"Just mind: You need two lives for this."
As Johnson rested in cheek on the stock of his rifle, closed his left eye, and looked through the scope on his rifle with his right eye, those words kept echoing in his head.
His boss at Langley, a man in his 50s named David Smith, had said those words to him when he was assigned to one of the units that didn't exist on any records within the CIA's Directorate of Plans. His boss had explained that he would have to kill people, lie about it, cover it up, and never say a word about it.
"
Just mind: You need two lives for this. This job is one life, and when you're not on the job, you have another life." He even had to lie to his wife and his son, pretending he had a boring, nondescript office job at Langley.
Officially, Harold Johnson was a paper-pusher for the CIA who tracked expenditures on office supplies and other mundane things the Agency spent money on. The agency had even paid for him to take accounting courses at Georgetown and get certified as a CPA.
Unofficially, he had never looked at a a spreadsheet in his life. He had joined the CIA after serving 4 years in the Marine Corps. He had been trained as sniper, and he found his employers at the CIA very enthusiastic when they learned about his abilities.
Johnson kept repeating those words to himself, hoping that they would assuage his conscience. His boss, Smith, had told him that everything they did was to keep America safe, and Johnson, who was deeply patriotic, wanted to believe him. That was why he had joined the Marines, to protect his country. In the Marines, his commanding officers had made it clear that the enemy was the Reds, and they said someday America would probably end up in a shooting war with the Russians.
Johnson had expected to the CIA to see the Commies as the enemy too, but he had been wrong. The man Johnson saw through his scope certainly wasn't a Communist. Nevertheless, Johnson had been told to kill him, and Johnson knew that it wasn't his job to discern right and wrong. It was his job to kill.
Instinctively following his training, he breathed in, breathed out, and steadied himself, not breathing so his rifle would be still. He aimed at his target and fired three times in incredibly rapid succession, which was not an easy feat with a bolt-action rifle.
Johnson managed to hit his target in the head, mortally wounding him. Hours later, Johnson would report to Langley that the mission was a success.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States, was dead.
Note: I don't actually believe in conspiracy theories, and I certainly don't think that the CIA really killed JFK.
"Augustus once said he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. I found Rome a city of marble and left it a city of ashes."
