20 March 2005
"You can't be serious," Jen said, shocked to her core by the very suggestion.
"Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs," Abdul answered with a shrug.
Jen wanted to spit in his face, but Wesley's steady presence beside her restrained her, somewhat.
They were sitting together, the three of them, in wicker chairs beneath the pergola Wesley had built for her, beer bottles in their hands and the sun high overhead on a fine Sunday afternoon. Abdul often visited them at home; he worked with Hartono, and no one questioned his connection to the Claybourne's. Particularly not today; as he'd flung himself into his chair he'd blithely announced that Hartono had sent him to check up on them, to see how they were handling the deaths at the dockyards. The answer, though he did not know it yet, was that they weren't handling it well at all. Jen hadn't slept a wink the night before, too worried about the future and the mess SIS had made of everything to even close her eyes. She'd only slept on Friday because she'd been too wrung out, too exhausted after the cataclysmic way she and Wesley had fallen together in the bathroom. That was something else Abdul didn't know.
"Thanks for confirming that we're expendable to you lot," Jen grumbled.
They were discussing SIS's plans for catching Hartono out. At present, SIS was preparing another setup at the dockyard just like the one that had claimed the lives of two of their agents a bare two days before, and Jen's mind was reeling at their blase attitude towards their personal safety.
"The brass are getting antsy," Abdul told her breezily. "The op has dragged on too long, and they want to see results."
"You're in his inner circle. Can't you give them what they need?" Jen demanded.
"Nah. Everything I got's circumstantial. He won't use a computer and I've got no paper trail. We need his signature on something, and we need it to be something big. There's talk of live cargo coming in."
"You know he's trafficking people and you're just going to let it happen?" Wesley asked. So far he'd been quiet, the way he always was, but Jen could see from the tightness in his jaw, the set of his shoulders, that he was as angry and perplexed as she was. She wondered if Abdul had noticed the tension in him at all, or if it had only revealed itself to her because of the way she had come to know this man, every inch of him, almost as well as she knew herself.
"It's all innuendo at present," Abdul said. "We can't prove it. And if we get the people here, and take them into custody, we can help them. If we move prematurely they may get snatched up by some other thug before we can stop it."
"So that's the plan?" Jen demanded. "We wait for him to ship a container full of frightened people from Indonesia all the way to Australia, have him sign for it, and snatch him up then?"
"You got a better one?"
Abdul's expression was practically smug, and Jen crossed her arms over her chest, angry and affronted. No, she didn't have a plan, not yet. It was too soon after the shooting at the dockyard; her thoughts scattered like autumn leaves, directionless and frantic.
"The shell companies," Wesley said.
"What about them?"
That was the thing about Wesley; he never said more than was needed. Abdul couldn't follow his train of thought, but Jen could.
"He's got three of them. One operates in Indonesia, shipping cheap crap for his two dollar shops. One of them runs the guns, and one of them we still haven't figured out. Maybe the third one is the one he'll use for the people. They all have fake names, fake offices, different bank accounts. There's no connection between them. But if we could make one…"
"We need bank statements," Wesley said. "Cross check the financials on all three and run them against the cargo logs. That's the whole point of having us in Claybourne Shipping, right? To gain access to the records? Let us see them-"
"We've got people for that," Abdul cut him off. "We've got your cargo logs. We can pull financials but it's a risk. The last time we did that it turned out he had an inside man at the bank, and the employee vanished along with all the records."
"Can you fake a tax audit?" Jen suggested.
"Might put him off shipping in the live cargo, and then we'll be in strife."
It seemed like Abdul had an answer for everything, but Jen didn't quite trust his glib explanations. She was certain he wasn't telling them everything, but she had no way to prove it.
"Look," Abdul said, leaning towards Jen, his forearms resting loosely on his knees. "I know you're jumpy, and I know it's frustrating. We're frustrated, too. We've been after this prick for years. He's a slippery one. It isn't your job to solve this. You go where we tell you, you get the information we need, and everything will work out grand."
With that he slugged back the last of his beer, set his bottle down on the table, and rose to his feet.
"I'll be in touch," he said, and without another word he turned and left them, disappearing through the gate in the back of the fence.
"We are so royally fucked," Jen breathed, watching him go.
"Yeah," Wesley said, ignoring Abdul's departure in favor of watching Jen with a curious expression on his face. "Nothing we can do about it now. Come on, we need to go to the shops, get something for dinner."
Slowly he unfolded himself from his chair, held his hand out to her. Jen took it gladly, for she knew as well as he did that their kitchen was already stocked, and they had no need for a shopping trip. The house was bugged, but so too was the garden, microphones strung up with the fairy lights Wesley had hung on the fence. They could not speak freely here, but they could say whatever they wanted in the car, and he had just neatly given them an excuse to spend a few precious minutes unmonitored. Jen was more grateful for that than she could say.
"We learned our lessons last time," Wesley reminded her.
He'd driven them, not to the shops, but to a park in a far corner of the city, parked the car beneath a copse of trees, far from prying eyes. The sun was setting, and there was hardly anyone about as the city settled itself for dinner, prepared to face another week of work.
"Hartono did, too," she pointed out. "He knew something was up, and he didn't show. What happens if he pulls his business from Claybourne Shipping?"
"Then Frank and Marcy are going to be in for it," Wesley said.
"Wes-"
"We'll find out tomorrow," he said. "And we'll deal with that when it comes. I don't want to talk about Hartono any more."
"What do you want to talk about, then?" she asked him, turning her head to watch his face in the glow of the sunset. Her heart began to race, as she looked at him, fear of an altogether different sort taking root in her heart.
They had not discussed it yet, what had happened in the bathroom. They hadn't talked about the passionate clinch they'd shared on the yacht, or the way he'd danced her round the kitchen on her birthday, or the reverent, desperate kisses that had spiraled into so much more on Friday night. The reason for that was partly practical - they could hardly talk openly at home, and if they kept slipping off into the bathroom together the spooks might notice something was amiss - but it was partly cowardice, on Jen's part. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know, really, how she felt about him, about what they'd done, didn't know what needed to happen next, what he expected from her. Hell, she didn't know what she expected from him.
"I'm sorry," he said, and her whole body tensed. He was sorry? Sorry for kissing her, sorry for shagging her like the world was ending, sorry for the tender way he'd touched her, after? Did he regret it already? Did he think they'd made a mistake? It had been beautiful, she thought, what they'd shared together, had brought her peace and comfort at a time when neither seemed within her grasp, and to think he regretted it made her feel used, somehow. Maybe it didn't mean anything to him at all, she thought.
"Wait," he said, as if he'd read her very thoughts. "I didn't mean...Christ, Trish, I'm not sorry I kissed you. I'm not sorry I touched you. It was...you were…you mean so much to me. I'm just sorry I put you in this position. I've made things difficult for you, and I shouldn't have let myself get carried away."
"You're an idiot," she told him, relief washing over her in waves as she reached for his hand. He smiled when she touched him, and she did, too, smiled to see the way his fingers locked with hers, his hand broad and strong and warm, wrapped around her own.
"Maybe it was a bad idea," she said. "But it's been a long time coming." The memory of him, hot and hard and hungry beneath her as she straddled his lap on the yacht, had been haunting her for months. It felt inevitable, somehow, that they'd wind up here. Trapped in close quarters with a kind, handsome man, with no one else to confide in, trust and forced intimacy and genuine affection had blurred into something else entirely, and Jen couldn't bring herself to regret it. She should have done, she knew; they were taking a huge risk, defying the spooks, a risk that could have disastrous consequences for both their futures. It was hard to be worried about her future, though, about her life after this, when she wasn't even sure she'd make it out of this operation alive. One day at a time, that was the only way she could live, and in that moment she could not imagine living without him.
"You mean a lot to me, too," she told him shyly. The words felt somewhat awkward in her mouth, but he'd said them first, and it seemed the only avenue available to her, the only way she could express how she felt for him, how she needed him, yearned for him, how grateful she was to have him by her side.
The words seemed too small to encompass what had just passed between them; terror and longing had broken the dam of affection between them, and they had both admitted, finally, to some feeling for one another, and he was holding her hand, and yet she still didn't know, really, where they ought to go from here. Whatever might be brewing between them, they could not date, like other people, couldn't see each other when it pleased them, shag when it pleased them, laugh about work over plates of takeout. Their situation was bizarre, and untenable.
"Hey," he said, his eyes drifting worriedly over her face. "We'll figure it out, yeah?"
What's there to figure out? She thought. She cared for him; she could not have him. They wanted each other; they could not touch each other, lest they be observed. A ticking clock hung just above their heads, counting down to the moment of their inevitable separation, and when that time came he would leave her, and she would never, ever see him again.
"Yeah," she said. There was nothing else to say. There was no point in treading over the same ground again and again, asking the same questions expecting different answers. Every second they spent alone was stolen time, and they would soon run out of it. It wasn't a lie, exactly, her agreement. They would figure it out; she had already. She would take what she could, what few precious moments she could have with him, and then it would end, and that would be that.
"Come here," he said, tugging her hand gently, and Jen went, clambered awkwardly out of the passenger's seat and into his arms. The moment she was in his lap he slid the seat backwards, let her settle more fully against him, his hands coming to rest on her hips while her own reached for his face, fingertips stroking gently against his skin while he looked at her in wonder.
"Whatever happens," he said in a low voice, "I'm glad I found you."
"Me, too," she answered, and then she bowed her head, and kissed him.
