The Library of Forbidden Books

Chapter 5

A knock at Sam’s door gave him a start, reminiscent of the dreams he had been having lately. Dreams of guilt, dreams that mull over relationships gone awry and unintentional affiliations; those were the weave of Sam’s tapestry lately. He sat up in alarm, still emerging from his sudden slumber on the couch that he did not deliberately undertake. Unkempt and greasy, Sam’s hair stuck to his unshaven face as he gasped. Under his open shirt. his chiseled chest heaved and he wiped his eyes while piquing his ears to see if the knock, too, had been part of his dream.

But it came again, this time accompanied by a familiar voice that instantly set him at ease.

“Open the door, you daft arse!”

“Hang on, I’m coming!” Sam cried, as he quickly kicked the empty bottles under and behind the couch. Barefooted, he slouched toward the front door in loose jeans. The seams chafed on the floor around his feet as he moved and Sam wiped his eyes and hair all at once as best he could to make himself look as composed as a hungover mess possibly could.

“Crikey, Samuel! What dog spat you out?” Patrick Smith asked when he beheld his red-eyed friend. “You look like shit, pal. What is it with you?”

“Bruich, mostly,” Sam fibbed slightly.

“What’s wrong with Bruich?” Patrick asked, as he set down a six-pack and leftover pizza from the night before that he carefully preserved in a Tupperware container.

“Vestibular disease, they say. My poor cat, Paddy! You should have seen it. Bloody awful not to know what is wrong with your pet and just hoping for the best. Floppy head, dizzy eyes, fatigue… I thought he was done for,” Sam whined, running his fingers through his hair in a daze that would not leave him be.

“And? Where is he now? Please, God, don’t tell me… ” Paddy started. Being the cat’s unwritten godfather and constant host when Sam went off on global excursions, he was as concerned for the poor beasty as his best friend.

“No, no, don’t worry. He is all right. The vet is treating him at the animal hospital for the next week or so,” Sam sighed, eyeing the food in the plastic tub. He had not eaten for more than a day after he came home from the vet and drinking on an empty stomach took him everywhere but the kitchen until he passed out on the couch.

“Do you even know what day it is?” Paddy asked.

Sam looked at the small window over his front door. “It’s night, Patrick.”

“I see you are further gone than I initially reckoned, old boy,” he told Sam, shaking his head while cracking open a brew. “Here. Hair of the dog.”

Sam’s stomach twisted at the thought of beer, at least for now. With a sharp eye he took the can from his friend and sighed, “This could very well end up on your shoes. Just a heads-up.”

“Get some food in your stomach too, please. When I did not hear back from you on Friday, I didn’t let my concerns overwhelm me so much, but by this morning I was certain you were dead in a ditch somewhere… again,” Paddy rambled into Sam’s aching head. He watched Sam wolf down a slice of Italian cuisine and chase it with half a can of beer as if it were his last meal.

“It’s just been a tough month is all,” Sam mumbled through the pulp of cheese, olives, and salami that filled his mouth.

“I don’t get it. You are famous now. Pretty bloody well off too, if I may say so. The book is a bestseller, and here you are, looking like an incontinent hermit on a booze binge!” Paddy said calmly as he sat down with a beer in his hand.

“Fame and money! Who gives a shit?” Sam muttered indifferently.

“People who don’t have what you are fortunate to have, Sam, they give a shit. People who have, never care. You were never like this. The last time I saw you like this… ”

“You have a fag? I’m dry,” Sam interrupted him, so that he would not have to hear that he had not been this emotional screwed-up since Trish’s departure. He knew full well that Paddy thought that publishing the long-awaited book on their exposure of the arms ring and her consequent demise was the cause of his hideous state. But he could not bring himself to admit that it was Nina Gould’s absence in his life that had him in such a twisted demeanor. He did not want to discuss the beautiful historian right now, or anytime really.

“I don’t smoke anymore, Sam,” Paddy reminded him. “Maybe you should give it up again.”

“I need at least two bad habits to sustain my multifaceted life, my friend. And I’ve picked this,” he held up the beer can, “and fags.”

Patrick Smith, agent for the British Secret Service and part-time darts champion with a difficult best friend, sat forward, pondering something. He cleared his throat and looked at Sam standing over at the counter, chewing like a caveman.

“Look, I don’t know what you are fighting against at the moment, but I have a freelance job you might be interested in,” Paddy said nonchalantly. “The book is out on the lists and the money is coming in. It’s not as if you have to work for this and that paper anymore. You get to take on assignments you want, right?”

“Aye. And right now I don’t want anything. All I want is my bloody cat to get well so we can watch sports together again,” Sam said plainly.

“Sam, I don’t know half of what you’ve been through, mate, but I do know the extent of danger you and Nina were in those two times when I was involved in what you guys had to get through,” Paddy told Sam sincerely. “Deep Sea One was a nightmare and that close call you had in Romania would have had me retire right away, had it been me. I won’t lie about that, but you… Sam, I’m not you. You live for this stuff. You thrive on that dangerous line between curiosity and revelation, and I have always admired you for that. No, I have envied you that.”

“You’re right. You don’t, literally, know the half of it, Paddy. I’m done. I’m fucking exhausted and all I want is some time to be away from the world and get my head straight, man,” Sam explained. He could see his old mate was driving toward something, tiptoeing for his sake. He appreciated Patrick’s respect not to ask about the rest of the matters and not directly pry into what was really bothering his friend, but he had to make it clear to him without allowing him to know that Sam was simply pining for a lost love and feeling awful about betraying the rival for her love, perhaps to his death.

The thing of it, for Sam, was not knowing. Not knowing if they killed Purdue because of his direction haunted him. If he could only ascertain the extent of the repercussions of what he had done he would know what penalty to impose on his own mind. But he could never tell Paddy this.

“The service has put me on a reconnaissance mission and as luck would have it… ”

“Or fate,” Sam mumbled.

“As luck would have it,” Paddy reiterated with annoyance, “they are giving me the authority to pick my team. I need a photographer and videographer, such as you. I want only the best for this assignment.”

“Call Carl Walsh,” Sam suggested blandly, “or Lynn Manly. She is very good. Also very nosy. Makes for a great investigative journalist. You two should get on swimmingly.”

Paddy just sat staring at Sam, trying not to let his emotions get the better of him, trying not to get up and wallop his best friend just for the unnecessary sarcasm, if nothing else.

“Because you are unfazed by money, I have nothing to reward you with apart from my gratitude, your owing me on the cat-sitting all this time and the fact that it is something you would definitely want to work on,” Paddy threw back some tactful guilt and mystery as bait.

Sam glared at him as he stuffed the last piece of pizza in his mouth. He stood there in his ill-groomed state, looking all but downright wounded. “You had to bring up the cat-sitting. You had to. You were never such a bastard, Paddy. It must be MI6’s influence on you, to make you go there.”

Patrick had to laugh. It was good to hear Sam’s old off-kilter sense of humor purse through his new pallid disposition. Sam kept a straight face only to perpetuate the jest. In truth, he did owe Patrick a sum of rewards and favors for looking after his beloved Bruichladdich every time the journalist had to disappear into oblivion with Nina and Purdue on their incessant Nazi relic hunting. Not to mention the times Sam was caught in life-threatening situations and Patrick came to his aid, indeed, saved his life no less.

Sam had to concede. He needed to get out and he needed to make it up to his best friend, somehow. And this would be the place to start. Sam sat down and sighed, changing his mood to be less disobliging, and looked his friend in the eye with sincere acquiescence.

“What do you need me for, mate?”

Paddy smiled, but he did his best not to look too overjoyed just yet, in case Sam took it as victory.

“Like I said, it is a recon assignment. Just recon for a few days to profile our mark and then back home again. No open season on your Scottish ass by vicious Germans, I promise,” Paddy assured Sam. He put his beer down and rubbed his palms together like an eager teenager and added, “The only thing is, I need to know now. That is why I am here… mostly.”

I need to get my mind off Nina, or I’m going to collapse in a heap of stupid again, Sam argued inside his mind. And it will occupy me fulltime. Maybe by the time I return home, I’ll be more numb about it all, who knows.

“Okay,” Sam announced, “I’m in.”

He did not even ask exactly what the assignment was about and he did not care. He had never worked with Paddy before and the two men trusted each other with their lives, they knew each other like twins and had their own way of communicating. Their logic was in synch and between Patrick’s training and Sam’s expertise they could easily finish this project in a few days.

“Excellent!” Paddy smirked. “Now, some details of the trip. All you have to do is record what we see, where we see it, who the marks are with, and who they contact. I’ll do the rest.”

“Okay, and is it local?” Sam asked.

“No, we are heading to Rotterdam. Our persons of interest have seats globally, but we believe that this one is the main gathering place for the heads of the organization,” Paddy informed Sam. “It is our task to follow them and ultimately locate one of the members, one Jaap Roodt. Once we know where he is, we report back to MI6 head office in Glasgow with all the footage and you get paid for your service to the country.”

“Jesus, you sound like Moneypenny,” Sam remarked, secretly very proud of how far his friend had progressed from DCI Patrick Smith from Edinburgh to Agent Smith of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Patrick laughed awkwardly, exhibiting some uncharacteristic poise. He had Sam Cleave bagged. Revelation imminent.