Chapter 9

nine

It isan essential pain of my new job that there is time for my mind to wander. Even with preparing new security plans, even with cataloging every restaurant and office we visit, studying every person Mark meets with, there are too many moments of nothing, of waiting, of standing outside his office or behind his chair in the hall, my mind free to drift to its new, all-encompassing preoccupation.

Him.

Imagining myself tied to his desk in that woman’s place.

Kneeling next to him, his fingers in my hair.

It’s all I can think of, all I can dream. In the early hours of the morning after Mark has held court with his camarilla in the hall, I come back to my apartment and jerk off thinking of his hand on my head. In the morning when I wake, it’s the same.

I think of the scenes we see in the hall night after night—people tied down, held in place to be punished or outright used—and I have to accept that I found the sight of Evander kneeling that first night unsettling not because it was something I didn’t want but because it was something I did want. Something I hadn’t known I wanted until I saw it, and then even after I saw it, I was terrified of what it all meant.

Every time I masturbate, I sit on the edge of my bed afterward, trying to reconcile the Tristan of six weeks ago with the Tristan of right now.

The morning we’re set to leave for Singapore, my father calls again, and I make myself answer, since I’ve been dodging his calls for nearly a month now, responding to his voicemails via text.

Sorry I missed your call, it was a busy night.

Sorry I couldn’t talk, was on duty.

Yes, I did see that the space bill is finally getting its senate vote next week. I hope you and Blanche are well.

But there’s only so long Ricker Thomas will stomach going without a sitrep, and so I know it’s time to talk, however pointless the conversation will be.

“Son,” he says after I answer. “It’s about time.”

“It’s been busy here.” I open my dresser and pull out several rolls of socks, tuck them in a neat line in the open suitcase on my bed. “How’s Blanche?”

“Perfect,” my father says simply, and despite myself, I smile. Blanche is everything he isn’t—open, warm, compassionate—and she’s kindled something in him I wouldn’t have thought possible.

My smile is short-lived, because he says next, “You know, we’re planning on staying in her townhouse for the time being, but I don’t have plans to sell the farm. You could still live there if you wanted. I wouldn’t expect rent, Tristan. Ever.”

“Dad—”

“And if it’s just any kind of work you’re looking for, you know I can help.”

“I know.”

There’s a pause, one that I know from long experience is the pause of a general changing strategy. “There’s a rumor that the intelligence side is looking for someone. An NSA agent has disappeared while on the trail of a hacker.”

I don’t respond, knowing my father will forge on anyway. “And the last person we know for sure the agent talked to was Mark Trevena.”

I’m getting my toothpaste now, along with my other toiletries, zipping everything into a small and worn leather bag. A surge of defensiveness on Mark’s behalf temporarily makes it difficult to think. “All right?”

“Tristan,” my father says impatiently. “The rumor is that Mark Trevena is involved with the disappearance of this agent. That he’s working with this hacker and is colluding to sell classified information to whoever’s willing to pay.”

I drop the leather bag in my suitcase and drag in a slow breath. I can’t let my preoccupation with Mark make it so I fight with my father over this. I have to be careful. “Dad. If you think accusing my boss—your brother-in-law, by the way—of treason and murder because of some agency rumor is going to make me quit—”

“Just consider it,” my father cut in. “You know his club deals in secrets, you know that the caliber of secrets he’s getting has to stretch to the highest level. Surely there’re meetings you don’t sit in on, surely there are times he goes missing that you can’t account for—”

It’s my turn to interrupt. “He’s not sneaking around doing murder, Dad. He watches people get flogged and he takes meetings with people who would also like to watch people get flogged. That’s it.”

“You don’t know him,” my father says firmly. “No one does. That’s the point. No one really knows who Mark Trevena is, what he’s done, what he’s doing. He’s a ghost; even in the most classified of records, he’s barely there. The only thing anyone can say for sure about Mark Trevena is whatever they can learn from his sisters, which isn’t much. Even Blanche can’t tell me anything beyond their childhood.”

I zip up my suitcase, ready to argue. I know him; I’m with him as much as someone can be with their boss.

But as I’m about to speak, I realize I don’t know as much about Mark as I think I do.

I know that he likes cappuccino in the morning and gin on the rocks every other time. I know that he runs five miles every day, that he swims another few miles on the rooftop pool after. I know how he sits in the club, head braced on his fingers, long legs kicked out, a devil waiting to be amused, and I know how he sits in meetings with potential clients and business partners, with danger glinting off him like the moon glinting off sea ice in the dark.

I know he likes his food delicate, creative, strange. I know he wears the same silver wristwatch every day. I know when he looks at the river, there’s something in his face that makes me think he’s far, far away in his thoughts.

I know what he sounds like when he comes.

But I don’t know what he believes, what he wants. What he’s willing to fight for. I don’t know when his parents died and if they were kind to him and if he misses them. I don’t know why he still goes to Mass some Sundays and I don’t know why he left the CIA and I don’t know why he built Lyonesse after he left.

So I can’t argue with my father. And I don’t.

Eventually the call ends, and I take my suitcase downstairs, ready to travel to the other side of the world with someone who’s still a stranger to me.

* * *

I expectMark to fly on a private jet, so I’m surprised when we get to the airport and make our way to a commercial flight.

“I do care about the planet a little,” says Mark, seeing my face. “Well, enough not to fly privately at least. Also, it’s very useful to fly commercial sometimes. Makes you easy to be searched for, if anyone were looking for you.”

“Do we want to be easy to be searched for? Sir?”

He gives me that expression where his mouth pushes in at the corner. An almost-smile. It makes what he says next sound playful and not ominous. “You never know when it might come in handy.”

We fly to New York, and I can’t hide my excitement when we’re at the front of the plane. The flight attendant brings us chocolate chip cookies, and the only time Mark looks up from his laptop for the short flight is to snort at me asking for his cookie if he wasn’t going to eat it.

At JFK, we are escorted right onto our next plane, and I almost run into the back of Mark when he stops in front of a section the size of a lounge. The attendant is showing him inside, and then I realize that the lounge is his seat, a plush leather armchair in a small room with a closing door, full-sized television, table, separate bed, and vase of fresh flowers.

It’s?.?.?.?slightly nicer than the C-17s that took me to Carpathia.

I could stare at the vase of flowers for the entire flight.

Flowers in the air. Pointless. Lovely.

“You’re here, Tristan,” Mark says right as I’m glancing down at my ticket, expecting to see a seat in the normal, non-vase-of-flowers section, and I look up to see the attendant lowering the far wall of Mark’s cabin to reveal an adjoining suite.

“The beds will fold out together to make a double bed,” the attendant says with the air of a thoughtful host, and I flush so deeply my cheeks burn.

“Oh, we don’t—I don’t—”

“We’ll start with the Krug,” Mark tells the attendant before I can finish stammering out that we don’t need a double bed. The attendant nods gracefully and leaves.

I step hesitantly from the aisle into my suite and stare at Mark from across the lowered wall. He’s already setting his briefcase down and shrugging his suit jacket from his well-made shoulders. I watch for a minute, my face flushing hotter as his shirt pulls tight over his body, and then tear my gaze away, deciding to follow his lead. By the time my jacket is hung in the narrow suite closet and my small messenger bag stowed, the champagne has arrived and we give the attendant our orders for dinner and for breakfast, since the flight is over eighteen hours long.

“Shall we toast?” asks Mark after the attendant leaves and closes Mark’s door behind him.

“To what, sir?”

He thinks for a minute. “To lucky guesses.”

“Have you made any lately?” I ask.

“You,” he says without hesitation. I blush anew.

And then his mouth presses in at the corner. “I hope to be making more very soon.”

“To lucky guesses, then,” I manage to say normally, lifting my glass.

Mark’s midnight eyes burn into mine. “To lucky guesses,” he echoes softly, and then drains his champagne before reaching for his laptop and opening it. I resist the temptation to pull out my own laptop again. I have the particulars of the trip already memorized—the people, the places, the purposes. Mark is meeting with the owner of a kink club in Singapore to discuss a mutual membership option and also with a member of Lyonesse who’s due to pay his membership fee. A fee he’ll only deliver in person, which I’ve noticed is very common. People feel safer giving up secrets when they can see your face, when you’re giving them expensive drinks and assurances the information will never ever be connected to them should it get out?.?.?.?unless they want it to be.

It should be an easy trip, with plenty of time between the two appointments, and that’s why I chose this trip to talk to Mark.

About Strassburg. About?.?.?.?me.

But as I watch him refill his champagne glass, I remember my phone call this morning.

You don’t know him. No one does.

Can I really offer to do what Strassburg did when I still know next to nothing about him?

Yes, my body sings; yes, my heart sings too. But my head reminds me of all the times I’ve fallen hard—of how foolish I felt when I learned the object of my desires was already in a relationship or wasn’t interested. In high school mostly, but also at West Point once or twice. The idea of falling again terrifies me.

I’m already immersed in Mark. If I add sex to the mix, I might be lost completely.

Mark sets aside his laptop when dinner comes, and after the first course is served, he glances up at me, long fingers grasping the stem of his wineglass. He doesn’t drink yet.

“Well, Tristan?”

I’m suddenly nervous that I’ve forgotten something crucial, made some error of bodyguard etiquette during our first international trip. “Yes, sir?”

“You’ve been sneaking glances at me for the last two hours. Out with it.”

“With what?”

“Whatever question you’re burning to ask. I promise I’ll answer.”

I shouldn’t be surprised that he noticed me looking at him, but I am. I have an abrupt and unhinged vision of me blurting out that I’ll take Strassburg’s place, and then panic. I’m not ready, I don’t even know if I—

Mark has taken a drink and is now studying me calmly. “Would you like me to start guessing? We do have fifteen and a half hours left of our trip. I’m sure I’ll land on the right answer before we reach Singapore.”

I desperately cast around for something, anything, to say that isn’t the only thing I’ve been thinking of for the last week. Because I’m not ready, not here in an airplane, no matter how private the suite is.

“I?.?.?.?”

Think. Think.

“I was wondering why you made Lyonesse,” I say quickly, grabbing onto the first thing that swirls to the top of my mind. “Why not a regular job after you left the CIA?”

Mark gives a small laugh. “Do I seem like the regular job sort to you?”

I can’t say that he does. “Well?.?.?.?no. Sir.”

He sets his glass down and looks at it for a minute, as if considering. And then says, “Do you know the legend of Lyonesse, Tristan?”

“I saw snippets online when you first offered me the job. A sunken kingdom.”

“A drowned kingdom. The legends say the sea took it after King Arthur’s time; archeology suggests it’s a folk memory from Neolithic times, when sea levels around Cornwall rose and submerged fertile fields and forests.” Mark looks up at me. “The legends also say Lyonesse was drowned for its sins. Similar to a kingdom in a Breton legend—Ys. Eat, Tristan, before it gets cold.”

I pick up my spoon and start on the soup. Sweet corn and crab, with a bite of whiskey and lime. It’s delicious with the white wine they served with it, and even after weeks of eating at the city’s finest restaurants with Mark, eating the club’s culinary masterpieces, I have another moment of dizzy appreciation for how strangely beautiful life can be outside of a war.

“Ys was also drowned for its wickedness,” Mark goes on. “Celtic Christians saw both legends, Ys and Lyonesse, as analogies for Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“And is that why you named a club after it? A tribute to wickedness and all that?”

Mark gives me a real laugh. “No, no, I wasn’t that clever. My grandfather was Cornish and would tell me and my sisters tales of Lyonesse at bedtime. I loved them. The idea of a place unbearably lovely and also unable to last, maybe even in part because of that same loveliness. And the story is a warning, I think, for those who need to listen. Power can be lost, the ground under your feet can founder, and only the just will survive. An important reminder for anyone delving into the world of pain and pleasure.”

He pauses a moment, long fingers twirling the stem of his glass, slowly, slowly, the wine rippling faintly from the plane’s vibrations. “When I left the CIA, I left very disillusioned. I’d lost—something. Getting it back was impossible. I had to find another way to live, and I couldn’t live in the world as it was.”

“So you built your own?”

His eyes dip down, the long lashes resting briefly on his cheeks. “Something like that.” He looks back up to me. “Do you like it? The world I built?”

Answers crowd on my tongue.

I hate it and I love it. It’s all I think about.

I want to kneel for you.

“It’s still very new to me,” I reply diplomatically.

“Hmm,” Mark says, looking down at his soup, and the conversation lapses into silence as we eat.