Ms Hwang,
Greetings from a dead man.
My name is David Allam. I am the CEO of The Allam Group, a British arms manufacturer , and I am the next person you will kill.
I write to you to beg you - on bended knee as it were - to please not harm my family. They are the innocent victims of a vain and reckless man who wasted his life in wanton dissolution merely so he could avoid looking into the mirror out of terror of what he knew awaited him.
You will be told that I supply weapons and arms to the worst people and countries in the world. It is true that our family fortune, going back to the Second World War, has been made by manufacturing and selling the tools of death and mutilation and pain. If there is such a thing as shades of gray, then we have made an honest living, not selling to the worst of the worst, but to just the worst: the British government.
I know your true identity. You work in the shadows. But as a weapons supplier, I work in total darkness. Where I dwell, there are secrets of such depth and simplicity that no one actually knows what they are. They exist apart from our supervision, indeed, apart from time. There are things, realities, that would scare the world too much. Only hints rise like smoke from a place infinitely black. They are read with all the interpretation and guesswork of tarot cards, and then decisions that affect the lives of millions are made. The secrets pile and pile up, until they become a faceless beast that says what it wants and does what it wants. All around the world, we call that government.
One day, deep in the basement of a banal government office, while sitting in a conference room, I learned your true identity by asking a man who you were as he handed me a cup of coffee. In that world, no more effort was needed. I might have acted against you, but it would be pointless. I mean you no disrespect, but you are merely one assassin in a line that stretches forever forward and forever backward in time. There is always a next you, as there is always a next me.
I don't seek pity or to avoid my fate. But I wish to share with you my brief story in the hope that one day it may serve as illumination into yours.
I was born into a wealthy but loveless home, raised by a series of coldly competent but disinterested nannies and was sent to boarding school at the age of five. The minimum enrollment age for the school was six, but by using their wealth, my parents persuaded the school to waive their rules for me, and for me alone. My parents dropped me off and left for Monte Carlo. Shortly thereafter, the school boasted of a new swimming pool.
Cambridge followed, but I don't remember it.
I was 19 when they died in a drunken car crash, and I took my seat as head of the family company. By then, I was arrogant, malignant, cruel, and petty. I left the management of the company to the board, and set out on my own journey of alcohol, drugs, women, and debauchery, burning through tens of millions of dollars - money earned by giving the British government the tools it needed to do its will around the world, as long as the Americans approved, that is. I told myself that I was being a loyal citizen, but I knew well enough that our government sold them on, to France, who sold them to Germany, who sold them to Japan, and so forth. I knew that they eventually ended up in the hands of some of the most wretched governments imaginable. But I looked the other way, and told myself that I had figured out how the world worked, and that everyone else was blind, or stupid, or both.
Somewhere along the way, I married. She was as empty and translucent as an icicle. After a year of trying to keep up with me, she left with millions, and I was left with a daughter, Mary, whom I barely remembered had been born. (Some years later I learned that my former wife had died of an overdose.)
You would think that I might have remembered the cold emptiness of my childhood, an expatriate from parental love, and would be determined to change and raise my own child as I wished I had been. But, of course, I didn't. I handed her to nannies as I had been and told myself that buying nice things for her would make up for my absence. Then I resumed my carnival ride of insanity, excess, and recklessness.
The poor girl was deprived of even the most basic care and affection that a father should provide. In 25 years, I had never attended a single birthday or watched a performance at school. The nannies would call and remind me that Mary's birthday was approaching, and I would beg them to buy something.
Mary tried repeatedly to contact me as she approached adulthood. She knew no way to reach me, so she called the company over and over throughout the years, but I had made it clear that I was not to be disturbed. To me, she had become a shadow who only reminded me of my shame.
Two years ago, I received a call from my company saying that Mary was desperately trying to reach me. I'm not sure why I didn't hang up. She had given birth, and wanted me to meet my grandson. I would have felt more embarrassed to not attend than I was motivated by love to see her and the boy. So I got drunk and made my way to the hospital.
Mary was holding the baby and whispering in its ear. I put on my best sneer and approached the bed. I was only a footstep away when Mary looked up at me, smiled, and said into the child's ear "David, I want you to meet your grandfather."
I staggered out of the room. The next thing I remember was sitting in the rain on a bench in St James Park. I felt like I had awakened in someone else's clothes, and in someone else's life.
I had deprived Mary of everything a child should have. I had ignored her, neglected her, abandoned her, and when I saw her in the hospital with that dear child, what did she do?
She showed me love.
Me. An aberration. A merchant of death.
The person who most deserved to hate me, to spit on me, showed me love. And she named her child after me. I had given her nothing. But to Mary, I wasn't a drunk, or an addict, or a monster. In her heart I had somehow, against all reason, all faith, remained her father.
It took me three months to get sober, and I have been ever since. Mary taught me how to feel affection, and how to care for someone beside myself. I play with my grandson every day, and we, including my son-in-law, Robert, have come together as a family, even though there are parts that will always be missing, because of me.
So I beg you again, Ms Hwang: I deserve to pay for the life I have lived. But Mary, Robert, and David - they are my victims. Please, please don't harm them. Should it help, I will pay you whatever amount you ask. Furthermore, bear in mind that my family knows nothing of my plans to be a whistleblower.
I had a friend in the current government that I trusted deeply. I told him that I planned to go public with some of the human rights abuses and illegal weapons trading that is widespread in the West. I had no illusions about what my so-called friend would do. I was lighting a fuse. I know that they are going to kill me, and since my daughter and granddaughter will inherit my company, they will kill our entire family, both as insurance and as an example to others. In such cases, they usually turn to people like you.
You have righted many of the wrongs in the world, and you have done it at great personal cost. Everyone who you have killed has deserved their fate, but ask yourself: of all the terrible people you have assassinated, why were they chosen? There is a plenitude of evil people and evil regimes. Take, for example, the group you destroyed in Mongolia. Did MI6 tell you that their camp is on one of the largest lithium deposits in the world? Or that the gold from Rome was used to bribe corrupt leaders?
You might be surprised to learn that my daughter and I have watched you perform online, and have listened to many interviews with you. The wonderful, warm, and talented woman that I see there, laughing with her friends, is not a person that would murder an innocent mother, father, and child. I know that the world sometimes needs those who are hammers, and often those who, like you, are scalpels. But I don't want you to feel guilty, or to hesitate. In fact, I pardon you for killing me.
I am 63 now, Ms Hwang. I am at an age where my past is laid out like a tapestry, my failings exposed in the light. Please be sure that when you, too, see that record, that you are not alone, and are not afraid of what you might see.
We will meet soon,
David Allam