Just when you thought I might be gone forever - I'm back!
This chapter contains several oblique references to Casino Royale, which I highly recommend if you haven't watched it already.
Some (self-indulgent) parts of this chapter are loosely based on my experience social dancing in the Chicago Lindy Hop scene.
4. Sacrilege
The text woke Bond at six a.m. as effectively as a car engine or a gunshot –
Flight 45
9 a.m.
Luggage sent ahead
The hall cupboard sat empty save for a suitcase stuffed for just such an occasion. In half an hour he was shutting the door on his sterile flat and ducking through a light drizzle into the backseat of a cab. His mobile settled heavy and unused into the bottom of a jacket pocket; a few taps would tell him where he was headed, but this was part of the game now, a deliberate deprivation, a test of all his observations over recent weeks. They were sending him for Zims, and if they were doing it now, with no briefing, the man had to be within a narrow window of time or geography or both. Amsterdam, then.
"Luggage sent ahead" meant his equipment would be waiting for him on arrival. At Schiphol the driver handed him a hardshell case containing his gun, his earpiece, and his hotel reservation, the latter folded into an envelope with a typewritten note:
Harvey Cain booked the same hotel –
Please send our regards.
The name surprised, because in Bond's years of service he had worked alongside another double-oh only a half-dozen times, and never the same one twice – though this was perhaps due to their short life expectancy and not any deliberate rotation. "Harvey Cain" was 002, the only double-oh who had survived active duty longer than Bond, a disguise and impersonation expert with so many aliases that Bond could not be sure he had ever heard the man's real name. Years ago, back when Boothroyd had still been Quartermaster, Bond and 002 had spent four months in the former Yugoslavia sharing a cell-block flat and come out of it with the friendship only a war zone could produce.
A zipped pocket on the inside of the briefcase held a tablet in a foam sheath. Bond powered it up and scrolled through the recent downloads: case information made up like academic articles, complete with footnotes and citations, meant to discourage over-the-shoulder snoopers. The boffins had probably enjoyed themselves a little too much.
The car drew up beside a hotel that jutted onto the water like the bow of a many-windowed ship. When Bond stepped onto the pavement he glimpsed himself mirrored in the water, face fragmented by miniature waves, hotel glass glittering behind him like hundreds of eyes, and he remembered the last choking canal he had looked into and the things it had swallowed forever.
Darkness dogged him up the stairs to his room. No frills, just a small bathroom and a single bed, which meant either all the suites were booked or Q was making a point about keeping his mind on his work. Bond took his time going through the motions of the mission: drawing the curtains, sweeping the room for bugs without a hit, taking a brisk shower and exchanging his travel-rumpled clothes for a finer suit. He knew he should have radioed headquarters by now, knew Q and M were probably going mad sitting on their hands, but their disapproval would give him a new target for his stewing anger.
After a glass of wine from room service and a semi-purposeful review of the briefing's pages on Zims, Bond finally put in the earpiece and cleared his throat. "Double-oh-seven, from Amsterdam."
"At last," Q said dryly, but Bond did not miss the thread of relief. "I was beginning to believe you'd been defeated by something mundane, like traffic or a heart attack."
Banter was familiar and welcome. "I'd never leave your lot with nothing to gossip about."
Q seemed to dismiss eye-rolling as adolescent, but exasperation flicked his eyes upward as though the impulse were still strong. Bond could hear the expression in his voice. "M requested that I assign you a specific identity, but experience has taught me you will ignore it. If you can at least pretend to be the CEO of an online pharmaceutical distributor, it would make my job a bit easier."
A smirk cracked Bond's face despite himself. "I'm sure you'll make me sound convincing."
"We've mocked up some websites that you apparently own, and falsified an impressive amount of web traffic and revenue. Unfortunately certain of your suppliers were recently arrested, which has scared certain other suppliers into scaling back their operations. You are interested in Zims because his counterfeiting business is a potential source of inventory."
A blue alert blipped in the corner of the tablet screen; Bond tapped it and watched a series of browser tabs load his supposed websites.
"I tried to make you an appointment, but he's a hard man to reach. So you'll have to charm your way in." Irony lay thick beneath the lightness of Q's voice. "One of the few good things to be said about Zims is that he's quite happily married, so I suggest not sleeping with his wife."
It was Bond's turn to almost roll his eyes. "In our business, that's a point against him. A well of information run dry."
Q assumed a familiar tone, stern but winking, that must have been passed down from Quartermaster to Quartermaster: "Use your imagination, 007."
The hotel bar doubled as a restaurant in the daytime hours. Bond ran an appreciative eye down the menu but contented himself with a sandwich and one of the house martinis, fuel with only a touch of his usual indulgence, because Q-Branch was still live in his ear and that meant work could not wait.
The room swarmed with international suits, most of them drinking carefully, socially, all of them married to their mobiles. Several of the men had female companions in obliging dresses, their smiles honed, sharp fingernails tinkling against delicate glassware. Any one of them could be a spy.
Bond recognized Zims immediately – throned in one of the plush semi-circular booths against the far wall – but feigned inattention until they had both finished their food. By propping the tablet against the edge of the bar he managed a few pictures for Q: Zims's luncheon guests, a younger couple, sleek as seals; the bodyguards, distinguishable by their silence, one at the booth and two across the aisle; the man himself, talkative and drink-flushed, his top lip curling away from his teeth in a snarling laugh.
Beside him, one braceleted arm draped possessively along the top of the booth, a dark-haired woman in a backless emerald dress sipped a vibrant cocktail. Bond could only see her profile, but that was enough to show him sharp cheekbones, long lashes, a broad and beautiful smile. Just beneath her left shoulder a birthmark colored skin like spilled wine. Not long ago that mark would have enticed him, made him want to lift aside the curtain of dark hair and see what else he could uncover – but today a woman's secrets felt like unwelcome complications, loaded and cocked more deftly than a gun.
The young guests tipped their waiter, said their goodbyes, shook Zims's hand and pressed kisses to his wife's waiting cheek. Bond glanced up as they passed him, and if his finger on the tablet screen happened to trigger the camera again – just distraction, he meant nothing by it, his apologies.
For a few minutes he watched Zims and his wife, more obviously than before. She had slid closer and their heads leaned together and from their smiles Bond could tell they were not discussing business. The bodyguard in their booth sprawled against the seat, apparently watching his friends with a lenient grin, but his eyes focused instead on the bar entrance beyond Zims's shoulder.
Bond summoned a waiter and pressed a large bill into the man's hand, gesturing at Zims's booth with a wave big enough to catch the attention of the bodyguards. "Tell the happy couple that their next round of drinks is on me."
Zims was accustomed to the flattery of sycophants; he accepted the waiter's message with no surprise and only the smallest amused glance at Bond. When the drinks arrived he clinked glasses with his wife and carried on their interrupted conversation. Bond considered Plan B.
But then Zims turned to one of the guards – tall, blond, and thick-chested, dressed despite the lingering heat in a black turtleneck and wool trousers – asked a question and listened closely to his answer. This, now, was business; the bodyguard sat up straight and glanced over his shoulder, in Bond's direction, twice. When Zims nodded, his man stood and approached the bar. Bond flexed his shoulder and felt the pull of his holster straps, the familiar weight of the Walther folded like a wing against his ribs.
The bodyguard stepped close enough to be heard at a murmur, just on the edge of threat. "My employer wishes to thank you personally."
He put an odd stress on the final word, and Bond's trained eye magnified the familiar: a cleft in the chin, fine creases at the corners of the eyes, a clean scar on the back of the left thumb, caused by a malfunctioning switchblade during an altercation in Zagreb.
Bond looked Harvey Cain in the eye and gave a small nod of recognition. "The pleasure's mine."
Double-oh-two drew up a chair for him at the outer curve of Zims's table. As soon as Bond had settled himself, the other two bodyguards stepped in side-by-side behind him, walling them off from the rest of the room, enclosing Bond in the circle of his enemies.
Zims wiped a fleck of condensation from his glass with his thumb. "Would you like to taste what you've bought?"
It was a tumbler of scotch on the rocks, already half-gone and beginning to melt. Zims slid it across the table without waiting for an answer. Bond sipped enough to wet his tongue with it.
"Macallan 25. A solid choice, though a bit obvious."
Zims shrugged. "I'm a man of fixed tastes. I don't usually take recommendations." There was no offense or threat in his tone; a little smile played about his lips. "But I sense a recommendation is what you are looking for."
"Can't a man simply wish to drink to the health of an accomplished gentleman and a beautiful lady?" Bond asked, raising the glass to Zims and his wife in turn. The lady rolled her eyes, but her shoulders relaxed and she faced him frankly, as though he had proven himself worthy of her consideration. Zims glanced at her, eyes crinkling, and put a hand on her knee, and Bond thought, Poor devil, he really is in love.
"If that is true," Zims replied, "then I accept your compliment. But a man comes alone, in an expensive suit, with a heavy briefcase, to a hotel bar full of millionaires with gorgeous women on their arms, and he picks me out of the crowd to make his introductions. I hope you will forgive me for suspecting ulterior motives."
Bond smiled and slid the tumbler back across the table. "And I hope you will forgive me for attempting to smooth the path."
Zims accepted the glass and threw back what remained of the scotch. "Well, I'm glad we can be honest with each other, Mr.–?"
"Bond. James Bond."
In his earpiece Q gave a tiny sigh. Bond pressed a napkin to his mouth to hide his smile.
"What exactly is the nature of your business, Mr. Bond?"
"I'm an entrepreneur, in the same field as yourself." Zims's grin edged with ironic amusement, and Bond placated, "Not a competitor. More like a middleman."
"I know hundreds of men like you," Zims said with exaggerated kindness, as though he were explaining a simple fact to a child. "They think a city full of customers is a proud achievement. They don't know that I am already in their city, and the next city over, and the next."
"All I care about is the numbers." Bond offered up the tablet, browser still running. "Not particular about where they come from."
Zims toggled perfunctorily through the tabs. His amused smile lingered. "I know hundreds of men like this as well. But I'll humor you. Join me in the penthouse in half an hour and we'll talk."
He returned the tablet and one of the bodyguards clapped Bond on the shoulder in a way that would seem friendly to anyone watching. Bond stood and buttoned his suit jacket and deliberately knocked his shoulder against the guard's as he strode away.
Q waited until Bond was out of Zims's earshot, as though the man might possibly overhear. "I don't like it. There's only one exit to the penthouse, unless you're prepared to dive off the balcony into the canal." A pause, not long enough for Bond to respond – "Actually, I'm certain you are, so I'll amend my objection to 'There're only two exits to the penthouse.' And I don't like your odds."
"I think they're excellent," Bond muttered, jogging up the six steps to the lobby and the lifts. "I've had worse than this alone."
"You need to have control of the situation before 002 can intervene," Q said. "Zims thinks he's loyal and I'd like to keep it that way, even if your negotiations go south."
"So I'm the one putting my face on the line," Bond grumbled, more wry than unkind. "And he will remember me."
He could picture it perfectly, the ironical tilt of Q's mouth, the knowing flicker of his eyes behind his glasses. "Why do you think we sent you?"
Holly was not supposed to sit in on the Amsterdam mission; technically there were rules about how many members of Q-Branch could listen to the comms at any one time, created to prevent sensitive intelligence from spreading even within the Branch. But rules were frequently broken in times of crisis, and increasingly she thought, watching Q's eyes darken, listening to the department heads whisper in frustration and fear, that if this was not yet a crisis, it would come to one, soon.
They had locked down the main intelligence room, but all doors in Q-Branch opened for Holly with the swipe of a card and the touch of a thumb. The main monitor on the far wall showed Q a three-dimensional map of the hotel, solid blue geometry dotted with writhing yellow splotches of human body heat. He was standing, as he always did for double-oh missions, his darting eyes the only sign of the nervous energy Holly could sense like an oncoming storm.
At a desk nearby, Jeffries examined twin monitors, one displaying footage from four separate security cameras, the other, a low-res video feed of a corridor broken at intervals by heavy numbered doors. The latter footage moved along the hallway at walking speed, hovering at roughly the height of a man's chest – a lapel camera, Holly realized.
The camera-wearer turned, and a cluster of dark-suited men appeared in the frame.
"Sir." A nearby voice, probably their cameraman: "Permission to take five before our meeting."
The shortest of the men glanced up from his mobile, shrugged, and nodded dismissively. Abrupt movement fractured his face into pixels, but Holly caught a flash of sharp eyes and felt a swoop of unease, of exposure, as if their camera worked both ways.
Their cameraman opened a nearby door and stepped into the blinding florescence of a white-tiled men's room.
Jeffries tapped out a series of commands, starting a scan of the loo and muting the comm link from their end. "I still say it's too early to send in 007."
Q arched an eyebrow at him, sideways.
Jeffries swiveled his chair towards Holly, a request for back-up. "Cain's been embedded in Zims's operation for six months, but it's only in the last three weeks that he's gotten close to the man himself. If they think something's up –"
The scan beeped an all-clear. Jeffries scrambled for the comm. "You're clean, Cain. How's the big man's mood?"
"Unflappable, as always. Much like yourself."
Jeffries grinned, and Holly knew Cain was grinning with him. Several of the double-ohs, Cain in particular, had a teasing rapport with Jeffries that they hadn't bothered to establish with anyone else in the Branch. He walked and talked and drank like them; he was looser than Sullivan, whose demeanor spelled authority, and they could not dismiss him as a woman or a schoolboy, someone who had to fight for the respect that rank should have earned them.
"Aww, I'm flattered," Jeffries said. "Nice to know I compare to jet-setting billionaires, even of the criminal variety."
The camera now faced the blank porcelain of a urinal. Cain's voice intermittently drowned the sound of running water. "Don't admire them for a second. How do you think they stay clean when they're handling all these drugs, eh? It's 'cause money and power are the real drugs to them."
"Don't get philosophical," Jeffries chided. "You're hired muscle. Talk less and lift more weights."
Cain zipped his trousers and sighed theatrically. "The indignities I suffer for the stage."
"You've got an admiring audience here, mate."
"If the two of you are quite finished flirting," Q cut in, his eyes still on the wall monitor.
Jeffries affected a pout. "Party's over, Cain, the Quartermaster's casting aspersions on our masculine friendship."
Cain chuckled and winked at them in the mirror over the sink. "Party's just started. Take care of 007 for me, Q."
Q sighed, but Holly saw the corner of his mouth curl with something like affection.
Holly followed 002's lapel cam to the end of the hallway and through the lift and watched Zims's men file into the penthouse, draw the curtains, set out chairs for the master and his guest. Over Q's shoulder one of the faceless yellow figures called a lift on the third floor and pressed the button for the penthouse, rode upwards with its feet planted in an implacable stance Holly would have recognized even without the hovering label: 007 – Bond.
"I hope you understand that I was joking about the canal," Q said as Bond watched the needle climb the dial above the door. "The water's only three meters deep. Jumping from this height, you would hit the water at a speed of –"
"No visuals, please, Q."
The lift pinged and the door slid open and Bond stepped into a square landing with three exits: the lift behind, an unobtrusive service door to the left, and a set of heavy dark-finished doors dead ahead. No windows. Bond shifted his briefcase to the other hand and visualized the floorplans: living room in the center, two steps up to the kitchen, two bedrooms with attached bathrooms on the opposite side, no way down except the lift or the dive.
One of Zim's men answered before Bond could knock.
"Punctual," Zims observed from behind his bodyguards. "You've cultivated some excellent self-promotional qualities, Mr. Bond."
The bar had been modern, clean lines and sharp leather, but the penthouse was another world entirely – wine-red wallpaper and ornate rugs, statuettes of pagan gods and maps mounted in gilded frames, the trappings of a wealthy and nostalgic traveler assembled as precisely as a movie set. Everything had heft, from the squat-legged furniture to the sandstone drink coasters. The kitchen had been shuttered behind French doors. Thick floor-length curtains snuffed the light from the balcony; instead a quintet of little lamps emitted a fuzzy sepia glow. Bond did not fear tight spaces, but he felt confined.
Two armchairs faced off across a claw-footed table. Bond stepped forward and was immediately blocked by a guard who motioned for him to hand over his briefcase and raise his arms to be frisked. The suit reached straight for his shoulder holster as though he knew Bond's arming preferences and held up the Walther between finger and thumb for his master's appraisal.
"Let him keep his gun," Zims ordered, settling into one of the armchairs. "That way he cannot object to us keeping ours."
The guard spun the gun round one-handed and offered the grip to Bond with a tiny bow and a tinier smile. Bond returned the smile in the spirit it was intended, one professional intimidator to another.
"During our intermission I've been learning what I can about your business," Zims said as Bond took a seat. Double-oh-two stood at parade rest over Zims's shoulder; Zims's wife lounged on a nearby sofa, paging through a gossip rag, her heels discarded on the rug. "You've done well for yourself financially, but you lack the connections necessary to ensure the safety of your assets."
The reply came to Bond a beat after the norm; part of his mind was diverted to a scan of the room – no sign of the third bodyguard. "I've been expanding without much care for the rules of the business." He shaded his smile with self-deprecation. "Turns out that earns you more enemies than allies."
Zims tapped his lip with one finger. In the empty space Q supplied: "Last one's in the kitchen, two o'clock. Cleaning his gun, if I'm not mistaken."
A smile started in Zims's eyes. "You're bold, but I don't think you realize how precarious your situation is. Your empire rests on some unreliable people." His whole face was creased now, grinning, perfect sharklike teeth. "Trust me – I know them better than you do."
"That's why I've come to you."
"And you think I'm trustworthy?"
Bond shrugged. "I did my homework, but no one ever really knows. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge."
Zims sealed his lips against his laughter, but his shoulders shook with it. It took him a moment to master himself enough to speak. "Oh, I know what that leap is like. The trick is to have someone waiting to pull you out before you drown."
And Bond felt the cold touch of the gun just behind his ear, heard Q's breath hiss through his teeth as though he felt it too.
Double-oh-two barely moved, just a tiny tensing of the hands and a glance at his false master as though checking for orders. Zims's wife disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the doors parted behind her, and Q had been right about the third bodyguard – kitchen table, clear view of the living room, the arm holding his silenced gun propped up casually beside a cluster of condiment jars.
Bond kept his hands on his knees, where everyone could see them. "Am I getting the five-star routine, or is this how you treat all your guests?"
"Only the ones foolish enough to come alone." Zims swirled his glass of scotch beneath his nose, inhaled, sipped. "Which, I admit, is most of them." He met the eyes of the guard at Bond's shoulder and nodded, once.
Bond had gathered himself like a runner at the starting line, weight shifting forward, right hand lifting, but 002 had left the gate, gun out and swinging for Zims, and Q got out only a fragment of a word, "Wa –" before the first gunshot thudded home.
Cain's left shoulder snapped back as though he'd been punched and blood bloomed glistening in the hole in his turtleneck. He did not fall gracefully; knees buckled first and he swayed before dropping, head hitting the carpet too hard to be a ploy.
No time for the paralysis of horror – instinct overrode and the wrist of Bond's guard broke with a scream, gun confiscated, body swung round to take the second bullet from the kitchen. Bond returned fire only once because Q was snapping orders: "Mission terminated, I need an extraction at the Hotel de l'Europe – Bond, get out of there –"
A third shot showered Bond with plaster dust. He hurled the squirming wounded bodyguard aside and dove through the nearest door – bedroom, more heavy furniture nestled flush against the walls and floors, nowhere to hide where he wouldn't be found in seconds. Q said, "Three o'clock" – another door, bathroom. Jacuzzi, vanity mirror, laundry chute in the back wall, pastel soaps carved into flowers and birds and fish. Porcelain sink, the kind Bond couldn't look at without thinking of smashing a man's head in, the first one never really leaves you, they'd said.
"Circle round – no, wait –"
A door crashed open in the second bedroom, footsteps also approaching from behind, and Bond ignored the voices in his head and took the third exit.
The chute was tight, but he fit with his toes pointed and his arms above his head. A final bullet clanged against the metal frame, but Bond was already two stories down, plunging for the belly of the hotel, below the bottom of the river.
In Q-Branch the silencer made a horrible splatting sound like fruit bursting against a wall. Q's whole body flinched. Jeffries sprang to his feet. Holly thought, It's a short in the speakers, even though she knew it wasn't, even though the alert flashed on all their screens that vitals had been lost, even though the yellow figure lay leeching color on the penthouse floor. Silence teetered on the edge for one stomach-dropping second.
Then the room erupted – Q patching to backup and Jeffries tearing through the data, ballistics, trajectory, distance of the medevac team, any hope they might have of salvaging someone. Holly snatched a tablet and watched medevac's GPS tracker veer through the birds-eye streets of Amsterdam, her finger tapping off the seconds even though they had timers on everything, gathering data from the ones they could not save.
When the call came in that Bond was secure, the adrenaline drain left them colorless and trembling, weakened by relief and reproof. Holly sat down on the floor and pressed both hands against the climbing pain in her back. Jeffries slumped in his chair, head lolling, fingers stabbing through his hair. Q had braced himself against the table, eyes hidden in the shadow of his fringe. His fingertips looked deathly pale beside the dark fraying wool of his gloves, and Holly felt the baby move inside her, and a fear sucked the air from her lungs.
Suddenly Q ripped out his earpiece and stalked from the room. Holly dragged herself to her feet and followed him. He was walking so fast that she had to jog to keep him in her sight, but when he turned the corner she knew where he was going and allowed herself to slow.
In their joined offices he was pacing, spine rigid, fingers spasming as though he feared what would happen if he closed them into fists. "They knew, they knew, maybe they've known for months –"
"Q –"
He whipped round like a snake. "Bond's only alive because Zims likes to play with his food before he eats it."
Holly had seen even the experienced techs flinch from the Quartermaster's anger, his youth and articulateness weaponized in combination. She held his gaze. "What are we going to do about it?"
A different voice answered: "Easy."
They both turned and looked at Jeffries, who had braced himself against the doorframe as if he didn't trust his legs. His eyes could scald. "We're gonna snuff the rat."
At some point in the chaos that followed, Q walked to the break room and poured himself a cold coffee and stood for several minutes staring at the cup on the counter, questioning the wisdom of drinking it. If only he could sleep – but there were meetings and paperwork and 007's debriefing, and he had reached the point of insomnia where everything seemed to happen on the other side of a two-way mirror, physically close but outside his influence. Dark spots collected at the corners of his vision and he could hear a high-pitched whine inside his head as though his brain had begun to short.
Movement near the doorway made him start. It was M, hands in his pockets and a flat look on his face. Q held his breath against twin surges of terror and resignation, because he had realized during the Skyfall investigation that his time here would end in death or sacking, and either of those could come at any time.
A long moment passed. Then M stepped around him to the coffee machine and began to fix a cup, as though he did not have several assistants who could bring him much better and fresher coffee on command. Q stared.
Mallory ripped open a sugar packet and tapped half the contents into his mug. "The Intelligence and Security Committee is clamoring for an independent investigation."
Confirmation of the inevitable made Q sigh. "That is their right as an oversight committee, sir."
M gave him an unreadable glance. "If this moves forward, there will be some difficult questions for you to answer."
"I have plenty of evidence that my office has been doing all that it can to apprehend –"
M did not have to raise his voice to cut him off. "They won't be questions about your office, but rather about your right to hold it." He paused and cocked an eyebrow as though he expected Q to interject. "Right now the Committee is under the impression that you perpetrated one incident of hacking that resulted in only a minor security leak – a smart boy's trick, audacious but just harmless enough. That was what they were told when your hiring was proposed. We've been lucky that up to now no one has ever looked too closely."
A smart boy's trick. Q's hands shook. "Sir, when I went before the board of inquiry following the Skyfall incident, did they not examine my credentials – my fictional credentials – and find them satisfactory?"
"They stand up well enough on their own, but consider who else is on the list of suspects. Do you really think no one will be suspicious if they investigate Mrs. Mason, or Mr. Sullivan, and compare the timing and the terms of their hiring with yours?"
Q thought of them one by one, alone across the room from the inquiry suits: Jeffries circumlocutory and Sullivan monosyllabic, Holly defensive but honest. They would all confess, they would have to confess, implicating each other for taking a job and following orders.
Mallory's voice was weary but stern. "Keep in mind this will be the second time your office has been investigated in less than a year. With both investigations occurring since you took over –"
Suddenly the room seemed suffocating – the blank walls, the cracked countertop, the stale-coffee smell, the mundane movements of M's hands as he stirred his coffee with a plastic spoon and continued in that disappointed tone as though the Quartermaster had proven more trouble than he was worth. Death or sacking – he had come close to both in the past year, and at least Colin hadn't drawn it out for days.
"I am well aware, sir, that I owe my continued existence to the charity of MI6, and I hope that throughout my tenure I have been useful to you and your predecessor as a convenient scapegoat."
The silence was ringing. "Sir," Q repeated, as if recognition of rank could save him now.
They faced each other. M took one step closer and Q most certainly did not flinch.
"I am trying to protect you," M said quietly. "Just as my predecessor tried to protect the former Quartermaster by allowing him to go through with his plans for retirement after we lost the list of agents to Silva, therefore absolving him of responsibility. I know that put you in a difficult position, but it was really a vote of confidence in you and the people you would bring with you to the job."
Somehow he had thwarted all of Q's expectations. Q knew he was probably gaping, but the implications had frozen every surface script and left his background processes scrambling to fill in.
M stepped back to the counter and picked up his coffee. He seemed to have shrunk, somehow, become a man and not a monolith. "I'm taking the precaution of locking Tanner and Mrs. Mason out of the highest security level. That leaves only you and me with unlimited access. We're going to force this person to show himself."
"Or herself," Q appended automatically, then closed his eyes in what might have been a wince, if he had had the energy. When he dared to open them again, Mallory was watching him with the faintest shade of a smile.
"You know," he said, "she warned me about you." There was only one person to whom the pronoun could refer. "She left among her possessions a letter for the next person to take on her position. 'Watch out for my Quartermaster,' she said. 'He's young, but he's never been afraid to speak truth to power.'" Some of Q's confused feelings must have shown in his face, because M observed, "You don't think that's accurate."
"I recall lying… trying to lie to you, sir, during one of our first meetings."
M's brows drew together in distant anger, his eyes focused on something beyond Q. "You were correctly assuming that not everyone around you could be trusted."
Q gave a jagged laugh. "That's the lesson, isn't it?"
Mallory looked at him as though he wanted to disagree but couldn't, or wouldn't, and Q felt unexpectedly thankful for that small respect, the lies they refused to tell each other.
The first sip of coffee tightened M's mouth in distaste, but he carried the cup with him as he walked out. At the door he turned back. "Q."
"Sir?"
M's eyes were as immovable as stone. "Your most important credentials aren't fictional. Use them, and prove me right."
Q let silence persist between himself and Audrey for a full week, and he might have let it go on even longer, might have let everything die there, if Amsterdam hadn't set in relief all the things left to lose. Mornings and evenings in the Tube he had composed several drafts of text messages, none of which felt adequate, let alone impressive. In the end he decided to combine three of the messages into one; he rarely apologized to anyone with full sincerity, and using a combination of tactics increased the likelihood he would get it right.
I'm sorry, I'm an idiot, can I make it up to you?
He knew better than to expect an immediate response, but that didn't stop the stutter, as though his heart had missed a step, every time a new text appeared (most from Holly, most about work). The reply that he finally received did not match any of his predictions.
Would you like to go grocery shopping with me tonight?
After Q had read this several times and determined that the secret meaning, if there was one, had eluded him, he sent back a single question mark and set his mobile aside. That she had replied at all had allayed his most serious fears, and he needed, desperately, to focus on work.
In less than a minute the phone rang.
He answered, cautiously: "Hello?"
"Hi." She sounded tired, or guarded, but the wryness had not disappeared. "Yes, I am actually asking if you will come with me to Tesco."
Q got up and shut his office door, cutting off Holly just as she swiveled her chair round to look at him. "I'm not opposed, just… confused."
"We've got someone on sick leave at St. Thomas's and I've been covering a lot of her shifts, but it's my turn to do the shopping, so… if we want to see each other, that's our best chance."
"What time?"
"In about an hour."
Q glanced at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. He was due on a conference call with the Hong Kong unit in thirty minutes, but it would be easy enough to send Sullivan in his place.
"All right. I need to clear up a few things at work. I'll text you when I'm done?" He hadn't intended the last sentence to come out as a question, but it seemed prudent to offer her the right of refusal, and fortifying to give her a chance to say yes.
"Okay."
Q filed away all the paperwork on his desk, binned his tea dregs, fished out some relevant emails, and then pulled the rarely-used inter-office phone towards him and dialed Sullivan's extension. When he was in his office Sullivan often tossed his mobile in a drawer and ignored it, an antiquated habit that Q had tried in vain to stamp out.
Sullivan picked up before the second ring. "Sir?"
"I've been called out of the office, so I need you to talk to Hong Kong without me. I'm forwarding my most recent conversation with their InfoSec person right now. I'll need a report before you leave tonight, do you think you can do that?" The question was a formality, a concession to their mutual respect; Q always asked, and Sullivan always gave the same answer.
"Yes, sir."
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Enjoy your date, sir."
Q slammed the phone down and swore, then looked up at the door and waited on tenterhooks for any sign that Holly had heard.
Nothing. Not even the sound of her typing. Q narrowed his eyes.
When he stepped into the outer office she didn't acknowledge him, not even when he sidled up behind her shoulder, close enough to cast shadows across her keyboard.
"Been spreading rumors about me?"
She still didn't look round, but her reflection in the monitor made glancing eye contact. "I work for the Circus – do you really think I have the time?" Q folded his arms and she relented. "I don't lie to Lamar when he asks me a direct question. You know that."
"You're speculating."
Now she turned and looked him in the face. Her tone was flippant, her expression fond, but beneath he felt the vein of concern that ran thicker in recent months. "You're not as good of a liar as you think you are."
They met at a Tesco Express near St. James's Park and Q pushed the trolley up and down the aisles and thought that perhaps they would seem like an ordinary couple if they didn't both look so tired. Autumn chill had not yet claimed London, but Audrey had bundled herself in a long knit wrap, like armor. She kept the trolley and her folded arms between them as much as possible.
Q regarded the row of glass freezers and its endless supply of preserved pizzas and microwave dinners. "Have you eaten?"
"Not since about four."
"Do you want to get takeaway on the way back to your flat?"
Audrey cocked her head, eyes slitted like a cat, a little smile that could be playful or cruel. "What makes you think you're coming with me to my flat?"
Q kept his voice and expression level. "I thought you wouldn't fancy carrying all of this through the Tube by yourself."
"I'm getting a cab."
"You'll still have to carry everything up the stairs."
Her mouth twitched as though she had barely restrained some word or smile or smirk. "You're trying awfully hard to be chivalrous."
"I tend to come across as insincere when I apologize with only words."
"I wouldn't know, since you haven't actually apologized with words." Q opened his mouth and she cut him off: "Text messages don't count."
Deprived of the obvious objection, Q's brain resorted to insincere retorts, the type of self-preserving posturing that neither of them deserved. Holly's exasperated face flashed in his mind's eye: Just say it, you great bloody idiot –
"I am sorry. I'm not –" But he wasn't sure which damning thing he had intended to use as an excuse. Not an honest man. Not a clever boy.
Audrey let him struggle for a few seconds, then put a hand over his on the handle of the trolley, squeezed, and let go. Some of the frost in her eyes had melted.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry, too." She opened a freezer door and chucked two bags of frozen vegetables into the trolley, her aim unsteady. "I feel a bit… like I prodded you to a level of intimacy we weren't ready for."
Self-deprecation wrung a smile out of Q. "I have difficulty reaching that level of intimacy with anyone, at any time." Apprehension struck him and he scrambled to clarify: "I'm not talking about sex."
This time Audrey didn't even try to hide her smirk. "Neither am I."
Q wanted to say something more, but this time their bubble of silence felt comfortable instead of confining, and if he burst it he could not be sure how it would reform. Neither of them spoke again until they reached the chip and pin machines. Audrey scanned and bagged while Q unloaded.
"It wasn't anything you said," Q tried. Audrey's chin jerked up in a reflexive glance, but her hands did not falter. "I'm grateful you trusted me."
She nodded, half to herself. "I refuse to think of it as a character flaw. Every relationship is a leap of faith."
"Sometimes you just have to take the plunge," Q said, then realized who he had echoed.
They walked. At first they meant to walk to the end of the block where Audrey would have a better chance of hailing a cab, and when they didn't immediately see one they kept walking, past several bus stops and Tube stations, ignoring the way the bags grew heavier in their hands because company made the rest seem just a little bit lighter.
Someone had posted a sign in the stairwell of Audrey's building that read QUIET HOURS – ELEVEN P.M. TO SEVEN A.M. They took the stairs on tiptoe, and Q held extra bags while Audrey fished out her keys and let them in. As they passed into the kitchen Q glanced down the hallway at the bedrooms – Will's door was closed, no light from beneath, and Kit's stood wide, a dark room and an empty bed. He took orders as they put away the groceries, stashing crisps and tea biscuits on high shelves, crumpling the bags into a cupboard to be recycled later, and wondering at domesticity and the small appeal it could sometimes have.
When they had finished Audrey opened a packet of Jelly Babies and they stood against the counter eating them.
"They say you're supposed to eat food in a variety of colors to ensure you're getting the right nutrients," she said, arranging her handful into the order of the rainbow. "So this counts as a balanced diet, right?"
Q was too busy eating the heads off first to pay attention to what color they were. "When I was in year seven my science class put Jelly Babies in potassium chlorate. They burst into flames and made a terrible screaming noise. Some of my classmates were quite upset."
"That's what you get for treating them that way," Audrey scolded. "They're just babies."
They stared at each other, equally deadpan; Audrey cracked first, clapping a hand over her mouth as if that could hide the mirth watering her eyes.
Q relaxed into a smile. "Is there anything else I can do to make this up to you?"
She blinked at him for a moment, and then a tiny spark of mischief crept into her eyes, and Q wondered if he would regret handing her such power. "Well – Kit's invited me to the Angel's Share on Saturday and I have been instructed to bring a date."
"The Angel's Share."
"It's a club, but it's got a live band instead of a DJ, and there's an attached restaurant that does dinner with white glove service. The whole thing's quite posh."
Q asked, "Does it have wi-fi?" and, when she raised her eyebrows at him in warning: "That was a joke."
One eyebrow stayed raised like the curve of a question mark. "Nine o'clock?"
"All right." He shouldn't promise anything, not when he couldn't even be sure he would still have his job by Saturday – but this was what normal people did, went out to clubs and restaurants with the people they fancied and ordered after-dinner drinks until they were just tipsy enough to be brave. It increased his empathy for his agents, this balancing act, pretending he belonged in a world that was closed to him.
Asking to stay would be pushing his luck. On his way out he heard her come up behind him, closer than last time, and catch the door before it closed. She didn't open it wide enough to be an invitation, but the glimmer in her face hinted that he might look for one, soon.
"By the way," she said, "it's vintage, so wear something nice."
The advantages of a high rank in the Secret Service included not just the ability to afford nice suits but also the benefit of example, and that Saturday Q stood in his pants in front of his open wardrobe and thought, What would Bond do? He didn't own anything that qualified as vintage – Q wasn't sure what the word meant in this context, though a quick internet search had shown him that the Angel's Share presented itself as a forties-style dance hall, high-class decadence with the barest hint of impropriety, the sort of place he could easily imagine Bond slinking through with a martini glass in one hand and a Walther in his dinner jacket. In the end he chose a charcoal-gray three-piece, with French cuffs and a red tie and white dress gloves that Holly had quietly bought for him the first time they met with the ISC after Colin.
The Angel's Share was, predictably, in Islington – far enough from his flat that he took a cab even though the weather was beautiful and a walk might have cleared his head. From the beginning he had felt his irresponsibility like a person's presence just outside his sight, but tonight it crept closer, breathed down the back of his neck as he stepped from the cab. Q rolled his shoulders and gritted his teeth against the feeling. Bond could be reckless without any consequences.
He was running late and the line was already long. The women were easy to pick out on the pavement, their hair and Kit's slinky blue dress drawing eyes through the mass of dark suits like the flash of color on a bird's breast. Audrey had woven her hair into a crown of plaits that shone under the streetlamps as though inlaid with gold. Q stood back a few paces to appreciate the greater picture – red lips, black dress, red sash, black tights, red heels, a pleasing play of contrasts rich with details that he hoped to explore at length.
Audrey seemed amused by something he didn't quite understand. "Hi, stranger."
"Hello, Robert," Kit said coolly, and it occurred to Q that he would have to explain himself to more than one person. Kit's date was tall and handsome in a molded way; he and Q exchanged stiff-lipped greetings and agreed through pointed looks to leave each other alone for the night.
Inside they found a table against the side wall and ordered drinks from a tuxedoed waiter who navigated the crowd with a sure-footedness that would have impressed even Q's agents. Except for the wide, arching entrance and a smaller corridor opposite that led to the loo and the fire exit, the dance floor was surrounded by concentric rings of intimate tables, none bigger than four seats. The narrow aisles jostled with people moving chairs to friends' tables or strolling round for a chat.
Nightmare to secure, Q thought. At least there's no windows.
The best view in the house belonged to the band, a five-piece arranged on a small uplit stage at the head of the dance floor, swinging their way through a trumpet-heavy tune that had the dancers sweating. All the trappings evoked a storybook idea of an earlier time – soft white sconces, dark wood along the bar, ladies in long gloves and men in dinner jackets, the keyboardist's tuxedo tails dangling over his bench like the tips of folded wings. No one was smoking, but a haze washed the room as if Q were watching everything through a layer of gauze.
Audrey leaned over and whispered, "I know this isn't your usual –"
"Hey," Kit interrupted, wagging a finger. "No secrets."
Audrey's eyes flared, which only made Kit grin; Q sensed that both of them were remembering a conversation he had not been privy to.
"Robert's never been here before," Audrey said crisply.
"Oh," Kit said. "A virgin." The waiter arrived with their drinks, and she raised her glass. "To first times."
"To starting over," Q amended. The four of them clinked glasses solemnly. Under the table he felt Audrey's foot nudge his, and when he turned his head her eyes were smiling over the rim of her glass.
They talked for the first round, the kind of slight conversation that occurs in a mismatched group, and inevitably fell silent for an uncomfortable stretch. The tables around them had filled and they had so much trouble catching the waiter's attention that Audrey finally took their orders and went up to the bar. A singer joined the band and began to croon an old love song, and when Kit suggested dancing her date sprang to his feet as though he'd been waiting for an excuse.
Just weeks ago Q could have been comfortable alone in a crowded room, but even at their out-of-the-way table he felt exposed. This whole evening seemed the most egregious bit of playacting since joining MI6, dressed and drinking like Bond, courting a little group who could not really be his friends. Dancing would be absurd, but sitting still felt like resignation. He was about to go searching for Audrey at the bar when she reappeared with three glasses triangled in her hands.
"I've got a waiter coming with your gin and tonic," she said, setting the glasses at the appropriate places and claiming the chair Kit's date had vacated. "Where's the Lady Katherine?"
Q inclined his head towards the dance floor. Audrey rolled her eyes affectionately.
"We won't see much of her for a solid hour. She loves this place."
"What about you?"
She searched his face as though she suspected some judgment, and it stung that she would doubt something so simple – but then she softened and smiled, sheepish but not quite ashamed. Her fingers smoothed out a wrinkle at the edge of the tablecloth. "Its charms work on me more than they probably should."
"Audrey!" A sandy-haired man in braces and spats trotted up to their table and touched a hand to her shoulder. "How are you, love? Still at St. Thomas's?"
"Forever at St. Thomas's," Audrey said with a smile. She had leaned, briefly, into this man's touch, and Q swallowed against the unpleasant taste in the back of his mouth.
"Care for a dance?" Spats asked her, with a minute glance at Q.
Audrey patted his hand, then shrugged it off her shoulder. "I'm here with someone." She angled her chair so she could address both of them at once. "Robert, this is Dylan, we went to King's together – Dylan, this is Robert."
Dylan stuck out his hand, but Q's hands had twisted into his napkin and stiffened into claws. He looked instead at Audrey, whose eyes were earnest. "It's all right if you want to dance."
Her face flickered surprise, undertones of confusion and what he hoped wasn't pity. Q's eyes skittered over the surrounding tables, the jumping band, the buzzing bar.
"You should do it with someone who knows what they're doing."
She hesitated, lips parting as though to speak, but then her face set and the moment died. When Dylan touched her arm again she reached up and put her hand in his, let him lead her waist-deep into the sea of dancers, and Q watched until the waves folded over them and washed them from sight.
His gin and tonic came, and he drank it much too fast and ordered another. The dance floor swelled and receded, offered him occasional glimpses of Audrey, Dylan spinning and dipping her, making her laugh and lean close to speak into his ear. At the end of the song he brought her to a table whose occupants greeted her with recognition and laughter and offered a chair that, after some vacillation, she took. Q watched the bubbles dissolve in her untouched martini and drummed strings of binary into the table and resisted the urge to pull out his mobile and cause some chaos in China.
At the bottom of his third glass she returned.
"Well, Kit's off in a corner snogging Caden –" She took a closer look at his face. "You all right?"
With her back to the dance floor she gleamed at the edges like some higher visitor, the light breaking through blinding between her fingers. Q's head swam. "I think I've had one too many."
"Are you drinking because you're nervous?"
She fished the lime wedge out of his glass and sucked it, red lips puckering around the rind, and Q wondered if that was deliberate or if the gin had primed him to see provocation in everything.
"I'm drinking because I need something to do with my hands."
"So come dance with me."
Q looked acerbically at the mass of accomplished dancers. "I would like to end this evening with you thinking well of me."
Audrey sighed, but her eyes were tender. "It's a slow song, you don't have to actually dance – you just put your hands on each other and sway. You don't have any more excuses, come."
She gave his hand a little coaxing squeeze, then turned and walked back between the crowded tables without a backward glance. Q gripped the edge of the table with both hands, unsure for a moment if he was pushing himself up or holding himself down, and considering just who he was protecting if he made the safer choice.
He reached her right as she turned round to look for him, and their knuckles knocked together awkwardly. Audrey caught his hands and reeled him in, placed his palms at her hips and laced her fingers behind his neck. At first they shuffled, uncertain of each other's rhythm. Q wasn't sure what he should or could look at – the pale freckled curve of neck and shoulder, the breathing swell of collarbone and cleavage, her eyes luminous with affection and pleasure and that familiar hint of challenge. Audrey solved it for him by settling her head on his shoulder and giving him the freedom to watch without being watched in turn. They were pressed so close that Q could feel her humming with the music, a comforting vibration like a cat's purr against his chest. The song had soaked into him some years ago, and without thought he began to mouth the lyrics:
Come the day you're mine,
I'm gonna teach you to fly –
Audrey lifted her head to treat him to the full force of her incredulity. "You know the words."
"Blame my grandmother," Q muttered. "She had a hopeless romantic streak, despite her best attempts to quash it."
Audrey sucked in her bottom lip and dropped her forehead against his shoulder. For a confusing, terrible moment Q thought she was crying, until he realized that the quivering meant laughter.
"What?"
"Nothing," she mumbled into his lapel, and then a fresh fit of giggles seized her.
"What?" Q demanded.
"Nothing," she insisted, and nuzzled into the crook of his neck, flicking dampness from the corner of her eye with the pad of her thumb.
They turned slow circles at the edge of the light for one song, then two. Everything seemed suffused and dizzy and sweeping, swirling like a martini, and even through the layers of his suit her fingers set off starbursts with every touch. Q thought, All torture is either deprivation or overstimulation, and how could something be both at once?
"I have a confession to make," Audrey murmured against his neck.
"Mmm?"
She inclined her chin, mouth at the corner of his jaw, just below the ear. "This whole evening was an elaborate plot to get you first into and then out of a nice suit."
"Well, now it's not a seduction, it's a statement of intention."
He felt her cheeks and lips shape into a smile. "I hope you'll forgive me for not playing hard to get."
The song ended and the floor broke apart and Audrey's fingernails pressed pinpricks into the back of his neck.
"We should go."
"Yes."
In the cab he remembered the ex-boyfriend and gave her space, let her be the one to slide across the seat and press them together. They were good, mostly, gentle teases at the edges of clothing, her fingers in the back of his collar, his gloves a luminescent white between her black-stockinged knees. When they stopped Audrey slipped out first and practically ran up the stairs, shoes in hand and the flash of a smile over her shoulder, and Q's eyes followed the flounce of her skirt and the flying strands of hair that had worked out of their twist and he didn't feel the slightest bit drunk anymore. He caught up with her just as she turned the key in the lock and slid an arm around so that when she stepped inside she pulled him with and they stumbled against the arm of the sofa. Audrey swayed and dropped her shoes and Q braced a hand against the wall to keep them upright, face buried in the hair pulled taut at the nape of her neck.
Audrey squirmed away and he loosened his hold, disappointed, but she was merely reaching for the light switch. Only when the lamps winked on and made him blink did he realize how dark the flat had been before, no movement or sound.
"Your flatmates?"
Audrey sighed, deep, and he felt it against his chest. "Will's visiting his parents, and Kit's probably going home with Caden – I could hardly pry her off him to say goodbye."
Q cast his eyes over the landscape of the living room. "Alone."
"I can hear what you're thinking," Audrey said dryly. "I'd like to make it to the bedroom at some point, Kit's love life has no guarantees."
Q thought, No one's does, but even he had enough sense not to say that aloud.
They abandoned their shoes and Q's suit jacket in the living room. Behind the bedroom door she turned her back to get something from the nightstand and he took her zip in hand, parted it slowly and bent his mouth to her spine, felt her shiver at the touch of his tongue.
She leaned against him, trapping his hand at the small of her back, and craned her neck to invite his attention at her throat and face.
"Tell me what you want," she mumbled against his mouth between kisses, lips pressing and vanishing in a rhythm like Morse code. "I want to give it to you."
And Q felt the words rise in his throat, felt his tongue curl to hold them back: I want to tell you everything. To be his invention alone, to be judged on his own faults and reparations, to lay bare his fears and insecurities would be greater and more crucial intimacies than the one they were about to share, and if Q could ask for only one mercy this would be it.
Instead he ran his hands down her shoulders, her breasts, her waist, slid the dress to the floor and she stepped out of it, legs in black stockings and, oh, maybe he could stop thinking about it, could release the lies into the sky like birds.
Audrey was nudging him, backwards shuffling steps toward the bed. Q let himself be pushed down onto the duvet, felt the mattress sink under her knees as she straddled his hips and began to undo him, waistcoat and collar and shirt. His tie went around her shoulders like a stole and his belt disappeared somewhere over the edge of the bed. She reared back and worked the pins out of her hair, placing the tips of them one by one between her lips. Q trailed feather-light fingers up from her waist and saw the muscles twitch electrified, ribs rise with captured breath.
Beneath the dress she wore a matching black bra and knickers, fine-fitting and expected, but the tights – the tights were actually stockings and suspenders, an elaborate contraption of snaps and strings and lace. Q ran his tongue along his teeth. "Vintage."
Audrey said, "Something to do with your hands."
Q said, "Oh, I have an overabundance of things now," and pressed his thumb against her through her knickers, uncurled his fingers between her thighs and traced the warmth and wetness he could feel through both layers between them, watched her eyes close and her head bow and her mouth form an oh.
Then they were scrambling, his trousers on the floor and their fingers fumbling with her stockings; they had both probably intended to tease, to turn it into a game of restraint, but confessions were easier in a headlong rush, no time for consideration or fear.
Just before she unclasped her bra, Audrey reached into it and pulled out the condom she had taken from the nightstand and handed it to Q. The foil was skin-warm between his fingers, the latex softened a little by her heat. She slid off him long enough to tug off her knickers and then she was back, arching above him on hands and knees, their bodies apart by less than the width of a palm. They were nearly naked, Q's shirt and vest rucked up to his armpits, Audrey with only his necktie dangling past her breasts. Q twisted his fingers into the ends, silk red like a gash across the backs of his gloves, and pulled her down so their mouths collided, teeth at his lip and her hand between their legs, holding him still long enough for her to settle their hips together with a gasp.
Again it took time to assert a rhythm. Q closed his eyes and resolved not to think, to sink to sensation and ease out the ache in his muscles by will. Audrey kissed her way down from cheek to chest, her trailing hair tickling. He reached out carefully and brushed it back from her face, the same kind of delicacy with which he handled explosives in the lab, a little too conscious of the fragility of bones, of the ways the right force could harm the trusting cheekbone and eyebrow and ear at his fingertips. Audrey turned her face into the palm of his hand and pressed first lips, then tongue against the tender flesh in the crook of his thumb. She held him still by the wrist and sucked one finger into her mouth, a warm damp pressure on the other side of his glove that mirrored what he felt below, and then she did it again, and again, nipping at the tip of each finger until she could tug the glove off with her teeth. Q lay captivated until she reached for his other hand, his left hand, and then his higher senses flared with alarm.
He surged up, heard her gasp at his sudden deeper thrust, swallowed further sounds with an urgent kiss. She opened her mouth to him and buried fingers in his hair, gripped suddenly at the base of his skull, and it was all too much, too soon –
"Sorry, I need a minute –"
Audrey ran her tongue along the rim of his ear in a way that only worsened the situation. Q's hands stiffened against her hips and perhaps she interpreted that as a shove, because she rose off of him and flopped belly-down on the other half of the bed. Q made a noise that was not a whine – the Quartermaster of MI6 did not whine – and reached for her. His ungloved hand landed between her shoulder blades, and he had grown so accustomed to the gloves that the soft heat of skin against his palm startled him. He ran his hand down her back to test this new power of feeling, dug the heel in to the muscles just above her arse, and she sighed and arched and spread her legs.
Q looked up. She was watching him, long dark lashes fluttering like a heartbeat.
"Well?" she said, and that was all the permission he needed.
Once he had straddled her, she lifted her hips; she was so wet that even from a new angle he entered her easily. Her hands skated across the mattress, bunched up the edge of the sheet and twisted in the best desperation. Q let his head rest against hers, panting damp down her neck and shoulder, licking tiny gems of sweat and feeling them flush together, hot cheek to hot cheek. He was shaking again but Audrey wouldn't let them slow, arching against him insistently, tangling their arms so he couldn't pull back. A rising sensation rushed through him, as though a wave were bearing him to its crest, and with a few more erratic thrusts he crashed down again.
It took him a minute to gather himself, but this wasn't finished until they both were. Q slid a hand under them, over smooth skin and rough curls, and felt blindly until his fingers slipped over the right spot and she jerked and moaned against his arm. He stroked her until she was squirming, whimpering, until she came clenching around his softening cock and they both collapsed, limbs limp and trembling. A fuzzy warmth saturated Q, a pleasant and tender heaviness that his mind sought to memorize.
Audrey drummed her fingers on the back of his gloved hand. "I never did get the rest of your clothes off."
Q couldn't judge how much his body must betray; he sat up on his elbows to put a little distance between them, but he couldn't stop the scarred hand from curling into a fist. This problem had been percolating for weeks in a semi-conscious room of his mind, the badland where he allowed himself to entertain irrational ideas, and he had decided to dodge the truth by skirting as close to it as possible.
When he tried to speak he found he couldn't, and had to clear his throat and start again. "I… have scars that I'm somewhat… self-conscious about."
Audrey moved her head sharply but abortively, as though she had checked an instinct to twist round and face him. Then her hand found his wrist, and she turned his fist over, coaxed his fingers open with persistent pushes of her thumb, and kissed him gently on his palm as if to say it's all right, I'm still here. The last tension rushed out of Q and he sagged, felt her sigh as his full weight settled over her.
They lay still and breathed gently together. Eventually Q began to feel sticky, but it was only reluctantly that he pulled away and slid to the foot of the bed to bin the condom.
"Thank you, Jeeves," Audrey said sleepily. She gave a foppish, dismissive wave and dropped her arm to the mattress as though it weighed several stone. "You may go."
Q snorted and lifted her arm aside so he could lie down close. "You're terrible."
"As long as the sex was good." Her eyes slid towards him in the shadow of her lashes as though she were gauging something surreptitiously.
"Is that even a question?"
Audrey chuckled, half-exasperated, and leaned over the side of the bed to retrieve the duvet from the floor.
"I was thinking about Kit calling you a virgin," she explained, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. "At first I was… I thought that, with a woman, maybe you'd never –"
"It's been a long time," Q said, a bit more sullenly than he intended. Audrey's face screwed up in unnecessary apology, and he kneaded the back of her neck and shoulders until she relaxed. "My last partner was a man, but even that was before I left Cambridge."
Even recumbent she seemed restless; her eyes climbed the wall poster by poster, Audrey to Audrey. "How is sleeping with a man different from sleeping with a woman?" Q frowned, considering, and she must have taken that for irritation. "I'm sorry if that's… insensitive, or – I've just never known anyone well enough to even think of asking that question, and I'm… curious."
"Men are easier, in certain ways. It's easier to understand what they're feeling because I have the same body and my experiences are analogous. But the challenge of women is a large part of their appeal." He gave Audrey a pointed look and she grinned, smugly. "Keep in mind that I haven't had a statistically significant number of partners of either sex. And we haven't accounted for all of my selection biases."
Audrey snorted and clapped a hand over her eyes. "I find it amazing that you still talk like you're defending your dissertation even after sex."
Q wasn't sure if she meant that to be nettling, but it prickled all the same. "I'm a scientist. Precision of language is important."
Audrey propped her head on her hand and examined him, deep and precise, as though her doctor's mind could lay him open and know the workings of the intangible. "I don't think that's right. I mean, I think that's true – but I don't think that's why you do it. I think it's a test, for the people around you."
It scared him still, her fingers on the pulse point of honesty. "Why do you care what my tests are if you're passing them?"
She dropped against the pillow and sighed, eyes blinking closed, but the tiny crease between her eyebrows remained. "Am I?"
Can you lie next to her
And confess your love, your love
As well as your folly
And can you kneel before the king
And say I'm clean, I'm clean
- Mumford and Sons, "White Blank Page"
Author's Notes
Title from "Sacrilege" by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The song that Q and Audrey dance to is, of course, "The Best is Yet to Come" by Frank Sinatra.
"I work for the Circus – do you really think I have the time?"
"The Circus" is a nickname for MI6 popularized by John le Carre's spy novels. In Chapter Three Holly refers to Six as "Babylon," which is a nickname specific to the building at Vauxhall.
"When I was in year seven my science class put Jelly Babies in potassium chlorate. They burst into flames and made a terrible screaming noise."
This actually happens - the videos are entertaining and a little bit creepy.
The Angel's Share was, predictably, in Islington
Most London residents, or fans of Neverwhere, will know The Angel, a historic landmark and former inn in the borough of Islington. Apparently there is actually a speakeasy-inspired bar in New York City's East Village called The Angel's Share, but I've never been there and I didn't use it as a model for the fictional version.
And now we've reached the intermission. Starting with the next chapter, the whole story tilts on its axis. It's not a Bond fic without guns and bombs and mayhem, now is it? I hope you'll stay with me and enjoy the ride.