They say that revenge is best served cold. They also say that revenge is sweet. I don't know who they are but I like how it sounds. I say that makes revenge Ice Cream. That's where I come in. I'm called the Ice Cream Man. I work for an agency of the government called the Parlor. Yes, I picked that to go with my name. Kind of catchy I thought.
The Parlor is an organization that is so secret even our top heads of state, the FBI, and the CIA don't know we exist. There are just three full time agents. We have many operatives that are brought in as needed for an assignment or two then they return to their regular lives. We recruit only the best in their fields. No one uses their real name in the organization. It really wouldn't be wise for us to know a lot about each other. Staying secret is what allows us to be successful.
You've probably seen or heard of our work. There are many books written about our missions and several movies. The names, events, and locations have all been changed but the stories were based on actual events. We fix problems, secretly. Things like rogue politicians or heads of state, big time criminals, and sometimes corporate giants who severely overstep certain boundaries. We have, on occasion, worked with our sister agencies in other governments.
My name is Tom Larabie, that's an alias. I run the Parlor and put together the operations. I've been told that I look a lot like Christopher Reeves in the first Superman movie, without that outfit or the cute little curl he wore. In reality, I look more like his Clark Kent personna. I even wear the fake glasses. If you saw me on the street you wouldn't look twice. That's how I like it. I fit in wherever I go and don't attract any attention. My wife on the other hand, attracts attention everywhere she goes. She's absolutely gorgeous and knows it. We've been married for almost three years. Mary, my wife, is thirty-five. I'm her second husband. All she knows of my work is that I do private contracting with the government. She thinks I build stuff.
My second in command is Art Pawlak, another alias. We refer to him as the Artist. Art does our recruiting. He's a single guy in his thirties. The Artist might recruit from anywhere on the planet. Everyone he recruits is fully trained before they're recruited.
Our other full-timer is Jeff Davis. He's our electronics genius and if can be accessed by a computer, he knows how to do it. He says that he's connected to every computer on the planet and from what I've seen, he's probably telling the truth. His nickname is Keys.
When we get an assignment our budget is unlimited. We've only had a couple that went over fifty million but those went way over. We also have unlimited access to technology. Some of our toys make James Bond's look like amateur stuff.
Whenever we have an operation we always develop multiple approaches to the problem. We begin with plan A and will switch to B, C or D as needed. I'm the only one who ever knows all the plans. I'm rarely in the field anymore due to my advanced age of forty-two. Don't get me wrong, I'm still involved but rarely on the front line now. I do miss the adrenalin rush sometimes.
This leads me to our story today. The government has been investigating Mr. A. He's a billionaire with everything. He's also connected, one way or another to just about every government on the planet. We know he's involved in arms peddling, drugs and slavery. With all his connections the government doesn't dare touch him. That's why we got involved. Our assignment: Stop the arms trading and destroy his supply, cut off his drug supply, stop the slavery and rescue the slaves. My favorite part of this assignment is the last part - break him. We get to keep whatever monies we might filter from his pockets into ours.
Our plan was developed so that all four parts would be completed at the same time. Essentially we would destroy him and everything he has a hand in. The drugs were coming from both the middle east and South America. We coordinated with several other agencies in multiple governments to address that. The arms were coming and going from Turkey. A Russian agency joined forces with us to resolve that. The slavery issues and taking his money would be purely a Parlor undertaking.
Jeff would take care of breaking Mr. A via the computer. One minute he would be a billionaire and the next he would be broke.
