by Helena Maeve
Ulysses froze in his tracks.
“Come closer.”
As invitations went, it wasn’t the most enticing, but something told Ulysses obeisance wasn’t optional.
Worse, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t recognize the speaker.
“Robin?” Foolish to ask, foolish to take even a single step closer. Chances were high that no one had thought to install CCTV in that narrow back alley.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ulysses made out Robin’s stern features, a faint dusting of stubble on his chin. Even now, with his life potentially hanging in the balance, he couldn’t deny the desire to scrape his lips across it.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he rasped. “People will talk.”
“People,” another voice snorted.
It took Ulysses a moment to identify Jules in the shadows. She was keeping her distance, for which he was grateful, but her presence told him all he needed to know about this meeting.
“Guess we’re not revisiting the past this time,” he drawled nervously. “I thought you were going to keep your distance from now on.”
“Probably shouldn’t have slept with him, then,” Jules snapped archly.
Robin said nothing. His expression was aggrieved, his gaze remote when he glanced back at Ulysses. Gone was the man who’d come apart in his arms as recently as last night.
Ulysses shoved past the painful shard of recollection. “What do you want?”
“You received the autopsy file.”
“I thought that might be you.” I was hoping I was wrong.
They had agreed back in Gatinau that some stories were better off buried. Ulysses shouldn’t have been surprised. This wasn’t the first time Robin had pulled the rug out from under his feet.
And yet he was. Like a callow, gullible boy, he felt of all things cheated.
Guilt was slower to surface, but the sentiment was there, steeped in the clumsy, half-baked excuses he’d come up with to justify betraying Robin over to the SIS in the first place. None stuck. It didn’t help to remind himself that Robin, too, was a liar.
Ulysses rallied with a cough. “Well? To what do we owe the change of heart?”
“I want to set up a meeting.”
“With Claudia?” Ulysses frowned. It took Robin’s silence and the gleam of his eyes in the headlights of a passing car to adjust his thinking. “No. And you can forget about using me to set it up for you.” Ulysses clasped a hand to the back of his head, where the hair was staring to grow in long, curling strands. He badly needed to make time to go the barber’s. “Have you lost your ever-loving mind? There’s a price on your head. On all your heads,” he corrected, because this concerned Jules, too. He was hard-pressed to understand how she could be all right with outing herself to the enemy.
Robin smiled wryly. “After all this, you still don’t trust me.”
I know you’re good in bed. I know what you look like beneath those clothes. I know how much I want to hold you, even now.
“I don’t,” Ulysses agreed, “and that’s hardly unreasonable. My life is on the line, too.”
Definitely not in the same terms—he doubted SIS would disappear him into some local Guantanamo at the drop of a hat when he counted so many nosy reporters among his friends—but being discredited had nearly destroyed his career once. There would be no coming back from a second broadside.
“Then let me save it,” Robin pleaded. He stepped closer, the distance between them narrowing to inches. “Do you have the story ready to print?”
“Not yet.”
Zeal burned in Robin’s eyes, a fire fueled by some nefarious intention Ulysses couldn’t yet decipher.
“Get that ready for tomorrow,” Robin urged him, “then put out a press release. Doesn’t have to be descriptive, just to whet appetites.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Ulysses demurred.
“Let them understand you’re ready to print your very own version of WikiLeaks.”
Because I want to end up in jail? “They’ll shut us down.”
“They’ll try,” Jules muttered darkly.
“When they contact you,” Robin went on, “and they will, you’ll tell them I want to meet Cole at the house tomorrow night.”
“What house?” And who’s Cole?
Robin’s smile turned rueful.
“Oh, no,” Ulysses laughed, stilted and wholly without humor. “Not for the world.”
Chapter Nine
The first car pulled up outside Ulysses’ window at nine-fifteen. Claudia informed him of its arrival while he stirred tonic into his gin.
“Sure you should be drinking that?” she wondered.
“Could be my last. If I’m about to be arrested for high treason, at least let me go out in style.”
Claudia let the gauzy curtain drop into place over the glass pane. “If you’re so worried about the consequences, why are we even doing this? Let’s call the whole thing off—”
“What happened to reporting the truth regardless of whom it displeases?”
Unceremoniously, she plucked the glass from his hands with a contemptuous glare. “That was before you decided to poke the bear, darling.” One meditative sip later, she was scrunching up her lips and handing him back the cocktail. “Too much lime.”
“I enjoy the bite,” Ulysses taunted.
Claudia didn’t dignify that with a response. She knew him better than anyone. Trying to deceive her was a hopeless, foolish endeavor. Ulysses didn’t fully comprehend just how foolish until she parked herself against the sideboard and fixed him with a measuring stare.
“So who is he?”
“What?” False nonchalance only worked if he wasn’t looking Claudia in the eye. That was mistake number one.
Mistake number two was making her repeat herself as though that might prove a daunting task. Claudia was nothing if not persistent. It hadn’t been so long ago they’d chased MPs down the sidewalk and hoping to get a few useful sound bites about the dirty linen du jour.
“What gave it away?” Ulysses wondered, temporizing.
“Your surprise one-eighty. I’ve seen you go balls to the wall for a story you believe in, even when the evidence stacks against you. This, though… We’re talking witch hunt. We have very little that’s concrete and a whole lot of conjecture. We just said we’re going to print something that we’ve barely scratched the surface of. I know it’s not ego, so… You must be protecting someone. Who?”
Ulysses didn’t ask what made her so certain that it was a ‘he’. If their friendship had been salvaged by anything, it was Claudia’s willingness to chalk the unraveling of their marriage up to his interest in men.
Relationships, Ulysses had learned, were all about self-delusion.
“Someone I met abroad,” he answered obliquely.
“One of us or one of them?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Claudia scoffed.
“I think he means well.” He’s playing fast and loose with our careers—and possibly our lives—but I think he’s doing it for the right reasons. Ulysses shook his head. “If you’re worried that my judgment’s been compromised—”
“I’ve known you since uni,” Claudia shot back, her voice hatchet-hard. “If I thought a pretty face could sway you, we wouldn’t be working together. Just…tell me you’re not abdicating responsibility for what’s about to happen. I feel better when I know you’re firmly in the driver’s seat and not…making room for whatever cause has got your bleeding heart going pitter-patter.”
“That makes one of us,” Ulysses muttered.
Before he could muddle his way through a better lie, the doorbell rang.
“Showtime,” Claudia beamed. “I’ll get it.”
“Oh, good. I’ll put on my shady dealings face on.”
Her smile was a flash of white teeth between rouged lips as she turned away. The fading click-clack of her heels down the hall ratcheted the turbulence in Ulysses’ gut. He downed the
rest of his gin and tonic in a couple of gulps, wincing at the tangy lime.
“You must be Mr. Cole,” Claudia greeted, loud enough for her voice to carry. “I was just leaving. Ulysses is waiting for you… I’ll see you later, darling!”
Ulysses echoed the sentiment, optimistic though it was. “Fancy a drink? We might be in for a long…” Wait died on his tongue.
Mr. Cole stood just inside the living room door, his hands folded at his back and his shoulders stiff. He looked every bit as incongruous here as he had in that bleak little hotel in Gatinau, gun in hand.
The smile he offered Ulysses was meditative.
“No, thank you. I don’t drink.”
“Admirable. Might change your mind, after this…”
“And what exactly is this?” Off his own bat, Cole took a seat on the couch. “I thought we came to an agreement. You return to your life and we continue to keep Britain safe so all those rights you enjoy are not lost.”
He made it sound so noble. Ulysses fought off an eye roll.
“I did return to my life. And then I was sent that file.” He pointed to the manila folder on the coffee table. “I was all set to dance to your tune like a good soldier, but my best intentions aside, I think you’ll agree the evidence is quite compelling.”
Mister X’s body might have disappeared, but not before it was identified, his fingerprints and dental records entered into Interpol’s database—where they still lay, unless the SIS had scrubbed the trace.
“Hacking is a criminal offense,” Cole observed.
“True, but it’s not mine.”
Ulysses hitched up his trousers and sat. “This was an execution, wasn’t it? Question is, if someone’s killing your agents, why are you bothering to cover it up? Shouldn’t you be looking for the culprits?”
“What makes you think we’re not?”
“Because you can’t.”
As was fast becoming habit, there was no warning to preface Robin’s entrance. One minute Ulysses was alone with his MI6 contact and the next, Robin stood in the kitchen door, hands thrust into the pockets of his bomber jacket.
“Isbell,” Cole said.
“I haven’t used that name in years.”
Cole flicked the manila folder shut and slapped it down to the coffee table with a sneer. “This is your work, I suppose. You of all people should know how well we respond to threats.”
“I do.”
“So you’re sacrificing Leach?” Cole sounded genuinely astonished. “I didn’t think you had it in you. Ten years of being on lamb must change a man… No longer gun-shy, I see.”
“I was never gun-shy,” Robin countered.
The flinty edge in his voice told Ulysses this was a charge he’d faced before.
He went on. “But once you start wondering why you’re being told to put a bullet in someone’s head, it’s hard to stop.”
“It was never your job to question.”
“Hence, I quit.”
Cole mulled that over in a silence that stretched and stretched until Ulysses wondered if he was supposed to remind them that he was just an innocent bystander, that the house had survived five generations of his family and he’d really, really like to avoid bloodstains on the carpet. He didn’t get the chance.
“This cannot go to print,” Cole said, gesturing to the folder. “National security interests—”
“Have nothing to do with why your agent is dead,” Robin interjected. “Come off it. This is me you’re talking to. You think I just happened to be in Criel-sur-Mer on vacation when it happened?”
Cole pursed his lips, but said nothing.
“This is what happens when you hunt down your own people. You eliminate half a dozen and twice as many start to get a little antsy. Tying up loose ends is one thing. Picking us off after you’ve trained us? We’re not stupid. We know there’s no retiring from this line of work.”
“You assume you know what happened in Criel-sur-Mer,” Cole contended glibly. “The truth is that a rogue agent infiltrated our services and absconded with vital information.”
“Sure,” Robin agreed, “if that vital information had a pulse.” The floorboards creaked when he advanced into the room. “You’re talking data and I’m talking people.”
Cole hummed a note of agreement. “I did notice you’d gone soft.” His gaze lingered on Ulysses for a beat too long to be an accident.
It made him want to squirm in his seat. Ulysses resisted.
“The higher ups are concerned. They don’t like moles and turncoats…and they certainly don’t appreciate exposés that force us to explain ourselves before this new prime minister.” He practically spat out those two words.
Ulysses felt a strange, unanticipated touch of kinship. Finally, something they had in common.
“Then lucky for you, I don’t want to stir the pot,” Robin revealed. “I’m here to propose a truce.”
“Really?” Cole smacked his lips. “You speak for all our stray assets, do you?”
Robin’s silence was a ponderous, amorphous presence in the room. Ulysses shot him a searching glance, eyebrows creeping up his brow. There were hidden depths to Robin’s hidden depths, plots concealed beneath his schemes. If he had a lifetime to unpack every layer, Ulysses wasn’t sure it would be enough time to get to the truth of him.
Trying might be enjoyable enough, though.
He locked down the thought, keenly aware of being caught between two irresistible forces. This wasn’t his fight, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be affected by the fallout.
“I have a feeling I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s afoot here,” Ulysses admitted. He cleared his throat. “But…picking off your agents doesn’t strike me as a particularly efficient way of doing business. You must hope to retire someday, no?”
Cole flashed him a placid smile. “You haven’t the faintest idea what’s at stake. Or what happened in Criel-sur-Mer.”
Before Ulysses could argue otherwise—and he was tempted to, the sting in Cole’s dismissal too sharp to ignore—Cole turned his attention back to Robin.
“And what about the real murderer? Will you bring him to justice?”
“I could try,” Robin said. “But we both know how that would turn out.”
“Moscow,” Cole echoed grimly.
In his quest to rile Ulysses against Robin, Cole had shared some details of his past exploits. Moscow was a particularly gruesome example—a body wrapped in plastic, pocked with cuts and bruises, ligature marks and ample burns. Death must have been a blessing.
Ulysses had read between the lines before and assumed that to be Robin’s work. He realized now that Cole had never spelled out the link.
Robin cracked his knuckles. “Our friends in Russia are just waiting for a hint of who took out their man.”
“It wasn’t us,” Cole murmured.
“Since when has that ever mattered? This spirals out of control—and it will—you won’t know friend from foe. I’ll make sure of it.”
As threats went, this one seemed to stick in Cole’s craw. He scowled, sucking his cheeks in as if he’d bitten into a lime. His gaze was a restless hummingbird darting over Ulysses’ living room without pause.
Eventually, Cole sighed. “What guarantees can you provide that Mr. Leach won’t publish the story?”
“I want no part in this squabble?” Ulysses offered.
“He won’t go to print,” Robin added.
The utter certitude in his tone chafed, but he refused to meet Ulysses’ eyes, so there was no telling if this was yet another front, another power play to suggest Ulysses could be controlled and was therefore manageable.
Cole mulled over the proposal. “I need more than that.”
“Story disappears entirely. No paper trail, no whistle-blowers,” said Robin. “Only a handful of people know about it now. We can keep it that way.”
“And what else?”
“What do you need?”
It took Ulysses a moment to gras
p that they had moved from opposite ends of the insurmountable challenge to haggling over its resolution.
“You come back to Vauxhall with me. Right now. You turn yourself in…”
Robin barked out an insincere guffaw that raised the hairs on Ulysses’ arms. “I do that and I never see the sun again. I know too much.”
“We can protect you,” Cole said, but it was an ineffectual lie when the specter they would be protecting him from lived in the same building.
Robin paced around the couch and peeled back the curtains that blocked out the view onto the darkened street outside. “Manuel Sosa. Do you know who that is?”
Cole scowled. “Yes.”
“He’ll go with you.”
“Is he aware you’re making decisions in his name?”
Robin’s profile remained half in shadow as he twisted to face the room. Something fearsome hovered in his gaze, a particularly chilling promise. Ulysses could well believe he was a killer. His insides compressed against his spine, but Robin had eyes only for Cole.
“I will expect daily calls from him. If he fails to make just one, our deal is off.”
“What, you’ll muster every agent we’ve ever turned loose and sic them onto us?” Cole scoffed.
“Yes.”
Ulysses had frequented enough bars to have a sound grasp of what men sounded like when they were boasting. He didn’t mistake Robin for one of them.
* * * *
They watched from the window as Cole crossed the street not long after the details were ironed out. Manuel was already waiting for him on the opposite sidewalk, a cigarette perched between his lips, unlit.
“So he drew the short straw?” Ulysses muttered. He couldn’t make himself meet Robin’s eyes.
“He’s the only one who can stand English weather.”
Across the street, Manuel was ushered into the back of a sedan with tinted windows. Cole had already disappeared from sight. Robin’s nonchalance stung in the wake of that grim surrender.
“I can’t believe you’d turn one of your own in…and for what?” Ulysses stalked away from the window. “So you could antagonize some field operative? You know Cole doesn’t have the authority to make any deals—”
