delga | fic: hard liquor. [11/14] (spooks)

hard liquor. (spooks)
Fiona, Adam, Tja; het./fem.
xi. aftermath

It is morning and Fiona is suffering the mother of all hangovers. However, there isn’t time for procrastination (she can’t legitimately take more than one day off work) so she showers, dresses and runs into the kitchen. Wesley is eating breakfast; Adam is reading the newspaper. She ruffles her son’s hair, drops a kiss onto his head. (Time to resume the charade, she thinks).

Adam refuses to make eye contact but her head feels as though a twenty-ton truck has just slammed into it and she can’t give a fuck about him right now. She eats her toast, drinks her coffee and makes pointless chit chat with her child.

(Adam walks out five minutes later. Doesn’t look at her once).

Great, she thinks. Just what I need. Fucking domestic issues.

“I’m taking you to Damascus.” Anouska looks at Tja.

“Syria?”

(They are in Messina, hiding, waiting to take a ship to Reggio di Calabria. From there they will travel to Rome. From Rome they will fly to Croatia to Bosnia to Romania and finally to Turkey in order to convalesce. Only then will they stop and take some respite).

Tja nods.

“Why?”

Tja refuses to make eye contact, changes the dressing on her stomach. (She should be in a hospital, thinks Anouska. She only has so many lives). “I’m dropping you off.”

“Why Damascus?”

Tja shrugs (or tries to). “I know people there. I’ve made some calls.”

Anouska has been here enough times to know when she is being played. “What people?”

(Intense concentration as she pulls the bandage round the wound twice more, holding her breath, trying so hard not to flinch or moan).

“Tja?”

“Nouska!” she snaps like a tight rope, bullied under pressure. “They’re people, I know them. Shut up!” Her breathing has become heavy. She holds her hand against her chest, tries to calm herself down. “How’s your English?”

“Not bad. Why?”

Standing, Tja pulls on a light kaftan (a memento from years a go), wincing as she stretches the sore muscles the wrong way. Her pallor is still shocking and she is still grossly underweight. Anouska tried to breach the topic of Tony Gutmann but Tja slapped her hand and that was that. The splinters, at least, are all out but she looks like a walking mummy, bandages and dressing everywhere. (She still does not look at Anouska).

“What do you know about the British Secret Service?”

Thames House. It’s time to talk to Danny. The younger spook swears up and down that he didn’t speak to anyone about the intel he dug out from the archives. Fiona pacifies him; looks around to see how much attention they’ve drawn. (None, thankfully, which is strange for a service that’s supposed to keep its ear to the ground. Though, she supposes, if they’re any good at their job, she shouldn’t be able to tell, should she?) She thanks Danny, apologises and is about to make off but—“Fiona?”

She stops, turns back. “Yes?”

“Who is she?” Danny looks pensive too, although he’s probably not sure why. (It’s called adoptive behaviour, mirroring. He’s trying to put her at ease, coax information from her, by replicating her body language and he doesn’t even know that he’s doing it).

Fiona tries to brush the question aside. “No-one. It’s nothing. Look, I have to—”

“It’s just that,” he glances round again, lowers his voice for good measure, “It’s just that I did some more digging. She was a tricky piece of work.”

(Fiona can feel the familiar chill rising in her spine). “Yes, that’s alright Danny. Forget I ever asked.” He seems taken aback. “It’s nothing. I just saw her name in one of the files. I was curious.”

“Oh… kay.” Danny steps back.

“Thanks again.”

“Sure.”

(Anouska doesn’t believe a word of what she’s just heard but looking at Tja’s face, she knows that this is no joke).

Tja still smokes like a chimney – this is one vice she can never be rid of. (She seems to like the familiar weight in her hand, regardless of the fact that it’s burning her lungs to a sooty char). Anouska likes to watch her take her first cigarette of the day (loves to see her roll the paper and the tobacco in one hand, to see her frame relax after the first drag).

They are in the hinterlands of Turkey. (Anouska is relieved: the Balkans still stink of Soviet rule, remind her too much of Moscow). She is nervous, commonly so. She still shakes from the memories of Palermo, still has nightmares from which she wakes in a cool sweat only to find Tja sitting in the corner of the room, her eyes unblinking.

It has been a week and a half since Tja’s initial presentation of her proposal. Now they are ready to go to Syria, to implement the final stages. Then Tja will walk away and Anouska will be… someone else.

(The plan is simple: put Anouska in the middle of a British SIS operation and let them take the bait. “I want you married,” Tja said, “I want you out of this. For good.”)

It is difficult to say no in the aftermath of love.

This is not love. This is not love. This is not love.

Adam is in one hell of a pissed off mood and whilst Fiona doesn’t exactly blame him, she also doesn’t have patience for it. Whispers are already running around the office (they’ve had something of a spat) and they’re driving her crazy. She wonders for the hundredth time how she managed to end up here.

The plan doesn’t make sense to her. She doesn’t understand how marrying a Middle Eastern drug baron puts her in a prime position for anything. But Tja has made up her mind. (This is to be their greatest con). She will go to Damascus, seduce the pimp and be contacted by a member of the British SIS.

(Tja doesn’t elaborate on the details, doesn’t explain how she knows anything about any secret service or how she knows that this will be the ruse. She doesn’t explain anything, just maintains her original mantra: you must marry him).

Anouska is bitter but she assumes that this will be as always – they will part ways and then, one day, when the timing is better (or by fluke) they will be reunited. So she does not argue, does not dispute Tja’s proposition. Just prepares herself for the upcoming task. (Long term, this time. There hasn’t been one so long since Jerusalem, she thinks).

By lunch time the headache has dissipated. She should make amends, she supposes, offer some sort of explanation.

She laughs.

(What explanation makes this all right? What explanation makes this viable?)

By the time they reach Damascus, Anouska feels the knots in her stomach tightening into heavy weights. She can’t shake the feeling that something is different this time; that this time, the results will be more permanent.

(She puts it down to her renewed sense of paranoia).

Tja says goodbye at the airport, promises to return in at least three months to check up. From here on out, the con is in Anouska’s hands – and she still doesn’t know what it is. Tja kisses her on the cheek, still cannot hug her, and presses the pad of her thumb against Anouska’s lips.

Then she walks away.

(Anouska is to set the plan in motion. Then, according to Tja, a member of MI-6 will approach her. In three months, Tja will return and it will finally be over).

It’s strange to think that she could have known Tja for so long and yet still have been so wrong.

(Not so strange though, when she considers the same of Adam).

She remembers being five, remembers being wrapped up in lots of layers and taken out by her father to somewhere in the city. Being five, she was unaccustomed to the crowds and frightened by the people. (Who could know that those crowds would one day be a comfort?) She remembers him telling her to stay where she was, remembers watching him walk into a large grey building.

(Remembers that it was snowing and that it was cold and that, ironically, she was stood on a street corner in the middle of Moscow).

Mostly she remembers the passing of time, the long drawn out seconds, minutes, hours; remembers thinking that she had been abandoned. Remembers wanting to cry, wanting matushka.

(This is how she feels, left in Damascus).

She finds him on the roof, of all places.

(He is leant over the safety rail. Looking down over the city, out across the urban maze).

Fiona takes a breath, walks towards his back. “She was a con artist.”

Adam doesn’t turn, makes no indication that he’s aware of her. (She knows he is; she’s seen the twitch of his head as she spoke, the sudden tensing and relaxing of his shoulders as he figures out who it is). He stays quiet.

(She feels as though perhaps she’s done some wrong. She doesn’t understand this guilt, except perhaps she does and perhaps this was the way it was, in the end, with Tja).

“She stole from people. From eminent men across Europe.” She walks forward, stands beside him. (He doesn’t look at her). She leans with her back against the rail. “She was… I mean, I…” (God, she thinks, this is so hard. I hate this). “Oh fuck it.”

It’s too cold, she thinks, to be messing around. Yes, it isn’t Moscow, but she’s spent so much of her life running around the tropics and staying away from the cold, it’s inevitable that she’s lost her taste for the bitter weather.

They stand like that, in tense silence, for over five minutes. Then Adam sighs, turns. “She wasn’t a thief. She was goddamn freelancer.”

end. [11/14]