Chapter One New Mission

Early morning, Thursday, October 15

Elizabeth Bennet stalked through the Langley corridors, her spiked heels echoing down the various hallways in their different directions, making it seem that a synchronized squad of women was on the move rather than only one.

It was late at night or very early in the morning, almost one a.m., and she had been summoned to Langley by the CIA director, Walter Kellynch.

Lizzy was unhappy with the summons. She had returned from a deep-cover infiltration assignment only days before, one which had emptied her mentally and physically. Desperate for time off―time to be herself, no cover―Lizzy yearned to wear her own pajamas, eat her own food, and sleep in her own bed. Think my own thoughts and do my own deeds.

She had spent the past three months as someone else, forced to think and act doubly, always shadowing and monitoring herself. The first requirement of a deep-cover spy assignment was spying on yourself. It was necessary to measure and angle your actions to ensure that you projected the person you were supposed to be. It was utterly exhausting.

Worse, it was dehumanizing. You had to think and act in ways that you could not own and do it for so long with so little downtime that it was hard at times to remember who was the pretense and who was the pretender.

Kellynch had been apologetic on the phone but ultimately insistent. Lizzy tried to refuse and suggested other agents, but he had not yielded. He regretted that it was necessary to send her into the field again so soon, but he had already secured the go-ahead from the Company psychologist who had overseen her final debriefing.

Lizzy had no grounds for refusal other than her preference, and she was not going to fight for her preference with her boss. She was headstrong but not obstinate. At his core, Kellynch was not an evil man, but he was―as his position required―hard. The combination of traits made him brittle, glassy. Driven by jealousy for the Company's reputation and by vanity about its success under his leadership, each morning in his office, over coffee, Walter Kellynch combed the internet for positive press, favorable mentions.

Lizzy was his best, he often told her—and he'd repeated that to her on the phone earlier. This mission required his best.

As she crossed the Central Intelligence Agency logo on the marble floor, she took a deep breath. Kellynch’s administrative assistant, Charlotte Lucas, sat at the desk in front of the door to Kellynch's office, on guard, as ever.

Charlotte smiled when she saw Lizzy, the smile warm but serrated with subtext. While the two women were more than acquaintances, perhaps almost even friends, Charlotte envied her. She had been low-key in love with Walter Kellynch for all the years she had been his AA― low-key because Charlotte was rarely otherwise about anything. That did not make her love for Kellynch less real, but her love was as low-key as everything else about her. She had always interpreted his favoritism for Lizzy as partly romantic…not wholly professional.

"Morning, Charlotte," Lizzy said quietly as she reached the large desk. "I won't say it's a good one―too damn early, too damn soon."

Charlotte nodded. "I told him that you needed some time off, that it was too soon, but—" She stopped, fighting a frown from her face. “But he had to have you for this." She managed not to stress the you.

Lizzy heard it with that stress and took Charlotte to intend it that way. She simply sighed. "I know. He said. On the phone. Thanks."

She was certain Charlotte was wrong about Kellynch’s attraction to her. Once, a year ago, Lizzy had tried to disabuse her of the notion, but the conversation had not gone well. Charlotte had gotten angry—angered both by Lizzy’s cluelessness and her involuntary but clear recoil at the thought of Kellynch's interest. "He's worth having, even if you don't want him," she had hissed, blushing slightly. By silent contract, the two of them had awkwardly avoided the topic since.

Before Lizzy could step around the desk to enter Kellynch's office, Charlotte leaned forward, gesturing for her to lean in to hear her whisper. "He's got two men in there. Agent Bingley and another man I don't know. I think he's MI-6."

Strange for whispers to seem out of place in Langley .

Lizzy smoothed her blouse and checked the slim belt of her pants. Charlotte's previously resisted frown now manifested as she watched her. Pretending not to notice, Lizzy continued to stall while she mentally prepared to enter the next room. Someone from MI-6? Who? Why? She'd had little luck with inter-agency missions and had not faced one in years.

Charlie Bingley, CIA, was familiar to Lizzy, one of the few colleagues she liked and respected. Her regard was not for his skills as an agent, which were perfectly adequate but no more than that. Instead, she appreciated his candid good nature, a near-singularity in Langley.

Almost no one could be a spy for long without it tainting them, embittering them. Most actually came to the job tainted, embittered already. Despite the brochures, the CIA did not collect the best and the brightest―not as a rule. Rather, it attracted the botched and the bungled.

But there were isolated exceptions like Charlie. And, Lizzy hoped, like herself.

Not that she wasn't broken…a little. She knew that. But she did not believe she was (yet) tainted or soured. Not beyond salvage, she encouraged herself, bending a Company term to a personal use. Although I worry. A certain brutal cynicism was the ruling dispassion of the agency. While Lizzy occasionally found it tempting, she had exerted herself to resist it. At least, she believed she had.

She stepped through the open door into Director Kellynch's office. It was at the top of Langley and huge. One long side, the side opposite Lizzy as she entered, was covered entirely in windows. At the moment, only distant lights in the darkness of Fairfax County showed through them. Because of the dark outside, she could see herself dully reflected in the glass panes as she entered.

She was wearing green—her blouse a light green, her pants a dark forest green. She knew green made her eyes more intense, rendering their brown earthier, richer. She habitually wore spiked heels to Kellynch's office, a brown pair tonight. The heels were her way of enhancing her height. She was not short, but she was certainly not tall, not physically imposing. She could hold her own and had done so on numerous occasions―with the scars to prove it―but she never liked seeming… diminished …in Kellynch's presence.

His implicit confidence in her, his reliance on her—these were cornerstones of her self-respect, such as it was. Abstractedly, she knew she was a good agent, but she only felt a concrete certainty that she was when Kellynch said so. That concrete certainty had helped to keep her alive and fortified her to endure missions. Had doubt crept in, she might not have lived to return to Langley.

As she walked farther into his office, Kellynch stood. The two men did, too―Charlie and the stranger from MI-6.

The former looked as he always did. Medium height, medium build. Medium . In every way. He had dark blond hair and pale blue eyes, good teeth—he was displaying them now with his pleasant smile—and a perennially eager posture, always seeming vaguely as if he were about to volunteer for something.

The other man was tall. Even in her heels, Lizzy had to tilt her head to look into his face. His build was athletic but square. Broad and powerful—wrestler, not gymnast―although he was not heavy. Powerful was the word that came to mind. Large but energetic. He had very dark eyes, so dark that his pupils were all but lost in his irises. Because of that, at first glance, his eyes gave the impression of imponderable depth, bottomlessness. His face was impassive when Lizzy first looked into it. But then he smiled.

The smile was not warm, but it was not false. Wary…or maybe uncomfortable. The smile returned the pupils to his eyes somehow, and he seemed fleshlier and less marmoreal. He nodded to her once, lightly.

"Hey, Bennet." Bingley strode to her and extended his hand.

She shook it and gave him a quick grin. "It's been a while, Bingley."

Kellynch cleared his throat. "Welcome, Agent Bennet. Glad you could join us quickly and on short notice." His slight smile was apologetic, but his eyes were decidedly un-sorry. "You obviously know Agent Bingley. Let me introduce Agent Fitzwilliam Darcy, MI-6. One of their best, if not their best."

Darcy walked to her, his stride, like his earlier nod, lighter than she expected. In fact, his movement was balletic. Surprising for a man so powerfully built. When he drew closer, she whiffed aftershave, a faint scent of Bay Rum.

"Good morning, Agent Bennet." He didn't extend his hand to shake hers, but there was nothing hostile in his British-accented tone…nothing otherwise unfriendly in his manner. He seemed simply to have returned to impassivity. However, she saw his eyes darken as he concentrated on her.

"Please," Kellynch said, gesturing to them all, "everyone, sit . We have a few…items…to talk about." He did so himself, his swivel chair positioned directly in front of the Babel of files towering atop the large desk behind him. Once everyone was seated, he slowly tented the fingers of his hands, assuming a mantis, prayer-like posture, leaning forward and exhaling.

"Agent Bennet, Agent Darcy is here on a mission, one under the auspices of MI-6 but now has immigrated, we might say, to us. Technically, it remains an MI-6 mission. However, the Company will oversee it.” He cleared his throat, his way of eliding red-tape details. “He will explain the mission to you in due course. When his superior contacted me with a request for help here in the US and explained the nature of the help needed, I immediately thought of you. I have been briefing Darcy about you and about your excellent track record―making sure he understands you are the woman for the job."

Although this prompted Charlie to smile at Lizzy, Darcy gave her an appraising sidelong glance suggesting that, even if he didn't entertain explicit doubts or reject the director’s recommendation, he wasn't yet convinced.

Kellynch continued, "I have brought in Bingley because the mission requires logistical support, a third to oversee what is happening, to keep up with equipment, and so on. Also, through an odd coincidence, Bingley and Darcy already know each other. They were in boarding school together in England."

England. Lizzy remembered Charlie had once mentioned spending his childhood abroad as the only child of a diplomat father. The conversation had been at an impromptu Langley Christmas party. Many people had been talking at once, almost all of them inebriated, and Lizzy had not asked Charlie more about it. But it made sense at the time and made sense now. There was something stereotypically British , a dash of BBC, in his quick good manners and easy formality. He was American, to be sure, but with across-the-pond polish.

If Charlie was a dash of BBC, Darcy―now that Lizzy had a better look at him―was all House of Lords. There was something imperial about him in the way held himself, about how he sat in his chair with his back ramrod straight and not resting against the chair at all. The sun never sets on the Empire, she reflected to herself, squelching a smile. He sits beautifully but uncomfortably. She leaned back for the sake of an American contrast.

"That's right," Charlie added, excited. "We lost touch for many years and came back into contact accidentally when a mission of mine in Istanbul crossed wires with a mission of Darcy's there at the same time. We couldn't believe that we ran into each other at all, much less that we were both…in the same line." His tone seemed astonished still.

Darcy's face as he listened did not change, although he did shift his eyes at one point and stared into the distance. Lizzy could not tell whether perhaps he was recollecting the story his old schoolmate told or whether he was bored.

Charlie grinned. "I'm pleased to have the chance to work with him. With both of you."

Technically, he and Lizzy had never been on a mission together. Normally, she worked alone. It was how she liked it. She trusted her own spy instincts implicitly and found the necessity of consulting someone else trying. Her professional first impressions were rarely wrong, if ever, and she hated having to justify them to anyone. Better simply to act on them. She had been doing it for years and was still alive. More than alive― the best.

Lizzy smiled at Charlie, determined to make the best of things. If she was destined to be a part of this mission, she was going to be encumbered with help. "Thanks, Charlie. I'm sure we'll make a good team."

Darcy cleared his throat and addressed Kellynch. "I am sure that Agent Bennet is a fine spy, but, well…"

"Patience, Darcy," Kellynch said. "Why don't you tell us all what it is you need, so that Agent Bennet "―pausing, he held her name by the edges, imitating Darcy―"can determine whether or not she suits and inform us of her decision."

Darcy lifted his eyebrows, but his shoulders sank almost imperceptibly. Lizzy noticed it and thought she saw a faraway flicker of frustration in his dark eyes. "Of course. I have been trailing a terrorist for several months. His real name, unknown to almost everyone, is George Wickham, but his other name, his alias, is well-known in the intelligence community: The Wicker Man ."

Lizzy sat up straight at the name. She did know it. The Wicker Man was a terrorist's terrorist, a killer who plagued the dreams of other killers. He was responsible—or reputedly responsible—for some of the most disturbing, lethal attacks of the past decade. Women dead, children dead, sometimes by the scores. He murdered so as to maximize fear and insecurity, to make victims of everyone who heard the news, not only those within the radius of the bomb blast. Destabilization . So far as Lizzy knew, no one had ever identified him or even had a scrap of creditable intel as to either his identity or his whereabouts.

Charlie was shaking his head. "It's amazing that you've discovered who he is. No one has had a guess."

"Knowing his identity is something, yes, but he can change that easily.” Darcy looked grim. “The man is a chameleon. If he realizes we know who he is, know the name George Wickham, he will kill that name, that identity, and resurrect himself as someone else, perhaps after extensive plastic surgery. This man is not attached to his identity”―he grimaced, the meaning of his expression unclear―“if you understand my meaning. He’s attached to his work .

"He's come to the States for reasons that are unclear. Right now, he has no idea that I have identified him, that I am trailing him. I've followed him from Berlin to London to here, D.C."

Lizzy sat farther forward in her chair. "If you know who he is and where he is, why haven't you taken him?"

He turned to her. "The Wicker Man is not only George Wickham, although he is its focal point. The Wicker Man is an international network of terrorists and double agents and informants, a multiple small-branched array of weapons, money, and death. I'm hoping to not only capture George Wickham; I want to bring The Wicker Man to heel." Darcy showed his white teeth in a clench, not a smile. "I want to destroy the whole network. To do that, I need to get close to him; rather, I need someone to get close to him."

"Close to him?" Charlie asked.

Lizzy felt her heart chill. She understood who that someone was to be.

"Yes, close to him. Wickham has only one weakness. Women.” Darcy’s eyes flickered toward and then away from Lizzy. “In the time I’ve surveilled him, I've discovered this: he's a womanizer. Odd to say, but he’s cautiously, complicatedly so. I need a female agent who can infiltrate his circle. Arouse his interest. Hold it."

Lizzy shifted in her chair, looking at Kellynch and ignoring Darcy. "Just to be clear, sir: you want me…for a honeypot ?"

Kellynch un-tented his hands and put his feet―his heels and not just his toes―on the ground, his gaze keen and commanding.

"Yes, I do. We need you to get close to Wickham, seduce him, and allow us to at least identify the key figures in his network. Discover how the network is funded. And so on. I know this isn't your preferred assignment and that you're just back from deep cover, but I believe you're the woman Agent Darcy needs."

Darcy cleared his throat again. "Director, all due respect, but I have studied Wickham, observed him around-the-clock. I know him better than anyone in the intelligence community. Anyone." He paused to look Kellynch significantly in the eye. "Wickham prefers his women blonde… "

Lizzy turned to him, immediately pissed by the tone and drift of his remarks. "I can be blonde by morning!"

He went on stubbornly, still looking at Kellynch and ignoring her. "Blonde, sir, and… voluptuous ." He finally turned to her as if daring her to claim she could be voluptuous by morning.

Her face reddened, and she rarely blushed; she could not remember the last time that had happened. "I…I…" She looked at Kellynch, collecting herself, preparing to speak.

Instead, Darcy interrupted with his annoying House of Lords voice. "Again, sir, all due respect, but Agent Bennet―while tolerable, pretty enough―she isn't handsome enough or sexy enough to tempt George Wickham."

Lizzy leaped to her feet and wheeled to face him, forgetting her distaste for such assignments in her fiery indignation. She had not known she had vanity enough for Darcy’s opinion to sting so much.

"Whether I can tempt George Wickham is not to be decided by surreptitious, side-eyed assessments of my tits and my ass, my figure, Agent Darcy. Seduction begins between a woman's ears. It's how she handles herself, not what the man sees to handle! I can tempt George Wickham! I guarantee it!"

Darcy sat back in his chair, apparently overwhelmed…shocked by her incandescent anger.

And then she realized with a sharp, sinking feeling that Kellynch was chuckling behind her. Damn! He had goaded Darcy into baiting her, and she had taken the bait.

"So, Agent Bennet," the director concluded in a smooth, final tone, his question purely rhetorical, "I take it you've accepted the assignment?"

"Yes!" she said, supplying the unnecessary answer. She then closed her mouth, hooked. She wanted to stomp her feet.

"No!" Darcy protested.

But Kellynch was already standing and had picked up his phone.