Bashir didn’t stir on the hospital pillow. He didn’t want Johanna to know he was awake. She was sleeping in an overstuffed chair by the window. The wear of the last few days showed in gray stamps on her face. She had been treated for hypothermia after she brought Felix Leiter in to the Dagger Complex, and now drifted between Leiter’s room, Bashir’s, and Ruqsana’s. Leiter was recovering. Ruqsana was not, the coma consuming seconds, minutes, days. Her mother was told that she’d experienced an unknown allergic reaction. Bashir knew he ought to call Mrs. Choudhury, but every time he picked up the heavy phone by the bed, he lost his nerve and surrendered it to the cradle. He knew he’d only do all the wrong things: ask Mrs. Choudhury for sympathy when he ought to give it; ask her—who’d known him since he was a boy, when she was running the nursery at the Barton Hill community center—how he’d got here. How he’d gone so wrong as to take the coincidence of friendship and let it darken Ruqsana’s skies so terribly.
Bashir’s parents met over iftar at Barton Hill. Bashir’s father was Sudanese, his mother Pakistani. Bashir’s mother had arranged the Islamic Cultural Fayre in Bristol every year. He remembered cringing by her side after September 11th under a banner that read: don’t panic i’m islamic. Remembered the football tournaments she organized, swapping nations among his teammates like trading Pokémon cards: Somali kids, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Kosovan, Indonesian, English. His mother wrote constant applications for council funding, requesting volunteer linesmen, a flip chart for a scoreboard, even public sector presence. His mates would ask if his mum was round the bend, inviting not just the police to the Fayre, but the army, fire brigade, and Crown Prosecution Service, who all touted their wares from stalls decorated in red, white, and blue. They wanted Muslim probation officers, Muslim firefighters, Muslim friends who would keep ears and eyes open. (That last suggested only between the lines.) His father, tall and skinny as a goalpost—something Bashir had inherited—watched all this from the sidelines, hovering near his Bristol Blue taxi, wanting to run away from the stiff smiles of the police and their like, but pinned there by his wife’s inexhaustible efforts. And amidst it all, Bashir: desperate to stay inside, to play chess, and get away from the good intentions of his mother and the reluctant faith of his father. But he never had. So here he was. A spy who brought the only friend he looked forward to hanging out with at the Fayre into danger, and left her there, not even for his ideals, simply for his philosophy. One life. Many lives.
He knew what Mrs. Choudhury would tell him. What were you thinking, Aazar Siddig Bashir? Your mother taught you that to save one life is to save all of humanity, and instead of honoring her memory you sacrifice my daughter to your cold calculations.
And for what? They’d lost Dr. Zofia Nowak. They’d lost 004 to Paradise, disappeared from every satellite image and shipping report. They’d lost Paradise, or perhaps to him. They’d lost to Rattenfänger.
“That doesn’t look like a nice place to be,” said Harwood. She was awake, the blanket folded neatly on the back of the chair.
“Where?” said Bashir.
“Inside your head. Ruqsana has a very good chance of recovery, Sid.”
He cleared his throat. Studied the morning shadows on the floor. “I never should have involved her in any of this. I should have listened to myself.”
“I didn’t know you had doubts.”
Sid laid a hand over the bruise on his chest. “At the beginning of all this. When I was mounting the rescue op in Syria to recover you, I was doing it because M thought that you’d have likely turned—it had been so many days. Or that you were a double already. He thought we could use you. I could use you. It wasn’t a rescue mission.”
She linked her hands between her knees. Her expression gave away nothing.
“I wanted to want to save you because I love you. I wanted to want to save you because whoever saves one life saves all of humanity. That’s my mother’s philosophy, my parents’ faith. I wanted it to be the whole reason, my whole commitment. But it wasn’t. It was a fraction of a calculation. M told me to get close to you again, reignite our relationship, and watch for betrayal. I did it, even though I knew it was unethical.” A bitter laugh. “And I didn’t even do a good job of it.”
Harwood crossed to the bed and sat by his feet, correcting the fall of the blanket. “We were both playing a long game. You know that. You lie to me. I lie to you. Maybe we should’ve got married after all.”
That made him smile. “So what’s the truth?”
“The truth.” She looked off, beyond the wall of the room, beyond the US Army base, into the past perhaps, or the future, somewhere that truth could be easily described. “The truth is I love you, Sid. Always did, always will. The truth is I had a job to do, and so did you. Always did, always will.”
“Except we failed.”
“I’ve given everything for this mission, and I’m not prepared to admit failure. Moneypenny is running down who in MI6 interrogated Mora, and in the meantime Tanner is in a precautionary sweat box—apparently he’d been making mystery visits to an unknown contact, and keeping certain things back about Paradise’s circle. We’re closer than ever to finding the mole. Aisha and Ibrahim are trying to shut down Paradise’s satellites to reveal his ship. And M is working on convincing the government to launch an ASAT against Paradise’s satellites if Q can’t shut them down. 004 will be doing everything he can to bring Paradise into the light. Ground teams have swept Baikonur for the location of Paradise’s own quantum computer to see if we can turn the satellites off at the source. If we find that, we can shut down his satellites from his own control station. Everybody’s doing their jobs, Sid.”
“Except us.”
“You tell me, then, with that astounding mind of yours. What’s our job?”
“Save Dr. Nowak from Rattenfänger. It doesn’t matter if we save Paradise or stop Paradise—whatever’s the flavor of the day. If Rattenfänger gains her knowledge—gains her—all of this will have been in vain.”
The door bounced open, knocking against a wheelchair. Felix Leiter maneuvered himself across the rubber floor. He winked at Harwood.
“You shouldn’t be up yet,” said Harwood.
“I’m good as new, doc. Here’s a souvenir for you.” A shell casing glinted in his palm. “Sniper got sloppy once. Might be all we need. Seven-point-six-two-millimeter round. I’ll send it to Moneypenny with a bow, see what your lab can figure.”
“Any idea on the identity of the shooter?” said Harwood. “A sniper that good belongs to a fairly elite club. You’ve probably met before.”
“You flatter me. I got one theory, but it’s just a hunch. James ever tell you about Trigger?”
Harwood nodded. The sniper posing as a cellist Bond had let escape in a shooting match in Berlin after spending three days constructing a fantasy around her beautiful pale blond profile. Harwood had been as unimpressed as M was back in the day. But she’d quieted down when Bond reminded her she was new at this game—wait until the murder really hits you, and you’d do anything to have Tanner sack you from the Double O Section so you can settle down and make a snug nest of papers as an ordinary staffer. Then scaring the living daylights out of your opposite number and maybe taking her left hand instead of killing her won’t seem so foolish.
Harwood had reminded James of that snug nest of papers when she told him it was over between them. She asked if he truly believed he’d make it there, if he truly wanted to make it there. James had asked her the same in return. “We’re the same model,” he’d said.
She had disagreed then. She wondered now.
Harwood cleared her throat. “I thought James injured Trigger enough to put her out of the game?”
Leiter tossed the shell case, plucking it from the air. “You don’t see me hanging up my gun. Trigger had an impressive profile as a shooter, and her signature still crops up every now and again. One theory is the Russians chucked her for failing against Bond and she went freelance. Her work has crossed my desk a couple of times.”
“You see her signature here?” asked Harwood.
“Something in the movement . . .”
“The sniper shot Elena. That wasn’t necessary. Does that fit Trigger’s MO?”
“Hard to say. She’s ruthless.”
“So much for James’s long-range, one-sided romance.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Leiter. “James likes ’em ruthless.” Then his raptor’s gaze settled on Bashir. “Sorry, kid. Hear you’re the brains of the outfit. The million-dollar question. Where does Rattenfänger disappear people? Johanna, Mora never gave you a sense of where they might be stashing prisoners? You must’ve talked about James.”
“I tried,” said Harwood. “No give.”
“Wherever he’s got Dr. Nowak, it’s someplace without technology, right?” said Leiter. “Otherwise Q would have found her instantly. Same with James.”
Bashir touched his foot to Harwood’s knee. “When you agreed to be captured by Rattenfänger, did Moneypenny know where they’d take you?”
“No. But she knew what to follow.” She raised her arm. “She had my location in my watch. Mrs. Keator developed a homing device and Morse code emitter that wasn’t detected by Rattenfänger. Trust the classics.”
“But Q eventually picked up satellite footage of you entering the compound,” said Bashir. “That’s how we found you.”
“That’s what Moneypenny told you. She had to wait until my breaking would seem convincing to Rattenfänger. She always knew where I was.”
Leiter whistled. “You are the real deal.”
“Did Moneypenny doctor the footage?” asked Bashir.
“Not by herself,” said Harwood. “Mrs. Keator was a co-conspirator.”
“Did they direct Q not to watch the compound?”
“No, directing our satellites away from Syria would have raised suspicion,” said Harwood. Her eyes narrowed. “But still, Q didn’t pick up on me entering the compound.”
“How’s that possible?” said Leiter.
“It’s not,” said Bashir. “Are you sure you were in the compound for the duration of your capture?”
Harwood tapped her watch. “One way to find out.”