Fic: Stars in Their Courses (Espionage)
So yesterday I spent time that should have been spent on other things writing fic for the Espionage episode I'd just watched. It was about a spy who is accidentally forced to kidnap the ten year old daughter of the British ambassador, and then there were shenanigans and tweeness after she turned out to be smarter than he was. Naturally, instead of just shooting her halfway through when she went on about stars, he took a bullet for her. Anyway, in short, I am a terrible person as I enjoyed it more than I like to admit. I wouldn't have written fic, though, but for the last line where the British Ambassador and the guy from British Intelligence seem to think that the girl is going to help the spy escape from the hospital while stopping off there on her way back to school and they were absolutely fine with that.
Which obviously made me go and write cracky fic about that and what on earth she would grow up to be, except then it went less cracky, I made it fit a hurt/comfort bingo square, and I think I may also have committed some tweeness while I was at it. I have no excuse, sorry.
(Also, hi, any new people. This is probably about par for the course with me these days, I fear. Feel free to run away now.)
Title: Stars in Their Courses
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 2966
Characters/Pairings: Kit Morley, Leo Brandt, Arnold Morley (Kit & Leo, Kit & Arnold)
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: Getting kidnapped by a spy should be frightening, but it seems to be the best thing that ever happened to Kit Morley.
For
hc_bingo square “forced to rely on enemy/rival” (only in a bit of a non-obvious way, perhaps). From the Espionage episode "Light of a Friendly Star", in which a spy kidnaps the daughter of the British Ambassador, who thinks that it's much more fun than going back to school. (Also, she can speak at least three languages and knows how to disable his car.)
***
Kit Morley had learned at a young age that when people said what a clever child! it wasn’t a compliment. By the time she was ten she was well aware that by ‘clever’ they merely meant ‘precocious and cheeky’ and it was usually a signal for her to go away. It was probably one of the reasons she was rarely allowed to meet her father’s guests at the Embassy when she was there on her holidays, even though she thought she was plenty old enough and it wasn’t fair. She, of all people, ought to have interesting stories to take back to school, but she never did.
Which was part of the reason she’d ended up kidnapping a spy, because she couldn’t just sit around all evening reading her father’s history books when other people were out doing things, could she? (Of course, really the spy had kidnapped her, but it had mostly been her fault and she didn’t like to blame Leo for it. Leo, in her eyes, was a lot like nearly all of her favourite cinema heroes, but mostly Richard Burton.)
“One hour,” said her father, before she left for the hospital to see Leo again. He’d be there at the airport himself this time and would personally see her onto the plane to England. And, he’d said, she absolutely mustn’t go helping Mr Brandt to escape.
That was silly, too, because Leo didn’t really need any help escaping from the hospital. Or at least, not very much.
*
“Kit,” said her father at the airport. “It seems that Mr. Brandt has escaped from the hospital, and coincidentally it must have been around the same time that you visited him.”
Kit played with the straw she’d asked for and sucked up some milk noisily enough to earn a frown from him. “Really, Father? Because he was there when I left. He seemed to be getting much better and I told him that you were going to do everything you could for him.”
“Kit.”
She looked up at him. “Well, I might have had a bit of an accident on the way out. I fell over something and scraped my knee and it did hurt rather. I might have made a silly fuss about it.”
“That’s not like you, darling,” said her father.
She twirled the straw around in the milk and then used it to blow bubbles into the liquid. “But isn’t that what you wanted? It isn’t very fair, Father, to scold me when I know it was your Mr. Wilson who sent that other car.” She lost her certainty and her face fell. “At least - it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the other people? Leo’s not in trouble, is he?”
“I, er, believe it may have been Mr. Wilson. Your Mr. Brandt seems to have worked for British Intelligence before - and, anyway, this isn’t something we can discuss here. Now, you haven’t lost your suitcase this time, and you won’t wander off at the other end? Running away isn’t a joke, darling.”
Kit glared at him, because obviously it wasn’t a joke when people had guns, and one of them had shot poor Leo. “Don’t be silly, Father. I’m going straight back to school. Can you imagine what Sybil will look like when I tell her about Leo? She’ll be so sick she might actually turn green. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Good, good,” said her father worriedly. “And, er, do keep up with your studies.”
Kit nodded. “Oh, I will, Father! I hadn’t realised how useful languages were until this week. I’ll have to work hard and improve my German now.”
“You know you won’t be seeing Leo again,” said Arnold Morley, the worried creases on his face deepening further. “Or any other spies, for that matter.”
Kit shrugged, because she was absolutely certain that she would see Leo again. She didn’t know exactly when or how it would be, but he was a spy, and spies were very good at sending secret messages. There would be one someday. Most grown-ups thought she was either funny or a nuisance. There was only one who’d said she was clever and actually meant it, and for whom she was the only star in an otherwise dark night. She didn’t exactly have the words for it, but it was a responsibility, and one she’d already accepted, because, after all, an awful lot of what had happened was her fault. She had to make sure that it all came out all right, if she could.
“And I will be there for Christmas,” her father promised again. He really did mean it; it just didn’t always work out, she knew. “All the Christmases I have out of all those millions of years ahead of us, like you said.”
*
On her twelfth birthday, her headmistress summoned her to the office and told her, while sounding distinctly dubious about it, “Kit, your uncle is here - come to take you out for your birthday treat.” She paused, and added, “I didn’t think your Aunt Margaret was married?”
“He’s married to my other aunt,” said Kit, crossing her fingers. “We never used to talk about her at all, but it’s all right now. You can ring my father and ask him if you like.” It wasn’t exactly a real fib, because they never did talk about her other aunt, even if that was only because she didn’t have one.
“He - well, he sounded German.”
Kit stared at her. “But that’s because he is, of course.”
“I should not be here, of course,” said Leo, leading her into the little tea room. “But I heard from Mr Wilson that your father must miss your birthday again, and I was nearby, I thought perhaps - as a thank you - this once -”
She beamed at him widely, and sat down at the table, taking in every detail of him so that it would stay clear in her memory. He seemed well now, and she hadn’t made up how handsome he was, which she was afraid she might have done, because she had been so much younger and sillier two years ago.
“This will not happen again,” said Leo, “but there, now you’ve seen me as well as ever, now we can forget this, yes?”
“Not forget,” said Kit, hurt by the suggestion. “Please don’t spoil my birthday with a nasty thought like that, Leo. Tell me something nice instead. Tell me about your sister. You said I reminded you of her. What was she like?”
Leo shrugged. “She was just a little girl, Kit. What is there to tell?”
“Her name,” said Kit. “And what she liked. That’s very insulting of you, Leo, you know. And then - then I can think about her, too, can’t I?”
He ordered lemonade and coffee, and then obliged. “Well, she was fairer than you - she had hair that curled. It would never sit right in plaits -”
“And the grown-ups would try to brush knots out of it too hard, I expect,” said Kit, with sympathy, because her hair wasn’t entirely straight, either. “Poor thing.”
“She was called Lotte, and she liked all kinds of things. She collected paper dolls - you know? She cut them out of books and drew her own on any paper she could find and made them outfits. She must have had a hundred, more maybe.” Then he stirred his coffee and fell silent again.
Kit drank her lemonade and thought about bombs falling and burnt pieces of paper people flying in the wind and realised that it hadn’t been fair to ask. She blinked back tears, then quickly changed the subject and told him that about how she’d boasted to her friends that she’d met a real spy, but none of them believed her, even though they should when you thought that her father was the British Ambassador in West Germany, and she obviously had a better chance of meeting one than they did.
“Just as well,” said Leo. “Finish that lemonade. I don’t think your headmistress was very happy about me - and kidnapping is not something they let you get away with twice.”
Kit nodded. “No, and she is very nice really, so I wouldn’t want to upset her. Leo, can you tell me where you live? So that I can write to you, I mean.”
“No point,” said Leo. “You shouldn’t be writing to me.”
Kit polished off the last of the lemonade, and said, “Well, it will be awfully hard to send you a Christmas card if I don’t know. I asked Mr Wilson as nicely as I could last year, but I don’t think he would do it again. He said it really wasn’t his job and he didn’t know what my father would say.”
“Then here,” said Leo, and scribbled down an address on a paper napkin. “That is not where I live, but if you address a card to Mr Schmidt there, I should receive it. But only a card, mind, and don’t show it to anyone.”
Kit nodded. “I promise. I’m much better at keeping secrets now I’m so much older, honestly. And my German’s getting pretty decent, too.”
“Good,” said Leo. He didn’t say much more, but once they’d reached the school again, he gave her a whole shilling, and kissed her on the forehead, because, he said, he had heard uncles did that kind of thing. Kit felt sure that in a different world, where his sister had grown up and he maybe had been an uncle, he would have been a very good one, but she was rather selfishly glad things were this way round today, because it wasn’t every girl who had her very own dashing secret agent to take her out for lemonade on her birthday - especially on a birthday that had promised to be rather a miserable one because of father being so very busy again.
*
“You do know,” said her father - still sounding worried - when she was fifteen and kept finding ways to very definitely be included in receptions at the Embassy (and sometimes caused trouble by challenging ministers on their current policy), “the best way to judge a man’s character is not by how much he looks like Peter O’Toole.”
Kit frowned again. “Richard Burton, Father. You always get that wrong.”
“Well, you take my point.”
She nodded. “I still think one can tell a lot from a person’s eyes, though. And there’s no need to make it sound as if I keep running away with people, because I know that’s what you meant and it isn’t fair.”
“I worry,” said her father. “Rather a lot.”
“I promise I won’t ever run away with anyone again,” said Kit. “Certainly not like that, Father. You see, when it was Leo, he didn’t want to take me. If somebody wants to take me away from you, then that doesn’t say very much about their morals, does it? So it wouldn’t ever happen again unless it was like that and nobody could help it.”
Arnold Morley sighed. “Kit, I’m sure you meant that to sound reassuring, but it isn’t.”
“Poor Father,” said Kit, and hugged him hard.
*
Once Kit had finished her studies at university, she found a use for her particular talents, working as an interpreter for Amnesty International. Her Father was dismayed, but not surprised, and she knew that he hoped that she would get tired of the travelling and settle down at home now that he finally had time for her. It was sad, she thought, that now she was the one who was too far away to see him. She always kept her promises about Christmas and holidays, though.
Leo wasn’t working for British Intelligence any more, or at least, he said he wasn’t. He said that she was right, and it turned out that he could do something else if he tried. It still seemed to be about buying and selling information, though, but at least she didn’t think it involved breaking into embassies to steal things any more.
She, of course, had a tendency to get a bit too involved sometimes. If she’d translated a terrible story from one human being to another, she did like to try and make things better if she could. Sometimes it all went rather wrong, because other human beings could still be cynical and cruel to each other.
What was funny was that, if he wasn’t a spy any more, it was strange how often Leo managed to turn up at some of those times.
This one was the worst, and her interest in the unfair treatment of the Everard family after the disappearance of Mr Everard had led her to terrible trouble, because it turned out it was British Intelligence who had been responsible for that disappearance, and some other horribly shady people weren’t at all happy about it. One of them had a gun.
“Miss Morley,” said the man with the gun. “We’d like you to come with us for a little ride.”
She wished he hadn’t said that. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t, because, you see -”
“Excuse me,” said a familiar, lightly-accented voice as a newcomer walked into the office. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I’m the chauffeur - I understand Miss Morley has an appointment to keep.”
The other man had told her he wanted to keep things quiet, and Kit was very pleased to see that that seemed to be true. At least, he hid his gun before Leo had had chance to speak, and now he gestured with exaggerated politeness for her to leave.
Leo offered her his arm, which she took, and they left.
“Where’s your car?” she asked. “We’d better hurry before one of them changes their mind. I would hate for you to get shot again.”
Leo turned his head. “I was thinking of taking theirs.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “But I couldn’t know you would be here. I’m afraid it’s - not exactly working at the moment.”
Leo shook his head at her. “You cannot spend your life ruining everybody’s cars, Miss Morley.”
“I don’t! This is only the second time. Perhaps we had better run? The main street isn’t far away.”
Once they were safely back at the hotel, Leo told her curtly that she should be much more careful in future, and that it was lucky that he had come looking for her at the right moment. Even in her more optimistic world, one could not rely on such things, and she was too clever to make such foolish mistakes.
“You know, Leo, you sound awfully like my father these days,” said Kit. “I didn’t think spies grew so old and stuffy.”
Leo shrugged. “Most of them don’t get to grow old, that’s why. Your father’s a sensible man. You should listen to him.”
“He doesn’t think I should see you, even now.”
“Like I said, Kit, your father is a sensible man. Except -”
She turned sharply. “Except what?”
“Well, I do not think he minds as much as he should,” said Leo. “Every now and then he wires me, when you are out of his reach and he thinks you sound as if you have got - a little carried away.”
Kit leant back against the ugly green and brown hotel wallpaper. “That’s very unfair of you both.”
“Probably,” said Leo. He shrugged. “You don’t believe the world is fair, do you?”
“Well, no,” said Kit. “Not fair, I know. And it was just as well, I suppose - this time. Anyway, this business about holding Mr. Everard for questioning - I shall have to talk to Mr. Wilson about it. I’m sure he’d know the right person to sort it out.”
“And if not, you will?”
Kit thought about it. “I don’t know what I could do, but I suppose I would have to try.”
“See?” he said. “Not careful. You’re growing up fast now. You should have more sense. That organisation of yours, they’ll fire you anyway if you don’t behave.”
Kit sat down on the window seat. “Do you remember when you said to me that you didn’t think you had a nationality any more?”
“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I suppose it’s something I would have said.”
“Do you still feel like that?”
Leo turned. “Suppose in a way I do. We’re all as bad as each other. Or maybe you’re right, and we’re all as good as each other, eh?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I think. Like you, but the other way round. Or more mixed up.”
He sat down next to her. “And that’s why you’re here?”
“Something like that. I tried to explain that to Father and he only looked worried and said I could always check my passport if I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, that is true, too, isn’t it? For me, it was not so easy. I had so many different papers to choose from, though only one name. Most spies are not even that lucky.”
Kit sighed, and thought again about difficult things she’d heard and seen and again about enemies and bombs and spies, and how all of these meant that she and Leo should certainly not be friends. “I will try and be more careful, I promise.” She’d said that to her father too, and she did mean it; it just wasn’t always possible to keep promises.
“Yes,” said Leo. Seeing her serious face, he added, “You cannot fix all the wrongs in the world, not on your own. Only the odd foolish spy who comes your way, maybe.”
Kit smiled. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” she said, and took his hand briefly enough that he couldn’t object, but she squeezed it tight before she let go again.
***
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
Which obviously made me go and write cracky fic about that and what on earth she would grow up to be, except then it went less cracky, I made it fit a hurt/comfort bingo square, and I think I may also have committed some tweeness while I was at it. I have no excuse, sorry.
(Also, hi, any new people. This is probably about par for the course with me these days, I fear. Feel free to run away now.)
Title: Stars in Their Courses
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 2966
Characters/Pairings: Kit Morley, Leo Brandt, Arnold Morley (Kit & Leo, Kit & Arnold)
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: Getting kidnapped by a spy should be frightening, but it seems to be the best thing that ever happened to Kit Morley.
For
hc_bingo square “forced to rely on enemy/rival” (only in a bit of a non-obvious way, perhaps). From the Espionage episode "Light of a Friendly Star", in which a spy kidnaps the daughter of the British Ambassador, who thinks that it's much more fun than going back to school. (Also, she can speak at least three languages and knows how to disable his car.)
***
Kit Morley had learned at a young age that when people said what a clever child! it wasn’t a compliment. By the time she was ten she was well aware that by ‘clever’ they merely meant ‘precocious and cheeky’ and it was usually a signal for her to go away. It was probably one of the reasons she was rarely allowed to meet her father’s guests at the Embassy when she was there on her holidays, even though she thought she was plenty old enough and it wasn’t fair. She, of all people, ought to have interesting stories to take back to school, but she never did.
Which was part of the reason she’d ended up kidnapping a spy, because she couldn’t just sit around all evening reading her father’s history books when other people were out doing things, could she? (Of course, really the spy had kidnapped her, but it had mostly been her fault and she didn’t like to blame Leo for it. Leo, in her eyes, was a lot like nearly all of her favourite cinema heroes, but mostly Richard Burton.)
“One hour,” said her father, before she left for the hospital to see Leo again. He’d be there at the airport himself this time and would personally see her onto the plane to England. And, he’d said, she absolutely mustn’t go helping Mr Brandt to escape.
That was silly, too, because Leo didn’t really need any help escaping from the hospital. Or at least, not very much.
*
“Kit,” said her father at the airport. “It seems that Mr. Brandt has escaped from the hospital, and coincidentally it must have been around the same time that you visited him.”
Kit played with the straw she’d asked for and sucked up some milk noisily enough to earn a frown from him. “Really, Father? Because he was there when I left. He seemed to be getting much better and I told him that you were going to do everything you could for him.”
“Kit.”
She looked up at him. “Well, I might have had a bit of an accident on the way out. I fell over something and scraped my knee and it did hurt rather. I might have made a silly fuss about it.”
“That’s not like you, darling,” said her father.
She twirled the straw around in the milk and then used it to blow bubbles into the liquid. “But isn’t that what you wanted? It isn’t very fair, Father, to scold me when I know it was your Mr. Wilson who sent that other car.” She lost her certainty and her face fell. “At least - it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the other people? Leo’s not in trouble, is he?”
“I, er, believe it may have been Mr. Wilson. Your Mr. Brandt seems to have worked for British Intelligence before - and, anyway, this isn’t something we can discuss here. Now, you haven’t lost your suitcase this time, and you won’t wander off at the other end? Running away isn’t a joke, darling.”
Kit glared at him, because obviously it wasn’t a joke when people had guns, and one of them had shot poor Leo. “Don’t be silly, Father. I’m going straight back to school. Can you imagine what Sybil will look like when I tell her about Leo? She’ll be so sick she might actually turn green. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Good, good,” said her father worriedly. “And, er, do keep up with your studies.”
Kit nodded. “Oh, I will, Father! I hadn’t realised how useful languages were until this week. I’ll have to work hard and improve my German now.”
“You know you won’t be seeing Leo again,” said Arnold Morley, the worried creases on his face deepening further. “Or any other spies, for that matter.”
Kit shrugged, because she was absolutely certain that she would see Leo again. She didn’t know exactly when or how it would be, but he was a spy, and spies were very good at sending secret messages. There would be one someday. Most grown-ups thought she was either funny or a nuisance. There was only one who’d said she was clever and actually meant it, and for whom she was the only star in an otherwise dark night. She didn’t exactly have the words for it, but it was a responsibility, and one she’d already accepted, because, after all, an awful lot of what had happened was her fault. She had to make sure that it all came out all right, if she could.
“And I will be there for Christmas,” her father promised again. He really did mean it; it just didn’t always work out, she knew. “All the Christmases I have out of all those millions of years ahead of us, like you said.”
*
On her twelfth birthday, her headmistress summoned her to the office and told her, while sounding distinctly dubious about it, “Kit, your uncle is here - come to take you out for your birthday treat.” She paused, and added, “I didn’t think your Aunt Margaret was married?”
“He’s married to my other aunt,” said Kit, crossing her fingers. “We never used to talk about her at all, but it’s all right now. You can ring my father and ask him if you like.” It wasn’t exactly a real fib, because they never did talk about her other aunt, even if that was only because she didn’t have one.
“He - well, he sounded German.”
Kit stared at her. “But that’s because he is, of course.”
“I should not be here, of course,” said Leo, leading her into the little tea room. “But I heard from Mr Wilson that your father must miss your birthday again, and I was nearby, I thought perhaps - as a thank you - this once -”
She beamed at him widely, and sat down at the table, taking in every detail of him so that it would stay clear in her memory. He seemed well now, and she hadn’t made up how handsome he was, which she was afraid she might have done, because she had been so much younger and sillier two years ago.
“This will not happen again,” said Leo, “but there, now you’ve seen me as well as ever, now we can forget this, yes?”
“Not forget,” said Kit, hurt by the suggestion. “Please don’t spoil my birthday with a nasty thought like that, Leo. Tell me something nice instead. Tell me about your sister. You said I reminded you of her. What was she like?”
Leo shrugged. “She was just a little girl, Kit. What is there to tell?”
“Her name,” said Kit. “And what she liked. That’s very insulting of you, Leo, you know. And then - then I can think about her, too, can’t I?”
He ordered lemonade and coffee, and then obliged. “Well, she was fairer than you - she had hair that curled. It would never sit right in plaits -”
“And the grown-ups would try to brush knots out of it too hard, I expect,” said Kit, with sympathy, because her hair wasn’t entirely straight, either. “Poor thing.”
“She was called Lotte, and she liked all kinds of things. She collected paper dolls - you know? She cut them out of books and drew her own on any paper she could find and made them outfits. She must have had a hundred, more maybe.” Then he stirred his coffee and fell silent again.
Kit drank her lemonade and thought about bombs falling and burnt pieces of paper people flying in the wind and realised that it hadn’t been fair to ask. She blinked back tears, then quickly changed the subject and told him that about how she’d boasted to her friends that she’d met a real spy, but none of them believed her, even though they should when you thought that her father was the British Ambassador in West Germany, and she obviously had a better chance of meeting one than they did.
“Just as well,” said Leo. “Finish that lemonade. I don’t think your headmistress was very happy about me - and kidnapping is not something they let you get away with twice.”
Kit nodded. “No, and she is very nice really, so I wouldn’t want to upset her. Leo, can you tell me where you live? So that I can write to you, I mean.”
“No point,” said Leo. “You shouldn’t be writing to me.”
Kit polished off the last of the lemonade, and said, “Well, it will be awfully hard to send you a Christmas card if I don’t know. I asked Mr Wilson as nicely as I could last year, but I don’t think he would do it again. He said it really wasn’t his job and he didn’t know what my father would say.”
“Then here,” said Leo, and scribbled down an address on a paper napkin. “That is not where I live, but if you address a card to Mr Schmidt there, I should receive it. But only a card, mind, and don’t show it to anyone.”
Kit nodded. “I promise. I’m much better at keeping secrets now I’m so much older, honestly. And my German’s getting pretty decent, too.”
“Good,” said Leo. He didn’t say much more, but once they’d reached the school again, he gave her a whole shilling, and kissed her on the forehead, because, he said, he had heard uncles did that kind of thing. Kit felt sure that in a different world, where his sister had grown up and he maybe had been an uncle, he would have been a very good one, but she was rather selfishly glad things were this way round today, because it wasn’t every girl who had her very own dashing secret agent to take her out for lemonade on her birthday - especially on a birthday that had promised to be rather a miserable one because of father being so very busy again.
*
“You do know,” said her father - still sounding worried - when she was fifteen and kept finding ways to very definitely be included in receptions at the Embassy (and sometimes caused trouble by challenging ministers on their current policy), “the best way to judge a man’s character is not by how much he looks like Peter O’Toole.”
Kit frowned again. “Richard Burton, Father. You always get that wrong.”
“Well, you take my point.”
She nodded. “I still think one can tell a lot from a person’s eyes, though. And there’s no need to make it sound as if I keep running away with people, because I know that’s what you meant and it isn’t fair.”
“I worry,” said her father. “Rather a lot.”
“I promise I won’t ever run away with anyone again,” said Kit. “Certainly not like that, Father. You see, when it was Leo, he didn’t want to take me. If somebody wants to take me away from you, then that doesn’t say very much about their morals, does it? So it wouldn’t ever happen again unless it was like that and nobody could help it.”
Arnold Morley sighed. “Kit, I’m sure you meant that to sound reassuring, but it isn’t.”
“Poor Father,” said Kit, and hugged him hard.
*
Once Kit had finished her studies at university, she found a use for her particular talents, working as an interpreter for Amnesty International. Her Father was dismayed, but not surprised, and she knew that he hoped that she would get tired of the travelling and settle down at home now that he finally had time for her. It was sad, she thought, that now she was the one who was too far away to see him. She always kept her promises about Christmas and holidays, though.
Leo wasn’t working for British Intelligence any more, or at least, he said he wasn’t. He said that she was right, and it turned out that he could do something else if he tried. It still seemed to be about buying and selling information, though, but at least she didn’t think it involved breaking into embassies to steal things any more.
She, of course, had a tendency to get a bit too involved sometimes. If she’d translated a terrible story from one human being to another, she did like to try and make things better if she could. Sometimes it all went rather wrong, because other human beings could still be cynical and cruel to each other.
What was funny was that, if he wasn’t a spy any more, it was strange how often Leo managed to turn up at some of those times.
This one was the worst, and her interest in the unfair treatment of the Everard family after the disappearance of Mr Everard had led her to terrible trouble, because it turned out it was British Intelligence who had been responsible for that disappearance, and some other horribly shady people weren’t at all happy about it. One of them had a gun.
“Miss Morley,” said the man with the gun. “We’d like you to come with us for a little ride.”
She wished he hadn’t said that. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t, because, you see -”
“Excuse me,” said a familiar, lightly-accented voice as a newcomer walked into the office. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I’m the chauffeur - I understand Miss Morley has an appointment to keep.”
The other man had told her he wanted to keep things quiet, and Kit was very pleased to see that that seemed to be true. At least, he hid his gun before Leo had had chance to speak, and now he gestured with exaggerated politeness for her to leave.
Leo offered her his arm, which she took, and they left.
“Where’s your car?” she asked. “We’d better hurry before one of them changes their mind. I would hate for you to get shot again.”
Leo turned his head. “I was thinking of taking theirs.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “But I couldn’t know you would be here. I’m afraid it’s - not exactly working at the moment.”
Leo shook his head at her. “You cannot spend your life ruining everybody’s cars, Miss Morley.”
“I don’t! This is only the second time. Perhaps we had better run? The main street isn’t far away.”
Once they were safely back at the hotel, Leo told her curtly that she should be much more careful in future, and that it was lucky that he had come looking for her at the right moment. Even in her more optimistic world, one could not rely on such things, and she was too clever to make such foolish mistakes.
“You know, Leo, you sound awfully like my father these days,” said Kit. “I didn’t think spies grew so old and stuffy.”
Leo shrugged. “Most of them don’t get to grow old, that’s why. Your father’s a sensible man. You should listen to him.”
“He doesn’t think I should see you, even now.”
“Like I said, Kit, your father is a sensible man. Except -”
She turned sharply. “Except what?”
“Well, I do not think he minds as much as he should,” said Leo. “Every now and then he wires me, when you are out of his reach and he thinks you sound as if you have got - a little carried away.”
Kit leant back against the ugly green and brown hotel wallpaper. “That’s very unfair of you both.”
“Probably,” said Leo. He shrugged. “You don’t believe the world is fair, do you?”
“Well, no,” said Kit. “Not fair, I know. And it was just as well, I suppose - this time. Anyway, this business about holding Mr. Everard for questioning - I shall have to talk to Mr. Wilson about it. I’m sure he’d know the right person to sort it out.”
“And if not, you will?”
Kit thought about it. “I don’t know what I could do, but I suppose I would have to try.”
“See?” he said. “Not careful. You’re growing up fast now. You should have more sense. That organisation of yours, they’ll fire you anyway if you don’t behave.”
Kit sat down on the window seat. “Do you remember when you said to me that you didn’t think you had a nationality any more?”
“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I suppose it’s something I would have said.”
“Do you still feel like that?”
Leo turned. “Suppose in a way I do. We’re all as bad as each other. Or maybe you’re right, and we’re all as good as each other, eh?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I think. Like you, but the other way round. Or more mixed up.”
He sat down next to her. “And that’s why you’re here?”
“Something like that. I tried to explain that to Father and he only looked worried and said I could always check my passport if I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, that is true, too, isn’t it? For me, it was not so easy. I had so many different papers to choose from, though only one name. Most spies are not even that lucky.”
Kit sighed, and thought again about difficult things she’d heard and seen and again about enemies and bombs and spies, and how all of these meant that she and Leo should certainly not be friends. “I will try and be more careful, I promise.” She’d said that to her father too, and she did mean it; it just wasn’t always possible to keep promises.
“Yes,” said Leo. Seeing her serious face, he added, “You cannot fix all the wrongs in the world, not on your own. Only the odd foolish spy who comes your way, maybe.”
Kit smiled. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” she said, and took his hand briefly enough that he couldn’t object, but she squeezed it tight before she let go again.
***
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