407 Drabbles (2)

by elfin

~ Tom ~

 

"...I got home that night, the day she died.  He was sitting on the doorstep, bottle in one hand, gun in the other.  He's been here ever since.  I brought his clothes and some photographs from the house, and when he went to the school to tell his son, I went with him and waited in the car.  Everything he's been through, everything he's seen and done, telling Wes that his mother had been killed almost broke him.  When we got back... I think he just needed to prove that he was still alive."

Harry didn't look the least bit surprised and I decided he'd already worked it out.  He is head of MI5 after all. 

“The night after I came in from the streets….  Adam was there for me when I needed to prove I was still alive.” 

“So you owed him a favour?” 

There was a possessive, protective note in his tone I couldn’t understand.  Not then. 

“It wasn’t like that.  It’s not like that.” 

“So what is it?  Don’t get me wrong, Tom.  I’m grateful for what you did today.  But you’re a decommissioned spy, he’s an active agent.” 

I wanted to laugh; I could already hear the sound in my ears, harsh and bitter.  But accusing him of destroying me, of trying to destroy Adam, seemed pointless. 

“Did you miss the part where he beat up and almost shot an MI5 witness this afternoon?” 

At least he had the grace to look sheepish.  “Fiona’s death….” 

“…has torn him apart.  I’m trying to pick up the pieces.” 

My coffee was going cold in the mug on the table, Harry’s doing the same next to it.  I knew I’d missed something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until I replayed the scene in my head.  That guy – whoever he was – lying on the pavement outside the embassy, face bloodied from when Adam had bounced it against the concrete, arm broken from Adam’s excessive efforts to get the information he wanted.   

Gun primed, one long finger curled across the trigger….  No one fired a single shot. 

“You wouldn’t give the order to shoot.”  It was a revelation, but one that made some sort of sense to me.  “Why?  You’d have shot me if I’d done anything like that….  The rest of us.  Why not Adam?” 

“Hi.”  We both started, turned.  Adam was standing in the corridor behind us, bleary-eyed from a gently drugged sleep, dressed in the same blue woollen jumper and grey jogging trousers he’d gone to bed in.  “Just wanted some water.”   

Harry rose to his feet and I watched as he moved to stand in front of Adam.  Whatever communication passed between them was silent.   

Then Harry’s arms went around Adam’s waist, Adam’s arms around Harry’s neck, and I wasn't sure which side of platonic the hug was on until Harry turned a kiss to Adam's head. 

I've never asked and he's never told me.  There's so much violence in his past, so much pain in his present and future.  I've tried to keep the now as easy as possible.  And until he decided he was going back to work three days ago, I'd been successful. 

They stepped back from one another at the same time.  Adam headed for the kitchen and we heard the cupboard, the tap, then he padded back through and up the corridor to the guest bedroom at the end, closing the door quietly.  Harry sat back down, elbows on his knees, reaching for his mug just for something to do with his hands. 

“I spent a lot of time with him after his torture in Yemen.  Oliver Mace, head of MI6 at the time, asked me to debrief him as a favour, one I didn’t understand until I met Adam and realised the state he was in.  He wasn’t going to tell Mace anything under duress and putting any kind of pressure on him just made things worse. 

He didn’t want to go home.  Wes was only four and neither Adam nor Fiona wanted him to see his father so physically and mentally injured.  So he was in an apartment, one of MI6’s safe houses.  I’d go there and talk to him, try to coax as much detail out of him as I could about what happened; trying to find out who’d betrayed him, if other agents were in danger. 

One afternoon the fire alarms went off.  Just a drill, just for thirty seconds.  No more.  But in those thirty seconds Adam had scratched at the insides of his ears causing wounds deep enough to need stitches. 

After that I took him home with me.  Spent very long days and nights just listening to him talk about nothing and everything because now and again he’d say something about his imprisonment.  And eleven days later he gave me a name.  It didn’t mean anything to him, as far as he knew the man had just been another aid worker, but it meant something to me.  Mace had his double agent and I was told to send Adam home and get back to Five. 

My problem was... I’d developed certain feelings for him along the way.  It was never a secret – Adam knew because I told him.  We never…. I mean, he didn’t….  I wasn’t his type.  He loved Fiona and although he admitted he sometimes went with men….  Like I said, I wasn’t his type.” 

First thing they teach you in spy school – to recognise when someone’s lying.  Spies – those who work undercover – use the knowledge to lie convincingly.  It had been a long time, I realised, since Harry worked in the field. 

I reminded him of the fact and he put his mug down without touching the cold coffee.  He looked at me ruefully and spoke almost apologetically.  “MI6 Christmas party three years ago, the Savoy Hotel.  Mace, unfortunately, has excellent taste in champagne and whiskey.  Not that Adam was drinking, but I was.  I paid the toilet attendant to take a break.” 

Oddly, his confession brought a smile to my face.  It was good to know Harry’s as human as the rest of us, with the same human failings. 

“I care for him, Tom.  I bulldozed a hundred rules to get him to MI5, a hundred more to keep him with us.  The day Fiona died I put a man with diplomatic immunity in the path of his rampage so he could find her.  I couldn’t give the order to fire this afternoon.  Maybe… I’ve been compromised all this time and I just haven’t been able to see it.” 

Leaning over, I caught his wrist.  “You’re not compromised.  You love him.” 

“Do you?” 

I can’t help the smile.  “I’ve been in love with him from the moment Carmen Joyce pulled the trigger and killed herself at his word.”  The smile fades.  “But it’s not about us now, Harry.  The only person Adam ever really loved is dead.  If he can’t get over that, we’ll both lose him forever.”