From Fitzroy’s Private Diary (Extract 168)

It’s always embarrassing when you kill the wrong chap. Not done it myself, but although we don’t like to talk about, it does occur. The thing is, when you’ve been travelling for a few weeks, maybe even had to live off the land for a while to get you into the best position (and that means going without those creature comforts that make a man a man, like hot shaving water), one can get a bit tired. It might have been a while since your stomach has seen three square meals a day, and that can have an affect on memory.

So, you’re looking down the sight of your rifle, and you’ve got a chap coming out of a door - just as expected – only, it turns out there’s a gaggle of them. A group of men who’ve been down the local watering hole together. All of them are on the bloated side, generally going to seed, and a bit dishevelled. A pack of politicians who probably went to school together, belong to the same clubs, and use the same tailor - doesn’t matter the country, it’s the same everywhere. Anyway, you’re looking down the barrel of your gun and you end up thinking, I’ve got a one in five chance of taking out the right target, I should go for it. After all, you’ve expended a lot of effort to get here.

This is, of course, when things like jug ears become important.

If you’re on an assassination mission, not that I would do that kind of thing, or at least I wouldn’t own to it if I did, then you can’t very well carry a picture of the fellow you’re about to help in shuffling off this mortal coil. If you get caught with something like that, the show’s over. However, trying to carry a clear and perfect picture of the target in your mind, all the while enduring the many difficulties of a mission, is hard.

What I advise is to only agree to take on missions to assassinate people who have distinctive features. That might be a particularly pronounced chin, overly large ears, a gargantuan nose,  a distinguishing facial scar or even a monobrow. These are sort of things that can be more easily committed to memory and used to accurately identify a target, even at a significant distance.

God, as they say, is in the details.