Last Line (13 page)

“Be so good as to send him in.”

A door creaked in the corridor. Michael turned a little and shot John one of their old
what the fuck now
looks, as if everything was just as it had been between them. John returned it on reflex. Christ,
could
he just forgive it, let it all go? He would never have believed it, but even a morning spent at odds with Michael had exhausted him, set a weary pain in his chest. If Mike wanted to pretend nothing had happened…

The door opened. John had a half-second’s vision of the most beautiful man he had ever set eyes on, and then his view was blocked. He blinked. Michael was standing in his way, for some reason on his feet and shielding him. John hadn’t even seen him move. “Mike…?”

Michael was reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. They hadn’t had time yet to check their weapons out of the arsenal. “Hold it!” he barked with the same snap of authority as if he’d been holding his H&K. “
Estanavitya
! Don’t you move another step.”

“Agent South!” Webb was surging to his feet. John, automatically doing the same, noted that Michael was doing his best to keep his boss in cover too. “Stand down, man! What the devil is wrong with you?”

Michael glanced over his shoulder. He was ashen, but his voice was steady. “I don’t know who you think this clown is, sir. The last time I saw him, he was leading a pack of Lukas Oriel’s foot soldiers. His name is Anzhel Mattvei. He’s a known associate of Oriel’s, one of MI5’s most wanted.”

The man in the doorway took one step forward. John could see him now. His impression of his beauty didn’t diminish. Six feet tall, eyes bluer than the sunlit morning sky, he looked as if he should be struggling to fit great white wings through the door behind him. His hands were up, the gesture gently mocking. “And, since Oriel’s fortress fell three years ago, a loyal servant of the Zemel government’s secret police,” he said in accented but polished English. He took Michael in—slowly, appreciatively, from his shoes to the top of his skull. “Your information’s out of date, Mikhaili. I changed sides—as did you, when it was expedient.”

Webb stumped round to the front of his desk. He laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder, and once more John noted the kindly gesture with profound unease. Michael didn’t react, stood rigid and motionless, his eyes fixed on the newcomer. “You heard him, Agent South. Our sources in Russia confirm this. Stand down.”

Anzhel
. John took up position at Michael’s other side.
He didn’t say
angel
when I was fishing him out of the bath. He said
Anzhel. “I don’t care who he is, sir. If Mike’s unhappy about him, I am too.”

The sapphire eyes fastened on him. John had never encountered a gaze at once so exquisite and so clinical. It sized him up like so much horseflesh. Then the wide, full mouth—the only mar to his perfection, and that only in motion, revealing a cruelly sensuous curve—broke into a smile. “
Bozhe moi
, Mikhaili! Is this your
zaichik
?”

“What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Enough!” Webb let Michael go. He stepped into the middle of the crackling three-cornered field of static that had sprung up in his office. “I called Agent Mattvei here in order to brief you all as to the details of your assignment. However, there seems little point in that until you’ve all got this infantile pissing match out of your systems.” He turned round slowly, facing each one of them in turn. “South, since you and Agent Mattvei already know one another, you may escort him to his accommodation. Safe house five. Get the keys from Ms. Pearce.”

Anzhel shrugged. “Very well, Sir James. I appreciate the courtesy. Mikhaili, shall we?”

“His name is Michael,” John growled. “And he’s not going anywhere without—”

“It’s all right, Griff.”

John started. He had almost forgotten that his partner had a voice in this.

But Michael had finally let go his frozen stance in front of Anzhel. He threw John a bright, desperate smile. “Calm down, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”

“Mike, who the bloody hell is this guy?”

“
Later
.”

Anzhel had turned in the doorway. The sunlight caught his fall of pale hair, so bright it almost took a reflection. Michael, going after him, looked like a shadow. Instinctively John moved to follow but found Webb’s solid arm blocking his route. “Not you, Agent Griffin. I want a word with you.”

“Won’t it wait?”

“Possibly, but I don’t choose that it should. Your last expenses claim redefined the word
exorbitant
. You’ve got some explaining to do. South, Mattvei—back here in two hours for full briefing. Griffin, close that door and come and sit down.”

John obeyed him as far as closing the door. Then he leaned his back on it and folded his arms across his chest. He waited until Webb had resumed his seat behind the desk. “This isn’t about my bloody expenses.”

Webb sighed. He looked weary, as if the confrontation that had just taken place had drained something out of him. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “Though it damn well ought to be. You can’t put in a claim every time that ridiculous car of yours develops a rattle.”

“Main work vehicle, sir. And if this is about Mike, he should be here.”

Webb looked at him consideringly. “You’re very loyal, aren’t you, Griffin?” he asked, as if that were somehow a bad thing. “I should warn you now: if your relationship with Agent South has gone beyond the wishing-and-hoping stage, I may have to think about reteaming you.”

“What? Why?”

“Same reason I’d separate a husband and wife. Same reason I reteamed Lucy Davis and Sandra Watts last year.”

John found himself momentarily distracted. “Really?”

“Yes. Not that it’s any business of yours. Couples can’t work together, Agent Griffin, not for Last Line. What are you smiling about?”

“Didn’t even know you knew we called it that, sir.” John gave up his watchful posture by the door and moved to sit down. He felt his smile become bitter. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry. We’re nowhere near wishing and hoping now. Not that it’s any business of yours. What did you want to tell me about Mike?”

“Insolent, Agent Griffin,” Webb said in evident approval. John sometimes thought that the only time he really pleased the old sod was when he was cheeking him. “How much has Agent South told you about his stint with MI5? His undercover op in Zemel Province in particular?”

John shrugged. “Next to nothing. Just that he was there.”

“He never mentioned Lukas Oriel to you?”

“Never heard his name until today.”

“You shouldn’t take that as a sign of lack of trust, you know.”

John looked up in surprise. Since when had Webb been concerned about his feelings? “I don’t,” he said. “Just of having signed the
Official Secrets Act
. I know he can’t just…chat to me about it.”

“Well, no. But there may be more to it than that in South’s case. His debrief on return from that mission is more or less a confession—of having infiltrated Oriel’s paramilitaries and run with them in the Zemel forests, hunting down opposing insurgents and anyone else who hadn’t espoused Oriel’s cause. Particularly groups of wanderers, Russian gypsies called ashkeloi. South did what he had to do to keep his cover—which included taking part in several massacres.”

“Jesus.” John felt the floor shift under him. Nausea coiled in his gut.

“Does it change your opinion of him, Griffin?”

“No. Because I don’t bloody believe it.” He didn’t, did he? A week ago, he’d have thrust the idea away from him—maybe slammed out of Webb’s office in disgust. He wished to God he could lose the image of Michael standing over him—expressionless, inexorable—in the farmhouse living room. Wished he couldn’t feel the tightening grip of his choke hold in the instant before
no
had somehow failed to mean
no
. “He couldn’t have. He must have been under duress.”

“Very possibly. But it’s his own report. Would you implicate yourself in a genocide, Griffin, unless you absolutely had to?” Webb leaned his elbows heavily on the desk. “Anyway. The important thing that you should know is this: Agent South named the leader of Oriel’s soldiers—the man who headed up the forest massacres—in that report too.”

An icy chill went down John’s spine. He pressed his fingers to his lips for a moment. “Please tell me not Anzhel Mattvei.”

“The same, I’m afraid.”

“You’re
afraid
? You knew all that, and you sprang the bastard on him anyway?”

Webb sighed. “That’s exactly why I did it. I had to see how he’d react.”

“I think you nearly gave him a bloody heart attack. Was that satisfactory?”

“What? To frighten and grieve one of my own men? One of my best, at that? No, Agent Griffin. It wasn’t satisfactory to me at all. If I could leave South to make his own peace with his past, I would.”

Webb’s regrets meant nothing to John, not unless they were backed up by action. “Why the hell can’t you?”

“Because I need Oriel. I’ve been tasked to find him by a higher authority than I’m at liberty to reveal to you. And to get him, I need Mattvei. I have to know South is stable enough to work with him, and to be sure of that”—Webb paused, and looked at John assessingly—“I need you.”

John shook his head. “Not a chance. I’ll watch his back, but any monitoring or spying…no way.”

“Watching his back will suffice. You may not find that such an easy task, however.” Webb flipped open the file on his desk, and John saw a flash of solemn MI5 letterhead. “The report Agent South gave on his return doesn’t tally at some points with that of other witnesses, among them the British soldiers who eventually stormed Lukas Oriel’s headquarters building. Your partner didn’t make his escape from Mattvei’s paramilitary group, and despite what he says, he did succeed in tracking his target—or at any rate, his target found him. South was liberated from a cell in Oriel’s fortress.”

“Liberated…” John sat forward in his seat, trying to ignore a wash of fear. “He was being held there?”

“That’s right. We don’t know how long for.”

Prisoners get fucked, John
. “Was he all right?”

“Bruised and half starved. Beyond that, not much obvious physical damage, though investigating officers found equipment used in… Do you know what waterboarding is, Agent Griffin?”

“Of course I bloody do!” John lurched to his feet. It was that or jump out of his skin. He took three tense strides to the window and stood staring blindly out. “It kills people. They can dry-drown. The trauma lasts for… Did he get treatment?”

“In order for any treatment or therapy to be effective, Agent South would have to remember and accept the torture. And as far as he’s concerned, he was picked up by British forces in the Zemel forest. No amount of MI5 deprogramming served to shift that belief.”

“But this Mattvei bloke, this Anzhel…” John paused, then spun back to face Webb. “He knows better, right? He knows what happened to Mike.”

“Maybe. Mattvei claims he worked closely with Oriel. But he may have been, as Agent South believes, no more than a foot soldier, an extremely blunt instrument. When Oriel’s kingdom fell, the Zemel government cut Mattvei a deal: his freedom and a place within their secret service in return for the location of Oriel’s WMDs. It’s no use looking at me like that, Griffin. It’s not my fault if the Zemel SS is less particular in its choice of employees than I am.”

Are you so particular? You hired a shell-shocked amnesiac
. “Did you know?”

“Did I know what?”

“That this Oriel would rear his ugly head one day. That Mike might have connections to him.”

“Oriel is wanted by law enforcement agencies all over the US and Europe. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that—”

“Did you plan to use Michael?”

Webb raised his brows. To John’s surprise, he looked less annoyed than pleased with the question, as if his employee had finally worked something out for himself. “Use him?” he echoed. “I
plan
to use you all. You know the terms of your employment, Agent Griffin. Whether there’s anything left when I’m done using you is entirely up to your own endurance and resourcefulness.”

Don’t mince words, now.

John sat in silence for a moment, giving the old man’s straightness its due of reluctant respect. “Fair enough,” he said. “But there’s a difference between that and screwing with someone. Mike’s been off-kilter since we ran into Piotr Milosz. I think he’s having flashbacks. He needs taking off this case, not…winding up to see what he’ll do next.”

“Your opinion is noted.”

“Or being left alone with side-swapping bastards like Anzhel Mattvei.”

“But he won’t be alone, will he? He’ll have you to keep an eye on him. I’ll expect you to do so assiduously.” Webb reached for the next file on his desk. It was a gesture John had learned to read as a dismissal, but this time he stood his ground. He needed to tell Webb, without betraying Mike’s confidence, that flashbacks were the tip of the iceberg.

An instant later he regretted it. Webb looked up. “Still here, Griffin? I was going to suggest you took a break for lunch, but since we have a little time, we might as well look at those expenses of yours in good earnest.”

* * *

Three-quarters of an hour later, philosophically tucking into a cheese and Marmite sandwich in the corner café instead of the fresh deli salad he normally enjoyed—best let the boss simmer down for a few days—John watched Michael carefully reverse his BMW into a tight space across the street. He set down his newspaper. He wasn’t about to spy on his partner, but he was hungry for the sight of him, even after so short a separation. Even after last night.

The driver door swung open. Michael got out slowly, as if aching. The bruise on his lip stood out lividly in the sunlight. How the hell had they got themselves to the brink of rape? Because that was how Mike would look at it, John knew, in a cooler moment, once whatever madness it had been had worked its way out of his blood.

Mike leaned his hands tiredly on the car roof. For a moment John thought he would look up and see him. If he did, John would waggle his fingers at him, beckon him over. Buy him a sandwich and try to make him laugh with the story of the bollocking he’d just had off the old man. Or—better yet—John would get up, run across the street to him, enfold him in a hug and tell him it didn’t matter, to forget the sodding disastrous sex and just be his friend again.