Greg Rucka - A Gentlemans Game: A Queen & Country Novel

Contents

To Lawrie Mackintosh,
and to the memory of his brother, Ian.
Two men who inspired, encouraged,
and made this novel possible.

From infancy on, we are all spies;
the shame is not this
but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

JOHN UPDIKE

Acknowledgments

Indebtedness and profound thanks to the following for their assistance, aid, encouragement, and time. Without their help, this novel simply would not have been possible.

Ben Moeling, you do good work. Please stick to your profession; the last thing I need is more competition.

TruBrit, in the form of Antony Johnston, Alasdair Watson, and Andrew Wheeler. Triple-A from NinthArt.Com?, gifted wordsmiths all, who went above and beyond with every inquiry, and provided exhaustive answers, new wrinkles, and plenty of laughs. If you three can agree on anything, its a small miracle. I cannot thank you enough for your help.

At Bantam, Nita Taublib and Irwyn Applebaum, who have exhibited patience, and perseverance, and faith in abundance. My debt to all at Bantam is great, but to you both (and that other one, whats her name?), greatest of all. Thank you for everything.

At Oni Press, publishers of the originaland ongoingcomic book series featuring Tara Chace, Queen & Country. Specifically, thanks to James Lucas Jones, Joe Nozemack, and Jamie S. Rich. Ive said it before, but there quite simply is no Oni Press without these three men; without Oni, there is no Queen & Country. For friendship, encouragement, and inspiration, I cannot thank you enough.

Additional thanks to all the wonderful, and truly gifted, artists who have worked on Queen & Country thus farSteve Rolston, Tim Sale, Brian Hurtt, Durwin Talon, Christine Norrie, Bryan OMalley, Leandro Fernandez, Jason Alexander, Carla Speed McNeil, Mike Hawthorne, Mike Norton, and Rick Burchett. With every issue and every arc, you brought Tara, Paul, Tom, Ed, Angela, and all the rest to life. I am forever in your debt.

As ever, to Gerard V. Hennely, Master of the Dark Arts and Holder of the Black Bag. Im glad youre my friend; if you were my enemy, Id be in hiding.

To Matthew and Shari Brady, for the chemicals.

To my agents and ferocious advocates, David Hale Smith at DHS Literary, and Angela Cheng Kaplan at Writers & Artists Group International. You can put away the spurs now, this horse has run.

To the real Tara F. Chace, who snuck me into her house late at night during high school so we could... watch videotapes of spy stories. Shall we walk?

To Bob, Roy, Ray, Elizabeth, Allan, and Jerome. Thank you for teaching me as much as Ian did.

And finally, as ever, to Jennifer, Elliot, and, for the first time, Dashiell. You make everything better.

Preoperational Background
Chace, Tara F.

The first time Tara Chace was ordered to murder a man, it was in Kosovo, as a favor to the CIA.

She used a Parker-Hale M-85 supplied by the Istanbul Number Two that had been moved to a cache near what would ultimately become her snipers nest in Prizren. She entered the country as a member of the British peacekeeping forces support staff, attached through the Ministry of Defense, then traveled as a liaison officer in an observer group past the NATO checkpoint into the city before striking out on her own. Once on-site, she hunkered down in an abandoned apartment on the third floor of an equally abandoned building to wait for her target and the dawn. The night had been cold, long, and Chace sat behind the rifle playing memory games in her head not to keep from falling asleep but to keep her mind off what she was there to do.

The target, a former Soviet general named Markovsky who had leaped gleefully into bed with the Red mafiya, appeared just after dawn, riding passenger in the cab of a three-ton truck laden with confiscated small arms. At first it had seemed Markovsky wasnt going to exit the vehicle, and Chace, behind the scope and with her pulse making the optics jump with every beat, half-wondered, half-hoped she would have to abort. The driver seemed to be handling the buy with the KLA, who had pulled up earlier, and all throughout the dance of lets see the merchandise and its companion two-step, show me the money, Markovsky stayed put.

Then the driver turned and signaled the general to join them, and before Markovsky had set a foot on the ground, Chace had put three pounds of pressure on the trigger and sent his brains misting onto the trucks windshield.

All hell had broken loose then, as everyone back in the Operations Room in London had known it would, and Chace had run, pursued by the angry KLA and the angrier Russians. Her alpha route out of Zone was almost immediately compromised, and her UN cover blown soon thereafter. Running pell-mell through the streets of Prizren, the KLA firing wildly after her, she had caught a ricochet in the left calf and gone ass over tit, only to rise and run again. Two further near-misses with her pursuers before finally managing to steal a car, and then shed had to keep a straight face and give a good lie past a Coalition checkpoint before finally making it to the British Sector.

At which point, safe at last, Chace permitted herself the luxury of passing out.

The mission had been considered a success, and her stock in the Special Operations Directorate of Her Majestys Secret Intelligence Service had risen accordingly, even as she limped back into the cramped and ugly little office in the M16 building at Vauxhall Cross. Her Head of Section, Tom Wallace, had rewarded her with a glowing write-up in her AIR, the annual evaluation that all directorate chiefs were required to submit concerning their personnel. Wallace had shown it to her before submitting itnot strictly against the rules, but an unorthodox decisionand taken great delight in pointing out his recommendation for promotion at earliest opportunity.

Youll have my job, soon enough, Wallace had said, and his grin had been as open and good-natured as ever, the look of a proud mentor. Nothing in his words hinted at anything other than sincerity.

Lets hope so, Chace had replied. Then Ill get the really good assignments.

It had been a joke, and they had both laughed, and time passed and the glow of the job faded as other jobs came, but the memory of it stayed with her. It followed when she was sent to Egypt and nearly lost her life in an ambush and was forced to kill three men in self-defense. It trailed her to Tbilisi where a Provisional Minder Three by the name of Brian Butler, who had been recruited into the Special Section only four days prior, died mere inches from her side.

It accompanied her home, first to her bedsit in South Kensington, and then later relocating with her when she moved to a flat in Camden.

It was tenacious, and the comfort found neither in a bottle of scotch nor in the arms of an eager lover could break its grip.

It became part of her life; moreit became part of her.

Wallace and she had laughed at the joke, but the fact was, there are no good assignments when you are a Minder; there are only ones marginally less likely to get you killed. As Wallace had told her when shed first joined the Section as an eager Minder Three, Its not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about, Tara. Its all those damn other ones, marked to whom it may concern.

There were no good jobs, and assassination was the worst of them all. Even putting all moral and ethical questions out of mindand when the order came, it was Chaces job to do precisely thatassassinations were fiendishly difficult to execute on every conceivable level. Politically, they were nightmarishly sensitive; logistically, they were almost impossible to adequately plan; and finally, once operational, even if the politics and the logistics had fallen in line, it would all go out the window anyway.