Like Nash, Sophia had freshened up and changed. Unlike Nash, she was stunning. How the woman made blue jeans and a simple white shirt seem demure and sexy at the same time was beyond him. She slunk into the room and sat at the end of the bed next to him. Nash wasn’t sure if the positioning was deliberate or not.
All the old memories came flooding back. The passionate arguments—she’d wanted him to leave MI6 but Nash couldn’t. That was before Nash’s own doubts had crept in. Later in his career he would have relented. Or perhaps Sophia had planted the doubts, and it had taken him too long to realise she’d been right all along. By then it was too late, she’d already disappeared from his life and he’d never see her again. Or so he’d thought.
“Been run off my feet all day.” Her palms slid down her jeans.
“Kidnappings always keep you busier than you expect.” He’d attempted to sound witty, but the edge was sharper than anticipated.
Sophia noticed, and chose her words carefully. “I prefer to call it an involuntary reunion.”
Her own attempt at levity fell flat, causing her to shuffle awkwardly. Sophia was softer now than she’d been on the plane, less officious. It may have been because she no longer had the underlings about her, but Nash sensed there was something else.
“How did you find us, Sophia? Me?” It wasn’t idle curiosity; Nash was still trying to piece it all together.
“The master spy wants to know where he went wrong?”
“It’s more than that, and you know it.” He slapped on the charm, though he wasn’t sure she bought it. “We’re trying to save the world here, and our respective organisations.”
“Former.” She held up a well-manicured finger. “Your former organisation.”
Nash had to concede the point. “They’re compromised and they don’t even know it, or if they do, they’re terrified to do anything about it for fear they’ll talk to the wrong person and become the next victim. Asking how we were discovered is not vanity, Soph,” Nash realised it was the first time in years he’d used his affectionate name for her, “it’s about survival. Knowing how you found us tells us a great many things.”
“Like who I’m working for?”
Feeling his mouth twitch, Nash chose not to answer. “You owe me that much.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“A Rolling Stones t-shirt at least.”
Sophia’s lips pursed. “My superiors put me on the case. Somehow, they were aware of us, seems they always knew. They said I understood you better than anyone and that would somehow help find you wherever you were hiding in the world. The first place I looked was where we’d spent most of our time together, but after an exhaustive search I determined you weren’t in my bedroom.” The renewed attempt at humour falling flat once more seemed to urge her on. “I was assigned various teams, one of which comprised our ace data analysts. They were assigned hefty server and satellite time to run all sorts of facial recognition and profiling searches. They were the ones who found you in Pakistan. That’s when I jumped on a plane. They picked you up again in Singapore. Nice job with the switching profiles and appearances, it almost worked, but AI can counter those sorts of things now.”
That didn’t tell Nash an awful lot. The IT person could have been Tartarus, or someone could have planted it for them to find. He rubbed his temples. All this doublethink wasn’t helping his jetlag.
“How did you know about the wine bar? Your man was in place before we even got there.”
There was no hiding the self-satisfaction on her face. “We had a woman on the ground when you landed. The moment you turned on your mobile phone in baggage claim she spoofed it, cracked it open like an egg. We saw all the websites you’d visited and how long you’d spent on them. The IT bods then took a data dump and trawled for key phrases and anything not related to My Little Pony.” She studied his reaction. She knew the site where he and his group exchanged what he’d thought up until this moment were private messages. “We made the owner of the bar an enormous offer to let us have the place for a few hours and here we are.”
It was plausible enough, but it didn’t exactly answer his questions. Nash needed more.
“How did you find Pinchot?” He shook his head. “Scratch that. How did you know about Pinchot to begin with?”
Her eyes distant, she spoke slowly. “Before I was assigned to find you, my superior Juliette had tasked me to help, uh, root Tartarus out of the DGSE.”
“Surely there’s an internal affairs department? One that—”
“We believe they were the first department Tartarus compromised.”
“Ah.”
“I think that was the real reason Juliette assigned me to go find you. We wanted to get to you first. There’s no way you and your little cohort could have done what they framed you for. Plus, if you were the good guys then we needed to find out what you knew. She sent me, out of everyone at the DGSE, because she couldn’t be sure of anyone else.”
“Why was she so sure of you?” Nash wasn’t certain why he asked the question, but it seemed important.
“Because we were once lovers.” Sophia studied Nash’s face, searching for a reaction.
“That’d do it.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“About you being bi?” Nash raised a quizzical palm. “I’m not going to dismiss it as unimportant, because it isn’t, but I think you know me well enough to know I support you and I’m glad you found out. I hope she made you happy.”
The revelation, while a surprise of sorts, wasn’t entirely shocking either. Like Nash, Sophia had always been an admirer of the female form, its infinite varieties and qualities. He recalled their lamentations about fellow workers who failed to support equality for their LGBTQIA+ compatriots. He meant what he said, he hoped Sophia realising her sexuality had brought her happiness, as that’s all he’d ever wished for her.
“She did make me happy,” her face was raked with a veil of sadness, “until she didn’t. We were better friends in the end.” Sophia folded her arms. “Why did you assume bi and not lesbian?”
Nash shrugged. “Market research.”
It was the first time in years Nash had heard Sophia’s laugh, and he instantly realised how much he’d missed it. Never a shallow fake one, you had to earn it, which made you appreciate it even more. It was a full-throated guffaw.
“Tu es un imbécile.” She exhaled heavily as if a weight had been lifted.
“Are there any other life-altering truth bombs you want to drop?”
Her levity evaporated in an instant, and her face grew paler by the second. She swallowed several times. There was a lot more at play than Nash realised.
Finally regaining the ability to speak, she said, “You were asking about Pinchot?”
Reclaiming her composure, Sophia explained how Pinchot intersected Nash’s story at multiple points. First the CIA and MI6 were after him after the Tartarus compound raid in Puerto Rico. Then again at Seoul, where the story had suddenly morphed into Nash’s Scooby gang attacking an innocent Pinchot for vague and implausible reasons. Then again in Paris, where Nash and his cohort had suddenly become drug dealers. According to Sophia, the framing of Nash, Eva, Bishop and the rest never rang true for her. And if they weren’t responsible, she postulated, then who was?
