Charles Robinson was floating on his first drug trip since his long ago college days. The morphine kept the pain away, but also brought strange dreams to his interrupted sleep. Every part of his body ached, not just his shattered kneecap, but every single bit of his anatomy felt like it had been through the wringer and back. His leg felt heavy and reaching down he felt the thick, rough shape of a supporting cast.
This was really going to mess this mission up.
He flopped back against his pillows, his mouth feeling like it was filled with cotton wool. He coughed dryly, and his stomach, as if protesting at the gesture, gave an almighty heave.
'Here,' a quiet voice said from his left before a shallow kidney shaped dish was thrust underneath his nose.
'I'm alright, I'm not going to throw up,' he pushed it away.
'Are you sure?' Ashleigh sounded sceptical, but she took the dish away. To his immense relief she passed him a glass of water instead.
'What are you doing here?' he said coldly. He knew he shouldn't be attacking her, but his frustration with the situation had doubled since the bullet had entered his kneecap.
'Playing Florence Nightingale.'
Charles snorted. Ashleigh scowled. 'What the hell do you think I'm doing here? I want answers, Charles, and you're going to tell me everything I want to know.'
'You know I can't tell you anything.'
'You had better start or I'm going to start withholding your morphine.'
Finally he looked up at her. She was slouched in a chair in the corner of the room, the shadows half hiding her, but he could sense the anger radiating from her. She was dressed in jeans and an off the shoulder jumper, and for some reason this irritated him even more.
'I see you've changed,' he said icily.
'The nurses were giving me funny looks.'
She didn't mention that the pink dress's origins had completely unnerved her.
'What time is it?'
'A little after three.'
'In the morning?'
'In the morning. You were rushed into theatre at about 9pm last night. I'm glad to say it was a success.'
Charles clutched at the blankets, pulling them tighter around him. 'No thanks to you.'
Ashleigh raised a disbelieving eyebrow. 'I hardly pulled the trigger myself, Charles.'
'As good as,' he hissed back, his temper only aggravated by the increasing pain in his leg.
It was all Ashleigh could do not to roll her eyes. 'Fine. Enough. We both have information the other wants. We could be civil to each other once, Charles, more than civil. I think its time we tried that tact again.'
'Do you want to start or shall I?'
Ashleigh was discomforted by the anger he was directing at her. She hadn't quite expected to be welcomed with open arms, but this hostility was frightening her. She had never felt so alone in her damned life, and Charles was now merely adding to that feeling. She rubbed her temples with fingers, trying to ease the tension there.
'Fine,' she finally breathed. 'I want to know why you're here.'
Charles glared at her, but eventually he unbuttoned slightly. 'When M returned, she asked me to keep an eye on you. In anyway I could. James was already looking for you, but as you can see, he was a little distracted. I noted you entering the country via Charles De Gaulle, and came out here to confront you.'
'Why?'
'Why indeed?' Charles sighed and shifted in the bed, his leg refusing to let him get comfortable. He sipped from the water glass, hoping the action would give him time to think. 'Because I didn't believe what I was hearing, Ashleigh. Because I wanted to hear the truth from the horse's mouth, so to speak.'
'So ask,' Ashleigh challenged.
'Later.' Charles gave her a dark look. 'To all sense and purposes, MI6 has washed its hands of you. You are to receive no assistance, and any agent discovering you is under orders to detain you immediately. The same goes for your husband, but that information is classified to all but the highest levels.
'That's comforting to know.'
'This isn't a joke you know, Ashleigh. Its deadly serious.'
'I am aware of that. I have been since they took my daughter.'
'MI6 have uncovered information regarding her abduction.'
Ashleigh sat bolt upright, her hands gripping the arms of the chair. 'Why didn't you tell me before? What do you know? Have you found her?'
'No,' Charles murmured wearily. His head was beginning to throb in time with his leg. 'But before I tell you, you must understand one thing. The more we discover about this Ashleigh, the more we believe that your husband was involved.'
'No.' Ashleigh shook her head vehemently.
'You seem pretty sure about that,' Charles examined a particularly clean corner of the sheet covering him.
'Natasha was Alec's life. She gave him everything he ever wanted, a family, a blood relative to call his own. He wanted to keep her safe above everything else. Me? I could fend for myself if needs be, but Tash? Tash was to be protected at all costs.'
'Really?' Charles commented sarcastically.
'Alec was working for M, Charles, you should know that.' He saw the anger in her building, saw the vivid red flush rising in her cheeks.
'So we thought.'
'What the hell do you mean?'
'Your husband was supposed to be meeting a convoy of goods entering the Ukraine from Georgia. M liked having him there, his name still inspires loyalty in many of the older members of the criminal underworld. Unfortunately we received news that he hadn't made it for the handover. Instead there was no sign of him, and the handover was a complete disaster. We lost several hundred thousand pounds worth of weaponry.'
'Oh dear. That was unfortunate.'
'Very,' Charles bridled at her deliberate antagonism. 'Especially as contained in that shipment were several new designs. Including the one that shot me last night.' Explain that one, he thought sourly. He had never thought he would enjoy taunting Ashleigh, but her stubbornness was grating on his already raw nerves.
'Coincidence,' Ashleigh brushed away the comment easily, but there was a new wariness on her face now.
'Well, that makes it even more amazing that this handover was scheduled to take place on the day you were attacked and your daughter taken. And what's even more coincidental is that a man matching your husband's description was spotted fraternising with a known criminal mastermind. Just a few days later. After he abandoned you in Sicily. And isn't it just even more coincidental that this man is the very person we are seeking in connection with the missing arsenal?'
Ashleigh remained silent but Charles could read the distaste on her face even in the dim light in the room.
'And that proves what, exactly?' she finally spoke, and the words came slowly, her mind frantically trying to digest the information given. 'Apart from the fact that the man you looking for might, and I emphasise that, might have been seen with Alec.'
'I believe that you received a white feather, Ashleigh. A single white feather.'
M's been telling tales, was the first irrational thought that shot through Ashleigh's head. 'And what do you think that means? I'm sure you're about to tell me.'
'You're searching for a man they call 'The Wolf'. The white feather is his trademark. Its either interpreted as a calling card, or…'
'He's marked you.' Ashleigh was horrified. The feather had confused her, but she had seen understanding in Alec's face before he had stormed from the room. There had been anger there, but there had also been obedience.
'Right.' Charles was growing more and more tired with every second that passed. His leg was half way to killing him, and he was in no fit state to argue the toss with Ashleigh. Nor was he willing to provide comfort in any form. 'M asked me to find you. She wants you to go to Cuba.'
'I know. James has already told me I should go. With Van Dien.'
'She's a good agent.'
'She's a jumped up secretary!' Ashleigh's temper snapped, her eyes flashed with anger, and she threw her head back disdainfully.
'Would you call Moneypenny that?' Charles hissed. 'Jasmin is a bloody good agent, and she's not just some Senior's personal assistant. She knows what she's doing, and she'll be able to help you in Cuba.'
Ashleigh snorted dismissively. 'Course she will. She'll be able to tell me everything I need to know about my husband. Its not as if I've learnt anything about him, having lived with him for the last six years.'
'I'm not so sure you have learnt anything.'
'What did you say?' Ashleigh's eyes narrowed.
Charles sighed. 'You had the world at your feet this time six years ago, Ashleigh. You could have been one of the most successful female spies in MI6 ever. You could have been a 00 agent, even M admitted that. If you had just learnt to control your impulses and grown up a bit. That's what's killing you now. Jamsin Van Dien is nearly the same age as you. She's exactly what you should have been, successful, admired, and above all she's ambitious. She'll go high in MI6, much higher than you ever achieved. '
He could see the way her fists clenched, the tension that was set into her shoulders. He was hitting very sensitive nerves. But it was the only way to get her agree.
'You bastard,' she whispered.
'It all boils down to jealousy, doesn't it?' Charles knew he had hit the nail on the head when Ashleigh sprang from her seat and began to pace the room. 'She's got exactly what you wanted, and what are you now? Wife and mother? What else?'
'I still work for MI6,' Ashleigh managed to mumble through lips that felt numb. She found herself staring blankly into space, anything to avoid the harsh look on Charles' face. 'I still work for you, you know that, you use my bloody reports and encodings every single working day. I translate, I unlock codes, I transcribe co-ordinates…'
'But its not the same as being an agent is it?'
Ashleigh gripped the back of the chair she had been sitting on, and felt a weight settle on her shoulders. It was what she had been avoiding since the day Natasha had been born, what she had refused to realise within herself. She had no career to speak of, no prospects for promotion. She had known that would happen when she had left her life behind for Alec, but now, faced with the horrors of the past weeks, she slumped, defeated.
'No, it isn't.'
Charles lay back against the pillows, still desperate to sleep. 'Then treat Cuba as an opportunity. This is a chance for you to discover the truth, but you're not going to be able to do that without some sort of assistance. M's decided to offer you that assistance.'
'I thought M had washed her hands of me.'
'After your vanishing act, she very nearly did. She was furious with you, and it doesn't pay to make the Ice Queen show any sort of emotion. It only leads to trouble. I've learnt that lesson the hard way. To everyone else, M has washed her hands of you. To those of us in the know, in other words, you, me, James and Jasmin, she's willing to make a deal.'
'I've experienced M's deals before. They have a tendency to benefit her more than anyone else.'
'Ashleigh, she's offering you your full agent status back.'
Ashleigh paused in her pacing. He'd evidently caught her attention.
'Full immunity. Support from international intelligence agencies. Even Interpol, and you know how difficult it is to get them to agree to anything. And all you have to do is relay any information you discover on the connection between Le Loup, the Wolf, and Alec.'
The name came awkwardly. To most, Alec Trevelyan was referred to as Janus, or occasionally as 'that bastard of a traitor'. Somehow, he suspected, neither would go down well with Ashleigh. 'That's all. Its merely an extension of your last deal with M, the one you made six years ago.'
'I have to spy on Alec,' Ashleigh said dully.
'Yes.'
Ashleigh fell back into her chair. Despair was coursing through her. She had no way of finding Alec without assistance, and yet, that came at a high price.
Defiantly, she thrust her chin into the air. It was time to start thinking like a Trevelyan. Alec seemed to have sold her out without a second thought, and now it was time to start thinking like him.
'Fine,' she said shortly, and if she was making a deal with the devil, then that was fine too.
'Fine?'
'Fine. I'll go to Cuba, I'll even go with that brunette Barbie doll, and I'll spy on my husband for you.' She sighed, a sound that came from deep within her, as if what she was saying pained her more than she cared to admit. 'Now. Tell me where I sign my soul away.'
