Private Wars (26 page)

CHAPTER 31

London—Vauxhall Cross, Office of D-Ops

18 August, 0858 Hours GMT

Time didn’t heal all wounds, not for her,
but in some cases it helped. Chace had come back from Tashkent thinking she was repeating her return from Saudi Arabia, expecting to find Crocker and another trip to the Farm, and then an uncomfortable and unceremonious discharge, this time once and for all.

Instead, she’d returned home to find Crocker acting as if she’d never left; not for Tashkent, not for Saudi, as if she’d been Minder One all along. He’d given her two weeks leave to recover and get her things in order, and to move from Lancashire back to London. So she’d continued on to Lancashire as she’d done for over a year and a half, taking the GNR to Leeds and then changing to Skipton, finally hiring a cab to take her the rest of the way to Barnoldswick.

People either stared at her as she went or studiously avoided looking at her. The bruises on her face had swollen, and she’d been given an ointment for the scrapes, which made the wounds appear still wet and fresher than they were. The sight in her right eye was beginning to return, clearest when she stood upright, worse when she lay down. The doctor who’d tended her at the British Embassy, hovered over by a concerned Station Number One, had explained that there was blood in the eye, and that was what was occluding her vision. It would stop and be reabsorbed soon enough, he assured her. As for her feet, luckily nothing had been broken, but the blunt trauma was severe enough that he’d advised her to stay off them as much as she could. He’d given her a set of crutches.

When Chace finally hobbled through Valerie Wallace’s door in the late afternoon of the twenty-fourth of February, she found Tamsin and Val in the front room, playing with a sorting set, plastic pyramids, spheres, and cubes that could fit into an elbow-shaped tube. Val came to her feet quickly, unable to completely hide the dismay and concern on her face, or the sharp inhale she made at the sight of Chace.

Tamsin merely looked at her blankly, eyes wide and blue and curious.

Chace thought her heart would break then, that her daughter couldn’t remember her. But Val saw it, too, and understood.

“It’s your face, love,” Val told her softly. “She doesn’t recognize you.”

Chace propped her crutches against the side table, nodding, still drinking in the sight of her daughter. Ten days had passed since she’d seen her last, and Chace was stunned by how much Tamsin had grown.

“Hello, Tam,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

Tamsin dropped the ball she was holding, struggling to her feet, her face lighting with an openmouthed smile. She wobbled like a drunk, then lurched forward, arms out, a miniature Frankenstein’s Monster, babbling happily.

Chace knelt and caught her in her arms, and held her until she was certain her heart wouldn’t break.

She
stayed in Barnoldswick for the week, and one night, after putting Tamsin to bed, sat with Val at the kitchen table, and explained her intentions. She was going to return to work, and that required her moving back to London, and she wanted Tamsin with her. She would hire a nanny, someone to live in and take care of her daughter during the day and sometimes the night, if need be.

Valerie nodded, failing to hide her disappointment or her hurt. “If you think it’s best, then.”

“It’s what’s best for me, and in the long run, I think that makes it best for Tam as well,” Chace said. “I’ll be traveling again, though. I don’t know how much, and I’ll never know when. But if you’re around, I’d like it so that Tamsin stayed with you while I’m away.”

“Here? Or in London?”

“Whichever you’d rather, Val.”

“Don’t much care for London.”

“Then here, by all means.”

Val considered, then nodded. “She’s my granddaughter, and far as I’m concerned, Tara, you’re my daughter-in-law. You’ll always have me, the both of you.”

“You’ve been generous beyond reason, Val, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

Val reached for her hand on the table, resting beside her mug of tea. Her touch was warm and soft and dry, and the look she gave Chace was grave.

“And this is what you want? What you truly want?”

“It is.”

“And it’s the same work, the same work you and my Tom were doing before?”

“Yes.”

“Either you’re good at it, or you’re a glutton for punishment, Tara. For Tamsin’s sake, and for yours, I hope you’re good at it.”

“I’m very good at it,” Chace told her.

And
so she returned to London.

Her feet had recovered enough that she could walk on them without the crutches for short stints. It made it easier to go about the shopping, the acquisition of those things that would be required to turn her bachelorette’s house into a home for a single mother. She contacted a service, set about interviewing nannies, and before the end of the second week had spoken with three she liked the looks of, forwarding their names to the Firm’s Security Division for the appropriate checks. Two of them came back clean, and Chace hired them both, a young woman from Salisbury named Missi, twenty-one years old and studying art history, and an older girl who’d grown up in Bristol, named Catherine, who was planning on a career in early childhood education.

Then she called Val and asked her to bring Tamsin down to London, to be with her mother.

By
the time she reported for work on the thirteenth of March, the shakeout had already occurred, and she entered the Pit to find Lankford and Poole already there, greeting her with applause. The Minder One Desk had been cleared of the previous occupant’s personal belongings, and a bouquet of flowers sat at its center, waiting for her. Chace had brought her go-bag, and as she felt her cheeks redden with the applause, turned and put it up on the shelf, beside Poole’s and Lankford’s.

“Like your bouquet?” Lankford asked.

“His idea,” Poole said. “He’s a romantic.”

Chace moved to the desk, took a closer look, then burst out laughing. They weren’t flowers at all, but rather an artfully arranged display of condoms in red, purple, yellow, green, and blue, most of them out of their wrappers, folded and tied to appear as blossoms. A card was taped to the vase, reading, “For God’s sake, be careful!”

“We got you the extra-big bouquet, boss,” Lankford told her. “Forty-eight, jumbo-size.”

“She’ll go through them in a week,” Poole said.

“I’m not like that anymore,” Chace said, mildly. “I’m a mother, I have to set an example.”

“Half a week, then,” Poole said.

The internal circuit on her desk rang, the same infinitely annoying bleat she remembered, and all of them, Chace, Lankford, Poole, stared at the phone.

“Minder One,” Chace said when she answered, and she felt herself smiling, and saw Lankford and Poole quietly laughing at her as a result.

“Come and see me,” Crocker said, and hung up.

So
she’d gone to Crocker’s office, and he’d given her a seat, and had redrawn the map of the Firm for her. There was no Frances Barclay, there was Alison Gordon-Palmer. Simon Rayburn was no longer D-Int, but instead was awaiting confirmation of promotion to Deputy Chief. Paul Crocker was D-Ops, Tara Chace was Minder One, and Kate Cooke still believed she ran SIS.

“I’m sorry,” Chace told him when he was finished.

“For? You did your job, you did it damn well, and you didn’t even know what the bloody job really was.”

“About Rayburn. I know you wanted the promotion.”

Crocker took out a cigarette, then offered her the pack. Chace hesitated, then accepted.

“I can live with it,” he told her. “Besides, you’re not ready to take over for me yet, and if I move on, I want you to fill this desk.”

“I’m flattered,” Chace said. “I think.”

“It’s not because I like you,” Crocker said. “It’s because you can’t be any worse at it than Fincher would have been.”

“And where is Mr. Fincher now?”

“Out at the School, taking a refresher before his reassignment.”

“He’s being reassigned?”

Crocker pulled a face. “Our new lady mistress on the floor above feels he is a damn fine officer. For that reason, he’ll soon be off to parts unknown to head up the station there. As long as he doesn’t end up as the new D-Int, I’ll be content.”

“Is that all, sir?”

“No.” Crocker shoved the stack of folders on his desk toward her. “This is homework. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, Minder One.”

Chace laughed, taking the stack and getting to her feet. “Then I’ll start reading. You know where to find me.”

“Yes,” Crocker agreed. “I do.”

So
it was that, six months after she’d returned from Tashkent, Tara Chace waited in D-Ops’ outer office, two blue internal distribution folders in her hand, joking with Kate Cooke and waiting for Crocker to see her for the morning brief.

“It’s a new perfume,” Chace said. “There’s a boy.”

“There is not a boy,” Kate responded, indignant, offering her a cup of coffee.

Chace took the cup, sipped at it, grinning. “It’s Lankford, isn’t it? You’ve got a thing for my Minder Three.”

Color crept into Kate’s cheeks, and she settled at her desk, putting her attention on the files she’d been sorting before Chace had entered. It seemed to Chace that she was trying very hard to avoid eye contact.

“I do not.”

“Well, it’s not Poole, and it’s not me, and I can’t much figure who else comes through this office that you’d try to capture with a new scent. So I’m thinking Lankford.”

“It’s not Chris.”

“Oooh, Chris, is it?” Chace moved toward the desk, reaching for the internal phone. “I’ll call down to the Pit, shall I, see what he thinks of that?”

Kate swatted at Chace’s hand. “Don’t you dare.”

Chace stopped, looked closer at Kate, who held the stare for a fraction before again turning her attention back to her work. The younger woman’s expression had tightened, the joke taken too far, and Chace realized three things in quick succession. First, Kate wasn’t trying to catch Lankford; she’d already caught him. Second, Kate Cooke had been in this office long enough to know the directorate’s opinion of staff/Minder fraternization. Relationships weren’t forbidden between most SIS staff, but between SIS staff and members of Special Section was a different story. One thing to tandem-couple with the new lad on the Argentine Desk, another thing entirely to tandem with an agent who might be asked to kidnap a general from his home in Tehran, a job he or she might not come back from, ever.

Third, Chace realized that she was living in her own glass house, that there was nothing she could say to dissuade either Lankford or Kate. Even if her affair with Wallace didn’t strictly fall into the same category—Wallace had left the Section at the time, to teach at the Field School—she’d done the same herself with Minder Three Edward Kittering when she’d been Minder Two. In the rankings of sin, Chace was the winner, and both of them knew it.

“Just keep it quiet,” Chace told Kate. “You don’t want D-Ops getting wind of it.”

Kate’s expression was a mixture of gratitude and hope.

“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t approve, but I won’t obstruct.”

“You did it.”

“Yes, I did.” Chace finished her coffee, moved around to the pot for a refill. “I was astonishingly stupid.”

Kate started to respond, but the door from the inner office opened, and Simon Rayburn emerged, bearing a folder of his own, this one red. He smiled at Chace.

“Tara.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“All well?”

“For the moment at least, yes, sir.”

“Very good.” Rayburn made for the exit, back onto the hall. “You can go on in, I think.”

“Thank you, sir,” Chace said, and went through to the inner office, to find Crocker seated behind his desk, as ever he seemed to be, scribbling his signature at the bottom of the memorandum he was reviewing. Chace stood, waiting while he shuffled the memo back into the stack, and when he looked up, she held out the folders she was carrying.

“Report to the FCO on the viability of recruitment in Guangdong Province as prepared per your request with input from the China Desk, with notes. And request for operational oversight regarding travel and incidental expenses to operational theater, prepared for submission to the Finance Committee. I almost handed it to the Deputy Chief on his way out, but thought it’d be better coming from you.”

She dropped the second folder on the first, and Crocker reached for it, flipping it open. “Sit.”

Chace barked, once, sounding less like a dog than like a woman trying to sound like one, then pulled up the chair. She leaned forward and lifted his pack of Silk Cut, freed a cigarette, and Crocker slid his lighter across the desktop absently, without looking away from his reading. Chace lit, exhaled, and sat back, waiting for his verdict.

Crocker closed the folder, then reached for his pack and lighter, sitting back himself. “You were diplomatic.”

“I thought honey rather than vinegar.”

“Probably wise. All right, I’ll send it up to C. If she approves it, she’ll have Rayburn present at the meeting.”

“He’ll sell it? We need more money.”

“We always need more money, Tara.”

“On Operation: Lanyard, Mission Planning couldn’t secure seats for Poole and me on the same flight, sir. We ended up flying into Hanoi sixteen hours apart, and that put me sixteen hours in theater without backup. The last time Lankford went out, he flew economy because Budget wouldn’t authorize a first-class ticket.”

“He did all right.”

“He did, but that’s hardly the point.”

Crocker lit his own cigarette. “C will give it to Rayburn, and Rayburn will bring it to Finance. It’ll be taken care of.”

“Nice to have a Deputy Chief we can trust.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” Crocker told her. While he didn’t actually grin, he came close.

Tara laughed, then reached into her jacket pocket and removed the printout she’d been carrying there, folded widthwise. “You see this?”

“I’m still working through the ‘Urgents,’ so unless it was graded ‘Immediate,’ no, I haven’t. What is it?”