Chapter Six Checkers

Lizzy struggled to sleep. The party had required intense concentration to be someone else (Fanny) and tailor that someone else to other people's expected or apparent expectations (Lady Catherine, George Wickham) while also tracking herself (Lizzy) and her own reactions to what was happening. It had been exhausting, requiring such a pitch of exertion that now she could not let go of it. The party replayed in her head, lights and music and conversation.

In addition, there was that kiss at the door. It had surprised her and evidently stirred her. It, too, kept replaying, a brief leitmotif between the longer, heavier replayed conversations.

She tossed and turned.

Maybe part of it is the strange bed? Maybe the kiss only surprised me? Everything else stirred me. Really, it's all an understandable reaction to a honeypot mission so soon after my last mission. No time to recover, to reset myself.

She had almost convinced herself of that when her phone, Fanny's phone , beeped.

After Darcy left, she had spent a few minutes with the phone tailoring it to her cover, and then she had put it on the nightstand beside her bed. Her agency phone was in the nightstand drawer, out of sight.

She rolled over, wrestling to disentangle herself from the boa constrictor of her blankets. Huffing, she reached for the phone and looked at it. There was a text from Ned.

Ned. Darcy .

Forgot to say how much I liked the fresh red pedicure

Lizzy inhaled in the dark and then laughed, delighted. With so much on the line for the party, she had temporarily forgotten about needing a pedicure. At the last minute, she had found a nail salon a short walk from her apartment and used the walk to acquaint herself with the immediate neighborhood. She had gotten her pedicure, deciding on red for no good reason she could offer other than liking the shade the nail tech had suggested.

When Darcy… Ned picked her up for the party, she had been fully dressed, her black closed-toe heels already on her feet. It was after they returned to the apartment that she had taken off the party dress and her heels and returned to him barefoot. He had noticed, and he specifically noticed the red polish.

She supposed he had sent the note to establish a Ned/Fanny text history. It was the kind of small but intimate thing a boyfriend might text to his girlfriend. An attentive, thoughtful boyfriend.

Lizzy couldn't help herself. Smiling in the dark, Fanny texted Ned.

Thanks, Ned! Nice of you both to notice and to say so

She expected that to be the end of the exchange, so she put the phone back on the nightstand. But then it beeped again. She retrieved it, curious.

All-day permanent red?

Lizzy boggled for a minute and then remembered an old advertisement—maybe for lipstick?— all-day permanent red. As if the phrase was at once the name of a shade and a promise of long-lastingness. She stared at the question. And then she decided to boggle Ned in turn.

All night too

For a long time, there was no response, only the promise of three dots flashing. Then Ned sent her a smirking emoji. There was a pause, and Ned's smirk was followed by:

Night, again XOXO

Fanny texted back:

Night XOXO

Setting the cell phone down and relaxing back into the bed, Lizzy reflected on the exchange. The XOXO was a good touch, and good for our cover, the text history. The kiss crossed her mind one last time, lingering in memory much longer than it had in fact. She rolled over and smiled herself into a swift sleep.

***

Saturday, October 17

When Lizzy woke up later than usual the next morning―certainly later than she expected―she started the coffee maker and quickly made herself some breakfast. As she sat down on a stool to eat, there was a soft knock at the door. Walking to it, she peered through the peephole. Darcy stood in the hallway, a grocery bag in each arm. Ned.

"Hey, Fanny, it's me!" He said it loudly enough to be heard through the door but not loudly enough for his voice to carry farther. He wouldn’t expect anyone but her to hear him but was obviously taking no chances.

Lizzy pulled the belt of her robe tight. Her robe was no shorter than the black mini dress she wore the night before, but somehow it felt more revealing. She opened the door.

Darcy looked her in the face, and she could tell he was resisting the desire to let his eyes drop. "Sorry not to have called first, Fanny."

She stepped aside to let him in and then closed the door.

He sniffed the air. "Is that coffee? Eggs?"

She walked past him to the counter, gestured to a stool, split her breakfast to share half of it with him, and poured him a cup of coffee. After placing the bags on the couch and taking off his jacket, he eagerly moved to sit where she’d indicated. As Lizzy came back around the counter to sit beside him, she noted Darcy’s casual “Ned” clothing, a sweater and jeans.

He took a bite of his omelet and hummed his approval. "Good!"

She looked over her shoulder at the bags. "What did you bring?"

He smiled at her. "A little sunrise shopping in the windy city. Couldn't sleep. Housewarming gifts. I'll show you when we finish."

"Okay." She started to mention the texts from the night before but stopped herself. She would let him mention it, if it was mentioned at all. Her bare feet, her toenails, were available as a conversation starter.

But Darcy kept his eyes on his food, eating with a real appetite. Lizzy ate, too, without talking. When he finished, he made a cross of his knife and fork on his plate and sat back, picking up his coffee and sipping it slowly as Lizzy finished.

He turned to her. "I thought I'd come by and keep you company this morning. Bingley seemed desperate to talk to his lady friend, up early to do so but also desperate for me not to be there. Something must have kept them from talking last night." He shook his head in disapproval. "So I took a walk. Lovely day, but cool."

"You don't seem happy for Charlie. He's a good man, sweet, gregarious―you know that. Why not be happy someone's making him so excited, so happy? It's sweet that he misses her and wants so much to talk to her."

Darcy looked at her as if her words might have a subtext, but she had intended none. Then he shook his head again. "I gather it's a novelty, a new thing. They haven't been together long. Given that, he should have put it on hold until we finished with this mission. What matters is Wickham, the Wicker Man, the network! We don't need Bingley distracted." He seemed especially adamant.

Lizzy paused to see if he was going to add anything else, but he just stared at his used silverware. "Look, Charlie’s our backup. Mostly, he's managing tech, doing behind-the-scenes work. It would be different if he were undercover himself and still trying to keep open communication with his girlfriend back in D.C., but he's not. Unless it becomes a problem, what's the use of making it one? He's a good agent. He knows his job."

Darcy seemed disposed to grumble. "I suppose, but if they want to keep their relationship a secret, why not take a break until he finishes here? The best kept secrets are those that are non-existent."

"Spoken like a man who has never been in love," she said as she rolled her eyes.

He looked up at her. "You judge me quickly and absolutely, Agent Bennet."

"Am I mistaken?" She steadily returned his gaze.

He stared back down at his utensils. "No. You're right. Not that it matters." His tone became professional as he faced her again, lecturing. "Spies ought not to fall in love. It creates misery all around. What we do and the life we lead melts every promise into a compromise. Or ruin. Best to leave all of that alone and simply do the job."

Despite the tightness in her throat, Lizzy swallowed. Although she had been in love once at Haverford, that had ended. She had not been in love since. Agent Bennet had reasoned with herself in terms similar to Darcy's on many lonely nights in deep cover. It wasn't clear that Agent Bennet had won those arguments with Lizzy, but they had inhibited Lizzy, making her slow to respond to male advances and even slower to initiate advances herself.

Darcy was right: promise melted into compromise. There had been a couple of flings, affairs, whatever , since college, but they had been short and, finally, unsatisfying. She was not the sort of woman who could separate sex from deep emotion, not effectively. And without emotion, sex became nothing more than companionate self-pleasure since the other person did not matter to her as he should. For Lizzy, sex should be a way of showing that you cared, not of finding out if you cared.

Other agents, different sorts of persons, rotated unfeeling bedfellows with no trouble or twinge of conscience. Lizzy wondered about them but never envied them. On her lonely nights, she wanted love, not simply sex. She was happy she acknowledged the difference, even if acknowledging it came at a steep cost to her. What's that line in King Lear? Edmund says, "I will teach you differences."

Strange that books are revisiting me now, on a mission.

"I understand your point," Lizzy said, "but he's not officially breaking any rules by staying in contact. I know you're running the mission, but can't you let him have this…her, whoever she is? Why cause friction between you…or between them? He'll be professional."

Darcy listened and nodded. "We'll see. I wish I hadn't found out. Ever since then, he’s felt like he was at liberty to tell me as much as he has. The professional thing would have been to hide the personal."

It was time to change the subject. "So! We didn't talk about Wickham specifically last night, other than to gauge…the first returns of my interaction with him. What did you make of him, up close?" Lizzy wasn't simply changing the subject; she'd been wondering about him and Wickham since she had seen Wickham's file on the plane.

Darcy's face darkened. "He's all he seemed to be through a camera or binoculars, only more loathsome. It's obvious why he's been able to do what he's done: he's handsome and he's charming." He glanced at Lizzy, but she kept her face expressionless, kept herself still. "In that white tuxedo coat, who would imagine him to be who he really is? He seems like a gentleman. But when you're near him for long, if you pay close attention, his gentlemanliness is a veneer. A true gentleman makes others comfortable; he does that by careful attention and an amiable manner, not by flattery or ingratiating himself."

Gentleman? Amiable? Lizzy asked herself. Does anyone still talk that way? She understood what Darcy meant, but he was all House of Lords again, especially with that British accent.

"What did you think?" he asked. He continued studying her face.

"Like you said, handsome and charming. Very charming. But there is something subtly manipulative about him. Talking to him was a little like sharing a scene with him, a theatrical scene in which he was acting, but a scene that he was also directing."

Darcy nodded once, emphatically. "Exactly."

"The file you gave us actually had surprisingly little on Wickham's history. Is there more that I can see to get a better idea of him?"

He glanced away. "Yes, there's more. But it won't help you much with the man. Until I identified him, we only had records of various incidents attributed to The Wicker Man. We now know he did them or orchestrated them, but we don't know any real details as to how."

"But why? Are his only motivations money and cruelty?"

Darcy shook his head at her. "Aren't those enough? Especially when you can combine them as he has?"

Lizzy felt like there was something in what he’d said, some slight revelation, but she was unsure what.

He went on, "I would've thought your time at the Agency would have shown you the reality that there are evil people. Wickham is one of them."

"Okay, but that doesn't mean there's not a story about how he came to be that way. Unless you think he was, I don't know…hatched as a demon."

He glared at her. "No, he is a demon born of a woman―a human demon. Perhaps he has his story. Whatever it is, that story does not excuse him for what he's done, not for one measure of the pain he's caused." Darcy's face had closed by the time he finished.

"Can you get me the other information? Maybe it won't help me understand him from the inside, his backstory, so to speak, but at least it will give me his basic biography."

Darcy's nod was reluctant. "I can get it. It may take a day or so to get MI-6 to send it. The bureaucracy there moves like Dickens's Circumlocution Office."

Lizzy chuckled. " Little Dorrit. That's my favorite of his novels."

"Mine, too," Darcy said, smiling, his anger cooling, his face opening. He turned on his stool and pointed to the bags. "Speaking of…I went for a walk this morning, as I said, and I found a tiny newspaper and magazine shop. Covers ―that was the name! Really! They sold coffee, so I went inside to buy a cup. As I stood waiting in line, I noticed the back wall was covered with tall bookcases stuffed with old hardbacks. So I bought you some. No self-respecting librarian should live in an apartment without its proper share of moldering classics."

He reached into one of the bags and pulled out a few used books. Wordsworth's Poetical Works , A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick. She took them, looked at them, and placed them on the counter. His smile had grown. He reached into the bag again and held up a thick blue-bound book, waving it proudly like a trophy. " Wives and Daughters. Gaskell. It was on the shelf. We didn't need to mention it at the party, but I thought finding it this morning was a good sign. And it's in very good condition." He handed it to her along with his excitement at finding it.

She smiled at him. "That's funny, finding a copy of that. Did it cost much?"

"Not much more than the others. There are more in the bag, but I'll let you discover them later. Oh, and I bought some other things. That place was like a shop in a Dickens novel, crammed with curious things." He reached into the other bag and lifted out a small cactus in a tiny terra cotta pot. "A succulent friend to keep you company, although he's slightly prickly. And"―he reached in again, producing a long, thin box―"something to pass the time: Checkers!"

It was indeed a box of checkers, a cheap set. "Checkers? You play checkers?"

Darcy laughed out loud, maybe the first time she had heard it, a deep chuckle that reverberated through her whole body. "Yes, Bingley taught me when we were boys, and I've loved the American version of the game since. It's deeply instructive, I think. Do you play?"

"Yes, I suppose. I learned it as a child. My dad taught me, and we used to play. But I haven't played in years and years."

His smile was boyish. "What do you say to a post-breakfast game as a way to pass some time? All we can do now is wait for Wickham to make some move. I can refresh your memory of the rules, strategy."

Lizzy laughed. This was an unexpected turn to the morning. "Okay. Open the box and set up the pieces. I'll go and get dressed."

After changing, she emerged from the bedroom to find Darcy had set up the game on the coffee table between the sofa and the armchair. The checkers, red and black, sat on the checkerboard, also red and black. He turned the board so that he was black and she was red. He stared at her as if suggesting the orientation of the board had another meaning, but he said nothing for a few moments.

"Since you're out of practice, I'll move first," he finally said. "Black, or the darker side, moves first." She nodded, and he slid a piece forward.

She examined the move and then looked at him. "Forced jumps, captures, right? If I have one, I have to take it?"

"Yes, that's right. That's one of the fundamental, somewhat counter-intuitive aspects of the game, especially if you've played chess."

He looked at her questioningly, and she shrugged. "A few times, also with my dad."

"In chess, people often become too consumed by defensive strategies, including but not limited to castling. Checkers is different―it's an offensive game. You can defend here and there, in particular situations, but there's no generally defensive way to win. No defense you build can stand up over time." He gestured for her to move. She did, more or less mirroring his move.

"Okay, good." Sitting back, he looked at her, his gaze warm and amused. He was enjoying himself. She began to relax and enjoy the activity, the spectacle of MI-6's best agent enjoying checkers. And of course, he was playing CIA's best.

"Now remember, the game is like chess in one important respect: control of the center of the board is crucial. It can seem like you ought to position your pieces at the edges of the board, but that's a mistake. Yes, they're protected from being jumped, but you limit their power." He made another move.

She studied it for a minute. She moved again. So far, there had been no forced captures. Lizzy studied his face as he leaned down, pondering, his brow furrowed. His stubble was blue-back, heavier, darkening his jaw. Looking at it, she could feel it again as she had felt it last night. She liked how he looked when he thought.

Without making his move, he lifted his head. "It's important to remember that advance en masse is best, allowing some of your pieces to protect others. But you have to advance. And that brings us to the most fascinating aspect of the game"―his tone grew more serious―"the one that keeps me playing. To win, you have to sacrifice pieces. Winning the war requires losing battles. You have to pick the battles, of course, and you can't lose too many and still win the war, but I find that feature of the game deep, vexing. I want to win without sacrifice. I believe that should be possible, but it isn't, not really, not against any competent player."

She considered his point. It was true. She could remember that feature of the game bothering her as a girl, playing with her father, especially the way the mandatory capture rule forced you into using a piece to make a capture that then required that piece's capture by your opponent. She had never really reflected on it as Darcy just had, thinking about it in terms of sacrifice, of lost battles and won wars. "That's interesting. It is perplexing, especially in those terms."

Darcy nodded, still lost in his thoughts. "I hate the principle that the end justifies the means . I always have; I don't believe it. The way I was brought up, my father… Anyway, I later came to realize that I've always believed in another principle, one that I was taught at Cambridge to call the Pauline Principle since it was St. Paul who formulated it. It’s in Romans, if I recall correctly. Do not do evil so that good may come. "

He sighed. "But I've ended up a spy, living my life in a shadow world where evil is routinely done so that good may come, or so it is claimed. Even worse, if good does come, then the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, my boss, or the director of the CIA, yours, Kellynch, will tell you that the evil you did was not, after all, really an evil since good came from it." He shook his head and stopped talking.

As he paused, Lizzy recalled her past honeypot missions. The Pauline Principle.

He glanced at her, looking as if he had just realized how much he had said and how long he had gone on. "Sorry. I guess checkers provides me an opportunity for musing about all that, trying to understand it. Maybe to reconcile myself to the decisions my profession requires of me."

Lizzy did not respond. They sat in heavy silence for a long moment.

Then Darcy finally moved a piece.

They were tied at one game apiece and in the middle of a third, the decisive game, when Darcy's phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and noted the number displayed.

"Bingley? What?" He listened carefully. "Who? When?" More listening. "Why?"

Charlie went on for another minute or two, and then Darcy said goodbye and ended the call. He gave Lizzy a puzzled look. "There's been a move, but not from the player we expected."

"What do you mean?"

"The priest, Collingwood , was at the security desk downstairs."

In moments, the two agents were seated at the counter again, their unfinished checkers game left behind on the coffee table. Lizzy's computer was open, and Charlie explained what had happened.

"So, our guy at the security desk said that a man walked up and asked about you, if you lived in the building. Only Darcy and I can go up without a prior word to them. The guard let us know just after Collingwood left. Collingwood wasn't exactly sneaking around, though. He was in his priestly get-up. What do you call it? The dog collar? He left his name and his business card…if that's the right thing to call it for a priest. He asked if you lived in the building. The guard told him that he could not say, that building policy was to protect the privacy of tenants."

Lizzy looked at Darcy. "I told him my name and that I worked at the CPL. But he couldn’t have gotten my address from my personal page, could he?"

Charlie broke in. He was shaking his head, embarrassed. "No, but I had to supply an address to the library when they gave your name as the winner of the invitation to the party. There wasn't time to mail an invitation, so I didn't think it mattered. I asked them to send the invitation to Fanny's personal email. They did. I printed it off from there."

"Fanny has a personal email?" Lizzy asked.

Charlie nodded, glancing nervously at Darcy. "Yes, but I'm monitoring it―you don't need to. Lizzy, if you want to use it to send something, just go to Gmail. Your computer's set up already. I intended to tell you all that later in a brief video conference. I didn't think Lady Catherine would contact the library about your address or that she would be able to get it if she did. But it must have been her, and she must have given it to the priest."

Darcy's lips were compressed, and Lizzy could sense his annoyance. "It's not a big deal in one way, since our hope is that Wickham eventually comes here and meets with Fanny, but we need to be in control of the mission information. We need to know exactly who has access to exactly what at all times. Success—and Agent Bennet's safety—depend on it."

"Right. Sorry," Charlie said, apologetic and cowed.

"It's okay, Charlie. He didn't make it to my door unannounced or anything."

"I'll be on top of things from here on," he promised.

"We'll talk later," Darcy said. He shut the computer and looked at Lizzy. "I'm sorry about that. It shouldn't have happened. I understand what Bingley was thinking, but it was sloppy. He either should not have supplied the address or made sure we knew he had."

"C'mon, Darcy. It isn't a big deal. I'm far more interested in why Lady Catherine's priest came here hoping to see me."

He did not comment again on Charlie’s mistake. He stood for a moment, pondering the question about Collingwood.

As he did, Fanny's phone rang from the bedroom. He looked at Lizzy, who briefly met his eyes and then hurried into her room. Darcy followed as far as the door and stopped. The phone displayed a number she didn’t recognize. She answered the call. "Hello?"

"Hello, Fanny. This is George Wickham. We met at the party last night." She turned and pointed at the phone. "Wickham," she said soundlessly to Darcy.

"Oh, yes, George, I remember."

"Lady Catherine told me how to reach you. I hope you don't mind, that I'm not intruding."

"No, you're not. It's fine. What can I do for you?"

He laughed. Rich and confident. "After the party, Lady Catherine mentioned to me that Ned was going to have to leave town. Is that right?"

Lizzy made sure she sounded disappointed. "Yes, he's flying out soon, in just a little while, back to New York."

"She also told me you had taken some time off, expecting to spend it with him."

"Yes, that's true."

"I'm going to be in Chicago later today. I'm not Ned, of course, but I was planning to tour some of the architectural sights and wondered if you might want to come with me. Maybe we could get dinner?" She paused deliberately, holding her peace for as long as she could, trying to wait him out. "It would be something to do," he added, "and just as friends, of course."

She had done it. Her skill, her talent, and her appearance had been enough to hook Wickham. Once again, however, she felt no particular sense of accomplishment. The difficult work, the tricky work, was all ahead of her.

She let another beat pass. "I suppose that'd be okay. Ned and I canceled our plans, and I don't have any others."

"Wonderful," he said, no surprise in his voice. From his point of view, he was succeeding, too. "I'll have a car. Should I pick you up?"

Darcy had moved to stand beside her, and she was holding the phone so he could hear, although she knew Charlie should be recording the call. Darcy nodded when she looked at him, and she responded to Wickham. "Yes, that will be fine. I'll text you my address."

"Good. Say 3 p.m.? That'll give us two or three hours of daylight to see some sights, and we can decide about dinner as we do. You're sure it won't be any problem…I mean, with Ned?"

"No, I'll tell him. He knows you, and he hates that our plans had to be canceled."

"Brilliant. Be sure to bring a jacket. We may be outside, do some walking."

"Okay. I'll text the address soon. I'll be downstairs. Text me when you arrive."

"See you soon, Fanny."

"Bye, George." She ended the call.

Darcy looked flushed beneath his stubble, but he smiled at her. "Kellynch was right. You were the woman for the job." He said it in a low voice as if his words were both verdict and sentence.

He turned and walked into the living room. She followed. He stopped and stared down at the checkerboard.