In any undercover operation, it is vital that some form of link be maintained between the operative and their parent organization. There are several reasons for this. Most obviously, not having a means to send information back makes the undercover agent's presence effectively useless. Of greater concern to the agent, however, is the need for a lifeline - some way of verifying their true identity and allegiance once the operation is over. But what happens when this link ceases to exist? Perhaps the agent's Handler was killed or has gone missing. Less dramatically but perhaps more tragically, perhaps all institutional knowledge of the operation was simply lost among the bureaucracy. In either case, cutting this lifeline can have drastic consequences.
What an agent chooses to do when this happens will vary. Some, particularly The Mole, may try to erase any remaining ties to their past and Become The Mask. Some moles, however, are more likely to remain true to their original mission - working to bring down the target of their infiltration from the inside, searching for an alternative means of proving their identity, or simply trying to find some means of escape.
As noted above, may result in the character Becoming the Mask. Attempts to reveal their true identity will likely result in a case of Cassandra Truth.
See also Trapped Behind Enemy Lines for the military variant.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In an arc in Jonah Hex, at the behest of the governor, Jonah commits a bank robbery and is sent to state prison so he can investigate corruption within the prison. However, this turns out to be part of a larger scheme by Jonah's Arch-Enemy Quentin Trumbull, and when the governor is killed, there is no one who can verify Jonah's story, forcing him to break out in order to clear his name.
- The premise of The Sleeper is that of an agent infiltrating a supervillain's organization, only for his mentor and handler to go into a coma, leaving the agent trapped.
- Venom: Happens to a reporter named Gray Russell who has gone undercover to infiltrate the Jadoo street gang and winds up in over his head. Gray finds that he'll be expected to kill someone as part of his full initiation into the gang or be killed himself, unless Venom and The Punisher can rescue him first.
Films — Live-Action
- Both major characters in The Departed experience this to some degree:
- Played straight with Sullivan. When things start to go south for Costello, he sets up the mob boss's arrest and uses the raid as an excuse to kill him, then does his best to cover his tracks and act like an upstanding member of the force.
- Zig-zagged with Costigan. At first, when Captain Queenan is killed and Staff Sergeant Dignam resigns, it appears this trope will be in effect, but he's able to make contact with other officers and pass along enough information to bring down Costello, then extricate himself and report in to headquarters. There's even a secret file on Queenan's computer confirming his identity... which Sullivan promptly deletes when he realizes Costigan can identify him...
- Face/Off: When Castor Troy wakes up, he kills everyone who knows that Sean Archer has gone undercover disguised as him... then turns the tables by masquerading as Archer himself!
- Happens to Yan in Infernal Affairs (remade as The Departednote ), when his superior Wong, the only cop who knows that he's undercover and wasn't sacked from the police for dishonesty, is murdered by the gang Yan is undercover with.
- In The Rock, John Mason was a former S.A.S. operative who was recruited into M.I.6. He was sent in a top secret mission to the U.S. to gather as much dirt on the U.S. government in case the British needed some leverage to keep them on their side. After Mason managed to get as much information as he could into some microfilm, he was discovered and went on the lam hiding the stash within a hollowed out leg in a church the middle of Kansas, as he revealed to Goodspeed at the end of their mission. When he tried to cross the Canada-U.S. border he was caught, and after he was identified as a spy, the British government disavowed him and was locked up in Alcatraz until he escaped.
- In Secretly, Greatly, the three main characters are all North Korean spies living undercover in the South. They take on specific roles as a village idiot, pop star, and student, and eagerly await orders while they grow attached to unsuspecting people in their community. For much of the movie, no orders come, but near the end it's revealed that political upheaval has led to the cancellation of their program, and that their only order is to kill themselves. This leads to a climax with a three-way showdown between the protagonists, the South Korean spies, and their superiors.
- In xXx, Yelena reveals she is an undercover agent within Anarchy 99 who was forgotten and abandoned by her parent agency.
Literature
- Discussed in the BattleTech Expanded Universe novel Falcon Rising. When Jade Falcon scientist Peri Watson goes undercover in a secret training center at the behest of her Khan, she wonders briefly what would happen to her if the Khan and saKhan - the only two people who know of her mission - were both killed in battle before her mission is completed. She quickly resolves to continue working to expose the facilities secrets, alone if necessary.
- In Mistborn, Marsh infiltrates the Steel Ministry. When the Inquisitors turn him into one of them against his will, they leave behind a flayed body in the safehouse where he was supposed to meet his contact, which makes it look like they tortured him to death. The rebellion doesn't take the chance that he didn't break, and immediately retreats to a location that he didn't know about, leaving him unable to reveal that he's still alive.
- In The Sympathizer, the main character is a Communist Mole in a cell of the South Vietnamese army. When the unit he's embedded with decides to emigrate to America, he stays embedded with them and continues reporting on their activities to his superior Man, even though he stops receiving orders. This eventually bites him in the back when the narrator joins his targets in a madcap bid to re-invade Vietnam, and gets captured and tortured by his erstwhile commanders.
- Your Republic Is Calling You: The main character is a North Korean sleeper agent who has been living in the South for several decades without any contact with the superiors back home. The plot is kicked off when he suddenly gets called back after 30 years, and he must decide between betraying his country or giving up his family and the comfortable life he lives.
Live-Action TV
- The sixth episode of Crisis (2017) centers on an investigation of whether an officer from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's Public Security Bureau turned into a terrorist for Shinjitsu No Hikari (Truth/Reality of Light) when the Tokyo Metro network was attacked with explosives. It turns out said officer wasn't extracted from the cult by his fellow PSB officers as planned after said officer infiltrated the cult, forcing him to commit terrorism in order to preserve his cover.
- In Star Trek: Voyager, Seska was a Cardassian spy on board the USS Voyager when it was flung to the other side of the galaxy. Though she lost contact with her Cardassian spymasters, she was still a villain, and ended up joining forces with the Kazon, who wanted to steal Voyager's technology.
- Treadstone. Petra kills her husband after he stumbles across the Cold War-era nuclear silo hidden on their farm. She calls her emergency contact number and is connected to a department store instead. The support network for her operation has been shut down (probably years ago) and no one cared to inform her about it.
Video Games
- The original Max Payne game (ignoring the How We Got Here intro and the shot prologue) starts off with Max working for the DEA as a deep undercover mole with Don Punchinello's drug ring. At the end of the first level, he meets up with his handler Alex who is shot and killed in front of him by an unseen hitman (who, we later learn, was sent by the mob upon discovering Max's true loyalties). As Alex has been the only officer who knew of Max's assignment, he ends up on the wrong side of the law and embarks on a one-man Roaring Rampage of Revenge for the rest of the game.
