Fifteen years ago, Imperial University Graduation, Capital City, Country Y

David arrived at their graduation ceremony, and carefully looked around. It had been six months since he had seen Robert, as he was spending his time outside classes and study completing his truncated Officer's course. He had, twelve months ago been accepted upon graduation to join military intelligence.

The last six months had made him think about the conversation they had on his eighteenth birthday, on how to bring down those who had killed their family. Yes, as they had both found out they were involved in the underworld, they never did anything to jeopardise the country. More importantly about eighteen months ago, they found the evidence that the arrest, military trial and the immediate carrying out of the death sentence was all done because a rival wanted their family out of the way, as they were moving more and more to become legitimate business persons, rather than underworld figures, and that was not appreciated.

He had spent the last six months, establishing his investment business, using the funds they had secured from the sales of the family jewellery, and what they had been able to obtain from hidden family accounts that the government had not located. He was already making a name for himself, both in investing and as a low-level person in the underworld. His first target, which was one of the last things he and Robert had spoken about was bring down the figures responsible for having their family killed.

He looked up, and saw Robert moving into the graduate area in his military uniform. He walked over and being conscious that they would likely be observed, shook Roberts hand, saying "Congratulations."

Knowing they were both receiving University awards, after saying "Congratulation to you as well," both Robert and David headed towards the area where they had been directed to sit, to be handed their degrees and awards.

Once they were seated Robert quietly said "I have a month's leave, can you get away to go to our country hideaway?"

"Absolutely, but we better head there separately. It is likely to be the last time until we have our revenge that we can meet."

Surviving through the ceremony, without anyone realising their plans, the two of them were invited to a special function afterwards, where they had to mingle with senior government officials. Robert, over the last six months had gotten better at hiding how uncomfortable this was making him feel, but he could see that David was uncomfortable with this, but from all he could observe he seemed to be hiding it reasonably well from everyone. Both slipped away after a couple of hours.

The next morning, separately they both headed towards the small rural cottage a three hours outside the capital that David had purchased a few months ago after his first few successful forays into the share market, hiding it through a web of companies that they owned to obscure its ultimate ownership to protect it.

Over the next few days, they simple spent time catching up with what they had been doing over the last six months, and just being each other's best friend as they had always been. On the fourth day after their arrival, the sat down, and quietly started to plan then next steps. Robert would pursue his career in military intelligence to get into a senior position that could benefit them significantly, while passing on useful intelligence to David.

David on the other hand, as they agreed would be the one to not only expand his legitimate business, but start their revenge activities, firstly to deal with the underground figures responsible for their family's death taking over their resources to parlay that into more power within the underground, moving from group to group, using they towards their ultimate goal.

More importantly David agreed to be Robert's confidential informant. Nothing would be recorded to ensure that there was no tracing back of anything to David, but as they both knew, it would allow them to use the military to take out people the needed or protect David.

For them, the hardest thing about their planning was how to communicate with each other. As Robert had already learned mobile communications, while being promoted as being secure were not. After discussing the process, David decided that he would engage a programming specialist to develop a secure unbreakable communications program and keep it ahead of the authorities, with Robert telling him if there was a problem. They also established the failsafe old-style spy communications with one-time cyphers and dead drops.

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