Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

Sinan was sure he wasn't cruel, and he didn't want to be selfish.

Sunlight had begun to bleed over the horizon and Sinan sighed, getting to his feet. It was time for prayers and work, and nothing could get in the way of those things. Not sex, not loneliness, not love.

He slung his rifle and dropped back down into the wadi, resolved.

Nia was shahid. She would die a martyr and go to Paradise. He would honor her for that, respect her, even aid her.

But he would not, he told himself, fall in love with her.

Hampshire-Lee-on-Solent, Residence of Wallace, T. 17 September 0544 GMT She woke him with the phone, saying simply, "I'm outside," and hoping that everything in her voice was enough.

"I'll let you in," Tom said.

Chace hung up the security phone, stepped back off the porch, looking up at Wallace's flat. It was still dark out, and fog had come in off the Channel, and she was cold and wet, and she needed to see his light come on, she needed to know that he would let her in and make her safe.

The light didn't come on, and for a terrible moment Chace wondered if Box had beat her to him, if she'd missed them in her three circuits around the immediate area, in all of her attempts to flush any possible pursuit. She hadn't seen anyone, still certain she was running clean, if for no other reason than, if she wasn't, they'd have fallen on her like buzzards on a corpse.

Then she glimpsed him behind the glass of the foyer door, shirtless, in baggy pajama bottoms, still bleary from sleep.

"Still dreaming, am I?" he said as he let her in.

Chace thought the wave of relief she was feeling might swamp her.

"If so," she said, "it's a bloody nightmare." • He gave her first a kiss, and then a hot shower, and, once Chace was dressed in clean clothes from her go-bag, offered a cup of very bad instant coffee, loaded with sugar and milk. Then he listened as she laid it all out to him, all the secrets he wasn't supposed to know any longer, what she'd done in Yemen, what had happened with Box, what Crocker had said.

"How are you fixed?" Wallace asked when she had finished.

"Crocker gave me what he could manage, but it was all in-house documentation. That and two thousand pounds."

"What about that?" Wallace indicated her go-bag, resting open on his couch.

She actually managed a smile. "You taught me well. I've got another five thousand American in the lining, and my good papers, the ones you told me never, ever to use."

"For which you should be damn grateful, because you'll need them now. What're they?"

"French national, Monique DuLac. Everything on her is current, and nobody but the man who made them knows she exists, and he's in Athens and not terribly talkative."

"Plastic?"

"There's a Visa, but I don't know if it'll hold. I'd rather stick to the cash."

"You'll need the Visa for the flight."

"You're assuming I'm going to go on this little suicide mission. As far as I'm concerned, D-Ops can fuck himself, and Weldon, and C, and then move on to Whitehall and slip it to the rest of them."

"He is protecting you," Wallace said. "You have to see that. He's doing everything he can."

"Then why am I running?"

"Are you? You're just here to say good-bye?"

Chace scowled at him, brushed wet hair impatiently back from her cheek. "If that was the case, I'd have jumped you already."

"Then it's not good-bye. So what is it?"

It was the whole reason she had come, and now, in the face of it, she found the words hard to say. It wasn't as if she hadn't made the decision back at the Imperial Age, looking out those fake windows, listening to Crocker's plea of not guilty.

But it took effort, and a strength she wasn't certain she still had, to actually say the words to Wallace. "I can't do it alone, Tom."

"Right," Wallace said. "I'll get my things." • They took his Triumph, speeding along the A3 and then the M25 and then the M20, racing to Ashford, with the intent of catching the Eurostar all the way to Paris. She'd been leery about taking his car, but the only other routes available to them were by rail-which would have taken them back into London first-or by fishing boat across the Channel. Although they could have caught the Eurostar at Waterloo, it had seemed like a bad idea because Chace felt-and Wallace agreed-that Box would be covering every international route possible. There would certainly be some kind of coverage at Ashford, but it wouldn't be nearly as severe, and she was confident they would be able to handle it.

With Wallace at the wheel and traffic light for much of the journey, they reached Ashford well before nine, parking in the multistoried lot that had been built to serve the terminal. The station itself was quite new, constructed for the Eurostar, modern and, to Chace's eyes, bland. Even the car park was bland, and fairly empty.

"You stay here," Wallace told her. "Give me thirty minutes to clear the terminal, see what there is to see, get the tickets. I'll need your passport."

Chace dug it out of her go-bag, handing him Monique DuLac as he stood beside the Triumph. She was suffering a headache that was the result of tension, exhaustion, adrenaline withdrawal, or all of the above.

"Seats together?"

"Might be best."

"First class, then."

"Oh, absolutely." Wallace grinned, hefted his bag, and headed for the covered walkway into the terminal.

Chace sat in the car, smoking, checking the clock. She saw the second hand sweeping past the twelve on her wrist, saw that it was precisely nine in the morning.

Rogue, she thought.

Fucking hell.

She thought about Wallace, got out of the car, stretching, looking around, seeing the rain fall outside the shelter of the car park. There were certainly cameras about, but Box would be focused on the terminal, waiting for her to board, probably thinking that she wouldn't be coming there at all.

She wondered how long Jim Chester at Monkton would wait before reporting Tom's absence back to Crocker. Or if Chester would go through Crocker at all rather than the Deputy Chief. Going through Crocker offered a flicker of hope; even if Chace had decided he was a worthless bastard, she knew he'd try to slow down their pursuit. It wasn't likely, though. Personnel issues went to the Deputy Chief, and as soon as Weldon heard that Wallace had gone missing, he'd waste no time informing Kinney to be on the lookout for him as well as for her.

Wallace had taken it in stride, had been immediately ready to go once he committed to the action. Eight minutes to change clothes and stuff some extras into his go-bag-still kept at the ready in the closet by the door-and another two to switch off the lights and lock up the flat. Coat and gloves, bag in hand, they'd been out the door before twenty past six, in the Triumph and on the road before half past.

He'd never hesitated, never questioned, and Chace wasn't really surprised when she thought about it. She'd have done the same for him.

Her watch told her it had been twenty-six minutes, and she thought that was enough and took her bag from the boot, locked the car, and made her way across the walkway into Ashford International. It was bright and airy and nouveau dull, and there were phone boxes near the walkway as she came out, and she stopped at them with an idea, wondering why she hadn't thought of it earlier.

She picked up the phone, dropped in what coins she had, and eventually was connected to British Airways reservations. Using Dorothea Palmer's Amex, she bought herself a ticket, one way, to Geneva. When she hung up, she threw the Palmer passport and plastic into the trash, then continued down to the floor of the terminal.

There was a scheduled departure in thirty-nine minutes, and a minor bustle in the terminal as passengers gathered themselves, waited in the lounge, made for the first-class/business parlor, or passport control, as their mood and their means moved them.