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He was certain the gringo was winning. Even as he approached the court he could see Juan leaping around seemingly out of breath and obviously out of his depth, and he is positive he heard the gringo announce three love to me, just before the man glanced back and noticed Teddy standing there… and started losing, clumsily and sloppily, out after out, until Juan could rejoice in his petty triumph. It had to be deliberate. Question is, what had provoked it… did the foreigner just get bored and want to end the game, or did he want to favour Juan, and if so, to what end? Surely it could not have been on his account… or was it? No, that’s wishful thinking, and Teddy should know better than indulging it, even when its object is as handsome as this… and yet.
When they walk through the club lobby – Teddy could not resist a spot of small talk as a way to test the waters on the off-chance the lure had been intentional – the stranger, Matthew Ellis, acts matter-of-fact and talks in neutral tones, no flirting, no innuendo. Until his eyes look straight into Teddy’s when he admits to being a risk-taker in life, as on the court, and Teddy feels his pulse quicken.
When Matthew is about to walk away, Teddy cannot help asking where he is staying, and is gratified when the answer is readily given. He tells himself that Matthew Ellis could be useful as a business contact, as a possible source of funding, or as an introduction to deeper pockets. It is the truth, of course.
But not the whole truth.
He mentions it oh so casually to Carrascal, and is secretly thrilled when Juan agrees that Matthew could be exploited in some way, and thus deserves an invite to the gala.
*
Why did he have to be an Englishman? Why does he, Teddy, see it as an immediate draw, as a badge of honour, albeit accidentally bestowed by the birth lottery? Does the fact that he is technically half English himself make him that desperate to belong? What does he have to prove by piquing an Englishman’s interest, by gaining his respect? Surely Matthew is a far cry from his father, and even if Teddy garners his favour, his father will not even know about it.
Still, there is something about this particular Englishman’s casually reckless manner, about his lithe, athletic body, his voice, like steel wrapped in silk, his aquiline profile and his mesmerising blue eyes that forces Teddy to admit that this time, his interest is about more than the man’s nationality. There is something about Matthew that makes him take extra care to look his best at the gala, and he is pleased to notice that he seems to have made an impression when Matthew sees him there; something that makes him act his most suave and gentlemanlike as a host, devoting a disproportionate chunk of his time to this particular guest. He knows how to be charming, and finds it an easy skill to employ, except that this time he has to tell himself to hold back, or else he will get ahead of himself, and certainly ahead of Matthew, with the flirting. Then again, Matthew answers him quip for quip, hint for hint… always open to offers, likes his freedom… holding his eyes, dropping his voice… and Teddy catches himself thinking that even if Matthew is not the answer to their cash-strapped prayers, he will find a pretext to keep the man in his orbit. He can always spin a story about his banking connections to Carrascal.
What the hell is he thinking?
His father would never tolerate this sort of laxity, not with his mantra of running a tight ship. His background check on Matthew has covered all the basics, but without having independent verification from third-party sources, Roper would deem it perfunctory at best.
But Teddy is still absurdly pleased when he is there at just the right moment when Matthew pulls out his business card to give Roxana. I’ll take care of that for you, he says casually as he puts it in his wallet, trying not to look like a cat that got the cream. Assuming Matthew plays both teams, as it were, as Teddy suspects, his victory over Roxy in the sexual sweepstakes with Matthew as the prize may turn out to be purely tactical, but he still enjoys it… so much so that he spends most of the night following the gala lost in rampant fantasies, and wakes up mid-morning bleary-eyed, to Carrascal’s pointed taunts.
When Roxy tells him the next day that Matthew can probably advance them the money they need, he has to force himself to sound thoughtful and cautious and tentatively optimistic, and not give away any hint of the excitement which, if he is honest with himself, has to do with more than just the money.
*
He hopes that his flirting at the villa will look to his enforcers like a keen interest in the contents of Matthew Ellis’s bank account rather than those of his trousers. Roxana will see it for what it is, of course; but so long as she brought Matthew back to him, and is staying at his villa as his involuntary guest anyway, there is not much he can do about her witnessing it. He hopes that Matthew also sees it for what it is, but Matthew seems more interested in getting a taste of the real Colombia than in Teddy’s person, and rather defensive at any hint of having been background-checked, so all Teddy can do is roll with it, plying him with champagne and coke and Pentothal and hoping that at some point in this charade, Matthew’s control will slip enough to show any hint of real reciprocal attraction… or lack of it, though this latter possibility is not something he wants to ponder.
Yet all he sees is more of Matthew’s self-destructive attitude – Teddy is anything but a coward, and yet Matthew’s recklessness unsettles him – until Matthew puts a stop to it by falling face first into the pool, and Teddy cannot resist a chance to touch him once he is pulled out, and is thoroughly unnerved by how good it feels. So much so that he sends Matthew away with Roxana; much as he hates giving up his coveted prize to her, he is in too great a danger of sidelining his work, his part in his father’s plan, for a chance of winning over Matthew, and knows that he cannot afford it if he is to please his father. His posting of Viktor to watch Matthew in Cartagena, notionally to keep him in check, is really Teddy’s way of driving home the painful truth that carefree Matthew will probably fuck anything that moves, and if it comes in a package as attractive as Roxana objectively is, the man will happily jump at the opportunity. Matthew is just his chance to get the money, Teddy tells himself, the right number of zeroes in a bank account… which does not stop him from being insanely jealous.
He thinks of going to one of the local clubs to pick up a man for the night to scratch the proverbial itch – he does not spend much time in Cartagena and can enjoy relative anonymity here – but the idea does not really appeal, and he is forced to admit that this time it is not so much what he wants to do but who specifically he wants to do it with.
Teddy can handle a good deal of physical danger without flinching; he has stared down the barrels of innumerable guns, and has held his own in dozens of knife fights; but Matthew as a danger is in a class of his own, far beyond damaging the body; he has taken residence in Teddy’s mind and is sidling dangerously close up to his heart. Teddy is not – yet? – in love, but he certainly is madly in lust… and the best thing Teddy can do is to stop it before it is too late. He tells Carrascal to get Matthew Ellis a ticket back to Paris, to his wife and daughter, and tells himself that he will feel free after Matthew is gone.
Trouble is, he feels fucking crushed before Matthew is gone.
*
He did not really have to join them at dinner. The papers are signed, and all they need to do is wait for Matthew’s money to come through. Juan can take care of handing him the Paris ticket, and between Juan, Viktor, Beni and Chico, there will be enough presence and enough muscle to handle Matthew on his behalf if things do not go to plan. But he cannot help wanting to be there. And seeing their apparently loved-up cooing with Roxana, he cannot help a last-ditch chance to vent his futile jealousy by getting Roxana to dance with him. Let Matthew see how readily she bends to Teddy’s will; let him see he was betting on the wrong horse, as it were, by bedding her; it will not change the outcome, and will not cancel the ticket in Matthew’s pocket, but it will make the man see how hollow and worthless his victory was.
Except that the only sure thing about Matthew is that he never does as he is expected.
He is at their side, and claiming Roxana for himself, within two minutes; and for a few seconds, Teddy is furious to see his ploy foiled… but he keeps watching them despite himself. Matthew’s dancing is not just good for a gringo; he is a hell of a dancer, period, his moves controlled but fluid and sensuous. To hell with it; this is Matthew’s last night in Latin America, heartbreak of Teddy’s own doing, and he is damned if he is letting Matthew spend it with Roxana. The woman is a walking falsehood, and Matthew… Teddy still does not really know who or what Matthew is behind the terse facts of his background check, but the worst thing is, the fact that Teddy is increasingly unlikely to ever find it out is beginning to fucking hurt.
So he indulges the irrational urge, and takes the proverbial plunge, and joins them in the dance, and it turns out that for whatever hidden motive of hers, Roxana is his best ally tonight – or his worst enemy, what with the way she purposely slithers around, pulling him and Matthew together… and he is coming undone so quickly at the other man’s touch, hot skin against his own, eyes locked, breath intermingled, the closest thing to a lovers’ embrace they can pull off in a public setting, that he is an instant away from throwing restraint to the winds and suggesting to Matthew that the two of them wait for his bank transfer to go through in Matthew’s room upstairs…
…and then the song ends, and the new rhythm is all wrong, and Matthew seems to realise that Roxana is very obviously the odd one out here and the two of them are standing too close, and the moment is gone.
And then he is forced to endure two minutes of acute humiliation when Matthew delivers his scathing monologue. We’re genetically dishonest, he declares, and continues to mock his own liaison with Roxana, but the way his eyes are trained on Teddy throughout makes it obvious to him that the mockery is directed at him; that for whatever reason Matthew has decided to erase any doubt – any hope – that their dance minutes ago was anything but a ruse; that all he is here for is a business transaction and the way their skin touched on the dancefloor meant nothing; and then he twists the knife with the suggestion that he knows much more about what Teddy is up to than he has let on up to now. Teddy wonders if Roxana was in on this, if she somehow put Matthew up to it; but it is irrelevant, he can deal with Roxana later. What matters now is that he is feeling like an idiot who let his stupid emotions get in the way of business – unlike Matthew, apparently – and come to think of it, the promised money is nowhere to be seen. And Matthew, cold-hearted snake that he is, is going to pay for both of these betrayals.
*
If he thought that trusting Matthew was a mistake, it does not even begin to compare with what an enormously painful mistake not trusting Matthew apparently is. It is not often, after all, that Teddy Dos Santos manages to scare himself.
He has put it in motion, has gone on the tugboat and told his men to bring Matthew there; he has let his fury get the better of him and pushed Matthew to the brink of death – all the while making a show of waiting for the money, though he cannot deceive himself as to the real reason for his rage… and the slimmer Matthew’s chances look, the more scared Teddy gets that he will have to follow through with killing him. For someone who has lost count of the men he has dispatched – he can no longer tell if they were a dozen or several, what with all the gunfights – this is an altogether new sensation. When the money comes through, it is as if both of them have been thrown a lifeline, for by then Teddy’s real reasons for being furious with Matthew no longer matter, outweighed as they are by the panicking realisation that he desperately wants the man to live.
Which does not make the morning after any easier to deal with.
Well, perhaps if he had followed through with his insane idea at the dance, it would have been worse still; at least he can tell himself that.
There is no way to undo what has passed between them; and yet he tries. Short of pouring out his heart to Matthew, and he still has enough common sense left to know that that would be his biggest mistake yet, he does whatever he can to make amends. The communion, the breakfast, his rash confessions that come perilously close to an apology; anything to elicit a reaction that would point to forgiveness, or to a degree thereof; and he is ridiculously relieved when Matthew seems to take an interest in the conversation, and ends up telling the man much, much more than he knows to be prudent. To hell with it; seeing those celestial eyes regard him, once again, with concern and curiosity rather than caution and coldness is a reward that makes his indiscretions worthwhile… or so he thinks.
Which does not stop him from feeling just as ridiculously embarrassed about it the day after. Hearing his father speak of far-reaching plans and grand strategies was a poignant reminder of his own pettiness. Here is a man who has it in him to rule a continent… and here is Teddy pining after another man like an obsessed teenager. So he does his best to be as impersonal and businesslike as he can when accompanying Matthew to the airport, hiding both his relief and his heartbreak at the impending parting. Pulling a gun on Matthew in the car is really just a way to put more distance between them, a caution more than a real threat – except that Matthew’s I am your friend breaks through all that in the space of two seconds. I’m not going to find that easy, he responds to Teddy’s admonition to forget him; and Teddy has a hard time telling himself that these words do not matter in practice as they will never meet again. And then Matthew’s cryptic, baffling I’ll pray for your soul, Eduardo makes sure that Teddy will not manage to forget him easily, either... as if that was ever on the cards.
*
Seen in retrospect, of course, Matthew’s – whatever his name – parting words were a declaration of war.
A war that Teddy lost in the space of half a day, to devastating effect.
On the surface he did what was necessary. Alejandro Gualteros lies dead in the remains of the warehouse, and thus, a crucial piece in his father’s plan has fallen into place. But there is no getting away from the burning humiliation clawing its way through his insides.
It was bad enough hearing Gualteros’ farewell words to him, all the more insulting because he knows them to be true; but seeing Matthew there, Matthew who has double-crossed him, outwitted him, used him, and is working to undermine him, hits him like a bullet through the heart. He cannot even bring himself to shoot at the man; he fires off his gun ineffectively, wide of his target, past caring that he is not aiming on purpose, concerned only with being seen to be shooting back rather than cowering in shock. Under that polished exterior, Matthew is a killer just like him; probably better than him, if his marksmanship is an indication; and he clearly does not let himself be ruled by emotions. Come to think of it, having just witnessed the lethal accuracy of Matthew’s aim taken at Chico, Teddy suspects that the man is sparing him on purpose, and hates him for it.
Not only has Matthew Ellis never cared for him; he has not even been honest in their business dealings. His money was good, sure, but what good was it if its sole purpose was to plant a bomb inside his father’s operation? Surely he did not trail Gualteros to the site of his execution to settle scores with Teddy for a less-than-tender farewell; but gallows humour will not help assuage the shame now. At least they did not get any more personal than the dance, though in retrospect, Teddy’s revelations the next morning were infinitely more damaging.
He does what he knows he must do for the sake of their plan; with a sense of impending doom, he calls his father and tells him what happened, and boards the chopper knowing that he is a dead man walking; his body will likely survive, but his spirit will probably never recover.
He hates Matthew Ellis.
He should hate Matthew Ellis, at any rate; but the absolute worst part is that he cannot.
In the end, he really hates himself.
As for Matthew, he can almost admire the man’s steely cunning. Whatever his real purpose, the execution was masterful. He never once let slip the mask, never showed how dangerous and effective he was until after the dance– unless it was apparent danger to himself from overconsumption of stimulants – and was content to be seen as benign and inconsequential for most of their brief acquaintance. Truth be told, he did give Teddy fair warning when Teddy was about to kill him – military intelligence, Basra and Fallujah – and what an idiot Teddy was to have disregarded the full weight of those words in the heat of the moment.
But as he sits alone at the back of the chopper on his way to La Estancia, he cannot escape a truth much more painful than the realisation of Matthew’s tactical superiority.
Teddy still misses him.
Teddy still needs him, still wants to see that sharp-featured face, hear that voice, the steel and the silk in it, he would give the world for another minute of that dance they never really finished.
The most humiliating and inescapable truth is that Teddy loves him, whatever his name, and he’ll be damned if it is within his power to stop.
*
“Were you susceptible?”
Roper’s voice cuts through him worse than a blade, leaving him open and gaping and bleeding. Yes, fuck it, he was, he is; and he would sooner die than admit it, but it is obvious that Roper knows it. He should have known that crawling back to Roper broken and weakened, he would only find contempt; but anticipating pain does not make it much easier to bear. The plan was no mistakes. It sounds like a sentence, a curse, eternal damnation. He knows there will be no forgiveness, but strangely, by the time he hears it, he is no longer sure he cares about it either way.
What really hurts, though, is the phone call.
“Put him on,” Matthew – Jonathan – says in his clipped English accent. No silky overtone in his voice now, pure steel, cold and clean. Jonathan Pine’s voice. This is the ultimate humiliation; he is not even worthy of an address, not even a taunt; he is merely a hand holding the phone that can be used to reach Roper, a pesky kid being shooed away from the adults’ table, a stupid loser meddling with this pair of winners. Teddy as a person does not even exist for this Jonathan Pine.
Except that he does.
The next call comes when he least expects it. He knows the number, but still mechanically asks who is calling. What sort of answer does he expect? Matthew Ellis? Jonathan Pine? The man who defeated you?
In retrospect, it should have been the man who is about to destroy you.
Or rather, the man who is about to save you.
The voice he hears next after this call is not Jonathan Pine’s, but his father’s… and if he thought Roper had hurt him badly enough earlier, he was the greatest idiot alive.
It would have been much easier if someone just shot him there and then to put him out of this misery, he thinks as the recording tapers out.
And there he is, as if conjured up by Teddy’s wish; except that he is unarmed.
Jonathan Pine.
Not Matthew Ellis, not the reckless, careless, unscrupulous and promiscuous creature; this one is dead serious, earnest almost; and the strangest, most incongruous thing of all is that Jonathan Pine is really kind.
His eyes are the same bright blue as Matthew’s, but unlike his father’s eyes a few hours earlier, Pine’s hold no contempt, show no gloating; he is almost pleading to be believed. A saviour, not a killer. There must be an ulterior motive, sure; he does not even attempt to hide it; but Teddy still cannot help thinking that someone of Pine’s obvious skill could just as well pull off his plan without Teddy. It would be easier and more expedient to kill him, or worse, share these same recordings with Teddy’s associates so as to completely destroy him. He does not really have any reason to be so damn caring about it, and no reason whatsoever to risk his life showing up in person and unarmed when he knows Teddy can shoot him.
No reason except to be there for Teddy, to bear the brunt of his anger and to hold him when he is breaking.
And to bring him to the one – one other – living soul who cares for him regardless of what he is.
It turns out that Teddy is not in love with Matthew Ellis, after all.
He is in love with Jonathan Pine, and will die for him if need be; and the fact that they just met about an hour ago is completely irrelevant.
*
several weeks later
He did not have to die for Jonathan Pine, after all, nor did Jonathan Pine have to die for him, though Jonathan did make a valiant attempt at getting tortured to give Teddy the greatest possible advantage in their deadly gambit.
Contrary to most rational expectations, two months on from what they were almost certain was a suicide mission, Jonathan Pine is sitting across from him on the terrace of his Medellin villa – their villa by now – studying him in the gathering dusk with those unfathomable blue eyes.
“What?” he asks when the scrutiny becomes too obvious to ignore.
Jonathan gives a tiny shake of the head instead of an answer.
“You’re staring,” Teddy prompts him again.
“Can’t help it, I like what I see.”
Teddy for his part cannot help grinning, and is happy to see it answered, but cannot think of a suitable riposte. It does not help that they both are borderline drunk by now – it started with two tumblers of single malt after dinner, one for each of them, and ended up with them finishing the bottle, though Teddy is probably the bigger culprit here – so while there is no stopping the longing glances, they are not up to much else at the moment. The silence stretches, and for a while, they are too comfortable to break it.
“What are you thinking?” Jonathan asks some time later, when it is almost dark. By then, Teddy’s thoughts have taken a familiar turn; familiar to Teddy but not to Jonathan, really, but Teddy, in his present state, forgets this detail until the words are off his tongue.
“Todavía no entiendo porque no me mataste.” I still can’t figure out why you didn’t kill me.
Jonathan makes no attempt to hide his shock, obvious even in the near-darkness; his next reaction is almost as immediate, if somewhat less expected, as he crosses the distance between them on the patio and sits down right next to Teddy on the sofa, looking straight at him.
“Dígamelo otra vez.” Say that once more. He sounds rather menacing, at odds with the concern apparent in his face at close quarters.
Teddy could try to sidestep the question, but by now there is no way out of this, not when Jonathan is cupping Teddy’s face in his hands as if Teddy were a priceless treasure; so he tries to string his jumbled thoughts into a more or less coherent litany.
“I almost killed you so many times. In Spain, at the Rosiñol, it was you I was calling, right?” Meeting no objection, he goes on. “I almost got you killed with the Pentothal in the champagne the first time you came here,” he gestures to the pool to make his point. “I almost killed you on the boat, and you almost let me do it.”
“Almost.”
“You are better than that, and better than me,” Teddy insists.
“I’m no angel either, I’ve killed too, and I’ve got people killed.” He says it in an incongruously gentle voice.
“No, I mean you are better at what you did, at warfare.” Teddy really meant it in both senses, but wants to stress this latter part. “I was the enemy to you then, it was before… all this… so why didn’t you even try to kill me? You weren’t even aiming to hit me after I’d killed Gualteros…”
“You weren’t aiming at me either,” Jonathan parries smoothly. True, if irrelevant. “And I wasn’t fighting you.”
That, oddly, sounds too dismissive for Teddy’s liking. “It was always about Roper, wasn’t it?”
“No, I knew you were his son so I was working against both of you, but you were always more than that.”
If he thought Jonathan was being too dismissive before, he is being too kind now. “I was always a criminal and a killer.”
“You were more than that, too,” Jonathan argues, very quietly by now, but no less insistently. “You were so… “ he pauses as he pulls Teddy closer, “…beautiful, and so broken, and so devoted to Roper, who did not deserve it for a second. When I heard what he said about you, part of me knew it was good news for my mission, and part of me just wanted to strangle him…” Jonathan shifts next to him so that they are facing each other again; he is still answering Teddy’s original question, by the sound of it. “Do you ever know why you are attracted to someone? It’s very easy to know why we dislike others, but impossible to really know why we love someone. It just… happened before I knew it. I couldn’t help myself. And once I knew it, I had no wish to hurt you, let alone kill you. I was going to put an end to what it was you were planning, but I wasn’t waging war against you, and even if I was, with you, it wasn’t about winning.”
“What was it about, then?” Teddy ventures.
Jonathan does not reply at once. “A… draw, I guess. Not winning, not losing, all that really mattered was just the two of us ending up together.”
Teddy takes it as his cue to touch his forehead to Jonathan’s. “Well, I’m with you on this last part.”
“Then I suppose we both got what we were asking for,” is Jonathan’s soft answer.
.