etched in relief upon a cold hard coin.
“Oh, come now, James,” Sir John guffawed. “You can do better, surely. He’s been single a bit too long, Miss - er, um. I hope you’ll excuse him.”
“Brown,” Jane allowed, with a tight smile and an air of ennui. “And yes, I do hear that rather often.” The other thing she was hearing as they approached the elevator was the muffled sound of phones ringing up and down the hallway from behind closed doors. Neither man seemed to notice. Again and again. That telltale single ring that meant the spyware was being fruitful and multiplying.
“Brown. Not Smith or Doe? Because you could be her twin,” James seemed to be arguing with himself. They had reached the elevator. As Sir John did the honors, swiping his badge and so forth, Jane felt as though her former lover’s eyes were boring a hole straight through her. “A dead ringer.”
“Bollocks!” Sir John exclaimed. They both turned to look at him as the elevator doors slid open. “Dash it all, I was supposed to bring that Libyan brief. See her out, will you? Or take her to lunch, why don’t you?” Sir John grinned knowingly. From his breast pocket the James Bond theme began to play. Just the opening guitar chords. He pulled out his cell phone, which immediately went silent. “There’s a good chap,” he said absently, and, returning his phone to his pocket, trotted away.
As soon as his back was turned, James grabbed Jane roughly by the arm and practically flung her into the waiting elevator. Jane noted that he too had a badge, confirming that he was very much at home here. He slid the badge through the reader with a suppressed savagery, as if it was a throat he wished to slit. From a neutral Krav Maga stance, but with her hands at her side rather than at the ready, Jane prepared to fight her ex-beloved to the death. Or fake his pants off.
“Let’s see - you’re very loud, you have perfect teeth, and are prone to violence. I don’t even need to see your gun. You must be an American.” Jane attempted to ice the short distance between them.
“Kiss me,” he said, turning abruptly and backing her into a corner.
“Add sex perv and insane. The complete stereotype,” she snapped. Instinct goaded her to let fly with a groin-kick/hammer-fist combo. Reason warned that if she did, it was game over.
She struggled a moment, the way an ordinary woman would, turning her head, scuffling with him briefly; but he was ruthlessly insistent. He found her lips and expertly delivered one of those long, slow, deep, hot kisses made famous by a certain Reagan-era baseball movie. Jane made herself go limp, and stayed that way. Played the cold fish to the end, refusing to respond. But despite herself she felt all the old chemistry - along with his shoulder holster and hard evidence that he was at some level sincerely happy to see her. In a Mae West sort of way.
“Damn you,” he said. The lift had stopped and opened without prompting, meaning they had reached some less restricted zone.
“I shall have you up before a magistrate for that,” Jane said frostily, smoothing her hair and avoiding her ex’s gaze.
“I shall have you up before a firing squad,” he retorted, walking her briskly past a gym, a lounge, and a staff cafe. His cell phone rang - the theme song from “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” Wah-wah-wah. He ignored it. Televisions squawked and fawned in every room, magnets for workers who had drawn the short straw on this one-time holiday, but who were nonetheless determined to participate in the pro-monarchist PR binge, if only virtually and vicariously. They kept their noses more or less glued to the telly screens, oblivious to the drama enacted behind their backs. “And the jury should note,” James continued, “that the lady failed to scream.”
“Ladies don’t, as a rule,” Jane snapped back. “Moreover, much good it would do me. I’m standing in a constabulary of sorts and I’ve just been accosted by someone who is, for all intents and purposes, a constable.”
“Of sorts,” James conceded. He gestured toward the rapt and huddled big-screen masses as he led her through bulletproof sliding glass doors onto a broad balcony facing the river. “Any number of people to help you. Feel free to raise a ruckus.”
“Don’t think I won’t. Because as delightful as this has been, I must be going,” she said, glancing at her ‘watch’ and pressing a second concealed button, a red one this time. She understood that by so doing she had just activated a burst transmitter that should indicate both her physical location and her desire to be extracted from a sticky situation. ASAP.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” James stopped beside an outdoor table and pointed at a chair. “Sit.”
Having determined at a glance that she was only on the fourth floor, with a series of terraces between her and the outer fence, and that she could, in a pinch, parkour off the building with relative ease, Jane sat. A few pigeons circled the antennas on the highest tower.
“I can see that you are either deranged or high,” Jane commented. “This is obviously some deep-seated cry for help.”
“I thought I’d put moral dilemmas behind me,” James said, heaving a sigh of frustration and something else. Anguish maybe. He threw himself into a chair. “And now here you are and my world turns upside down. Do I kill you, do I turn you in?” he drew his gun, a Walther PPK/S, removed the safety, and put it on the table between them. “Do you have an opinion?”
“Whoever she was, she seems to have made quite an impression,” Jane sat back and debated overturning the table. She knew the gun was bait. She also knew that John should be on his way. Sit tight, she told herself.
“You want me to count the ways,” James smiled painfully. “Or apologize? The truth is I did not regret it. I was right. At the time.”
“So what’s the problem?” Jane let her gaze wander right and left. No sign of John. Damn.
“You chose that half-assed slacker piece of shit over me,” he almost shouted.
“I can’t imagine why,” was Jane’s swift, barbed reply. She stared pointedly from him to the gun and back. “Sexual assault and intimidation - what woman could resist?”
“Lisbon. Prague. St. Petersburg. Look at me,” he demanded. She looked, with the blandest of expressions, trying not to remember some of the best sex any woman could ask for. But any emotional attachment had been short-lived and almost entirely one-sided. For good reason.
“I’m thinking - trust,” she spent a long time on that one word, “trust might be an issue in your line of work.” She was walking a tightrope here, trying to say only the sort of things an unwitting but cautious hostage might say. And yet hit him where it hurt, if such a place existed.
“You knew that marriage was fake. You knew it was just cover. That she meant nothing to me. That it was over the minute the mission was over and we debriefed.”
“You make it sound like something out of Shakespeare. Star-crossed lovers separated by tragic flaws and world events.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Here as - in this building?”
“As - in my life again.”
“I’m very much wishing that I had not come,” Jane said honestly. “If that is any comfort. This has turned into the most complete cockup.”
“Who or what are you after,” James asked, narrowing his eyes. The next instant he was opening them wide, as epiphany struck. He dug his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. “Say that again.” Jane had a sinking feeling. What had she said?
“You saw for yourself. I’m not after anything.” Over his shoulder, she could see two men advancing toward them, in aprons. They might have been waiters from the canteen. Except on closer inspection they looked very like Monty and Pegg, MI6’s own Keystone Cops. James held out his mobile like a microphone.
“Say ‘cockup’ again. Say anything you damn well please. Tell me, for instance, how you feel about the IMF.” He wanted a voice imprint. Shit! All her old stuff was archived - retina scans, DNA, fingerprints, alias profiles. But what a
bout her conversations with IMF Guy on the charter flight and up in his New York office? To her knowledge, Deus Ex had not gone out of their way to access and erase any new recordings that might exist. On the theory that her involvement was so limited, amounting to a single data point or two in an ocean of intelligence. After all, what were the odds?
“I’m just a courier. Do you allow firearms in this establishment?” she asked the two men, over James’s shoulder. They had stationed themselves a little to the right and behind him. He automatically stiffened and put his hand on the PPK.
“No smoking, no drugs, no weapons is our rule, Missis,” Pegg replied, reaching over James to offer her a menu card. “We do allow dogs, so long as they’re service animals.”
“We’re featuring an all-wedding menu today, with special dishes inspired by the royal reception,” Monty said, sizing up the situation and motioning to Jane keep calm and carry on. “I call your attention to the Cornish Crab Salad on Citrus Blini, which has been selling briskly. And perhaps the gentleman would fancy the Confit of Pork Belly with Crayfish and Crackling.” He had a pair of shiny silver handcuffs at the ready.
“My personal choice would be the Scottish Langoustines with Lemon Mayonnaise,” Pegg said, pulling a small spray can from under his apron and giving it a vigorous shake. “And do be sure to save room