Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

"Two more on motorbikes," Poole said. "Those are the ones we did see, Tara. Probably double that working you up right now."

"Probably," she agreed, and cleared the smoke from her mouth to make room for more of her lager.

"Want to explain this, then?" asked Poole.

"I can't. Chris?"

Lankford shook his head. "I got into the office, he told me to park and started scribbling the note. Handed it to me, then said that Nicky and I were to follow, to do what you said, and to lie low otherwise. And that we were on no account to talk to the DC or C or anyone about what was going on."

"There you go, Nicky."

"You shag Harry or something?" Poole asked. "Why this sudden attention from Box?"

"Why are you so concerned with my sex life, Nicky?"

"Might be because you have one," Lankford observed.

"Not for much longer," Chace said. "All right, finish your beer and then shove off. Back to the Pit, do your thing. Assuming Box doesn't try to grab me between now and darkness-"

"Not a safe assumption," Poole observed.

She continued without pause, glaring at him. "-find me at Paddington at twenty-hundred, and be ready to play. That's where I want to lose them, and I'll need you both to run interference."

"There's going to be hell to pay when Kinney realizes what's going on," Lankford said. "He'll start screaming about SIS operations in London, infringement, all of that."

"He'll be screaming about something else, we do it right." Chace looked at Poole. "I need my go-bag, can you bring it?"

"Easy peasy."

Chace rolled her eyes, and Poole chuckled. "You want docs? Cash? We're assuming you're going to ground here."

She thought, then shook her head. "No, too risky. I'll handle that myself if I have to. But I will take whatever you two have in your wallets."

"Don't you have a bank card?"

"And let Box find me via ATM? Not on your fucking life, Chris."

Both men reached for their wallets, dumped several bills onto the table. Chace counted them up quickly, two hundred and eighteen pounds. With her eighty-seven, enough to buy her way around almost any obstacle. She tucked the bills into her pocket, then came out with the note Lankford had brought from Crocker. She handed it back to him.

"Get rid of this."

"Thought you'd have already done it."

"No place to ditch it that Box wouldn't grab it themselves. Make sure it's destroyed."

Lankford finished draining his glass, rose, nodding. "Right."

Poole got to his feet. "Anything else?"

"One thing."

"Yes?"

"Wish me luck?" she asked.

Poole stared at her for a moment, unsmiling, and the full seriousness of the situation settled on them all then.

"I would, Tara," he said. "But I don't think luck'll do it."

London-Vauxhall Cross, Office of D-Ops 16 September 1849 GMT "Where's Chace?" Weldon demanded.

"She's not in the Pit?" Crocker said.

"You damn well know she's not in the Pit. Where is she, Paul?"

Crocker scratched at his jaw, finding a spot of stubble he'd missed with his morning razor. "I really have no idea, sir. Perhaps you could inquire of David Kinney? I'm sure he knows."

Weldon's frustration ran through his neck, turning it crimson.

"It is after six, sir," Crocker added. "She may have headed home."

"Wardens clocked her out at half-past two. She never came back."

Crocker nodded thoughtfully. "She did say something to me about visiting her mother."

"Her mother lives in Geneva. Do you expect me to believe you allowed her to leave the country without registering the departure? That you've sent Chace on vacation without the proper authorizations?"

"I long ago abandoned hope of guessing what you might or might not believe, sir."

Weldon's hands opened and closed several times, and then he pivoted and slammed the door to the inner office. The gesture was uncharacteristically violent, and Crocker started slightly with surprise.

When Weldon turned back, his expression had drained of any readable emotion, including fury. His shoulders slumped, and his head lowered, and Crocker felt he was looking at a defeated man. Weldon wasn't a bad liar, but he wasn't the expert that Crocker himself was or, for that matter, that most of the Ops Directorate were. His words were good, but his body language had the tendency to give him away. He couldn't control it, at least not before it could be read.

This was not an act.

Weldon slowly took the chair facing the desk.

"You had lunch with Cheng," Weldon said. It wasn't accusatory.

"At the Hole."

"What did she tell you?"

Crocker didn't answer.

Weldon shook his head ever so slightly, as if he'd expected as much. "There's a directive from Downing Street coming, Paul. Probably arrived, though I haven't seen it."

"Directives are supposed to come down from C to you before distribution for action."

"I'm included in distribution after the fact," Weldon said. "This is coming from C to you."

"And this directive says what?"

"That Tara Chace is to surrender herself to David Kinney and the Security Services. Immediately."

"What's she done?"

Weldon just looked at him, clearly too tired and too defeated to play along.

"You've been fighting it," Crocker said, realizing.

"The last two days, since it was first proposed." Weldon looked away, to the sole decoration on the walls, the Chinese dragon print that Crocker kept framed behind and to the left of his desk. "Obviously to no effect."

"Why didn't you say something to me last night?"

"Because it wasn't your place, or mine! We serve, Paul, that's what we do, and we do not have the luxury of picking and choosing which directives to pursue. Every effort, every argument, was put forth on Chace's behalf. But the decision has now been made, and it is our obligation to follow our Government's orders."

"At the cost of Chace's life?"

"Regrettably, yes," Weldon said. "She's one person. For what's at stake, that's a reasonable sacrifice."

"I disagree, sir."

"I know you do. But your agreement, your disagreement, your cheerful acceptance, it's all irrelevant now. You will receive the directive, and you will implement it, or it will cost you your job."

Crocker stared at Weldon, saw in his expression that it wasn't a threat. Just another statement of fact.

"I don't know where she is, sir," Crocker said.

"But she's running."

"Perhaps."

"Did you speak to her?"

Crocker shook his head.

"I'd like to hear you say as much."

"The last time I spoke with Minder One was this morning," Crocker replied. "She was in the Pit until two-thirty, then left the building. I do not know where she went, nor do I know why."

Weldon frowned, measuring Crocker's words, probing their truth. "What did she say to you this morning?"

"That she was being targeted. That she suspected Box."

"That was all?"

"That was all."

"Did you confirm it?"

Crocker scowled. "Of course I didn't."

"Then why did she bring it to you?"

"To let me know she knew."

"I beg your pardon?"

"She was confirming it was Box."

"But you said you didn't confirm it!"

"That's correct. Chace knows that I'm to be informed if any of the Minders are under security check. She also knows I can't confirm it if they are. And since I didn't leap to my feet and start screaming that she was the target of a hostile party, she reasonably concluded that the check was in-house and routine, performed by Box."

"Routine, you say?"

"Elaborate but, yes, routine."

Weldon's thick fingers played absently with the tail of his tie. "She wouldn't believe that, would she? Not after being vetted so recently?"

"It's possible. She's my Head of Section, I'm inclined to grant her a modicum of sense."