A gentleman_s game (queen and country)

by Greg Rucka

  Sinan was sure he wasn't cruel, and he didn't want to be selfish.

  Sunlight had begun to bleed over the horizon and Sinan sighed, getting to his feet. It was time for prayers and work, and nothing could get in the way of those things. Not sex, not loneliness, not love.

  He slung his rifle and dropped back down into the wadi, resolved.

  Nia was shahid. She would die a martyr and go to Paradise. He would honor her for that, respect her, even aid her.

  But he would not, he told himself, fall in love with her.

  37

  Hampshire-Lee-on-Solent, Residence of Wallace, T. 17 September 0544 GMT She woke him with the phone, saying simply, "I'm outside," and hoping that everything in her voice was enough.

  "I'll let you in," Tom said.

  Chace hung up the security phone, stepped back off the porch, looking up at Wallace's flat. It was still dark out, and fog had come in off the Channel, and she was cold and wet, and she needed to see his light come on, she needed to know that he would let her in and make her safe.

  The light didn't come on, and for a terrible moment Chace wondered if Box had beat her to him, if she'd missed them in her three circuits around the immediate area, in all of her attempts to flush any possible pursuit. She hadn't seen anyone, still certain she was running clean, if for no other reason than, if she wasn't, they'd have fallen on her like buzzards on a corpse.

  Then she glimpsed him behind the glass of the foyer door, shirtless, in baggy pajama bottoms, still bleary from sleep.

  "Still dreaming, am I?" he said as he let her in.

  Chace thought the wave of relief she was feeling might swamp her.

  "If so," she said, "it's a bloody nightmare." • He gave her first a kiss, and then a hot shower, and, once Chace was dressed in clean clothes from her go-bag, offered a cup of very bad instant coffee, loaded with sugar and milk. Then he listened as she laid it all out to him, all the secrets he wasn't supposed to know any longer, what she'd done in Yemen, what had happened with Box, what Crocker had said.

  "How are you fixed?" Wallace asked when she had finished.

  "Crocker gave me what he could manage, but it was all in-house documentation. That and two thousand pounds."

  "What about that?" Wallace indicated her go-bag, resting open on his couch.

  She actually managed a smile. "You taught me well. I've got another five thousand American in the lining, and my good papers, the ones you told me never, ever to use."

  "For which you should be damn grateful, because you'll need them now. What're they?"

  "French national, Monique DuLac. Everything on her is current, and nobody but the man who made them knows she exists, and he's in Athens and not terribly talkative."

  "Plastic?"

  "There's a Visa, but I don't know if it'll hold. I'd rather stick to the cash."

  "You'll need the Visa for the flight."

  "You're assuming I'm going to go on this little suicide mission. As far as I'm concerned, D-Ops can fuck himself, and Weldon, and C, and then move on to Whitehall and slip it to the rest of them."

  "He is protecting you," Wallace said. "You have to see that. He's doing everything he can."

  "Then why am I running?"

  "Are you? You're just here to say good-bye?"

  Chace scowled at him, brushed wet hair impatiently back from her cheek. "If that was the case, I'd have jumped you already."

  "Then it's not good-bye. So what is it?"

  It was the whole reason she had come, and now, in the face of it, she found the words hard to say. It wasn't as if she hadn't made the decision back at the Imperial Age, looking out those fake windows, listening to Crocker's plea of not guilty.

  But it took effort, and a strength she wasn't certain she still had, to actually say the words to Wallace. "I can't do it alone, Tom."

  "Right," Wallace said. "I'll get my things." • They took his Triumph, speeding along the A3 and then the M25 and then the M20, racing to Ashford, with the intent of catching the Eurostar all the way to Paris. She'd been leery about taking his car, but the only other routes available to them were by rail-which would have taken them back into London first-or by fishing boat across the Channel. Although they could have caught the Eurostar at Waterloo, it had seemed like a bad idea because Chace felt-and Wallace agreed-that Box would be covering every international route possible. There would certainly be some kind of coverage at Ashford, but it wouldn't be nearly as severe, and she was confident they would be able to handle it.

  With Wallace at the wheel and traffic light for much of the journey, they reached Ashford well before nine, parking in the multistoried lot that had been built to serve the terminal. The station itself was quite new, constructed for the Eurostar, modern and, to Chace's eyes, bland. Even the car park was bland, and fairly empty.

  "You stay here," Wallace told her. "Give me thirty minutes to clear the terminal, see what there is to see, get the tickets. I'll need your passport."

  Chace dug it out of her go-bag, handing him Monique DuLac as he stood beside the Triumph. She was suffering a headache that was the result of tension, exhaustion, adrenaline withdrawal, or all of the above.

  "Seats together?"

  "Might be best."

  "First class, then."

  "Oh, absolutely." Wallace grinned, hefted his bag, and headed for the covered walkway into the terminal.

  Chace sat in the car, smoking, checking the clock. She saw the second hand sweeping past the twelve on her wrist, saw that it was precisely nine in the morning.

  Rogue, she thought.

  Fucking hell.

  She thought about Wallace, got out of the car, stretching, looking around, seeing the rain fall outside the shelter of the car park. There were certainly cameras about, but Box would be focused on the terminal, waiting for her to board, probably thinking that she wouldn't be coming there at all.

  She wondered how long Jim Chester at Monkton would wait before reporting Tom's absence back to Crocker. Or if Chester would go through Crocker at all rather than the Deputy Chief. Going through Crocker offered a flicker of hope; even if Chace had decided he was a worthless bastard, she knew he'd try to slow down their pursuit. It wasn't likely, though. Personnel issues went to the Deputy Chief, and as soon as Weldon heard that Wallace had gone missing, he'd waste no time informing Kinney to be on the lookout for him as well as for her.

  Wallace had taken it in stride, had been immediately ready to go once he committed to the action. Eight minutes to change clothes and stuff some extras into his go-bag-still kept at the ready in the closet by the door-and another two to switch off the lights and lock up the flat. Coat and gloves, bag in hand, they'd been out the door before twenty past six, in the Triumph and on the road before half past.

  He'd never hesitated, never questioned, and Chace wasn't really surprised when she thought about it. She'd have done the same for him.

  Her watch told her it had been twenty-six minutes, and she thought that was enough and took her bag from the boot, locked the car, and made her way across the walkway into Ashford International. It was bright and airy and nouveau dull, and there were phone boxes near the walkway as she came out, and she stopped at them with an idea, wondering why she hadn't thought of it earlier.

  She picked up the phone, dropped in what coins she had, and eventually was connected to British Airways reservations. Using Dorothea Palmer's Amex, she bought herself a ticket, one way, to Geneva. When she hung up, she threw the Palmer passport and plastic into the trash, then continued down to the floor of the terminal.

  There was a scheduled departure in thirty-nine minutes, and a minor bustle in the terminal as passengers gathered themselves, waited in the lounge, made for the first-class/business parlor, or passport control, as their mood and their means moved them.

  She didn't see Wallace.

  She did see, however, a woman emerging from the first-class lounge, wearing trainers and jeans and a navy-blue parka. She had black hair and a young face, and
Chace tried to avoid meeting her eyes, but it was too late, and confusion and surprise were stamped on the woman's face with the same clarity as Elizabeth's profile on a coin.

  Fucking hell, Chace thought, and she turned immediately away, keeping the motion and movement casual, scanning for a direction, seeing the sign for the women's lav. She made for it, knowing that she was trapping herself, and hoping that the woman behind her wasn't certain enough of what she'd seen to call it in.

  The bathroom was like the rest of the terminal, modern and too bright, white walls and chrome fixtures, and as soon as Chace was through the door, she kicked it closed behind her, working her way down the line of stalls, trying to read which were occupied and which were open. The fear, and she knew it for what it was, was struggling to get loose inside her, and she felt her head go light and her stomach weak with the new surge of adrenaline.

  None of the stalls were occupied, and Chace reversed, heading back to the entrance just as the woman came through, and again they were face-to-face and close enough now that Chace saw that she truly was fresh to the game. She had one hand in the pocket of her parka, the other out, holding the black cylinder that would become the baton, and Chace saw the outline of the wireless earpiece in her ear and knew there wasn't any other choice about it.

  With her right hand, Chace brought her go-bag up at the woman's face, catching her in the chin and knocking her back into the already closing door. Her impact slammed it home, and Chace dropped the bag on the follow-through, driving her left fist at the other woman's neck, trying to put her down.

  The woman saw it coming, jerked her head right, brought her free hand up to parry, and Chace saw the com button dangling from her sleeve, and it became the focus of her existence. She couldn't let her hit the button, she couldn't let her transmit. If this bird from Box got the word out, neither Chace nor Wallace would make it out of the terminal.

  Chace snapped her left arm back, turning her hand, trying to grab the woman's wrist, and she felt the impact at the side of her knee, the baton connecting with soft flesh and timid cartilage, and she heard herself swearing. She knew she hadn't been hit hard because the knee hadn't abandoned her, but the pain was extraordinary and brutal, and it made her vision swim.

  But she had the wrist, and then the thumb, and she trapped the digit between her own thumb and fingers, closed her hand, sweeping it down. The woman grunted, trying to turn with it and swing at Chace again, and failed at both, and Chace drove her into the door, slamming her head forward with her right before reaching down to the trapped hand and wrenching the lead free from her palm. The wire snapped and she tossed it away, and then Chace's breath was gone and the world was white, and she was tasting bile and blood in her throat, aware that she was having trouble standing, that somehow she'd lost her grip on the woman.

  She came back to herself in time to see the woman spin, drawing back to jab the baton at Chace's stomach a second time, and somehow Chace got out of the way, slamming into the door of one of the stalls and crashing hip-first into the toilet. She righted herself, and the woman was coming at her again, baton raised, and this time there was nowhere to go, and Chace lurched forward, bringing her left arm up to block and taking the blow high on her forearm.

  It took everything she had not to scream.

  Chace continued forward, now under the woman's arm, ramming into her, fists working. She hit her four times, all with her right, all jabs along the left side of the woman's chest, trying to hurt her, to cause her as much pain as she could. The woman slammed into the sinks with her lower back, gasping, and Chace heard the baton clattering to the floor, felt the dull impact of a fist that somehow missed her neck and landed on her shoulder instead. Chace dropped her chin instinctively, felt the woman clawing at her hair, trying to get her head back, to get another shot at the throat.

  Chace punched low with her left, feeling her arm scream in protest, already going numb, making it as vicious as she could, almost screaming herself. She landed the blow just above the pelvic bone, felt the punch sink, felt the woman slacken, groaning. Chace turned out of the clench, grabbed her with her right, jamming her thumb into the woman's nose, yanking her forward. The woman staggered, flailed, but her legs were going, and her breath had already gone, and she had nothing left.

  Chace pitched her face-first into the stall, throwing her against the toilet, then bashed her head against the porcelain. The woman moaned, flailed weakly, and Chace bounced her again, and she stopped moving.

  Wheezing, Chace got to her feet, her lungs crackling, her right knee throbbing, a hand on the side of the stall to steady herself. Over her own breathing, she barely heard the muffled announcement from the terminal PA, a call for boarding for the nine fifty-nine train. She glanced down at her watch, realized that she'd been in the bathroom now for perhaps all of a minute.

  The woman groaned again, slid farther between the toilet and the wall of the stall.

  Chace leaned down, caught her beneath each armpit, and hoisted her onto the toilet seat, leaning her back. She ran her hands over her quickly, finding the radio secured at her hip, pulling it free and then turning the squelch all the way up. Now, instead of no response, whoever radioed would hear distortion and static, and it was possible that could be mistaken as network trouble rather than an agent down.

  Somehow, Chace didn't put much stock in that happening.

  She unfastened the woman's belt and trousers, yanked them down around her ankles, righted her once more on the seat before turning and shutting the stall door, locking them both inside. The clearance at the bottom was slight, and Chace had to squeeze through, her left arm all but dead, her knee making her wince in protest. If someone came in now, she'd have a hell of a time explaining things.

  But no one did, and she grabbed the baton as she got back to her feet, collapsing it and dumping it into the refuse bin. She checked herself in the mirrors over the sink, brushing her hair back into place with her fingers, straightened her clothes. She looked, she thought, fucking awful, but not like a woman who'd been in a fistfight, and that was about as much as she could ask for at the moment.

  Taking her go-bag once more, she stepped back into the terminal to find Tom Wallace searching for her. Frowning slightly, already turning toward passport control, he handed over her passport and ticket as soon as she reached him.

  "Stomach trouble?" he asked.

  "Thought you were taking care of it."

  "Mine's in the men's room," Wallace said. • They arrived in Paris just before one in the afternoon, at the Gare du Nord, and before they left the station, Chace found a phone and made the call to Air France reservations. The next available flight to Tel Aviv was the following morning, departing ten-thirty, and she booked seats in their false names, Monique DuLac and Richard Kent, and then paid with the credit card Wallace supplied her in Kent's name.

  "Done?" he asked when she hung up.

  "French is an easily acquired Romance language, Tom," she said. "You should have picked it up by now."

  "Merde," he told her.

  "It's done. All we have to do now is occupy ourselves for the rest of the day."

  "Fancy a trip to Disneyland, then?"

  "I'm knackered."

  "Or we could find a room and get some rest," he amended.

  "Yes, please," Chace said. • They spent the night at a Holiday Inn in Roissy, about a mile from Charles de Gaulle Airport, and as soon as they were in their room, Chace kicked off her shoes and jacket and fell onto the bed, utterly exhausted. The numbness in her left arm was abating, leaving radiant pain to mark its passage, and her right knee throbbed. She managed to stay awake long enough to hear Wallace tell her that he'd be back shortly, that he was going to grab some food and cigarettes, and she heard him leave the room, heard the door lock, and then she dropped away into sleep.

  Wallace woke her when he returned, and she cursed him for it but took the six aspirin he offered, chasing it with half a liter of water.

  Then she fell back into
the same sleep, and a darkness that held no dreams. • When she awoke next, it was to the sounds of the television, to the smell of Wallace's cigarettes. She opened her eyes to see him seated beside her, propped against the headboard, a bottle of beer in one hand, watching the television, something in black and white and poorly dubbed into French. He gave her a grin, and she looked at the clock and saw it was fourteen minutes past one in the morning.

  "Why aren't you sleeping?" she croaked at him.

  "I tried, but you kept stealing the covers," Wallace said.

  She nodded, accepting that as a reasonable excuse, if not an honest one, then rose and limped to her go-bag, idly wondering if her foot had healed only to be replaced by her knee and if she would ever be walking right again. She found her toiletries, then moved into the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth, stripped, and showered. She stayed under the water longer than she needed, soaking the heat, breathing the steam, examining her bruises. The baton's impact on her left forearm had left an angry, swollen ball, yellow and green that was painful to the touch. She shut off the taps, toweled dry, and went back into the room without bothering to dress.

  Wallace was still on the bed and he'd removed his shoes, but that was all, and she laughed.

  "You're a daft old man, Tom Wallace," Chace said, and she climbed onto the bed, took his face in her hands, and kissed him with all the hunger she'd been holding in for six years. • They made love twice before dawn, the first time with the clumsiness of desire, the second time with purpose and passion. They dozed together until the wake-up call shocked them back to consciousness at half-past six, and made love a third time before heading to the shower again. Her knee felt better, and the green and yellow on her arm had become yellow and blue, which translated as progress. They dressed, packed what little they had unpacked, checked out, and made it to the airport by eight.