A Gentleman's Game

30

London-Vauxhall Cross, "the Pit" 16 September 1413 GMT The red phone rang on Chace's desk, and she answered it before the tone had faded from the air, grinning at Lankford seated across the room, who once again had exhibited his Pavlovian response to the bell. Poole, without looking up, chuckled.

"Steady, Chris," Poole said.

"Minder One," Chace said.

"Minder Three, my office, now," Crocker's voice snarled in her ear, then he hung up.

Chace blinked, listened to the dead circuit, then replaced the phone. Poole glanced up, then did a double-take, seeing her expression.

"Well?" Lankford asked.

"Boss's office," she told him. "You."

"Me?"

"Him?" Poole asked.

"Him," Chace confirmed.

Lankford stared, then all at once seemed to realize that he wasn't moving. He sprang up, sending his chair banging back against the wall, nearly clipping his hip on the corner of his desk as he came around its side. He hustled to the door, opened it, closed it, doubled back, grabbed his suit jacket off the peg, then went to the door again and disappeared into the hall, still struggling to get his arms into the sleeves.

Chace and Poole exchanged grins, then she rose and closed the door.

"Think he's cleaning out his desk, then?" Poole asked.

"I'd like to think I would have been informed."

Poole tilted his chair back, folded his hands behind his head, watching her. "I've got a mate out Portsmouth way."

"I feel sorry for him," Chace said.

"You and me both. Does work at the School, handles the night exercises, teaches one of the tech courses."

"My sympathy grows."

"Yeah, well, he says that when you were out there on your refresher, you and a certain recently retired Head of the Special Section went out for dinner and drinks and the like. And that you failed to return to your dormitory that evening, but instead returned to the School in the very wee hours of the next morning, driven by the self-same recently retired Head of the Special Section, and that the both of you were looking considerably the worse for wear."

"Does your friend remember what I was wearing, too?"

"I can call and ask him. He is a trained intelligence officer, you know."

"So are you."

"So I am."

"And you have drawn conclusions."

"I have." Poole nodded slowly. "I have indeed."

"Do you wish to share those conclusions, Minder Two?"

"It is my conclusion, Minder One, that you and the former Minder One got blasted and then shagged like giggling teenagers when their parents are away on holiday, that is my conclusion."

Chace grinned. "Do you have any evidence to support this conclusion?"

"Aside from that cum-drunk grin you've got on your face, no, I do not."

"Cum-drunk?"

Poole shrugged apologetically. "Regiment talk."

"Lovely, that."

"But descriptive."

"Evocative, at the least."

"You have not refuted my conclusion, oh Head of Section."

"No, I haven't, have I?"

"Nor have you confirmed it. You have yet to answer conclusively one way or the other."

"That is correct, you are quite correct, Nicky. Do you want an answer, is that what you're hoping for here?"

Poole smiled, pleased with himself. "Yes, very much."

"Right, then," Chace said, and she flipped him two fingers and showed him her best fuck-off smile. "Mind your own."

Poole laughed, dropping his hands back to his desk, returning to his work.

"I always do, don't I? It's in my job description," he said. • Lankford returned fourteen minutes after he'd left, and both Chace and Poole looked up from their work as he entered, curious as to what had happened in Crocker's office. The look on Lankford's face was pinched.

"You on your bike?" Chace asked him.

Lankford shook his head, took off his coat, hung it on the rack.

"What then?"

"He wanted to talk about my prospects." While he said it, Lankford dropped a folded square of paper onto her desk. "Wanted to know how it was working out down here, if I was ready to make a go of it full-time."

Chace looked at the paper, then to Lankford, quizzical. Over at the Minder Two desk, Poole's chair was scraping back on the floor as he got up to join them.

"What'd you say?" Chace asked, taking the paper. There was nothing special about it whatsoever: copier paper, white, plain, folded in a square.

"Well, that I was enjoying the work very much," Lankford said. "That I recognized I had a long way to go until I was at your level, or Nicky's, but that I felt certain I would rise to it, and do so quickly."

"I agree," Chace said, opening the sheet. "You're coming along nicely."

"Thank you."

Chace looked at the note, handwritten by Crocker, blue ink on white paper. Leave. Do not return home. Lose Box. 0210 Imperial Age, VIP, clean. Minders will support.

Chace found it suddenly hard to breathe, had to force herself to inhale. She turned the note in her hand, showing it to Poole but looking at Lankford. He was watching her, his expression blatantly defying the banality of his words, drawn with tension.

For a moment, she honestly couldn't think of anything to say, her mind still spinning from the note, trying to fathom it, straining to understand. Trouble, obviously big trouble, and she was at the heart of it, but she was damned if she could see the why of it, or even the how. She had known it wasn't a spot-check by Box, she had known it wasn't simply a security viewing. But this… This was beyond anything she had imagined, if for no other reason than that she had not, in her wildest dreams, thought it would lead to something like this.

Box wanted her, Crocker's message made that clear. Why, she didn't know, but if Crocker was telling her anything at all, he was telling her that Kinney was going to try to put the arm on her and she'd better get moving, and fast.

The clock on the wall told her it was fourteen-thirty-three. Just under twelve hours until she was to be in the VIP room at the Imperial Age, then. Provided she could keep her liberty for the duration.

Poole had finished reading the note, and now he was looking at her, too, much the way Lankford was.

"Is there anything else you think I should be working on?" Lankford asked her. "To improve my performance?"

She still couldn't trust her voice with a response and so she shook her head, drawing the note back from Poole and crumpling it tight in her hand, then dropping it into her jacket pocket. Then she rose from her chair.

"No, Chris," she told him. "I think you've definitely demonstrated that you're ready to be Minder Three."

Poole took the cue off her, went to the stand, grabbed his coat.

"I'm off for a pint," Chace told them, and left the Pit. • She had a moment of apprehension, showing her pass to the warden on the door on her way out, but he didn't stop her, just gave her a nod of recognition and waved her through. She stepped out into the courtyard of the building, into the slight mist that was doing a weak imitation of rain, following the walk to the door by the gate. The gate was opening, and Chace recognized C's black Bentley as it glided into the yard. She looked away from the car, kept her stride steady.

There were more guards on the gate and they showed no signs of wishing to detain her, just checked her pass again, logged her out. Chace took the opportunity to glance back toward the entrance, saw C's driver opening the rear door, saw Barclay climbing out of the car, far enough away that she couldn't read his expression. She turned away before he could return the look, stepped through the door beside the gate, tucking her pass back into her inside pocket.

Wondering if she hadn't just left Vauxhall Cross for the last time.