by J. Calamy
“Aw hell…” he whispered. A photo had caught his eye, on the little table by Graves’s armchair. It was Nick, smiling into the camera. He recognized it. It was from the first week, when he had helped Russ throw Tony into the harbor. It was printed on computer paper, crooked and bowed in the frame.
“You—” Nick said and turned and grabbed Graves’s ears to haul him down for a kiss. “You do love me.”
“Nonsense,” he muttered, kissing Nick again. “Slander and lies.”
Nick bit his lip and Graves grunted.
“Yes, all right, I’ll confess it. I do love you, my Nick.” He stroked Nick’s face, smiling down at him.
They sat on a cushioned couch overlooking the wake. The air was warm and soft even in the shade. There was not only coffee but toast and bacon and fruit and anything Nick could want. He lay in the circle of Graves’s arms,
“Scimitar,” Nick said.
“Home,” Graves added. “Your home now, as much as mine.”
“Home,” Nick said wonderingly. “Home.”
Epilogue
Thomas Macaulay was a good man. Or so he told himself. The work he did made some lines blurry, but in his heart he knew that those blurry lines didn’t matter in the end. He thought the end had come in Hong Kong. Even now, he couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened. Just thinking about it made him angry enough that it seriously threatened his status as a good man. In fact, it made him feel positively murderous.
He and Tang had met only once since the bungled attempt on New Year’s, but Louie had been burying his officers and expecting to lose his job—so they hadn’t said much except a shared sense of rage. He had stopped by the hospital where Mac was recovering from the gunshot wound Nicholas Erickson had given him. A through and through—not enough to keep him down. But it had blown his shot that night.
“The interference by the Chinese Drug Agency was especially hard,” Tang said in his usual diplomatic way. “They were eavesdropping. And I, in my stupidity, said over the radio that the boss of Red Sky was on the bird.” He shook his head, looking gray and old in the fluorescent hospital lights.
“It should have been their bird Graves shot down,” Mac said gloomily.
“You think it was Graves himself who made the shot?” Tang asked. He had barely been out of the hospital himself when the op went down. Mac didn’t blame him for any of it.
“No one else could,” Mac said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice and didn’t bother to. He knew Tang felt it too. The Chinese had cut the power, caused a panic, and their men and the HKPD boys had ended up shooting each other as much as at Graves and his people.
Now Mac sat on his hotel patio, drinking and trying to understand what had gone wrong. He poured himself another glass of gin. His phone was sitting on the table by his glass. He was going to have to make the call. He just didn’t want to yet.
Turning Joseph Stinton had been the closest he and his team had ever gotten to Graves himself. They had two months, two glorious months where they knew where the boss was, could track his movements. Before Joe Stinton, Graves would appear, attend some red carpet event, or hold a random Scimitar Shipping event and be gone again before Mac could even get on a plane.
Joe’s panicked call after Chiang Rai had been the key. The key to the boss’s whereabouts, to his plans… Except nothing Graves did in those two months made any sense. Everything Mac and Joe had known or planned had tipped sideways because of Nicholas Erickson.
And now he had to report the whole thing. Years of careful work down the drain. He looked at his phone again, dread coiling in his belly.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he said to himself. “This ain’t your first rodeo.”
“Agent Macauley, this is a surprise.” The voice on the other end of the line made Mac shiver. He hated that smooth English voice. “I do hope you’re calling me with good news.”
“I’m not, sir,” Mac said, deciding to cut to the chase. Sir Ian Graves was not someone you beat around the bush with. He took a deep breath and poured out the whole damn fiasco.
“And the Chinese couldn’t catch the bird either. He was gone. I assume he’s out to sea, probably be years before he surfaces again.”
“Is the boy with him?” Sir Ian asked. Mac wished he could figure out if the old man was pleased or not. But Sonny’s foster father was a cold-blooded, cunning monster and even an operative of Mac’s caliber couldn’t get a bead on him.
“Yes, sir,” Mac said. He pushed his feelings about that into one of the compartments in his mind.
“Are you jealous, Agent Macauley?”
“No, sir.” Mac rolled his eyes. How many times do I have to try to kill your boy before you let that go?
“Good,” Sir Ian said. “Return to Sri Lanka and stay there. I have a man in place. This isn’t over, and I want you…handy.”
“Who is paying my fees?”
“I am. Your handler already has the paperwork. You have no one to report to at this time. Besides me, of course.”
“Well, all right then.”
“Until next time, Agent Macauley.”
“If you say so,” Mac said and hung up. He took a long drink of his whiskey, the ice clinking against his teeth. “But this ain’t gonna turn out like you think,” he said. He got up to pack. At least there was still Sri Lanka. Maybe he could salvage something there.
About J. Calamy
J Calamy is a disabled vet and foreign service wonk who spends a good part of the year bouncing down dirt roads in the back of Range Rovers with men with guns. Coffee, romance novels, and embassy scuttlebutt are her last remaining vices.
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