Yesterday's Hero (33 page)

At least, I think, as a pothole in the road lifts me six inches out of my rough seat for approximately the nine billionth time, there is a plan.

Kiev

It’s almost three a.m. when we check into the hotel. I was expecting a student motel with fifteen to a room, but apparently Malcolm is picky about where he sleeps.

“If I’m going to spend a third of my life doing it, I’m going to be comfortable,” he informed Antonina after rejecting her first five hotel choices. This apparently convinced her that she should have tried to get more money from us, and we have to walk the last fifteen blocks.

The clerk, though, is a friendly fellow, more so than seems reasonable at such an hour; and being more bonesore and world-weary than I feel anyone should ever feel, I take advantage of this to pressure him into opening the bar for me. He pours me a double of some mystery whiskey and then, mercifully, leaves me alone.

I sit in the half-light of a single lamp, and try to work out what’s eating at me. We’re not doing too badly, truth be told. Sure I’ve taken some knocks today, the worst of them possibly on my posterior, but we’ve still got two days before the deadline. We’re closer than we’ve ever been to ending this.

Maybe I’m just tired.

But then the real reason walks into the bar.

“Mind if I join you?” Aiko doesn’t wait for me to reply. The desk clerk scurries over and she points to my glass, which may not be particularly wise, but a silent minute later she has her own. She takes a sip and sighs.

“Quite the trip,” she says, nodding to herself. “Quite the trip.”

“Yes,” I say, fully aware of how monosyllabic I am. This sort of thing seems to reduce me to caveman levels of verbalism.

“So,” Aiko looks up at me from her glass. She’s changed into a pair of dark green cargo shorts and a loose white T-shirt proclaiming “I shot Kennedy.” It hangs off one shoulder. She has very smooth skin. “Why did you come to the Ukraine, Agent Arthur?” Aiko asks. “Business or pleasure?”

Oh Lordy.

It is, in the end, a question about the future. A question that extends beyond the Russian’s deadline, about life after the seventeenth. Assuming there is life beyond then. And I have been sticking resolutely to the short term.

But here Aiko is, and she’s asking me where I stand. When the chips have all fallen where they may, am I with MI37 or the Weekenders? With Felicity or her?

I look up at Aiko. She is a pretty woman. A clever woman. A good woman. A good human being. She makes me laugh. I admire her.

But…

Jesus.

It’s all true of Felicity too. Except, that makes them sound the same. And they are so not the same. There is something so very fundamentally different about them both.

And I know, I can be certain that I belonged with Felicity. I felt that, albeit fleetingly. She was the person I wanted. But now? Who am I now? Who is she now? And does that even matter? Because, surely regardless of whether the world survives, I don’t think our relationship will.

So surely there’s no real question here.

Except… Jesus, why can nothing ever seem sure?

I begin to realize it’s been quite a long time since Aiko asked her question.

“Maybe,” she takes a substantial swig from her whiskey, “I should put it another way.”

I remain resolutely noncommittal.

“I like you, Arthur,” she says. “I think we both know that. We both do now.” Another gulp of whiskey. “And I think we both know that your girlfriend doesn’t like you any more. So,” she finishes the whiskey, “the only thing I don’t know now is whether you like me.”

Oh crap. And it’s all so simple when she lays it out like that. All so easy. Logical. Except logic doesn’t seems to apply to my life any more. Maybe it never has when it comes to the heart. And now I have to figure out how to explain that, when I can barely explain it to myself.

“Aiko—” I start.

She closes her eyes, shakes her head. And even the tone of my voice is enough.

“There is one other way I can put this,” she says. She stands. I think she’s going to leave. And part of me feels like an ass for having pushed away such an obvious opportunity, and part of me is so relieved I have to suppress the accompanying sigh.

And then she leans in and she kisses me.

Her lips touch mine. Soft as a breath. My mouth opens slightly, as much shock as… well, at least half shock. She slips my bottom lip between her two. My breath is caught. What if I am caught…?

Caught by who?

And then she pulls away. My breath so short it’s an actual little person.

“I—” I start.

“Think about it,” she says. “But, speaking selfishly, it’d be nice if you made your mind up soon.”

She gives me a smile, a beautiful smile, then turns and leaves. I stay sitting, staring at the empty whiskey glass, at the smudge her lips made on the glass.

And if I made the right decision or the wrong one, I honestly don’t know.

Thirty-five thousand feet above the North Seaand descending. October 16th.

“S
o,” Devon leans across the aisle of the 757 and gives me a conspiratorial wink, “I am assuming you have a terribly cunning plan for when we land about how to find these dastardly Russians.”

Terribly cunning might be overexaggerating the extent of my planning. The ratio between terrible and cunning has been somewhat negatively affected by the fact that I’ve spent a large portion failing to not think about either Felicity or Aiko. The latter of those women has spent the whole flight sitting directly in front of me, not turning around once. She has pulled her hair into two small pigtails. I have studied them to the point where I could now pretty much write an algorithm for their movement in response to turbulence. On other subjects I am less edified.

“We need access to the full KGB files on our Russians,” I whisper, looking up and down the aisle for any stewards who seem overly interested in our conversation. There are, unsurprisingly, none. “We have their names, some associates. But we need things like aliases. Or known contacts. Or safe houses. More about them, about how they operate in London.”

“So,” Jasmine leans over from my other side, “like who has the KGB files?”

I grimace. Not because I don’t know where they are, but because, a few days ago, I walked out of that building swearing never to return.

“MI6,” I say.

“Oh,” Jasmine says. “Like, shit.”

“No chance you can hack into those files is there?” I ask Devon.

“I can’t hack anything,” she says. “That’s Tabitha’s game. And Clyde’s.” She wrinkles her nose. “The sort of underhanded, unpleasant thing that dirty little people who can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar would do if you ask me. Legitimate computing needs not good enough for them. Doesn’t matter how many years of good service the old computer may have given them. Once the odd part needs trading in, and there are new models on the showroom floor. So it’s time to trade in, apparently. No need to let the old computer know. It’ll figure it out. If its processing speed is up to it.”

Air stewards are starting to look our way now.

“It’s OK.” I pat her hand. I’m not sure what else to do. “It’s fine.”

“You can’t just, like, ask one of the old MI37 folks to do it for you?” Jasmine asks.

Devon almost spits into the aisle.

“Relations were strained last time we spoke,” I say. “And there’s this whole thing with them needing to arrest us both. And we don’t know anyone at MI6. And I doubt anyone Malcolm knows is suicidal enough to want to break into Vauxhall Cross.”

“Are you saying, Arthur,” Devon looks at me, “that we are, in the common parlance, screwed?”

In front of me, Aiko’s pigtails bob. I pause. Because what I suppose I’m really doing is laying the groundwork for asking Devon to do something really unpleasant.

“There is one person I can think of.”

“Who?” Devon is watching me warily. She can see the shadow of the trap closing over her and is trying to work out if she has time to escape its clutches.

“Kayla would do it,” I say. “If you asked her.”

Devon is very quiet.

“Who’s Kayla?” Jasmine asks. “Is she the grumpy goth one, or the one with the awesome sword?”

“She’s the one,” Devon replies, “with the awesome sword and an alarming preponderance for treating me like a pre-pubescent child. You bloody ask her.” This last statement is stabbed in my direction.

“She wouldn’t do it if I asked her. She’s not one hundred percent fond of me.”

“I shouted at her a lot,” Devon protests.

“She’s the forgiving sort.”

“She’s the sort to stab people long before the forgiving process has a chance to begin,” Devon comes back.

Which is a fair point, to be honest, but not one likely to get us closer to Devon begging this favor.

“She’ll forgive you,” I say, as convincingly as I can, “precisely because she has an enormous affinity for you.”

Devon regards me balefully as she is able. “You know,” she says, “I think I’m beginning to see why Kayla doesn’t like you.”

London, 8:36 pm

Bushy Park is not one of London’s better known royal parks. It’s a gem though. A beautiful ocean of green in the urban mix. That is, right up until sundown. At which point it become a bit large, and out of the way, and full of suspicious shadows.

I fight monsters for a living, and I’m still enough of a city lad to jump at a deer crossing the path in front of us.

Still, Devon informs us that one of the many things I don’t know about Kayla is her love of taking evening strolls in Bushy Park whenever she’s in the city.

Aiko, Devon and I wait by the large fountain at the park’s heart. Aiko and I still haven’t really talked since the evening in Kiev. And yet it’s Devon who is the tense one. I think she’s starting to regret agreeing to this entire plan in fact.

And then, around quarter to nine, I see a round-shouldered figure slouching towards us.

“That’s—” I start.

“Yes.” Devon nods. She swallows several times. I don’t know if her face is in the shadows by accident or design; I don’t know whatever emotions are brewing.

She steps out into the pathway. The plan is for her to make first contact, and then, if she thinks it’s important or helpful, I’ll step up too. Patting her legs three times is the best signal we could come up with. Malcolm seemed to not think much of it, but he didn’t go as far as offering his own.

I’m not sure how into subterfuge Malcolm is. I get the impression he’d rather kick in the doors at 85 Vauxhall Cross and see how things went from there.

Devon walks slowly towards Kayla, mirroring her shuffling gait. Neither of them seem anxious to get very far very quickly. Then Kayla looks up and abruptly stops. I can see her looking at Devon. Devon catches the change and stops too. They stand looking at each other.

Then Kayla moves. I barely catch it. The barest suggestion of movement, and then she’s fifteen feet from where she started, standing tight behind Devon’s back.

“O
h shit.” Aiko fumbles in her waistband for another of Malcolm’s illicit guns.

I put my hand on her arm. Then I hesitate for a moment because I’ve had the audacity to physically touch her. And then I get over myself a little.

“That’s not necessarily aggression,” I say. Then I think about it. This is Kayla after all. “Well, it’s probably aggression. Everything’s pretty much on a sliding scale with Kayla. But this isn’t so bad for her.”

“But if it turns bad…?” Aiko tries to pull her arm out of my grasp.

“Then we’ll all be dead before you get the gun up,” I say.

Aiko doesn’t look exactly happy about that. But it’s hard to be happy when confronted with the fact that if Kayla wants to kill you, she just will. On the plus side, it does add a frisson of danger to staff meetings that is usually inherently lacking.

Kayla and Devon remain a frozen tableau for a few seconds more. Fortunately Kayla seems to decide against impaling Devon, so it’s good I read Kayla correctly on that one.

Then Devon reaches out her hand and slaps her thigh three times.

Personally I’d imagine it would happen a little more naturally, and not like a moment of jazz hands in the middle of something that resembles a hostage negotiation.

Still, I pick myself up off the bench, give Aiko a hopeful smile, and head in their direction.

“Hello, Kayla,” I say.

She barely even looks at me. Devon gives me a look that is less than encouraging.

“Will you help us?” I ask Kayla.

The shrug is a bare flicker of movement.

I’m honestly not sure what that means. I wait for further information but it doesn’t come. “I…” I say.

“No.” Kayla’s monosyllable is barely audible.

Right then…

“Will you tell Coleman you saw us?”

Another minimalist shrug.

“Come on, Kayla,” I say. “Please.”

Not even a glimmer of anger from her. Not even a spark. She stands there as near to lifeless as she can be.

“No,” she says eventually.

I let out a breath of relief. Now this is just useless, not actually hazardous.

“Why not?” Devon asks. She’s still standing with Kayla behind her. I wonder if Kayla bothered drawing her sword. I doubt it. I don’t know what she’d fight for right now. It’s as if everything has been taken away from her, out of her.

“You don’t want my help.” I have to lean in to catch the words.

“Well of course I do,” Devon snaps. “I’m here bloody asking for it.”

Not quite the gently-gently approach I’d have taken. Kayla doesn’t even respond to it, though. Just stands there staring over my shoulder.

I just need to snap her out of it, to…

Sometimes words come into my head and I wish that they didn’t. Because they’re usually not awesome for my chances of survival. But… Hell, it’s been a good week for stupid things.

“What would Ophelia want?”

Finally Kayla makes eye contact. It’s like staring at an event horizon.

“To be alive,” she says. Each word is a tombstone falling. And I have nothing to come back against that with. I know it’s not my fault Kayla’s daughter is gone, but it doesn’t make the unspoken
accusation any easier to deal
with.