I, Spy? (13 page)

He shrugged. “Nine it is. I’ll see you then.”

I skipped upstairs, feeling much better already, and changed into my navy suit. I had my phone and credit card in my pocket, hoping I’d be able to jimmy open the door if I needed to.

I didn’t need to. Wright answered the door, wearing a hotel robe and smoking a cigar. Oh, please.

“Room service?” I said. I hefted the towels I’d brought from my room. “I’ve come to make your room ready for bed.”

He stood back to let me in. “English?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you doing here in Rome, then?”

Hoping you’ll go away.

“Studying, sir. Ancient Roman politics.”

This stumped him, as I’d desperately hoped it would. “Right,” he said, taking my towels. “I’ll be in the bath.”

Was it my imagination, or did he wink at me?

Bleurgh.

I clattered around for a while, until I was sure he was done listening to me, then I got out my phone and tried to remember how to take a picture with it. I messed around in Wright’s briefcase, taking pictures of a lot of things—the camera was slow but the pictures were hella-good—but I didn’t see anything I thought was very interesting.

However, I did see a magnificently placed wedding ring on top of a serviette with three girls’ numbers scrawled on it.

“Room service?” Wright called from the bathroom, and I froze with my finger on the shutter to snap the ring. “Room service? Come and scrub my back.”

I bolted.

Back in my own room, I found I had about ten minutes to get ready for dinner. I dropped the suit on the floor, wriggled into my marvellous dress (maybe slightly too small but at that price, who gave a damn) and shoes, sprayed on Impulse body spray in the absence of perfume, and ran my fingers through my hair.

There. Ready.

Sort of.

Harvey was waiting, looking handsome and indefinably American, and he smiled at me as I approached.

“You look brand new,” he said. “You ready to go?”

We took a taxi across the river and wandered around looking for a trattoria in the Trastavere district. I had no idea a modern city could be so beautiful. Every road ended in a little piazza with the sort of topiary in huge terracotta pots that my mother would pay a fortune for from the garden centre. Soft, happy light and chatter and music flowed across the streets from every building. The people were beautiful, olive-skinned and charming.

One of the things I found so frustrating earlier in the day when I was running out of time to go shopping—I mean, complete my mission, ahem—was the way you can’t follow a road to the end, then turn left or right onto the next road, as it appears on the maps. Oh no. Every road ends, as I said, in a charming little geranium-filled piazza with a dozen pretty little alleys leading off all over the place. Whichever one you take is guaranteed to take you completely the wrong way, and by the time you find a street with a street sign and locate it on your (by now very crumpled) map, you’re halfway across the city in the wrong direction.

I minded very much when I was alone, but now I figured I was getting the hang of it. Of course, it helped that I wasn’t getting quite so hassled by a lot of Romans who appeared to have never seen a blonde before. Now I was getting the same attention, but walking arm in arm with a handsome man seemed to subdue it somewhat.

“You’re a hit,” Harvey said as a wolf-whistle echoed down the street after us.

“It’s the hair,” I said. “They have a thing about blondes.”

“You ever been to Asia?”

I shook my head, no.

“Man, they go nuts over a white skin there. If you’re a redhead they practically worship you. Blondes too.”

“My mother went to Sweden once with her friend who’s Indian,” I said. “They couldn’t get over her. People kept touching her hair. My mother’s blonde like me and she was kinda pissed off people kept ignoring her.”

“People notice her a lot?”

I thought about it. My mother had never been like other people’s mothers. She didn’t look old. She didn’t have scary-hair-in-the-air like my friends’ mothers all had from when we were at primary school. She borrowed my clothes. She was attractive and made the most of herself in a growing-old-gracefully sort of way. She moved with the times, which I guess was the secret to avoiding old age.

“Yeah, people notice her a lot,” I said.

“Must run in the family.”

He was very sweet and charming, and he spoke perfect Italian, and he didn’t act appalled when I told him I didn’t eat meat. People have been known to stare at me like I’m an alien or something. I just smile and reassure them it’s not contagious.

He asked me about being a stewardess and I told him we were now called cabin crew, which if you ask me is just de-glamorising it a bit more. I made up a load of stuff about the training and hours and things I had no idea about and asked him about the mobile phone industry.

“
Ti piace un piccolo caffè
?” the charming man who owned the trattoria asked us, and Harvey looked over at me and said, “Anything but cappuccino. It’s just not Roman.”

I thrive on an abnormal amount of coffee. I smiled sweetly and asked for
una espresso doppio
, which I learnt years ago in school and thought it sounded impressive.

It was impressive. A pure shot of caffeine so strong it made me dizzy, and I had to hold onto Harvey’s arm as we walked back to the hotel.

Well, maybe it was also the wine that made me hold onto him. Maria said I should have a glass a day; well here I was bravely taking a week’s worth.

And maybe it was also the fact that Harvey was very fit and cute and charming that made me hold onto him. It was certainly that which made me go back to his room and let him kiss me like the Prince Charming he was.

Although, seeing as he’s a classless American, maybe that should be Citizen Charming. It doesn’t quite have the same ring.

“Mmm,” I said when he stopped kissing me.
“
Ciao, bella
.”

“Isn’t
bella
a girl?”

“Well,
bello
, then. Although that sounds rude.”

He grinned and took off his jacket. He had lovely broad shoulders and shiny hair. He looked like exactly what I needed to cheer myself up.

He kissed me some more, and it was very pleasant kissing. Not the fireworks I got from Luke, nothing as scary as that. I wanted to put my arms around Harvey and let him protect me. I didn’t want to shoot him, which I suppose made him a better contender than Luke.

Something vibrated in his pocket, and my eyes widened. “That could be fun.”

He withdrew a sleek mobile and raised his eyebrows at me. “Damn,” he said, reading the display. “I have to take this. Sorry.” He disappeared into the bathroom.

Oh, great. So a call on a phone was more important than making out with me. I sat down on the bed, rubbing my arms which suddenly felt quite cold, and pulled off my shoes. Harvey was quite a bit taller than me, which is an interesting feat, but he wasn’t lanky. He wasn’t all lean muscle like Luke. He had brawn. A big hunk of American beefcake. Mmm.

And look at me! Making out with two men in as many days. Ella would be pleased. She said my talents were wasted as it was. I once asked her what she meant by my talents, and she blushed and said, “Remember when I came to visit you at uni that time? Well, the walls in those rooms are very thin.”

See, I’m blushing now just thinking about it.

Harvey talked for ages. I spread myself out on the bed, feeling wanton, then quickly sat up, feeling stupid. I couldn’t even go and freshen up, because Harvey was in the bathroom.

After a while I started to get really bored. What was so important that he’d rather talk about it than get naked with me? Unless I was that boring. God, maybe I was boring! Certainly Luke didn’t seem to have missed me that much.

Miserably, I gathered up my shoes and pashmina and little evening bag and left the room. I had sort of lost the mood.

I got back to my room and stared at the perfectly made-up bed. My feet ached from my new shoes and all the walking I’d been doing, my head was fuzzy from the wine and I was feeling very unloved. I was so drunk I even half thought about seeing how powerful the vibrate function on my mobile was. I could ring one from the other.

I picked up my little Siemens phone. There were no messages. Nobody loved me. I picked up the Nokia. There were three texts and half a dozen voice mails, all from Luke, all demanding to know why I wasn’t answering my fucking phone.

“Jesus Christ,” he said when I called him, “why the hell didn’t you answer?”

“I forgot my phone. Phones.”

“Where were you? I thought—”

“I was at dinner,” I cut him off. “With a very charming man. I’ve just come from his room.”

Luke was silent for a few seconds. “Was it Wright?”

No, it wasn’t right at all. “No. I went in there earlier. Dressed as a concierge. I took some pictures but there was nothing interesting in his briefcase.”

“No, well, there probably wouldn’t be. I think he’s more of a puppet. This is bigger than just Wright.” He was silent again. “So who did you go to dinner with?”

Hah! He was jealous! I did a little dance, sitting there on the bed.

“Just someone I met on the flight,” I said.

“And what were you doing in his room?”

Oh, God, this is fantastic. “Investigating.”

“Investigating what?”

“Whether he’s a better kisser than you. And you know what, he is.”

“Sophie, that’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is, it’s funny because it’s true.” I stuck my tongue out at the phone.

“Are you drunk?”

“I have to be drunk to want to kiss someone else? Can’t I pursue casual sex if I’m sober?”

Christ, I was drunk.

“Look,” Luke said tightly, “just don’t do anything stupid, all right? And set your damn alarm for tomorrow. I’ve got you booked on the 0625 flight out of Ciampino. Make sure you have enough cash for the taxi. Do you still have your passport on you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That makes it a lot easier. It’s hard enough trying to explain special operations to someone who speaks your own language. I’ll see you when the plane gets in, should be around seven.”

And with that he clicked off, sounding pissed off.

Score!

The Nokia woke me up at five am. I pulled on my new civvies—the white shirt over the Gucci dress, which might have looked stylish on someone less hungover—found some ancient shades in the bottomless pit of my Ace bag to cover up my shadowed, bloodshot eyes and staggered down to reception.

“I need a taxi,” I whispered to the perfect woman behind the desk. “To Ciampino airport.”

She nodded, made a call, and five minutes later there was a car waiting for me.

I sat with my head back against the seat as we swung around Rome in the early morning and tried not to heave. I get carsick even when I’m dead sober. Seriously, it was like hitching a lift with Michael Schumacher.

Or Ayrton Senna.

I felt like month-old milk by the time we arrived at the airport. I checked in—having remembered to put my stun gun and things in my hold luggage—and stumbled through to the tiny airside bar.

At Stansted it’s like a little shopping mall. There are clothes shops and shoe shops and TV shops and bars and restaurants and coffee stands and all sorts. You could live there. Some people practically do.

Ciampino airport’s airside facilities consisted of a bar, which was closed, and a tiny tabaccheria. I bought a large bottle of water and some Soft Fruits and put my head on the table until it was time to board.

I slept my way through the flight, the last few days’ sleeplessness having caught up with me, not to mention last night’s wine, and dreamed of Harvey and Luke both turning me down. Bastards.

The plane was pretty much empty when I was woken by a (thankfully unfamiliar) stewardess. I grabbed my bag, trying to hide the Ace logo, and tripped off into the very cold, windy British spring.

We were off-jetbridge (stupid cheapo airline), so I had to walk across the freezing tarmac, keeping my head down so no one recognised me, and up the steps into the terminal.

Luke was waiting at the top, looking pissed off.

“Jesus,” I said, “when you said you’d see me there I thought I’d at least get to Baggage on my own.”

“You look like hell,” Luke said, and swiped his pass to get us back into the terminal.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Where are we going?”

“Back to the office. Quicker this way.”

“I need to pick up my bag.”

He stopped and closed his eyes and looked like he was counting. “What bag?”

“I had to buy some stuff! I couldn’t walk around Rome in my uniform.”

He ran his eyes over me. “So I see.” He sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”

We went back through the normal route to the transit and baggage reclaim. I showed my passport, like a good traveller, and Luke flashed his pass. It was quite normal for staff to return from the gate through customs. It was great, like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, although it’s perfectly legal.

Sometimes the whole airport thing just totally overwhelms me. I mean, there are all these rules about where people can and cannot go, and all these hidden tunnels and doors that are only used by staff, and if you open the wrong one and let a passenger in then it’s unbelievably illegal. But if you have the right pass you can, in legal terms, wander in and out of the UK all day long.

And I swear, BAA must have acres of footage of me wandering around being totally lost in the bowels of the system.

We waited in silence for my bag, then walked out to the car park, equally quiet. Luke stopped by his Vectra, and I shook my head.

“Might as well get mine out of here as well,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”

I walked down to Ted, incredibly relieved to see him again, and sat there for a few moments, feeling surreal.

So. I’d just done another handful of things that were not totally legal and, apparently, got away with them. I’d been somewhere exotic and beautiful. I’d kissed a total stranger in an unknown place. I’d taken photographs of documents in a suspect’s room.

Was I like a great spy, or what?

Alexa wasn’t there when I walked into the office, but Luke was standing talking to One.

“Ah,” said my boss. “How was your trip?”

I looked between them cautiously. “Okay,” I said. “Unplanned and exhausting, but okay.”

“You found the shops,” Luke said. “It can’t have been that bad.”

I glared at him. One laughed.

“It was admirable of you to pursue your quarry so far,” he said. “We got your pictures. For reference, next time send them to my e-mail address…” he started looking around Alexa’s desk, “I’ll write it down for you…”

“I’ll just put it in my phone directory?” I offered gently, and he nodded.

“Ah yes. Much more sensible. It’s [email protected].”

I blinked at him.

“1995,” he explained, “when Goldeneye came out. That’s my favourite.”

I blinked again, nodded and inputted the address. Was there anything about this place I was ever going to understand?

I could see Luke was nearly smiling, and I avoided his gaze. “Were they useful?” I asked. “The pictures?”

“Inasmuch as they told us he wasn’t the big man in this,” One said. “David Wright is something of a pawn, I fear.”

“A pawn in what?” I asked. “What is going on here? No one,” I glared at Luke, “ever tells me anything.”

“That’s because there’s not always a lot to tell,” One said, going into his office and motioning for me to follow. “Most of this job is pure instinct, Sophie. I’ve been watching you—” How? How had he been watching me? “—and I can see you work on instinct, too.”

Well, of course. Got to trust your instincts. Feminine intuition and all that.

“She certainly doesn’t work on logic,” murmured Luke from behind me, and I scowled. I hadn’t even realised he’d come in. So much for instinct.

One was seated at his desk. “What we have so far is this,” he said, looking up at me, and I tried to look alert and instinctive. “You’ve noticed that a lot of Ace planes have been having technical problems recently? That there have been delays, that passenger numbers haven’t been quite what they usually are?”