The Rookie?s Guide to Espionage: An Eva Destruction Espresso Shot

by Dave Sinclair

  If there’s coffee to be thrown, that’s my job, Eva thought. She knew how to make that shit burn.

  Eva assessed her situation. The dull ache in her back meant she’d been dosed up on something to deal with the pain. She rubbed her back against the chair. Something under her t-shirt crinkled, but she couldn’t quite feel it. The wound was numb.

  They needed Eva alive for some reason. She could only speculate as to why. Perhaps Isabella needed answers. Was Eva working with a team? Did the DGSE or MI6 know where she was?

  They were good questions. It was a pity the answers were no. Eva was on her own. Nobody knew where she was. There was no backup. No one would come for her. The SAS wouldn’t be swinging in on ropes and telling everyone how awesome they were. No one would save her.

  Eva could hear the shower running. She guessed it was the fake fireman. At least, she assumed he was fake. Eva didn’t know much about the Paris fire brigade, but she suspected beating up women wasn’t usually part of the service.

  Given the circumstances, Eva had to assume Isabella had gone rogue. She was hiding out, had been disguised, she’d murdered an innocent French citizen and had tended to Eva’s wounds personally rather than taking her to a hospital. Plus, there was no one else in the room. No witnesses.

  Isabella leaned against the kitchen table. She’d changed her outfit. This one matched her curves instead of disguising them. Two pistols lay beside her on the table, as well as an assortment of armaments. Based on the equipment, Isabella had come prepared for a siege. The weapons were all too far away for Eva’s liking.

  “Thirteen dollars.” Eva’s voice was hoarse and barely audible.

  Isabella leaned in. “What was that?”

  “Thirteen. Dollars.” Eva struggled to speak. She was weak. Very weak.

  Isabella shook her head, not comprehending.

  “When we first met,” Eva said, fighting for each word, “I said if I had a dollar for every time I’d been tied up, I’d have twelve dollars. It’s up to thirteen now.”

  Genuine amusement spread across Isabella’s features. She shook her head. “You amaze me every time we meet, Eva Destruction. Just when I think I ’ave you figured out, you come up with something new.”

  Eva did her best to sound strong. “You owe me a dollar.”

  Isabella stroked one of the pistols. “Perhaps I do, but,” she tilted her head, “do you really think you’re going to live long enough to spend it?”

  Doing her best to clear her head, Eva glared at Isabella. “The DGSE must be so proud of the little monster they’ve created.”

  Isabella shook her head. “You are not cut out for espionage. You are too weak, too feeble. You still have morals, for goodness sake. This profession is not for you. Only bastards are suited to this life, yes? You ’ave to be ’eartless to be a spy, Eva.”

  Heartless? Eva wasn’t heartless. She was many things: a decent dancer, a seasoned drinker, a bar room brawler. But heartless? No. Yet another person doubting her suitability for the job. Not that it mattered. Unless she escaped, she’d be nothing but landfill and a name on the MI6 memorial wall.

  The water in the bathroom was turned off, followed by the sound of a shower curtain being pulled back. After a few moments, the man who’d beaten the crap out of Eva marched into the living area with a towel wrapped around his waist. The flecks of grey didn’t mask the fact that he was in exceptionally good physical shape for a man in his fifties.

  He strode over to Isabella and gave her a deep, passionate kiss. Once he extracted himself from Isabella’s embrace, he gave Eva a wink and went to the fridge to grab a beer.

  There was no need for introductions. Eva knew who he was. Eva knew everything about him.

  Born in Essex, he’d joined the British Army at sixteen. He’d soon qualified as a Para, Parachute Regiment, and worked his way through the ranks. From there he’d quit the armed forces and joined MI6 as a field agent. Over the next two decades he’d excelled in many international missions, earning praise and distinctions. He’d racked up quite the list of achievements.

  He was also meant to be dead.

  Alexander Bourke was the man Eva had been tasked with finding on her original mission. It seemed obvious now why a supposedly dead MI6 agent had been seen near Lyon; he’d been working with Isabella.

  If she had a free leg she would have kicked herself. Alex was Alexis. Of course he was. Eva had presumed Isabella’s fellow agent would have been from the DGSE, not MI6.

  The not-dead Alex slithered up to Isabella and wrapped his muscular arm around her. They stared at Eva, as if admiring a treasured pet. Isabella nestled into his bare chest. Eva wasn’t sure her nausea was entirely related to her injury.

  Fighting through the haze of drugs and pain, Eva said, “You look better with the mask on.”

  Alex didn’t take his eyes off Eva. He said, “You’re right, she is sassy. Quite the attitude.” He frowned approvingly. “Tough, too.”

  “Now now, my love, don’t be getting ideas.” She patted his brawny thigh. “She’ll rip your throat out given ’alf a chance. This one’s not a plaything.”

  Alex looked Eva up and down. “Shame.”

  There was a familiarity and warmth in their banter. They seemed to actually be in love. Sick and twisted love, but love nonetheless. Psychopaths in love sounded like a movie from the 90s.

  Eva regarded Isabella. “Lies work best when they contain an element of truth.” She jutted her chin at Alex. “This is ‘Alexis’. The person you said you loved more than life itself.”

  Isabella and Alex grinned at one another, but said nothing.

  Eva went on. “The mission you told me about, the one where you were impulsive and Alexis died, that was another lie, wasn’t it? He didn’t die, he just appeared to, as far as MI6 were concerned. Then he went off and set up The Tempest. Am I right?”

  Isabella didn’t reply, just stroked Alex’s chest.

  After a swig of beer, Alex said, “She’s smart, too.”

  All the pieces were starting to fall into place—all except the keystone. The one piece that made everything fit together.

  “Why?”

  Neither replied. Alex took a big gulp of beer, draining the bottle. He turned to Eva. “You could at least offer your appreciation.”

  She shook her head. “For what?”

  He nodded at Eva’s midriff. “The bullet missed all your major organs”.

  “Am I meant to thank you for shooting me in the back? Did you get thank you notes from all your terrorist victims? Gee, thanks for blowing off my body parts and burning me alive, you’re the best. Love and kisses.”

  “Okay, perhaps appreciation was too much, but you could at least admire the craftsmanship.”

  “The what?”

  He sighed. “See, if I’d hit a lung or your heart, you’d be dead in no time. With that injury you could last days, weeks if we tend to it well enough. Imagine the information we could extract in that time. All the fun we could have while you bleed out. What a time we’ll have.”

  There it was. The veiled threat. Not even that veiled. Eva wouldn’t be getting out of this alive. They’d healed her just enough to extract the information they needed, then she was done for. There would be torture. There would be pain. There would be death.

  “So, my love, the question of the ’our is, who knows you are ’ere?” Isabella asked. “As we ’aven’t ’ad anyone kick in the doors yet, I’m assuming not many?”

  Eva squared her jaw. “Everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Isabella replied mockingly.

  “Yep,” Eva said confidently. “MI6, the DGSE, MI5, SAS, CIA, Mossad, Green Berets, Delta Force, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, David Hasselhoff, Fozzie the Bear, fucken’ everyone.”

  Isabella and Alex laughed. Eva didn’t like those laughs. Sure, she thought she was naturally pretty funny, but she didn’t think it was her banter that amused them, More like her desperation.

  It was obvious Eva didn’t have any backup. Sh
e would die in this shitty apartment. If she was going to perish, she at least wanted to die with some answers.

  “What I don’t get,” she began, “is why you would want to recruit young kids to blow themselves up? There’s plenty who will do it for free without your help.”

  Alex opened the fridge and pulled out another beer. “True, but not when we need them to.”

  Isabella poked him in the ribs, as if to silence him.

  Alex shrugged and took another drink. “Who’s she going to tell?”

  The DGSE agent rolled her eyes and tilted her head, as if to say, go ahead. Alex grinned.

  Over three beers, Alex answered Eva’s question in great detail. Their joint mission had been to track a Belgian scientist who was selling black market materials. They’d tracked him to a warehouse in Sarajevo where he was trading plutonium for bars of gold.

  Like Isabella had told Eva back in Vienna, the mission went south. Isabella rushed in recklessly, the scientist died in the crossfire and Alex was badly wounded.

  Even before the mission, he and Isabella had become jaded with espionage. While he slowly bled out and they awaited extraction, they formed a plan. Alex would fake his own death, leave MI6 behind and use his skills to create a new enterprise. They set the warehouse on fire, dressing one of the terrorists as Alex, and had Isabella tell the story of how Alex had sacrificed himself for her. Standing orders were that only live agents would be extracted, so MI6 thought Alex was a pile of ash in Sarajevo.

  “But I still don’t get it,” Eva said. “To what end? A spy for hire is nothing new. I’m sure freelance ex-agents are a common thing.”

  Isabella and Alex beamed at one another. He shook his head. “This isn’t about spying on a politician’s wife or being a gun for hire for a drug cartel. It’s much grander than that. No one has ever tried this before.” He waited, enjoying the dramatic pause. “We call ourselves The Tempest. We’ve been using acts of terrorism to manipulate the stock market.”

  If he was expecting a round of applause, he was plumb out of luck.

  There it was The Tempest was Alex and Isabella. They were the shadow organisation behind it all. This wasn’t revolution, this was profit.

  Alex went on. “If you’ll excuse me for using the phrase, we’ve been making a killing.”

  If the evilness of their scheme wasn’t enough, their smugness was sufficient justification to execute them in the slowest manner possible. What sort of sadistic bastard killed innocent people for fun and profit?

  Isabella rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t judge me with those self-righteous eyes. You don’t think your government does the same every other week? What do you think wars are about, my love? Being right? No, they’re about profit. Just like this.”

  They were truly insane. Terrorism for profit. There was no insult vile enough for these two.

  Alex oozed smugness. “Time an attack here, bump up a stock there. It’s pure genius. I can’t believe no one has tried it before.”

  “Maybe nobody has been as sadistic and twisted as you two fucking crazy bellend slapping spunktrumpets.”

  “Oh, they ’ave been, darling,” Isabella said, “believe me. They just ’aven’t ’ad our vision.”

  “So, what? You pick innocent kids off the street, tell them they’re terrorists and strap bombs to them? Jesus Christ.”

  “That was Nur’s job.” Isabella nodded at Eva. “You call him Justin Bieber. ’e was good at convincing them they were on their way to paradise. He could talk the talk, that is for sure. It is a shame we ’ave to find a replacement for ’im.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have killed him then?” Eva glared.

  “Well, I couldn’t risk ’im spilling everything, now could I?”

  It was clear Eva was dealing with two psychopaths. Cold-blooded, unfeelingly merciless and without pity. They were truly vile. If she had half a chance Eva would slash their throats for the world to be rid of them.

  “I see you’re impressed,” Alex said, his words dripping with sarcasm. “It was all Isabella’s idea. Brilliance personified, when you think about it. Invest in oil stocks and blow up a tanker in the Persian Gulf. Need prices to go down? Let an Arab country foil a terrorist plot. Simple economics.”

  “What was Lyon? I assume something to do with the NATO summit?”

  “Oh yes,” Isabella smiled. “Defence stocks went through the roof. They were going to announce a scale back on spending. We bought up big at a ridiculously low price and ta da, made quite a sizable profit with minimal effort.”

  “But all those blameless people died. Those suicide bomber kids died. For what? A few pieces of silver?”

  “Far more than that!” Alex boomed. His face was angry. “I’ve seen my compatriots, my friends, die because of politics. Government officials don’t care about espionage or what is right or wrong—they care about the next election and the state of the economy. When they had to choose between a two per cent swing in some election or letting one of my friends die alone, bleeding out in the snow in the middle of Siberia, guess which one they chose? We are mere commodities. I simply took their game to the next level. Everyone is dispensable in the new world economy. The funds we’re raising will support people like us, and their families. They’ll live like the leaders who don’t give two shits about their lot. They’ll be compensated like they should have been years ago, not sacrificed on the altar of an election platform.”

  “It’s blood money,” Eva spat. “It will be tainted with the lives of those innocent people you cut down.”

  Alex shook his head condescendingly, as if talking to an ignorant child. “All money is tainted, girl. You think that steak you ate last week was from a humanely treated animal? You think that cheap phone you own wasn’t manufactured by economic slave children who don’t die early, tortured deaths? Wake up. We’re reaping vengeance on those who believe life is cheap, by using their own tactics against them.”

  They were truly insane. Eva didn’t buy the added moralising; it was pure justification for their blatant greed. Reason wouldn’t get through to them. She doubted anything would.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Eva dreaded the answer.

  Alex gave an embarrassed shrug. “It’s a bit 80s bad guy confession, isn’t it? But it doesn’t really matter. You know you’ll die here, right? Telling you all this just cements that in your mind. Now that you know we can’t let you live, you’ll provide us with answers more quickly.”

  “Oh, gee, you’re right. Can you pass me that pencil over there?” Eva nodded to one by the coffee table.

  Alex picked it up and walked towards her, a curious expression on his face. He twirled it in his fingers like a wannabe-drummer. “Why on earth would you need a pencil?”

  “I need to write my last will and testament, obviously. I’m going to leave Isabella my spoon collection. Would you be interested in my assortment of My Little Pony hair ties?”

  Alex placed the pencil on the table and towered over her. “Sarcasm won’t save you, bitch. MI6 won’t save you. Nothing will. You think you’re smart now, but you’ll be spilling your guts soon enough, begging us to end the pain.”

  “What pain?” Eva asked.

  Why did you ask that, Twatmonkey?

  Isabella leapt from the table, twisted Eva’s body and without preamble punched her wound. Pain enveloped Eva completely. The agony was complete. Her vision was engulfed by intense, excruciating light.

  “Who knows you are ’ere?” Isabella screamed, followed by another punch. “Who did you tell?”

  Eva had never experienced anything so intense. The agony overwhelmed her. The questions and blows kept coming; Isabella never let up. She took delight in seeing Eva suffer. She panted like she was getting off on it. The woman was sick.

  The beating and questions were relentless.

  Eva passed out.

  * * *

  When Eva came to, Isabella and Alex were nestled in each other’s arms on the couch. It was a comfortable embrace,
like two lovers watching television. Except there was no television. They seemed to be scrutinising a smartphone, no doubt reading news of their exploits. The two spies faced away from Eva, towards the door. Alex’s gun lay next to them on the armrest, alongside Eva’s. Eva kept her eyes mostly closed, so they’d think she was still out if they turned around.

  “What about a car accident?” Isabella asked.

  Alex gave a disapproving grunt. “I’m still inclined to get rid of her in another terrorist act.”

  “No, my love,” Isabella said in a soothing voice. “Even if we still had Nur and his little contacts, what would be the point? If we could use one of the fresh patsies, why would we waste someone we ’ad spent all that time and money readying for ’er?” Isabella nodded in Eva’s general direction. “It takes so long to groom them, we do not want to sacrifice one for no financial gain, no?”

  There was the sound of a kiss. Alex said, “You are a practical capitalist, my dear.”

  Isabella snapped her fingers. “’ow about we strip ’er naked. Snap ’er neck and throw ’er off a bridge? They will not know if it is suicide, assault or what.”

  “Perfect!” Alex replied, as if they’d just chosen what takeaway to order.

  Eva’s fate was sealed. All she needed to do now was be tortured more, suffer and die.

  Except that wasn’t going to happen. Eva Destruction was not one to lie down and simply hope for the best. She was a survivor. She was a fighter. And not a clean one, either. She may have been weak from torture, but Eva still had a pulse. That was enough.

  On the kitchen table were two spare clips of ammunition. Useless without a gun. But next to them, there was something she could use. A desperate plan formed in her mind. It was haphazard at best, laughable at worst, but it would do.

  Eva readied herself as best she could without arousing attention. Muscles tensed. She drew air into her lungs, knowing they would soon be put to the test. There would be no second chances, no do-overs. Mess this up and she was dead.

  Don’t fuck it up, Dildo Breath.