“Earlier that day, when I was on the phone with her, I asked her how I could pass the test,” Kingsley said. “She said you win by playing. If I didn’t play along, I wouldn’t win. I played along. And, as you can see, she didn’t kill me.”
Someone else had once asked Kingsley that question—Will you let me kill you? He’d said “yes” then, too, and didn’t regret it.
“Did she try to kill you?” The colonel sounded wistful at the thought of someone killing Kingsley.
“Yes,” Kingsley said. “Slightly.”
“How does someone slightly try to kill you?”
“She put a knife to my throat but didn’t press down,” Kingsley said. “I wasn’t too worried about her going through with it though. I was in a hotel room. If she got blood on the rug, she might lose her security deposit.”
“What were you doing on the rug?” the colonel asked.
“Madame was interrogating me,” Kingsley said. “Politely.”
“And you told her your name and why you were there?” the colonel asked Kingsley.
“You didn’t send me in with much of a cover. Good thing, too. She already knew who I was. She has a mole.”
The colonel only snorted.
“Impossible,” Huet said. “Do you have any idea how suspicious that sounds?”
“Suspicious or not, it’s true. She has someone on the inside. I never told her my last name. She knew it anyway. Knew my birthday. Knew my rank. Someone got into my file and read it to her. She knew everything about me.”
“We already knew she had friends in high places,” the colonel said. He didn’t seem the least surprised to hear they had a mole in the agency.
Huet grunted. “This Madame woman probably fucked half the cabinet members and has photographs of them hidden in safes all over the country. And your nephew, too.”
“Captain?” the colonel said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Shut up.”
Kingsley covered his mouth to hide his smile.
“How were you treated while you were there?” the colonel asked Kingsley.
“Like a pet,” Kingsley said. “Or a toy.”
“A toy?” Huet said. “You’re a decorated legionnaire.”
“To you I am. To them, I was a toy. They played with me. Then they were done playing.”
“And you’re not angry about that?” Huet asked.
“I was in the house thirty-six hours and I got to be with two beautiful women. For work. And I’m supposed to be angry why?”
“Yes, for work,” Huet said. “This is your job, not a game.”
“This mission wasn’t my idea,” Kingsley said, leaning back in his chair again. “You all sent me in. Don’t get angry at me for, well, going in. And in. And in…”
Kingsley had left out the part where Polly had done most of the “going in.” They didn’t need all the dirty details. Only some of them. Only the details that didn’t involve objects being inserted into his ass.
The colonel sat down hard in his chair behind his boring brown desk. Huet took over pacing duty. “I suppose you didn’t happen to determine the street address while you were there.”
Kingsley shook his head. “Blindfolded on the way there,” he said. “Unconscious on the way back.”
“Leon didn’t tell you where you were?” Huet demanded.
“No,” Kingsley said. “And I wouldn’t have either, if I were him. He doesn’t want to leave. If they hadn’t sent me packing, I’d still be there. On my mission, of course. Fact-finding and all that.”
The colonel raised his eyebrow. “You liked it there.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Kingsley asked. “I was on vacation.” En vacances.
“A vacation in a cult?” Huet asked, disgusted.
“If that’s a cult, I’m a virgin,” Kingsley said. “Now am I free to go?”
“Not yet,” Huet said, turning around. “We have to decide what to do.”
“Do?” Kingsley repeated. “There’s nothing to do. Leon is nineteen years old. If he wants to live in a commune and sweep floors, that’s his business.”
“You heard the colonel—his mother wants him out,” Huet said.
“Well, I want to meet my mother for lunch in an hour, but she’s been dead nine years,” Kingsley said. “We don’t always get what we want, do we?”
“No,” the colonel said with a sigh. “We don’t.”
“We’ll just have to go in and extract him,” Huet said.
“Extract him? Like a bad tooth?” Kingsley asked. “He doesn’t need extracted. He’s happy. He’s not there under any duress. He was healthy and unharmed. Leave him be.”
“Leave him?” Huet asked. “You didn’t even try to talk him out of there, did you? You had one job, and you failed.”
“They cut me loose before I could—”
“No,” Huet said, cutting Kingsley off. “They got to you, just like they got to him. Listen to you, arguing that we should just leave him there with those insane women.”
“Just because they wanted to fuck me more than you doesn’t make them insane,” Kingsley said. “Sounds like proof of a sound mind, if you ask me.”
“Lieutenant, no one asked you,” Huet said.
“Captain, sit,” the colonel said.
Huet flushed with anger and sat on the boring brown chair next to Kingsley’s. He moved it four inches away out of pure spite.
“May I speak freely, Colonel?” Kingsley asked.
“When do you not, Lieutenant?”
That was a good point.
Kingsley smiled in apology and leaned forward. “Sir, you know some English phrases, yes? Like ‘rough trade’?”
The colonel coughed. “Yes,” he said. “I speak English.”
“Well, I speak some American. And here’s an American phrase for you—young, dumb, and full of come. Ever heard it?”
The colonel cocked an eyebrow at him.
“That’s your nephew,” Kingsley said. “His cock is making all his decisions right now. Trust me, even if he wasn’t in that house, his cock would be making all his decisions for him. Mine did at nineteen.”
“Still does, I hear,” Huet muttered.
Kingsley ignored him. “I understand it’s embarrassing and awkward that your nephew has moved into a commune where his one purpose in life is to serve women on his hands and knees. But this isn’t our job,” Kingsley continued. “We shouldn’t be wasting the resources of this office to babysit an adult.”
“We determine the allocation of resources, not you,” Huet said sharply. He looked at Colonel Masson. “He talks his way back in, gets Leon to give up the location—”
“It won’t be that easy,” Kingsley tried to say but Huet talked on over him.
“We tail him,” Huet said. “We follow. We go in, pull Leon out, and we make sure this never happens again.”
That got Kingsley’s attention.
“Make sure what never happens again?” Kingsley demanded. “We make sure grown men don’t get laid ever again?”
“If we do a little damage to the house,” Huet said, “that’ll make this Madame person think—”
Kingsley stood.
“Lieutenant?” the colonel said.
“There is an infant in that house,” Kingsley said. His voice was unsteady. “Six weeks old. He’s the son of one of the women. We do not go guns blazing into a house of women and children.”
“They have the colonel’s nephew,” Huet said.
“And I’ve already told you that he hasn’t been kidnapped. He’s there by choice. Even if it’s a stupid choice, it’s still his choice,” Kingsley said. He looked at Huet, back at the colonel. “I’ll hunt KGB for you. I’ll hunt gun runners and war lords for you. I’ll happily hunt arthritic eighty-year-old Nazi prison guards into the deepest circles of hell for you, and I won’t come back until I have their black hearts in my back pocket. But this is a witch hunt. I don’t hunt witches. The only monsters you ever catch in a witch hunt are the me
The colonel leaned back in his chair and lifted his chin. “I suppose we do have to remind you who you answer to,” he said.
“The president,” Kingsley said. He pointed to a photograph of the president hanging over the colonel’s desk. “I’ll go have a little talk with a reporter or two. I’m sure the president will love to read about how his officers are conspiring to hurt women and children on French soil for the sole purpose of saving a man who doesn’t need or want saving. That will play well on the front page of Le Monde. I’m trying to save your career, Colonel.”
The colonel didn’t speak. Captain Huet looked too angry to say what he wanted to say.
“Leave them alone,” Kingsley continued. “Leon will come back when he’s ready.”
“They drugged you and dropped you into a hotel room like a sack of dirty laundry,” Huet said. “And you defend them?”
“I told her she could do anything she wanted to do to me,” Kingsley said. “Considering killing me was one of the options, I got off easy. Now…may I go?”
“One more question,” the colonel said.
“Yes, sir?”
“This Madame person…what’s she like?”
Kingsley hadn’t expected such a question from the colonel.
“I’ll say this,” Kingsley said, “I wouldn’t fuck with her if I were you.”
“I’ll fuck with her,” Huet said.
Kingsley turned and punched the prick in the face.
“Christ,” Huet said, blood spilling down his face. His nose was bleeding like a busted pipe. “What the fuck is wrong with you? This is…this is insubordination.” He looked at the colonel for back up. The colonel said and did nothing. “He broke my nose!”
Kingsley massaged his knuckles. “You go near that house or those women,” he said quietly to Huet, “and I will make sure your own mother won’t recognize you. You hurt a hair on their heads, and I’ll sell you to the first KGB officer I find. I’ll trade you to him for a half-empty bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes.”
“Are you going to let him threaten me like that?” Huet demanded of the colonel.
“Yes,” the colonel said. He turned to Kingsley. “Lieutenant, you’re dismissed.”
Kingsley left the office and nearly ran straight into Bernie, who’d been eavesdropping outside the door.
“Bernie…” Kingsley grabbed the man by his lapels and steered him away from the colonel’s office. “You’re going to get yourself killed doing that one of these days.”
“Did you just hit the captain?”
“I would appear so. Got any ice?” Kingsley shook his hand out. It was throbbing already.
“I’ll get you some,” Bernie said. “How much trouble are you in?”
“Not enough, considering.”
The colonel really had let him off easy. Too easy. Probably because he’d always wanted to punch Huet’s perfect nose, too.
“What’s wrong?” Bernie asked.
“Nothing,” Kingsley said, a lie maybe. He could still feel Jacques’s tiny fingernails digging into his chest.
Bernie found Kingsley an icepack. With it wrapped around his hands, they left via the echoing industrial back staircase. Bernie had asked him a thousand questions yesterday after Kingsley had called him from The Opulent, but he’d refused to answer any of them until he’d spoken to the colonel. Kingsley knew any second now Bernie would start up again with the interrogation. He was right.
“Can I ask about the tuxedo?” Bernie said.
“I got married.”
Bernie’s eyes went wide.
“Not a real wedding,” Kingsley said. “It was a party game.”
“Who’d you marry?”
“An eighteen-year-old girl.”
“Pretty?”
“Stunning, charming, spirited, loved being fucked.”
“Does she have a sister?”
“You’ll have to ask her, if you can find her.”
Bernie pushed the front doors open and they went out onto the cold gray winter streets.
“Was the house nice?” Bernie asked.
“Very big, very elegant,” Kingsley said. “But pretty cozy for the headquarters of a sex cult,” he said as they reached Bernie’s car.
“Did they really make you shave your balls?” Bernie asked.
Kingsley stared hard at him. “Take me home,” he said.
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
Bernie’s little Citroën wove in and out of Paris’s Sunday traffic. The world spun by Kingsley’s window so fast he felt dizzy. But he’d felt dizzy ever since waking up in that hotel room yesterday morning. It wasn’t a drug-induced dizziness, but the dizziness of a child who’d been taken off a carousel he would have been happy to ride for the rest of his days.
“You miss them?” Bernie asked.
Kingsley tore his gaze from the world outside the window. “Who?”
“You know who. The house. The women.” Bernie waggled his eyebrows at Kingsley. “Your bride.”
Kingsley smiled. His bride. He glanced down at his left hand—unharmed—and at the gold band Madame had put on him and had left on him for some reason.
“No,” he said, finally.
“Why not? I would be.”
“Because they’re not done with me yet,” Kingsley said.
“How do you know?”
“Madame’s a sadist. And she hasn’t broken me yet.”
“Broken you?”
“I was a toy,” Kingsley said again, not that he imagined Bernie would understand what he meant. Few did or could. “Children only stop playing with their toys when they get bored or they break them. Do I look broken to you?”
Bernie glanced at him, smiled with pity. “A little.”
It might have been the first astute thing Kingsley had ever heard come from Bernie’s lips.
Kingsley sighed. “Ah, maybe they are done with me then.”
“This will cheer you up,” Bernie said. “New assignment. Good one, too.”
He handed Kingsley a red file folder.
“What’s this?”
“Six-month stakeout. French national helping rich assholes launder their dirty money.”
“How’s that good?”
“What’s your favorite city full of rich assholes?” Bernie asked.
“New York?” Kingsley asked.
Bernie grinned. “Are you happy now?”
Kingsley smiled. If anything could help him forget Madame and Polly, Colette and Jacques, it was Manhattan.
“God bless America.”
II
Summer
28
A new dream.
Kingsley has never been in this part of the forest before. In his waking life, yes, but not when he dreams. This is a summer forest, dense with leaves and the sweet damp scent of rot. He walks barefoot across soft emerald moss under a sea green canopy of aspen and oak trees. It’s cool in their shade but hot the second he steps free of the shadows. When a breeze blows past him, he smells something in it that doesn’t belong.
Winter.
Kingsley hears a twig snap.
It is the only warning he’s given before impossibly strong hands grab him and thrust him back and hard against the rough trunk of a tree. The bark bites into his back, but in the dream Kingsley doesn’t feel anything except arousal.
“Were you looking for me?”
The question is asked by the blond boy, who is wearing all black in this dream—black trousers, black jacket, black shirt and black tie. So much black he could pass for a priest. But no black shoes. His feet are naked like Kingsley’s.
“I’m always looking for you,” Kingsley says. “Everywhere I go, I look for you. I never find you.”
“You know why that is.”
“I do?”
The blond boy nods.
“Because I don’t find you,” Kingsley says. “You find me.”
The boy in black nods again. “Very good.”
“But you don’t ever find me, do you?” Kingsley asks.
“I’m here,” he says, and for one single second, the blond boy looks hurt. It’s something that can only happen in a dream. The boy has no heart, no mercy, no sympathy, and no conscience. He gives pain. He does not feel it himself.
“You’re not here,” Kingsley says. “This isn’t real and you’re not real.”
“In that case…” He releases his grip on Kingsley’s shirt and turns to leave him.
“Don’t go,” Kingsley cries out.
The boy stops, turns around. He stands still, hands clasped in front of him and waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Kingsley says. “You are here. I was wrong. You are always here inside me.”
“I am inside you,” he says. “So what would you have of me?”
“Just be with me,” Kingsley says. “Stay and be with me.”
“I’ll stay if we can play.”
“Anything,” Kingsley says. “Any game you want as long as you don’t go away again.”
He walks over to Kingsley, bringing with him the scent of snow. The bite of ice.
“Here’s a game,” the blond boy says. “It’s called Blood.”
“How do we play?”
“We kiss,” he says. “And the first person who bleeds, loses.”
“What do they lose?”
The blond boy smiles. “Blood, of course.”
Then he kisses Kingsley.
The kiss isn’t kind, isn’t erotic, isn’t sensual, isn’t sweet. It’s punitive. It hurts. Kingsley loves how much it hurts. His mouth is invaded, taken over, conquered. Violated. A slap would hurt less than the kiss, and in seconds Kingsley tastes salt and copper in his mouth.
“I win,” the boy says, stepping back from Kingsley and the kiss. The boy in black lifts his fingers to Kingsley’s lips and touches them. When he holds them up in the light there is rust-colored blood on the tips.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Kingsley says. “You kissed me. I win. I need your kisses more than I need my blood. Kiss me again. Even when I lose, I win if you’re kissing me.”
The boy raises his eyebrow. “You’re starting to learn,” he says. “Ready for a new game?”
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