A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  “Then I’ll see you at twelve-thirty, all right?”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it,” she said, and then added, “Is Tom around?”

  “He’ll be in this afternoon. Shall I tell him you’re here?”

  “No.” Chace grinned. “Let me surprise him.”

  •

  The rest of the morning was spent in the simulator, killing video projections with modified pistols that did everything real guns did, but fired light instead of lead. The Master ran Chace through multiple scenarios: take the target in a crowd, in a café, in a hallway, on a flight of stairs; take the target with no protection, with two bodyguards, with six, at a traffic stop. What to do if you miss? If the gun jams? If the gun breaks? If you snag the pistol on your draw?

  After each exercise, The Master would play back the video he’d recorded of Chace, berating her for her errors, grudgingly acknowledging her triumphs. Much as she was loath to admit it, she’d begun the day rusty. It had passed, and passed quickly, and everything she’d been taught came back as fresh as ever, and it pleased her that she’d even managed to improve in the practicals.

  The Master made her wait as he finished her evaluation, telling her to break down and service all of the weapons she had used during the day. When Chace had reassembled the last of the firearms, he dropped the sheet in front of her so she could read her score. Crocker would be pleased, she’d delivered on his demanded five point oh.

  Wishing The Master a good evening, Chace headed back to the dormitory. She showered quickly and then, dressed once more, went in search of the only man Tara Chace was certain she had ever truly loved.

  •

  The Field School shared Fort Monkton with the Royal Navy, which maintained a submarine-escape training facility on the site, as well as other tactical simulators. The whole area around Portsmouth was thick with RN types, the city and the fleet sharing a long and distinguished history, of which Monkton was but a small part. The site had first seen the construction of Haselworth Castle in 1545; Fort Monkton had been erected some two hundred years later at the behest of the Royal Navy, and a companion fortification and artillery battery, Gilkicker Fort, had been raised nearby later in the eighteenth century.

  Both Monkton and Gilkicker were closed to the public. Students at the School were housed on campus, but the instructors were not. Most had their homes in one of the many communities surrounding the harbor, in Portsmouth or Gosport or Fareham. Many of those same instructors chose to drive to work, and the parking lot shared by the Field School and RN staffs was thick with their cars.

  There was only one Triumph Spitfire MK I among them, though, and while she’d never seen the vehicle before, Chace had no doubt who it belonged to.

  The top was down, so she climbed into the passenger seat and passed the time by rummaging through the glove box, which ended in disappointment when she couldn’t find anything embarrassing. She did find an unopened pack of Silk Cut and some matches and, with only some minor internal debate, decided she’d earned a reprieve.

  She was smoking her third cigarette when she heard footsteps on the gravel, approaching the car.

  “You always were a weak-willed bird,” Tom Wallace said.

  Chace flicked the cigarette away, leaned over to push open the driver’s door, and waited for Wallace to settle behind the wheel before saying, “Let’s go someplace where you can get me drunk and then take advantage of me.”

  “Fucking brilliant,” Wallace said, and started the car.

  •

  Wallace had been in Gosport long enough to find a pub he liked, the Black Swan, and had been frequenting it enough that the pub had come to like him. While Wallace got them a table, Chace went to the bar to order the first round, two lagers. The barman was old, and old-fashioned, and when he served her one pint, presumably for Wallace, and a half, presumably for her, she sent the half back.

  “No, another pint, if you please.”

  The barman’s eyes turned critical. “Not terribly ladylike.”

  “I’m a terrible lady.”

  The barman’s lower lip worked, rising up and out as he gave Chace a second appraisal before barking out a short laugh and taking the half back. He pulled a fresh pint for her, and she moved off to join Wallace at their table to begin the work of serious drinking and less serious catching up. Over the course of three pints and most of the pack of Silk Cut they traded recent history, and Wallace confirmed most of what Chace had already determined for herself. He was doing well, he told her, relaxed and recovering from a life of abuse at the hands of SIS.

  Certainly his appearance supported the claim, and Chace couldn’t recall when Tom Wallace had ever looked so good, or so relaxed. He had ten years and an inch in height on her, but sitting in the pub, he seemed both younger and even taller. The lines on his face had softened, and color had returned to his complexion. He’d put on some weight as well, but it was appropriate to his frame, and she thought he looked as fit now as he ever had. His black hair, streaked with gray, was still as sloppily trimmed, but the brown eyes that watched her were no longer bloodshot or red-rimmed, and the mirth in them had begun to return. With his summer slacks and white trainers he looked more like an architect or an ad executive than a spy-turned-instructor.

  Most Minders left the job in one of three ways, either sacrificed on the Altar of Bureaucracy in a discharge, promoted up the ladder in SIS—as Crocker had been—or killed in action. Wallace was unique in the history of the Section. A twelve-year veteran, he’d left on his own accord but still remained in the Service via lateral transfer to the School. Now, four days a week, he lectured to new recruits in the wood-paneled and electronically secured classrooms of the Manor House, a living legend passing on his pearls of wisdom.

  And if the students gathered in his classroom knew who he was, had heard rumors about this operation or that mission, about this daring escape or that piece of unbelievable luck, it was a given that Wallace, bound by the Official Secrets Act, could neither refute nor deny the story. The most he would ever say was that he’d done his job, and he was proud to have done it, and now he was doing this one, and the students had damn well better feel the same.

  “You look remarkably good for a man who’s gone soft,” Chace told him.

  “I sleep a full night. No fear of the phone waking me. You have no idea what a pleasure that is.”

  “Full night is right. You turning your ringer off? I tried raising you last night, didn’t get an answer.”

  Wallace glanced away from her, toward the rest of the room, and the weathered lines creased at the corners of his eyes, giving away the smile even as he tried to hide it. Chace leaned around, to see him full on, and that did it, flushed the grin from hiding and onto his face.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Chace said. “You’ve got yourself some bint tied to your bedposts, haven’t you?”

  “I prefer to say that she’s got me.”

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  “Three weeks, if it’s any of your business, and I’m reasonably certain that it isn’t. You don’t have to fear, Tara, she’s been cleared. Safe for government work.”

  “Is that what you call it these days?”

  “I’m an old man. I can use whatever euphemism I choose.”

  “You’re not old, Tom, you’re just randy.”

  He laughed, drained the last of his pint, and rose, saying that he’d found a good Indian place nearby, and that they’d better get some food before they were too pissed to manage the utensils. Chace agreed, emptied the last of her own glass, followed him out. Ducking beneath the blackened crossbeam at the pub’s entrance, climbing the steps into the fresh air off the Channel, she felt it again, the pang of jealousy, and it annoyed her enough that she voiced it.

  “She’d better be worthy, or else I’ll find her house and burn it to the ground.”

  Wallace stopped to light a fresh smoke, handed it off to her, then lit a new one for himself. “It’s down this way; we can wa
lk.”

  “Her house? But I don’t have my arson kit.”

  “The restaurant, you daft cow. Her place is over in Portsmouth, and that’s the only clue you get.”

  “No, tell me more about her. I find myself possessed of the same fascination I normally feel when viewing accident scenes.”

  “Or causing them.”

  “I can’t say. I never stick around long enough to admire my work.”

  Wallace chuckled, leaking smoke. They continued down the lane, turning onto the High Street. It was a pleasant night, and the streets were alive with traffic, but not crowded, and it made walking a pleasure.

  “You needn’t worry, Tara,” Wallace said after they had traveled several blocks in silence. “She’ll never replace you in my affections.”

  Enough sincerity had crept into his voice that Chace wasn’t certain if they’d left the realm of jokes and crossed the border to someplace more serious.

  •

  They found a newsagent’s on the High Street and bought more cigarettes, then made their way to the Magna Tandoori Restaurant, on Bemisters Lane. The curry was devastatingly hot, the way they both liked it, and each washed the meal down with more beer, spending most of the meal bitching about everything from expense reimbursement to the bastards in the Motor Pool who wanted seventeen forms for every time you needed a car on the job. It was late and they were both drunk when they finally staggered back onto the street, and when Wallace offered to give Chace the couch at his place, she agreed without hesitating.

  It was only when they were back in the Triumph, the night chill of sea air forcing some sobriety back into her brain, that Chace recognized the danger of what they were doing.

  •

  Wallace had found himself a two-bedroom flat on the third floor on a block of surprisingly posh-looking homes on Marine Parade Drive. He parked the Triumph in his garage, cluttered with auto parts and tools, then guided Chace through the front door and into the building. There was a videophone in the alcove, and another set of doors, triple-locked, and inside doors to two ground-floor flats, a flight of stairs, and a lift. They took the stairs as a matter of habit.

  His flat was cramped and plain, with two large curtained windows facing toward the seafront. Chace dropped her leather jacket over the back of the couch, then pulled the curtains to take in the view of the water and, in the distance, the lights shining from the Isle of Wight. In the kitchen behind her, she could hear Wallace rattling around, opening cabinets, clinking glasses.

  He offered her a glass of whiskey when he joined her, holding the bottle and a glass of his own, which he then attempted to juggle while opening one of the windows. It swung outward, and he stepped over the sill and onto the small balcony. Chace followed him out, and they stood together, drinking their drinks and listening to the sounds of the sea and the distant horns and clatter from below.

  “What do you think?” Wallace asked.

  “It’s spectacular. I’m wondering who you robbed to pay for this place.”

  “That’s not really what I was asking.”

  Chace took more of her drink.

  Wallace sighed, refilled his glass from the bottle, then hers. “We could, you know.”

  “Oh, trust me, Tom, I know. I’m drunk, but I know.”

  “I didn’t mean to . . . I mean, when I offered, it wasn’t because I was planning on anything. It’s the truth, I don’t know if you believe me.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Then I have to ask it again, Tara. What do you think?”

  Chace almost laughed. “I wish I knew.”

  After a moment, Wallace broke open one of the new packs, offering a cigarette to her before taking one for himself. They smoked them down in silence.

  “The whole thing with Kittering,” Chace said. “The thing with Ed, you know. You never told Crocker.”

  “I never told him, but he knew.”

  “No, he didn’t. I mean, he knew what Ed and I were up to, but he didn’t know.”

  Wallace looked away from the water to her, curious.

  “It was about you,” Chace explained. “Took me until you announced that you were leaving to realize it, but it was about you, Tom. The whole time, it was about you.”

  Wallace stared at her, and she laughed without a sound, amused by how pathetic it all seemed to her.

  “Tara?”

  “Come on, don’t do this. You’re a bright lad, you can figure it out.”

  “Not with this I can’t.” Wallace looked away, back to the sea. “I’ve never been good at figuring things like this.”

  “Neither have I. That’s why it took until you were gone.”

  Wallace shook his head ever so slightly.

  Chace looked into her whiskey, then drained the glass, feeling the raw heat in her chest. The lights from the Isle of Wight danced on the water, teasingly, as if you could walk all the way to their source.

  “I didn’t want Ed,” she said. “I wanted you, Tom, and there was no way in hell I was going to make a try at my Head of Section.”

  She turned to him, waited, and when Wallace finally faced her, she kissed him, feeling his mouth unyielding at first, then softening, answering. The taste of cigarette smoke and whiskey and curry and the ocean, all the flavors of the forbidden.

  “I wanted you,” Chace said.

  12

  Israel—Tel Aviv, Mossad Headquarters

  23 August 0904 Local (GMT+3.00)

  It was the second bombing in as many weeks, this time in Jerusalem, on King David Street, Friday night, when the kids were out. Another suicide to accompany the murders, an eighteen-year-old Palestinian girl who’d walked up to a crowd of teens and ended them all in fire and light. Seven dead, another four wounded, two of them critically. The eldest had not turned twenty; the youngest was fifteen.

  The Israeli response came the following Sunday morning, less than thirty-six hours later, when two IDF helicopter gunships launched two missiles each into the home of Abu Rajoub, near the Gaza Strip. Rajoub, long identified as the director of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s martyrdom division, was killed along with two lower-ranking members of the organization, his wife, and one of their six children.

  The thing that bothered Noah Landau most about all of this was that it barely bothered him at all.

  Wrestling his beaten Toyota through Tel Aviv traffic and listening to the news on the radio, outrage and regret and condemnation and threats, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything about it anymore, one way or another. The intellectual response remained intact, the understanding of the horror visited and revisited, the seeming futility of the cycle. He knew all the reasons, beginning with the essential principle that a government is obligated, morally and legally, to protect its citizens from violence, within and without. He still believed that a zero-tolerance policy was the only possible solution in the face of terrorist violence.

  But as he cleared the security to the underground parking lot of the innocuous and frankly dull building that housed his office with the Mossad, Noah Landau realized that his emotional disconnect was complete. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he should feel; it had reached the point that he simply could not feel it any longer.

  He’d reached this point before, twice. Once in late 1982, fifteen years old and kicking a soccer ball in the front hall of his family home in Haifa, much to the fury of his mother. The phone had rung and she had answered and he had continued to play, and then she had screamed. It had been an extraordinary noise, and as an adult, he still heard that sound, something perfectly pure in its horror, the sound of a soul being torn from a body.

  His father had been killed in action in Lebanon.

  His mother’s grief had so overwhelmed him, he’d been left with nothing of his own. In that vacuum, he’d felt the absence for the first time.

  The second time had been when his wife, Idit, and their eight-year-old son had died in a Tel Aviv café, when a car bomb had detonated twelve feet from where they were
eating.

  •

  “Noah.”

  “Viktor.”

  “El-Sayd is on the move.”

  Landau stopped in the hallway but didn’t look back, wondering if this was another of what Viktor Borovsky considered “jokes.”

  If it was one, it wasn’t funny.

  “He doesn’t leave Egypt,” Landau said softly.

  “Yeah, well, I know that, but this is out of Cairo. El-Sayd’s making plans to go to Yemen sometime in September.”

  That was enough to earn second consideration. Landau turned around, peering at the other man over the top of his glasses. Viktor was leaning in the doorway of his office, his long arms folded across his chest like spider’s legs. He shot Noah a sharp, thin smile and then, with the heel of one foot, kicked his door open farther, pushed away from the frame, and disappeared into his office, inviting Landau to follow.

  So Landau followed, closing the door behind him. Borovsky was already at his desk, flipping through stacks of signals and memos. He was almost six and a half feet tall, bamboo-shoot thin, and bony. Landau could see the rounded cap of each of Borovsky’s shoulders beneath his cotton shirt.

  “The Old Man hasn’t seen it yet,” Borovsky was saying. “Got it this morning, haven’t finished with the stack that came in overnight. But I saw el-Sayd, I thought of you.”

  “Does it check?”

  Borovsky stopped riffling through the papers long enough to blast him with a glare. “Got it this morning, I said. Haven’t had a chance to do anything else with it. Still have three dozen of these shit signals to do, okay?”

  “Then until it checks, you’re wasting my time.”

  “Don’t be such a cocksucker all the time, Noah. You don’t have to be such a dripping-dick cocksucker.”

  Landau moved to the desk, set his case down beside it, not speaking. When Borovsky swore, his Russian accent grew thicker, sometimes to such an extent that it was impossible to make out the Hebrew he was using. Adding profanity into the mix didn’t help, since most of the profanity in Hebrew was actually taken from Arabic.