A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  This was most certainly a CT operation. It made sense that Kinney would be here.

  But Chace had to wonder why he couldn’t have been somewhere else instead, at one of the two other operations running, perhaps, where Poole or Lankford would have had to deal with him instead of her. But she knew the answer as soon as she posed the question; she’d dealt with Kinney before, and the bad blood of that past encounter notwithstanding, Crocker had been obliged to send his Head of Section as a courtesy. Anything else would have been an insult.

  Chace waited until Kinney was finished on the radio, then asked, “How many?”

  Kinney sucked air through his teeth, as if debating whether or not to tell her. It was against his every instinct to be honest with SIS, just as it was against all of Crocker’s to play fair with Box. But tragedy made for strange bedfellows, and for the moment inter-service rivalry had been forced into the backseat, at least for tonight.

  “Five,” Kinney said. “Three men, two women.”

  “Armed?”

  “That’s what we’ve been led to believe.”

  “Explosives?”

  “Suspected. Not confirmed.”

  “And they’re HUM-AA?”

  “That’s what our intelligence suggests, yes.” Kinney looked at her pointedly. “Unless you have anything to the contrary?”

  She shook her head. “Terrorist cells operating in London are your province, not ours.”

  Kinney started to respond, then seemed to think about what she’d said. He closed his mouth abruptly. Chace continued before he could respond to the slight.

  “So we’re taking them?”

  “We are taking them, yes.”

  “When?”

  “When we’re ready. You’re here as an observer, Miss Chace, as a courtesy. This is a Box operation, not some Minder shoot-’em-up. We want them alive, for questioning.”

  “That’s a lovely sentiment,” Chace said. “Have you shared it with them?”

  Kinney held her stare for a second, then turned away, speaking into his radio once more.

  •

  Chace moved back into the main room before dawn, settling on the couch to watch the video feed of the action coming in over the laptop. The CT team had finished placing their breaching charge, a snake of explosive that ran in a tall oblong on the wall, roughly half a meter from where the camera had been placed. The detonator sat beside the laptop, a toggle switch with a lead that ran back to the explosive on the wall.

  The camera itself could be turned nearly ninety degrees in any direction, controlled by a remote with a thumbstick set in its center, and the image it sent back was remarkably clear for a device so small. Looking into apartment four-twelve was like looking into a mirror image of their own room, at least in terms of dimension and layout. But content was radically different, and there was no question in Chace’s mind what all that equipment on the kitchen table was meant to do.

  Four-twelve held explosives, and its occupants were building themselves a bomb.

  “If there’s one, there could be others,” Chace said. “We don’t know what else is in that apartment.”

  “The second team drilled through into the bedroom, from four-ten,” Kinney retorted. “They’ve seen nothing but the two women asleep in the bed.”

  “Where are the men?”

  “Out and about. We’ve got them under surveillance. We’ll take them when they get back.”

  “Out and about at five in the morning? They’re scouting locations, Mister Kinney.”

  “We have them under surveillance. If they try anything, they’ll be stopped.”

  The four men on the CT team had stopped their work, listening to the hushed debate. Chace looked to the man who’d let her into the apartment, the one she took to be the team leader. He shook his head slightly, turned his attention back to the laptop.

  “The point is that they’re not trying anything yet,” Chace whispered. “You wait until all of them are in the apartment, you’re giving them a chance to react.”

  “Miss Chace, you’re here as an observer—”

  Chace gestured angrily at the laptop screen. “You don’t even know if it’s armed! For God’s sake, Kinney, at least start evacuating the building!”

  Kinney clamped his mouth closed, and for a second, Chace thought she could hear his teeth grinding.

  “Miss Chace,” he said, “if you cannot keep your voice down, I will have one of these men escort you from the scene.”

  “You want to get blown up?” she demanded.

  Kinney leveled a finger at her. “One more word. One more word and you’re out. Now, be a nice little girl and sit down, shut up, and mind your own.”

  Chace bit back the immediate urge to respond, feeling heat climbing down from her neck to her shoulders, feeling the eyes of the four men on the CT team on her again. Normally she could take sexism in stride, but here, now, coming from Kinney, in front of an audience, it infuriated her. She knew why he was opposed to evacuating the building, let alone the floor; it would tip his hand, give the game away, and as far as it went, he was right, it would. His targets might escape, and he wasn’t willing to let that happen, especially in the wake of the disaster on the tube only three days gone.

  The Security Services were taking it on the chin, and Kinney wanted the big success, to prove that they were still in the game. Hence the three operations in one night, timed to coincide; a message to say, what you did to us, we can do to you.

  Chace understood it, right down to the symbolism of Box picking three targets of their own. But looking at the monitor, and on it the view of the kitchen table, of the bomb-in-the-making, it seemed an awful risk to take for the sake of soothing a bruised ego.

  Kinney moved forward, bending his mouth to the ear of the CT leader, whispering. The leader glanced at Chace, then back to Kinney, nodding. Kinney returned to her, fingering the radio in his hand.

  “I’ve informed Sergeant Hopton that if you so much as cough, he is to remove you from the site,” Kinney whispered at her. “Further, should it be required, he has been directed to take whatever action is required to keep you silent. I’m sure you understand what that means.”

  Chace stared at him, then mouthed the word “yes” as widely as she could manage. Hopton was watching her, and she caught him looking, and he turned his attention to the laptop once more.

  Kinney nodded and slunk back toward the bedroom.

  She fumed, leaning forward on the couch, trying to get a better look at the monitor. Hopton shifted to his left, trying to accommodate her view, and that mollified her somewhat. She didn’t doubt that he would do as Kinney had directed, but at least he didn’t seem happy at the prospect.

  •

  At eighteen minutes to six, they blew the wall, and even then, it was almost too late.

  Activity started in four-twelve at oh-five-thirty-three, with the return of the three men Kinney had been waiting on. They were all in roughly the same age bracket, mid to early twenties, two of them of indeterminate Middle Eastern origin, the third Caucasian, and Chace could hear them through the thin walls even as she watched their entrance on the video feed. They looked exhausted and nervous, and she thought that was a bad combination. They’d been living in fear since the seventh, she supposed, knowing what the inevitable response to the attacks on the tube would be, knowing that Box would be out in force, bent on finding anyone anywhere who might be a threat.

  A justified paranoia, as far as Chace was concerned.

  She watched over Hopton’s shoulder as the three men removed their coats, dropping them onto the couch in a heap, then headed in different directions—one toward the bathroom, one toward the bedroom, the third, the Caucasian, digging into his discarded coat, where he pulled a small digital camera from its pocket.

  Site selection, Chace confirmed for herself. They’ve been out choosing targets.

  The Caucasian had moved to a chair at the kitchen table, and Hopton twisted the knob on his control, turning the cam
era to keep the man in view. Chace watched as the man opened a laptop computer of his own, booting it up, then attached a cable from the computer to the camera, preparing to upload his photographs.

  Chace heard the soft click of the bedroom door opening, Kinney stepping carefully to join them. Chace glanced away from the screen long enough to look the question at him, but Kinney shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he murmured.

  She wanted to scream at him.

  “The women,” Kinney explained softly. “They’re too close to the wall from four-ten. If it’s blown they’ll get hit in the blast, and we don’t want to risk losing them. I want them alive.”

  Chace rolled her eyes, looked back to the monitor. Hopton was getting to his feet, holding the detonator for the wall-charge in one hand, using hand signals to motion the rest of the team to prepare for their entry. All of the men were moving carefully, quietly, pulling their balaclavas and gas masks into place, swinging their weapons into their hands.

  On the monitor, the Caucasian man was bent to the laptop, back to the camera, working.

  Then he stopped, and Chace saw the tightening along his back as his head came up, saw him turn his chin, realized he was listening, that he’d heard something.

  She felt one of the stuffed animals resting against her thigh where she sat on the couch, reached down for it, brushing the hard rubber of the teething bear with her fingertips.

  It wasn’t what he was hearing, Chace realized. It was what he wasn’t.

  “Now!” she hissed to Hopton.

  “Chace,” Kinney growled.

  On the screen, the man had risen from the table, was walking toward the wall, their wall.

  “Jesus Christ, do it now!” Chace said. “He knows, dammit—”

  Kinney dropped a hand onto Chace’s shoulder, already turning to Hopton, snarling, “Get her out, and don’t be gentle about—”

  She launched herself off the couch, trying to shrug free of Kinney’s grip on her shoulder, pleading with Hopton. “He doesn’t hear the baby, Sergeant! He knows!”

  “Sergeant, get her out of here.”

  Hopton grimaced. In her periphery, Chace could see the man on the monitor, now at the wall, so close to the camera his image was distorting.

  “Clear,” Hopton said, and Chace shut her eyes, tucking her head, trying to save her vision from the inevitable flash of the explosion, and even then she could see the light, a searing red that matched the crackling burst of wood and wall. There was a scream, and Hopton shouting, and she opened her eyes to see the CT team pouring into the apartment, stepping over the Caucasian man, twisted on the floor.

  Beside her, Kinney was shouting into the radio, telling the other team to go go go, but even as he was saying it Chace heard the second detonation, muffled, and a scream.

  The bathroom door opened, and the man inside surged out, pants half-raised, and Chace had just registered the pistol in his hand when one of the CT team shot him.

  She pulled the pistol from her waist, stepped through the breach in the wall, coughing as she caught a lungful of atomized debris still hanging in the air. The CT team was already disappearing into the bedroom, and she heard an exchange of fire, two single shots, and the rattle of multiple MP-5s in response.

  Behind her, Kinney was shouting that he wanted them alive. Chace didn’t know if it was directed at her, the radio, or God above. She didn’t much care.

  Pistol held low in both hands, Chace followed after the CT team, peering around the doorframe into the bedroom. Blood spattered the wall and ceiling, and she saw the two women, still in the bed, each in their nightclothes, one of them now being dragged free of the sheets by Hopton as another of the CT team readied a set of plasticuffs. The other woman was pitched face forward, as if she’d been sitting and then simply toppled, and past her Chace could see the gap into four-ten, where the explosion had taken the wall. It had also taken the back of the woman’s head.

  The third man was slumped against the wall, legs splayed, eyes wide.

  Chace stepped back and nearly slammed into Kinney as she turned.

  “You bitch, you stupid bitch! Look what you’ve done!”

  Past him, on the floor, Chace could see the Caucasian man trying to roll onto his side. The blast had caught the side of his face and chest, and blood bubbled out of him where the shrapnel of the wall had driven through his flesh.

  “You’ve fucking ruined it,” Kinney raged. “I wanted them alive! We needed them alive!”

  “Two of them are.” She indicated the man on the floor with the pistol in her hand. “Though I don’t fancy his chances. Shall I put him out of his misery?”

  Kinney’s face lost all the color that had flooded into it, and he struck at her forearm, trying to get her to lower the pistol. She laughed, tucking the pistol back into her pants.

  “You’re an evil piece of work,” Kinney said, raising his radio again.

  “No,” Chace told him, heading for the door. “They’re evil, Mister Kinney. Me, I’m one of the good guys.”

  6

  London—Mayfair, Hyde Park

  13 August 1217 GMT

  It was one of the oldest espionage clichés in the Firm, certainly outdated, and in the current day and age of parabolic microphones and laser-beam listening devices quite possibly tragically insecure. But walking in Hyde Park was still Paul Crocker’s favorite method of information exchange with the CIA, and he balanced the potential of compromise with the benefit of being able to talk out of the office, away from the alarmist eye of the Deputy Chief and the distrust of C. Meetings like today, the only person who knew for certain where he was and what he was doing was Kate, and she’d run dutiful interference should the need arise.

  Cheng was waiting for him on a bench near the Park Lane entrance, and though he was certain she saw him coming, she didn’t move until he’d reached her.

  “You’re late.” She said it mildly and didn’t bother to look at him, instead keeping her eyes on a couple picnicking with their two children some twenty feet away.

  “Tube’s still fouled,” Crocker said, which was the only explanation he was willing to give, and truly the only explanation necessary. It had been just six days since the strikes, and even with crews working around the clock, the Central and Northern Lines were still down, and the Bakerloo had resumed service only that morning, and even that was limited. The economic impact of the closures had yet to be measured, but traffic in Central London had predictably become even more of a nightmare than it already was.

  Cheng got off the bench, adjusting the linen jacket she was wearing. The jacket was navy blue, and the blouse beneath it a pearl white, and her trousers, linen as well, were black. She watched him take in the wardrobe, then looked him over in turn and cracked a smile.

  “You must be burning up.”

  Crocker grunted, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket and getting one lit. It had turned unseasonably hot in the past week, and the air in the city had been still and heavy. Depending on where you were, you could still catch the scent of the smoke. Standing in his three-piece suit, Crocker felt as if he might spontaneously combust.

  Cheng turned and began walking, heading deeper into the park, and Crocker fell in beside her. He had almost a full foot on her, and a stride that could easily outdistance Cheng’s own, but the walking was habit as much as the meetings were, and they’d long ago worked out a rhythm. Cheng had been posted to London as the CIA resident a year after Crocker had ascended to D-Ops, and though they had never interacted in the field prior to that point, they instantly saw in each other a kindred spirit or, at the least, an ally against a common foe—the bureaucrats. Cheng would always put America’s concerns first, as Crocker would put England’s, but the friendship that existed between them was honest, if shaped by the respective demands of their assignments.

  In the main, SIS needed the CIA more than the CIA needed SIS. But not always, and Cheng was wise enough to see that, even if her bosses back in Virginia weren’t
.

  They walked, taking in the park, the smell of the grass and the trees, the summer hour. Scattered on the lawns, Londoners sunbathed or took lunch or kicked footballs, but it was quieter than normal, and Crocker knew there were fewer people out and about. That, and the abrupt lack of tourism, gave the park a strangely empty air.

  “How’re Jenny and the girls?” Cheng asked.

  “Fine. I’d ask how whoever you’re seeing is, but you’re not seeing anyone.”

  Cheng smirked. “Not that you know of, at least.”

  Crocker blew smoke from the corner of his mouth. “So what do you have?”

  “You talked to Rayburn?”

  “Not since yesterday afternoon.”

  “He’ll be getting our analysis of the tape sometime today. He’ll be able to tell you everything I can.”

  “Angela.”

  “You are an impatient man.”

  “I have an impatient C, who apparently has an impatient Prime Minister. They want action, and they can’t have that without a target.”

  “Speaking of action. Quite the stunt your Mister Kinney pulled on Tuesday morning.”

  “That wasn’t Kinney, that was Chace.”

  “Chace killed three suspected terrorists in one sitting? There are folks back home who’d give her a medal.”

  “Four, actually,” Crocker corrected. “One of them died in hospital from injuries sustained at the scene.”

  Cheng pursed her lips in a silent whistle of appreciation.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Crocker said, far more defensively than he’d intended. “They’d been made, there was reason to believe there was an explosive on scene, they had to move.”