The Truth About the Liar

by Helena Maeve

  Assuming, of course, they didn’t dispatch him to Siberia, where he’d never talk to anyone worthwhile ever again.

  Arthur fell back to the mattress and closed his eyes. His options were limited, his future girdled by lethal threats.

  The key remained where Klaus had left it, untouched.

  Chapter Six

  Twenty-four hours after he’d first pulled them on, Arthur found unbelievable relief in tugging off his shirt and slipping out of his pants. He sat down in the bathtub because it was easier than holding himself upright when his knees seemed to have acquired the consistency of pool noodles.

  The injured one ached, too, a dull reminder that he wasn’t in the best shape.

  So take it easy, old man. Manuel Sosa’s voice chimed in his ear with all the warmth and friendliness of a man who knew what it felt like to lose everything.

  Pity Arthur couldn’t put him out of his misery when he’d had the chance. He didn’t take contracts on account of liking someone, but the sentiments that developed during a deep cover op sometimes confirmed his objectives.

  He’d liked Manuel. He could’ve done him, quick and easy, without any pain.

  It would’ve been a blessing, compared to what those fuckers at Section had in store.

  A nerve spasmed in his kneecap, abruptly shooting volleys of white-hot pain up his thigh and into his skull. He snorted over the sound of rushing water, gaze slanting of its own accord to the wall that separated bath and bedroom. That outcome was no longer on offer. Somewhere beyond the cracked blue tiles, Klaus would be going through their paperwork, or cobbling together the next leg of their journey.

  He had yet to tell Arthur what kind of mission he was in for once they reached Cairo. Given the odds, Arthur guessed it had to be a low-success, high-mortality sort of thing, like infiltrating MI6 and going after one of their assets. Those were really the only jobs he’d ever been good at.

  With a shaking hand, he rubbed at his knee, feeling for the rivets and screws that picked up the slack on shattered bone. The pain dulled, then sharpened again, a saw scouring his nerves.

  Arthur took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. Hopefully Robin wanted him to play kamikaze. Anything more complex was likely to end in failure.

  And still the stubborn thought came to him that it would be easier to run once he was off the continent. There might be something for him in the Middle East. Soldiers of fortune were in high demand in Yemen and Syria, provided they didn’t care who paid their wages. Or he could go as far as Pakistan and sell his know-how to foreign governments.

  Back in the day, the popular switch used to be defection to the USSR. Now recruits were less into flags and ideology than they were cold, hard cash.

  What’s a fugitive with delusions of grandeur compared to an oil-rich warlord? Provided the latter wasn’t a Company legend, anyway.

  A knock on the bathroom door cut through the mire of Arthur’s thoughts.

  “Are you okay in there?”

  “Worried I’ll drown in the tub?” he shouted back through the door.

  The doorknob turned.

  “Christ, I didn’t say come in!” Arthur yelled. He wasn’t bashful, even with his array of bruises and his crippled hand, his bum knee. Klaus had seen him naked before. It wasn’t a matter of modesty.

  Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding when Klaus stopped trying to open the door.

  “There’s food,” Klaus said. “If you’re hungry.”

  Oh. Regrets were a dime a dozen in this business. Arthur bottled his embarrassment and switched off the trickling shower.

  Climbing out of the tub would have been easier with another pair of hands to help steady him, but Arthur didn’t ask for Klaus’ aid and his jailer-cum-handler didn’t offer. He seemed surprised to see Arthur emerge from the bathroom in just a towel, though, his gaze raking down Arthur’s body and away in a decidedly not indifferent fashion.

  “My clothes stink,” Arthur snapped by way of explanation. Deal with it, asshole.

  Klaus nodded and sat a little straighter against the headboard. “I hope shawarma is okay. There’s nothing else nearby…”

  “Hmm…and here I thought we weren’t to leave the room.”

  A rule, Arthur knew full well, that only applied to him. I’m the dangerous one in here. It didn’t stop him from digging into Klaus’ food when it was offered, stomach growling noisily into the empty hotel room.

  Arthur tore into the flatbread wrap with gusto, barely tasting the ingredients as he wolfed down a couple of greedy bites. “Shouldn’t lock me in, you know,” he muttered once he’d swallowed. “What if a fire breaks out?”

  What if I lit a fire? Arson had never been his beat, but people changed. Desperation lent itself to all manner of thoughtless acts.

  Klaus looked up from his own wrap, the length of carpet between their beds as wide as a trench. “You weren’t.”

  Arthur barely reined in his disbelief. He could take the lie at face value. He could pretend to believe that a man who picked him up after he attacked his former handler would trust that he’d keep from causing trouble.

  If true, that level of laissez faire would bite him in the arse someday soon.

  “Sure that’s wise?” Arthur wondered idly.

  “Probably not.”

  He huffed out a breath. “Again with the reverse psychology… So is that what this trip is supposed to be? Reform school for the failed mercenary? Can’t say I’m terrifically impressed. You’ve got sauce on your chin.”

  “I already answered that question,” Klaus said, mopping up the spill.

  “I know, Robin wants me to work for him. Guess trying to kill one of his buddies endeared me to him, right?”

  Klaus bit into his wrap and went on chewing meditatively, as though Arthur was merely background noise he could ignore.

  Fat chance. “And you don’t know why or what… You don’t know anything. Basically you’ve gone from renowned hit man to prison transport chauffeur.”

  Klaus’ answer was, predictably, complete and utter silence. When the furrow between his thick eyebrows deepened, Arthur only felt like he was seventy-percent talking to a wall.

  “All I’m saying,” he added after a long beat, “is that from where I’m standing, it looks like you drew the short straw. I always thought Jules must’ve been on his shitlist to wind up having to play nursemaid, but you…”

  Arthur shook his head. Reputation preceded Klaus Tressing—reputation and a serious body count. He had been on the Company’s Most Wanted list for years before Arthur had even made his first kill. Rumor had it that the only reason he hadn’t been picked up by intelligence operatives in the past was that at one point or another, they’d all made use of his ample skill set.

  Sitting in a shitty motel with Klaus and eating shawarma was the equivalent of sitting with Pavarotti and listening to trashy Europop.

  “Is that what happened?” Arthur pressed. “You piss him off somehow and got landed with little old me?”

  “You’re very curious about Robin,” Klaus noted, swinging his long legs over the edge of the mattress.

  Arthur chuckled mirthlessly. “Can you blame me? In just a couple of months, he’s gone from a fucking nobody to this weird, mythical figure. They’re saying he’s got all Five Eyes wrapped around his little finger. GCHQ, Interpol… Even people like you and Jules whisper his name like he’s Voldemort. Spies without a country, right? That’s the motto? You’d think you people would know how impossible that is. Have you even met him?”

  “Yes.”

  For such a brutish man, the moments when Klaus spoke softly were the most unsettling. Arthur temporarily lost his train of thought, shaken out of his disdain by a burst of sudden interest.

  “For real? What’s he like?”

  “White.”

  “That’s it?”

  Klaus swallowed past a mouthful of shawarma. “That’s all you get for now.”

  It was becoming a familiar ref
rain. Arthur wasn’t trustworthy, so he was left in the dark—sometimes literally, when Jules had been in a bad mood.

  He waited for Klaus to give another inch, but in the ensuing silence there was only the sound of his masticating and the shawarma wrapper crinkling. Arthur went back to his supper with a ball of resentment taking up space in his stomach.

  Klaus had already turned in for the night, massive back turned to the room, by the time Arthur folded half of the wrap into the paper and, quietly, slid it inside one of the suitcases. He didn’t have the heart to throw away the leftovers. He had no way of knowing when his next meal would come, if Klaus would even deign to let him eat again or if food, like freedom, was a carrot to be dangled in front of his nose in exchange for cooperation.

  The room was dark when he finally crawled into bed and pulled the musty covers all the way to his shoulders. Klaus’ breaths, slow and even in the pitch darkness, served as his metronome. If Arthur could just follow his pace, he would fall asleep and perhaps even wake when Klaus did. He knew there was danger in the experiment, but the alternative was exhaustion. He needed a few hours’ rest, in a real bed, with a real pillow under his head. He needed to get his strength back.

  Above all, he needed to get away.

  * * * *

  A number of trivial observations registered in Arthur’s exhausted mind before he seized on the more vital details. One, the flowery curtains were open, daylight streaming through the windows and slanting across the covers in two white oblongs. Two, one of the suitcases was open.

  Three, the other bed was empty.

  Arthur jolted up in bed and propped himself on his right elbow. His towel had come undone while he slept. It tangled now around his hips, so he kicked his way free as he levered upright. Was it too much to hope that Klaus had realized the futility of his mission and left during the night?

  Too good to be true.

  Klaus Tressing wouldn’t leave loose ends any more than his agency brethren might.

  The echo of water pelting tile on the other side of the bedroom wall gave away the truth.

  Arthur scrubbed a hand over his face, desperately seeking to banish the pleasant lethargy of a lazy morning. So much for sleeping with one eye open. He must have been more tired than he’d thought if he’d conked out with an enemy agent within arm’s reach. He’d evidently been more tired than was safe.

  He swung his feet to the floor and grabbed for the towel. Though the air was stale, closed in, the room seemed chillier today. Arthur put a hand to the joint between the two window panes. Without the heavy drapes to insulate the cracks in the crumbling wooden frame, wind gusted brazenly indoors, raising goosebumps along his arms and chest. It made for a rude awakening, but no more so than trudging to the open case at the foot of the bed and finding that Klaus had packed enough clothes to last them a week of no laundry.

  This was no last-minute jaunt. He must have planned for the trip a while before Robin had called to dismiss Jules from her post.

  Still groggy, Arthur didn’t notice at first that his leftover shawarma had been jettisoned. He wanted to laugh it off—maybe Klaus had woken up peckish—but the attempt stuck in his throat. The wrapper was in the trashcan, the last few bites discarded like offal.

  Arthur came awake in an eye-blink, blood pressure ratcheting up with every stutter of his galloping pulse. Beyond the trite clichés about children starving in Africa—did Klaus think it would be funny to starve him? Was this part of his fucked-up rehabilitation junket?

  Red flashed before Arthur’s eyes. He didn’t have any brain cells left for self-preservation, his skull pounding with a sudden rush of anger as he grabbed the bathroom doorknob and twisted it open.

  “You fucking bastard!”

  Klaus whirled to face him, a surprised moue on his stupidly memorable face.

  “You have some nerve! I didn’t ask for any of this—if you think I’m going to put up with your shit, you sorry fuck, you’ve got another thing coming!” Words pouring from his lips like water through a sieve, it took Arthur a moment to compute what he was seeing.

  Klaus, slick cock in hand, arched an eyebrow. When he spoke, his voice was a measured whisper. “Can this wait?”

  No. Common sense won out. “Yes,” Arthur gritted out, mouth gone predictably dry. He slammed the door shut, a five alarm fire blazing on his face.

  Klaus was—rippling muscle, thick cock, tendons taut beneath dark skin—a good-looking man. And a good-looking man who happened to be wanking off didn’t leave Arthur unaffected. It just wasn’t worth his pardon, much less an existential crisis.

  Still a little shaken, Arthur grabbed yesterday’s jeans and a clean shirt from the suitcase. He wanted to be dressed before Klaus was done with the shower. He told himself it had nothing to do with needing the illusion of armor.

  He didn’t quite believe it.

  The sound of the shower cut off a couple of minutes later, silence settling over the room in its place.

  Arthur desperately tried not to think of Klaus finishing what he’d started. He banished the image from his mind again and again, no matter how swiftly it rose up, weed-like, to taunt him.

  “I’m not sure I understood,” Klaus said as he returned to the bedroom. “What was it that had you so upset?”

  For once, Arthur’s useless hand became a handy excuse to avoid glancing up as he struggled to lace his shoes. “You threw away the food.”

  “Ah, yes. I did.”

  Arthur blew out a long breath. The urge to tear into Klaus had dimmed in the face of embarrassment. Its absence was sorely felt. “I was going to eat it.”

  “Wasn’t that good,” Klaus replied, as though he didn’t understand. “I’ll get you another before we leave—”

  “Not the point.” Cheeks warm with mortification and effort, Arthur righted himself. One shoe was still unlaced, the loose ends tucked in around his sock.

  He didn’t want to look at Klaus—half-naked, water-dappled—but avoiding his gaze would’ve been too obvious.

  It was Klaus’ turn to let exasperation show. “Then what is the point, Arthur?”

  Don’t touch my food. Don’t pretend you don’t know how effective that is. The Company had perfected certain methods first cobbled together by guerrilla fighters and enemy armies in Vietnam and elsewhere. It didn’t matter who’d invented persuasive tactics, so long as they won the war.

  Or, in Klaus’ case, so long as they broke Arthur’s resistance by the time they reached Cairo.

  “Never mind,” Arthur sighed and pushed up for the bed. “You finished with the bathroom?” His insides churned, but he didn’t let himself look away from Klaus’ impassive brown eyes.

  “Sure.”

  It shouldn’t have been a relief to put the closed bathroom door between them. It shouldn’t have weighed on him that there was no key in the lock.

  You’re ridiculous, Arthur mouthed at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. His gaze fled, treacherous, toward the now-vacant bathtub behind him. He couldn’t unsee the shape of Klaus’ generous musculature as he stroked his dick.

  His stomach back-flipped angrily, nerves and lukewarm anger swirling in his gut.

  He had worked with men like Klaus before—men who’d shown a lot more interest in him than Klaus, at that. There was no reason to assume anything nefarious just because Klaus had needs.

  Arthur switched the sink tap on to cold and splashed water onto his face until his teeth chattered. Klaus didn’t have a monopoly on fear or fearsome sights. He was just their most recent manifestation, a rigid, broad-shouldered reminder that all debts had to be paid sooner or later.

  His help wasn’t free of charge. His efforts to get Arthur to nominal safety would have to be made up someday.

  Arthur raked a damp hand through his hair and focused on calming his breaths. “Get over it. S’just another job.” The goal of which was to get clear of his former employers and anyone else who wanted a piece of him.

  If he thought of it that way,
then he wasn’t Klaus’ prisoner. He was simply an ineffective collaborator—wounded, in recovery. Free to do as he wished.

  Slowly, Arthur relaxed his features.

  It took conscious thought to ease the tension around his eyes and stop his teeth from chattering or squeezing together in anger. It took genuine effort to tip up the corners of his lips into something vaguely approximating a smile.

  He would get out of this, with Klaus’ help. His fellow hit man would lend a hand because he had no other choice. And when the time comes, I’ll do for him as I should have done for Jules.

  By the time he reached for the bathroom door, Arthur felt like a new man.

  Chapter Seven

  “Ever been married?”

  “No.”

  “Ever wanted to get married?”

  Klaus sighed.

  “Any little Klauses running around Germany, wondering where their daddy’s gone off to?” Arthur pressed him.

  “Assuming there were,” Klaus mused, “would you advise me to turn this car around?”

  Arthur scoffed. “And lose my one and only hope of heaven-sent escape? Never. I’m just morbidly curious. The thought of you with a wife and kids is strangely hilarious.” Besides, he had no hope of figuring out how to approach the Klaus Problem if he didn’t know who Klaus was. Recon was imperative. He slanted a glance to the man himself, quiet and serious behind the wheel of the Audi. “So…kids?”

  “What about you?”

  A snort of laughter crept out of Arthur’s throat and crashed against the windshield. “I thought you did your homework before you came to pick me up.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” Arthur grinned at the stretch of highway ahead of them.

  Sometimes it felt as though road was all there was in Europe. Miles upon miles of cement rolling out over farmland, around towns, a spider-like network of interconnected beehives hemmed in by oceans and the occasional wars.

  The landscape didn’t change no matter how many borders they crossed. The same scraggly tufts of yellow-green grass topped the banked hills on either side of the tarmac. The same dull green fields stretched to meet the horizon. Occasionally they would pass a town or a village—a collection of gray-walled buildings with crumbling rooftops and backyards full of random junk—but for the most part the scenery was barren, repetitive.