True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  Kitt drew out a handkerchief and brushed away the gob of vomit from his pale-blue cuff. “You’re a bloody nuisance, Mae,” he said, watching her move away.

  Outside, it was drizzling and sunny at the same time, the clouds above fat and patchy. Somewhere there’d be a rainbow. Mae buttoned her coat and paused to read the signs leading to P6 overhead, as Kitt had directed her to during part of his dictatorial ‘you do exactly as I say’ speech earlier in the morning. The silent, need-to-know adherence to protocol, the procedure that informed him of details yet did not disseminate that information to her, and the cloak and dagger shite were equally silly, but she pretended to fuss in her bag for a mint and he passed by. Then he paused, glancing at her, just to let her know she was not to deviate from the course.

  It was childish, but Jaysus, she wanted to toss the mint she’d retrieved at him. Instead, she swallowed the juvenile pettiness and continued on, with him following a few paces back, mobile at his ear, his small suitcase rolling along.

  “Again, I apologise for inconveniencing you,” he said. “Yes, it was fine… I don’t see that as a problem… Night Watch at the Rembrantplein… Oh, I see, yes, where the sculptures are… Inside the old bank… Coffee would be most welcome… Thank you. I appreciate you adjusting your schedule to meet with me. I’ll see you soon.” He finished the call, pocketed the phone, and manoeuvred his suitcase over a bumpy patch of pavement. Moody, brooding, Kitt stayed three steps behind Mae, silent until they reached the edge of the P6 Valet parking area. “Green Jaguar,” he said and on cue, a green XJ sedan pulled to the kerbside. The boot lid rose, the driver, a short man in a black cap, got out. “Get in the back,” Kitt said, taking her bag. “Sit behind the driver.”

  Mae pulled the rear door open and climbed into the car while Kitt put the suitcases into the boot. The driver, a different man to the one who had climbed out, got in and gave her a smile. “Hello, Mae.” Timothy Bryce said over the driver’s seat, his green eyes crinkling beneath an old-school chauffeur’s hat.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Didn’t Kitty tell you?”

  “Kitty’s told me nothing. He’s barely said five words to me since breakfast.”

  “He gets like that when he’s formulating a plan, then it’s ‘Bryce do this, Bryce get that, Bryce I need’. My job is doing what and going where I’m told, so here I am. He reached for something on the passenger seat. “Here, this is for you.” He handed over a small envelope and a little drawstring bag. “Save the envelope for later, open the bag now.”

  She pulled the strings of the pouch and pulled out a gold necklace dotted with small gold and silver coins strung between fine gold links. “Thank you, Timothy, it’s very pretty. Why are you giving me a gift?”

  “I’m not. It’s not really a present. It’s a GPS transmitter and a fashion accessory all in one. You can wear your glasses on it too. See that hoop there in the middle? That’s for your reading glasses. Oh, and there’s another, smaller piece in the bag for you. Did you find it?”

  Mae tipped the pouch into her hand. Out spilled a tiny, pinkish-toned item she’d seen several months ago. She rolled the earpiece between her fingers. “Shall I insert this now?”

  “No, but I’ve been instructed to tell you to wear the necklace at all times. How was your flight, did you see all the pretty tulip fields in bloom?”

  Before she answered, Kitt slid into the front seat. “Bryce. Drive. The Bank, 9 Utrechtsestraat, the Rembrantplein. It’s a café.”

  “Near the Night Watch statues.” Bryce pulled away from the kerbside.

  “Sculptures,” Kitt said, eyes on the side mirror, watching their exit from the valet area. “The Night Watch in the Rembrantplein are bronze-cast sculptures, not statues.”

  “You’re so educational, Kitty.” Bryce said. “The hotel master passkey is in the envelope in the console. Are you ready for the current update or is there another tourist fact you think we ought to know?”

  “Get on with it, Sergeant.”

  Bryce chuckled lightly. “Hilary resigned, sir.”

  “Well, we saw that coming. Llewelyn will be put out by losing his ‘girl’. And.”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “I don’t like any of this. We’re going to have to listen to Llewelyn whinge about every ‘new Hilary’ who tries to fill the floor manager position.” Kitt pulled down the sun-visor and flipped up the little vanity mirror and angled it to see Mae, reading glasses on, eyes down as she examined the clasp of the necklace he’d ask Bryce to bring. “Go on.”

  “One of the CCTV cameras near the Broad Walk was damaged, but the camera across the street from where your Bentley had been parked shows that Charteris and Eaton were pushed backwards, in front of the oncoming vehicle.”

  “Oh, Jaysus.” Mae froze, arms bent, elbows pointed forward, hands tucked behind her neck as she hooked the ends of the necklace clasp.

  Kitt met Mae’s eyes in the mirror. He watched her drop the necklace and plaster a hand over her mouth. “Suspects?”

  “Two men in hats and sunglasses. But there’s more,” Bryce continued. “The forensic team say the driver was already dead when he was pulled from the lorry and beaten. They believe someone else was in the tipper.”

  Kitt snapped the visor back into place “Then we can rule out terror.”

  “Yes, but not officially.”

  “Where is Vlaming?”

  “In his office at The Hortus Botanical Garden. He’s scheduled to give a lecture at eleven.”

  Kitt glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten.

  “Now that information is being exchanged, I have a question.” Voice thin, Mae leaned forward between the seats, wiping away wetness under her eyes. “Are you joining us on this…whatever it is, Timothy, or are you here to babysit me?”

  “While I enjoy your company, I don’t actively participate in field actions, I merely support Kitty in what he needs, Mae.”

  Kitt turned about in his seat and looked at her, blankly, silently. His lack of demeanour a clear indication of his seething rage.

  She mirrored his lack of expression.

  Chapter Seven

  Kitt went on being aloof. “I’m a field officer. Bryce is not. Neither are you. I don’t want you here, but here you are. I receive authorisation from Llewelyn, who receives authorisation from the Home Office. I have orders. While I follow orders, I am approved to operate on my own terms, make my own decisions, use my own judgement, without needing to check in for permission before I do so. I don’t need to clear anything with you or Bryce. Bryce is a support officer, and that’s what he does, support me.”

  “Like a good underwire brassiere,” Bryce said.

  The conversation ceased, the only sound came from the tyres on pavement, the shifting of papers as Kitt read through them, and the passing of other cars. Mae watched out the window, the Jag travelling along the motorway, passing over a canal, driving by a lake, the landscape changing from semi-rural to the outskirts of Amsterdam. Cosmopolitan, atmospheric, known for being very permissive, Amsterdam was a monumental city full of narrow streets of narrow houses, canals, merchant houses.

  The Jag crossed the Amstel, the river that gave the city its name, and another canal. Open green spaces gave way and suburban buildings began to change to narrow, brick structures a few storeys high. The closer they got to the oldest parts of the city, the more the buildings began to resemble picture postcards of skinny, attached row houses and businesses rimmed by trees and canals. Bryce drove by the port, the Amsterdam Centraal train station, and pulled to the front of The Palace Grand Hotel where people whizzed along the street on bicycles.

  The façade of the hotel was a modern contrast and juxtaposition to the picturesque, idealised Holland of wooden clogs and tulips, of Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh, of solemn places like the Anne Frank house, of exotic, erotic locations such as de Wallen—the red light district—and sacred places like the Basiliek van de Heilige Nicolaas, the Catholic Bas
ilica in the city’s old Centre District, right next door to the Palace Grand.

  “Follow her in to drop off the bags, Bryce.” Kitt said and stayed in the car as Bryce took the baggage inside to the lobby desk, following Mae.

  She approached the hotel’s reception. “Good morning, how may I help you?’ The slender brunette woman behind the desk said, her English coloured with a Spanish accent.

  “Good morning. I have a reservation for myself and my employer, Professor Boothroyd.”

  The desk clerk’s fingers tip-tapped it over a keyboard. “I must apologise. Your suite is not yet ready. I estimate another ten to fifteen minutes.”

  A suite. She was booked into a suite, another nicety for her trouble, courtesy of HRM’s government. Mae nodded. “Not a worry. I’m aware check-in is after two. May I leave my bags with you and return in a bit?”

  “Yes, of course. Your things will be in your suite when you return.”

  Mae turned to Bryce. “Thank you, driver. You may leave the bags.” Bryce nodded and Mae glanced down at the counter, to a gum-edged pad of colourful Amsterdam tourist maps. “May I?” she said

  “Please.” The clerk peeled off a sheet and handed it over. “You have a reserved space in the car park in the lower level. Will your driver be parking your car now or later?”

  “Later.” Bryce said.

  “Thank you. I’ll have Sem collect your bags now.”

  The clerk said something to a young man who disappeared from the area behind the desk and reappeared at the front to gather the luggage on a trolley.

  Then Mae was in the car again with taciturn Kitt, folding the paper map as Bryce drove them along the Prins Hendrikkade. The drizzle had ceased. People whizzed along the street on bicycles. Bryce turned to go one way along a canal, following the trams on Damrak until he stopped near the edge of the Amstel River.

  Kitt turned about in his seat, looking between the cream leather headrest. “Remember, Mae,” he said. “I’m Leslie Templar, and you are here to observe, so sit and watch. Stay out of sight and just watch.” He slipped a chunky ring on the third finger of his right hand. Gold, the ring was set with a black onyx cameo. “You can put the earpiece in now.”

  He watched her stuff a buff-coloured piece of soft plastic into her left ear and motioned for her to lean forward. When she did, he adjusted the coin necklace.” You look very pretty.”

  She looked at him, deadpan. “Don’t flatter me, just go on, run through it again like a dress rehearsal. You have the first line. Listen,” she said, mimicking the intonation he’d used early this morning. “Sit two or three tables away… Take it from there.”

  “I am so pleased you paid attention and know my lines, Mae. Being well-rehearsed is important. So…listen. Sit two or three tables from us and listen. Use your phone…” He went off script and ad-libbed his next line, “I’d prefer if this were something where you could send me a message with cute emojis that express your undying love for me, but you’re not the sort to send emojis, and if you were, this morning you’d likely send me the smiling pile of poo. Instead,” he picked up where he’d left off, “listen, and send me a text if you hear a name, a place, anything that you think might, in any way, however seemingly insignificant, be something you’ve heard or come across before. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, you’re right. I’d send you the smiling pile of poo.” Mae fiddled with the earpiece.

  “That’s my girl.”

  “Your girl?” Mae shook her head

  “Ah. Yes. Girl. For that I’d get two smiling piles of poo.”

  Bryce sniffed a chuckle.

  Kitt remained blank, unreadable. “Bryce,” he said.

  Mouth twitching, Bryce got out of the Jag.

  “Right then.” Dispassionate, Kitt waited.

  Mae waited too; the silence marked by the tock-tock-tock of the indicator Bryce had left on. “You don’t want me here,” she said, voice soft as snow and just as icy as his eyes, “and I don’t really want to be here, but this was my only option, and you can’t keep bullying me.”

  “I’m not bullying you.”

  She tipped her head and squinted at him with one eye.

  “I’m bullying you.” He nodded. “I’m bullying you. I’m sorry. I’m trying like hell to control a situation I have no control over. I want to pretend you’re not here. I want to pretend I can do this with you here when the truth is I can’t. So I am trying to look past who you are and how I feel about you, to ignore you enough to treat you as I would any novice field officer with barely any experience, but the fact is I should have ignored you the day I met you. Only I didn’t. I couldn’t. That’s my failing. I apologise for bullying you, but mostly I apologise for my shortcomings, for my lack of self-control, for my absolute inability to ensure my work would never again affect your life in this way.”

  “The self-reproach is a nice touch,” she tipped her head, “but I don’t want your guilt or an apology. I want you to tell me what you are thinking, what you are planning, and ditch the whole intelligence world need-to-know Junior Secret Agent scenario.”

  “Junior Intelligence Officer scenario.”

  Mae looked heavenward for a moment. “I want you to tell me what this is all about. I want to know why a lorry killed three people before smashing into your car. I want to know if this is terrorism or simple, outright murder. I want to know why Llewelyn threatened to put my brother in an asylum if I didn’t cooperate. I want to know what he’s keeping from me. I want to know what you’re keeping from me.”

  “I’m not keeping anything from you. I don’t know why he’s threatened you. Not yet, anyway.”

  “But you’re going to find out?”

  “Yes.”

  She twisted the coin necklace between her fingers. “In other words, you don’t know anything but bullying and bluster, and you going into this blind, or close to it—”

  “I often go into an assignment blind or close to it.”

  “—does not fill me with any confidence. Yet here I am, the pair of us uneven-tempered with each other. Here I am vacillatin’ between tellin’ myself I can do this and wantin’ to light a match and toss it over my shoulder because it’s not going to matter what I do or what we do. Here I am, followin’ the feckin’ instructions you and your employer demanded I follow because I love you, and if I don’t feckin’ laugh about how absurd this is I’ll go bonkers and wind up like Sean. We both know I’m more than halfway there already.”

  “As am I.”

  “Why don’t you teach me what to do, instead of bloody ordering me about?”

  “Teach you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Teach you.”

  “Isn’t that what you do now? Isn’t that what you were doing with Eaton? Isn’t that what Llewelyn wants you to do with me?”

  Kitt looked at her, face blank until he took a breath, and she watched the blankness in his eyes cast off sudden sparks of fury, revulsion, recrimination…and tenderness, enough for her to think he was about to say something else, something deeply confessional, heartfelt, and a little on the mushy side, but Kitt got out of the car, the edge of his suit jacket flapping in the breeze.

  Bryce climbed back in and resumed driving for another block and a half, taking her past the Rembrantplein, a square filled with life-sized, bronze sculptures of Rembrandt’s Night Watch painting. “Here you are,” he said, looking at her over the seat’s headrest. “I gather early this morning he gave you very strict instructions, like ‘keep your ears open and your mouth shut’ or something along those lines?”

  “Not so much instructions as orders, like I’m his subordinate.”

  “Technically, I’m his subordinate, not you.”

  “You’re also his friend.”

  “And you’re his wife. He’s worried about you being here. And he’s thinking. He’s a very good thinker, a chess player thinking fifty moves ahead kind of thinker, but he’s also being a prat. You’ve never seen him at the very start of an operation, when he�
�s focused on encoding information. It’s his SOP.”

  “SOP?”

  “Standard operating—”

  “Procedure.” Mae hooked her reading glasses through the little hoop on the necklace.

  “Yes. You’re going to hate me for saying this, but I agree with Llewelyn’s logic in having you here. I know Kitty does too, and that’s why he’s so scared.”

  “You’re a good friend, Timothy.”

  “I’m also very good at following orders. Out you go. I’ll drop the car with the hotel’s valet parking. If you need me, I’ll be enjoying the two-star comfort of the Hotel Old Amsterdam, a mere one-hundred-fifty metres from the Sexmuseum.”

  Laughing, Mae climbed out of the back seat and found herself standing in front of an old bank that had been converted into an American chain café with a green mermaid logo.

  Trim, fit, the man was out of breath as he came from the rear of the café, where the toilets were. His eyes darted around nervously, searching the room for someone he was supposed to meet. Early forties, tall and slender, Jan Vlaming jerked his head, flipping back a tuft of straw-coloured hair from his forehead, the movement accentuating a round face, pink cheeks, and large sky-blue eyes that gave him a something of a baby-face and a stereotypical Dutch-boy appearance. He looked to the bustling upper level, up the staircase of what was now a popular American chain coffee house carved out of what had once an old bank and back to baristas busy making coffee at the long bar. As he scanned the café, licking his bottom lip, he leaned against the bar like an old gunslinger in a saloon, trying to be casual in the way his eyes wandered about the space. A barista called out his order and he straightened with a jolt, collecting his iced coffee, whipped cream spilling over the edge.

  Kitt decided to put the man out of his misery and gave a little wave. The man came up the staircase. Kitt met him on short landing. “Mr Vlaming?” he said.

  “Oh, you must be Mr Templar.” With a laugh bordering on reedy, Vlaming shook the hand Kitt offered.