I’d found a place with three bedrooms, a lovely large kitchen with bay windows looking out over the small dock that came with the property, all sitting on three and a half acres. Private driveway, through a small wooded area, the nearest neighbor at least a quarter of a mile away! And not visible, either. I could see across the bay and make out a house on the other side of it, but even that was just a twinkle of lights.
The master bedroom had been built with skylights with retractable covers. It was amazing to lie in bed at night and look at the stars above me, so clear because of little-to-no local light pollution. I even ended up buying a really nice Meade Telescope, to do some stargazing. I upgraded the kitchen and wired the whole house for internet, put in Sonos speakers throughout and made sure the house was inspected and all things fixed that needed to be, including a new roof.
I was pretty happy with it once everything was done. It had a nice wrap around deck, the master bedroom had a small balcony, and I even had a hot tub installed, for the winter evenings. Lots of natural light, and I built myself a small conservatory on one side for vegetables that would not die in the cold winter, and a grilling station on the other side.
I did raid the lockup with the furniture from the house Clarissa and I shared, but in the end, only took six pieces from there, giving the rest away to charity. The double lounger we had, where Clarissa and I had spent more than a few evenings curled up together, binge watching some TV show. A side table that I’d been given from my parents, via a grandmother. The plates that came from another grandparent. A table we’d found at an estate sale, that was designed for lots of plants, with lots of little bits sticking out to put pots on. It was funny, when I went and looked at all that was there, I realized that there were no keep sakes from her side of the family at all. No hand-me-downs or anything. Nothing with history. Clue number one, right there, that I’d just entirely missed.
For a vehicle, I had a Kia SUV, a small single sculling rower, an actual larger fishing boat with an outboard motor, and a small Harley Davidson motorcycle I used on occasion. The house came with an external two-car garage, and a very small boathouse on the jetty, just large enough to house the fishing boat during the winter months.
I’d filled my time trying various hobbies, determining that if I did work again, it would be something I wanted to do, rather than something I had to do. While I didn’t look back at the financial analysis, I did use what I’d learned in my own money management. The money from the UK went through several different accounts at different banks, and by the time it ended up in its final destination, in a bank in Jersey, there was no way anyone would have been able to trace it. It was mine and no one was going to be able to claw it back.
I’d tried learning to fish, and while I could do it, I found it a bit too melancholy for my tastes. It took just the right day and mood for me to take the larger boat out and start casting. The rowing I’d enjoyed, and I did that daily on the water, if I could. If it was storming out, or in the depths of winter, I used my machine I had in the second bedroom, while watching episodes of Stargate SG1 on the big TV I had mounted in that room.
I was still doing the photography, but now just for kicks. I’d even started doing astrophotography, once I realized that the telescope I’d bought could be converted into basically a large lens for the digital Canon I had bought. It was nice to get back to that, even if I wasn’t doing the stock photography thing much anymore. I did sell some of the prints I did of the moon and other planets.
I’d tried writing, since that’s what people did in my position, right? Yeah, I confirmed my original decision to move into financial management because my efforts were not good, to be kind to myself. I gave that up pretty fast and just bought a kindle paperwhite and read what other people wrote instead.
That said, I did find my reading material changed a lot. Before, if I read a book, it was usually fiction, often an adventure novel or sometimes science fiction. Now, I was reading nonfiction and particularly stuff to do with the intelligence business. I wanted to know more about Clarissa’s world, what she did in it and so on.
I tried bowling, but both the leg and the fingers made that really hard to be competitive. I did slightly better at shooting; I was in the US, might as well make use of that fact. I bought a Glock 9mm and went to the range just to see if I could hit the side of a barn. I soon discovered that like most things, it was all about a few good bits of advice starting out, and a lot of practice.
Among other things, I did travel this newly adopted country of mine. I saw places I’d always wanted to; I went to New York and saw The Book Of Mormon on Broadway. I went to Washington D.C. and spent three days in the bowels of the Smithsonian. I hiked down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and then took a helicopter ride to Las Vegas, where I spent several days haunting various Casinos. I did a grand tour of California, from San Diego up to San Francisco in a convertible. I ate sugared donuts and shrimp po’boys in New Orleans. I went to see the Cubs play at Wrigley Field, and I walked the grassy knoll in Dallas. I took a whale-watching cruise from Seattle, and I rode some of Route 66 on my Harley Davidson.
I enjoyed my time, even if it was mostly solitary. I soon learned there was a difference between lonely and being alone. For the most part, I was content to be alone. I found I didn’t need anyone in particular and my own insecurities and distrust stopped me from forming any really deep relationships with anyone, platonic or otherwise. That’s not to say I didn’t have friends; there were people I could hang out with if I made the trip into town, and I even hosted a BBQ or two myself on my property and took some guys out fishing. But I was in no hurry to really connect with anyone. I wasn’t looking for it, and I wasn’t putting myself in a position where it was likely to happen.
I did wonder if I should seek out counseling or therapy, but then, what could I say? I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, that was for sure. If they believed it, which I highly doubted, then what? There was no way to corroborate my story, and even if there was, the UK government would Not Be Amused by any revelations I might make, even if they were for my own mental health benefit. And if you can’t actually be honest with therapists, then their usefulness was limited, that much I did know.
In the end, I just kept schtum (it’s a British expression, look it up!) and grew out my hair, to cover my ear. While the rebuild was actually fairly decent, and did actually help with hearing, the actual skin didn’t look quite right. It was a bit too shiny, and people who met me could tell something was off, but not exactly what it was, till they realized it was the ear. It was just easier to grow out my hair and cover it and be done talking about it.
So, I just lived my life and enjoyed it as much as I could, even if it was a little empty at times. Holidays, in particular, were hard. Days like Fourth of July or Thanksgiving were usually okay, because they weren’t my holidays, days I’d grown up with being special. But Guy Fawkes, Christmas, New Year, those were harder. I tried heading to a bar for New Year, see how the Americans did it, but it was noisy, and everyone was already in groups. I learned very quickly how easy it was to be very alone in a large crowd.
I give all these details so you get the idea of where I was mentally, and what my life was like, when the first of three incidents that changed the direction of my life, post USA move, occurred.
The first happened abruptly, without warning and gave context I didn’t know I actually wanted. Needed, is more like it. I thought I’d put that part of my life behind me, in fact. But past deeds have a way of forcing themselves into current consciousness. Or some shit like that. I need to read less Deepak Chopra and more Steven King, I think.
It was a Sunday, in May. We’d come out of the winter cold and were in the middle temperatures between winter and summer. It was perfect weather, in fact. I’d driven into the southwestern edge of Salisbury, to a small diner that did a terrific breakfast, and I’d tucked into my muesli, followed by ham, lobster, mushroom and avocado (yes! Even on this side of the country!) omelet, and I’d literally just paid the bill at the cash desk, tipping Mabel the waitress fifteen dollars when I heard a voice from my past behind me and without thinking, I turned round. I noticed it mainly because it was another British accent, and I hadn’t heard one in the flesh in some months. You can’t help but turn around when you hear one when you are an ex-pat.
The voice I’d only heard once before in my life, for like five minutes, yet it was etched into my consciousness like the seventeen-thousand-year-old drawings on the cave walls in France. It was the voice of The Major.
As I turned, I saw that he was standing in front of a booth, where a woman and two children were seated, and while he was looking at me, he was talking to them.
“Lucas!” he exclaimed, in an amazed voice, using my assumed name, directing his attention to me. “I had no idea you were around!”
He moved in close to me, put his arms around me to hug me and whispered in my ear, “Play along. Follow my lead.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and stepped back, a big smile on his face. “If you are here and you tracked me down, it’s got to be something important right?”
His smile dimmed and he turned to the blond woman who had now struggled out of the booth and was standing next to him, a pinched look on her face. The two children were next to her, one barely toddling, and the other more like a three- or four-year-old, gazing up at me. Clearly, they were little versions of the Major. His family, perhaps? That was interesting. I didn’t think field agents were allowed families. God knows the one I was married to sure didn’t seem to.
“Dear, this is Lucas Ferring. He’s a… well, a client, of sorts. If he’s tracked me down here, he obviously has something important to impart.”
“Is this work, Darrell? We had an agreement…” her voice was surprisingly nasally and high pitched and she was clearly pissed off, arms folded, her whole-body language radiating her annoyance.
“Yes, I’m sorry, dear. This is probably something I need to deal with. It’s not my choice. My old mucker Lucas here clearly needs me to know something, and it may impact other things that are going on. I promise, just an hour, hour and a half, tops.”
He was almost pleading with her. Some field agent he was, henpecked by his wife.
She scowled at me and said, “Is this true? You couldn’t just leave him alone while he’s on his holiday, could you?”
I literally didn’t get a word in edgewise. I spread my hands before saying, well, I don’t know what, really. But ‘Darrell’ — the Major — got there first.
“Don’t blame him, hon. That’s not fair. Obviously, whatever it is, it’s critical and can probably impact other things that are going on. You know there are several pots boiling right now, we probably just need to turn the heat down on one of them, right Lucas?”
I just nodded and didn’t say a word. It seemed safest.
“Look, take the kids. Go check out that Farmers’ Market down the street? The one with the stalls with all that old stuff? Please, dear. I know this isn’t what we planned, but it’s only an hour and a half. It’s obviously important. I’ll meet you right back here in ninety minutes.” It was half whining, half instructing. I could almost admire it, if I didn’t already know he was a master at this kind of bullshit.
His unnamed wife sniffed, and then put her hand out and said, simply, “Keys.”
The Major fished them out of his coat pocket, handed them over, and then said, “I’ll text you when I’m on my way, and you can wander back here, okay? Kids, be good for your mother. I’ll see you shortly.”
Then he turned to me, and said, “Okay Lucas, this is your show, shall we?” and he gestured at the door.
I just nodded again and turned to go. “Oh wait,” he said, as his wife and kids streamed out past me.
“Need to pay the bill first!” he quipped, smiling and holding up his wallet.
As he walked to the desk, I followed, and he paid quickly, watching out the window as his family climbed into a small SUV and then pulled out into traffic.
“Okay,” he said, turning to me. “I know you have questions, and I’m here to answer them. I have, as you heard, about ninety minutes, so, let’s get somewhere private, and we can talk.”
We walked outside, and I was glad I’d brought the SUV into town that morning, instead of the Harley. Wondering what the hell I was doing, we climbed in and I decided the best thing to do was head for home. It was, after all, only ten minutes away. I did have a nice deck, facing the water, and it was private.
Apparently, the Major — Darrell? — seemed to know all about, as he mentioned, “Let’s go look at your view! I understand it’s quite nice? Water and all that?”
I held my tongue as we drove, uncharacteristically. I had learned from those years in captivity, don’t volunteer anything you don’t have to. Let him do the talking.
He didn’t say much on the journey, which is just as well, as I was stewing quite nicely. What the hell was he doing here? How had he found me? What did he want? What was all that bullshit with his family? Were they even his family? Or some sort of cover, like I was for Clarissa?
We arrived quickly and I drove in, parked, and we got out.
He looked around. “Yes, nice place! The pictures I saw don’t do it justice.”
“Pictures?” I asked, as I opened the front door.
“Well yes. You don’t think they aren’t watching, do you? They need to be sure. Whether it’s that you are a good boy or that you are actually having a decent life, I don’t know. Probably more of the former than the latter, if I am any judge,” he replied, cheerfully, as though it was no big deal. Well for him it probably wasn’t.
“Let’s have a beer?” he suggested, and waved at the window, “I’m not driving, and I doubt you will want to after all I have to say. Let’s sit out there and enjoy the rest of the morning. I’ll get an Uber back into town, later, okay?”
I grabbed two LandSharks and followed him outside, where I had two Adirondack chairs, just outside the back sliding door.
“Ahh,” he said, dropping into one chair and taking a long drag. “This is the life. You landed in clover here, Richard. Sorry, Lucas.”
He shifted a little, and I just remained mute, waiting for whatever he had to say. He shifted in the chair again, a little uncomfortably.
“Okay, well. What to tell you? Errr, first things first. I am no longer with the security services. I left just over two years ago. Obviously, the family thing took off, the kids and so on. Right now, I work for myself. I do some security consulting, training bodyguards, protect against corporate espionage, that sort of thing. Set a thief to catch a thief, so to speak. I do keep my ear to the ground, and pass around some information when it comes through me. Still keep up with lots of contacts, you know how it is. Not officially working for anyone, but unofficially, working for everyone, sort of thing. It keeps me busy and the money coming in.”
He stopped to take another drag in the bottle, and then continued. “The wife knows what I used to do, and has some idea of what I do now, which is why she wasn’t surprised when you suddenly popped up. That sort of thing happens. She’s just mad that it happened on our holiday. And yes, this was no coincidence, as I’m sure you’ve surmised. We, — I, — came here, expressly to see you.”
He stopped and looked at me, presumably to see how I was taking this. Given the last time I’d seen him, he’d extolled my ex-wife to shoot me, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with him. And he could see that.
“Look, I’m not here to harm you, or destroy your tranquility or anything. I’m here because… well, when we last met, I was of a different mindset, shall we say. Things have changed a lot since then, family, wife, moving occupations. I have a very different perspective on what happened now than I did then. I know I said some things that were… well, while they were technically right, they were designed to hurt and for that, I do apologize.”
I wondered how I felt about that. Did it make any difference? Not to me, but it probably did for him. Whatever.
Encouraged I hadn’t started shouting at him yet, he carried on. “Lucas, there’s some background you need to understand who I…, who Clarissa was. Is. Well, she probably is, but I’m not. Look, this is just confusing. Let me back up and explain some of the way the world is. You’ll understand better if I do that.”
He settled back, took another pull on the beer, and stared out over the estuary past my property.
“I was career MI6. So was Clarissa. Some of what she told you, her background story, was true. Some was not. Her mother is not still living. She died when Clarissa was seven. She never knew her father, who was career Navy, and who died during the Falklands war. The woman you met was one of our old staff women, who retired. She still kept her hand in, doing odd tailing jobs for us, acting the part for cover stories, that sort of thing. Much as she did for you. Clarissa was recruited at university, as was I. I went to Hertfordshire University. We were two years apart in age, her being older.
“Now, while we are part of the security apparatus, most of the field agents come from the services, usually from the intelligence groups. I came via the Army. Clarissa came in cold, although she holds rank in the Air Force, despite never having actually been in it. It’s a weird services thing, a holdover from the original SOE group in World War Two. Rank doesn’t actually mean much in the field; I’ve given orders to generals before, and they obey them because they know I have the experience and they don’t. Clarissa is now a full Colonel rank, by the way, in case you were interested. That’s about as high as it goes when you are still in the field. She may well get to General if she sticks it out, but by then, she’ll be running a desk, designing ops rather than running them.
“So how do I fit in all this?” I asked, interjecting for the first time. “Seems to me the last thing she’d need is a husband?”
“Well, for that, I need to give yet more background. Sorry, lots of knowledge required to understand how that came to be.”
He paused, another large gulp of beer, and an examination of the bottle, to see how much was left. Not enough, obviously. “Thirsty work this, perhaps another?”
“Got get it yourself,” I grunted, sipping mine more sparingly. He gave me a mirthless grin, and jumped and sauntered into the kitchen, returning with another bottle.
After settling, he continued.
“Okay, Lucas. So, I don’t know what you know about the realities of working as a field agent for British Intelligence, but it’s not like it is on TV or in the movies. We don’t go out there, infiltrating super villains and their organizations, and sleeping with lots of exotic women, while killing people left right and center. Field agents, or operators, as we are called, are used sparingly and with specific situations. We recruit specific targets, for example. Once recruited, they are handed over to a handler, who works for a spymaster, who handles a specific ring of human assets. They can be anywhere from an office cleaner to the spouse of an officer, to the officer themselves, and any level in between. Anywhere we see a chink, an angle to go after. For some it’s money, for some ideology, for some it’s love or sex or lust, or even orientation. Everyone we deal with has a lever, and it’s up to us to find it and use it. That’s one aspect of being an operator.
“We have other functions too. We escort assets out of dangerous situations, where they’ve become untenable, and yet still have value to us. Sometimes we are sent in to recover information that an asset cannot give to us directly, for one reason or another. I’m sure you can see that an operator’s remit can be broad and wide. We aren’t double-oh-bullshit, but we do have skill sets, and we do go into extremely volatile and dangerous situations. And inevitably, at some point, your luck runs out. We all know that, going in.
“But, we are all very gung ho, and all very patriotic, but between you and me, we are also a bunch of raving self-absorbed narcissists who believe we are just better than the opposition, and want to prove it. And the bosses know that, and use it. Now I’m out and looking back, it’s more obvious than ever to me.
“However, it’s also an extremely insular occupation. You can’t share it with anyone, except fellow operators. You are trained to lie, and lie well, and it becomes second nature. You are always weaving people away from any kind of truth, as you see it. You do become paranoid, but often with good reason. But, and this is the biggie, you lose contact with regular people. You can’t be open with anyone, up to and including your family. And then couple that with the fact that you can effectively find out anything about anyone you want. Plus the access to technology no one else has, and that your whole job is to fool the other guy, well… is it any wonder that as time goes on, field agents lose touch with the society they are actually doing stuff for?
“You’ll hear a lot of crap about how noble these operators are, putting their lives on the line for freedom and the common man, and it’s all just that. Crap. You very quickly lose sight of the people you are doing this for, because you have nothing in common with them, and you are all so far superior to them anyway. It becomes about the mission, and outwitting the other side, who are the same as you. It becomes a means to its own end. It’s not about ‘The Big Picture'”, here, he used air quotes, “because you never see that anyway. You are doing the bidding of whatever political wind is blowing at the time. Taking the chance to one-up the opposition. Proving you are better than they are. That’s what it all comes down to, – a huge dick comparing contest, regardless of whether or not either person has a dick at all. Given it’s all one massive echo chamber internally, well, you can imagine how prevalent and agreed upon that thinking becomes. It becomes a very much ‘Them and Us’ mentality.”
He stopped, took another swig, and looked off into the distance.
“Lots of operators never come out of that mindset.”
He sighed and added, “I did though. Thankfully.”
“Anyway, given the atmosphere of how the work gets done, it will surprise you not one iota that there are a lot of burnouts and people who lose the plot. Now, when an operator loses it, it’s not like in the movies. They don’t suddenly turn evil and try and ransom the world. No, they tend to check out mentally, and start writing their memoirs with a particular political slant, or they start propagating conspiracy theories about lizards running the world. They don’t become arch nemeses, they become a problem of encapsulation. Of discrediting. Of losing yet another trained resource and having to replace them.
“So, how to combat that? Well, this is where you come in. Or your ilk, anyway. The thinking at the trick cyclists’ level was this. If people are becoming isolated from the common populace, then they need reminding of this. An attachment to the people they are doing what they are doing for, so to speak. People like you, old chap.”
“So, I was what, an emotional support husband?” I answered, both fascinated and appalled, at the same time.
“Well, that’s one way to look at it, I suppose,” mused the Major, dubiously. “I think the intent was more to be a grounding rod. To give the operator a grounding in reality. Of what life is really like for everyone else. An outlet to be ‘normal’, whatever that is. I mean, an operator’s life is anything but normal. Everything is a performance. All true intentions hidden. All that sort of thing. The idea, as I understood it, was to have an axis of life where that wasn’t true. Where they could relax a little, and be who they are deep inside, rather than who they think they have to project themselves to be, in order to get the job done. You get the gist.”
I did. It was revolting, but yes, I did get it.
“You were actually part of the pilot program, in fact. Clarissa and four other operators were tasked with finding a mate. Someone they could connect with. Someone where they didn’t have to be an operator, as much as a partner. She went through four or five people before she met you. You turned out to be, as she put it, ‘perfect fodder’. Yes, I know,” he interjected as I slammed my beer down, angrily. “I know. Not a nice way to categorize you at all. I get that, now. But you have to understand, at the time, we all thought this was a stupid idea, and treated it as though it were a mission. Something to be completed, but not something to invest in emotionally, right? So we went out, we did it, and then… well… the higher-ups knew that we’d treat it with contempt, but they figured that you can’t stay in a relationship, one that is loving, and make it work without it actually working, right? I mean, you can’t treat the other person with contempt because they are a mark, without them feeling that. You have to treat them as though they are your other half, and over time, that becomes a reality. That was the idea, anyway.”
He took another sip and then looked at me directly. “And what’s more, it worked. It did for Clarissa, it did for me, hell, you can see how it’s still working for me.”
“Does it matter if it worked for me?” I asked, picking up my bottle again, not really giving a shit what he thought of my question. “It’s nice that I got picked. Was I just the right level of naive? Was I just gullible enough? Just that right amount of stupid to not ask questions or notice anything?”
“Well, that’s where it all fell down, isn’t it? The brief was all about the expensive to train and mentally fragile operators, not the poor saps chosen to prop them up. There was very little consideration of that part of the equation, to be honest. I mean, some of what you just said is, unfortunately true. The partner did have to be someone who was not naturally suspicious. Who would trust, once that relationship was established. Not stupid per se, just… not that observant. I’m sorry to say it, but you fit the profile, and more importantly, Clarissa liked you. Right from the word go.
“They did quite a deep dive on you, to make sure you were who you said you were. There was even a profile study performed, so Clarissa would know how to handle you. What your triggers were. When she needed to give way. Relationship crib sheet, so to speak. We all had one on our prospective partners.”
“Jesus,” I hissed, bitterly.
“Well, again, it sounds pretty awful I know, but you need to look at it from a different point of view. They were trying to make your relationship frictionless. Trying to remove points of contention before they began. I mean, if every marriage had this on entry, for both sides, can you imagine how many more successful ones there would be? Sure, in this case, the reasons for it are far from altruistic, but the practical effect, well, what difference does it make why it was done? The end result is what mattered, on both sides. It made for a more harmonious relationship. Nothing to complain about there.”
“Well, yes, you would say that, if you are the side that gets these little reports. It’s less than respectful to those of us who just thought we were working it out for ourselves.”
The Major coughed slightly and looked away. “Well, yes, that’s true too. I do forget, sometimes, that I’m now on the outside too.”
There was silence for a while. We both drank and kept our council.
Eventually I broke it.
“Was any of it true?” I asked, the only question that really mattered, when it came down to it. “Did she ever love me?”
He looked back at me, and for once, I could see the contrition on his face.
“I don’t know for sure. I think so. You’d have to ask her. I know I ended up in love with my wife. I can only imagine what it was for her. The reality is, we didn’t talk about this kind of thing at work. I mean, how can you? We are supposed to be hard-bitten operators. It’s just not the kind of thing you broach as a discussion topic when you are cleaning your silencer, you know?”
A thought occurred to me. “Did she kill people?”
The Major shifted again, uncomfortably. “I can’t really go into details. I know you signed the Secrets Act, but that only is in effect in the UK. Let’s just say, we were trained for all eventualities, and sometimes those come up, and leave it at that.”
I nodded glumly. She had then. Great. Who the hell had I been married to?
“So, I suppose when I blew up that operation, the whole thing got shut down?”
The Major laughed. “Oh hells, no. You were considered their greatest success!”
“I what?” I demanded, confused.
“You were proof that an operator could carry on a relationship, and make it work. You quite literally laid down your life for your wife, even after discovering her situation. That was considered the pinnacle of success. You loved her so much, you would do that.”
“It’s not like I had a lot of choice,” I pointed out. “It’s not like I had a lot of options. I was shot in the leg.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” replied the Major, bemused. “Don’t sell yourself short. You could have sold us out, or yelled for the police, or something else, I don’t know what. Instead, even after I suggested to your wife that she leave you, or worse, shoot you, you took the gun and protected us as we escaped. Even though we’d failed in our mission. That took real guts. And it’s taken me this long to recognize exactly what you did, and the price you paid for that, for no reason than you loved your wife. Honestly, I thought at the time, what a wimp! How easily fooled! And then I left the service, and took a long look at my life, and the things I’ve done, and then my wife, and then my kids as they came along, and re-evaluated a lot of things.
“That’s why I’m here. I realize now that I owe you my life. If you hadn’t done what you did, the Saudis would have taken us all, and God knows what secrets we may have spilled. They are very good at getting the truth out of people. You are owed by the people who screwed you over, above and beyond what the service paid for your silence. So I’m here to fill you in and give you at least some of the background on what happened, and why. You deserve at least that. I can’t go into everything, mainly because I don’t know everything but still, what I do know I’ll share.”
He took a deep breath, looking over the water, and then turned to me, and looking into my eyes, unblinking, with what looked like a tear in one eye, he said, slowly, “Thank you for my life. I don’t know how else to say it.”
I mean, how do you respond to that? I couldn’t say “Think nothing of it” or “It was nothing” because it fucking was. I lost two years of my life to this, plus torture, and now I was effectively someone else. And I still was no closer to really understanding who my wife actually was.
Easier to just nod, awkwardly. That’s what us British do best, isn’t it? Never acknowledge a thank you? Too much drama. Stiff upper lip in all situations.
In an effort to change the subject, I asked, “So did things change after I blew whatever it was you were doing? What was that, anyway?”
“Ahh, that’s an area I can’t really go into. Plausible deniability. Let’s just say that Clarissa was going to get some information we dearly wanted to have, and leave it at that. Safer for everyone, including you. Anyway, no. Things didn’t change. Well, not drastically, anyway.”
“No?” I exclaimed, surprised. “I blew up something because I didn’t know what was going wrong. My wife lied to me, and I caught it, and then I followed her, and well…”
“Well, what has changed is that now, when marriage is in the offing for an operator, their partner is brought in and briefed. Not before some leverage is either obtained or generated, of course.”
“Leverage?” I asked, disgustedly. “They have to force them into marriage, if they don’t want it, after they are told the truth?”
“No, it’s for prevention of them revealing the truth, if they take it badly. Look, you are just told your wife to be is a spy, and has lied to you. Naturally, most people are fairly pissed off at that. There’s nothing then to stop them from going to the press. ‘My life with the spy who loved me!’ The Sun would LOVE that as a headline. No, the leverage is just to stop them from revealing all, if they are that pissed off. Honestly, most are surprised, a little angry, but mostly they think it’s cool! That’s the major change. Now, it’s all about supporting ‘our brave agents in the field.'”
I sighed. “Well, I’m so glad I could help facilitate such a change,” I said in a depressed voice.
“Yes,” sighed the Major. “I know, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting your unique perspective on the whole thing. It’s not quite so cool when you are on the receiving end of it, I’m sure. Speaking of you blowing up the operation, how did that come about exactly? We never completely pieced it together. I know the group will have debriefed you after you were found, but I never saw that report.
“Clarissa knew that at the surprise dinner at the Dorchester, when she saw the table full of disrobed Arab princes show up, she had to get out of there. As much so the op wasn’t blown as much as to preserve your relationship, sorry to say. They already knew her in her operational persona, and it all would have blown up if they’d seen her. She thought she got out in time, and she hightailed it to the office, explained what had happened, we came up with a story we thought you’d go for, tinged with truth as it was, and then she thought it had blown over.
“And then you showed up at the gathering.” He looked at me, intently.
“Well, she didn’t get out of the dinner date unseen. That table full of princes sent us a bottle of very expensive wine, to a Miss Davies. And she didn’t go straight home, either. Her phone wasn’t turned on. They had talked about meeting her Wednesday. Clearly, she didn’t want to see someone, she bolted the moment that lot showed up. When I confronted Clarissa, she didn’t mention why a group of strange Arabs would be sending her wine or calling her by a different name. And that bullshit about her sitting in a park, thinking things over? That was just a crap story. So yeah, suspicions were spooked and I followed her that day, to see what she did. See if there was any truth to the whole Wednesday thing. I got in to the place dressed as a bike courier. And the rest you know.”
“Oh, that explains so much. I knew we shouldn’t have followed through on the op that day. Too many variables in play. But Clarissa was dead set on it. She was convinced she had you in the palm of her hand. Once we got away, we were confused. Were you part of the Saudis’ plan? Had you been turned? Had someone else got to you? We had no information at all.”
He paused, and then glanced over at me.
“She never believed you were dead, you know. Despite what we were told, she never bought into it. You are free because she didn’t believe it. Oh, we were warned off, of course. The service had people watching the venue and the embassy, and police swarmed the venue almost instantly. You weren’t being kept there, if you were still alive. But you weren’t seen going into the embassy either. The higher-ups concluded that you’d been taken to some safe house and… disposed of. So nothing of you would ever be found. The Saudis specialize in that. We still don’t know how they got you into the embassy in the first place. But, if you were somewhere, it would have been there. Clarissa knew it, as we all did.
“We were debriefed, and then given new assignments, and told not to look back. Clarissa was stone-cold. She ended up a legend in the service because of it. The woman who left her husband in front of the enemy, for the mission. She’s untouchable and spoken of with awe because of it. The stone-cold bitch.”
He glanced over at me again, out of the corner of his eye. I just sat, immobile, staring at the water, jaw set.
“But that was all a front. She worked tirelessly when she was in this country, and often when not. She was pulled up three times and written up. She spent all her time doing her best to ferment rebellion against the Saudi regime in the UK. It didn’t matter how or who, she was just stirring the pot. She’s very good at that, remember. She whipped up sentiment and got others to stand up and rabble-rouse, and it ended up with the embassy being stormed. Not before she’d surreptitiously taken out a few of the armed guards there, to make it easier. The Saudis have never dropped the ball on personal protection, and never shied away from using force when they have to, and so when the mob had gathered, she had to make it easier for them to gain entry, and so she did.
“She was there, when they broke in and stormed through. She was in the building when they found you, and she was the one who called the ambulance. She is the reason you are still alive. And the British Services know it, everyone does. But no one will call her out on it. It’s all just swept under the rug.
“You turned up alive, and then the government had to figure out what to do with you. They made a concerted effort to offer you something. Like I said, they weren’t altogether without empathy for how you’d been used, or what you’d been through. They don’t want to make a bad situation worse. And if Clarissa had gotten any hint that you weren’t taken care of… well, she’s a feared woman in that group, let me tell you. She would have been watching everything like a hawk.”
He trailed off, clearly not knowing what to say next. I sat, silently for a moment, digesting everything he’d said. There was a lot of information that felt right in what he’d delivered, but I didn’t know how it changed how I felt right then.
“So, if she cares so much, where is she?” I asked, looking unblinkingly at him. “Why are you here, telling me all this, instead of her?”
He shifted yet again, and picked up the second bottle, popped the cap and drank deeply.
“Because she’s scared. She’s terrified of you,” he said, eventually.
“Oh, I find that hard to believe,” I scoffed. “Big bad secret agent woman, who destabilizes regimes? Why the hell would she be afraid of me?”
“Because I think she loves you. Because you are the embodiment of everything she’s failed at. She manipulated you from the start. She lied to you. She betrayed you with her body, multiple times while you were married. She walked away from you when a situation she created put you in danger. What she did to you, callously, and with aforethought, pierces every possible rationalization she has for what she does. It exposes her to herself for what she is. A glorified thrill seeker, who doesn’t care who she hurts as long as she gets her buzz.
“She can’t possibly face you and continue to be who she has built herself to be. So she won’t. Oh, she’ll read the reports and manipulate from the shadows, but she can’t see you in person, because then she’ll be face-to-face with what she’s caused.”
He paused and took multiple drags from the bottle.
“At least, that’s what I think,” he said, burping after swallowing it all. “What do I know though? You’d best ask her yourself, if you ever see her. She’ll be honest with you, and she won’t with anyone else.”
“Is she…” I hesitated a bit before carrying on. Did I really want to know? “Is she still working for the government? You know, an agent.”
“Last I heard, yes. Last thing she told me was she was working as an instructor, training the next generation of field agents. Apparently, they are terrified of her, with her reputation and all.”
I nodded, although I don’t know why. “Figures.”
“She won’t talk about you, you know. People ask her and she always sidesteps the question. You’re like this walled off subject. Even to her superiors. I think everyone has learned to just not ask at this point.”
“Is she going out with anyone?” I asked, again, not knowing if I really wanted to know the answer.
“Hard to tell with her. All very private. Nothing on the books though, so if she is, it’s all on the down low. Doubtful though. I know she doesn’t do any swallow ops anymore though?”
“Do I even want to know what that kind of operation is?” I asked, taking a swig myself.
“Probably not,” the Major replied, with a small grin on his face.
He glanced at his watch and grunted. “Okay, well, my time is up. There’s only so long Fiona will wait for me. She’s annoyed enough as it is. I gotta go.”
He pulled his phone out and loaded up an app. “Just organizing an Uber. You don’t have to drive me anywhere. I suspect you’ll just want to sit and think about everything I had to say.”
He fiddled with the phone a little longer and then exclaimed, “There. Eight minutes out.”
He glanced over at me and then said, slowly, “Look, Lucas. I can’t apologize for her, or her choices, but it may help if you look at her as somewhat of a victim of all this, as are you.”
I made a ‘huh’ noise, and said, “Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously. She chose this life, but it’s cost her. Cost her a lot. No husband, no kids, and no prospect of any at this point. She has no family except those she’s decided are, inside the service. And honestly, most of them don’t survive. It doesn’t pay to get too close, you know.”
He paused, and finished the last of his bottle.
“She didn’t ask for this, she was ordered into it. She was ordered to deceive you. Now, I grant you, she still did it, and betrayed the relationship you thought you had, but three things I’ll say. The first is, you did have a good relationship with her, right up till you didn’t. Until you knew, she was everything you wanted, right?”
He just stared at me, till I nodded, somewhat reluctantly.
“Secondly, if you want to be really angry at someone, be angry at the people who thought that manipulating you was the right thing to do. I know for a fact she didn’t want to do it, but the mission comes first, so she did. And she did a damn good job of it, protecting you from her world, as much as protecting your own perception of your relationship.”
He paused again, staring at me. I didn’t nod this time. I had my own thoughts on that.
“And lastly, they were right. She was better for everything you brought to the table. Her connection with the real world solidified almost overnight. All the potential issues of losing touch with reality were utterly gone. She knew what she had and she was going to protect it at all costs. She knew for what she was doing what she was doing, – you were her reason to do it. I am convinced that she really did love you. I just feel like it was all just… mismatched. She loved you, you loved her, you just weren’t able to be matched up in all channels of life. It’s fucking tragic, and it played out so terribly. And I’m sorry. For what they did to you, for what she did to you, and for what I helped to do to you.”
His phone beeped and he glanced down at it. “My ride is here. I’m going to go. You won’t see me again, Lucas, but again, thank you for my life. I hope yours gets better. Get out there and start living it, and stop living in the past. There’s too much life yet to be lived, mate. Thanks for the beer.”
He stood up, raised his hand, and walked around the side of the house to where, presumably, the Uber was waiting.
I didn’t get up. I stared at the water, wondering what I was supposed to feel now.
The second thing that redirected my life was meeting Susan. Susan, sometimes Susanna, occasionally Sue, but never Susie. That’s what her ex-husband used to call her, and she was not having that from anyone.
We met at the nearest bar to my house, Scruffy Ducks. Why it was called that, I’ve no idea, but US bars all have much stranger names than I was used to. Back home, pubs are all The King’s Head or The Dolphin Hotel or stuff like that. Here, it’s all “Irwin’s Bar” or clever names, like “Whiskey A GoGo”. This one was Scruffy Ducks.
It wasn’t quite a dive bar, – I learned later that one of the hallmarks of a dive bar is no windows, and this one had a row of big windows you could sit in, – but it wasn’t far off. It clearly had been a classier establishment sometime prior; you could tell it had the bones of a nice place. Wooden carved bar, mirrors behind the bar, decent toilets, even a little kitchen I learned about later that was now closed for the duration. It even had an outside area, all along the front, where you could have a beer and watch the world go by.
There was a couple of inevitable flat-screen TVs, but there was also an honest-to-God real dartboard, none of that plastic rubbish, two pool tables and even a couple of cocktail arcade games. It was quite the classic American Bar.
But it was also quite run down. Clearly, no money had been invested in it in quite some time. It just looked worn and tired and used up.
Since I arrived in the US, I’d decided to try and follow one of the American sports. I’d followed my beloved Arsenal back home, but trying to see a UK game in a bar in the US was pretty much a nonstarter, so in the interests of ‘being someone else’, I thought I’d try one of the ones the US makes such a fuss about.
I did look at baseball, but after going to a game, I realized two things. The first being, ‘this is Rounders,’ a game played by kids back home. I mean, it absolutely is, exact same rules. Sure, this is a bit more hard hitting, harder ball, longer bat and so on, but essentially the same game. And the second was that people attending a baseball game tend to spend as much time facing away from where the game was happening as they did facing it. As a game, it’s slower than even cricket, which is saying something. So that didn’t happen.
Then I looked at Ice Hockey, and that looked good, except there wasn’t a local team to follow, at least nothing local in the NHL. So that left… the NFL or the NBA. There was the Philadelphia Eagles, but I honestly didn’t really understand the rules or strategies of the NFL — it looked a bit like Rugby, but it definitely wasn’t Rugby, so I left that alone.
That left the NBA. Locally, the closest were the Philadelphia 76ers or the Washington Wizards, neither of which had covered themselves with glory in the last few years. So I said Sod It, and decided to watch as many games as I could before I decided on a team to support.
Now, as any true fan knows, you watch these games among other people. Or close friends, and that was a problem since I didn’t have any, so in a bar it was. And that bar ended up being Scruffy Ducks. The bar staff there were surly and not given to chatting or being sociable, but the drinks were cheap and the local regulars not particularly volatile, even when drunk.
One of the nice things was that I could use my motor bike to get there, since it was only a couple of miles from my house, and it was all back roads, so if I had a few drinks, I was relatively okay riding home. Unless it was pouring, in which case it was an Uber, all the way.
I had been in the bar a few times when I met Sue. She came in after I was sitting with a few of the regulars, feeding them drinks and soaking up all they had to say about NBA teams, and she ended up joining us, since she knew all those locals. We were introduced, and then she proceeded to let me know all of her opinions on NBA teams, players, locales, stadiums and potential bed partner skills of some of those aforementioned players.
She was quite fun. Spirited. Red hair, although I later learned, out of a bottle. ‘The carpet doesn’t match the drapes’, the charming phrase the yanks have for that particular situation, I had been informed. She was older than I was, by about two or three years, but she sure didn’t look it. Think a younger Reba McIntyre, and you are close. She had a lived-in face and attitude. Didn’t suffer fools gladly, and said what she thought. Just didn’t give much of a rat’s ass what anyone else thought about her belief set. ‘Rat’s Ass’ is another one of those charming American phrases I had learned to appreciate.
I saw her again a few days later, when I stopped in for a drink. The more I stopped in, the more I noticed her there. I started to wonder if she had a drinking problem, the amount she was in there, until I found out her story.
After that initial meeting, she’d usually wander over to wherever I was sitting, bring her coke or her water or, in extreme cases, beer and sit with me. We’d have some pretty fun talks, like our upbringing. Because she was pure USA and I was pure UK, we’d have very dissimilar histories, and I educated her on The Magic Roundabout, Trumpton and Blue Peter, and she’d explain to me Sears Toughskins, Captain Kangaroo and Schoolhouse Rock.
We’d talk about sports and movies and all sorts of things. I’d forgotten how nice it was to hang out with a good-looking lady and just… be there. Talking a lot of crap, on my part anyway, but still.
I learned about her situation, that she actually owned the bar, at least on paper. She and her ex had owned it together after she inherited it from her father. He’d bought in and they’d run it together. It hadn’t taken that long before he’d turned out to be a fairly weak landlord, with a penchant for gambling, badly. He’d gotten involved in some poker game in Boston, while up there for a visit with friends, and lost. Heavily. To the tune of tens of thousands.
He’d fled back to Salisbury, thinking he’d left it all behind. No such luck. The Boston group who’d been running the game had tracked him since it’s not like he’d hidden anything, and arrived in Salisbury, looking for their payout. It had not been pretty, because he’d not had the money to back up his swagger when he rolled into the game. There had been a beating, and Susan had also gotten slapped around.
In the end, he’d taken off in the dead of night. Emptied their accounts, and vanished along with his pick-up truck. And left Susan behind.
She had to deal with the representatives of the loan shark who wanted his pound of flesh. Since they couldn’t find him after he’d just vanished, they’d come after her.
She’d been beaten twice before they finally got her to sign over fifty-one percent of the bar to them. Enough that their word went, but she was still on the hook, since she was the signature on all the loans her silent partners wanted. Plus every two weeks half the alcohol bottle orders marched out the back of the bar into a waiting van, never to be seen again. She never even saw the empties.
She’d tried going to the local cops, who had basically asked her if she could prove that they beat her, that she signed off fifty-one percent under duress, and when she couldn’t they lost interest. Her suspicion was that the mob, – Irish or otherwise, – behind this lot she was dealing with, had leant on their police connections. There was clearly no help there.
So, she’d done her best. This bar was her father’s, and she still had a large interest in it. “Forty-nine percent of a bar is better than a hundred percent of nutthin’,” she’d declared, following that declaration with downing a tequila slammer. She wasn’t allowed to run the bar; the new majority shareholders put their people in, and they did the bare minimum to keep it open. No more money was spent on it, fixtures and fittings allowed to run down.
But by God, Susan wasn’t going to let it go without a fight. She cleaned it every morning, made sure booze was ordered appropriately, worked behind the bar when need be.
It was a pretty sad story, all told. Her ex never came back and she divorced him for desertion two years after he left. Since then, she’d not really been interested in, nor had the time for any kind of regular male companionship.
For my part, I told her a version of my story, – my wife had a double life, I discovered it, and in doing so, I was injured and it took a long convalescence to recover, I’d made out like a bandit financially and now I lived the life of Lord of the Manor by the water, just outside of Salisbury.
She accepted that, and while I did have to explain the bullet scar in my leg, the eye problem and the deficiency in my fingers, “Motorbike accident!”, she never asked about the ear, if she ever noticed it.
And somehow, we ended up this couple. It’s weird, we never sat down and talked about it. Never said, “We are together! We are in Love! We are a Couple!” it just… happened. Organically.
It was never a white-hot passionate thing. Oh, we had our moments of passion. She particularly liked it riding cowgirl. But we never even talked about moving in together. We just… started doing things. Together. Dinners. Movies. We drove to Washington DC and saw some shows. We took a vacation together to Florida. Stuff like that. It was soon clear to everyone else we were a couple, because we got invites to parties and some events as a pair, but… we just never moved past the “we get together, have a few laughs, sleepover sometimes, enjoy each other’s company”. We maintained separate residences and didn’t live in each other’s pockets. She had some of her own hobbies and I never interfered, and the same for me. We never even talked about being exclusive, but I know I was, and I was pretty sure she was. I never heard about any man friends, and no one ever talked about her being seen with any. It was, comfortable, that was the word. She didn’t demand of me more than I was ready to give and vice versa.
The ultimate friends with benefits, so to speak. Very close friends with benefits, perhaps?
There were times when she would look at me, as though to say something, and then change her mind. I think she dimly knew something wasn’t quite right with me. I never talked about my past in specifics, mainly because in this identity, I didn’t really have one, and I think she felt that. She may well have been wanting more, but I just wasn’t in a place to offer any. The wounds were too fresh, even though they really weren’t. The betrayal just too great. Too much unfinished business, I guess. Business that would never be resolved, either, so I was stuck in an endless loop.
I didn’t want to potentially lose what we did have, so I just didn’t rock the boat. Didn’t talk about any of these things. Never moved past that stage.
And then the third thing happened.
Clarissa showed up.
It was almost two years after I’d last seen The Major, and I had no clue she was coming. I arrived home after driving to the local grocery store, — that was a terminology thing I still hadn’t gotten used to. Back home, when you say you are going shopping, particularly groceries, you name the store you are going to. “I’m just popping down to Waitrose,” or “I’m stopping at Tesco to get some…” But here, the store is never named. “I’m going to the Store,” or “I’m going to the drug store.” It’s weird. As Shaw once famously said, “Two countries divided by a common language.”
Anyway, I had arrived home, grabbed my three paper sacks of goodies, bracing them together so one didn’t fall, kicked open my front door and walked into the kitchen, and almost dropped them when I saw her sitting in my easy chair, rotated to face the kitchen. I don’t know if the greater shock was someone in my house, or the fact that it was actually her.
I stood stock-still, staring at her, not knowing what to do. Did I put the groceries away? Where there any things that need to be refrigerated or frozen? After a second, I thought, “Sod it. My house. I’ll do what I want,” and with an effort of will I started pulling things out of one of the sacks and lining them up on the kitchen island, ready to be put away.
“Hello Rich,” she said, smiling the smile of someone who hopes you’ve forgiven them, but isn’t entirely sure. “Long time?”
I just grunted back, and pulled the tins of beans off the island and moved over to the pantry, where they were stored.
I stole glances at her as I unpacked the first bag. She looked good. Hair was now dark, cut short, almost a bob, but with a parting. Same eyes. Same mouth. A little older, a few crow’s feet around the eyes and the mouth. The nose was slightly different. Had it been broken? Surgery?
Her body was much the same, although she appeared to have a scar on the back of her left hand. No rings. What looked like a Rolex on one wrist.
Why did I care? It’s not like we had anything in common. Not anymore.
I carried on putting things away, making a point of looking away.
“Rich, I know this is a bit of a surprise. After all these years. I just…”
I stopped putting things away and turned to her, leaning on the island with both hands. “You just what? Thought you’d stop by the ex-husband… no wait, not ex-husband. We were never married legally, were we? You just thought you’d stop by because you were in the neighborhood? Yeah. Right. You are never in a neighborhood you don’t want to be in. Also,” I said, as it occurred to me, “no car? What, you walked here?”
“It’s down the lane. Old habits…” She tried to smile at me, but I wasn’t having it.
“So, why are you here?” I asked, flatly.
“We were married,” she said, softly, leaning up in the chair and coming to almost attention. “It was real. The Major didn’t know his arse from his elbow. He could be quite the prat, at times. I made sure it was real, even though I caught hell from the brass when it came to light.”
“Well hallelujah! Something was real! Wonders will never cease!” I exclaimed, swiping up the frozen peas and opening the freezer draw and smashing them down, then slamming the draw closed.
I took a deep breath. It was easy to get angry, I mean, I had cause, right? But this was a chance for some answers. The question is, what did I want to know?
Well, honestly, the question was, what didn’t I want to know?
She could see me standing stock-still, muscles locked and breathing heavily.
“I deserve that,” she said, even more quietly. “That and more.”
“Why are you here, Clarissa? Is that even your name these days?” I didn’t say it in a sneering or petulant tone. I honestly just wanted to know. If anything, a different name might make it easier to handle all this.
“I’m Donna these days,” she replied, “And you are Lucas, yes? I know, it’s hard to switch. To me, you’ll always be my Ritchie Rich. As to why I’m here, well, I wanted to see you. To see how you are doing. Just looking in on an old fr…” her voice died halfway through the word ‘friend’.
‘For a top-end spy, she sure doesn’t sound like she’s prepared for this conversation,’ I thought. But then, she’d spent years lying to me, very effectively, so evidently, she could act her way around me without me having a clue. So, was she now? But if she was, what was the point? Why bother to come here and then lie to me? I shook my head internally. Trying to consider all the possible angles was madness. I might as well take it at face value.
“Friend?” I asked. “Is that what we are now, ‘Donna’?” I emphasized her new name.
“Well, that’s up to you.”
I paused, then asked one of the few questions I really cared about.
“What exactly am I to you, Clarissa?”
She leaned forward, and her gaze slowly slid to the floor.
“Someone I care about. Someone I wronged, in the worst way. Someone I hurt. Someone I left for dead. Someone I really wish I could…” she hesitated, then looked back at me directly. “Someone I loved. And who I would like to connect with again.”
I couldn’t help but notice the past tense of love. It’s not like I was surprised. I was sure I was in the same place. I didn’t honestly know how to respond to the rest of her statements, though.
“And how do we do that, Clarissa? How do we reconnect? You left me for dead.”
“To be fair, Rich, you did tell me to,” she responded, a little tartly, pursing her lips at me.
I couldn’t argue that, so I didn’t try.
“You were everything to me,” I said to the bag of groceries, pulling over another one and starting to empty it. “I loved you with everything I had. You were one extremely skillful liar; I have to give you that.”
I paused, can of baked beans in my hand, — why are the US ‘Pork and Beans’ so crap, compared to Heinz baked beans from back home? I discovered later it was because our beans have sugar in them, which surprised me, since everything else in the US appears to be loaded with sugar and salt, unlike our stuff back home. The bread here tastes really weird, with all its additives.
I looked at her directly. “Was any of it true? Anything in our relationship real?”
This was the sixty-four-million-dollar question I’d waited years to ask.
She looked away. Great. Then she looked back at me.
“You have to understand the conditions under which I met you, Rich. It… wasn’t how you normally meet someone. I was under orders…”
I snorted. For the first time, it occurred to me that she probably didn’t know that ‘Darrell’ had visited me years before and given me his side of the story. I didn’t know if his was any more truth than hers, but it would be interesting to see if they were even remotely the same, so I decided not to tell her what I already knew.
She sighed.
“Look, I need to give you some background. I’ll answer your question, but you need to know other things to make sense of it.”
She paused, then coughed and asked, “Can I get a glass of water?”
I walked over to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and threw it to her. I was marveling at how similar her conversation was to the Major’s. Did they go to school for this? Were they operating off the same script?
After opening the bottle and taking a swig, she continued.
“So, to understand why I do what I do, you have to understand my upbringing. My father was a retired Sergeant Major, who had been all over the world. And Mother, she was a reporter. That’s how she’d met Dad. She was in Singapore, and he was stationed there. I’ve no idea why. Actually, now I say that, I should look into that. I’m not sure there was an Army battalion there? Anyway, I was the product of their union. Now Dad, well, they say that travel broadens the mind? It was the opposite for Dad. He ended up a small-minded bigot, all about the Q’s and T’s, everything just so, and sod Johnny Foreigner. Mum, well, she just went along with Dad. She was quite blinded to his faults. To her, they were all just another reason why he was a square peg in a round hole, and Mum loved that.”
She took a breath.
“They died when I was fifteen.”
“So the woman I met?” I interjected.
“Mabel. She used to be a field agent. Retired in the nineties, and then discovered like so many who had devoted their lives to the service that it was all she had. No friends, no family, just her little cottage in Brighton and her memories, that she could never share. She pestered us for small contract work, just so she could feel still part of something. Following people, I mean, who thinks they are being followed by a little old lady walking a Scottish terrier? Various small walk-on parts, like that of ‘my mum’, things like that.”
Clarissa looked off into the distance.
“She died last year. There was almost no one at her funeral. It was very sad. They couldn’t talk about her life of the medals she won, or the people she saved at all.”
She refocused her attention back to me.
“Anyway, I was always destined for the security services. It’s all I ever wanted. Listening to Dad’s stories of the things he was involved in, the incompetence, the mishandling, the pure naked aggression and greed, on both sides. I just, well, I only ever saw myself in that world. I mean, I recognized Dad’s small-mindedness right from the word go, but his stories were things he lived. I knew what I wanted to do, and I made sure I was in the right place to be recruited. It helped that when they died, – carbon monoxide poisoning because Dad left a space heater on in their bedroom that wasn’t adequately ventilated, typical Dad, – I went to my uncle’s house from the age of fifteen onwards. He was in the civil service, and he knew people. Knew what they were looking for. He could guide my ambitions, so to speak. Tell me which universities they watched, what the people they wanted would study. So I did all that, and lo and behold, in my last year, I was asked ‘how patriotic did I think I was?’ Which led to questions like ‘how far would you go?’ and so on, and eventually to an invitation to apply for a specific civil service kind of job.”
She stopped for another swig. “It’s terribly humid here, isn’t it?” she said, conversationally, and then carried on.
“I worked my way up the ranks. And it’s not that terrible for women now, I can tell you. It’s not about who you know, once you are in. It’s about how imaginative you can be, how much nerve you have, and how ruthless you are prepared to be. And… well, I did well. I’m sure you can imagine what kind of person I was. Am, even.
“The thing is, there is a huge burnout rate for people in my line of work. Lots of people who lose the plot. Start seeing things that aren’t there. People who start reacting to things you haven’t done or said.”
She shrugged at me.
“You can see why this is a problem. The service thinks this is driven by people who work for the services getting out of touch with ‘the common man’.”
She used fingers to emphasize ‘the common man’. “They may be right, I mean, you don’t tend to have many friends outside of people you work with, because well, all you do is lie to them, and they never understand your frequent absences.”
She at least lowered her eyes when she said this, indicating she knew damn well what was going through my mind at that statement.
“The service decided it would be better for the longevity of employees, and the connection to the real world, if they found a partner. I was part of the inaugural group. There were five of us.”
I snorted again. “Of that five, how many are still together?”
“Two,” she immediately retorted. “One died on a mission. Two are still together, although… their partners were informed once what happened with us… happened. One divorced for other reasons. And then there’s us.”
“No second go at it for you, then?”
“No,” she said simply. “Once was enough.”
I bristled at that.
“No,” she said, seeing the look in my eye, putting a hand up to placate me. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean, I couldn’t go through that again. What I put you through. What happened to you. How I… felt after you were taken. I mean, how I feel now. I could never put someone else through that. I couldn’t cope with that, either.”
“Not because you still care about me? Just what happened to me?” I probed. I doubted I’d get a direct answer, but it was worth trying.
“I’m getting to that”, she hedged.
“Anyway. I went looking. You weren’t on my radar, if you are wondering. You were serendipity in its most wonderful form. Right from the first time we met, at that wedding, I knew from that moment I could have a relationship with you. Be my yin to your yang, so to speak.”
Another swig of water. I noticed she was throwing the bottle from one hand to another, something she did when she was intent on what she was thinking or talking about. It was a tell on her having singular focus in what she was discussing. When she played with things with her hands, unconsciously, she was focused on one thing, and one thing only.
“Were you ever a relative or…?” I asked, the sudden question occurring to me.
“Yes, I was. Exactly what I mentioned to you. Just… not with the family connections I told you. Anyway, yes, you were exactly what the doctor ordered. Straightforward, smart, funny, down to earth, had your plan for your life. Sexy smile. Honest.”
“Naive.” I interjected.
“I would have used the word Innocent,” she replied, with an impish grin.
“You ticked all the boxes for me personally, – I could totally see myself married to you. Being your partner, and you mine…”
“As far as you let me,” I interrupted again.
She sighed, and then carried on.
“Of the parts I shared with you, you got one hundred percent of me. Of the parts you did not, well… let’s just say you probably didn’t want to know those parts. You actually got the best of me, frankly. And inside of those confines, you got all of me.”
“But not all of you, unlike you having all of me?” I responded, aggressively. All this justification was starting to piss me off.
She paused, and just looked at me.
“Is this what this is? Pile on Clarissa day? Do you want me to talk or not?” she demanded.
“I think I’ve got cause, don’t you?” I said, more mildly, hooking my hair around my reconstructed ear to make the point.
She sighed.
“Yes, you do. Still… let me get this out? This is… hard for me.”
I gestured at her to go on, but rolled my eyes internally. ‘Hard for her’. Fuck that.
“You ticked all the boxes the service required, too. They did a deep dive on you. You checked out. So, as far as they were concerned, it was a go. We… courted, and I was happy. For a change, one of the service programs really worked. All five of us were really happy. We were connected, grounded, had a life outside of work. Of course, the job had to change a little for us. No long undercover jobs, but then we didn’t do many of those anyway. Not our MO. No prolonged stays in other countries. But, it worked. It worked for everyone. Even for you. I know you were happy. I sure as hell was.”
“Of course you were. Your fat and stupid husband to come home to, and all the thrills of espionage and spy shit during the day. Tell me, Clarissa, how many men did you sleep with while married to me? I really would like to know.” I put that flat out there, to remind her that this was not all hunky-dory and hearts and flowers, as she was portraying.
Her eyes avoided me again.
“Not many. Sometimes it was necessary. I was trained as a swallow, but I hardly ever did that. Only when it was… strictly necessary. It was a job, not a desire. You were quite enough for me, on that front. You don’t need to worry your ego over that. I was entirely satisfied at home, let me assure you. I did what the job demanded. The job was there before you…”
“… and still there when I was gone into that hell hole.” I finished. I’d completed putting the second bag away, and had started on the third.
“How many?” I demanded again.
“How is knowing that possibly going to be helpful to anyone?” she pushed back.
“HOW MANY?” I shouted, slamming the bottle of olive oil on the table, for emphasis.
There was a sudden silence, broken eventually by her saying softly, “Seven.”
Another pregnant pause.
“And all that shit the Major said about us not being married?”
She rolled her lips over her teeth and back out again, the classic sign of someone who doesn’t want to say what they have to.
“The service didn’t want a record of marriage. That was as much for your protection as mine. If someone found me, they wouldn’t find you from a records search.”
“Oh come on,” I hissed, not buying that for a second. “That’s just bullshit. Our lives were intertwined. Joint bank accounts, joint insurance, joint mortgage. Even if there was no legit marriage certificate, I would be easily found. Try a different tree to piss on?” I suggested.
“Okay, okay,” she said, putting down the bottle and holding both hands out. “Fine, you want the truth? The service didn’t want any possibility of this coming back on them. Of someone who found out what was going on suing over marital grounds. If we weren’t legitimately married, you couldn’t sue them for interfering, or for anything else. Not a very nice thing, but there you are.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, under my breath.
“But you said…?” I queried, putting mushrooms in the fridge.
“Yes, well, that was my little bit of rebellion. See, I really did like you. I loved you. I really did, Rich. And I wanted that to be real. Screw what the service wanted. I mean, what were they going to do, once it was done? Undo it? Even they can’t do that. They were pissed but… it wouldn’t have been any different really. I just wanted that. For us.”
So, my question was answered. Sort of.
“As to your original question, yes, everything I showed you was real. As real as it could be,” she qualified, at the end.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that while everything I showed you was real, it wasn’t everything there was to show you. I couldn’t tell you what I did for a living. I couldn’t come home and cry on your shoulder if an asset was burned. I couldn’t come and complain to you about office bureaucracy. I couldn’t explain the stress I was under. You weren’t able to be there for everything I needed you for. Not because you wouldn’t have, but because I couldn’t tell you.”
I pondered that for a moment. I could see what she was talking about. That sucked, from her end. It sucked from mine just a little bit more, but still… I could see it. Then another question occurred.
“Were we ever going to have kids?”
She snorted, then frowned. “Knowing what you know now, what do you think?”
“So, no, then?” I persisted. Make her explain it properly. “I was just going to be, what, kept in the dark and fed bullshit?”
“No,” she replied, sitting back and running her hand through her hair. “At some point, some medical reason would have come up preventing me from having kids. To be honest with you, that was a major source of guilt for me, not being able to provide you with that. And you’d never know it was all crap, either. On top of all the stress from my job. I did have thoughts about manufacturing a divorce, to let you be free to find someone who could give those to you, but like most things at that time, I was selfish and I just wanted you with me. I needed you. Still do, truth be told, but I’m fairly sure that ship has sailed. I highly doubt you’d want me, with all my baggage, around at this point.”
“So, you admit it was selfish?” I pushed, just to make a point.
She laughed, humorlessly. “You don’t get it, Rich. I was an operator for a security service. You have any idea what my life expectancy is? Four years. Four years from starting operations, to something fatal happening to me. I’m already well past my expected life span. I was expected to be selfless, to sacrifice myself if the conditions demanded it. We have an actual manual on that, you know? I was putting myself in harm’s way for Queen and Country every day. So, I was a little selfish with you. That’s what you were there for. That was the entire point of that operation.”
“And what about me? When did I get to be selfish?” I demanded.
“Well, yes. That’s where it all falls down, doesn’t it?” she answered, wearily. She glanced up at me. “I’m sorry, Rich. What I did, what they demanded of me, what they did to you, the manipulation, all of it. Now, with distance, I can see how wrong it was. You paid the almost ultimate price for my deception and I really am sorry. You are quite my greatest failure, as an operative, as woman and as a human being. I don’t know how else to say it. What we did to you was unforgivable.”
There was yet another uncomfortable silence. I broke it by asking, “So, that holiday in Spain we were supposed to take? I’m assuming that got canceled because of something at work?”
She nodded, and then said, “Yes, we’d had an operation go sideways there the week before. An asset was blown, and there was all hell to pay. The idea of an active operator going on holiday to Spain right then was a non-starter. Way too dangerous. The Spanish might have just grabbed us just to make life difficult, in a tit for tat way. So, that had to be shut down. I’m sorry. Normally my… other life never interfered. I worked very hard for that to be true, but in this case, well…” she shrugged with a rueful smile. “The trip to Maryland was nice though, you have to admit.”
I did nod back, equally ruefully. It had been nice. Very nice. Still would have liked to have gone to Spain though.
There was yet another silence as we both groped for what to say next.
I figured that if she hadn’t talked to the Major, then she wouldn’t know how I actually cottoned on to the fact that she wasn’t all she claimed to be. I might as well give her the background.
“In case you were interested, when you left the Dorchester that day, hurrying away, that table of your targets sent us an expensive bottle of wine, for someone named Ms. Davis. They talked about seeing you that Wednesday. Clearly, you were hiding from them, hoping they didn’t see you, and that’s what gave me the idea that something was not on the up and up. I put on a delivery courier type of costume and followed you to work that day, and saw you leaving for that little soiree, with the Major, not dressed like you were when you left for work, and knew something was going on. I followed you and bluffed my way in pretending to be a courier picking up, and well, you know the rest.”
She nodded and murmured, “So that’s how it came about that you were there! Well, fuck ups always are simple. Good. The service floated the idea that you’d be turned or something after we got back. I told them what a load of crap that was. We just had no idea how you’d tumbled what was going on. Turns out, you didn’t. Just wrong place at the wrong time.”
Realizing what she’d just said, she looked back at me, eyes wide.
“I didn’t mean, good, you were captured. I meant…”
“I know what you meant,” I interrupted.
There was yet another awkward silence. We were having a run of those.
“I got you out, you know,” she said, softly. “I was the one who was riling up the disaffected. The service didn’t want me anywhere near that place. None of us. We were expressly told no operations against the Saudis. They were on their guard now, anyway. I think they were looking for evidence of you. We went back to the venue, – there were police there almost immediately anyway, so there was no time for them to, umm… dispose, of you, if you were dead. But there was no trace. So we knew you weren’t there. We figured they either had you in the embassy or had already spirited you away. We never saw anyone enter the embassy, so they didn’t think you were there, but I knew. I knew you were somewhere there. I could smell it. Three times I tried to get operational approval to come to find you, and each time I was turned down. ‘Operational collateral’, you were deemed. I just think they were glad you were gone. One less embarrassment for them to live down. One less failure of one of their operatives to explain. When you turned up, they didn’t know what to do with you. That Thurgood arsehole, he put you on a leash, gave you money, and sat and watched you for a year to see what you’d do. You crawled away here, and he was satisfied. He still has the NSA monitor you, and has an agent watch you periodically, just to see what you are up to. He’ll have you killed at the drop of a hat if he thinks you are plotting to reveal anything. All that legal bullshit? That’s to try and make you aware of how precarious your life is, without actually coming out and threatening you.”
She picked up the bottle and finished it.
“But I knew you were in there, in that embassy. I was part of a team that intercepted a Saudi agent in Cairo, and one of the things he mentioned in interrogation was ‘the mystery man in the basement, in England.’ He didn’t know anything else but I knew what it meant. I even took it to the brass in the service, and they wanted nothing to do with it. I was told to Leave. It. Alone.” How she managed to enunciate the capitals on those words I don’t know, but she did.
“I was told it was not something we were to follow up, and I was warned off, to the point they threatened a reprimand in my file. I wasn’t allowed near the place, so I got someone else to do it for me. It took forever to find the right disaffected group, to drop enough hints, to get them angry enough to actually attack the place. I may have helped them out a bit… guided them by remote, sort of thing. Had some friends in with the mob, specifically there to take out their shooters. The Saudis are very hot on personal protection, and they would easily have taken out protesters invading their turf, if their heavies had still been able to.”
She put the empty bottle on the floor, and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped in front of her, looking at me earnestly.
“When they found you, well, I couldn’t believe it. I was the one who called the ambulance. I watched over you for days. I caught hell from the bosses. They knew who’d been behind it, even if they couldn’t prove it. But it was worth it. You saved my life, when you knew I’d betrayed you, and that idiot I was with tried to make it worse, just so you’d give him a reason to put you down, so we could escape.”
Her voice started to shake.
“I couldn’t come to you before now. I couldn’t face you. The only man I’ve ever loved, and I left you to die. The mission always comes first!” she uttered the last sentence in that tone people use to express anger at what they were saying. At themselves. “Look what they did to you! Because of me. Because of the damn fool job I was so dedicated to. You didn’t ask for any of this. You just wanted a wife and a marriage, and instead, you got me, and all the crap that comes with it. You paid the price for my mistakes. Two years of your life. Torture. And God knows how you got through it. I’ve read the reports, but I know for a fact they don’t carry the full story. Of what it’s like to go through that. To completely lose hope. You said as much when they debriefed you.”
She finally broke down in tears, railing at herself.
“Well, I’m grateful for you getting me out,” I said, spreading my hands open. “But I would point out that the only reason I was there in the first place was because you were so intent on playing Mrs. Bond, and lying through your teeth about it.”
She looked lost and even though sobbing, I heard her say, “Yeah…” quietly.
Beyond saying that, I honestly didn’t know how to react. Here she was, saying herself all the things I’d saved up to yell at her, if and when this current confrontation ever came to pass. Now she was doing a better job of summing it up than I ever could. This was the despair and remorse I wanted. The pain on her side. The realization of who she is. What she’d done. The price I’d paid.
And yet. It didn’t fulfill me. It didn’t suddenly make it better or worth it. There was literally nothing I could do or say to her to either make it worse, OR make it better. I could forgive her, say the words, but we both knew it would be an empty gesture. She wouldn’t accept it any more than I’d have meant it. And even if I had meant it, so what? What did that do for her?
Or me, for that matter.
She sat and sobbed for a few minutes, chest heaving and taking great lungsful of air, face in hands. I let her. I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t about to take her in my arms and claim all was forgiven, or it didn’t mean anything, because it fucking did. From her deception to the continual lies, to the betrayal of her vows, to me losing two years and being tortured. None of that was okay or forgivable. Not in my eyes. The fire of anger had dimmed, but the memories hadn’t. I still woke up one night in three with the nightmares and the screams. In a moment of clarity, I realized this was one reason I’d kept Susan at arm’s length. I would never have been able to explain it to her.
Eventually, she started to subside, and she looked up at me, water rimmed eyes red, and bursting with pleading.
“Say something, Rich. Please. I am on the edge of my sanity here. Tell me you hate me. Tell me you want me to die. Just, please… say something.”
“Clarissa, I loved you. And I thought you loved me. Those years we were married were the best of my life. Even though it was all a lie, I still don’t regret being married to you. Even if I wasn’t everything in your life, you were in mine. So, I will never hate you. I hate what you did, but not you. I understand why you did what you did, but… I’m not going to give you absolution for those acts. That’s between you and your maker.”
I took a deep breath.
“If you want forgiveness, then sure, have it. I don’t think you’ll know what to do with it, but consider the entire episode closed, okay? I’ve made another life, and it’s not so bad. I have money, the freedom to do what I want, I date a bit. While I won’t say I’m gloriously happy, I am content. I think that’s as much as I can expect, at this point. And it’s better than I thought I was going to get, when I was sitting in that cell. I got myself into that, as you pointed out, and you got me out, so… while we aren’t even, we aren’t entirely lopsided either, right? Take that to mean something.”
Her breath was still ragged and she just stared at me, those big wild eyes. I had no idea what she was thinking.
Then she asked, politely, if I had a tissue. I got up and grabbed one from the side table, handed it to her, where she then proceeded to blow her nose in a most un-ladylike fashion. I smiled. She always sneezed and blew her nose like a bomb was going off. Just one of her idiosyncrasies. I remembered it well, making jokes about it when we were married.
“Sorry,” she murmured apologetically, more under control now.
“Clarissa. Donna. Whatever your name is. Move on. I have. While I’m sure this has been cathartic, it’s time to stop living in the past and regretting what is in that past. Go be the best spy you can be, untethered to me or what happened. Don’t forget, and don’t make the same mistake again, okay? But… I’m fine. Go on with your life.”
She stared at me a bit more, and then a tiny smile tugged at her lips.
“Seriously? You’re okay?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say okay, no. I still have nightmares but… I’m past it. It’s in my past. I have a future now. Or at least a semblance of one.”
“Oh, that Susan woman you’ve been dating?” Clarissa demanded, a little flash in her eyes. Some feeling was evidently still there for her.
“Clarissa, you don’t have a leg to stand on, being jealous of me having a life. God knows how many times you slept with someone while married to me.”
“Those were jobs!” she protested. “It’s not like I wanted to!”
“Whatever,” I replied. “This is me moving on and having a life, so deal with it.”
Another impasse.
“Okay, okay,” she muttered, eventually. Then she brightened. “I did also come to give you something.”
“I did wonder why now?” I asked. “Why did you show up now, after so many years? If you couldn’t see me, why is it that you can now?”
She scrabbled around in her pocket, pulled out a small USB stick and reached out to give it to me.
“Because of this. It’s… insurance. For you. It’s a password protected directory, and you won’t have the password. Please don’t try and guess. Three tries and it’ll wipe itself. No one knows about this, since it was generated on a laptop that had no internet connection, and is now destroyed. No one is going to come looking for it. But, that said, I’d put it somewhere that’s not here. You’ll know the password when you get it. It will come to you when it’s appropriate. That’s already in hand. Just… something to have in your pocket. That’s why I came now. To give you this. I needed to see you for my own reasons but this gave me the push.”
She had her hand outstretched and I looked at it, wondering if I wanted to do this. Get into her world again. Because clearly, it was something to do with her world.
In the end, the pleading in her eyes got to me and I walked over and took it from her, putting it in my pocket. I didn’t even look at it. And I didn’t actually touch her. For some reason that was important.
She sat back, satisfied and more under control, nodding at me.
“You’ll know what to do with it if and when the time comes,” she repeated. “I really wish there was more I could do, you know? Just, an apology doesn’t cut it.”
I thought for a moment, and then said suddenly, “Well, there is one thing. And I don’t want to hear you can’t do it. I want you to make it happen. Whatever you need to do.”
“Of course,” she said seriously. “Whatever it is, consider it done.”
I explained what I wanted and she nodded, completely understanding my request. She smiled at me and said, “I’ll take care of it myself. My personal guarantee.”
“One last question?” I asked.
“Sure,” she replied.
“What’s your real name?” I wanted to know. “Are you Clarissa from birth?”
She smirked at me, and then instead of answering me, said in a low tone. “Rich, I just wish you knew how much you don’t want to know.”
Then she looked at her watch. “I have to go. There’s a flight tonight I am booked on. To Jamaica.”
“Well, have fun,” I said, sardonically.
She stood and paused next to the table I’d brought from our home in the UK, with all the plants on it. To be honest, I’d gone a little overboard; there were at least two times as many plants in pots on it than it was really designed to handle. She stroked her hand along the front of it and smiled at me, wistfully. “I always loved this piece. Such great memories of when we found it. I’m really glad you kept it.”
Then, she walked over to me and stood directly in front of me. Her hand came up and caressed my cheek, and then she leaned forward and kissed me, gently, full on the lips. I thought I’d cringe at the touch but surprisingly, I was okay with it. It was the ending of something, something that needed to end.
“I did love you. That was not a game or in any way not real, Rich. Leaving you in that room was the hardest thing I ever did, and I will blame myself forever for that. I’m so sorry for what was done to you, and what I did. Be well, my love. Have a life. Have the life I can never have, and we can’t have together, much as I wish we could.”
And then she was gone, and I never saw her again.
Life went on for me after the bomb of her reappearance in my life. True to her word, she took care of my request. Susan was summoned to the bar by her partner who then, both unwillingly but also apprehensively, signed over their fifty-one percent to her for the princely sum of one dollar. They also passed her a check to cover all the outstanding loans the bar had and told her it was all hers again. They ‘gotten what they wanted out of it’, eyes wide at her and being extremely polite about it while they said it. She could see that they clearly believed she had powerful friends, and they even apologized to her for taking as long as they did, trying to recoup her ex’s debts. They also explained she’d never be bothered again, for the rest of her life, and indeed, if she had any issues with anyone else, come to them and they’d take care of it for her, free and gratis. As a Thank You and an apology.
She left the bar bewildered, confused and extremely happy. And when she was happy, I was happy. She had no idea what had happened, but wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
For my part, I just carried on living, although I made overtures to Susan to take it to the next level, talking about moving in together, or possibly more. The answers and catharsis I needed had been mostly provided. Once she moved in, even the nightmares stopped.
The USB key I stashed at the bottom of a tree on one of the very small islands dotting the bay behind my house. I wrapped it in plastic and rode my little sculler out to one of the islands on a sunny day, had a small picnic, buried the remains of the food, the USB key with it, and went home. No one ever came looking but it was the smart thing to do, I figured.
Epilog.
Two and half years later, Susan and I were discussing wedding plans, when I got sent a small newspaper clipping, with a note. It was in the mailbox for the house, but no stamp on it, so evidently it was hand delivered.
The note read
Hey Lucas.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but she died a couple of weeks ago, in a shoot-out in Lebanon. She just couldn’t stay away from this life. I kept telling her it would kill her eventually, but all she said was, ‘perhaps it’s time for that.’ I don’t think she ever quite got over what happened to you, and how much her fault she felt it all was.
Her office sendoff was huge. So many people owed their lives to her, or the operations she was involved in. She was extremely popular in the office, so there’s that, I guess. Enclosed is the official newspaper report. All the details are extremely fictitious, but… the name on this is her real name. She always told me that I had to do this, let you know this way, if her end came. She said you’d know why.
Sorry, buddy.
Darrell.
The clipping was the death notice for one Miriam Finchley. That’s who my Clarissa really was, – or had been. Miriam Finchley. And she wanted me to know that.
And I knew why.
That next day, I took Susan for a picnic to that island where I’d buried the USB key, dug it up, and then sat Susan down and told her it all. Every detail. My marriage to Clarissa, my incarceration, the torture, being freed, the ultimatum from the British Government. Even the visit from The Major, and the visit from Clarissa.
She sat, open mouthed, during the whole thing. At the end of it, she first examined my ear closely, sat back with her hand over her mouth in shock, and then, overcoming the shock, she grabbed me with both arms around me and kissed me, hard.
We took the USB key home, and on a PC that had been hobbled so the ethernet port didn’t work and the WIFI card removed, I checked out the password protected directory.
As I suspected, the password was her real name, upper-case M and upper-case F, no space.
Inside the directory, there were two files which I copied immediately, just in case there was any issue with the key itself. I had been warned it could clear itself.
One was a small text file, named “read_me_first.txt” and the other was an MS word doc file, called, “Memoirs of a misspent life, by Miriam Finchley.”
I opened the first, and there was a small text file, with a message addressed to me.
Hey Rich. If you are reading this, then I’m dead, or at the least, declared dead. Sorry about that. So, this is a book I wrote. My memoirs. Specially selected stories of operations I was part of that really expose the politics of what we were doing. Not every story; I’ve specially selected ones that don’t talk about other agents or sleepers or anything like that. The only people named are people who are In The business, so to speak, and who deserve a little light shone on what they do and why they do it.
Everything in this is verifiable, which is why I selected the stories I did. Mostly though, it’s to get back at the people who thought that manipulating and destroying innocent people’s lives was acceptable and just collateral damage.
I’ve read that agreement they made you sign and while it covers you writing things down, it doesn’t say anything about me doing it. And since I’m dead, well, I don’t care that much about my reputation. Let me take a few of these bastards down with me, right?
It’s up to you what you do with this. If you do choose to put it out there, my advice is to do it in a deniable way, so it’s not linked to you. There are powerful people I name in here, and some of them are not from countries that will censor or deal with them. Better safe than sorry.
I really did love you. I’m so sorry for what I did.
Miriam.
The second file was the memoirs she’d written. Now I understood why she didn’t want me to actually have this till she had passed. And why she’d been insistent that no one would know about it. It was explosive stuff. I read it in two days, – it had stories of her burglarizing, assaulting, manipulating, outright beating people, the whole deal. And what’s more, it had the complete circumstances of why she was ordered on these missions, why they’d come up, who’s feathers had been ruffled, and how petty and how ego driven most of it was.
Two things came out of this. The first was that while Clarissa had said that I knew all of her, it was clear that I didn’t know her at all. Or at least that the parts of her I didn’t know about far outstripped the parts I did. She did things I would never have believed her capable of. And she said this was only ten percent of the things she did, the things she could talk about because it didn’t reveal anyone but the culpable, then it was clear I was a small part of her life.
And the second was that the intelligence business is a dirty business indeed, and that while it is well-intentioned and good things are achieved and people protected, at least fifty percent of it was personal egos being attacked and assuaged. Right down to the individual operators, most of whom had completely forgotten the reasons they were doing things for in the first place. Personal pride was rampant and sacrifice of those who had the most to lose was considered required and necessary to satisfy these slights.
And among those stories was the tale of me. What she’d been ordered to do, how she’d done it, the lies and manipulation, and what had finally ended up happening to me. Her feelings on what she’d been ordered to and the results she achieved. How she regretted it to the soul of her being, for what it did to me. There were some things in there I didn’t know, but on the whole, it matched what she’d told me.
It was just horrible reading, all the worse for knowing it was true.
Susan and I talked about what to do with this explosive material and in the end, we decided to take a trip. Susan gave me a ride into Salisbury, I went to a car hire place at random, hired a car, and then the pair of us, complete with luggage, drove the car into Washington DC, where, again at random, we went to a dealership and bought an RV. Quite a nice one at that. Diesel, three slide outs, two air conditioners, built-in TV, nice shower, storage, the whole deal. I shifted money from one of the accounts I’d moved the money from the UK government to pay for it, and then withdrew forty thousand in cash, to use as spending money. No tracking that.
And then we drove across the country for the next six months, checking out cities. We even went to Canada. In New York, I stopped off at a Walmart and for cash bought forty USB sticks, forty padded mail bags and a tablet, and from then on, anytime we hit a McDonald’s, I would spend an hour on the tablet, investigating publishing houses throughout the world. In each city I visited, I would send out one of the padded envelopes with a USB stick inside and a note attached, stating “Do whatever you think is correct with the contents of this USB stick.”
We sent them to two publishing houses in Australia, three in Germany, two in France, one in Russia, two in Spain, three in Canada, one in New Zealand, etc. You get the picture. All from random cities in the US. It was the best I could do to ensure I wasn’t traced.
The book was published in fifteen different countries in the end, after each had done as much as they could to validate the claims in the book. Right at the end of our tour, I pushed it onto the internet using that tablet, to as many places I could think of, anonymously. Good luck in repressing that, UK Security Services. The tablet went into the ocean off Galveston, Texas, after that.
It was the talk of the world for months. There was a reshuffle at the top of the UK government over it. Other top posts had to resign, including the head of the CIA and MI6. It was quite the scandal for almost six months and then, as things are wont to do, something else came along and replaced it.
Still. I’d made life difficult for those who’d felt my life was theirs to manipulate, and all through the graces of my wife, whose reputation was both ruined and also rehabilitated, after a made-for-TV movie made her out to a put-upon officer, who did what she was ordered to do but hated every second of what it made her become. I dunno, maybe it was the truth. Hard to really know, at this point.
For me, I just sat quietly, no one figured out who I was and Susan and I married the next year, and lived together as harmoniously as you can live with a part Irish redhead (even if it is from a bottle) who runs her own bar.
I still can’t decide if I am glad I met Clarissa McDonald, or not.