Come home
Here we meet the other cannon character. When do you guess who it is?
2/6/98
Fiona reached the third floor and turned right, as she had done every day for years now, when she wasn't in the field. But she usually did it with Adam beside her. It had felt very strange to leave him at home this morning and go to work. Adam had joked about feminists throwing their hats in the air.
Two weeks, two days. It felt like less than that. Two weeks, two days since Adam had been retrieved. He'd been allowed home two days ago, still walking with a crutch and bandaged. He'd abandoned the crutch almost at once, preferring to limp around. His right leg still wasn't really bearing weight.
Section Lambda's office came in to view. Sam, Tash, Sarah and Jack (returned from South Africa) were facing the glass pods, looking at a man Fiona didn't recognise. He was maybe an inch shorter than Adam, had short black hair and, from what Fiona could see over his shirt collar, light brown skin. A middle eastern? They'd been given a middle eastern man as a temp? They were gold dust, ever since the civil war, they'd been recruited slowly, used a lot and killed frequently. Gold dust or not, the new boy was being subjected to the mandatory `interrogation` by those already on the unit.
Fiona emerged from the pods and was greeted shortly by the regulars, then all eyes were back on the new boy. Fiona passed him to stand next to Sarah and looked at him properly. She'd been right, he was middle eastern, very young, no scars she could see, but a bruise yellowed his jawline on one side. He had dark, attentive eyes and didn't look at all intimidated.
"Languages?" Sarah asked.
"English, Urdu, Fahrsi-"
"Fahrsi?" Tash repeated.
"Persian's name for itself. I read, write and understand eastern dialects of Arabic, but I don't think I could speak it under pressure."
"Arms training?" Jack asked.
"Most pistols."
"Knife?"
"No."
"Unarmed combat?"
"Learned by experience."
"Got hit though, didn't you?" Jack pointed at the new boy's bruise.
"He came off worse than me."
"Have you ever been caught?" Sam asked. They were on to experience? Fiona'd missed most of the fun.
"No, and pleased about it."
"Carried out an interrogation?"
"No."
"Killed?"
"Been killed, obviously not."
"Killed someone." Sam clarified.
"Yeah." But he obviously didn't like thinking about it, so Sam would press him.
"How?"
"Fight over a gun, I won, told him I'd shoot him if he tried to rush me. He didn't believe me. Him or me."
"Ever in cold blood?"
"No." Sam flicked his eyes across to Fiona, signalling her to take over.
"Snatches?"
"As part of a group."
"Building searches?"
"For people and things."
"Analysis?"
"Sporadically. I've spent most of my time in the field."
"Seen an ally killed?"
"Civilian, yes. Teammate, no."
"Created covers?"
"For myself and anyone else."
"Blackmail?"
"No."
"Honeytraps?"
"A few times."
"How effectively?"
"Think he'd be OK." Tash interjected, eyeing the new boy critically. "He's alright looking, isn't he?" The new boy raised his eyebrows.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"Nothing on Adam." Fiona muttered to Tash.
"Didn't say he was." Tash muttered back.
"Experience wise," Sam said, "could be worse." That was as close as Sam ever came to being impressed with someone he didn't know.
"He's done a lot for his age." Sarah agreed.
"For those of you who were late," Sam started, "this is Zaffar Younis."
"Zaf to friends." Zaffar Younis added smiling. Sam didn't return the smile.
"My team currently consists of Sarah Ridgewell, Jack Ansong, Tash Sloan, Fiona Carter and Greg Langley, who still isn't here." Sam nodded at each of them in turn.
"Senior field officer?" Zaffar Younis asked.
"Is the one you're replacing, or rather covering for. Replacing Adam Carter would be a feat."
"Enough, all of you!" Chris walked in. "Let the poor man alone. Tash, the ambassador we discussed yesterday, apparently there is more information now. Start reading. Sarah, Argentina. Need I say more? Jack, you know what you should be doing. Fiona, clear your desk. You've got a backlog. Then look at Adam's. Sam, follow me. Mr. Younis, I will have work for you in fifteen minutes. Sorry to keep you. Also, don't mind this lot. They cross-examine everyone who comes in here."
Everyone moved off at once. Fiona kept half an eye on Zaffar Younis. Sometimes, this was when they showed the strain. Zaffar Younis didn't though. He just shook his head and smiled at the floor.
"You don't feel like giving me a hand, do you?" She asked him. There was information she still wanted from him, but she didn't quite dare ask outright with Chris watchin.
"OK. Sure." He walked over to her. "What do I do?"
"Anything from another unit, put here, asset, here, budget, HR, PR, psyc..."
"I get the idea."
"There." Zaffar Younis picked up a ream of paper from her intray and started sorting.
"Is the common surname between you and Adam Carter coincidence or relation?"
"We're married." Fiona replied. Zaffar Younis sighed.
"Oh well." Fiona smiled, almost in spite of herself. "Why's he out of action?" He asked, then seemed to change his mind. "You don't have to answer that if..."
"I don't have to answer any question anyone asks me. There may be consequences, but there's always a choice. Adam proved that." She'd seen a route to the information she wanted, and was rely on Zaffar Younis's curiosity.
"How so?"
"He spent eight days refusing to answer questions put to him by a gang of Serbs, whatever the cost." She carefully didn't look at Zaffar Younis to gage his reaction, but she heard his intake of breath. There was a reason they said `never be taken`.
"Is that why..?"
"Yes." She said, letting more pain show in her voice than usual. "It's a risk we run on this unit. We get used for everything, so exposed to all kinds of risk; we get shot at, stranded in the field, attacked by blown assets, imprisoned, ransomed... tortured." She let the silence hang.
"A bit different to Epsilon." Zaffar Younis said after a minute. "There, you get stranded in the field as a matter of course, you're almost imprisoned half the time, but you're very unlucky to get shot at, being beaten up is more likely, but the biggest risk isn't actually other people." Yes, this would lead her to the information she wanted.
"How so?"
"Often, it's disease. It's trafficking unit, so you're dropped off abroad with a locator beacon with three signals; onshore, standby and mayday, and there's a sort of... unofficial way of signalling contagion. You're given a way of contacting a people smuggling ring, or put in the way of a trafficking cell and you're taken back to the UK. Once you're moving, beacon goes to standby, then, in theory, you just wait for the SBS to turn up."
"But?" Fiona prompted. Zaffar Younis shrugged, then continued to cooperate.
"Things go wrong. The SBS can only operate in international or UK waters. While you're on the boat, you're at the mercy of the crew. If they know SBS are coming, they might try to kill and dump their cargo, then you just have to hide and try not to listen. That's when you send mayday. But as often, someone on the boat has typhus or cholera or yellow fever or something. They spread like wildfire once they're on board, because conditions are usually so bad. The guy I replaced was going out of Siera Leon, one of the other passengers had some sort of haemorrhagic virus. The spook signalled `contagion`, but the boat wasn't in international waters yet. By the time they got there five days later, everyone on board was dead." That was the information she'd wanted; the kind of work he'd been doing before, but still, she felt herself recoiling from him slightly. He noticed. "I'm clean." He held his hands up slightly, one still full of paper, as if to surrender. "I've spent most of the past fortnight in quarantine."
"For what?"
"Yellow fever and I don't have it. It's possible that no one did."
"So why..?"
"It's one of those annoying diseases that looks just like everything else, unless it goes septic." There was a pause. Zaffar Younis frowned. "You're still interrogating me, aren't you?" Fiona smiled.
"You're learning, aren't you?" Zaffar Younis smiled. "Why does six care? It's not usually a human rights organisation."
"PR mostly, I think. Lefties get their anti-trafficking, righties get their lower illegal immigration... And five hate illegals, they don't know who they are, they can't pull files on them."
"They'd hate being in six."
"Mr. Younis." Chris called, re-emerging from his office. "Sam and I will brief you now." Zaffar Younis nodded, put the last two envelopes down on piles and walked away, glancing back at Fiona in farewell.
o0o0o0o
Fiona got home at half past eight that evening to find Adam waiting at the door for her. They greeted each other and kissed; Adam had supper half-ready, so limped back over to the hob. That had almost made Fiona laugh.
"You're walking like Long John Silver. They gave you a crutch for a reason."
"I'm fine." Adam had insisted. "I think Long John Silver had a certain... je ne sais quoi, don't you?" Fiona shook her head at him. Adam squawked "Pieces of eight." once, then laughed with her.
"Adam, that's the parrot."
"Well, the two are inseparable, they're almost the same person."
"Like us?"
"Yeah. Like us."
Throughout supper, Adam had been communicative, engaged, cheerful about his injuries, joking about them, everything he knew she wanted to see. But as the evening wore on, she began to see flaws in his facade. A few times, she'd turned and seen him staring in to space, eyes distant, darkened in pain. He'd jumped when she'd called him back. When she lay down beside him, kissed him and curled up in his arms, she knew he wouldn't sleep. He hadn't in two weeks, not really. He'd lie awake, doze a few hours, then shout himself awake again. She'd wake too, he'd insist he was fine, she'd insist he wasn't. He'd pretend to be asleep again, but stay awake longer than she did, and repeat the cycle.
Fiona closed her eyes and bit the inside of her mouth gently. The prospect of the night ahead, and how many more in the weeks and months to come, scared her. Adam was her rock, but how he was shaking. She had to be strong, for all their sakes; for her own, for Adam's and for their baby's. One of her hands slid to the rim of her pelvis, unbidden protecting.
"By the time you're born," She thought to the life there, "if will all be alright. I promise."