Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

"So she's running."

"I really can't say. I haven't heard from her."

"You're her D-Ops, no one in the world knows her better."

Wrong, Crocker thought. One man knows her better.

"I can't say, sir."

Weldon expelled a breath, frowning, obviously and deeply troubled. He smoothed his necktie, got to his feet. "When the directive arrives, you will follow it."

Crocker allowed himself the glare, both because he wanted to and because it was what Weldon expected of him.

"She's to be detained for Box," Weldon continued.

"She'll resist."

"Then steps will have to be taken to subdue her."

"You're authorizing violence against one of our own officers?"

"It won't be us who initiates violence, Paul, if that's what it comes to. If that's what it comes to, she'll be bringing it on herself."

"You'll destroy this Service, you realize that?" Crocker said, and all the anger he had been fighting against began erupting, and he heard his voice gaining volume and decided he didn't care. "We sell her like this, we'll never come back from it, we'll never regain what we lose. Sacrificing an agent in the field, on a mission, for a goal, that's one thing, that's something they all acknowledge, something they come to terms with as part of the job. But you bastards sell her to the enemy, condemn her to humiliation and death, all for the sake of a political expediency that's only required because she did exactly what you asked of her!"

"The Saudis, as I have said again and again to you, are not our enemies," Weldon retorted.

"How can you say that? You read the same packs from D-Int that I do! The Saudis harbor, supply, and provide comfort to our enemies, and that makes them our enemies! For Christ's sake, the camp in question is in the bloody Wadi-as-Sirhan, not in fucking Chipping Norton!"

Weldon became absolutely still, his look as jagged as broken glass. Raised voices approached the line but didn't necessarily cross it. Admitting that he knew the whys and the wherefores after denying them was perhaps insulting but expected. It was Crocker's profanity; that was another matter entirely.

"How can I say it?" Weldon repeated tightly. "Because it's what Downing Street says, Paul. It's what C says. And it's what you're going to say as well."

Crocker closed his mouth, breathing through his nose, feeling his heart pounding about in his chest as if it had been kicked free. Too much, he knew that, he'd pushed it too far, but the anger was righteous to him, and he didn't want to let it go.

He tried again, calmer. "You'll destroy the trust that exists in this building, in this service. You'll destroy the Special Section. None of them will ever trust any of us-me, you, C-again. It will kill us."

"Don't be dramatic. We will survive. We have survived worse, much worse."

"Betrayal from outside isn't the same as betrayal from within. This won't be seen as a Philby."

"No, it will be seen as a rogue SIS officer being taken in by Box."

"She's not rogue."

"If she doesn't report tomorrow morning, she damn well will be." Weldon stabbed a finger at Crocker. "If she isn't in the Pit by oh-nine hundred, you're to flash-signal all stations that Minder One is AWOL. One way or another, Paul, Chace is coming in, and she's coming in to Box."

London-Bayswater, Paddington Station 16 September 1959 GMT Poole and Lankford had been wrong. There weren't eight of them following her, there were at least sixteen, and those were only the ones she'd been able to make in the hours since leaving the Royal Albert pub. They cycled quickly as well, and she was having a damned time keeping up with the changes and long since had passed the point of being able to track them all.

They dogged her in cars and on motorbikes where they could, alone or in teams of two or three on foot where they couldn't.

She hadn't made it easy on them, but she'd yet to make it hard, so their cautiousness bothered her, because she felt it was unwarranted. Aside from the dogleg she'd made before entering the pub, she hadn't tried any other moves to flush or shake them. She'd remained on foot the entire time, walking back toward Vauxhall Cross upon departing the Royal Albert, passing Century House along the way, the old home of SIS, then turning east to follow the Albert Embankment along the Thames, taking her time, growing steadily colder and wetter in the rain.

She'd crossed Lambeth Bridge, turned north on Millbank, passing the Houses of Parliament, deep into the heart of government, which Chace was sure had confused the hell out of them. She'd had minor amusement scaring them as she mixed through a group of tourists at Westminster Abbey, certain that her multiple shadows were all scurrying, waiting for her to jump.

But she played it straight, turned north again, now in the direction of Whitehall with the FCO, the Treasury, the MOD, and then turned left again at the north side of Parliament Square, making toward St. James's Park. There was a small pub off Birdcage Walk, and she ducked inside to dry off and have a quick dinner, a jacket potato washed down with two pints of lager. The day's work had ended, and the pub was at capacity and spilling out onto the street when she left, the drinkers oblivious to the dreary weather, far more concerned with the task of washing away the remains of their day.

She cut north through St. James's into Green Park, but veered farther west, realizing that if she continued on her original path she might force their hand; north would take her to Grosvenor Square, the American Embassy, and if they thought she was reaching out to the Americans, they would have to move.

Which made her wonder again why they hadn't already. What were they waiting for? Sixteen plus people all acting as her shadows, they had to be planning a grab. But something was staying their hand, and there was simply no way for her to discern it. She didn't even know why she was doing what she was doing in the first place now, except that Crocker had ordered as much of her, and really, that was all it took.

Put your faith in yourself, Tom liked to say. And when that fails, put it in D-Ops.

She still had faith in herself.

But it was a comfort in the rain and in the falling darkness to have some of it in Paul Crocker, too. • Chace entered Paddington Station at a minute to eight, passing Poole just inside the western doors, not stopping and not looking at him. She wished she had a radio, an earpiece, so she could hear the babble of traffic now flowing over the Box surveillance net. They'd be switching on, full alert, certain that she was about to rabbit. They'd be arguing as to whether to collapse on her or let her run awhile longer, to see which way she was going to jump-or even if she was going to jump at all.

She was banking on them taking the wait-and-see approach. It had been their guiding principle thus far, and unless she forced their hand, she was relatively certain it would last at least a little longer. But it wouldn't change the fact that she was now making them very nervous, and as she moved farther into the station, toward the cafe and kiosks clustered by the ticket booths, she began to see the evidence to prove it, glimpses of her various shadows moving to different posts, trying to cover all of her possible escapes.

Chace kept herself from smiling.

Their numbers had made it near-impossible to lose them on the street, to ditch them from block to block, in the open. There were just too many of them, and each could respond quickly, ahead of her or behind her, she wouldn't be able to shake them.

But in Paddington Station she could use their numbers against them, stretching out their coverage in an attempt to watch her every possible exit. And Paddington gave them too many choices; for every train that was preparing to depart, a man had to be positioned on the platform, just in case she sprinted to board at the last moment; each of the station exits had to be covered, inside and out; the tube entrances had to be covered, the escalators, and the entrance to The Lawn, the sprawling shopping addition beyond the glass walls; even the ticket booths, in the hopes that, should she move to purchase a fare, they would be able to discern her destination.