License to Kill

I couldn't help but notice the past tense of love. It's not like I was surprised. I was sure I was in the same place. I didn't honestly know how to respond to the rest of her statements, though.

"And how do we do that, Clarissa? How do we reconnect? You left me for dead."

"To be fair, Rich, you did tell me to," she responded, a little tartly, pursing her lips at me.

I couldn't argue that, so I didn't try.

"You were everything to me," I said to the bag of groceries, pulling over another one and starting to empty it. "I loved you with everything I had. You were one extremely skillful liar; I have to give you that."

I paused, can of baked beans in my hand, -- why are the US 'Pork and Beans' so crap, compared to Heinz baked beans from back home? I discovered later it was because our beans have sugar in them, which surprised me, since everything else in the US appears to be loaded with sugar and salt, unlike our stuff back home. The bread here tastes really weird, with all its additives.

I looked at her directly. "Was any of it true? Anything in our relationship real?"

This was the sixty-four-million-dollar question I'd waited years to ask.

She looked away. Great. Then she looked back at me.

"You have to understand the conditions under which I met you, Rich. It... wasn't how you normally meet someone. I was under orders..."

I snorted. For the first time, it occurred to me that she probably didn't know that 'Darrell' had visited me years before and given me his side of the story. I didn't know if his was any more truth than hers, but it would be interesting to see if they were even remotely the same, so I decided not to tell her what I already knew.

She sighed.

"Look, I need to give you some background. I'll answer your question, but you need to know other things to make sense of it."

She paused, then coughed and asked, "Can I get a glass of water?"

I walked over to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and threw it to her. I was marveling at how similar her conversation was to the Major's. Did they go to school for this? Were they operating off the same script?

After opening the bottle and taking a swig, she continued.

"So, to understand why I do what I do, you have to understand my upbringing. My father was a retired Sergeant Major, who had been all over the world. And Mother, she was a reporter. That's how she'd met Dad. She was in Singapore, and he was stationed there. I've no idea why. Actually, now I say that, I should look into that. I'm not sure there was an Army battalion there? Anyway, I was the product of their union. Now Dad, well, they say that travel broadens the mind? It was the opposite for Dad. He ended up a small-minded bigot, all about the Q's and T's, everything just so, and sod Johnny Foreigner. Mum, well, she just went along with Dad. She was quite blinded to his faults. To her, they were all just another reason why he was a square peg in a round hole, and Mum loved that."

She took a breath.

"They died when I was fifteen."

"So the woman I met?" I interjected.

"Mabel. She used to be a field agent. Retired in the nineties, and then discovered like so many who had devoted their lives to the service that it was all she had. No friends, no family, just her little cottage in Brighton and her memories, that she could never share. She pestered us for small contract work, just so she could feel still part of something. Following people, I mean, who thinks they are being followed by a little old lady walking a Scottish terrier? Various small walk-on parts, like that of 'my mum', things like that."

Clarissa looked off into the distance.

"She died last year. There was almost no one at her funeral. It was very sad. They couldn't talk about her life of the medals she won, or the people she saved at all."

She refocused her attention back to me.

"Anyway, I was always destined for the security services. It's all I ever wanted. Listening to Dad's stories of the things he was involved in, the incompetence, the mishandling, the pure naked aggression and greed, on both sides. I just, well, I only ever saw myself in that world. I mean, I recognized Dad's small-mindedness right from the word go, but his stories were things he lived. I knew what I wanted to do, and I made sure I was in the right place to be recruited. It helped that when they died, - carbon monoxide poisoning because Dad left a space heater on in their bedroom that wasn't adequately ventilated, typical Dad, - I went to my uncle's house from the age of fifteen onwards. He was in the civil service, and he knew people. Knew what they were looking for. He could guide my ambitions, so to speak. Tell me which universities they watched, what the people they wanted would study. So I did all that, and lo and behold, in my last year, I was asked 'how patriotic did I think I was?' Which led to questions like 'how far would you go?' and so on, and eventually to an invitation to apply for a specific civil service kind of job."

She stopped for another swig. "It's terribly humid here, isn't it?" she said, conversationally, and then carried on.

"I worked my way up the ranks. And it's not that terrible for women now, I can tell you. It's not about who you know, once you are in. It's about how imaginative you can be, how much nerve you have, and how ruthless you are prepared to be. And... well, I did well. I'm sure you can imagine what kind of person I was. Am, even.

"The thing is, there is a huge burnout rate for people in my line of work. Lots of people who lose the plot. Start seeing things that aren't there. People who start reacting to things you haven't done or said."

She shrugged at me.

"You can see why this is a problem. The service thinks this is driven by people who work for the services getting out of touch with 'the common man'."

She used fingers to emphasize 'the common man'. "They may be right, I mean, you don't tend to have many friends outside of people you work with, because well, all you do is lie to them, and they never understand your frequent absences."

She at least lowered her eyes when she said this, indicating she knew damn well what was going through my mind at that statement.

"The service decided it would be better for the longevity of employees, and the connection to the real world, if they found a partner. I was part of the inaugural group. There were five of us."

I snorted again. "Of that five, how many are still together?"

"Two," she immediately retorted. "One died on a mission. Two are still together, although... their partners were informed once what happened with us... happened. One divorced for other reasons. And then there's us."

"No second go at it for you, then?"

"No," she said simply. "Once was enough."

I bristled at that.

"No," she said, seeing the look in my eye, putting a hand up to placate me. "I don't mean it like that. I mean, I couldn't go through that again. What I put you through. What happened to you. How I... felt after you were taken. I mean, how I feel now. I could never put someone else through that. I couldn't cope with that, either."

"Not because you still care about me? Just what happened to me?" I probed. I doubted I'd get a direct answer, but it was worth trying.

"I'm getting to that", she hedged.

"Anyway. I went looking. You weren't on my radar, if you are wondering. You were serendipity in its most wonderful form. Right from the first time we met, at that wedding, I knew from that moment I could have a relationship with you. Be my yin to your yang, so to speak."

Another swig of water. I noticed she was throwing the bottle from one hand to another, something she did when she was intent on what she was thinking or talking about. It was a tell on her having singular focus in what she was discussing. When she played with things with her hands, unconsciously, she was focused on one thing, and one thing only.

"Were you ever a relative or...?" I asked, the sudden question occurring to me.

"Yes, I was. Exactly what I mentioned to you. Just... not with the family connections I told you. Anyway, yes, you were exactly what the doctor ordered. Straightforward, smart, funny, down to earth, had your plan for your life. Sexy smile. Honest."

"Naive." I interjected.

"I would have used the word Innocent," she replied, with an impish grin.

"You ticked all the boxes for me personally, - I could totally see myself married to you. Being your partner, and you mine..."

"As far as you let me," I interrupted again.

She sighed, and then carried on.

"Of the parts I shared with you, you got one hundred percent of me. Of the parts you did not, well... let's just say you probably didn't want to know those parts. You actually got the best of me, frankly. And inside of those confines, you got all of me."

"But not all of you, unlike you having all of me?" I responded, aggressively. All this justification was starting to piss me off.

She paused, and just looked at me.

"Is this what this is? Pile on Clarissa day? Do you want me to talk or not?" she demanded.

"I think I've got cause, don't you?" I said, more mildly, hooking my hair around my reconstructed ear to make the point.

She sighed.

"Yes, you do. Still... let me get this out? This is... hard for me."

I gestured at her to go on, but rolled my eyes internally. 'Hard for her'. Fuck that.

"You ticked all the boxes the service required, too. They did a deep dive on you. You checked out. So, as far as they were concerned, it was a go. We... courted, and I was happy. For a change, one of the service programs really worked. All five of us were really happy. We were connected, grounded, had a life outside of work. Of course, the job had to change a little for us. No long undercover jobs, but then we didn't do many of those anyway. Not our MO. No prolonged stays in other countries. But, it worked. It worked for everyone. Even for you. I know you were happy. I sure as hell was."

"Of course you were. Your fat and stupid husband to come home to, and all the thrills of espionage and spy shit during the day. Tell me, Clarissa, how many men did you sleep with while married to me? I really would like to know." I put that flat out there, to remind her that this was not all hunky-dory and hearts and flowers, as she was portraying.

Her eyes avoided me again.

"Not many. Sometimes it was necessary. I was trained as a swallow, but I hardly ever did that. Only when it was... strictly necessary. It was a job, not a desire. You were quite enough for me, on that front. You don't need to worry your ego over that. I was entirely satisfied at home, let me assure you. I did what the job demanded. The job was there before you..."

"... and still there when I was gone into that hell hole." I finished. I'd completed putting the second bag away, and had started on the third.

"How many?" I demanded again.

"How is knowing that possibly going to be helpful to anyone?" she pushed back.

"HOW MANY?" I shouted, slamming the bottle of olive oil on the table, for emphasis.

There was a sudden silence, broken eventually by her saying softly, "Seven."

Another pregnant pause.

"And all that shit the Major said about us not being married?"

She rolled her lips over her teeth and back out again, the classic sign of someone who doesn't want to say what they have to.

"The service didn't want a record of marriage. That was as much for your protection as mine. If someone found me, they wouldn't find you from a records search."

"Oh come on," I hissed, not buying that for a second. "That's just bullshit. Our lives were intertwined. Joint bank accounts, joint insurance, joint mortgage. Even if there was no legit marriage certificate, I would be easily found. Try a different tree to piss on?" I suggested.

"Okay, okay," she said, putting down the bottle and holding both hands out. "Fine, you want the truth? The service didn't want any possibility of this coming back on them. Of someone who found out what was going on suing over marital grounds. If we weren't legitimately married, you couldn't sue them for interfering, or for anything else. Not a very nice thing, but there you are."

"Jesus," I muttered, under my breath.

"But you said...?" I queried, putting mushrooms in the fridge.

"Yes, well, that was my little bit of rebellion. See, I really did like you. I loved you. I really did, Rich. And I wanted that to be real. Screw what the service wanted. I mean, what were they going to do, once it was done? Undo it? Even they can't do that. They were pissed but... it wouldn't have been any different really. I just wanted that. For us."

So, my question was answered. Sort of.

"As to your original question, yes, everything I showed you was real. As real as it could be," she qualified, at the end.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that while everything I showed you was real, it wasn't everything there was to show you. I couldn't tell you what I did for a living. I couldn't come home and cry on your shoulder if an asset was burned. I couldn't come and complain to you about office bureaucracy. I couldn't explain the stress I was under. You weren't able to be there for everything I needed you for. Not because you wouldn't have, but because I couldn't tell you."

I pondered that for a moment. I could see what she was talking about. That sucked, from her end. It sucked from mine just a little bit more, but still... I could see it. Then another question occurred.

"Were we ever going to have kids?"

She snorted, then frowned. "Knowing what you know now, what do you think?"

"So, no, then?" I persisted. Make her explain it properly. "I was just going to be, what, kept in the dark and fed bullshit?"

"No," she replied, sitting back and running her hand through her hair. "At some point, some medical reason would have come up preventing me from having kids. To be honest with you, that was a major source of guilt for me, not being able to provide you with that. And you'd never know it was all crap, either. On top of all the stress from my job. I did have thoughts about manufacturing a divorce, to let you be free to find someone who could give those to you, but like most things at that time, I was selfish and I just wanted you with me. I needed you. Still do, truth be told, but I'm fairly sure that ship has sailed. I highly doubt you'd want me, with all my baggage, around at this point."

"So, you admit it was selfish?" I pushed, just to make a point.

She laughed, humorlessly. "You don't get it, Rich. I was an operator for a security service. You have any idea what my life expectancy is? Four years. Four years from starting operations, to something fatal happening to me. I'm already well past my expected life span. I was expected to be selfless, to sacrifice myself if the conditions demanded it. We have an actual manual on that, you know? I was putting myself in harm's way for Queen and Country every day. So, I was a little selfish with you. That's what you were there for. That was the entire point of that operation."

"And what about me? When did I get to be selfish?" I demanded.

"Well, yes. That's where it all falls down, doesn't it?" she answered, wearily. She glanced up at me. "I'm sorry, Rich. What I did, what they demanded of me, what they did to you, the manipulation, all of it. Now, with distance, I can see how wrong it was. You paid the almost ultimate price for my deception and I really am sorry. You are quite my greatest failure, as an operative, as woman and as a human being. I don't know how else to say it. What we did to you was unforgivable."

There was yet another uncomfortable silence. I broke it by asking, "So, that holiday in Spain we were supposed to take? I'm assuming that got canceled because of something at work?"

She nodded, and then said, "Yes, we'd had an operation go sideways there the week before. An asset was blown, and there was all hell to pay. The idea of an active operator going on holiday to Spain right then was a non-starter. Way too dangerous. The Spanish might have just grabbed us just to make life difficult, in a tit for tat way. So, that had to be shut down. I'm sorry. Normally my... other life never interfered. I worked very hard for that to be true, but in this case, well..." she shrugged with a rueful smile. "The trip to Maryland was nice though, you have to admit."

I did nod back, equally ruefully. It had been nice. Very nice. Still would have liked to have gone to Spain though.

There was yet another silence as we both groped for what to say next.

I figured that if she hadn't talked to the Major, then she wouldn't know how I actually cottoned on to the fact that she wasn't all she claimed to be. I might as well give her the background.

"In case you were interested, when you left the Dorchester that day, hurrying away, that table of your targets sent us an expensive bottle of wine, for someone named Ms. Davis. They talked about seeing you that Wednesday. Clearly, you were hiding from them, hoping they didn't see you, and that's what gave me the idea that something was not on the up and up. I put on a delivery courier type of costume and followed you to work that day, and saw you leaving for that little soiree, with the Major, not dressed like you were when you left for work, and knew something was going on. I followed you and bluffed my way in pretending to be a courier picking up, and well, you know the rest."

She nodded and murmured, "So that's how it came about that you were there! Well, fuck ups always are simple. Good. The service floated the idea that you'd be turned or something after we got back. I told them what a load of crap that was. We just had no idea how you'd tumbled what was going on. Turns out, you didn't. Just wrong place at the wrong time."

Realizing what she'd just said, she looked back at me, eyes wide.

"I didn't mean, good, you were captured. I meant..."

"I know what you meant," I interrupted.

There was yet another awkward silence. We were having a run of those.

"I got you out, you know," she said, softly. "I was the one who was riling up the disaffected. The service didn't want me anywhere near that place. None of us. We were expressly told no operations against the Saudis. They were on their guard now, anyway. I think they were looking for evidence of you. We went back to the venue, - there were police there almost immediately anyway, so there was no time for them to, umm... dispose, of you, if you were dead. But there was no trace. So we knew you weren't there. We figured they either had you in the embassy or had already spirited you away. We never saw anyone enter the embassy, so they didn't think you were there, but I knew. I knew you were somewhere there. I could smell it. Three times I tried to get operational approval to come to find you, and each time I was turned down. 'Operational collateral', you were deemed. I just think they were glad you were gone. One less embarrassment for them to live down. One less failure of one of their operatives to explain. When you turned up, they didn't know what to do with you. That Thurgood arsehole, he put you on a leash, gave you money, and sat and watched you for a year to see what you'd do. You crawled away here, and he was satisfied. He still has the NSA monitor you, and has an agent watch you periodically, just to see what you are up to. He'll have you killed at the drop of a hat if he thinks you are plotting to reveal anything. All that legal bullshit? That's to try and make you aware of how precarious your life is, without actually coming out and threatening you."

She picked up the bottle and finished it.

"But I knew you were in there, in that embassy. I was part of a team that intercepted a Saudi agent in Cairo, and one of the things he mentioned in interrogation was 'the mystery man in the basement, in England.' He didn't know anything else but I knew what it meant. I even took it to the brass in the service, and they wanted nothing to do with it. I was told to Leave. It. Alone." How she managed to enunciate the capitals on those words I don't know, but she did.