Title: History Lesson

Disclaimer: I own no rights, I make no profit.


Chapter 8 – Reaching Dead Ends

After filling Bond in on my initial findings I decided that I was going to quit for the remainder of the night. I knew I was going to start my investigation of Mr. Kirkland with the generally available sources followed by another dive into the dark web. If those panned out my next move was going to be getting into the Home Office followed by a walk through Mycroft's systems. Doing the latter without using MI6 or setting off any of the protections I knew were there meant I was going to have to be at the top of my game. Of course that brought up another potential problem; only one bed.

Once again Bond seemed to read my mind, "The sofa folds out or the bed is big enough to share. Your call."

I thought for a moment. We were officially dark but would my subconscious draw the distinction between this situation and hiding because someone was after me? For that matter would sleeping in a strange place trigger any latent PTSD still hanging around from my kidnapping? I knew from my various bouts with the psychologists that I subconsciously associated most of the 00s, Bond especially, with safety. Would sleeping in the same bed, I wondered, be enough to stave off a nightmare or worse a panic attack? For a moment I seriously considered bedding down in the closet. Of course the closet wasn't really an option. I'd be stiff and Bond would most likely spend all night sitting in front of the closet door.

That left sharing a bed. Given that I had even considered the closet as an option meant that Bond in the next room would be too far away. Unfortunately, sharing a bed would have the potential to be very awkward in the morning. Generally I had a tendency to snuggle up and grab onto my bed partners. The more I cared about someone it seemed the more I would act like an octopus in my sleep. If I was really being honest with myself I cared a great deal about James so my sleeping behavior was most likely going to be an issue. However, if I was going to be at my best I needed some serious uninterrupted down time.

"Well," I sighed, "I think we better share."

I was surprised at Bond's response, "You think you'll sleep better?"

"If anything today was triggering your presence should stave it off," I admitted then plowed on, "However, I must warn you that sometimes I tend to get possessive in my sleep."

Bond laughed, "I doubt you could pull anything I've not dealt with before. As long as you don't try to engage in any somnambulistic sex then I think we'll be good."

I could feel my ears getting red. Hopefully they were covered enough by my hair so he wouldn't notice.

"I prefer to be fully cognizant when engaging in amorous activities," was what came out of my mouth.

I winced at the pompous nature of that statement but Bond didn't seem to care.

"So do I," he admitted with a smile. "You take the en-suite first. I'm going to set up the doors and rearrange the furniture to give me a bit of warning if anyone tries to force their way in." He paused then added, "You are sleeping on the side away from the door."

That I had expected. Bond was in protection detail mode which meant placing the asset where anything had to go through the agent first.

It didn't take long for me to clean up and crawl into the bed. I positioned my glasses strategically for a one handed grab and jam onto my face and made sure the pistol was easily accessible. In the unlikely event that someone broke in I'd be able to roll off the bed and come up with both glasses in place and firearm ready. It was not terribly necessary since anyone breaking in would inevitably be dealing with Bond first. However, the preparations did make me feel more secure which was the entire point.

Bond came into the bedroom just then. He noted my preparations and grunted his approval on the way to the en-suite. By the time he had finished and slipped into the bed I was fighting sleep. As I had suspected his proximity allowed me to relax and I quickly slipped into oblivion.

00Q/00Q/00Q/00Q

I woke up gradually. I was relaxed, warm and being held. I slowly realized that I was half laying on the person holding me. There was a faint smell of gun oil mixed with the barest hint of a familiar aftershave. I then noticed that my nose was pressed up underneath a chin with my forehead resting on a stubbly cheek. With that my brain came on line suddenly as I realized I was snuggling with James Bond.

Bond rumbled, "You awake there Q?"

I halfheartedly attempted to extricate myself from his hold while mumbling, "No."

I figured feigning being half asleep was my best bet at avoiding embarrassment.

"So you don't want me to get up and make tea?"

"Tea?"

I raised my head and looked at him in an approximation of just woke up confusion.

He chuckled and said, "Not bad. However, faking sleep in this position requires a bit better muscle control. You are way too tense."

I'm not quite sure exactly what he did then but suddenly I was in sole possession of the bed and a nude, except for pants, Bond was shrugging on his shoulder holster. He stalked out of the room like the predator that he was, still chuckling under his breath. I realized at that point that I was incredibly aroused.

A shower and change of clothes later I wandered out into the living area of the flat to find Bond impeccably dressed, reading something on his mobile. He looked up as I entered.

"You'll be happy to know that you neither snore nor toss and your possessiveness is relatively mild." Then he asked, "Full English?"

I wasn't quite sure just what to say to the first remark but the second completely derailed my brain. We'd been in the flat less than 24 hours and neither of us had left. How the heck was Bond going to produce breakfast out of thin air?

"If I suspect I'm going to stay a couple of days I have the rental company stock the kitchen with some staples," Bond explained.

Now that made sense however I wasn't even going to deign to answer the breakfast question until I had…

Bond stood and moved to the kitchen area. He clicked on the kettle which obligingly started steaming, he must have turned it on when I was in the shower, and started to make tea. Before I knew what was happening I had a mug of tea and was seated at the table watching Bond efficiently make breakfast despite the fact I hadn't indicated whether I wanted it or not. Unsurprisingly by the time he had finished assembling it I was hungry so I tucked into it.

When I'd polished off the last of my toast I looked at him and said, "Thank you. I didn't know you could cook."

"You pick up a lot of skills out in the field," he replied. "Most of them even prove useful at one point or another." He smiled and started clearing the plates, "So today you are going to unearth Mr. Kirkland's electronic secrets?"

"I'm going to start with the easy stuff, social media and the like then dig into the banking and credit. What I find will direct my search from there."

"Well you better get to it then," Bond said from the sink. "I figure we have about 48 hours before M starts making unfounded assumptions about either your or my loyalty."

I snorted in reply. I'd pulled M's metaphorical fat out of the fire too many times for him to doubt my loyalty. That, however, didn't mean that he wasn't going to start receiving pressure from various quarters for having his Quartermaster and most effective 00 in the wind. I therefore booted up my laptop and dug into the research.

I was half way through the financials when I noticed the pattern. By the time I read through the credit reports I was almost sure. I doubled back and rechecked a couple of things and just had to laugh out loud. The noise, of course, brought Bond.

"Well?"

"We are not going to get much background on Mr. Kirkland I'm afraid," I smiled at him.

"Because?"

"He's a legend."

"And this makes you laugh?"

"Yes, because specifically he's my legend."

Bond's eyebrows went up at that but all he said was, "Explain."

"You know after the first incident with Mr. Greene I spent over a month changing my identity and backstopping it."

Bond nodded.

"Well, at the same time I made the outlines and set in place the framework for five other legends. There are two left. I used two for 00 missions where the background needed to be impeccable and this," I gestured at my laptop, "is the third."

"So what did you use it for and why?" Bond asked.

"It was one of the earliest things I did in Q-Branch," I started to explain. "A request had come in from the Home Office to create a set of records and an electronic back trail, name to be left blank. It bounced around as an assignment for about two weeks." I had to smile as I remembered the circumstances, "Scuttlebutt at the time was that the assignment was cursed. It seemed like everyone who started working on it would get pulled into something incredibly complex within 48 hours plus or minus. By the time it landed on my desk six people had worked on it, only the bare minimum had been done and we had a deadline."

"You decided to pull out one of your pre-made identities to expedite the process?"

"I was just going to copy the structure," I admitted, "but for some reason I decided to go with what I'd prepared instead." I thought for a moment, "I'm still not sure exactly what made me think this particular request required more than just the usual."

"Hmmm, the electronic trail is a bust then," Bond stated.

"Not exactly," I replied. "I may not be able to tell you about his origins but I am able to tell you what he's been up to using this identity over the last several years."

"That's probably more useful for our purposes."

I nodded in agreement.

"To all intents and purposes Mr. Kirkland is a boring civil servant. He has a wide variety of interests locally. He's also interested in a variety of things from abroad ranging from a couple of North American companies, to an artisan pasta manufacturing concern in Italy and some obscure German metalworking artist named Belischmidt. He has a variety of friends but no family except for an older uncle who is a history professor at Kings College."

"Belischmidt," Bond had a reflective look on his face. "I've heard that name before but I can't seem to place it."

I did a quick search.

"Well this artist lives in Canada but he's a German national on some sort of work visa." I dug a little deeper and added, "Looks like he has a relative of some sorts in the German diplomatic corps."

"No, that doesn't ring any bells."

I kept looking.

"One in a million or more exactly one in 20 thousand or so," I idly remarked, "He's got albinism."

"Excuse me?"

"Here," I turned my laptop around, "I found a picture."

Bond looked surprised, "Now that's interesting."

"Oh?"

"He looks a lot like one of the stock photos we use to train agents. Without training the brain tends to focus on the most obvious characteristic, albinism, and misses the details like ear and nose shape, scars and the like."

"Well it's most likely not him." I turned the laptop around again, "That picture is the only good one I could find of the artist."

"Probably not," Bond agreed. "I recall hearing that most of those training photos are digitally modified from ones dating as far back as World War II. Still he has very similar features to the photo if I recall it correctly."

"Enough of that detour," I said as I started working again, "Mr. Kirkland doesn't appear to have any sort of personal connection to the artist other than liking his work. He also seems to like some band out of the Seattle area called Abney Park. No accounting for taste if what I'm seeing really does reflect his tastes and isn't just a smoke screen."

"Do you think it's a smoke screen?"

"No. It all fits together. This is his normal working cover identity. It looks like he only sheds it for a day to a week every other month or so. It's not terribly obvious but there are some gaps in his spending habits that look a lot like the ones we get for agents on short assignment."

I made a mental note to myself. We would need to come up with some sort of algorithm to keep up a normal spending pattern for lower level agents who had London based identities but were on regular out of country rotations. If I could spot that kind of pattern with a bit of work it would probably be highlighted in neon for someone like Fred. The safer the identities were at home the more confident the agents would be in the field. Even better, it might just allow us to get around some of those pesky procurement regulations. No need to financially penalize agents for backstopping their cover after all.

I mentally gave myself a shake. I was getting distracted again. Back to work. I decided to take a cursory look at the friends and family before tackling the Home Office.

Mr. Kirkland's friends were a mixed bag of people from work and university; nothing at all interesting there. The uncle, now that was a different story. A quick look into the personnel files revealed that Professor Bruce Levonson, age 73, had retired from government service some eight years ago. He had been Home Office dealing with legislative issues and prior to that he had been employed as a member of the diplomatic service. If you believed his curriculum vitae, he had been posted to a variety of embassies mostly in Eastern Europe. Looking at the locations, duration and nature of the assignments I suspected that he'd been either been a legitimate diplomatic aide or one of us. Whichever had been the case he'd been low enough level so that the powers that be had decided he could stay in plain sight with his original identity intact.

The professor taught several modern history courses starting with just before World War I and ranging up through the demise of the Berlin Wall. He seemed to be well liked and his classes, while not incredibly popular, were well attended. The only thing of interest was a note that the professor would be unavailable until the end of the month due to a family issue. As far as I had been able to find Mr. Kirkland had been his only living relative. I coded an alert to let me know who accessed his university file and left it. I'd most likely have more luck with the Home Office and if not there Mycroft's systems.

The Home Office systems were a bit more challenging to hack than I had expected. They'd clearly improved their security since the last time I'd been snooping around. Given that over 80% of their information was public with the exception of certain departments they'd been behind the curve for quite a while. I was pleased to see that this was no longer the case.

Mr. Kirkland's personnel file was as I had expected, boring. Similar to Professor Levonson's file there was a note that he had requested and been granted leave for personal issues. I made a mental note to look at both their NHS records. Once again Levonson's old files held the interesting information. What I found tallied with his university CV. I expected the last entry to have been his retirement out brief and clearance but that was not the case. There'd been a full blown security review less than five years ago with no real indication as to why. When I was a low level staffer I'd performed many a cursory review required if we needed to talk to an ex-employee about something in their area of expertise. This level of review, however, was more akin to the one performed on a new branch head at MI6.

My computer alerted. Someone was accessing the university files on Professor Levonson. I quickly switched over and back tracked the access. What the heck did NSY want with…Oh…I sighed.

"Something?" Bond asked.

"Professor Levonson was found in the back of a lorry this morning. He'd been dead for several days it appears. The crime has been linked to a rather bloody warehouse killing they found on Friday. My brother has been consulted."

"The Ice Man?" Bond asked.

"No, The Virgin," I replied abstractedly as I carefully backed out of the NSY server.

Mycroft had acquired The Iceman sobriquet early on in his career due to his ability to appear unmoved by even the most bizarre or heinous events. Sherlock had acquired his Virgin moniker more recently courtesy of Ms. Adler who had applied it and it stuck. Once the 00's and the minions had learned of the familial connection I, not to be left out, became The Boffin. Of the three titles it was the closest to the truth. Mycroft hid is caring behind a facade of apparent disinterest. Sherlock, whatever his current relationship status was with John Watson, was definitely not virginal in any sense of the word. As for me, the computer expertise, hair and glasses meant I'd be lucky having Boffin being just my unofficial shorthand referent.

As I shut down the computer I looked up at Bond. He wasn't hiding his reaction. The look on his face appeared to be one part frustration, probably due to the lack of a clear target, and one part amusement? I realized then that I was in danger of being subjected to a bit of the dark humor that agents tended to spout among themselves when management or support staff was not around. I also knew that there were a very few among the agents that realized Q-Branch had a similar brand of wit. Bond was one of them so he wasn't terribly surprised when I beat him to the punchline.

"You could say we've reached somewhat of a dead end."