A Gentleman's Game (24 page)

“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.

“You on your bike?” Chace asked him.

Lankford shook his head, took off his coat, hung it on the rack.

“What then?”

“He wanted to talk about my prospects.” While he said it, Lankford dropped a folded square of paper onto her desk. “Wanted to know how it was working out down here, if I was ready to make a go of it full-time.”

Chace looked at the paper, then to Lankford, quizzical. Over at the Minder Two desk, Poole’s chair was scraping back on the floor as he got up to join them.

“What’d you say?” Chace asked, taking the paper. There was nothing special about it whatsoever: copier paper, white, plain, folded in a square.

“Well, that I was enjoying the work very much,” Lankford said. “That I recognized I had a long way to go until I was at your level, or Nicky’s, but that I felt certain I would rise to it, and do so quickly.”

“I agree,” Chace said, opening the sheet. “You’re coming along nicely.”

“Thank you.”

Chace looked at the note, handwritten by Crocker, blue ink on white paper.

Leave. Do not return home. Lose Box. 0210 Imperial Age, VIP, clean. Minders will support.

Chace found it suddenly hard to breathe, had to force herself to inhale. She turned the note in her hand, showing it to Poole but looking at Lankford. He was watching her, his expression blatantly defying the banality of his words, drawn with tension.

For a moment, she honestly couldn’t think of anything to say, her mind still spinning from the note, trying to fathom it, straining to understand. Trouble, obviously big trouble, and she was at the heart of it, but she was damned if she could see the why of it, or even the how. She had known it wasn’t a spot-check by Box, she had known it wasn’t simply a security viewing. But this . . . This was beyond anything she had imagined, if for no other reason than that she had not, in her wildest dreams, thought it would lead to something like this.

Box wanted her, Crocker’s message made that clear. Why, she didn’t know, but if Crocker was telling her anything at all, he was telling her that Kinney was going to try to put the arm on her and she’d better get moving, and fast.

The clock on the wall told her it was fourteen-thirty-three. Just under twelve hours until she was to be in the VIP room at the Imperial Age, then. Provided she could keep her liberty for the duration.

Poole had finished reading the note, and now he was looking at her, too, much the way Lankford was.

“Is there anything else you think I should be working on?” Lankford asked her. “To improve my performance?”

She still couldn’t trust her voice with a response and so she shook her head, drawing the note back from Poole and crumpling it tight in her hand, then dropping it into her jacket pocket. Then she rose from her chair.

“No, Chris,” she told him. “I think you’ve definitely demonstrated that you’re ready to be Minder Three.”

Poole took the cue off her, went to the stand, grabbed his coat.

“I’m off for a pint,” Chace told them, and left the Pit.

•

She had a moment of apprehension, showing her pass to the warden on the door on her way out, but he didn’t stop her, just gave her a nod of recognition and waved her through. She stepped out into the courtyard of the building, into the slight mist that was doing a weak imitation of rain, following the walk to the door by the gate. The gate was opening, and Chace recognized C’s black Bentley as it glided into the yard. She looked away from the car, kept her stride steady.

There were more guards on the gate and they showed no signs of wishing to detain her, just checked her pass again, logged her out. Chace took the opportunity to glance back toward the entrance, saw C’s driver opening the rear door, saw Barclay climbing out of the car, far enough away that she couldn’t read his expression. She turned away before he could return the look, stepped through the door beside the gate, tucking her pass back into her inside pocket.

Wondering if she hadn’t just left Vauxhall Cross for the last time.

31

Saudi Arabia—Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan
16 September 1731 Local (GMT+3.00)

Sinan watched as Matteen moved
to the entrance of the tent, closed the flap, then slipped and turned the four wooden toggles through their frogs, trying to ensure against interruptions. Finished, he returned to the small table, propped his rifle against it, and sat on the rickety stool. On the table was a blue and black knapsack, a knockoff of a popular Western design, with several pockets and flaps and zippers. Matteen opened the pack and began loading it with boxes of ammunition, to weigh it down.

Sinan didn’t sit and, after confirming that Matteen was getting the weights correct, turned his attention to Nia. They were in one of the smaller tents, and there wasn’t a lot of room, and among the smell of the canvas and the heat and the dust, Sinan was sure he could smell her, too, and he cursed his imagination, willed himself to focus on the task at hand.

“We are your brothers in this,” he said to Nia gently. “And you are our sister.”

She nodded, hesitant, but the gesture was clear enough, even under her cloak and veil.

“You are
shahid,
and our purpose is to see you attain Paradise.”

Another nod, and Sinan was suddenly uncertain if he was trying to reassure Nia or himself. Behind him, he heard the sound of the zipper running over its teeth as Matteen closed the knapsack.

“Show us,” Sinan told Nia.

The woman hesitated again, then turned away from him, toward the wall of the tent. She reached up, unfastening her veil from her cowl, removing the
abaya.
Sinan looked away at first, when her bare arm revealed itself, and saw that Matteen was watching Nia’s movements with a decided disinterest. He envied his fellow the ability, wondered how he could manage it.

Sinan couldn’t.

But he couldn’t
not
look, either, and when he forced his eyes back to Nia, she was pulling the
abaya
away from her body, and he saw her bare legs. They were smooth, their curve gentle, her thighs slim but strong, and when she shifted her weight, he saw the muscles move, disappearing up beneath the shorts that were too short, the kind of shorts the Zionist girls wore. Her skin reminded him of her eyes, the eyes he’d caught himself thinking about too many times. Warmth seemed to emanate from her and, for the first time, Sinan wanted to touch her, to feel it for himself.

And he knew he was too weak, then, and he prayed to Allah, the Compassionate, for mercy.

She folded the
abaya
carefully, then shyly turned back around to face him, her eyes on the dirt floor of the tent.

Sinan looked, and even though he was supposed to look, even though it was his job to look, he felt guilt and shame surge through him, seeing her like this. She’d been given one of the Western tops to wear, powder blue to match the dark blue shorts, and there were three thin white stripes on the top, running around the center, and they made her breasts seem bigger, more defined. Her arms, like her legs, were slender and graceful, and her black hair fell thickly below her shoulders.

When he looked at her face, he was certain she was beautiful, and he thought, for the first time, that he must be very ugly to her eyes.

It was Matteen who spoke first. “Good, I believe the clothes. But your hair will have to be cut, you understand?”

Nia’s left hand started toward her head, then stopped, fell back, and she nodded, still looking at the floor.

How old is she?
Sinan wondered, still drinking her in, unable to stop himself.
Eighteen? Nineteen?

“Come sit here,” Matteen said, and he got to his feet, making room for Nia at the table.

She did as he instructed, and when she moved, she glanced to Sinan, and he knew she saw how he was looking at her, and still he couldn’t stop it. She knew it, it was in her eyes, and he expected displeasure or contempt.

But he saw none.

“Sinan?” Matteen asked. “You want to do this?”

Sinan looked at him quickly, but Matteen appeared just as bored by their activities as before.

“We have scissors?”

“I thought I brought them, they’re in our tent,” Matteen said. “I’ll be right back.”

He opened the flap just enough to slip out, leaving them alone, before Sinan could offer to do it himself.

Nia shifted on the stool slightly, hands in her lap. Sinan tried to find something else in the tent to look at, settled ultimately on the main support for the roof.

“Is it heavy?” she asked softly. “The bomb?”

“Ten pounds,” Sinan said. “Maybe more. When we’re finished with your hair and your clothes, you will try on the knapsack. Matteen’s weighted it down, so you know what it will be like.”

“I thought there would be a belt. In Gaza, they showed us pictures of the belts.”

“The knapsack is easier to make than the belt,” Sinan explained.

“Ten pounds.” After a moment, Nia added, “That’s not too heavy. My books were heavier.”

It took him a second. “You were a student?”

She nodded.

“Why aren’t you a student now?”

“They killed my friend.”

Sinan moved to the tent opening, peered out between the flaps. There was no sign of Matteen, no sign of anyone about, really. From one of the larger tents, he could hear the sounds of a recording playing a sermon, Dr. Faud’s voice.

“Your friend,” Sinan began. “Your friend . . . you were close to him?”

He heard Nia shift again on the stool. “I am a Muslim woman.”

He turned back to her then, feeling utterly like an ass. “I did not mean to insult you. I know you are a good woman and that you are proper. I didn’t mean to say otherwise.”

“He was my friend,” she repeated, and she looked up at him, and Sinan thought her eyes were colder now. “In Nablus, and he was shot, and he died, and he didn’t do anything to them.”

“I understand.”

She turned her head away, the gesture angry, and Sinan felt even more an ass. He looked to the tent flaps again, wondering what was taking Matteen so long.

“You aren’t an Arab,” she said. “You’re English.”

“I am a Muslim.”

“But you are English.”

“No, I am a Muslim. What I was before I found the Truth is nothing. It is what I am now that matters.”

Nia seemed to think about this, then shook her head. “Why are you here?”

“I want to help my brothers.”

“Did they kill someone close to you? Did you lose a friend to them?”

Sinan thought about Aamil.

“No,” he said. “Not like you mean. But I have seen my brothers dying, my sisters dying, and that was enough for me. The
imam
in my mosque, before I came here, he taught me about what it meant to be a Muslim, he taught me that there were six pillars, not five, and it was he who helped me find a
madrassa
that would take me.”

“So you came here?”

“I was in Cairo first. For many months, and then I was sponsored on the Hajj by the Prince, Allah have mercy on him. And on the Hajj, I saw . . .”

Sinan faltered, afraid to share what he had seen. Aamil had been there, and Aamil had understood, but only barely. There had been times, since then, when Sinan had wondered if his vision of the Satans, of the suffering they brought, hadn’t been the result of hunger, or dehydration, or exhaustion, or all of those things combined. It did not matter; he had seen what he had seen, and he had known what he had to do, as a man, as a Muslim, but mostly, as a Wahhabi.

“What did you see?” Nia asked softly.

She was looking at him again, curious and beautiful. He opened his mouth to answer and then felt the sunlight splash him as Matteen slipped through the tent flap.

“Yassir was using them,” Matteen explained, handing the scissors to Sinan. “Sorry it took so long.”

“It’s all right,” Sinan told him.

Nia straightened in her seat, pushed her tumbled hair back off her shoulders, and none of them said anything as Sinan began to cut it.

When he was finished, Nia wiped at her eyes, and he realized she had been weeping.