The Barista’s Guide to Espionage

by Dave Sinclair

  “Cut the crap. You’ve got bugger all, haven’t you?”

  The grey man cast his head downward. When he raised it, for the first time she saw some humanity in his eyes. “Your summation is correct. We have no idea where he is headed. We weren’t able to scramble jets to intercept the plane in time. In short, we have nothing, Ms Destruction.”

  She sighed. She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t have nothing.” Eva rose. She placed her fists on the table. “You have me.”

  Even as the words spilled out, Eva wasn’t sure she didn’t want to gather them up and stuff them back in her mouth. She was pissed at Harry, yes, but to sacrifice him like that? Was that who she was?

  “Eva,” Bishop said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Eva stared at Bishop. Why would he oppose her on this? She ran it through her mind again. Harry had left her for dead. He was the one who was the betrayer. No, this surely had to be the right path. The fact that it contradicted Bishop only reinforced the idea in her head.

  She inhaled deeply and addressed Bishop. “If you want to find him, I’m your only chance. I might be able to get him to tell me where he is.”

  The grey man seemed dubious. “I don’t distrust your intent, Ms Destruction. You said yourself, he left you and Mr Bishop to die. Even if you were somehow able to contact him, and he miraculously had a change of heart, I seriously doubt Mr Lancing would divulge his location if you called him and asked. Regardless of your previous rapport.”

  “What if…what if…” Was she really going to suggest this? Was she mad? Was she that pissed at him? “What if he doesn’t say where he is, I could ask him to come get me? What if I say I want him back? That I want to be with him? He said himself he still loves me. I could use that against him. He turns up, you nab him.”

  Bishop was wary. “Eva, I’m not sure you understand what you’re committing to, you–”

  The grey man interrupted, finally animated. “And if he doesn’t come? Would you be willing to leave? To meet him? To let us track your whereabouts?”

  Events were spiralling too quickly. Could Eva do it? Could she be a spy? Could she spy on him? On Harry? Could she do the things he’d done to her? Would her conscience allow it?

  The last of the grey man’s unemotional disguise fell away. “We would supply you with every resource possible to ensure your safety. It would be a great service to the Commonwealth.”

  She ignored the plea to her patriotism. Eva didn’t have any. She turned to Bishop. “You need someone on the inside. You need me.”

  Bishop shook his head. “It’s risky.” He turned to the grey man. “For one thing, she’s not trained.”

  She turned to him. “Those SAS blokes were. All those years of kung-fu classes, stupid haircuts and no sex didn’t do them any good. Call me Little Miss Opposite. No martial arts, fabulous hair and plenty of rumpy-pumpy, I’d say I’m over qualified.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Eva.”

  “I know. But if you want him I’m the only one who can deliver him tied up with a pretty bow.”

  My god, had she just agreed to deliver Harry’s head on a spike? How had she turned from wondering if she still loved him to betraying him so quickly? Was she that cold hearted? Or had he hurt her that much? She had heard the old phrase about a woman scorned before and had dismissed it as misogynistic nonsense. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She could see Bishop wasn’t in favour, but he didn’t have much choice. Regardless of the incessant flirting she had no doubt his first priority wouldn’t be her. Was he trying to talk her out of it? Eva didn’t believe for a moment it had to do with her lack of training. It was highly likely it was her lack of penis. There wasn’t much she could do about that.

  For a while the room was quiet. The grey man probably didn’t want to say anything that would change her mind. Eventually Bishop said, “She’s going to need a handler.”

  “We can draw up a list of candidates that–”

  “No,” Bishop interrupted. “I have just the one.”

  Fifteen minutes later there was a rap at the boardroom door. The grey man called for them to come in. There was a pause. When the doors parted she lost her mind.

  Her brain reeled. Several thousand thoughts bombarded her brain at once. Not one of them made sense. Nothing at all made sense.

  A tall man ambled into the room.

  He gave a slight shake of the head as if to say don’t let on. He needn’t have bothered. Eva was so stunned she couldn’t have uttered a sound. She tried to backtrack her history with the man to have his appearance as a member of MI6 make even a tenuous connection to logic.

  He strode forward and extended his hand. “Hello Evie.”

  Holy cockwaffles.

  “I look forward to working with you.”

  Holy cum-juggling fuck buckets.

  She stared at the figure standing before her. At the man she’d known for eight years. A man she thought she’d known like a brother. Eva stared at a man she obviously didn’t know at all.

  “I’ll be your handler. My name is Paul.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Does she know?”

  “Evie, please. Lower your voice.”

  “Does she sodding well know?”

  Paul had escorted Eva to a small meeting room. As soon as the door was closed she punched his arm.

  “It’s not as straightforward as all that.”

  “I don’t give a twirly fuck how complicated it is. Does Nancy know you’re a spy?”

  “I’m not a spy, Evie. I work at MI6 but I don’t do any actual spying.” Paul must have determined semantics wasn’t going to win her over. “No. She doesn’t know. She suspects, of course, but she’s never asked directly. She’s a clever clogs. Nancy knows when I disappear urgently in the middle of the night it’s not a Treasury spreadsheet that needs my attention.”

  Eva was finding it hard to come to terms with the revelation. Paul, the husband of her best friend was a spy/not-spy. She’d placed him in the lovable oaf box and was having a hard time getting him out of it. Sure he was a news junky, sure he worked long and odd hours…but a senior member of MI6? It was hard to deal with.

  A thought jumped into her mind. “Bishop…”

  “What’s that?”

  “You sent Bishop to meet me at the Eye a year ago. That was you, wasn’t it? He said an old friend sent him and that it was off the books. You sent him, didn’t you? That’s how he knew about Harry so soon. That’s how MI6 knew my connection to him so fast, because when he came out to the world we were standing in your bloody flat!”

  “You’ve always been smart, Evie.” Paul rubbed his face. “But you need to keep that sort of talk between ourselves. Nobody here should know about our personal connection. They’d see our relationship as a weakness and hand you over to someone else. I don’t want that to happen. They’d expect us having a history would mean I’d be less likely to put you in danger. I called in a lot of favours to be your handler. I haven’t been one in years. I suspect there’s some along the chain of command that think I fancy you. Little do they know you’re not my type. Too tall, too skinny, too Australian.”

  The attempt at humour was welcome but Eva didn’t crack a smile. She wasn’t there yet. She was still far too angry at his deception.

  “I can’t believe you lie to your wife. Every day.”

  “It’s my job, Evie. Without certain secrets people die. It’s that simple.”

  “Oh, so you don’t trust Nance?”

  “I do with every fibre of my being, but that’s not what it’s about. It is about protecting her as well. Behind these walls the ability to keep secrets determines if lives are saved or lost. It’s not a matter of trust. It’s a matter of national security. Honestly, you have no idea what happens in the world every day. What sacrifices are made, the tragedies averted, the lives saved while you make your lattes.”


  “Leave coffee out of this.”

  Paul smirked and Eva glimpsed her old friend again. “I love my wife, but her not knowing certain things about what I do protects her, protects King and Country.”

  “And that’s important? King and Country? Would it be so important that you’d sacrifice someone for it? Me?”

  “Yes. I have and I would again. In a heartbeat.”

  If Paul had slapped her across the face he couldn’t have shocked her more.

  “This isn’t a game, Evie. I love you, but if there was a choice between you and the nation I would choose the nation. You have to understand that. This isn’t a lark. It’s deadly. If the wrong decision is made people die. If you’re not prepared for that I’ll tell the higher ups you had a change of heart and I’ll meet you in the pub later for a beer. But if you stay, you need to realise that it’s likely lives will be lost, that you’re stepping into a cloudy world where nothing is black and white. You will be forced to make decisions that will haunt you for life. If you can manage that, wonderful. If not, I more than anyone else in this building understand. The choice is yours.”

  Yes, the choice was hers. In a way she wished it wasn’t. Being forced into it would make betraying her ex-lover so much easier. But that’s exactly what she would be doing. Betraying Harry. Betraying the man she had loved more than any other in her life. As much as she could justify it logically, when the time came would she be able to deliver him to the ones baying for his blood? Irrespective of how it ended, what she’d discovered, could she hand him over and live with that on her conscience?

  Paul must have sensed her wavering. “Evie, I can get you out of this if you want. But I also have a job to do. We’ve analysed the secrets Lancing was going to reveal. They would have resulted in our own operatives being uncovered and killed. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact. People would have died. Governments would have fallen. Innocent lives would have been lost all because of one man’s hubris. We can’t be certain our boffins extracted every copy of the data, or worse, he has more to threaten us with. It need not happen. It can be stopped. You can stop him.”

  “You really don’t like Harry, do you?”

  “Tell me one damn good reason why I should like the bastard?”

  “You’re making it personal.”

  “Of course it’s ruddy personal. He was in my house. Ate my food.”

  “Drank your shitty wine.”

  “He also changed who you are. I had the opportunity to stop him but I didn’t.”

  “What, you wanted to put a bullet in his head between courses? Nancy’s cooking is bad, but not that bad.”

  “Stop making jokes.”

  “Stop freaking me the hell out. For eight years, eight sodding years, I knew you as a clueless lovable oaf and now you’re James Bond’s dad.”

  They stared at each other for a long while.

  “Oh, and speaking of Bond, thanks for sending his sleazy brother my way. Bishop’s quite the cretin.”

  “He’s an old friend of mine. A good man, loyal, faithful.”

  “Does he fetch sticks too? You make him sound like a dog.” Eva fidgeted in the suit. “I’d appreciate it if you could stop him humping my leg.”

  “There’s more to him than you think.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he has the emotional depth of a teaspoon. But next time you send a secret agent my way could he be slightly less sexist?”

  “He may have his flaws, we all do, but he’s an honourable man. He’s seen a lot of suffering in his time. Too much. Don’t dismiss him so quickly, he may be imperfect but in a crisis you want him to have your back. Believe me.”

  Eva suspected there was far more to the story but knew better than to ask. The room was still again. No sound permeated the four walls.

  She could imagine what cogs were turning inside Paul’s head. Paul knew her well enough to know pushing her wouldn’t work. He had to let her make up her own mind; would she be a government stooge or tell them to go to hell?

  Eva peered down. She really needed some new shoes, not that she had the time to shop. Harry had bought her the shoes in Rio. He’d bartered hard, got a great price and ended up paying five times what they were worth anyway. The woman had hugged him and shut up shop early. She and Harry had made love under the stars that night. It had been a good day.

  Quietly Eva said, “Okay.”

  A single word to commit to herself to a path of betrayal. It was that easy. While her justification was sound and Eva wanted revenge on Harry for leaving her for dead, there was a pang of doubt. Okay, a lot of pangs.

  She was stepping into the unknown, again. She had no idea how Harry would react to her contacting him. Would he greet her with open arms or throw her off a cliff? Sure, she wanted to slap Harry’s pretty-boy face, but could she hand him over to people who wanted him dead? The US and UK governments had proven that human rights and the rules of international law meant nothing in the face of national security. Would Harry simply disappear?

  Eva had made a commitment. She would help Paul and his MI6 apprehend Harry. She dismissed the twinges of guilt as nothing more than aftershocks. When she had a moment of doubt, all she had to do was recall the moment when he’d saved himself and left her to fend off air-to-surface missiles with nothing but a weak cocktail and her wits.

  Over the next few hours Eva was advised of certain protocols and asked to sign countless forms. For some reason, everything she signed had to be done in green ink. She assumed it was an MI6 thing. Paul left her alone but she saw him hovering in the hall, never too far away.

  Form after form was shoved in front of her by humourless and featureless personnel. None cracked a smile. The harder Eva tried to pry some human interaction from them, the faster the forms came. It was officious to the point of clinical detachment. Don’t get friendly with the bait.

  It was only after the last form had been signed that she saw Bishop again. It was a relief. He was like a human lifebuoy in a sea of bureaucracy. When he sauntered into the meeting room she almost hugged him. Then she remembered she hated him.

  Bishop escorted her to the elevator without a word being spoken. As the doors closed, Eva asked, “So, how are we going to do this?”

  “Very simply, we’re not. I’m taking you home.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Eva, let’s be realistic. I’m not throwing you into a vipers nest full of angry bees…”

  “Still haven’t got those metaphors sorted out, huh?”

  “…with no way of knowing if we can offer you backup.”

  “I signed forms and everything. I’m in. And there you go telling a woman what she should be doing again.”

  “If you were a man I’d be advising the same thing.”

  “Would you be looking at his breasts as much?”

  Bishop’s eyes darted to the elevator ceiling. “You can still change your mind. Go home and think about it, please. This isn’t a game.”

  “So people keep telling me.”

  Eva found it odd that Bishop was the one who was trying to talk her out of it. The grey man obviously perceived her as an asset. Even one of her very best friends did. Yet, here was Bishop, a man she hardly knew, a man who disgusted her, looking out for her. What was that all about?

  “Are you trying to change my mind because I’m a woman?”

  “God no. No. No. I mean, no.”

  “The sexist brute doth protest too much, methinks.”

  “No, not at all. But if I were to say anything, I would say that that fieldwork for a woman is inherently more dangerous. The threats are more immediate, there are greater dangers, more psychologically damaging ones than for a man.”

  Eva chose not to hide the distain. “Just as well you didn’t say anything then, otherwise you’d have come off as a patronising chauvinist son of a bitch. Dodged a bullet there.”

  Regardless of Bishop’s misdirected attempt to protect her virtue, there was no way Eva could say she didn’t have her doubts. Despite her anger
towards Harry she was still betraying her ex-lover and throwing herself recklessly into danger. Was that really who she was?

  “All I’m saying is that I urge you to reconsider. I’ll be at your house in the morning. Sleep on it.”

  Absentmindedly, Eva mumbled, “We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with sleep.”

  “What?”

  “Huh? Sorry. Just a random Shakespeare quote. You said sleep.”

  Bishop nodded and stared at the elevator doors. “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

  Eva tilted her head. “Orwell?”

  Bishop nodded, still facing forward.

  She didn’t know if the line was general spy issue or perhaps Bishop was slightly deeper than she’d given him credit for.

  She assumed the former.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bishop liked his coffee black. Like his turtleneck. And his pants. And his dive watch. And his socks. And his shoes. Eva assumed he had a bust-up with colour some time in his past. It was apparently a bad break-up. His underwear was probably black too. She assumed boxers. Or at least that’s what Eva had in her mind. And then all of a sudden her imagination had him not wearing underwear at all. What the hell? Bishop represented everything she hated in men. Where had that thought come from? Maybe his one-track mind had somehow infected hers.

  “You okay, Eva?” he asked.

  “Hmmm? What now?”

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “You just put six spoons of sugar in your coffee.”

  Eva gawked at her coffee. Dickpans. She wanted to put her wandering thoughts down to realising how difficult the path she’d set herself on was going to be. She wanted to.

  When Bishop arrived Eva had already made her decision. In fact, she’d decided somewhere around 3.00 a.m., right between the rerun of Seinfeld and Only Fools and Horses. He’d quickly discovered there was no talking her out of it.