Alien Tongues (16 page)

After a pause Séamus said, "Alice, are you sure that's a compliment?"  They both laughed.

"I knew it would come out all wrong," she said.  "I don't know your past or your family situation, and I'm not going to ask about it now.  But I feel like you've been protecting us as if we were family members.  I believe that, no matter what happens to this project or the government's interest in it, your loyalty to us will never be compromised. I agree that the girls themselves are probably safer if they quit now, and you have to put your fiancée first.  In fact everyone else will be fine, and it's Séamus FitzGerald's career that will suffer because Wilkie and I botched this up.  But you aren't blaming us because you're thinking of everybody except yourself."

Séamus raised his glass and they clinked drinks.  "Now I understand.  How do I explain that on my resume?"

Alice, walked across the room to change the background music and turn it up louder.  "Let's dance while I think about it."  She embraced him in a slow shuffle.

The routine did not change that night.  In the morning, there were some signs on Alice's face that she had been crying, but her voice seemed as cheerful as ever.  After taking the girls to the lab, Séamus mentally braced himself and sent a message to his boss that he needed to talk personally.  He was mildly surprised when she almost immediately requested him to call her in the office.   She gave him her usual classy smile when her face appeared in the screen.

"Thank you for taking my call so quickly, Principal," he began.  "I've been doing a lot of soul-searching recently.  I don't believe I am making a good contribution to this assignment and that has made my overall record with the Agency unsatisfactory. At the same time, I am in grave danger of losing the woman I love by pursuing this career.  I've decided I need to assist you to transition me out of this role.  I will be submitting my resignation letter this afternoon."

Not the slightest glimmer of surprise flickered across his boss's face.  She gave him another smile, this one appearing more consciously indulgent.  "Séamus, let me say I fully understand your feelings, they are only natural. Your job would be a great strain for anyone.  However, I am pleased to report to you that, by all accounts, you have been doing superbly there.  I've told you before, please do not be the judge of your performance, that is our job.  I've told you that, though before this assignment the success of the projects you were involved in was mixed, that was largely not your fault.  What you've achieved here has catapulted you way beyond that middling picture and made you quite a star.  So congratulations, and please keep up the good work."

It was like he had crawled along a dark tunnel to open a trap-door which let in blazing sunlight.  The words made him dizzy and threatened the euphoria of the original meeting in her office, overpowering any will to resist.  Yet how could her words be true?  Was she so Machiavellian that she would make up such a story, simply to save herself the job of finding a replacement?  Was this dumb agent in this dumb job such a perfect fit, that it made no sense to pull some decent agent out of something really important?

"Principal, with great respect, during my tenure the failure probability has risen from 60% to 94%.  I have been unable to help these girls in any way.  I feel quite out of my depth.  A fresh minder here would certainly do no harm and could well stimulate a breakthrough."

His boss took a visible breath which gave the merest hint of impatience.  "Agent, the fact that we have 6% left – which I personally think is absurdly pessimistic – is almost entirely due to you.  You successfully removed the danger from a local crime ring.  Everyone there trusts you utterly.  Any other agent would fail at the job miserably – I don't have anyone else who has what it takes.  So you're staying there because it is vital for the Agency and for a mission of extreme importance."

After shooting the stray dog with his bazooka, he was being strafed by a squadron of fighters.  What was left in his bunker?  Oh yes, he had mentioned love.  "Principal, I am really so flattered by what you say.  But I have a fiancée and I simply must return to London to repair our relationship.  I can't lose her.  I really hope you can understand that.  It's much more to me than my job."

The classy smile did not appear, but instead one that did not show any teeth.  It was in no way intended to be friendly.  It could be considered a polite acknowledgement of sincere sentiments that the listener judged to be woefully misplaced.  It also suggested that the listener knew she could not persuade the speaker of the folly of his position.  There was no real room left for discussion.  It was time to end the talk courteously.

"Séamus, I hope you will excuse me because I have a meeting starting shortly for which I need to do some preparation.  Let me end by saying I really do sympathize with your difficulties and I know we are asking a great deal from you.  Your sacrifices will not, I assure you, go unrewarded.  But please, do not under any circumstances send me a resignation letter, it's out of the question.  If you would like a senior civil servant to visit your fiancée and explain that, right now, your country needs you just as in the same way it called up young fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain whose life expectancy could be measured in hours, I'd be pleased to arrange it.  OK if I ring off now?"

"Of course, Principal. Goodbye."

The rest of that day, and then the next, gave Séamus a sensation of floating somewhere off the ground, as if encased in a kind of magical rubber suit that would have allowed him to slam into a wall without feeling a thing.  He watched sport with the girls, being barely conscious of what he was watching.  He imagined himself writing the resignation letter but he did not sit down to do it.  He felt like he could make sense of nothing, and that included his own personality.  By the end of the second day, knowing Alice was going to visit him that night, feeling started to return to his body and mind.  Alcohol was calling him in a depressing way.  Was he developing a real drinking problem?

Two thoughts kept floating endlessly around his mind.  The first was whether his decision to resign had anything at all to do with his father, and some subconscious thought process that had been triggered by McMahon's remark.  It was a stupid, ignorant, misinformed remark, but the fact that a man like McMahon would bother to voice it was like sandpaper constantly rubbing on his skin.  The second thought was the undeniable fact that his boss was determined to keep him where he was. Modest man that he was, he had to accept that it exceeded the convenience of having a dumb agent doing a dumb job.  His role was making some difference to something, and that something still mattered a great deal to the Agency.  All he could think of was that his presence was truly keeping the girls from giving up, and someone – maybe Wilkie – had greater faith that a breakthrough was still on the cards.

Yet how could he go back and tell Sheryl that he had changed his mind?  He couldn't, simple as that.  Through his ox-like handling of a delicate situation, he had lost any chance to finesse his position, and forced a flat choice now between continuing his job or his relationship.  One of them had to end.  Soon, he had to make the final call and move on.  He would allow himself a night or two to check all the crazy mental activity that might have contributed to what he had just done.  Perhaps talking to Alice might help.  After all, she had worked enough with Wilkie on cognitive-science projects.  She might have ways of uncovering what drove him always to eliminate the better options in his life.

Around 8 pm that evening, Alice knocked on his door.  When she entered, she gave him an unusual stare.  He asked her what was up, suddenly worried about the girls. 

"Did you by chance happen to read or listen to the news this evening?" She asked.

"No, why?"

"Well, it must have been a really quiet day, because one small local story from here somehow got national attention."  She continued to stare at him.  "It involves you, I'm afraid."

His heart seemed to be failing.  He thought of the local Herald reporter. He had tried to buy him off with a modest story the following week, and wasn't certain it was enough.   But this couldn't be the work of the Herald alone.  National coverage.  Someone powerful had worked this.  And it was the type of news story which, if cleverly handled, could make the choice he had just been facing completely moot.  The choice had just been made for him.  Sheryl was more correct that she could have imagined.  He had been played for the biggest sucker in Whitehall.

He sat down at his desk, armed with glass and whiskey bottle, and fumbled the address of the Evening News.  Alice sat behind him on the bed, waiting.  It took a few seconds to find the news story.

"Today, Petra Kosovich filed a civil rights suit against the West Yorkshire Police Force, alleging her rights were violated when apparently false information was used by the police to obtain a search warrant for her apartment.  Answering the door in her night-attire to a police officer, she and her companion that evening, Séamus FitzGerald, were taken to a Middleton police station where they were interrogated for one hour.  Apparently, the police believed that Ms Kosovich was a victim of human trafficking, forced to provide sexual services to local customers of a call-girl ring.  In fact, she works as a saleswoman at a local cattle breeding centre, and has held that job for eighteen months since moving to England.  She had met Mr FitzGerald in a local pub earlier that evening.  Mr FitzGerald is a government auditor who was recently posted to the government laboratories in the area."

Even if, by some miracle, Sheryl forgave him for this transgression and the obvious humiliation it would bring her, the message of this article was clear.  Someone was demonstrating that he could be publicly embarrassed at any time.  If that someone was at the Agency, he or she could prevent his personal life getting in the way of his mission.  Séamus FitzGerald might stand against such attacks, but he could not expect people like Sheryl to suffer them indefinitely.

It took a few more moments to realize that, in a very perverse way, this news article contained the kernel of a compliment.  The concept of a dumb agent on a dumb mission was suddenly banished.  If nothing else, going to these extreme lengths proved not only the importance of his mission but also his personal role in it.  He might be a prisoner to the Agency, but in some way he was a valued prisoner.  Now he needed to know one extra piece of information.  Who had set up the original false warrant?  If that had been the Agency, then this whole plan predated his talk of resignation.  They then must have anticipated his disillusionment and made contingency plans.  Someone – presumably Wilkie – had expected the brick wall the girls were going to hit but had not communicated as much to Alice.  Maybe he had wanted to create a crisis point.  A second-level game was being played above them, and they were naively believing the scripts they had been given.

He turned to look at Alice still seated on the bed.  Her expression was full of worry, and he was touched to think that it was essentially for him.  He exaggerated a shrug.

"There goes my reputation," he remarked.  "Just for your information, Alice, I went to this Petra on by boss's instructions, so we could send a message to the call-girl ring we were not going to touch them."

"You don't need to explain to me," Alice told him, "But I had anyway figured out that one."  She smiled.  "Why would you have paid for what you could have got for free in your own room?"

He smiled back.  So he could still smile.  "Let's go to the White Hart," he told her. "I want to see if I can find McMahon."

Alice looked at her watch and sighed.  "Hmm, better not spend the time at home changing.  Still, who am I trying to impress?  Let's go!"

As soon as they entered the pub, Séamus spotted McMahon talking with a group of other men.  He got drinks for the two of them and they took their usual place by the fire.  He thought it better to wait until McMahon came over to him.  There was every chance of that – after all, because of the news he was now quite famous.  For the sake of filling in time as they sat waiting, Alice gave him an update on her analysis which he tried hard to follow, both of them glancing regularly across at McMahon's group.  About twenty minutes later, McMahon broke away and walked towards them, accompanied by another man.  Séamus recognized the face – it was Edward Allsop, the man who had tried to break into the facility and who had been caught on camera.

"I expect you'll be wanting a word with me," McMahon said to Séamus.  "But before we start, I just want to introduce someone who says you'll recognize his name – Ed Allsop.  He's a colleague of mine, you might say."

Allsop looked at Séamus in a distinctly unfriendly manner.  "I will catch you later after Ryan's had his talk."  He then walked back to the original group.

"What's that about?" Séamus asked McMahon, nodding towards Allsop.

McMahon shrugged.  "I thought you would know.  Sorry, he didn't tell me.  Actually we don't work together, but we have the same employer."

"Kevin Grant," Séamus said.

"Aye," McMahon sounded a little surprised that he knew.  "Actually, he's over there in the group – do you know him by sight?"  Séamus replied that he did not.  McMahon glanced over his shoulder.  "He's the smaller man, shaved head."

Séamus glanced over to the group.  He had already noticed the man who, almost a head shorter than the others, was nevertheless the dominant character, the other men tending to address their comments to him.  The shaved head appeared to be his response to premature balding.  He was good-looking with a strong, restless gaze which seemed to take in everything around him.  There was a sense of enormous energy about the man, kept under tight but comfortable control.  Séamus judged him to be dangerous.  Perhaps the only dangerous man in the group, with the potential exception of McMahon.