Walt McGough
Dramatic
PARKER: 20s–30s, African American
A new operative at the CIA, PARKER has been charged with interviewing a retiring agent, and discovering what went wrong on his final mission. The agent is not cooperating.
PARKER Let me explain something to you. The Farm is for convalescence. The Farm is the finish line. The Farm is really fucking far away from you right now, because you’ve spent the last twenty-four years maintaining the ability and willingness to kill anyone you encounter, and that’s a very useful thing for fieldwork, but not for a retiree, no matter how much government-funded beer he drinks at some resort. Does that make sense? You are not unique. You are not special. You are a tool, that was mass-produced two decades ago to be a very specific way, and all of a sudden you decided you didn’t want to be a tool anymore, and you walked away from it, and that decision happened to come shortly after a mission that you pretty much have to agree went to fuckshit with no warning. There are a lot of red flags there. I’ve read your resignation, and I’ve watched the debriefings, all of them, and I’ve heard all the song-and-dance about “the way things was,” and the only thing that I have gotten out of all that is the impression that you are a man who is trained to lie to people, and you are incredibly good at your job. And, you are using all of your considerable faculties in that department to pretend to be balanced, and stable, and ready for reentry into society. I don’t buy it. Something went wrong, something that you’re trying to keep down, and you think it’s okay and that you can just keep it inside and go into the real world with it, but it’s not okay because you don’t know how the real world works anymore, and you haven’t for two decades. And that means that I am going to keep you in this goddamn room until you’ve convinced me that you’re not going to flip out at a Costco and choke a toddler because you think that he’s wearing a wire. Once I’m satisfied, you can go to the Farm, but the burden of proof is on you.