Most of the time it’s just so easy to watch through the scope as the target’s body hits the floor. Most of the time you can calmly pack up the gun, check the area, and leave.

The killing of the President of the United Economic Nation was not like that. I have never, for instance, found it necessary to consider the consequences of my bullet. Nor have I ever felt regret at dispatching the target.

No, as I watched him start the six-hundred-thousand-metre fall to the ground far below, I felt that this job was perhaps one that I should have turned down. Perhaps, as I watched the first reactions of shock from his useless bodyguards, I should have missed. He had been a good man, but he had been a bad man as well – as we all must in these times. Perhaps I was ushering in a new age of prosperity for the Nation.

I was arguing fruitlessly. I had murdered their best hope for peace and happiness, and I knew it. I had always known it.

I packed up the gun, looked around and left.