Work Text:
It was a Monday morning, and FBI Agent Bill Goodman found himself eager to get back in the saddle doing his job at the CIA enclave. The past weekend away from the joint CIA/FBI Task Force had been a nice little respite from the dark and dangerous intrigue of keeping all the balls in the air so that America remained safe from her numerous enemies.
Bill and his fiancé, Katie, had spent their time together doing the usual mundane things. She had caught up with laundry, and he had replaced a washer in a leaky faucet. Together they took walks in the neighborhood and did the weekly food shopping. The evenings were spent watching old flicks on Turner Classic Movies. It might have seemed a bit bland, but it was the way most couples lived their lives after being together for years.
This was the kind of life Bill thought he wanted. It had worked for his own parents who had been married for decades. So, he had always desired to travel the same route with the same partner until he was old and grey and had retired from his federal job. Or at least that was his aspiration until he had teamed up with another partner who was an adrenalin junkie.
It seemed the addiction was contagious, because the old staid and steady Bill had somehow morphed into a more intrepid version of himself. It was as if he had awakened from hibernation and was ready to venture out into the world with a greater sense of daring. Of course, he couldn’t share any of that with Katie. Spy organizations were all about secrets and dark intrigues that had to be kept from everyone, even the person you thought was your soulmate.
**********
Nikki Reynard nodded to Bill as he came into the office. The FBI agent looked around at the small circle of CIA operatives who were already deeply engrossed in their computer screens, and he was surprised that his partner, Colin Glass, seemed to be missing. It was true that the roguish spy usually ignored the clock and came and went as he pleased, but when a new week started, he always made a point of showing up for a briefing of what had transpired over the previous two days.
“Where’s Colin?” Bill questioned the Deputy Chief of Station.
His boss looked up and shrugged. “He’s a bit under the weather, so he’s taking the day to rest up.”
“Maybe I should call him or stop by to make sure he’s alright,” Bill answered as he eyed the woman carefully. Something was suddenly pinging his bullshit meter, and it went into overdrive when she casually nixed that idea.
“Colin doesn’t need a mother hen hovering over him, Bill. He’s a big boy and he can take care of himself. I think you can be more useful reviewing the intel that came in last night from our overseas station in Belgrade.”
Bill fought the urge to argue, but then he reverted to being a rule follower and taking orders from a superior. However, it didn’t make a bit of worry stop niggling in his gut. If nothing else had happened during his first year in this job, he had learned that visceral instincts were sometimes the only thing that saved your life, as was a quick-thinking partner who always had your back.
Then another thought was front and center in his mind. Maybe he was being warned off because Colin was now flying solo on a new op. The CIA may have given lip service to being collaborative with the FBI, but Bill suspected there were always irons in the fire that they kept on the down low. Working with a spy agency had made Bill jaded because nothing was ever what it seemed. So, at the end of the workday after he had done his due diligence analyzing the foreign intel, he retrieved his gun and phone from the lockbox that was external to the busy hive of clandestine spies, and he sent Colin a short text. You doing okay, partner? Bill never got a response.
The next morning, Colin was still a no-show, and this time Bill was more adamant about knowing the reason why. “Okay, Nikki, what’s really going on? I thought we had agreed on transparency, but I think there is something happening that you’re not telling me. Either I’m part of the team or I’m not. So, set me straight.”
Nikki knew she couldn’t continue to keep the FBI agent in the dark, but this was a delicate issue that had to be handled with kid gloves. She would be betraying a personal confidence, but if that had to be done, then Bill Goodman was probably the best candidate to maintain a sense of discretion. With a crook of her finger, she bade Bill follow her into her small office and she closed the door to give them some privacy.
“Bill, I’m going to tell you something that is rather sensitive when it comes to your partner. I hope that I can rely on you to understand how intrusive this may seem at first glance, but it goes deeper because it does have ramifications for our agency.”
“I’m listening,” Bill gave a noncommittal answer, but he found himself becoming intrigued.
Nikki took a deep breath and spoke in a quiet voice. “Colin broke a cardinal rule when it pertains to what we do. He had a partner that he fell in love with, and that made him vulnerable. I immediately pulled him out of the field when she seemed to have been killed in an explosion in the Philippines because he was devastated and I worried about what he might do to seek revenge. We had lost one valuable operative, and I didn’t want to lose another.”
“Yeah, he told me about Toni Napier,” Bill admitted to becoming privy to that tragedy, but then his sharp mind glommed onto Nikki’s phrasing.
“You said that Colin’s girlfriend seemed to have been killed. Has that assumption changed?”
“Yes, Bill, it has. Colin has recently encountered her right here in New York, and now it’s obvious her time in our employ was all a ruse because she was a double agent working for our enemies, and probably was the whole time she and Colin were together. Of course, Colin is angry because the woman he loved with all his heart betrayed him in the worst possible way. Now, he’s like a loose cannon and I’m worried about what he might do. I gave him some space yesterday, but I can’t have him staying out of touch, maybe working off book with his own agenda.”
“I’m sure with all your fancy toys that it shouldn’t be a problem to find him,” Bill said almost facetiously.
“Yes, that’s very true, and our ‘toys’ tell us that he hasn’t left his apartment since Friday. It’s been over three days now, so I’m suggesting that you take yourself there to do a wellness check. I think he would tolerate you stopping by rather than me.”
“And then I’m assuming that you’ll want a full report of my findings on your desk before the end of the day,” Bill said sarcastically. It rubbed Bill the wrong way that Nikki Reynard was all business without a hint of compassion.
The woman gave a small, almost rueful smile. “That would be helpful, Bill. You may think I’m being callous, but in our line of work personal entanglements are always a liability because they can be used as leverage. Colin ignored a safeguard that was in place for a reason, and I do feel sorry for him. But the job must always come first. See what he’s up to and try to screw his head on straight so he gets it. If that’s impossible, then other avenues will need to be explored.”
Suddenly, Bill didn’t want to hear any of them. “Sure, I’ll check in later,” he merely said as he left the CIA Deputy’s office.
Nonetheless, Bill couldn’t help recalling an instance when Colin said that spies didn’t live to be old. They died of either a bullet or a terminal case of paranoia. Bill didn’t want to go there, but once it was out there, it couldn’t be unsaid.
**********
Colin’s swanky apartment was in a high-rise complex situated in an upscale neighborhood. Bill had only been there once after he had waylaid his partner and pointed a gun at him because he suspected he was the mole in the CIA. It took a lot of Colin’s quiet reassurance and an explanation before Bill became a believer that his assigned counterpart really was on his own crusade to identify the serpent among them. That concept was strengthened when Bill found himself gazing at a wall in Colin’s apartment embellished with possible clues and suspects. It looked like a jigsaw puzzle, but one thing was definitely in place. Toni Napier’s photo appeared on that wall like an enshrined departed specter, and now Bill was here a second time burdened with a mission centered around that very same woman.
After a ride up in the elevator, Bill stopped at a door and knocked, but it seemed as if nobody was home. Even though Nikki had assured him that Colin was inside, Bill had his doubts. Someone as savvy as the Brit operative would know that his handler was keeping tabs on him, so he could easily have eluded her scrutiny by leaving his phone behind, buying a burner, and using a disguise to stymy facial recognition. He could be in the wind on a personal crusade to seek his own type of closure, consequences be damned.
Then the FBI agent’s mind went in a different direction. What if Colin was inside and had done something stupid? Knowing the man as he did, Bill didn’t think that was likely, but it was imperative that he get the lay of the land and put that fear to rest once and for all.
Since becoming paired with a spy, Bill had added a new skill to his repertoire. Colin had taught him how to pick locks and had even gifted him with his very own set of tools to get the job done. A careful intruder looked left and then right to assure himself that he wasn’t being observed breaking and entering. He quickly set to work and felt the tumblers move as the tension wrench allowed him access to the hardware’s pins, and within a matter of seconds, he was turning the knob and inching the door open. Bill wondered if his partner had any booby traps set up in his lair like trip wires or something much more dangerous. But the entranceway and the adjacent rooms were shrouded in quiet shadows.
Bill closed the door softly, drew the Glock from his holster and began tiptoeing down the interior hall. His first stop was the kitchen, and it was there that he found Colin’s phone on the granite island. It was turned off, but when he tried powering it up, he saw that the battery was dead. Okay, that answered one mystery, but what else was he going to find beyond a room that seemed neat and undisturbed? Was he going to find Colin dead on the floor, a victim of a traitorous assassin’s bullet?
But a worried FBI agent found that wasn’t the case when he entered the living room and observed his partner sprawled, loose-limbed, on the sectional couch with a crystal tumbler half-full of an amber liquid in his hand. The usually tidy scruff on Colin’s face had grown out like a wannabe fledgling beard, and his dark hair was messy with unruly strands falling over his forehead. His eyes were bloodshot and the smell of liquor seemed to surround him like a vaporous cloud. Bill let out a relieved breath, holstered his weapon, and sat down to confront the usually suave, unflappable man.
“It’s barely 10 o’clock in the morning, Buddy. Don’t you think it’s a little early to start getting hammered?”
Colin squinted his eyes and waved a careless hand. “Mornings are just extensions of the nights that preceded them, Bill. So, technically, what you see is a continuation of a really long party. And since you weren’t invited, that makes you a party crasher.”
“I’m you partner, Buddy, so you should have invited me,” Bill cocked an eyebrow.
Colin laughed. “Yeah, we’re partners. We’re fuckin’ Butch and Sundance.”
“I’m thinking we’re more like Riggs and Murtaugh,” Bill answered with a lopsided grin.
“Whatever,” Colin said breezily. “But do you know what links us together, my friend? I’ll give you a hint. It’s that little ‘and’ word. To be specific, ‘and’ is actually a conjunction that indicates the joining of two things of equal importance. So, maybe you’re right and it was gauche of me not to have asked you to come to my big blowout gala.”
“This doesn’t exactly look like a celebration, Colin. It looks more like a wake.”
“No, Mate, you’ve got that wrong. Wakes are bon voyage parties for people who have actually died.”
“That’s right, Buddy, they are. But in this case, apparently Toni didn’t die,” Bil said softly.
Colin suddenly turned surly. “Nikki sent you here, didn’t she. She wanted you to check on her impulsive problem child to see what I’m doing. Well, you can tell her I’m doing just dandy because it’s my job to be impervious and indestructible.”
Bill was shaking his head. “No, Colin, first and foremost, you’re a human being. You’re not some robot or a sociopath without feelings, and it’s okay to admit that you’re not above experiencing emotional pain. Someone you loved and cared about deceived you, someone whom you had grieved and mourned. I can’t begin to imagine how that would affect me.”
Colin didn’t seem to be listening because his inebriated brain had taken him elsewhere. “Did you know that Toni bugged this place? I thought that was a cheeky thing to do and I was furious. I told her that the next time we crossed paths, it would be the last time because I was going to kill her.”
Bill stared hard at his friend and asked the million-dollar question. “If you encountered Toni Napier again, Colin, could you really bring yourself to end her life?”
The CIA operative ignored the question as he took another swig of alcohol and was off on a tangent. “Just so you know, Mate, I’ve decided to embark on a new chapter in my life. It’s going to be out with the old Colin and in with the new and improved me. That means I’m swearing off women because I’ve learned the hard way that they can be very deceptive creatures.”
“I doubt that’s going to last for very long,” Bill quipped.
“No, I’m being serious,” Colin said with a hand over his heart. “But don’t fret that I might be lacking for companionship because I already have a spare partner at my disposal. So, I guess it’s only polite to ask if you’d be willing to entertain a different kind of relationship with me. Obviously, my tragic flaw is that I’m not such a good judge of character when it comes to the female sex, but I don’t think you’d ever betray me. We could be two people linked together by a conjunction, both on the job as well as under the sheets.”
Bill blew out a surprised snort. “Buddy, you’re out of your head drunk or you’d never suggest something like that. Hopefully, to save us a lot of embarrassment, you probably won’t even remember propositioning me after you sleep it off and sober up.”
Colin downed the last of what was probably expensive top shelf liquor from the tumbler in his hand and placed it on the coffee table. Then he closed his eyes and allowed his body to sink back onto the couch cushions.
“Yeah, you’re probably right, Bill. I am tired, and I need to sleep. You can let yourself out and report back to basecamp that I’m still living and breathing, and that I’ll be back on the job tomorrow.”
Bill felt hamstrung because Colin, even in his compromised state, was intent on avoiding the real issue by trying to clumsily sidetrack the one person who was attempting to help him. He was effectively shutting a friend down.
Bill couldn’t help envisioning a different Colin — not the usually mild-mannered person with the charming British accent who never carried a gun. Instead, he visualized a brutal, almost crazed caricature of a man trying to “tenderize” a corpse with a makeshift weapon. Bill suspected the over-the-top rage was the culmination of Colin’s frustration, grief, and deep-seated guilt over Toni Napier’s death, or what he thought was her death. Now that Colin knew that Toni wasn’t dead and had played him for a fool, would his violent alter ego reappear once again like the Incredible Hulk? Maybe now wasn’t the best time to go there. Maybe there would never be a good time for a discussion like that.
“Okay, Buddy, I’ll go. But before I leave, I’m plugging your phone into a charger. You can’t stay off the grid forever, no matter how tempting that may be.”
“Uh huh,” Colin mumbled as he closed his eyes and bid farewell to someone he was tied to by a conjunction, and maybe the only person who would never intentionally hurt him.