Roger Seagraves walked out of the U. S. Capitol after an interesting meeting that, surprisingly, had had little to do with politics. That evening he sat alone in the living room of his modest suburban home after arriving at an important decision.
He had to kil someone, and that someone was a very significant target. Instead of a daunting proposition, Seagraves saw it as a worthy chal enge.
The next morning Seagraves drove to his office in northern Virginia. Sitting at his desk in a space that was smal and cluttered, and looked exactly the same as other work spaces up and down the corridor, he mental y assembled the critical pieces of his task. Seagraves final y concluded that he would do the deed himself, unwil ing to trust it to a third party. He’d kil ed before, many times in fact; the only difference now was he wouldn’t be doing it for his government. This one was al for him.
He spent the next two days in careful, decisive preparation efficiently conducted around his day job. The three imperatives of his mission were embedded in every action he performed: (1) keep it simple; (2) provide for every contingency; and (3) never panic no matter how much your plan goes awry, which it occasional y did. However, if there were a fourth rule, it would have to be: exploit the fact that most people are fools when it comes to things that actual y matter, like their own survival. He had never suffered from that shortcoming.
