Wilderness of Mirrors (10 page)

An enigma wrapped up in a conundrum, Ms. Samantha Bond.

His mind played with the variables and found them to its liking, so he left the car and joined Anubis on his rounds. The brick enclosed yard was elegant and private. Spy-for-a-living private. There was broken glass along the crests and plenty of automatic lighting.

He glanced at the house’s façade. Lots of thorny roses by the door and ground-skimming windows, but no ivy or other plants that could hide an intruder. The upper stories had opaque glass and security cameras. The front gate had been automatic. It was wood-encased steel topped with attractive finials – albeit iron ones. He’d missed the front entrance, but he didn’t expect deviation.

He felt safe here.

Had Brad done the work? Nigel didn’t think so. There was a father-like feel to the layout. Obviously, someone cared about whether Ms. Bond slept well.

Anubis brushed Nigel’s hand on his way by. Modus operandi or a shot over the bow? Guard or hearing dog?

Fascinating.

The beast vanished into the house after his muzzle did a fair imitation of opposed digits.

Nigel followed.

The door’s locks and security system were quite good, better than Barkley’s.

He could’ve gotten through them, but he doubted anyone of his caliber was snatching silk underwear from swanky flats in SW1. Did she wear silk or nothing at all?

A gust of interior air bumped him and his first notion was he’d become an insect. A bee to be precise. His nose twitched.

Roses. Sea salt. Heated sand.

He was a seagull now.

He examined the floor, uneven beneath the soles of his loafers. River rocks, undulating like the backs of so many turtles deeply pressed into sandy grout. Her boots were on a pair of driftwood pieces protruding from the white wall. He slipped off his shoes and caressed the rocks with his toes, surprised to find them heated.

The temperature of the room was pleasant, cool even. A peculiar contrast to the floor.

All about him the walls were white.

The dog was nowhere to be seen; yet Nigel was certain it was well aware of his location.

Nigel worked his way across the entry stones, careful not to turn the ankle of his wonky leg. It was a considerable space with a Mark Wilkinson kitchen to the right, its floor to ceiling windows facing the rear garden. To his left was a living area cum dining room. Everything flowed and blended like waves on an outgoing tide: Gustavian clock and chairs, Asian table with Chinoiserie mirrors and an Art Deco bar service, Egyptian cotton settees and Moroccan inlaid end tables. Pieces from the world’s best estate sales coveted by Sotheby’s and jumbled by an American Loki.

Mischief meets Mayfair.

And not a single noise. The silence was of interest to him. She’d replaced sound with scent. With visual melodies. With texture and temperature. He already knew she could cook.

Four senses became forty.

He closed his eyes and listened.

Water had been turned on.

He passed onto an immense Turkish carpet, old and marvelous beneath his cautious tread. The entry ahead once belonged to a church; now it was fitted into a wall by a bespoke joiner. It beckoned visitors through its stripped and whitewashed casing and blessed their journey.

Her bedroom.

No brain-clogging candles here, but a flotilla of rose petals and, from the scent of it, a mixture of sea salt and lavender in a massive Grecian tub carved from Calcutta marble and set upon lion’s feet.

The tub was docked against the far wall, anchored with a freestanding faucet set. A bombe chest in weathered blue had been fitted with a simple white basin. As for the toilet, he could only guess it was hidden behind one of two sliding re-claimed teak doors.

Steam drifted and swirled, curling in sinuous paths around the antique posts of the room’s mahogany bed. It was original British Colonial, with a cutout depicting two parrots in the negative space.

The bed’s coverlet was a simple white duvet, stuffed with silk or maybe eiderdown. Atop it were a jumble of interesting pillows and a cashed-out Alsatian. Books lined floor to ceiling apothecary shelves and a few choice photographs sparkled among them. The opposite wall, behind the tub, was a flecked mirror inset with candelabra-like fixtures. The floor was close-fitted slate topped with an enormous cheetah-patterned rug.

He curled his toes into that wool, glad she had the sense to leave spots where they belonged, over the grace of sinew and skeleton.

“There’s a robe on the hook in the sauna. A towel too.”

He was too tired to flinch.

She stepped away from a hidden staircase behind the church door. It obviously led to the second level.

So Ali Baba had a little sister.

“Am I to take a bath?” It seemed absurd.

Her hair was pulled back, and she’d changed into exercise attire. Every curve emphasized. He wanted to run his hand along them.

Her lush lips parted with a pop of air. “Well, I don’t know when last I’ve seen someone more in need of one. It seemed like a better idea than Brad’s. He’d hand you a bottle of whisky and play until you passed out.”

Nigel frowned, lustful thoughts disrupted by the odd question.
A bath?
He hadn’t had one in….well, he couldn’t even begin to guess.

“Where will you go?” He was careful to look at her face and keep his eyes off the rest of her.

“On a run.”

“And him?” Nigel eyed Tamar.

Samantha shrugged. “We’ll know in a moment.” She navigated the open door and paused.

Tamar closed his eyes.

“I guess he’s with you.” She quirked a brow. “Don’t worry, he’s got cataracts.”

Was he actually going to stay? Take a bath?

When he turned, she was gone. He heard the door close. Tamar rolled to his back and stared upside down at his mistress’s visitor.

“You might have cataracts, mate, but if you tell her what I look like naked, I’ll have you killed.”

The long black tail swished and his eyes closed. He seemed to smile and say, “I could arrange
your
death right now.”

“Ever think of working for SIS?”

No answer.

Nigel crossed to the doors at the room’s front. One opened on a simple white marble toilet. The other ushered him into the desert. Dry heat. Scorching heat. Heaven. Even the lighting was pinched from a solar flare.

He went out and closed the gold taps. Then he shed his garments into a tidy stack on the rattan-seated George III chair.

Hair had begun to grow back in a fine stubble along his side and thigh, but the full-wall mirror made him wonder if he’d live to see forty. Bruises, sutures, old white weals, too much sun here, too little there.
You’re a fucking joke, Forsythe
.
And they’re going to put you out to pasture if you don’t do something about yourself.

He pivoted and entered the Sahara.

At least if he died in the teak chamber, he’d die a relatively happy man.

“W
here is he?” C, Chief of SIS’s most covert division, released his question like a hornet with stingers enough for all. His time was limited, and he rarely devoted it to field agents.

Brad’s shrug was wooly.

So, Milton had a very good idea as to Nigel’s whereabouts.

C shifted his exasperation to Dr. Monroe, chief psychiatrist at Vauxhall HQ. “What about you?” The steely-eyed genius tapped away his boss’s threatening tone, fingers playing the leather armrest.

The fact it was ‘Scotland the Brave’ left C more than a little irritated. “Well?”

Monroe grunted. “Forsythe should have seen me this morning. Missed his appointment with his GP too. The new one, Dr. Brothers.”

Darkness shifted ominously in C’s mind. He felt his cheeks flatten and his thick neck bull against the starch of his collar. “He hasn’t been debriefed. He’s not seen our physicians.” His knuckled fists ground against the desk’s surface. “What the hell is going on, Milton? I sense your part in this.”

Brad shifted so his elbows came to rest on his knees. “Don’t look to me. I’ve been here since dawn.”

Innocence never looked so wicked.

“One of our hired cars picked you up last night.” C stood so his broad back blocked most of the window’s dusky light. “You and Forsythe were dropped off at Battery Wharf.”

“We had a drink. We
are
on holiday.” The comment was subtly seasoned with rebuke.

C tasted it again in the set of his Brad’s mouth.

“And once that drink was finished?”

Brad rubbed his chin with the side of his forefinger. “We had another.”

C frosted the tip of Monroe’s crooked nose with his glare. “This doesn’t bother you?”

The psychiatrist cleared his throat for the third time. “Sorry. It’s the bloody Lipitor.”

Brad’s splayed thighs twitched, along with the too-Italian mouth. “You should join our side, Doctor. It’ll kill you quicker but with less side-effects.”

Monroe ignored Brad. He, like C, had dealt with Milton enough over the years. “To answer your question, of course it bothers me. I have other patients, and he skipped his appointment without troubling to cancel. But what’s more upsetting is…well, these notes.” The doctor slipped his glasses from his balding head and set them against the crook of his nose. He licked his fingers and pushed aside several pages of the newborn report. “Here.” His wise eyes met C’s.

‘Agent Forsythe (known in the attached report – from Puerto del Carmen Clinic, Lanzarote, Canary Islands – as Giles Pattinson) was treated for a bullet wound to the left thigh and bullet lacerations and fractures across the …lado…izquierdo…parilla costal…”

Dr. Monroe squinted. “A terrible translation, this.”

“Rib cage. Left side.” Brad reached over. “May I?”

“No.” Monroe turned the papers away. “Ahh, here. Basically, Dr. Garcia de Herrera assumes that the trauma of Giles’s rob –”

Brad steepled his reclaimed fingers. “Robbery. We tried not to go too far off-piece. Our improv was he was attacked and robbed while motorcycling in Morocco.”

“May I continue?” The doctor’s spectacles flashed as he glowered over them.

Milton gestured,
Of course
.

Bite for kick. Dr. Monroe would never weave together the pieces of Agent Milton. Hell, C couldn’t figure him out and he’d known him since the man was a child.

“It goes on… ” Monroe coughed again, “I’m paraphrasing here
…Giles appeared to have symptoms synonymous with post traumatic stress: depression, unnatural reaction to noises, flash irritation.”

“It’s not battle fatigue.”

C rested his eyes on Brad’s dark hair. Jet black, just as his mother’s had been. “What makes you so certain. I don’t recall you receiving a medical degree, fabricated or otherwise.”

The Roman face became stroke still.

Defensive?
Not usually Brad’s MO.
Ahh, protective
. Not caution to the wind, but shielding all the same.

“He’s tired. I’ll give you that. But Nigel’s always been dark minded. Closed off. He was irritated because I pressed him into coming back here. You know he hates London. Hates winter.” Brad picked a cat hair from his trousers. “As for the noises, well, he despises anything that’s not LPO.”

The doctor snorted.

“You don’t agree with him?” These games were served best with tea and there wasn’t a drop of it in sight.

Monroe’s mouth whittled away the beginnings of a smile. “No. That is, I
do
agree with him - to some extent.”

C watched Brad; bloody pleased as punch, that one. “What exactly
don’t
you agree with?”

Monroe closed the report. “I think, despite the surgeon’s prowess in Lanzarote, we should have a look at Nigel’s injuries. And, given Agent Milton’s penchant for prescribing whisky and cigars, I would ask him not to do so for at least ten days.”

Brad’s face revealed nothing.
Bastard
.

“Instead, I’d recommend some EMDR sessions, desensitization and the like. I won’t bother with SSRI drugs; I know he won’t likely take them. But… ” He pointed at Brad. “Your friend needs rest. Fractured ribs and bloodletting like that aren’t splinters to a wrung-out forty-year old.”

“He’s thirty-nine.”

“Enough.” C interrupted. “Milton, do as he says. Keep Forsythe out of trouble. Make certain he rests. No more drinks. And, get him in here in the next day or two for a debriefing. If he’s not up to it, I’ll send someone to Battersea. We need him back again. Full strength. This op isn’t over.”

Brad ran a hand through his thick, wavy head of hair. “I’ll have it passed on to him.”

C and Monroe waited for the ‘who’ behind the bait of a line.

The agent stood, lethal elegance made flesh. “You missed the most important therapy of all. Always do.”

He left the room and C felt the weight of a thirty-year marriage of convenience crush his Turnbull & Asser collar to hell.

S
am didn’t consider herself a proper runner. She never needed to run the way she needed to breathe or eat, the way true runners did.

To her it was simply a part of ‘The Promise’. Requisite and executed without fail, her daily runs consisted of long mental rants against London drivers, difficult clients and the all-purpose target of AG. And by the time she returned home, lunch calories and anger were temporarily banished.

Only today wasn’t to be one of those days, Sam considered bleakly as she dodged pedestrians and the coming of dusk. Today her exercise in repentance would have little effect on the grim dilemma she’d left contemplating her tub.

I should have dumped his sorry ass right back on Brad’s barge-step.
Why on earth had she brought him home?

Her feet smashed the pavement and her knuckles whined because she’d forgotten gloves.
His fault
. Yanking down her sleeves, she curled her thumbs into the cuffs and imagined heat flooding her fingers.

You better be out of my bath by the time I’m done, Mr. Forsythe, because I’m not in the mood to shiver.
As luck would have it, her thought captioned a very coarse image of Nigel and little else. Beyond irritated, she pushed at the impression only to discover its resilience.