Then she called Val and asked her to bring Tamsin down to London, to be with her mother.
By the time she reported for work on the thirteenth of March, the shakeout had already occurred, and she entered the Pit to find Lankford and Poole already there, greeting her with applause. The Minder One Desk had been cleared of the previous occupant’s personal belongings, and a bouquet of flowers sat at its center, waiting for her. Chace had brought her go-bag, and as she felt her cheeks redden with the applause, turned and put it up on the shelf, beside Poole’s and Lankford’s.
“Like your bouquet?” Lankford asked.
“His idea,” Poole said. “He’s a romantic.”
Chace moved to the desk, took a closer look, then burst out laughing. They weren’t flowers at all, but rather an artfully arranged display of condoms in red, purple, yellow, green, and blue, most of them out of their wrappers, folded and tied to appear as blossoms. A card was taped to the vase, reading, “For God’s sake, be careful!”
“We got you the extra-big bouquet, boss,” Lankford told her. “Forty-eight, jumbo-size.”
“She’ll go through them in a week,” Poole said.
“I’m not like that anymore,” Chace said, mildly. “I’m a mother, I have to set an example.”
“Half a week, then,” Poole said.
The internal circuit on her desk rang, the same infinitely annoying bleat she remembered, and all of them, Chace, Lankford, Poole, stared at the phone.
“Minder One,” Chace said when she answered, and she felt herself smiling, and saw Lankford and Poole quietly laughing at her as a result.
“Come and see me,” Crocker said, and hung up.
So she’d gone to Crocker’s office, and he’d given her a seat, and had redrawn the map of the Firm for her. There was no Frances Barclay, there was Alison Gordon-Palmer. Simon Rayburn was no longer D-Int, but instead was awaiting confirmation of promotion to Deputy Chief. Paul Crocker was D-Ops, Tara Chace was Minder One, and Kate Cooke still believed she ran SIS.
“I’m sorry,” Chace told him when he was finished.
“For? You did your job, you did it damn well, and you didn’t even know what the bloody job really was.”
“About Rayburn. I know you wanted the promotion.”
Crocker took out a cigarette, then offered her the pack. Chace hesitated, then accepted.
“I can live with it,” he told her. “Besides, you’re not ready to take over for me yet, and if I move on, I want you to fill this desk.”
“I’m flattered,” Chace said. “I think.”
“It’s not because I like you,” Crocker said. “It’s because you can’t be any worse at it than Fincher would have been.”
“And where is Mr. Fincher now?”
“Out at the School, taking a refresher before his reassignment.”
“He’s being reassigned?”
Crocker pulled a face. “Our new lady mistress on the floor above feels he is a damn fine officer. For that reason, he’ll soon be off to parts unknown to head up the station there. As long as he doesn’t end up as the new D-Int, I’ll be content.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“No.” Crocker shoved the stack of folders on his desk toward her. “This is homework. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, Minder One.”
Chace laughed, taking the stack and getting to her feet. “Then I’ll start reading. You know where to find me.”
“Yes,” Crocker agreed. “I do.”
So it was that, six months after she’d returned from Tashkent, Tara Chace waited in D-Ops’ outer office, two blue internal distribution folders in her hand, joking with Kate Cooke and waiting for Crocker to see her for the morning brief.
“It’s a new perfume,” Chace said. “There’s a boy.”
“There is not a boy,” Kate responded, indignant, offering her a cup of coffee.
Chace took the cup, sipped at it, grinning. “It’s Lankford, isn’t it? You’ve got a thing for my Minder Three.”
Color crept into Kate’s cheeks, and she settled at her desk, putting her attention on the files she’d been sorting before Chace had entered. It seemed to Chace that she was trying very hard to avoid eye contact.
“I do not.”
“Well, it’s not Poole, and it’s not me, and I can’t much figure who else comes through this office that you’d try to capture with a new scent. So I’m thinking Lankford.”
“It’s not Chris.”
“Oooh, Chris, is it?” Chace moved toward the desk, reaching for the internal phone. “I’ll call down to the Pit, shall I, see what he thinks of that?”
Kate swatted at Chace’s hand. “Don’t you dare.”
Chace stopped, looked closer at Kate, who held the stare for a fraction before again turning her attention back to her work. The younger woman’s expression had tightened, the joke taken too far, and Chace realized three things in quick succession. First, Kate wasn’t trying to catch Lankford; she’d already caught him. Second, Kate Cooke had been in this office long enough to know the directorate’s opinion of staff/Minder fraternization. Relationships weren’t forbidden between most SIS staff, but between SIS staff and members of Special Section was a different story. One thing to tandem-couple with the new lad on the Argentine Desk, another thing entirely to tandem with an agent who might be asked to kidnap a general from his home in Tehran, a job he or she might not come back from, ever.
Third, Chace realized that she was living in her own glass house, that there was nothing she could say to dissuade either Lankford or Kate. Even if her affair with Wallace didn’t strictly fall into the same category—Wallace had left the Section at the time, to teach at the Field School—she’d done the same herself with Minder Three Edward Kittering when she’d been Minder Two. In the rankings of sin, Chace was the winner, and both of them knew it.
“Just keep it quiet,” Chace told Kate. “You don’t want D-Ops getting wind of it.”
Kate’s expression was a mixture of gratitude and hope.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t approve, but I won’t obstruct.”
“You did it.”
“Yes, I did.” Chace finished her coffee, moved around to the pot for a refill. “I was astonishingly stupid.”
Kate started to respond, but the door from the inner office opened, and Simon Rayburn emerged, bearing a folder of his own, this one red. He smiled at Chace.
“Tara.”
“Good morning, sir.”
“All well?”
“For the moment at least, yes, sir.”
“Very good.” Rayburn made for the exit, back onto the hall. “You can go on in, I think.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chace said, and went through to the inner office, to find Crocker seated behind his desk, as ever he seemed to be, scribbling his signature at the bottom of the memorandum he was reviewing. Chace stood, waiting while he shuffled the memo back into the stack, and when he looked up, she held out the folders she was carrying.
“Report to the FCO on the viability of recruitment in Guangdong Province as prepared per your request with input from the China Desk, with notes. And request for operational oversight regarding travel and incidental expenses to operational theater, prepared for submission to the Finance Committee. I almost handed it to the Deputy Chief on his way out, but thought it’d be better coming from you.”