True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  His hands reappeared. “I want to believe all of it,” he said, slipping a plain gold wedding band on the stumpy remains of the third finger on his left hand.

  “Eat your eggs, Hamish. Then tell me what we’re going to do next.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was creased from being crushed in a ball of bedlinens, but Tanja Goedenacht’s dress fit fine, despite being a little snug across Mae’s bust. The dead woman’s shoes were a size and a half bigger than hers too, and tissues stuffed into the pointed toes would not solve the issue of walking without the shoes flopping off.

  Kitt stood back and looked her up and down. “Mm. The shoes aside, the outfit suits you better than it did her. That’s really your shade of pink.”

  “Liar. I look awful in this colour. It’s almost as dreadful on me as that stretchy, yellow dress Fiorella’s goddaughter lent me last summer.”

  The left side of his mouth rose and stayed that way. “Tell me something, is wearing another woman’s dress better or worse than wearing another woman’s dress and fishnet knickers? As you did in Sicily last July.”

  “You would bring up those bloody knickers. Fiorella’s goddaughter had appalling fashion sense and probably still does.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “I prefer my own knickers and clothes.”

  He kept grinning with amusement. “Where’s the scarf I gave you this morning?”

  “In my coat pocket.”

  He went over to the small bag she’d left by the door, rifled through it, finding her coat at the bottom. He dug into the pocket, tossed aside a packet of tulip bulbs, and jerked out the faux silk white scarf dotted with black windmill silhouettes. He brought it to her. “Put this on, Grace Kelly-like. Tanja’s coat and sunglasses too.”

  “Sunglasses? It’s night time.”

  “They’re to hide that your eyes are the wrong colour.”

  “And how do I hide a three-inch height difference?

  “Play it drunk and lean on me.” He cocked his head. “Are you ready?”

  “Almost. Can you explain a few things?”

  “What?”

  “I’m a little confused by something. When I was in hospital, after the accident, or the hit—it was a hit, wasn’t it, not a terror attack of some kind?”

  “Yes. Charteris, Ruby Bleuville, Llewelyn, probably Milton Foley and Morland too, they were assassinations. My best guess is the Enrico Cartel, Yeoh Triad, or Gallia Family. Eaton, on her way to work, was collateral damage.”

  Her lips parted. She crossed her arms, the scarf trailing down like a flag that very plainly did not signify surrender as much as it did vexation hiding beneath the surface of silky, spun polyester. “How did Morland die?”

  “Morland had a stroke.”

  “What do you bet Weed will try to pin that on me too?” She uncrossed her arms, her irritation remaining.

  “There’s something else?”

  “I find it odd how you were visibly put off by the possibility of Llewelyn suggesting I pose as Jill Charteris, but you’re fine with me posing as Tanja Goedenacht. What’s the difference?”

  “You posing as Tanja is a temporary distraction to get us both the hell out of here.”

  “Okay. Why aren’t you bullying me into staying with Bryce or having him take me to a safe house?”

  “Once Weed’s stabilised and the police realise he’s not a raving, suicidal drunk spewing gibberish, but an officer with AIVD, he will try to pin Morland’s death on you, along with the murders of Tanja and Llewelyn and possibly even Ruby Bleuville. At this point, you’re safer being unsafe with me more than you are in any unsafe holding cell where someone can get to you the way they got to Ruby, Foley and Llewelyn.”

  “In other words, you’re not letting me out of your sight.”

  “Exactly. Are you ready, my love?”

  “Did you send the message to Bianco the gorilla?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m ready, Diddums.”

  Kitt’s mouth quirked. He powered off Tanja’s mobile and slid the phone into the pocket of the black coat he helped Mae into. Then the bell rang, followed by two short knocks and a sharp bark from Felix. Bryce was here. Kitt went to the door and opened it. “Any trouble?” he said.

  Bryce winced, teeth showing. “Well, water was a bit shallow. Weed has a hip dislocation.”

  “Ah.” Kitt shook his head. “I’ll send him a nice cane to assist his recovery. I’ve a lovely silver-tipped one at home. It is still in the umbrella stand under the coat rack, isn’t it, Mae?”

  “Yes.” Mae let out a noisy huff of astonishment and moved to the entrance so she didn’t have to shout across the room. The dog hopped off the chair where he’d been curled up and followed her to sniff Bryce’s shoes and then latch on to his knee. “You naughty boy!” Mae said, tugging the anxious humper away from the man’s leg. “Sit.” The dog sat. She picked him up and gave him a cuddle, clucking at him gently.

  “Oh, my sainted aunt,” Kitt muttered.

  Mae ignored him. “You’ll look after the furry little man, won’t you, Timothy?”

  Bryce chuckled and gathered the small bag and handbag she’d packed. “I’ll take the furry little man next door to hump Ivar—one of our Station NL locals, Mae. He’s been tasked with wrangling the Amsterdam police, which is what he’s tending to at this moment next door. He’s also handling the local arrangements for Llewelyn. Everything is under the orders of Spec Ops Deputy Director Cubby. SODD Cubby has authorised your field extension, Kitt, but the lady is unhappy about how you’ve treated our Dutch friends. She assumes there will be reprisals, which you’ll be made to face, if indeed Arthur—or Weed—choose to exercise a claim. I’m to tell you Cubby expects a full report outlining your actions. She wants it in writing, Kitty, in writing.”

  Kitt smiled. “Have I mentioned how very happy I am to have you supporting me again, Bryce?”

  “While I am pleased you missed me, I’m not writing your report, Kitty, not when I have my own paperwork to do.”

  Mae pinched her thumbs to her fingertips, gesturing like an Italian mama who grew up in Dublin. “You joke about pitchin’ a man off a building and sending him a cane, but ya eejits eff and blind about paperwork. I’ll do your paperwork just to shut ya up about how bleedin’ diabolical it is.”

  Simultaneously, the two men turned to look at her and burst out laughing.

  “Right. Right.” She nodded rapidly. “Just remember, ingrates, I offered.”

  “I’ll take these things down and put them in the boot,” Bryce said, still chortling. “The car will be out front in five minutes, standard field kit inside. I’ll play valet and will hand over the keys. Ivar tagged the delivery van earlier. Hairy knuckles is sitting in it, waiting for you. I’ll follow him, you follow me. Once we establish where he’s going, I’ll head back here for the furry little man and take him to my pet-friendly hovel near the Sexmuseum, to monitor things, and do my paperwork.”

  She put a hand to her forehead for a moment. “Let me know if you change your mind, about the paperwork, Timothy.”

  Bryce touched her shoulder. “I appreciate the offer, Mae.”

  Mae stood on her toes and kissed Bryce’s cheek. “Thank you. Again. Please look after my dog.”

  “I’ll keep the furry little man at my side.” Bryce smiled handsomely.

  When the Welshman left, Mae shook out the cheap souvenir scarf, wrapped it around her head, put on Tanja’s sunglasses, and turned to face Kitt. He’d moved to look out the window, down to the canal below. “Feeling a little remorse?” she said, joining him.

  “No.”

  “Right then. Have you had a pee? Have you cleaned your teeth? Have you said your prayers? Are you ready to go? And if you are, please have a really good, action hero film-worthy line to say so.”

  Any sense of humour, any playfulness he’d displayed in the last ten minutes vanished. Kitt spat out a string of four-letter words, a series of vulgarities, and a very solid e
xpletive “How’s that?”

  “Not very catchy or cinematic,” Mae adjusted her sunglasses, “but the creative use of obscenities was impressive.”

  “I thought so too.” Kitt took her hand and led her across the sitting room.

  He held the door open and she stepped into the hallway, barefoot, Tanja Goedenacht’s high heels hooked on two fingers over her shoulder. They climbed into the lift. The doors slid shut. Mae stood on her toes, looped an arm around his neck, and kissed him long and slow and deep, and she was childhood Christmas, springtime rain, and so much fire, an astonishing flash fire that seared and cleansed and healed, his undoing, his remaking. When she let him go, he peered down into hazel eyes that had a wild edge to them. He cupped her cheek. “My love,” he said.

  “Why,” she said, “am I suddenly not scared?”

  “You’re not scared?”

  “No, I’m actually a bit…giddy.”

  “You’re giddy and I’m terrified enough for the both of us.”

  They reached the ground floor and crossed the black and white tiled lobby, moving by pillars to the front of the Palace Grand Hotel, Mae leaning on him, giggling drunkenly, hand on his arse. The white van with its vegetable logo on the side stood across from the porte-cochère, the hotel’s narrow carport where Bryce got out of the car, which was not the Jag from earlier in the day, but a pale green Aston Martin coupé.

  An absurd giggle rolled from Mae’s nose.

  “Your giddiness,” Kitt said glancing at her, “part of it is adrenaline. It makes you feel alive. The other part is because your safety is off. Events you keep surviving have switched it off. Eventually, it will wear off, it will catch up to you, and I’ll be there for you when you crash, but right now, you’re high on it. The problem is, with your safety off, you don’t examine any decision or choice, you just dive right in, without thought.”

  “Just like you.” She let out merry whoop when he lifted her, slung her over his shoulder, and took the key fob valet Bryce handed over for the green DB11 Volante. Bryce went to the other side of the car and opened the passenger door. Kitt deposited Mae in the seat, handed the Bryce some Euro, and saw the interior of the white delivery van illuminate, Bianco the gorilla waiting behind the wheel lighting a cigarette.

  Bryce went back inside the hotel. Kitt got in the DB11, started the engine. “No, not just like me.” He dropped his mobile in her lap, the screen lit. He caught sight of a billow of smoke spewing from the driver’s side window of the white van as it pulled out onto the short, one-way laneway, rolled past the closed shops, cafés on the inner Prins Hendrikkade, north toward the IJ waterfront before turning west. Ivar had placed a strip of black gaffer tape running horizontally across one rectangular taillight. It would be easy to distinguish the van from others in the dark.

  “We need to talk about safety.” Kitt leaned across the console and Mae, grabbed the seatbelt, and buckled her in.

  “I am perfectly capable of putting on my own seatbelt.”

  “I am only looking after you the way any decent husband looks after the wife he loves and cherishes.”

  “You do know there is nothing you have to prove to me.”

  “Perhaps I have something to prove to myself.”

  “Prove what, that you are a better husband than Caspar was, or that this isn’t impossible?” She rubbed two fingers over her bottom lip and watched him frown. “Because I know you still see this, see us, as impossible.”

  “I do not.”

  She smiled softly. “Then why do you mumble ‘This is impossible’ every so often?”

  “Do I?”

  She looked at him, her expression telling him exactly how full of shite she thought he was.

  “I do,” he said and looked out the windscreen, watching for Bryce.

  “Why is it impossible?”

  High beams flashed ahead, just where the van had turned west. Kitt pulled away from the cover of the hotel’s small porte-cochère. “You, we will never be free of the life that I chose for myself, and it’s not the life I wish for you. Can you navigate?” He tipped his head to the mobile in her lap.

  Mae lifted the phone. “Do I simply follow the moving red dot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can navigate. But before I do, put on your feckin’ seatbelt,” she sniffed. “You say my safety’s off, but you’re the one driving without a seatbelt.”

  Kitt pulled on his seatbelt.

  She found her glasses in the coat pocket, put them on, and looked at the red dot on the screen. “I noticed this months ago,” she said, the dot moving along a little map. “Your life is part Agatha Christie, part Robert Ludlum spy thriller.”

  “Ludlum, not Ian Fleming?”

  “No, no you don't have the gadgets. Of course, that’s the film James Bond. Book Bond wasn't nearly as gadgety.”

  “That little dot you’re watching move is a gadget. So is one of the coins on your necklace. You are still wearing it under that dress, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m still wearing the necklace under this ugly pink dress,” she said, then she went quiet, her knee bouncing with pent-up energy and impatience.

  Kitt followed the same route the van had taken, Bryce ahead in Weed’s orange hatchback. The route took them in the direction of the interchange for the A5 and the A10 motorways. After five or six minutes, instead of turning west on the A5, which would take them to the Dankwaerts Estate in the Bollenstreek—the bulb region of South Holland—the van, and Bryce, took the ramp onto the A10, and went north. They travelled over a bridge across the IJ, and swung northwest on another motorway, the A8, where Bryce peeled off and left them, the city lights on the left, dark countryside on the right.

  Mae shifted in her seat, her coat—Tanja’s coat—shushing almost as noisily as her frustrated huff. She pulled off the scarf and shoved it in a pocket.

  The mobile continued to pick up the van’s tracking signal, the altered taillight visible in the distance. Kitt wanted a better idea of what was ahead. He touched the media screen. A map appeared, their location showing as near Zaandam. “Is there anything noteworthy in Zaandaam?”

  Mae had a look at the dashboard’s display before she did a quick search on the phone. “Windmills,” she said, and switched between watching the little dot move on the mobile’s screen and watching the little dot that was the Astin Martin moving on the dash’s display. “Windmills,” she muttered, fidgeting, yawning, sighing.

  They passed over cloverleaf exits, crossed another bridge and river, town lights on the left, dark fields on the right. Kitt slowed, dropping back, letting the van gain more distance.

  Mae watched the dot move on the mobile. “I said you’d hit every cheesy hallmark of a spy film except for the car chase, and here we are, chasing a van in the morning twilight. I thought a car chase would be more exciting than this.”

  “This is not a chase. We are not chasing.”

  “Forgive me. I thought tailing someone would be more exciting.” She yawned again.

  “It’s called physical surveillance. Why don’t you try to sleep?”

  “I’m navigating.” Mae touched the map on the car’s dash, widening the geographic view of the motorway and land. “He’s either going to peel off up here and go northeast to Purmerend,” she slid fingers across the screen, “or continue to Assendelft. Then, when he gets to the next motorway interchange, perhaps he’ll take the A9 and drop into Alkmaar. I read there’s a huge cheese market there. Jaysus, this is the worst car chase—excuse me—this is the most useless physical surveillance ever. Perhaps you speed up and run him off the road or something.”

  “Mae, you’re whinging. Stop it.”

  “I know.” She nodded dropping the phone into her lap. “I’m sorry. I have this inexplicable exhilaration and screaming impatience coursing through me.” She shifted in her seat again as if it were studded with dull spikes. “How do you teach your trainee spies to be patient, Kitt? What practice do you advocate—yoga, mindfulness, guided imagery?
”

  He reached across, took her hand, and squeezed it, his fingers tickling her palm. “You already know the answer.”

  Mae laughed and then groaned and then took a deep breath.

  They continued following the van northwest, the countryside backlit by a dim near-light of pre-dawn sun, colours from greyscale to purple and deep blue.

  “New day, same shite,” she said, rubbing her shoulder. Any pain she had from where a bullet had struck her last January was minor, a sort of itching throb of irritation. The bullet had missed bone and a major artery, but it had taken a chunk of flesh and left a scar bigger than the shrapnel scar Kitt had on his shoulder. She wondered if his scar ever itched or throbbed or irritated him, because the itching and throbbing and irritation was much the same as the itching, throbbing, irritating, sodding physical surveillance. “What is it we’re doing again, Kitt? Why are we following the van? Tell me again why didn’t you grab Bianco or head to the Dankwaerts Estate, or have Vlaming arrested?”

  “Vlaming is guilty of fraud and theft from his own family, but he’s a victim of extortion as well, and in Tanja’s messages to Mr Bianco, she indicated she’d take me to the country greenhouse, which is clearly not on the Dankwaerts Estate. So here we are, heading northwest instead of southwest to Lisse, Leiden, or the Bollenstreek where the tulips grow.”

  “Maybe we’re following Bianco to that farm where a family of seven had locked themselves in a basement, waiting for the end of time. Did you hear that news story?”

  “That was northwest, in a town called Ruinerwold.”

  “Ruin-er-wold—sounds like a fitting name for a place to live when you’re waiting for the world to end, don’t you think? I wonder if the basement was beneath a greenhouse.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it’s pronounced.” Kitt gave a soft laugh. “You talk such nonsense when you’re tired.”

  “Yes, I’m tired and fidgety and frustrated.” She squirmed on padded, luxury leather. “Nonsense breaks the tension, smooths over the absurdity of where I find myself, offsets the absolute outlandishness and unbelievability of the events that have put me here. I am married to a spy and, even when one suspends belief, it’s all so…so…so implausible, even for a work of fiction, even if there have been married fictional spies, like Ethan Hunt for example.”