A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  “Yes, I am.” He raised a hand—carefully—and flagged a surly young man, asking for a soda.

  “No argument?” Cheng poked at a caper on her plate with her fork. “No let’s go halvesies, no you’ve got the bigger budget?”

  “No.”

  “You must really want something.”

  “Why’s Box going through Chace’s unmentionables?”

  “Because they’re like the FBI?” Cheng offered. “They suffer from the same intelligence equivalent of blue balls?”

  “They know how to get themselves off,” Crocker said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The surly young man came back and placed Crocker’s drink on the tiny table, hard enough that soda slopped over the sides, then lingered to take his order. Crocker asked for the pierogi and another napkin, lit a cigarette as the waiter departed.

  “Come on, not while I’m eating.”

  “Especially while you’re eating. What do you know?”

  “What makes you think I know anything about why your Security Services—meaning Britain’s—are looking at your people—meaning you specifically?”

  “Because at last count the CIA was supplementing the income of roughly a quarter of the staff at Box.”

  Cheng grinned and pointed her fork at him. “You can’t prove that. And even if you could, I’d deny everything.”

  “I’m serious, Angela. They’ve got her under close watch, it’s not a check, it’s something else. David Kinney came to me this morning trying to figure out what I know and left smug in the knowledge that the answer is nil. We’re talking about my Head of Section. Anything happens to Chace, I lose one-third of my ops capability. Bad for me, bad for you, bad for the special relationship between our houses.”

  “You lose Chace, you lose more than a third,” Cheng remarked, now using a small slice of rye bread to make an open-faced sandwich. “Lankford’s untested.”

  “No, he’s tested, he’s yet to pass.”

  “Making my point.”

  She took a bite from her sandwich, then bent back in her chair to make room for the waiter’s return. The young man dropped Crocker’s plate on the table with the same finesse with which he’d delivered his drink, spilling more soda. He then dropped a napkin on Crocker’s lap before departing again for the bar.

  “You’re sure he’s not Russian mob?” Crocker remarked.

  “No, he makes porn,” Cheng said. “This is his day job. His mother runs the place. Came over during the war, her husband was with the Polish exiles.”

  “You checked?”

  “Sure. Didn’t you?”

  “About Chace.”

  Cheng shook her head. “You should talk to your own people, not me.”

  “I’ve tried. They are being unusually reticent.”

  “Meaning you couldn’t bully it out of Weldon?”

  “Meaning Weldon has suddenly developed a spine. Meaning Rayburn is out of the loop, whatever it is, and meaning that I can’t get in to see C.”

  “C’s avoiding you?”

  “Kate’s been trying to get me in to see him all morning, keeps being told that he’s out of the building or in meetings.”

  Cheng stopped eating, used her napkin to wipe the corners of her mouth. The gesture was deliberate and slow, and Crocker knew she was using the time to collect her thoughts, and he knew the thoughts weren’t pleasant ones. The mirth was draining from her face much the way ice melts under running water.

  “You need to start looking for a new Minder,” Cheng told him softly. “You’re about to be one short. Again.”

  Coming from anyone else, Crocker would have dismissed the statement as hyperbole. But for all the banter between them, all the jokes, Cheng didn’t make cracks like that, not about the lives of his people or hers.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Crocker asked.

  “They’re giving her to the Saudis, Paul.”

  “What?”

  “They’re giving her to—”

  “I heard you. What the bloody hell does that mean, Angela? The Saudis have no reason to be looking at her, they’ve no reason to be looking at us. They were looking at the Israelis for what happened in Yemen.”

  “I know.”

  “What changed?”

  “The world.” She folded her napkin beside her plate, pushed back from the table, rising. “Let’s go to my office. That way you can scream and shout and break things.”

  •

  “It’s in the Wadi-as-Sirhan, somewhere south-southeast of the Jordanian border.” Cheng turned the photographs on her desk, facing them toward Crocker, standing opposite. “Complement anywhere from forty to eighty terrorists, mix of veterans from campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Chechnya, along with new recruits, mostly pulled from the madrassa-and-mosque crowd in Saudi, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan . . . you get the idea.”

  “Who claims it?”

  “You don’t know?” Cheng looked genuinely surprised. “It’s your pals in the Harakat ul-Mujihadin, Abdul Aziz faction. Same gang that set fire to your lovely subway system. The camp’s equipped for the whole nine yards, Paul—firing exercises, CQC, bomb-making, rhetoric. Word is it’s higher education for the jihadis.”

  Crocker bent, giving the photographs a close examination. They were remarkably clear and uncompromising, and he guessed they had come from the latest-generation satellites the CIA now employed. In a couple of photographs, he was able to make out faces, gestures, even expressions, all of them captured from orbit.

  “How recent are these?” he asked.

  “These came in this morning, requested by the White House yesterday. There’s another batch coming, the satellite’s making a pass every seventy-nine minutes, and for the time being, it’s a hot spot.”

  “Wadi-as-Sirhan.” Crocker chewed on it, trying to connect the location with the facts in his memory. “That’s Tabuk province, isn’t it? Prince Salih was on the magistrate’s council in Tabuk.”

  “Salih was the main source of income for the camp.”

  “But the camp hasn’t dried up now that he’s dead?”

  “On the contrary, it’s doing booming business. Maybe they were stashing away money for a rainy day, God only knows. The Mossad has hard intel that HUM-AA is liaising with Hamas and Al-Aqsa, bringing in bombing recruits.”

  Crocker, mildly alarmed, moved his look from the pictures to Cheng. “They’re teaming the bombers with the regulars?”

  “Mossad thinks that’s the plan. Your pal Landau apparently pushed a rather strongly worded pack up the chain to his Chief, and his Chief in turn presented it to his Prime Minister and select members of his Cabinet. Mossad Research believes that the bombers are being paired with trained jihadis to act as their cutouts and handlers. The jihadis move the bombers to their target locations, assemble the explosives, wire up the bombers, and turn them loose.”

  “And from the Wadi-as-Sirhan . . . ,” Crocker said.

  “Yeah, from the Wadi-as-Sirhan, they’ve got access to the whole Middle East. With the mess in Iraq right now, the White House is more than a little antsy that we’re going to be seeing more dead soldiers on television, and that’s the last thing the President wants. Not to mention what it could do in places like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan.”

  “Why stop there? If they’re willing to give it the effort, they could strike a lot closer to home.”

  “There’s that, too.”

  Crocker made a face, discarded the photograph in his hand with a flick of the wrist, turning away from the desk. On the far wall of Cheng’s office was a framed photograph of the President of the United States, and beside it, another of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. An American flag hung limply from a pole in the corner, between the couch and a bookshelf.

  He heard Cheng moving, then the rattle of a cap coming off a bottle and the whiff of alcohol splashing into a glass. When he turned back, she was standing by the sidebar behind her desk, offering him a cut-glass tumbler of scotch.

&nb
sp; He hesitated, then took it.

  Cheng poured a shot for herself, then moved to the couch, settling in, smoothing her skirt with one hand, drink balanced in the other. She waited until Crocker had taken a seat and a sip before tasting her own.

  “The Israelis are viewing this as a direct threat to their security and the lives of their citizenry,” Cheng said.

  “With good reason.”

  “Yeah. But they can’t move against Saudi. If they launch a covert and it goes bad, they’ve wandered into the worst-case scenario. Israeli commandos on Saudi soil? It’ll make what Chace did in San’a’ look like Up with Islam Day.”

  “So they’re pressing the White House.”

  “Not exactly. They double-teamed, sent their Foreign Minister to speak to the U.S. Ambassador, and at the same time the Head of Research, this ex-KGB guy—”

  “Viktor Borovsky,” Crocker said. “I know who he is.”

  “Right, Borovsky sent his findings to the Company, claiming it was a courtesy.”

  “But looking for verification.”

  “Which we provided.”

  “You have the same problem the Israelis have, you can’t launch a covert inside Saudi.”

  Cheng drained her glass, set it down. “Nor can you.”

  Crocker thought, took another taste of the scotch. It was a blend, and not a particularly nice one, and he made a face.

  “I save the good stuff for my ambassador,” Cheng explained.

  “So I see.” He pushed his glass away. “White House spoke to the Saudis?”

  “That’s the only move.”

  “And?”

  “And the Saudis said that they would happily roll up the camp in the Wadi-as-Sirhan, in the spirit of goodwill and international peace and friendship, and as a show of solidarity in the war on terrorism. They have one of their new antiterror teams standing by, apparently, and this is supposedly one of the good ones. Meaning, one of the ones where the members aren’t actually foaming Wahhabists themselves.”

  “But.”

  “But they feel that the murder of Prince Salih bin Muhammad bin Sultan is a crime that must be answered, both publicly and politically. They’re refusing to move on HUM-AA until the perpetrator has been rendered into Saudi custody.”

  The apprehension that seized his stomach took Crocker by surprise.

  “They realize there’s a good chance that Abdul Aziz will launch a bomb at one of them soon enough, just like UBL, don’t they?” he asked.

  “If the Saudis do—and they probably do, but I never try to gauge a government’s capacity for self-deception—they clearly feel it’s worth the risk. Gets worse, though. They’ve made it real plain that any incursion whatsoever into the Wadi-as-Sirhan will be viewed as a direct challenge to their sovereignty, and they will respond accordingly.”

  “Meaning they’ll cut off the oil.”

  “They know how to hit the Administration where it lives, let’s put it that way. Doesn’t do great things for you guys, either, I might add.”

  “It doesn’t have to be her,” he said after a moment. “It doesn’t have to be Chace.”

  Cheng picked up her glass, examining it, as if hoping she’d missed a few drops of her drink. “Maybe not, but they know they’re looking for a woman, and they know she’s from the West or an Israeli.”

  “How do they know that?”

  “Apparently there’s a witness, or three or four, and while the witnesses didn’t see the actual assassination, they saw a woman leaving, and they’ve identified her as non-Arab.”

  “I won’t just hand over Chace.”

  “You’re talking like you have a say in it, my friend, and you and I both know that you don’t. The Israelis aren’t going to hand over an innocent; they’ve already responded that, if forced to do so, they’ll take matters into their own hands.”

  “It doesn’t have to be her.”

  “Then you’re going to have to find some chick who’s willing to be rendered to the Saudis to have her head snicked off in Chop-Chop Square, Paul. Because the Saudis are locked on this, they’re not backing down. And if Box is closing in on Chace . . .”

  “The Government has already made its decision,” Crocker concluded softly.

  Cheng nodded, but didn’t add anything.

  The tension in Crocker’s stomach shifted, moved upward into his chest. His immediate thought was that there had to be a dodge, some way to get Chace out of the situation, some way that would satisfy all the parties involved. But when he looked to Cheng, he could see the resignation on her face, and he knew its source.

  “They’ll execute her,” Crocker said. “God knows what they’ll do before that, but they’ll end up executing her.”

  “Trust me, I know. Look, Paul, you don’t have to convince me how much this sucks ass. I know exactly how much this sucks ass, I am painfully aware of the degree of ass-suckage present in this scenario. But it’s the rules of the game. Chace doesn’t matter one goddamn, and you know it. Neither do you, neither do I. It’s the institution that matters, it’s the politics, and right now there’s one agency and three major governments, and they’re all in agreement on this.

  “As far as they’re concerned, you can always get a new Minder One.”

  “Not like her.”

  “You think they care?”

  Crocker bit back a response, trying to grip the anger as it surged forward. Cheng didn’t deserve it; Cheng hadn’t earned it.

  He rose, heading for the door. “Get someone to see me out.”

  “I’m sorry, Paul.”

  “The hell with that, I need an escort, I’ve got to get back to my office.” He stopped abruptly, veered toward Cheng’s desk. “Let me use your phone.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I need to call my office.”

  “I can do it for you.”

  Crocker glared at her. “No. You can’t.”

  Cheng shook her head. “I can’t let you, Paul.”

  “Then get me a fucking escort out of here now!”

  She rose, moved to the office door, and leaned out, calling for her PA. “Margo, Mr. Crocker needs an escort out and a cab.” She told him, “Let me know what I can do.”

  “You’ve done quite enough, thank you,” Crocker said, and left.

  30

  London—Vauxhall Cross, “the Pit”

  16 September 1413 GMT

  The red phone rang on Chace’s desk, and she answered it before the tone had faded from the air, grinning at Lankford seated across the room, who once again had exhibited his Pavlovian response to the bell. Poole, without looking up, chuckled.

  “Steady, Chris,” Poole said.

  “Minder One,” Chace said.

  “Minder Three, my office, now,” Crocker’s voice snarled in her ear, then he hung up.

  Chace blinked, listened to the dead circuit, then replaced the phone. Poole glanced up, then did a double-take, seeing her expression.

  “Well?” Lankford asked.

  “Boss’s office,” she told him. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Him?” Poole asked.

  “Him,” Chace confirmed.

  Lankford stared, then all at once seemed to realize that he wasn’t moving. He sprang up, sending his chair banging back against the wall, nearly clipping his hip on the corner of his desk as he came around its side. He hustled to the door, opened it, closed it, doubled back, grabbed his suit jacket off the peg, then went to the door again and disappeared into the hall, still struggling to get his arms into the sleeves.

  Chace and Poole exchanged grins, then she rose and closed the door.

  “Think he’s cleaning out his desk, then?” Poole asked.

  “I’d like to think I would have been informed.”

  Poole tilted his chair back, folded his hands behind his head, watching her. “I’ve got a mate out Portsmouth way.”

  “I feel sorry for him,” Chace said.

  “You and me both. Does work at the School,
handles the night exercises, teaches one of the tech courses.”

  “My sympathy grows.”

  “Yeah, well, he says that when you were out there on your refresher, you and a certain recently retired Head of the Special Section went out for dinner and drinks and the like. And that you failed to return to your dormitory that evening, but instead returned to the School in the very wee hours of the next morning, driven by the self-same recently retired Head of the Special Section, and that the both of you were looking considerably the worse for wear.”

  “Does your friend remember what I was wearing, too?”

  “I can call and ask him. He is a trained intelligence officer, you know.”

  “So are you.”

  “So I am.”

  “And you have drawn conclusions.”

  “I have.” Poole nodded slowly. “I have indeed.”

  “Do you wish to share those conclusions, Minder Two?”

  “It is my conclusion, Minder One, that you and the former Minder One got blasted and then shagged like giggling teenagers when their parents are away on holiday, that is my conclusion.”

  Chace grinned. “Do you have any evidence to support this conclusion?”

  “Aside from that cum-drunk grin you’ve got on your face, no, I do not.”

  “Cum-drunk?”

  Poole shrugged apologetically. “Regiment talk.”

  “Lovely, that.”

  “But descriptive.”

  “Evocative, at the least.”

  “You have not refuted my conclusion, oh Head of Section.”

  “No, I haven’t, have I?”

  “Nor have you confirmed it. You have yet to answer conclusively one way or the other.”

  “That is correct, you are quite correct, Nicky. Do you want an answer, is that what you’re hoping for here?”

  Poole smiled, pleased with himself. “Yes, very much.”

  “Right, then,” Chace said, and she flipped him two fingers and showed him her best fuck-off smile. “Mind your own.”

  Poole laughed, dropping his hands back to his desk, returning to his work.

  “I always do, don’t I? It’s in my job description,” he said.

  •

  Lankford returned fourteen minutes after he’d left, and both Chace and Poole looked up from their work as he entered, curious as to what had happened in Crocker’s office. The look on Lankford’s face was pinched.