Greg Rucka - The last run

"Dead serious?"

"Soon as the Boss finds a new Minder Three, I'm off to Mission Planning. He's going to make you Minder One. Don't look so bloody happy, Nicky."

"Do I?"

"No, you look like I just uprooted your herb garden, actually."

Poole made a clicking sound with his tongue. "You tell Chris?"

"Figured it could wait until he was back from Mosul."

"Probably best. If I tell you how much you'll be missed, it's not going to make a bit of difference, will it?"

"Not a whit of it," Chace said. "But the effort is appreciated." It took two hours of searching through Archives before Poole found references to an agent named Falcon in the reports of Jeremy Newsom. For security reasons, the documents couldn't be removed from the room, so Chace and Poole spent another ninety minutes working at a set of facing desks, in surprisingly poor light, reading through the reams of paperwork Newsom had produced. All Stations delivered daily reports, normally no more than a page or two in length, but as the Revolution had approached, Newsom-along with his Number One, a man named Andrew Thurman-had seen the writing on the wall, and their signals had consequently increased in both frequency and length. SIS had, in turn, responded, accepting their analysis, and at several points Chace ran across "US-UK EYES ONLY" stamps, indicating that the information had, in fact, been shared with the CIA, only to be disputed and even disregarded, in turn, by the U.S. State Department.

There were only a handful of references to Falcon, but from what Chace and Poole could gather, he was a young man, a soldier, and had passed on some minor, but useful, information about support for Khomeini within the armed forces. His associated expenses totaled up to just under twenty-two thousand pounds, which led Chace to conclude Falcon had been a paid source, rather than an ideological one.

Nowhere within the files did either of them find anything that explained the phrase "the grapes are in the water."

As Poole was replacing the reports, Chace used the internal circuit to call up to D-Ops. Personnel files were kept by the Security Division, technically part of the Operations Directorate, and classified anywhere from Secret, in the case of general staff, to Top Secret, in the case of senior staff, for a minimum of fifty years from the date of recruitment to SIS. Access required written permission from D-Ops, or, in the case of senior staff, from the Deputy Chief or C.

Crocker came on the line with a characteristic growl.

"I need written permission to draw the personnel files of Thurman, Andrew, and Newsom, Jeremy," Chace told him.

"Who the bloody hell are they?"

"They were the Station One and Two for Tehran just prior to the Revolution."

"This is about Barnett's signal?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll clear it."

The runner was waiting for them when Chace and Poole returned to the Pit, two massive files in his hands. Chace signed for the documents, handed over the one for Jeremy Newsom to Poole, and was about to settle in at her desk to read up on Andrew Thurman when she saw that the file had a "DECEASED" stamp across its face. She tossed it aside, and she and Poole each took half of the substantial Newsom file, trading papers back and forth as they read.

Jeremy Newsom was an old warhorse. He'd started in the Army in 1953, in the Prince of Wales' Division, the Sherwood Foresters, promoted to Sergeant while fighting against the communists in Malaysia. Recruited by the Firm at the height of the Cold War, he'd been sent to Oxford, where he'd studied Oriental Language and Culture, as it had then been called. His initial Station famil had been Cairo, followed by turns up and down the Persian Gulf, from Kuwait to Bahrain to Oman, with years spent in London in between, working a variety of Desks both in-house and in Whitehall. Security reports, evaluations, and commendations filled the rest of the folder.

From what Chace read, Newsom had been a good officer, if not an admirable family man. He had married while in the Army, and Chace found five separate Security notices regarding Newsom's liaisons with different women. Two had occurred while he was stationed in London, each with women working in the Firm itself, but it seemed that Newsom had developed the habit of taking up with some female member of the embassy staff while on Station. From what Chace could gather, none of the relationships had been compromising to SIS, but they exhibited a lack of judgment, and she suspected this was why Newsom had never been posted as a Head of Station.

His final field job had been Tehran. Following the Revolution, he'd been binned back to London and put onto the retirement track, which he'd accepted early. There was a note as to the effect that he and his wife, Mary, divorced just prior. Security audits continued intermittently over the next ten years, at which point it had been determined that any information Newsom had was so out-of-date as to be of no value to the opposition. The last entry was five years old, stating that Newsom was now living with his eldest son in Southend.

"Southend in December," Poole said, reading her mind. "Better dress warm." Jeremy Newsom sat deep in an old lounge chair, wearing baggy black slacks and a bulky, hand-knitted sweater, watching Grandpa in My Pocket on BBC2. Chace held in the doorway at first, not wanting to disturb the old man, and for several seconds she did nothing but take in the room, the occupant in his chair, the voices on the television, the space in general. Pale winter sunlight slanted through a window to her right, and from some unseen duct, forced, hot air was feeding steadily into the room, raising the temperature to a few degrees above comfortable. There were no books anywhere that Chace could see, and no photographs, just a couple of framed, banal paintings, flowers and trees, and two hand-drawn pictures that she assumed had been done by one of the Newsom children, tacked to the wall beside the narrow bed.

"Mr. Newsom?" Chace said. "My name's Tara Chace."

The old man didn't move, didn't appear to hear her, and Chace took a step inside, closing the door gently behind her.

"I'm with the Firm, sir."

"You're not Dot." Newsom brought his head around slowly, and Chace saw that his face was lined and long and sad, his blue eyes remarkably pale.

"No, sir, my name's Tara."

Suspicion, then, but just for a moment, almost immediately eclipsed by a delighted smile, fed by false recognition. "Jaanum," he whispered. "Oh, pet, I thought you'd gone."

The word, perhaps Arabic, perhaps Farsi, had no meaning to Chace, but she saw that Newsom was now struggling to get out of the chair, using both hands on the armrests and still unable to manage it, and she moved to him quickly, dropping to her haunches. Newsom responded, stopped trying to rise, instead now leaning forward and gazing at her with such relief and adoration it made Chace's heart ache. He reached out with one hand, touching her hair.

"Spun of gold." Newsom spoke softly, almost whispering, stroking her face with his fingertips. "Always so dolly, not like Mary. You were always so, jaanum. I thought you'd gone."

"No, I'm here." Chace took hold of his hand, pressed his palm against her cheek. "Falcon has come alive, Jeremy. Do you understand me?"

"No, we don't talk about that, eyes only and all that nonsense, you don't ask, I don't ask. Your business is yours. Mine is mine." His hand remained against her cheek, his palm soft and dry. The smile faded. "I had to leave, I'm sorry, jaanum."

"It's all right, I understand. But now you're back. I need to know about Falcon."

"I don't know who that is."

"In Tehran," Chace said, and when Newsom grimaced, she added, "It's all right, Jeremy. You can tell me."

"They killed Robin, you know. Shot him dead as soon as that old bastard came home from Paris. Eagle, Swallow, too, anybody they could lay their hands on. I knew it, nobody listened. They said, they said, how bad can it be? But we told them, he won't give it up, he'll take over. It'll be a backlash, we'll never get our foot in again." Newsom's hand moved along her face, and he smiled once more, drawing his thumb lightly over Chace's lips. "God, I could kiss you for days, love."