True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  Tanja gave a wry little smile. “I supposed you could say the woman I remember had hair that was ginger-blonde, but I admit I was paying more attention to the man she was with. He was really good-looking.”

  “You met the woman we mean?” Weed dabbed his mouth.

  The brunette nodded. “I think we did.”

  “Oh, my, that bebek goring is hot!” The ‘Professor’ downed his tea and sucked in cooling air. “I met a woman at the Aalsmeer Flower auction, a Texan,” Llewelyn said, fully embracing the kindly professor persona. “I do think, as Leslie suggested when he contacted me, we may have been victims of the same woman.”

  Tanja hesitated slightly when she reached for her tea. “What did you have stolen, Caratacus?” she said, tilting her head in interest.

  Mae paused beside Kitt, to his right, bottle of expensive water in hand. He looked up at her, meeting her eyes as she filled his glass. She pressed her lips together when he took the glass from her, his fingertips brushing over hers.

  “Saffron crocus corms,” Professor Caratacus Boothroyd said, “rather a lot of them.”

  Arthur gave a quizzical look. “Corms?”

  “The bulbs. Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, next to vanilla,” Kitt said, and crunched a prawn cracker.

  “Yes,” Llewelyn said. “It takes eighty-thousand flowers to harvest a mere five-hundred grams of saffron, hence the exorbitant cost, and I had a few hundred-thousand euros worth of saffron crocus corms ready for sale go missing, taken right out of the climate-controlled storage unit.”

  Tanja set down her chai.

  “What are you a professor of, Professor?” Weed asked. “Spices?”

  “Botany—Plant Sciences it’s called now. The corms were in temporary storage at the Luxembourg Freeport while I made upgrades to my private…”

  Discreetly, Mae went about her duties, refilling wine, water glasses and tea cups, wiping up spilled rice, making more chai, listening to plausible bullshit stories with no one taking mind of her as she moved about. She bit her molars together, the way Kitt sometimes did. Rather than listen to eejit ‘Caratacus Boothroyd’ spin a bullshit tale of saffron crocus theft at the hands of Ruby Bleuville, Mae proceeded to clear away dirty dishes, knowing that maintaining cover was all about acting, method acting. Intelligence field officers were nothing but method actors, just like conmen and conwomen playing a game. Kitt had told her his work was a game, and it was, a game full of actors, with no glitzy award ceremony beyond surviving to play another day. She knew he listened to it all, intently, seriously, flashing the occasional smile at Tanja, and he was just as embedded in being Leslie Templar as Hans Weed was in being a jazz musician, Arthur the CEO of a human resource consulting firm, and Llewelyn a benign professor of botany.

  When Tanja began to tell the story about her boss, Mae paid attention. “We met this woman and her boyfriend,” the woman began. Her account included Vlaming, his Aunt Polly Dankwaerts, Giacomo Negroni—like the cocktail—and his sickly-sweet cologne, the Asian man, the man from Guatemala, as well as Ruby Bleuville, the strawberry-haired ‘Arts and Collectible Specialist’ from Texas. It was tripe, the same utter crap Jan Vlaming had already provided, practically word for word. Mae listened, and the woman, like the story, had been rehearsed. Pretty Ruby Bleuville may have been involved, but a now-dead woman was being scapegoated. The subterfuge by all parties put them no bloody closer to uncovering anything of actual substance—except for the fact that the room was full of BAFTA and Oscar contenders that would never be.

  Tanja sighed unhappily. “Like you, Kurt, my boss’s family opens its estate gardens to the public. Tomorrow, in fact, is the family’s well-known garden party. This woman, Ruby, I invited her to Jan’s Aunt Polly’s garden gala.” Best performance by a lead female actor nominee Tanja Goedenacht wore a troubled expression that made her very blue eyes doll-like. “I am responsible for Jan and his aunt losing family treasures that survived wars and Nazi occupation. I should have said something when we met her, but I didn’t. Jan liked her and her boyfriend, but I didn’t. There was something about them both, him in particular. Yes, she was beautiful. The boyfriend, Negroni, was very good-looking too, polished, but unpolished, like he was uncomfortable in his own skin and he tried to cover it up with expensive clothes. Did any of you meet him?” Hand shaking, Tanja reached for her teacup and gestured to Mae, holding the empty Delft cup aloft as she looked at the men at the table.

  Oh, she was good.

  “Vlaming said he hoped to see Negroni tomorrow, at his aunt’s garden party,” Kitt said. “Do you think you could arrange an invitation for all of us to the afternoon’s event?”

  Tanja turned to Kitt, her head tipped to one side, her cheeks pink, her mouth a lush, rosy bloom. “That’s a very good idea. May I be frank, Leslie?” She put her hand on top of his, the relaxed, natural curl of his fingers hiding the fact that two were shortened.

  “By all means.”

  “Jan is a mess. Such a mess. I don’t know how he held it together with you this morning. He’s…I’m not sure this is the right expression, a bundle of nerves. I gave him half a Xanax this morning, just to meet you. To be honest, I’m not much better. I took half a Xanax this morning too. I feel responsible. So much money. He’s lost so much money.” Her mouth and brows twisted with frustration, her China-doll face suddenly crumpling.

  “You’re a very considerate employee,” Kitt said, turning his hand to squeeze hers ever so lightly.

  Tanja laughed and scooped lustrous black hair over one shoulder. “Thank you for saying that,” she said, and Kitt smiled at her, giving her hand a reassuring little squeeze.

  Mae filled the young woman’s cup with the last of the Christmas-scented milky tea and turned away. Janey Mack, Kitt was the business. It was a form of manipulation she knew, something spies were trained to do. There was probably a handbook for intelligence agents with a title like Neurolinguistic Programming for Espionage, Deception Detection, and Sales, covering things such as body language, pupil dilation, vocal inflection. Seeing her husband with a woman, one half his age, smiling at her, was so familiar and so normal, and she looked at them with a detachment that was unexpectedly familiar and normal, which wasn’t normal.

  She poured fresh chai into Llewelyn’s cup and wondered how likely was it that Tanja Goedenacht was married or engaged or in some kind of relationship.

  She’d never paid much attention to Kitt’s technique in the past, but there was something fascinating and decidedly psychopathic in the way he charmed, persuaded, or manipulated women into joining him for a drink, into joining him for the evening, into sharing his bed for the night.

  When the story-telling dinner concluded, Mae served coffee, more Christmas-like scented chai to Llewelyn and Tanja, and offered speculaas biscuits around. The outside rain, a soft mist, hit the glass of the sliding balcony doors, distorting the pink, white, and red lights from the sex district on the other side of the canal, five floors below.

  “Wow,” Weed, said, peering at his digital watch, “It’s already nine o’clock.” He rose. “We’d better say goodnight, Arthur. We’ve got an hour’s drive back to Leiden.”

  Kurt Arthur balled up his napkin and tossed it on the table. “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure to meet you Tanja, but…I’d prefer it had been over different circumstances. Come to the house the next time you’re in town, Caratacus.” He got to his feet.

  Llewelyn, Kitt, and Tanja followed suit. As butlers do, Mae led the way to the small foyer, the small group shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries. As butlers do, Mae handed out coats, opened the door for them and wished Arthur and Weed a pleasant night.

  A few steps behind, Kitt slid his hand in the small of Tanja’s back. “Shall we go to the bar downstairs?” he said, smiling, glancing at Mae, her façade of professional efficiency in place. As butlers do, she helped Tanja into her coat and stepped aside to hold the door open for them, looking at nothing in particular. As butlers do not, she failed
to give Kitt his coat. “Good evening, Valentine,” he said with a nod.

  “Good evening, sir.” Mae offered a bland smile and ran her hands over her apron, smoothing it as was her habit. He loved watching that simple action, only this time the movement was slower and had a shade of wiping off something disagreeably sticky. Or perhaps that’s how he felt, disagreeably sticky giving his attention to a woman he cared nothing about.

  How odd it was, how easy it was to fall into a past behaviour of being attentive to a woman he cared nothing about, right in front of his butler, while his butler went on as reserved and professional as she had always been, as if these last few months hadn’t happened. Yet the last few months had happened. His butler was his wife, and his old, cavalier behaviour was like a sticky trap, the glue sort used to catch vermin.

  And he felt very much like a rat.

  Busy, but quiet and elegant, the Palace Grand’s bar was an intimate setting with low lights, little tables, and small booths in black, grey, and soft burnished gold. The bar itself was round and lit from below. Kitt signalled the barman and led Tanja Goedenacht to a table, a tiny, half-moon booth near a gas-burning fireplace. They slid into seating near the fire and had a sweeping view of the entire bar—and the gorilla trying be inconspicuous in a booth with hanging glass beads that gave the impression of privacy. Over the edge of gold-trimmed drinks menu, the brawny man with hairy hands and knuckles had watched them enter the bar, watched them settle beside each other.

  A waiter appeared. “Een moment,” Tanja said, turning to Kitt. “Do you like Negroni, Leslie?”

  “I’m not a huge fan of gin.”

  “The Nederlands Negroni doesn’t use gin, it uses Bols Genever, distilled grains and a botanical mix. Are you game to try?”

  “Why not.”

  Tanja faced the waiter. “Twee Nederlands Negroni,” she said and turned back to Kitt.

  He relaxed in the booth, casually dropping his arm on the back of the crescent-shaped seat. “Tell me something,” he said with a smile, “why would you need a bodyguard?”

  A flash of surprise flickered on her face before blossoming into a brow rumple and pretty, perplexed little squint. “A bodyguard? What do you mean?”

  Kitt flicked his eyes in the man’s direction. “That man over there, the one with the all arm and chest hair sticking out from the front of his collar, the one who looks like a big gorilla. He was in In’t Aepjen. I think he’s watching you. Or watching us.”

  “I think you might be right.” She chuckled. “He’s probably a tourist, staying here like you.”

  “Maybe he’s interested in you the way that kid in the orange tracksuit was. The way Jan Vlaming is. This morning, Vlaming could not stop staring at you any more than the gorilla over there can. What is this sway you have over men?”

  “You’re very flattering.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  “I’m serious. I could see you how make Vlaming nervous.”

  “He was anxious about talking to you. He was pretty bad on the phone with your colleague, the woman, but he’s worse with you. To be honest, he thinks that, because you’re here instead of her, you know something he doesn’t about Ruby Bleuville. He’s fucked because he met her.”

  “You think he slept with her?” he said and his phone vibrated against his chest. Llewelyn signalling to come upstairs to the suite.

  Tanja sighed. “Do we have to talk about Jan?”

  The waiter returned with their cocktails, setting them on the table.

  “Shall we run a tab?” Kitt said, reaching into his jacket, moving from the inside pocket, to feeling the outside ones, then on to his trouser pockets.

  Tanja watched him pat himself down. “Something wrong?”

  “My wallet. It’s in my coat and I left my coat upstairs.”

  She lifted her handbag. “I invited you. I’ve got it covered. I’ll pay, Leslie.”

  Kitt laughed and touched the back of her hand. “And I won’t stop you. But it’s not just my wallet, my phone is in my coat. I better retrieve them before the professor goes to bed. Will you excuse me?” He left her at the table, exited the bar, went to the marble-lined lift bay and pressed the call button.

  When the doors parted, he found Mae on the other side. She wore her green coat, umbrella in hand, his coat over her arm, the dog beside her. “What are you doing here? Where’s Llewelyn?”

  She watched Felix stretch up his dainty legs on Kitt’s thigh. “Llewelyn’s not well; something he ate hasn’t agreed with him. He asked me to bring your coat, inform you that once you are,” she paused, “finished with Ms Goedenacht, Mr Weed is out front, waiting in his car, and he’d like a word. Then I’m to return upstairs to make another pot of tea.” She handed over his coat.

  Kitt took his mobile from inside his jacket, and stuffed it into a pocket of his coat. “You’re not his bloody butler,” he said irritably.

  She shrugged. “I am for now, and you need to get back to pumping Ms Goedenacht for information.”

  The lift doors began to close. He shoved a hand against it. “There’s no need to make it sound sordid.”

  “Did I make it sound sordid?” She pursed her mouth, picked up Felix, and stepped out of the lift. “Is she in your room yet?”

  Her question thumped Kitt in the guts. Cuckoldry had never been an issue for him; his affairs with married women had been a tool, a means to an end, a bit of meaningless fun, nothing he’d considered to be distasteful—and something he’d never stopped to consider from the other side. “No, she’s still in the bar,” he said. Sinfulness and guilt were notions he’d discarded long ago, but his tongue felt devilishly serpentine in his mouth, the sensation of growing scales crept up his back.

  “Oh,” she said. “Is Weed watching me?” she said. “Or am I imagining that he is?”

  Kitt sloughed off the slither of snakeskin and put his mind on a goddamned job more reptilian and less redeeming. “He’s watching you. He watched you all through dinner. And there’s someone watching me, but he’s not on the same team. He’s playing for Vlaming or Tanja.”

  “Why is Weed watching me?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll ask him. Go on upstairs,” he said.

  She didn’t move, she merely looked at him with an odd look of expectancy, her brows arched.

  “What?”

  “Please move. I need to take the dog to piddle and then head back up to make Llewelyn tea. If you’re worried about my being alone, Mr Weed is sitting in his car out front. He’ll keep an eye on me.”

  Kitt crowded her backwards into the lift. He poked the first-floor button and turned to her, his head cocked slightly. Mae gave him a flat look and went on giving him a look devoid of a flutter or wave that imparted expression of any sort, while he felt his jaw clench.

  “Are we about to bicker?”

  When the doors closed, he said, “Let’s get this straight.”

  “We’re about to bicker.”

  “You are not Roger Llewelyn’s butler. This is a role you are playing. There is no need to take the role to heart. You are not actually working for him.”

  The lift began to move. “Why would you think I wouldn’t take the role earnestly, Kitt? You maintain the role you play in any assignment you have.” She glanced at the rosy-red lipstick he knew stained his cheek in a lip-print scarlet letter. “Why would I not do the same?”

  “I am an intelligence officer. You are not.” He reached over to scratch Felix under the chin.

  “You’re right. You’re a spy, I’m a butler, and I take that seriously, regardless of the charade surrounding the situation. You clear your mind by running, eating or being sick. I clear my mind by my work, by being productive.”

  “Productive? That’s your sodding answer for everything.” The dog licked his fingers.

  “And breathe is yours. So how is it different?”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped dog slobber from his hand. “I’ve trained for the work.”

&
nbsp; “As have I.”

  The lift stopped, an electronic bing sounded, and the doors parted. Neither one of them moved. His stubbornness, her obstinacy kept them suspended in a box that smelled of a spicy deodoriser. The door closed.

  “Regardless of our shared, ongoing churlish prickishness, I know, deep down, you like this,” Mae said.

  “Like what?

  “Having me here, working this operation with you.”

  Stone-faced, unblinking, unmoving, churlishly prickish, Kitt said nothing.

  “You mentioned training. Now you train others to do what you have for so long,” she said. “Does part of your instruction to your trainees include how to work with a partner? Because you like having a partner you can bounce ideas off, you like me giving you feedback. You like that I come up with a theory you never considered. In fact, you like that I can think laterally, outside the box, something I know is important you foster in your trainees. Most of all, you like that I can improvise as well as you.”

  Kitt poked the ground floor button, turned slightly sideways, maintaining his dispassion. She gave him the look that told him exactly how full of shite she thought he and his dispassion were. He loved that look, loved how it held him accountable, loved that she didn’t let him get away with anything, but his lack of expression didn’t waver.

  “Be as pokerfaced as you want.” Mae gave a little snort. “I’m not quite the nuisance you say I am.”

  The dog-slobbered handkerchief made it halfway back into his trouser pocket. “Has this just turned into a contest or is there something you are trying to prove?” He shoved the square of pale blue cotton into his trousers.

  “I have nothing to prove. I am trying,” she said putting Felix on his feet, “to keep myself—and you—safe while I look after my dog.”

  “Our dog.”

  The doors parted and she moved toward the marbled hallway, half inside the lift, Felix outside. “Yes. Our dog. Now, if you’ll excuse me. Our dog needs to pee, my employer needs a cup of tea, and Ms Goedenacht is waiting for you. So do get on with being charming to the woman.” Mae stepped out of the lift.