Belladonna and Blunt
Previously: Alex spied on the spy-function, posing as a waiter, when Mrs Jones appeared as icy's 'Lady friend'. Alex is dismayed that MI6 is behind the attacks on him.
Running through the back door, Alex pushed young waiters into the walls and almost-but-not-quite knocked over several trolleys of dishes and hors d'oeuvres.
Yells of indignity and aggravation echoed Alex as he hurtled through the dim passages, reaching a set of stairs that he leapt up with alacrity. It must have been his imagination, but it seemed as though he could smell Mrs Jones' peppermint breath as though she was breathing down his neck from right behind him. He lunged up the stairs as they curved, round and around, ever upwards, as if he were in a tower.
Somehow, Alex continued panting up the stairs though his knees and feet burned from the repetitive strain. Finally, he reached an antechamber stemming off from the staircase, which led to a larger chamber that he thought must have been a child's playroom, for it was still filled with cloth dolls, a hobby horse, wooden hoops and a penny whistle, preserved in glass cases. An open window let the breeze ruffle the hobby horse's mane.
Unfortunately, Alex discovered there was no door to exit the room bar the one he had entered through, just as, despite her age and heels, Mrs Jones entered the chamber only a few seconds later, puffing and panting.
"Alex, please –"
Alex didn't give her a chance to finish as he scrambled out the window and jumped.
Alex's breath whooshed out as he landed onto a sloped roof conveniently just below the window. He immediately rolled over the edge to the opposite side of the roof, where he rested for a few seconds. He peered back behind him. The pale glow of Mrs Jones' face hovered at the window, and then turned away.
Moving quickly, Alex grabbed the edge of the roof, and lowered himself to perch on a windowsill below. From there, he half-leapt, half-fell down to the ground, two metres below. He buckled his knees as he landed, and rolled to absorb the impact.
Limping slightly, he skirted the grazing crowds of spies to the parking area. While he wasn't sure that his plan was going to work, for now, he had nothing better. Luckily, the first car whose lock Alex attempted to pick and then hotwire started easily, with a barely an audible purr.
The Audi was hardly inconspicuous, but amidst the Lotus cars, Aston Martins and Porsches also on offer, it was, he mused, a rather fortunate find. Strange that spies enjoyed having such flashy cars.
xxx
When Alex pulled up outside Dick Poven's house, there was no sign of pursuit.
He packed up, wrote a quick thank-you note to Dick Poven for the use of the house, and then contemplated the fact that he had only arrived here one day ago.
How quickly he had discovered the true person behind the attacks on him! He hadn't had time to dwell before, and now that he did have time, Alex couldn't bring himself to be truly surprised because he'd lost that one-moment-only immediate aftershock. MI6 had ordered people to try and kill him. Was it SCORPIA all over again? Whatever it was, it was a fact, and while mystifying, no longer startling.
In that split second, he had denied it as impossible – he was their 'greatest asset'! Why would they want him dead? But as he fled, he was furious, then hurt, then unshaken as he accepted it, though he couldn't ever see Mrs Jones or MI6 the same way.
Alex threw his luggage into the Audi roughly and got in. Biting his lip, he twisted the key with a frown to begin the long drive back to London.
xxx
Next evening, after hours and hours of continuous driving with only short breaks for short naps, Alex dumped the car near the Royal and General.
The long drive had given Alex plenty of time to think. He had concluded that where Mrs Jones went, Alan Blunt was the true boss of the operation, and so he had decided to go to the MI6 headquarters and confront them head-on. Mrs Jones must have told Blunt by now that Alex was coming. In his hollow state, Alex hoped that Blunt would have the traditional manners to at least listen to what Alex had to say before calling the guards on him. Blunt hadn't killed him in the hospital, at least.
But that was as far as Alex had gotten. What reason on earth drove them to send killers after him? What had he done? Hadn't they forgiven him for his attack on Mrs Jones when he was with SCORPIA? Blunt and Jones and probably the rest of MI6 wanted Alex well and truly stone-dead. It was only the grace of fortune that allowed Smithers to escape his superiors' madness.
Or perhaps Smithers was in on it all...? No, that didn't make sense. Maybe Smithers had gone behind his superiors' and the rest of MI6's backs. He was sneaky enough, that was for sure.
Just like way back at the start of this entire mess with MI6, Alex crossed the brown marble floor of the Royal and General, past the receptionist. Maybe it was even the same receptionist as that very first time he'd been introduced to the Bank. Doubtful. She would have remembered him, and smiled, or said something. Instead, to his relief, she steadfastly ignored him.
The lift attendant looked at Alex when he arrived at the lifts and gave a smile dripping with condescension. Despite Alex not looking quite like a kid, clearly he still appeared much too young to be a legitimate worker here.
"Floor sixteen, please," Alex smiled stiffly, and gave the employees' code to let him know that he was, indeed, an employee of the Bank. "Oh-five-oh-four." He met the lift attendant's curious gaze steadily.
"Are – are you sure, Sir?"
"I'm sure."
Clearly, the lift attendant wasn't as sure as Alex. He attempted a glare at Alex. It was nothing compared to the glares Alex had received from K-Unit.
"Oh-five-oh-four," Alex repeated impatiently. To Alex's relief, the lift attendant, albeit still squinting dramatically, stood aside and pressed the buttons to send Alex to floor sixteen.
By the time the lift had managed to eke its way up to floor sixteen, Alex was well and truly seething. Why on Earth had Blunt made the brilliant decision to send assassins after him? It surely wasn't because of SCORPIA; they'd used him after that without worrying. Was it some kind of twisted test of his skills? No, MI6 couldn't be that idiotic. What had he done?! And the gall to say that they were looking into the issue when he was in hospital, when they themselves were theissue, as it were…
Finally, he arrived outside Blunt's office, almost trembling with rage.
Room 1605. Inexplicably, Alex was reminded of Guy Fawkes, just like those years ago when he was still fourteen, and first visited Blunt's office. Remember, remember the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. How apt, Alex snarled mentally. He opened the door and marched in.
Blunt's face looked as blank as it had ever been, though perhaps, if it wasn't Alex's imagination, his eyes were a little wider than usual. He discreetly tucked the papers he had been reading into one of the drawers of his desk. "Alex."
Alex was curt. "Blunt."
"Why are you here?" His voice was mild, unsurprised and only slightly curious.
Why was he here? Why was he here? "You know why I'm here," Alex growled, clenching his fists. "Hasn't your pepperminted puppy let you know yet?"
For once, Blunt's pause didn't seem intentional. "Know what, may I ask?"
Really? He wanted to try Alex's patience this far? Alex kicked the door shut behind him and took a step towards Blunt, whose expression remained bland.
"That I know you and Mrs Jones sent all those assassins after me," he spat. And the words came pouring out in a torrent of fury and hurt. "Is this because of SCORPIA? Or you're scared I'll go to the media? Because if there's some sort of problem, you know, I think I'd prefer to have some sort of conversation about it instead of just trying to kill me right off the bat. And then you went and visited me in the hospital! Gee, what a laugh that must have been. 'Poor Alex, isn't it amusing when he's confused?'"
Breathing heavily, Alex watched Blunt carefully. His expression didn't change. But the man was silent for a long time, enough time for Alex to calm somewhat. Then Blunt took a deep breath. "Alex –"
The door opened and Alex instinctively hid himself behind the pot plant beside the door. In walked a ruffled-looking Mrs Jones, pushing the door shut behind herself without turning. Alex pressed himself further into the shadows behind the pot plant. Be the tree, he remembered.
"Ah, Tulip, how may I be of assistance?" asked Blunt, expression showing no hint of the conversation he'd been having with Alex.
"Alan," Mrs Jones smiled, showing her lipstick-stained teeth and releasing the waves of peppermint into the room. "I'm afraid Alex seems to have contracted some sort of tropical hallucinatory disease while he was… away. He appears to believe that his hunters were sent by me." She gave a sharp laugh.
Mr Blunt leaned back in his chair, as much as one could in such a straight-backed chair. "And did you?"
Mrs Jones raised her eyebrows. "Of course not!"
"Well," said Blunt, with – or so Alex imagined – the barest hint of a smile, "you never know." He motioned for her to take the seat opposite him from across the desk. Alex sent mental waves of gratitude. This way, it was virtually impossible for Mrs Jones to notice him behind the pot plant. Perhaps Blunt wasn't in on sending the assassins after all. "So, how did you come to this conclusion?"
"I came to that conclusion," Mrs Jones repeated, "because he… he told me."
Blunt waited.
"Er, well, long story short, we bumped into each other and he accused me – in his delirium – of, well, you know," continued Mrs Jones.
Alex shook his head violently, and caught with relief Blunt's tiny flicker of acknowledgement. "I see," said Blunt, and stopped.
Mrs Jones filled the silence. "It was in Ireland. For that conference? He was there, for some reason. He was in the kitchen."
Blunt nodded, but didn't speak. Typical information-garnering tactic, thought Alex with approval.
"I wanted to give the head chef my approval. For public relations."
"Hmm," Blunt contributed.
"She knew me already," burbled Mrs Jones, somewhat desperately, "from a man I know. He knows Alex, too. I introduced him to Al…" She paused.
Blunt picked up a small paperweight and weighed it in his hand, his expression as impenetrable as ever. "Do I know this man?" he asked, sounding bored.
"No," Mrs Jones hastened to answer. "No, I picked him up. By myself. You wouldn't know him."
"Well," said Blunt, placing the paperweight back down carefully. Alex wondered if he was imagining the slight upwards quirk of Blunt's lips. "You never know."
They sat in silence for a while. All their meetings might be like this, Alex speculated. Mrs Jones brushed imaginary dust from her suit skirt.
Mr Blunt glanced briefly at Alex, expression unchanging, before transitioning smoothly to looking out the window. A small crease appeared in his forehead before eventually disappearing. He leant forwards on the table, affixing Mrs Jones with his terrifyingly blank eyes. "How did you introduce this man to Agent Rider?" he questioned.
Mrs Jones gave a slight twitch. "Alan, you know I don't like your referring to him as an agent."
"That is what he is, Tulip," said Blunt mildly.
But Mrs Jones was having none of it. "This is all because of you," she accused him.
Mr Blunt's gaze did not alter. He waited.
"You know, I used to think it was okay," continued Mrs Jones, voice high. "But it's not!"
"What isn't?"
"Having a child agent. It's wrong!"
Alex caught the brief glance Blunt sent his way with a shrug and a blank expression. Mr Blunt leant back into his straight-backed chair. It looked just as uncomfortable as it had the first time. "Tulip, we were discussing how you introduced this man of yours to Agent Rider."
"Stop calling him an agent!" demanded Mrs Jones. "And that's not important!"
Blunt's gaze went down to the desk, then back up as he directed his stare to his deputy. He said nothing.
A flush appeared on Mrs Jones' cheeks.
"You heard my reasons for including Mr Rider in our employ when we employed him," Blunt said at last. "If you agreed then, you must agree now."
Mrs Jones' lips tightened. She did not respond.
"He is an excellent agent," Blunt prompted, with another split-second look towards Alex. "Mature enough to be an adult, despite his age."
Alex couldn't help but feel pride rise within himself, though he crushed it quickly with thoughts of all the paint MI6 had caused him. Most recently, missing the football season.
Mrs Jones remained silent.
"Agent Rider will be an adult soon," Blunt pushed, "so there is even less need for any… angst."
Mrs Jones twitched violently. "That is no excuse!" she burst. "The more time he is with us, the more chance there is of the media finding out, and god forbid that should ever happen. You know the consequences, Alan."
"We agreed the benefits outweighed the—"
Alex had never seen Mrs Jones so emotional before. She interrupted Mr Blunt angrily. "No, you agreed. I succumbed to your authority. But no more!"
Blunt blinked. Alex was sure he imagined the victorious smirk that flashed across Blunt's face.
But Mrs Jones was too far into her impassioned rant to notice such things. "I had to get rid of him somehow. And if I just made you fire him, then he might have turned against us and tried to kill us, or gone to the media, and if we sent him on a suicide mission, then that would be just cruel."
Raising an eyebrow, Alex wondered just what exactly Mrs Jones' definition of 'cruel' was.
"This wasn't really… it really wasn't hurting him. It was meant to be quick." She subsided and appeared to shrink in the chair. "I just wanted what was best," she whispered in a small voice.
Blunt was silent for a while. Then he nodded. "So you did send the assassins, then? I see." He looked at the grey sky through the window.
"I knew you'd see it," Mrs Jones said proudly. "This is the best solution, Alan."
Blunt nodded again. He picked up the paperweight and weighed it in his hand as before. "I suppose we should end this, then, eh?" he told Mrs Jones, sounding oddly cheerful. She gave a polite laugh, and Blunt gave a twist of his mouth that was probably supposed to be a friendly grin.
Next to the pot plant, Alex stood shakily. Was this how it would end? With a lunatic deputy convincing the head of MI6 to kill Alex in cold blood, in this very office? He stepped towards the door.
Blunt's gaze snapped to him. He rose to his feet. "No—"
The door crashed open just as Mrs Jones spun in her chair to see Alex, her mouth forming a small 'o'. Mrs Jones might have collapsed in on herself then, or she might have lunged at Alex. But the world would never know, because there was a bang and Alex was thrown to the floor.
He looked towards Blunt, who held a gun – the paperweight – and then Mrs Jones, who also lay on the floor, blood beginning to pool from her abdomen.
"It's okay," Blunt said to the men holding Alex down. "He was protecting me."
Alex was let up and the suited men who had appeared out of nowhere went over to Mrs Jones and helped her up, holding her arms behind her back. One of them pressed his suit jacket to her stomach.
One look to Blunt, and Alex knew the man had called the men. Somehow. He had planned this – maybe not until halfway through Mrs Jones' rant, but Blunt looked almost too smug for events to have been completely random.
Relief flooded through Alex. So it had been Mrs Jones acting alone, then. "Where are they taking her?" he asked, to fill the silence.
"Do you really want to know?"
Alex thought about the answer. No. It didn't matter now, he realised. He was tired of running, and now that Mrs Jones had been dealt with, there wasn't any more point in pursuing the story. That was one lesson he'd learned over the years since his Uncle's death. Sometimes, curiosity really did kill the cat.
Blunt seemed to have come to the same conclusions. "She will be taken care of. You needn't worry about her again." He shuffled some papers on his desk, presumably for dramatic effect. "Ah, yes. The man you know as 'Wolf' is in St Dominic's Hospital. Room 1302, under the name David Webb. He may require some form of apologetic acknowledgment. I will leave that to you."
"Thank you." Alex realised that he had never thanked Blunt before. Were they developing an amicable relationship? Would wonders never cease?
The head of MI6 was staring at him. Well, not so much as staring, but watching, with blank eyes that seemed unfazed by all that passed before them, even the misplaced accusations of a too-young agent and the treachery of a trusted deputy.
For a moment, Alex wondered why Blunt wasn't saying anything. Then, he began to suspect that, in Blunt's own strange and disinterested way, the man was allowing Alex some time to process everything that had happened. After all, it wasn't every day that a teenaged spy was betrayed by the deputy of the organisation for whom he spied.
As Alex warmed to this idea, he couldn't help but notice that Blunt had now politely – Sympathetically! Kindly! – averted his eyes, and was allowing Alex to waste his precious office-time.
Alex couldn't help but blush. "Thank you," he said again, and this time he really meant it.
xxx
After exiting the Royal and General Bank, Alex had a moment of mental panic. His quest over, his life no longer in danger, what was he meant to do now? Could he simply return home, as if nothing had happened? Somehow it seemed trivial to just go home, have dinner, watch some television… But then, as it had been shadowing him this entire ordeal, he remembered the semi-final.
Alex checked his watch for the date. Today was the day! And he would be just on time, if not a little early, provided he hurry. He hailed a cab.
Blank faces – some sneering, some supportive, some disappointed, but most of them blank – greeted him when he arrived at the grounds where his team was just warming up. It was either a sign of hope for him, or of despair, depending on which way he looked at it.
Alex approached his coach with trepidation.
"Coach," he greeted the man. "Glad to see we've, er, we've managed to make the semi-finals."
The grizzled man crossed his arms. "Yes," he said shortly, "barely. Where have you been, Alex?"
He clearly wasn't making it any easier for Alex. It was a far cry from his proud crowing before Alex had left that they'd 'beat all those nancy-boys and show them real football'. Although perhaps he was saving that for the pre-match huddle.
"Ah, I was wondering, Sir," Alex pushed through his unwilling mouth, "whether I may still, er… whether I can play?"
There was a minute of silence, but it couldn't have been a minute because no-one paused for whole minutes, at least in not this sort of situation, and then the Coach spoke. "I'm sorry." Alex felt his stomach plunge, and he swallowed the emotion threatening to crumble his façade of calm. The Coach, uncrossing his arms, continued. "You know the rules, Alex, and so do I. You have to attend at least 75 percent of matches. Otherwise it isn't fair. You might have been co-captain, but –"
Of course. Why had he expected anything else? Rules were rules. "Yeah. Sorry," he muttered.
The Coach smiled slightly. "Maybe next season, if you don't disappear on us, eh, Alex?"
"Yeah, hopefully."
And that was that.
Alex spent the next two hours or so wandering despondently around London, until he realised he had something else to do: Wolf had gotten hurt for him, had broken his collarbone at icy's, and so it was only proper to visit him in the hospital, pay his respects and all that. Blunt had even reminded him, telling Alex the specific hospital Wolf was in. St Dominic's. Room 1302. Under David Webb.
Instead of catching another cab this time, Alex walked. It wasn't that far away, after all. He'd walked further before. He arrived barely breaking a sweat, nodding to the receptionist and striding confidently to the lifts, reading the directions on the signs he passed.
It was then that exhaustion hit. Not during Mrs Jones' apprehension, or even when Coach refused him. He entered the lifts and leaned on the bar along the lift wall, staring across at the wooden panels of the outside wall. What a day it had been! Odd doorknockers, becoming a temporary waiter, betrayal, confusion, Blunt being nice, of all things, and missing out on the rest of the football season…
As the doors of the lift that would take him to Wolf's floor slowly closed, a couple of people strolled by, one of them with a distinctly familiar face he couldn't quite place. "Such a shame those kids from Brooklands lost," the familiar face commented to the person beside them, "they were so close to the grand final."
Alex's ears pricked at 'Brooklands'. He sneaked a glance through the gap between the closing lift doors. Was that—?
It was, good God.
His jaw dropped.
The End.
AN: Well, that's that! Did you like it, hate it, heaven-forbid despise it? Don't forget the competition! And I'll see you next story :)