Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(5)

“Yeah?”

“I was fine with it, I really was. During the day. But now, it’s like we’re trying to take away her final bit of comfort. If it was up to me, I’d walk. Honest I would.”

“Except you won’t.”

“I might.”

“You get the job done. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Long as I’ve known you. You’re a company man.”

I chewed my lip.

“Meaning?”

“Like I say! You get the job done.”

But it hadn’t sounded that way.

“Company man,” she’d said. But I’d heard “stooge.”

I told her, “I’m a Field Op. I don’t do this stuff. She winds me up, and sometimes it’s deliberate, and sometimes maybe not, and it was easier just disliking her. Except that now I’ve seen this other side, this tiny, scared old woman—”

“Yeah, that’s sad. You’re right.”

“And I ache, and I want a fucking bath. And they’ve only got a shower.” I was trying to lighten the mood. “What’s wrong with this country, anyway, you don’t have baths?”

“I’ll raise the issue, next time I’m at the White House.” Then, very quietly, she said, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“I wish you were here. I had some stuff to sort out but now I just want you here. Or maybe I’ll come join you there? Is that a good idea?”

But it wasn’t.

“I’ll get this done,” I said. “Till then, I’m better on my own . . .”



I’d walked out on her once. Looking back, it made no sense, and yet I’d done it. Then we’d met again, in circumstances that would always leave me wondering what had actually brought us back together; what had sparked off the emotion and revived our romance.

We were an odd mix. Even I saw that.

Angel was six foot two. She was a runner and a tennis player. She sang opera. I thought her voice was great. She disagreed. “Fit for choirs and amateurs,” she said. Back when I’d first known her, she’d had a trick of bursting into song in public places—bars, buses, department stores—just to see me cringe and get embarrassed. “It makes you look so English,” she’d explained.

Angel was smart. She had a doctoral thesis I kept promising to read but never had. In conversation, she could break an argument in pieces and pick out the flaws as easily as she could hear a bum note in a musical performance. She was beautiful, talented, and clever.

She was way out of my league.

She just hadn’t realized yet.

One day, she would. But for now, she told me that she loved me, and told me to relax, and not to let things get to me; and that we’d see each other very soon.

Then she left me to my paintings, and my carpets, and my view.





Chapter 6

Perils of the Restaurant Trade




“You think I’m racist, don’t you, Christopher?”

“I think . . . you have some views I don’t agree with.”

She sniffed. “You’re young,” she said, which I was not. “You’ll learn.”

The great green shell of Lady Liberty loomed over us, shining in the sun. We took the waterside path. I wheeled Melody Duchess slowly round the island. A gaggle of Korean girls parted before us, reforming in our wake to take yet more group selfies, while a tiny child threw bread to fish that no one else could see. The skylines of Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey made their slow parade around us, as if we were the single fixed point at the center of a small, revolving universe.

I recalled the briefing for the job: be nice, get her to trust you. And, You’re English. She’ll like that.

“I have had many colored friends over the years,” she said. “Are you surprised to hear that, Christopher? You shouldn’t be. I have nothing against the coloreds, not as a race, nor, in most cases, as individuals. But what I’m saying is this: don’t think that their interests are ours. Do you understand?”

“Their interests?” I said, and then, a moment later, “Ours?”

“Now, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying. You have your faults, but you’re not stupid, I’m sure of that.”

I was as close to blowing the whole job as it was possible to be.

I didn’t say a word. But she knew what I was thinking.

“Now you’re all steamed up, aren’t you? Because you know I’m right. Everybody knows. The colored people—they know. They’ve always known. You can’t say so. Not in this town. We all have to pretend we’re one happy family. But it’s not like that. Never was and never will be.”

“That’s not experience.”

“In ten years—five years—you won’t recognize this country. The Mexicans, the coloreds, the Asians. You stick around, tell me I’m wrong.”

I remembered a taxi driver I’d been having a few drinks with, back in England. He’d told me, if his fare talked politics, then he’d agree with them. Whatever they said. “I been Labour, Tory, UKIP, RCP, you name it. I been all o’them—for twenty minutes.” His point was simple. If they liked you, then you got a tip. Mission accomplished.