Her Fugitive Heart

by Adi Tantimedh

  “Very funny, love.” Roger tried to laugh. “Pull the other one, eh?”

  “As the head of Golden Sentinels, I’m asking you to leave.”

  Roger looked at her in disbelief. Had it all come to this after over thirty years? He and Cheryl were practically kids when they first met in the eighties and ended up together solving cases, ducking and diving, fucking and skiving. They nearly got married but didn’t. She nearly had his baby but didn’t. There was another life they could have had together but didn’t. She suggested expanding and he scouted out Ken and Clive. He made contact with the Americans and they put Marcie in touch with him and she brought in lucrative contracts from the CIA, on condition that she became his handler. They needed a bigger office and she found this one. He hired David as the firm’s legal counsel. She scouted Mark. He hired Olivia. David brought me in for an interview. Roger hired me while Cheryl was at first hesitant. I met Julia, who then came on her own for an interview with Roger. Now he was being cut loose.

  Roger had been outplayed at last.

  “We’ve all had enough,” she said. “You nearly sank all of us this time. I’ve put up with your schemes and your bullshit for thirty years, and I founded this firm with you. It’s as much my baby as yours. The difference is I don’t hold my baby in the fire and snatch her back right before she starts to broil. We all took a vote here. It’s over, Roger.”

  He was speechless, in shock.

  “What am I supposed to do, then?” he said, sheepish.

  “Don’t you have friends to call and pitch another scheme to?” Cheryl said, already over him. “Or have you burned them all?”

  Considering we’d released all his files, it would seem Roger was now without a pot to piss in. Those files had thrown up all the dirty little secrets Roger had been holding on to for decades. Everything from affairs, to secret love children, dodgy tax returns, financial records, recordings that many law enforcement agencies would love to hear, murders covered up, insurance scams from arranged accidents and property damage, illicit financial deals with sheiks, with Russian oligarchs, with bankers—all about Roger’s friends and enemies alike. These were all on-the-record documentations. I’d had enough. We all had. Was he going to rage? Turn on his charm? Make another speech? There was a sense of the end here. He was all played out.

  Roger walked out of his office, now Cheryl’s. The color had drained from his face.

  “This isn’t the end,” Roger said. “I’ve still got moves to make. You watch. I’ll bounce back like I always did. It’ll be like when I first started. Who’s coming with me?”

  We continued to work on our computers.

  “Ravi?”

  “I’ve got a backlog to restore here, Roger,” I said.

  “Come on, son. I brought you in here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. In fact, once I finish helping with opening up the office, I’m quitting.”

  “Come on, you can’t be serious. After all the work you did for the last three years? All that training, the knack you have for the job, and you want to just chuck it?” Roger said, almost pleading.

  “I never liked getting one over on people,” I said. “No matter how bad they were. I never liked burning down their lives, no matter how much they deserved it. That’s what you don’t get, Roger. I don’t get my jollies from having power over people. It was a job and I didn’t feel good doing it. It was never about having power for me.”

  “Ken? Clive?” Roger said. “How about it, lads? We can do things old-school again, without having all that technology, just stay on the streets with a phone, a contact list, and you can give a kicking to whoever you don’t like.”

  “Nah, we’re fine here,” Ken said. He and Clive stood there like slabs of granite, immovable, and the hostility wafting off them made Roger back away from them.

  “Mark?”

  “Cheryl brought me in,” Mark said. “I’m sticking with her, if you don’t mind.”

  “Benjamin, my boy—?”

  “Fuck off, Roger.”

  “Olivia? I’m your godfather—”

  “And you nearly got me arrested,” she said. “You’re lucky I haven’t told my father about that.”

  “Marcie! Surely you don’t want me off on my own?”

  “Roger honey, you went off the reservation with that coup attempt. The Company hates having to clean up after an asset. We’re going to have to review our arrangement.”

  “This isn’t the end,” he said. “I built this firm and its branches from scratch!”

  “With my help,” Cheryl said.

  “Well, I can start again!” Roger said. “I’ve done it before, I can do it again! Just you watch. Don’t be surprised if you see a new firm on the map! And don’t forget, I know all the secrets about this place! I know all your secrets!”

  “And we know yours, Roger,” Cheryl said. “Do you really want to play Mutually Assured Destruction with us?”

  Roger stood there, deflated, trying to find a move, an angle, a play, but he was coming up blank. He looked around the office, as if saying good-bye. Then he turned towards the exit.

  We pretended not to, but we watched Roger walk out, trying to hold his head high, but there was a sag in his shoulders, a weight in his step, the loss of nearly thirty years leaving a hole in his core. He was back at point zero, but with too many years. The gods waved him on as he went out the door, Kali dancing behind him in celebration of the types of chaos Roger was going to be getting into from now on, untethered as he was from Golden Sentinels and us. Lord Shiva waved his blessing. The show would go on. Cheryl turned her back at last. Ken and Clive went back to their desks and picked up the Mirror to look at the football results. Marcie got a call on her mobile from a client, about his latest crisis with his wife and his bit on the side. Benjamin went back to his work desk and started to take apart a drone. Olivia was back typing away on her computer. I saw Kwan Yin standing over Olivia. Everything did work out, after all. Kwan Yin looked over at my gods and nodded at them in greeting. They nodded back.

  “That Roger,” Cheryl said. “He knew from the start he would one day use you to burn his ‘friends’ if they sold him out. He always had a knack for reading people.”

  “Hard to believe he had me as part of his long game all along,” I said. “I was his backup when none of you wanted to talk to him.”

  “What he always forgot,” Cheryl said, “was that his own weapons could be used against him. You’re not a double-edged sword, Ravi. You’re a nuke, and anyone who uses you gets blown up, too.”

  “In the years I’d been working at the firm, I kept burning down people’s lives on my cases. I never thought I’d end up burning down my boss.”

  “You’re a weapon, Ravi,” Cheryl said. “As all of us are here. You were just the most unpredictable one, and Roger’s hubris was thinking he could control you.”

  “Karma’s a bitch,” Kali said, and giggled.

  What a fucking year it had been. It was over. I was knackered.

  “Are you thinking about leaving us, Ravi?”

  I looked at Cheryl and the gang. She looked at me with neutral eyes. Everyone else was going about their own business. Mark had found his groove between working here and moving from squat to squat contributing to the anarchists he was in cahoots with. Ken and Clive were going to continue going after the people they thought deserved it. Benjamin was happy with his tech and causing mischief with Olivia. David would eventually leave the firm to run for office as an MP once the heat from all this coup mess blew over. Marcie was happy with her personal network of assets here. That left me and Julia. Julia wasn’t passionate about the job, but it gave her something to do to take her mind off her addiction.

  “Would you like time to think about it? If you want to be free of all this, I’ll understand,” Cheryl said.

  Two years ago, I might have given my answer on the spot. No more racking up karmic debts with the lives I ruined, no more anxiety about the erosion of my soul, no more stress
over the laws I was bending or outright breaking on a case. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  Suddenly, Roger poked his head through the door.

  “Sorry to interrupt, children,” he said. “But I forgot one last thing. You might want to check the news. Something’s going viral, as they say.”

  Cheryl switched on the wide-screen TV.

  “. . . news conference this morning,” the newsreader was saying. “Viewers might find the following footage disturbing.”

  The screen showed the president of the United States roaring like an overgrown infant, tearing off the last of his clothes and his underpants. His bum and his cock were blurred into a mass of pixels for the sake of whatever good taste was left there. He was bug-eyed and sweating like a sprinkler, wanking himself into a frenzy as Secret Service agents struggled to get him under control. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” some journalists were shouting as everyone in the room scrambled to avoid getting spattered by the president’s fluids. The camera became increasingly wobbly as the president started flinging his feces and fluids at it and everyone. Then the Secret Service agents finally tackled him to the floor of the shit-stained White House press room and the camera cut out.

  “The uncensored footage is on the Internet,” Benjamin said, looking up from his computer.

  We huddled and watched it several more times.

  “Does his behavior look familiar?” Mark said.

  “That’s how Laird Collins and the guests were acting at the mansion party,” Marcie said.

  “After they were doused with the magic mushrooms,” Julia said.

  “How did Roger know this was going to happen?” I asked.

  “And who could have gotten close enough to douse the president?” David asked.

  “Wittingsley,” I said under my breath.

  Everyone heard me.

  “How the hell did he pull that off?” David asked, blinking. “With all the vetting and security checks?”

  “He’s an expert at infiltration and guerrilla warfare,” Ken said. “Old Tel would have found a way.”

  “Nice one,” Clive chuckled.

  “The White House has gone into press blackout,” the newsreader on TV said, “and speculation is rife about the future of this presidency. After a year of turmoil and scandal, and now today’s incident, many are questioning whether the president can stay in office—”

  Cheryl switched off the TV.

  “Come on, guys,” Marcie said. “This isn’t funny.”

  But she couldn’t hide her smirk.

  This had happened because I let him go those months ago when I had him cornered.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Why would he do this? Someone must have paid him. It’s too much trouble unless he had assurances he would get away with it.”

  “Now, who would do that?” Marcie said.

  “They’re probably going to blame the Russians,” Olivia said. “When in doubt, Americans like to default to that.”

  “Roger, did you—?”

  I turned to the door, but he was gone. He just had to have the last word and make a grand exit.

  We watched the footage again. We couldn’t tear our eyes away. Maybe we were in shock. The days and weeks ahead were going to be full of headlines and pundits weighing in on this scandal, how the president could possibly survive the optics. This was uncharted territory. Chaos would be the key word in the media. A sense of things falling apart. One article would go on at length about the president turning the White House press room into a biohazard zone. The president’s people would try to push the line that the video was faked using sophisticated software, but the witnesses would begin to publish their accounts, including the reporters who were there. They would all be gleefully writing about the president losing his shit in front of so many cameras and the state of his mental health. They wouldn’t even know what he was doused with. We did, and from what we’d seen, there could be long-term mental health repercussions. “All part of the cycle of death and rebirth,” as Kali would say.

  I looked at Marcie. She saw me looking at her and just winked. I remembered her old lesson about the intelligence agencies fucking with presidents they didn’t get along with, but this was off the charts. Had things gotten that bad with this one? This was chaos on a scale I could never have foreseen.

  I heard a round of applause behind me. None of the others seemed to hear it. I turned around and saw the gods gathered on the office sofa, laughing and clapping.

  “Well done, my son!” Kali cried.

  Lord Shiva nodded at me in approval.

  Ganesha pumped his fist in the air.

  Bagalamukhi threw her head back and drank in all the secrets in the air.

  Louise blew me a kiss.

  I felt light inside, like I was ready to float out of my body.

  “Julia,” I said. “Fancy a holiday? Better yet, how about we go on a proper honeymoon finally?”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Someplace warm, with a beach, preferably with no extradition treaty.”

  “I assume the gods are coming with us?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Louise will be joining us,” Julia said.

  “Of course she is,” I said. “What do you fancy? Bali? Phuket?”

  “How long shall we be away?” she asked.

  “As long as we want,” I said. “Maybe forever.”

  EPILOGUE: THAT DAY BY THE BEACH

  Julia and I lounged in our deck chairs, looking out at the sea.

  We’d been there for over a month, with no contact with the firm, no phones, no going on the Internet. I shan’t tell you where, in case we ever want to come back. We rented this modest little hut by the beach and spent our days taking walks in the sun, breathing in the air, then sitting down to record my account of the last three years in these books. Julia spent the evenings in our guesthouse typing it all up on her computer and uploading the files to a secure server on the cloud as additional backup. I let Julia name the journals. She called the first one “Her Nightly Embrace” after the case where we first met; the second one “Her Beautiful Monster,” which seems to be what she calls me from time to time; and this, the third one, “Her Fugitive Heart,” which . . . I’m not sure, but I think she was trying to tell me something there. When we weren’t writing, we consummated our marriage, again and again and again. This was as close to bliss as we were going to get.

  Julia sat on my lap as we lounged on the beach.

  “What am I to you?” she asked.

  “My wife. My better half,” I said.

  “What else?”

  “My recording angel.”

  “Too right,” she said, and glanced up at the road. “Looks like playtime’s over.”

  We watched the woman in the light blue sundress get out of her rental car, take off her high heels, and walk up the beach towards us, her shoes in her hand. The office we rented the beach hut from had phoned earlier and told us that an American lady had called looking for us. We hadn’t told anyone at the firm where we were going. My parents and sister knew, and we talked to them on the phone once a week, but I’d asked them not to tell anyone where we’d gone. Of course it would be Marcie Holder who tracked us down. She probably didn’t even need to ask my family. I knew she would find us eventually.

  “She really is a spy through-and-through, isn’t she?” Julia said, waving at Marcie.

  “I think it’s her religion,” I said. “For all her talk about serving King and Country, Marcie really worships at the altar of Espionage. It’s a priesthood all in itself.”

  “Well, she’s spent the last couple of years inducting us into it,” Julia said.

  Marcie finally reached us. We exchanged hugs and fixed her a margarita.

  “Ready to come back to work?” Marcie asked. “Everybody misses you back in London.”

  “Did Cheryl send you?” Julia asked.

  “I’m here on my own steam,” Marcie said. “Cheryl wasn’t going to force you. She knows the shit
you went through and how you feel about it. As far as she’s concerned, you don’t owe her anything, and if you don’t go back, that’s cool. She’s so—what’s that term Benjamin likes so much?—Lawful Neutral about everything.”

  “Cheryl has always been very kind to us,” Julia said.

  “Oh, and everyone back in London says hello,” Marcie said.

  “I dunno, Marcie,” I said. “I feel like I’ve had enough of all the dirty tricks, the blagging, the social engineering, the lies. We’re tired of being a pawn in Roger’s games, then in your games. I never liked causing all that chaos, unlike everyone else at Golden Sentinels.”

  “But you guys are so good at it,” Marcie said. “So what are you going to do if you quit?”

  “Maybe work in a bookshop,” I said.

  “Seriously?” Marcie laughed.

  “Actually, we were thinking we might write books,” Julia said. “Total escapism. Nothing to do with reality. Period romances with vampires. Bodice-rippers.”

  “Now I know you’re shitting me,” Marcie said. “Come on, kids. Think of all the fun we could be having again, this time without Roger making you do stuff you’re going to feel guilty about.”

  “Marcie, you’re just going to bring us work that makes us feel guilty,” I said. “You sold Roger out. How can we trust you not to do that to us?”

  “Because you’re not going to go off the reservation and try to take over a fucking country. That already puts you in my good books.”

  Her smartphone buzzed. She looked at the text and tapped out a reply.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not here to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. And oh, a friend wanted to talk to you.”

  The video chat rang on her phone. She answered and handed it to us.

  “Hey-hey-heeeey!”

  I winced.

  “Ariel,” I said.

  Her face beamed from the phone screen, chipper as ever.

  “You guys still on vacay or you going back to work soon?”