Just calm down. No histrionics. It'll only make him feel worse.
He found Ian in the kitchen, cleaning the espresso machine as if nothing had happened.
"I hope that bag doesn't mean what I think it does." Mike took a fresh can of coffee beans from the cupboard and snapped the seal, trying to sound seen-it-all and reassuring. "Because we made plans, you know."
Ian took a few moments to look up from the sink. "I think I should go away for a while. I can see the damage I'm doing."
"Ah, come
on
."
"Rob can't go back to work. You've put your adoption on hold. Now all this crap's on your doorstep. You can't leave the house without treating it like exiting the Green Zone."
"You've been rehearsing that, haven't you?"
"Mike, whatever you do, it's never going to end. It's always going to be this way. It's going to ruin your lives. Drop me off at the bus station when you collect Tom and I'll lie low somewhere."
"That's not going to solve anything." Poor kid: he was blaming himself, taking responsibility for the sins committed against him. Mike felt that protective anger kick in again. "Just keep your nerve and sit tight."
"Would you sit back while Rob bent himself out of shape protecting you?"
"That's not what's happening here, Ian."
"You've given me everything. You've given me the ability to survive on my own, too, and that's priceless."
Mike didn't want to get into the habit of pressing psychological buttons. Manipulation was what you did to strangers, and he couldn't do that to a kid who needed to be able to trust him. But he found himself grabbing for anything that would persuade Ian to stay.
"Well, unless you're planning to call Dru Lloyd and tell her you won't be here, she'll still be staking us out," he said. "And it's going to be hell on a bus the day before Thanksgiving."
"I'm sorry. I know I've hurt you."
"Hey, you're an adult. The whole point of ..." Mike balked at the word
rescuing
. That sounded like a debt. "The point is that I wanted you to have the freedom to make your own choices. Do you really
want
to leave?"
Ian was starting to look defensive, chin lowered. "Of course I don't."
"Then stay."
Mike judged that was a good time to stop. Dad had always let him make his own decisions even as a child, on the condition that he lived with the consequences and understood that he wouldn't get bailed out. It hadn't felt harsh at all. It had been a privilege, control over his own life and the adult respect of a father he adored. Mike had learned at the age of eight that if he blew his monthly allowance in one go and then decided that he didn't really want that pet rabbit after all, that Mom and Dad would simply ask him how he planned to take care of it. It had been a seminal lesson. He chose what he wanted very carefully after that. He also took good care of the rabbit.
Ian rubbed his eyes as if he'd just woken up. "Sorry. I must seem like an ungrateful asshole."
"Not at all. You've had a tough time. You think this'll be easier on us."
"Why are you so patient with me?"
Mike found it too hard to say
because you're our boy, because we love you.
It might have sounded like pressure. He diluted it. "Because you're a good person. A nice guy. Livvie and I are very fond of you. Now go put the bag away before Rob sees it, or we'll never hear the end of it."
Ian reassembled the coffee machine and disappeared. Mike heard the rasp of the leather bag as Ian lifted it off the tiles and went upstairs. The crisis had been averted.
I'll tell Livvie later, when Tom's here and everyone's distracted.
Tom was finally arriving this morning after months of on-off arrangements, and Mike didn't want to spoil the reunion for Rob. They'd swing by the hotel on the way to Odstock to check that Dru's car was where it appeared to be on the GPS log, confirm that it hadn't moved all night, and then get on with the holiday. Mike could cover this without Rob.
Persuading Rob to leave it to him wouldn't be easy, though. Mike found him found him sitting in the Mercedes in the garage, eyes glued to his phone as he watched the auto-tracking sending back data as a moving point on a map.
"Alien," Rob murmured.
"What is?"
"This. Like the movie. The bit where all you see is the monitor with one dot moving towards another dot in the air ducts, so you know the alien finds the bloke and rips his guts out." Rob looked up. "It's okay. She isn't slithering around the ventilation system."
"They claim that thing's accurate to within a few meters."
"Only one way to find out." Rob started the car. "You ready?"
Mike wondered if he should go and tell Livvie about Ian and warn her to keep an eye on him. No, Mike had to trust him. If he'd wanted to sneak out, he would have been gone before Mike got up. "Let's go."
Just after 0830, Rob turned into the Byways parking lot. Mike could see the Sonic, still in the same bay. There was also a dark blue Chrysler van in the next row.
"There you go." Rob nodded in its direction. "There might be another explanation, but I'm buggered if I can think of one."
Mike held his phone as if he was checking for a signal and took pictures of both vehicles with their plates as discreetly as he could. The Sonic was local and probably a rental, but the Chrysler had Massachusetts plates. Slapping the spare GPS unit on it would have been ideal, but there were people around and it was too risky in broad daylight. He didn't know if one of the people in the parking lot was the driver, either.
"Bugger." Rob made an annoyed puffing sound. "We could always come back tonight and tag it. Let's go."
Mike wondered what people thought when they had their car serviced and found a tracker stuck underneath. "I check under our vehicles daily. Especially after the trooper fixed Livvie's light."
"He was real, you know. I check too. Mainly for explosives."
"Damn, life's made us paranoid, hasn't it?"
"And we're still here to tell the tale."
They had forty minutes to kill at the airfield before the Gulfstream was due to land. Rob was still mesmerized by the GPS tracker, but he was drumming one heel on the ground as he sat studying the map, a sign of his impatience to see his son again. Twenty minutes later, he nudged Mike and showed him the phone. The GPS marker was now moving towards Westerham. Mike tapped the map to zoom in for a closer look. He wasn't sure how much to trust the accuracy with a moving vehicle, but the car didn't go to the lay-by as he expected. It turned off onto the scenic trail.
He texted Livvie an update. She'd keep the alarms on and the doors locked anyway. "Dru's decided to recon on foot, then."
"Take the car back and leave me here," Rob said. "One of us should be at the house all the time now. Tom and I can get a taxi."
"No, we'll be home soon enough. They can't get into the house. Let's see what they do today."
Mike thought through the permutations. Livvie hadn't left the house since Dru had shown up, so Dru didn't know she was there. Dru hadn't seen Ian, either. If she'd spotted anyone, it was just himself and Rob. They'd be able to use that to their advantage somehow.
Somehow. We track her and see what shakes out.
But Tom was finally here. The jet landed and he came down the steps with a big grin on his face, looking more like Rob than ever. He was wearing an eye-watering orange mountain jacket that flapped open to reveal an equally searing blue lining. Rob scooped him up in a ferocious hug.
When Tom extricated himself, he stepped back for a moment to take his phone and record some footage of the jet, arm outstretched in that universal stance of someone grabbing a piece of posterity. He turned around, still grinning.
"Mike, that was just the most amazing trip ever," he said. "Thanks. I'm gobsmacked. You're the best."
Mike calculated the correct level of man-hug for an honorary uncle. "Can't have the heir to the Rennie empire traveling with the sweaty peasantry, can we? So, Rob, you want me to brief Tom? Or will you?"
"Yeah, I've got something to tell you, kiddo. I'll explain on the way. Mike's driving." Rob put Tom's bags in the trunk. "Christ, what's that jacket the regulation camo for? Mars?"
They were laughing and nudging each other like kids, and just a little tearful. As Mike drove off, he caught Tom's reflection in the rear-view mirror, looking expectantly at his dad. Mike wasn't sure how much Rob was going to tell him. But there'd be no disguising the fact that the house was on alert.
"I need to brief you as well, Dad," Tom said.
Rob looked over the back of his seat. "You go first."
"Okay. I've been dying to tell you for ages. This work placement." Tom took a breath. "I applied to GCHQ. I got the placement and a sponsorship for my final year."
"Say again, kiddo?"
"GCHQ. Cheltenham. You know. That's what I was doing this summer."
Oh God
. Mike felt that awful trickling water sensation down his back. Rob said nothing.
"Are we talking about the same GCHQ I think you mean?" Mike asked. "Signals intelligence?"
"You know that look on your face, Mike? That's why I can only tell close family."
So Tom had been working at the UK's eavesdropping HQ. Mike really hadn't seen that coming at all. Nor had Rob, obviously. His jaw really did drop a little. Dru was forgotten for the moment.
"Bloody hell," Rob said at last. "Did you get extra spook points for not telling your poor old dad?"
Tom took it as a joke, but Mike wasn't too sure. "They're sponsoring my final year," Tom said. "That means I'll probably get a job when I graduate. So I can pay Mike back. Well, eventually. By the next Ice Age."
Mike tried to salvage the conversation. How could they tell him anything at all about Ian now? Tom wouldn't thank them for sharing. He'd grown up knowing how to keep his mouth shut, but it was one thing having a Marine for a father, and another being told about classified military research that had gotten out of hand.
"Hey, that was a gift, okay?" Mike said. "I'll just send your boss a note saying that it's a payment from the CIA and that you did a great job with the electrodes."
Tom laughed. Rob didn't.
"You're going to do
intelligence
?" Rob said, as if he still refused to believe it. "Can I even ask that?"
"No, not an
intelligence officer
." Tom said it slowly. "Just research. Remember I'm doing computing and linguistics. A boffin. Not a spy."
"You mean eavesdropping stuff?"
"Bit of a value judgement there, Dad. I can't say."
"Never mind, I'm bloody proud of you all the same." Rob seemed to be getting his breath back, but Mike could see he was struggling with the idea. He really didn't like anything to do with spooks. "Well done, kiddo. That means they vetted you, PV'd you, yeah? The full monty."
"That's one reason why I took so long to tell you."
"I must have come up clean as well, then."
"Yeah, you did really well to cover up all that kidnap and industrial espionage."
Rob didn't even try to laugh that time. Tom couldn't possibly have known how close he'd come to hitting a major artery.
"Seriously, congratulations, Tom." Mike nodded his approval. "We'll have someone to send our complaints to when the intel comes up as shit again, huh?"
"I'm just the IT guy. Try switching it off and on again."
Mike decided to tackle the subject of Ian himself to save Rob from more agonized squirming. "Okay, here's
our
exciting secret. You'll notice some armoured paranoia when we get back. Security lockdown. Don't lose any sleep over it. Ian has a persistent stalker. Maybe two."
"Oh."
"Nothing serious."
"And there was I thinking you were hiding someone from the Mob." Tom chuckled to himself. "That's a relief. No witness protection, then."
Rob turned in his seat. "Kiddo, you would
not
be here now if I thought there was the slightest risk to you."
"I know, Dad. Do I need to know what this stalker looks like?"
"I'll show you a picture later. Woman, blonde, about forty."
"Jesus, Ian's eighteen, isn't he? Okay, I won't knock it until I've tried it."
Rob managed a smile this time, but the look on his face was still suppressed horror.
"I've never shown you my scar, have I?" Mike said, doing his best to derail the conversation. "It's a work of art. Your dad's the Picasso of giblets."
Rob went back to checking out the road around them. "Yeah, there was some offal left over, but I didn't think Mike would need it. Like when I did that self-assembly wardrobe. Remember, Tom? When I had all those screws left? Your mum went ape-shit."
"Is she armed, this stalker?" Tom just ploughed on with his questions. The banter hadn't distracted him one bit. But he was Rob's son, cut from the same persistent and cautious cloth, and he probably knew that strenuously jokey tone all too well. "I'm including bread knives."