Man Of Mystery 

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During this time, he met and fell in love with Sidelle Rimbaud, a beautiful French Direction de Surveillance du Territorie (DST) agent, who specialized in countering illegal drug trade, organized crime and arms proliferation. The couple moved into a small French villa, and made plans to marry. However, in 1982, Bannon, along with Rimbaud and a Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent named Lee Hyung-Jin, was assigned to break up a group of North Koreans who were smuggling child porn to fund their terrorist cell. After weeks of surveillance, the teams descended upon a warehouse in Marseilles, where several of the terrorists were hiding. A vicious shootout followed, and Rimbaud was fatally shot in the chest and neck.

Bannon was devastated, but also furious and hungry for revenge. He says Interpol capitalized on his desperate frame of mind, and recruited him for Archangel, a secret branch of Interpol designed specifically to hunt those who traffic in children and kiddie porn. Bannon was given an intensive psychiatric exam, which determined he had the right combination of aggression and empathy to work as an Archangel operative.

"Archangel wanted someone with a tendency to accept violence as a solution to conflict," Bannon says. "However, that had to be weighed with a strong ethical base. In other words, someone who could both negotiate with people and slap them around. I seemed to fit that profile."

He was soon sent to a giant warehouse outside Lyon, France, where he underwent an intensive training regimen to prepare for the many dark and dangerous deeds he would be asked to do. Bannon rose each morning at 5:30am, and with a few other agents underwent rigorous exercises and weight training. This was followed by classes in unarmed combat and gruesome assassination techniques using fighting knives and stilettos. Bannon soon discovered that he had a knack for bladed weapons. His specialty was known as "wet work," or close-quarter, quiet assassinations.

Bannon said he was also shown horrific images of child pornography, rape and torture.

"This was the propaganda they used," he says. "To create this demonic Other, and encourage this sense of outrage in us and convince us that we were part of something bigger than ourselves. That we were the only ones who could possibly stop these villians."

Bannon was also tutored in international business lingo and practices, which would enable him to blend into the corporate world with ease, as his legends would often require. He went through grueling interrogations where he was drilled again and again on minute details of different legends. In the dangerous world of Archangel, one little slip-up could mean certain death. After three months of this type of extreme physical and mental training, it was time to go to work.

Cleaning House
Bannon's first "cleaning assignment" took place in Romania. His target was "James," a known child molester who dealt in child prostitution and pornography. Bannon's legend was that of a young executive from a global company looking for cheap Romanian labor.

Bannon located James, who posed as an import/export broker, at his Romanian office. For several days Bannon shadowed James, and eventually followed him to Transylvania, where James took a tour of Bran Castle, better known as Castle Dracula, a big tourist trap in Romania. With Bannon looking on, James was approached by a middle-aged Romanian, and the two men left the castle together. Bannon followed the men through a network of alleys, and finally to a parked car. After James handed over a wad of cash, the other man opened the car door and pulled out a young girl. Bannon sprang into action. A quick strike to the throat of the Romanian, and a thrust of his utility knife into the heart of James, and both men lay dead.

Bannon says he spent the remainder of that evening curled up in the corner of his Romanian hotel room.

"Here was this little girl who I helped save," Bannon says. "On the other hand, when you felt the dull, throbbing horror of taking another person's life, it's hard to feel justified. It was a bizarre mix."

Archangel continued to send Bannon on investigations and "cleaning assignments" all over the world, the exact number of which Bannon won't say. But the first few years -- the early to mid-80s -- were the most intense and active.

However, it wasn't all work. In 1983, Bannon began dating "Shin," a beautiful Korean performance artist who lived in Seoul. Although a romance flourished, Bannon kept his true identity a secret, telling her he was a Canadian businessman. The two had been dating only a couple of months when Shin disappeared while in Osaka, Japan, for a performance gig. Using his Archangel connections with the Japanese yakuza, or mafia, Bannon learned that Shin was last seen in a small Japanese village called Yonago, where a known violent fetishist was bragging that he had graphic sexual pictures of a Korean woman. Bannon and his contact tracked the man to a small farm, where they found him working in the fields. While Bannon searched the farmer's house, his partner approached the suspect and started asking him questions. When Bannon heard the two men struggling outside, he grabbed a baseball bat and sprinted toward the commotion. His partner was badly hurt, and the farmer's arm was broken. Bannon, after an intense struggle, finally dropped his adversary with a blow to the neck using the bat. His partner finished the job with a hatchet.