The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own The New Avengers, nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own The Avengers, either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

Emma and Gambit stood, chain held carefully between them, facing the source of the new threat. A man they both recognised as Klizan's chief of security was at the top of a short flight of what had probably been the servant's stairs, with a gun trained on them.

"Sorry," Gambit said levelly. "I've seen that trick before."

Klizan's chief of security seemed momentarily thrown by the comment, but then realised Gambit was looking at the gun in his hand. "Ah, yes," he said, a slow, sinister smile creeping across his face. "I couldn't risk my colleagues killing you before time. They can be very impetuous, you see. Lack the subtleties of a professional."

"Good help is remarkably hard to find," Emma sympathised, earning a glare of reproach for her flippancy. That only made Gambit grin, too, rather spoiling the effect the security chief was going for.

"Yes, but I am a professional," he growled. "In more than one sense of the word. So if you think I'm unarmed—" He pointed his gun at the ceiling and loosed off a shot. A small measure of plaster dust and a few bits of rotting wood rained down from above, proof that he was telling the truth. The security chief's eerie smile returned as he levelled his weapon at Gambit and Emma. "Kindly let my colleagues escort you back to your room without too much fuss," he instructed, and Emma and Gambit twisted around to see two more men coming up the main stairs, advancing on them menacingly. "Come along quietly, please," the chief went on as the men closed in and Gambit and Emma dropped automatically into a fighting stance. "I will shoot you," he added warningly. "I'm not so concerned about your well-being that I'll hold off if you attack."

Gambit and Emma exchanged resigned glances, then put their hands up, deciding to play along for the moment. "Excellent," the security chief praised, as the other two men grabbed them by the shoulders, and started to steer them back toward the bedroom. They nearly tripped over their fallen adversaries in the process, who were only now picking themselves up from the floor. They caught sight of the chief as they regained their footing and grimaced apologetically. "Sorry, Rogers," one said to the chief.

"Idiots," the chief—Rogers-spat, as Gambit and Emma were marched back into their prison. "You underestimated them." He moved to where Gambit and Emma stood, facing the bed, exchanging knowing looks, as their escorts took up position behind them. With a nod, the two men gripping Emma and Gambit's shoulders struck them on the back of the legs, forcing them to fall to their knees. Before they'd had a chance to recover, their heads and shoulders were forced violently onto the bed's disintegrating mattress, heads turning toward one another to avoid inhaling a lungful of dust. Rogers bent to brush some of Emma's hair back from her face. "She may be a girl, but she's no ordinary girl," he sneered, looking into Emma's fiery eyes. "She can kill you as soon as look at you. But then, I suppose not everyone is privy to the story behind Emma Knight's co-called sabbatical from her company, and just what she got up to in the meantime. And with whom." He lowered his face until it was very close to Emma's, even as she struggled against the restraining hands.

"Keep that up and see what happens," Gambit warned, twitching with similarly barely-contained ire.

Rogers turned his attention to Gambit. "And him," he continued, as though Gambit hadn't said anything at all. "The guest list said Michael O'Carroll, Knight Industries' money man, didn't it? But you'd have done well to check through our files. This is Mike Gambit, Ministry man. John Steed's protégé, by all accounts."

"Really? Do you know something I don't?" Gambit said wryly.

Rogers looked Gambit hard in the eye, face once again very close. "Very odd to see you together, though. And very surprising to see Ms. Knight back in action. Did Steed arrange this, I wonder? Or are you two off a little caper of your own?" He tsked in reprimand as he deduced it was the latter. "Oh dear, oh dear, Mr. Gambit. What will your people say about this? What will—what was her name? Your charming partner?" He snapped his fingers as though struggling to recall. "Ah! Purdey. That was it. What will she think? Does she know you're out playing spy games with this legend?"

"You leave Purdey out of it," Gambit growled. "Or you'll see how much you really have underestimated me."

"Oh, struck a nerve, I see." Rogers treated Gambit to an oily grin. "Perhaps we'll have to pay her a visit, find out how much she knows about all of this."

"She doesn't know anything," Emma asserted. "No one at the Ministry does." Rogers turned his attention to her, and even Gambit was alarmed by the burning intensity of her gaze. "This is my operation," Emma went on, with a fierceness that actually seemed to puncture Rogers' sense of superiority. "Mine. Do you understand? And the Ministry may not know that I'm here, but my people certainly do. If you kill us, they'll know it was you." She paused for effect, then added, for emphasis, "They already know about the defective parts in the factory. And so do the authorities. Very soon, it's going to be swarming with police and agents, all closing in on the truth." She raised her head off the mattress, ignoring the pressure of the arm trying to force her back down. With her hair tousled and wild, she looked like a warrior queen, Gambit thought. Magnificent. Formidable. "And everyone will know about your deplorable cost-cutting measures, made at the expense of your customers. Your stock prices will tumble, and your board members will resign. It might even spell the end of Klizan Aerotech. Killing us will only add murder to your charges of criminal negligence." She straightened up further, chin turned up defiantly. "I suggest you have a word with your boss, and persuade him that it's in his best interest to unlock these cuffs and let us go."

Much to her surprise, Klizan's oily smile returned. "Boss?" he laughed. "And who, pray tell, do you think that is, Ms. Knight?"

Emma was clearly taken aback by his comment, but she held firm, unwilling to let herself be rattled for long. "You're Klizan's chief of security, aren't you? That means you report to him. Unless Klizan goes in for unusual managerial structures. Do you report to the chief cook and bottle washer, or the gardener?"

Gambit's mind was working furiously, cycling back through the conversation, searching for something that Klizan had said that had rung an alarm bell in the back of his skull. With a sudden, sickening realisation, he knew what it was. "How did you get those files?"

Rogers tore his gaze away from Emma's taunting visage, temporarily distracted from the tempting prospect of throttling her with his bare hands. "What?"

It was Gambit's turn to raise his head off the bed, eyes piercing. "You said you've read my file. That's how you know who I am." 'Who Purdey is', he added to himself, not wanting to remind Rogers of her if possible. "But who would have access to that sort of intel? A big corporation like Klizan Aerotech?" He shook his head. "No. They go in for research on their competitors. I can see you pulling something together on Emma. But not on me. Not on short notice. You wouldn't have access to my files. You wouldn't even assume I was intelligence. Maybe a corporate spy. Not the real thing." He cocked his head to one side. "Unless you're not actually working for Klizan. Or not only Klizan, but the other side, too."

Rogers beamed at him, like he was a particularly clever child. "I can see why you brought him along," he told Emma. "He's definitely earning his danger pay today. Very astute, Mr. Gambit. Very astute indeed. You're quite right. I am working for someone other than Mr. Klizan. Someone with loftier goals, shall we say?" He looked from Gambit to Emma and back again, looking very pleased with himself. "You think that it's all down to cost-cutting, don't you? A case of business putting its bottom line above its conscience. Trying to sneak one past the authorities, cutting corners because it'll add a few quid to the bottom line. And if a few people get hurt in the process, because things break down, well, that's the cost of doing business, isn't it? These things happen. No one can claim a product is 100% safe, can they? That's what we'll say—or we were going to say. What Klizan was going to say, if anyone found out. But now the cat's out of the bag." He looked hard at Emma. "That's what you said, isn't it? People—your people—know about it and they've told the powers that be. You Now there will be recalls, to be sure. Your task is complete. No one will get hurt or suffer any ill effects. The great British public will be saved from the consequences of greed. And that would be true. If that was all we'd done."

Gambit felt a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "What do you mean?" he demanded, voice low and rough.

Rogers turned the oily smile on him. "What do I mean? My dear Mr. Gambit, I thought you might have worked it out already. In fact, I feared it. That was why I had you picked up. If I'd known your intel was so sadly lacking, I could have let you be." He sighed with mock regret. "Too bad. You might have lived. But now I'm going to have to kill you. If I let you go, you'd investigate me, and that would never do. Because what you don't know—what Klizan doesn't even know—is that the cost-cutting was only the beginning. Klizan thinks that's all that's going on—a bit of dodgy fiddling to cut costs. That's what you uncovered, that's what he's complicit in. The problem is, we don't work for him, not really. We just wheedled our way into his organization, promising to do some off-the-books cost-cutting. But what we're actually here to do, the heart of the operation, is sabotage."

Gambit tightened his jaw. "You're working for 'them', aren't you? That's why you have our files."

"Right again. Ms. Knight, do you have anything to contribute?"

Emma's eyes were narrowed. "I'm drawing my own conclusions," she declared airily. "I take it you've been sabotaging parts on all of Klizan's projects? Not only the ones containing the shoddy parts?"

"Excellent. Really excellent."

"And I suppose it's not a coincidence that you targeted Klizan's company, given that he's spent the past year on a military contract?" Emma went on, eyes turning heavenward in thought. "Planes, tanks, even radios, all filled with presumably-faulty components, all designed to fail, and bring the country to its knees in the process?"

"Ah, it's so refreshing to see your business acumen at work along with your espionage skills." Rogers looked to Gambit. "She really is magnificent, isn't she? A pity to destroy such a brilliant intellect in its prime."

Gambit was so busy processing the implications of what Emma had said, he was almost disinterested in the renewed threat to their lives. "That's the real conspiracy, then? Let Klizan bring you in to supposedly cut costs in the dodgiest way possible, then once you have your foot in the door, fiddle about with the military equipment being manufactured, all without him knowing." He cocked his head to one side inquisitively. "What's the play? Disable our defences and launch a full-scale assault, or sell the option to do it in the future to the highest bidder?"

"We'd left our options open, to be perfectly honest," Rogers said blithely. "But now that the pair of you have sent the authorities sniffing around, I expect we'll have to push the button ourselves. It'll take time for them to uncover the sabotage, since even Klizan doesn't know about it, so he can't crack under pressure. But we won't be able to wait too long. Still, I think we'll be able to marshal our forces quickly enough."

"An invasion," Emma said grimly. "And our forces will be helpless."

"Yes, that's the idea," Rogers said mildly. "It's a very small component we've introduced into the equipment. A tiny augmentation that can be used to cause a very small yet crucial malfunctioning of any number of pieces of equipment. Planes, tanks, submarines, computers, all of it. It'll bring you to your knees, and while you're there, we'll—"

"Swoop in and put us down?" Gambit predicted, jaw working madly.

"That's the idea." Rogers sighed and cocked his gun. "But I'm afraid you won't live to see it."

Emma tilted her head inquisitively to one side. "You said Klizan didn't know about this. It must be a very small operation."

"Very small," Rogers confirmed. "Just my security men and I. And a few select people on the assembly line."

Emma's mouth turned down in a mixture of frustration and disconsolation, hair falling like a curtain over her face. "All this time I was focussing on Klizan. And he doesn't even know we're here!"

Rogers seemed delighted by Emma's sudden and uncharacteristic show of weakness. "No one does, my dear. Just me and my men here. Klizan will read about your untimely demise in the papers along with everyone else." He slanted an eyebrow at Gambit. "I'm afraid your death will be met with considerably less fanfare, Mr. Gambit. Your colleagues will mourn you, I'm sure, but only the people in this room will be privy to your true fate. No one will know you were anywhere near Klizan Aerotech."

"No one," Gambit repeated faintly, eyes on Emma, still hidden by her hair. But as Rogers forced them back onto the mattress, Gambit could just see the smile turning the corners of Emma's lips upward, and the way her eyes were dancing.

"No one knows we're here," she echoed, but the despair was gone from her voice, and Gambit realised that his instinct that her behaviour was uncharacteristic was well-founded. She had played weak to find out if their cover was still intact, to work out if anyone knew where they were, save for the men currently in the room with them. And that was a problem they could solve…

"Yes, and while that's still the case," Rogers began, moving out into the hallway, voice getting more distant in the process, "we had better take care of you once and for all." He re-emerged with a large black bag, from which he extracted a device. Emma and Gambit strained their necks to see from the confines of the mattress. "The lovely thing about acting as Klizan's security team is that I have off-hours access to all of the factory facilities. So I'm able to procure the odd bit here and there." He punched a few buttons on the device. "Take this lovely little thing—a small explosive device that punches above its weight. It'll destroy this house, and both of you. Someone else will have the problem of trying to explain what the pair of you were doing out here, alone, together, in the middle of nowhere…" He let the sentence hang. "Although perhaps it'll tell its own story. Never mind. It'll all come out in the wash. Or the fire." He nodded at his colleagues. "You hold them down. You there, take off the cuffs—it'll look suspicious if they're found tied together. You, get the car." The men scattered, and Emma and Gambit found themselves once more pushed hard into the mattress, while a third man sandwiched himself between them, keys in hand. Rogers watched with half an eye, setting the bomb on the rotting wardrobe and giving it an affectionate pat. "The first strike," he murmured, half to himself. "The first of many that'll bring your country to its knees. Just as you are now."

"To quote a friend," Gambit murmured, subtly shifting position in time with Emma, Purdey's voice echoing in his mind, along with an image of her holding a marshmallow pie. "What's wrong with knees?" Without warning, Gambit and Emma swung the chain up and over the neck of the man with the keys, pulling him bodily onto the mattress, where he splayed, flailing, between them. It was enough of a distraction to afford them the small edge they needed. The loosening of the grip on their shoulders gave them the breathing room to each drive the elbow of their other arm into the stomachs of the men holding them. They straightened up as the men doubled over, feet shooting out behind them to drive into the shins of their captors. As the two men went down, Emma and Gambit leapt to their feet, climbing up and over the mattress, turning around as they went to face the other way, before returning to the floor to assess the scene. Rogers had turned from the wardrobe in surprise, brandishing the gun. "Look out!" Gambit cried, gripping the headboard and heaving the bed across the room to slam into Rogers. Emma threw herself forward to intercept the gun as it tumbled onto the mattress from his nerveless fingers, other arm extended to keep from pulling Gambit in her wake. She sprawled headlong onto the mattress, gripped the gun just before one of Rogers' men threw himself at her in an attempt at intercept. Emma fired automatically, and with perfect aim, and he went down. She then rolled to the side to avoid Rogers' foot as he struggled over the headboard onto the mattress. Gambit sprang up onto the surface, wobbling slightly as his boots tore through the frayed cover and became enmired in the stuffing beneath, but regained enough of his footing to grab the lapels of another man as he mounted the bed to swing a punch at him. Gambit dodged, swung a punch of his own that actually hit its mark, then landed an expert chop to the solar plexus, before seizing his opponent's lapels. It was at that moment that he found himself tugged downwards by virtue of his connection to Emma, and made a split second decision to change tack. He dropped into a sitting position, and executed a quick stomach throw. His assailant sailed through the air—straight out the bedroom window. Emma was tussling with Rogers on the bed, but still managed to aim a look at the now-horizontal Gambit as the sound of breaking glass reached her ears. "Naughty," she tsked. "We'll lose our room deposit."

"Air-conditioning," Gambit grunted, kicking at another man who'd stepped into replace his airborne friend. "Thought it was getting stuffy."

"It is rather crowded," Emma agreed, as Gambit did a double-take at her position. She'd somehow managed to wrap her ankles around the neck of one man while still tussling with Rogers. "Next time, I refuse to share a bathroom."

"I'll tell the front desk," Gambit vowed, aiming another kick at the man's head as he came back for round two. He caught him under the chin, and his head snapped back as he tumbled backward and into the wall, before he collapsed, unconscious. He regarded Emma's predicament with an expert eye. "Need any help?" he inquired, more out of politeness than anything. Emma's default setting was to have things in hand. Or ankle, he mentally amended, as the man between Emma's feet slumped unconscious. "Never mind."

"It was a kind offer, well-intended," Emma said gently, with a winning smile. She planted her hand, fingers splayed, across Rogers' face, and pushed, sending him tumbling off the bed and onto the floor. "But if you want to help, you can start by finding your feet. This new jewellery is good for keeping track of your date, but highly impractical for mingling."

"I'll get you a necklace next time," Gambit grunted, gripping the headboard and heaving himself upward, mattress giving way under his boots as he went.

"I think I ought to book the hotel next time as well," Emma opined, plucking at one of the many tufts of white mattress fluff that were marring the aesthetics of her jet black catsuit. "The standards at this one are extremely subpar." She regained her wobbling footing just in time to plant her foot in the middle of the recovering Rogers' chest, sending him tumbling backward to knock his head against the windowsill. Emma nearly lost her balance in the process, the precariousness of the mattress almost negating its advantage as higher ground, and staggered sideways, prevented from tumbling back into the sea of fluff by Gambit, who caught her up in his arms. Emma twitched her nose to dissuade another piece of mattress fluff from climbing up her nostrils, then smiled up at Gambit in her best impression of a damsel in distress. "I thought you might have had your fill of having me in your arms for one night."

Gambit grinned back at her. "It's not the kind of burden you complain about. But we have bigger problems." He nodded at the wardrobe, where the device sat innocently counting down their doom. "Do you think you could defuse it?"

"I could try," Emma replied, and the pair untangled themselves before commencing the short, mincing journey across the mattress to the wardrobe. Emma snatched up the box, turned it over in her hands until she found a panel that was, rather infuriatingly, screwed shut. "I need tools," she fumed distractedly, fingernail finding the seam for the panel but unable to gain any purchase. She turned the box back upright, regarded the timer grimly. "And more time. If I'm reading this right, we only have thirty seconds before the whole building goes!"

vvv

Purdey sat bolt upright with a start, a gasp escaping her lips even as her brain struggled to remember what had woken her in the first place. She sat there for a moment, shoulders heaving, nightgown clinging to her body where sweat had broken out on her skin. She stared out through the beaded curtain into the dark of her living room and started the long, arduous process of gathering her thoughts. Only in the end, there was really only one thing that surfaced to take precedence over all others.

Gambit.

That was it. She couldn't remember what it was she'd dreamt, what the imagers had been, how the plot unfolded. But she knew that, whatever the specifics of it had been, it had boiled down to Gambit. Gambit in danger.

It made sense, really. She'd been worrying about Gambit all day: whether he was all right, what he was doing on his day off, who he was with. And dreams were just one's brain's way of processing whatever was going through it before it was packaged up for the day.

Only, the feeling she'd had when she was asleep, the one that was still tingling through her fingers even now that she was awake, was more urgent than that. More vivid. More real. It wasn't so much a dream. That didn't give what she'd felt the weight and credence it deserved. No, it was more than that.

It was a premonition.

Purdey shook her head, tousled blonde hair swaying in the process. No, that wasn't right, either. It was something unfathomable, like Gambit and Steed's telepathy. A sort of intangible connection between her and him, a psychic tether that neither of them really understood, or even verbally acknowledged, but that they both knew was there, both relied on for their work, both had come to value beyond their professional relationship as something special, important, unique. A bond that made them closer than Purdey had been willing to admit to herself, even as she continued to take both solace and enjoyment from it. But there was no denying it was there now, and Purdey knew, just knew, without being able to explain, that Gambit was in trouble. She didn't know what kind of trouble, or if it had been resolved, but she knew it had happened, the way she knew she was sitting there, in her bedroom, with her heart pounding through the material of her nightgown and sweat trickling down her back.

Gambit was in trouble, and there was nothing she could do, nothing at all, except lay back down and try, desperately, to go back to sleep. She did so, pulling the sheet up to her chin, stared at the alarm clock on her bedside table, at the glowing numbers, and calculated the hours left until Gambit was supposed to be back, when she could call out a search party if he wasn't. As she lay there, trying to will her eyes to close, a sudden thought occurred to her. If she could feel Gambit's distress, maybe she could send a message the other way. It was something she could do, at least. Better than lying silently in the dark. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. "I'll find you," she whispered. "If you need me, I'll find you, Mike Gambit. Just try to stop me." With that thought drifting out into the psychic realm, she drifted back to sleep.