Fairfax, Virginia; 1958
It had taken her a while but, Agent Eva Green was pleased to report that a mere 10 days after landing at Washington International Airport and setting foot into the CIA's Headquarters for the first time; she had finally managed to find her way around without having to stop at various desks and ask for directions.
Sure, there were still moments when she had to turn around because, let's face it, all marble corridors look the same when you're not really paying attention. But, with a few well-placed friends in the secretarial pool and the ice-broken with some of the less sexist Agents, she had done it; America was conquered…or at least Langley was.
The smile on Eva's face was more genuine than it had been in the past few days as she effortlessly navigated the building, a bundle of files in her hands. Yes, she thought, today was going to be a good day. She had finally made her small cubicle feel homely amongst the sterile workplaces of her colleagues and the headache she had expected to be nagging at her from last night's activities, was surprisingly absent.
"You've been avoiding me, Agent Green."
She jumped at the sudden appearance of one of her aforementioned colleagues and quickly corrected the stumble in her stride as Agent Solo fell into step beside her.
"Avoiding? No. Busy with work?" She nodded to the files in her hand. "Yes." She corrected managing to force a small smile before speeding up her trek through the building.
"So busy you can't meet for drinks?"
"Exactly." She turned a corner sharply and hid a grin as he missed it and was forced to jog after her.
"But you went out with the secretaries last night." He pointed out. She stopped suddenly, frowning as she mentally repeated his words.
"Are you stalking me, Agent Solo?" She asked, an eyebrow quirked as he rounded to face her in the narrow corridor.
"It's a local spot." He shrugged. "But back to the topic at hand…" He trailed off, watching as she shifted uncomfortably at the change. "…you're avoiding me."
She flashed him another strained smile as she pushed past him and made her way further along the marble corridor, her emerald heels clicking against the harsh material.
"I assure you, Agent So-"
"It was Bennett wasn't it?" She stopped, her shoulders tensing. "Of course it was Bennett." He sighed and she turned to watch his own shoulders deflate. "He gets a kick out of telling people."
"To be fair to Agent Bennett, nobody else was going to tell me the truth about who you are and what you did."
"Which is?" He glanced over his shoulder to her.
"You're a criminal, Agent Solo." She reminded him. "You have a 15 year suspended sentence for robbery, handling stolen goods and serial theft of arts and antiquities." It pained her slightly at how well she knew his bio and cringed as she realised she was probably conjuring images of her spending her nights devouring the personnel files of her supposed allies…not that it was far from the truth in this case. "You saw the devastation the war left behind and you sought a profit from it."
When Agent Bennett had cornered her and handed her a black file with her favourite CIA Agent's name across the front, only days after arriving in the country, she had been suspicious to say the least but with his warning of; "You should know before you get too friendly with him". She had digested the contents in the privacy of her hotel room that very night and it had broken her heart.
"I don't suppose it would make difference if I told you that I was a changed man?"
"No, Agent Solo, I don't think it would."
It had killed him a little to watch her walk away from him out of the corner of his eye. He'd honestly hoped that maybe just once, someone would see him as more than a list of wrongdoings and instead focus on the successful, charming and well-dressed man before them.
He took a moment, in that narrow corridor, to wish that he hadn't been so stupid all those years ago. Perhaps he still would have found his way to the hallowed halls of the CIA but he also might have had the chance of friendship with the British Agent.
Shaking his head, he pushed off from the wall and retraced his footsteps back to the intersection where he had first noticed the blonde Agent, humming to herself as she took a sharp right.
Standing on that small insignificant marble intersection, Napoleon Solo made one of the most important decisions of his life as he decided that he would not be allowing Eva to walk away from him; not without hearing his side of the story.
It was time to pull in a few favours from the girls in the secretary pool.
Eva had known that something was up when the secretaries had suddenly appeared at her cubicle late in the afternoon. Their insistence that she join them for cocktails after work had, on the surface, seemed like a friendly gesture. She had nothing against the women; they had after all had many good nights out since she had arrived in the U.S. but their smiles had been just a little too bright and their goading a little too rehearsed that when she agreed, they had all begun giggling.
And so, as she stepped into the quiet bar at 7:16pm on a Tuesday night, Eva was far more interested in solving the mystery behind the invitation than realising it had absolutely nothing to do with the secretaries at all.
She had been sitting, alone, at the bar, her fingers twirling the cocktail stick that had 10 minutes ago been skewering an olive, for too long she decided as she drained her drink. And with another glance around the bar, she knew that the girls had absolutely no plans to join her tonight. She reached for her bag as it sat on the empty bar stool to her left but turned as the sound of a glass sliding along the wooden bar filled her ears. Frowning at the full glass of martini, she heaved a sigh before fully turning to greet its buyer.
"I take it you are responsible for the absence of my friends?" She asked eyeing the smirking Agent carefully.
"I know absolutely nothing about such a thing." He told her, the lie falling from his lips so easily that she rolled her eyes.
"I'm sure." She drawled, lifting the martini glass to her lips and allowing the translucent liquid to slide down her throat. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Agent Solo?"
"I realised that we haven't had a proper chance to get to know each other." He reasoned, also taking a sip of the drink in front of him. "And I sought to rectify that."
"How generous of you."
"What can I say?" He smiled, his arms open wide. "So, Eva…if I may call you that?" She nodded, her fingers toying with the stem of her glass while the other lay across the bar, clearly marking out her personal space as he leant in. "What brings you to our mighty shores?"
"Are we really going to do this, Napoleon?" She asked with a sigh. "Pretend that I don't know about you?"
"Ahh, but you see, you don't know about me…at least not everything." He pointed out. "For instance; my father was a janitor."
"Fascinating."
"Come now, aren't you the least bit intrigued as to how I found myself on the devilish path to the CIA?"
She pondered his question for a while before draining her glass and turning to face him fully.
"Fine." He grinned at her. "But we're doing this my way." She reached out and snatched his brandy from his lose grip before slipping from the bar stool and heading towards a secluded booth at the back of the room. "Be a good man and get another round in." She shook the brandy as she walked. "Martinis are reserved solely for girl's night."
"Yes ma'am."
"So your father was a janitor?" She asked as he slid into the booth opposite her.
"Indeed." He told her. "Emigrated here from Ireland; which tells me nothing on where the name Napoleon came from." He grinned as she laughed at that; the ice slowly melting away from between them as he spoke. "But it was my mother who introduced me to art; she used to love filling our house with anything and everything that was beautiful, whether it was from the second-hand store or just a newspaper clipping of some priceless painting that spoke to her soul." He smiled sadly as the memories came flooding back.
"What did she do?" She asked, the drinks long forgotten as she was pulled further and further into the story of Napoleon Solo.
"Nothing." He shrugged. "Where I come from, the women usually don't. They raise the babies and have dinner ready when the husband's come home. But she could have done anything." He told her, his eyes bright as he thought of the woman that had raised him. "Today, with all of these art galleries and photographers roaming the streets, I just know she was born in the wrong decade."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Napoleon." She broke him from his reverie.
"No need." He waved away the notion of sympathy and instead took a long drink. "Anyway, it was the old man who first told me that you can't get anywhere in life unless you take whatever you need to go forward." He smiled. "A lesson I took to heart unfortunately."
"And you never thought to instead earn it?" She asked, her posture straightening as they arrived at the topic that had caused the iciness in the first place.
"Let me ask you, Eva, what did your father do?"
"He was a lawyer." Napoleon simply shrugged as if to say I've proved my point. "And my mother was a teacher but that doesn't mean I don't know what it's like to fight for a seat at the table, Agent Solo." She told him, her voice rising as she defended herself. "I've earnt everything; it's my hard work and dedication that has got me where I am."
"Same here." He reminded her. "Just…on the other side of the tracks." She shook her head at the man and pushing aside her drink, made to leave.
"Agent Solo, I think-"
"Stop." His hand was gentle on her wrist. "Don't go." She hesitated, the apology in his eyes forcing her back into her seat despite everything else her body was warning her against. "Let's talk about you instead."
"I've already told you; my father was a-"
"Let's talk about you." He reiterated and a silence fell over them as she wondered exactly what he wanted to know. She knew it was uncommon for women here to take full-time jobs never mind join the Intelligence Services but surely she wasn't that interesting. "Why MI5?"
"Oh that's an easy one." She relaxed as the question was posed and felt herself settling back into the soft material.
"Well?" He prompted and she frowned.
"Well…actually it's not that easy." She admitted. "And it's rather a long story."
"I've got all night."
She wasn't used to someone hanging off her every word and honestly, it was a little disconcerting but as soon as she opened her mouth to tell her tale of the path to MI5, she couldn't stop; the look in his eyes always prompting her to continue when she lagged and then they were at the crux of it:
"I still don't know how he did it, he was far too old, but my father enlisted during the war. He was sent to some far flung place and used to write letters of how exciting it all was and how he couldn't wait to tell us stories when he returned. But he never did. And it was like a switch flipped in my mother and I watched his death slowly tear her apart; she blamed herself of course for not talking him out of it, but regardless of whose fault it was, my family was torn apart by that war."
She knew the pain in her eyes was evident but a quick smile from Solo and she was off again.
"I was a child when the surrender came through on the radio. And while for my country it finally meant peace, for me, it meant that my work was only just beginning. As soon as I was old enough, I went to the army office and applied for a job there. In all my naivety I assumed that meant I was going to receive a uniform and be shipped out to be a part of the occupying forces…" She smiled as he tipped an imaginary hat to her. "…but I'd forgotten one very important thing…"
"Which was?"
"I'm a female, Napoleon." She reminded him, gesturing down to herself. "They poured me into tight clothes and sat me behind a desk where I filled in request forms and directed soldiers to the meeting rooms just above my head. My first day, there was this visiting GI who said to me "Sweetheart, get me a cup of a coffee and do it with a smile." And I said; "I'm here to serve my country not wait on you."
She paused as Napoleon let out a laugh before gesturing for her to continue.
"So he goes: "Sweetheart, the only service you can provide for this country is hospitality, now show me that smile of yours and make my day." So I did." She rolled her eyes at the thought of her past self. "And I carried on doing it for a year before something snapped in me and I demanded a chance. I stormed right upstairs to the main office and said; let me run the course with the new recruits; I pass and you give me a uniform, I fail and I'll happily swing my hips and bat my eyelashes for the rest of my life."
"What happened?"
"I failed…miserably." She told him, taking a drink of the amber liquid. "But the next time I walked to that desk that had taunted me for a year, it was my last day at the war office."
"But you said-"
"There was this guy from MI5 in the crowd as the recruits ran. Said he liked to see that sort of fire in a person regardless of their sex. Told me that I was a useless soldier though and if another war came and the likes of me were filling the trenches, we'd all be speaking German in a week." She smiled. "But apparently there was another battlefield that needed me; one that was played out by only a handful of people and I could be one…I haven't looked back."
And with a shy bat of her eyelashes, Agent Eva Green had successfully stolen the heart of Napoleon Solo. It was careless really, he thought, as an ex-thief he should have seen it coming.