I sigh. "Gettin' pretty far off track here, but this was before I joined the service. Some lads I ran about London with, causing trouble, if I'm being honest. Mostly boosting cars and being vagrants, with the occasional bout of drunkenly picking fights with rich wankers."
"And you stole a caravan? Which is…?"
"I think your lot call it a camper."
“I’m confused."
"Oi, keep up. A big thing with wheels what you can live in. Got a kitchen and a shitter an' all, yeah? But you've got to have a jeep to tow it with. We stole a jeep and a caravan and did a runner right out of London. Made it as far as Taunton before the law caught up to us."
She blinks. “Well, I have no idea where Taunton is, but I guess it doesn't matter. So what then?"
"I get sent down. Went to jail, meanin'. That's where Leftenant Rodrick Ulysses found me."
"That's his name? For real?"
I nod. "Absolutely. He was an absolute unit, too. Sort of bloke who could crush bricks with his bare hands. Saw him do it, matter of fact. And the short version of that story is that jolly old Leftenant Ulysses told me I could rot in prison for a laundry list of crimes—which, by the way, was only what they could pin on me and not even the half of what I actually done—or I could join the military and he'd fast-track me into the SAS. Turns out I'd taken some test or other during a short stint of attending a proper secondary school, and that test showed an aptitude or something? I dunno. They heard about me somehow and decided an orphan with no family and no education would make a great fuckin' operator. Guess they was right, ey? Coz I was. I am. I'm a legit fuckin' top-tier operator. But what I'm not is a good soldier. Which brings me back to the original story."
Bryn grins at me. "See what I did there?"
I frown. "No, I don't."
"I got a whole bunch more information about you out of you and you didn't even notice."
This gets a laugh out of me. "You're a sneaky one, you are. Make a hell of an interrogator.”
"So, you're carparked at a pub, and in walks a woman." Bryn rolls her hand. "Carry on."
"She was a proper fit, Vivian was. Had no idea who she was, or I'd not have touched her with a ten-foot pole. But then, all’s I saw was a gorgeous woman. Some bit older than me, maybe, but so what? I've had some great sex with older women."
Bryn arches her brow at me. "Nice."
"What? It's true, and it's context. You wanted to know. I didn't know how old she was or who she was. She didn't look her age, and she didn't introduce herself as 'Vivian Goddard, wife of Major-General Albert Goddard, Director of Special Forces.' Nah. She sat down next to me, ordered a G-and-T, and chatted me up. Said her name was Viv. I had no reason to think she was anyone special. So, you know, we shagged. She paid for a room at a hotel. I assumed she was in town on business or something—I didn't ask. Wasn't that kind of thing, I thought. Figured we'd just shag a time or two and she'd pop along her merry way."
"I'm guessing that's not what happened."
"Not exactly, no. She showed at the pub again the next weekend. Same hotel, same room. This time, she gave me a key and told me to be there at the same time the next week. And it was just sex. She was Viv, I was Rush, we didn’t talk about our lives, or who we were, or our jobs. Nothing personal, ever. Figured she came into town on business every week, and I was her little plaything while she was in town. I was fine with the arrangement when that’s all I thought it was.”
"But then?" Bryn prompts.
“Bu then…" I sigh. "There was an event. We all had to dress out in our parade uniforms and attend some ball or other. Stuffy, boring, formal bullshit. We all hated it, but when brass says dance, you dance. And guess who I saw waltzing with her husband, the commander of all special forces in the UK? Viv. Gussied up in an expensive gown, dripping in diamonds and looking quite different from the lady who was laughing in bed with me just a few days prior."
Bryn laughs. "Oh god. I bet that was a shock."
"To say the least, yeah. Nearly fainted, honestly."
"So how did the commander find out?"
"He started to suspect something and had her followed. Had photographs of us together."
Bryn winces. "Oof. Not good."
"Yeah nah," I drawl. "I got a summons to Goddard's office. Which I don't have to tell you don't bode well. A nobody soldier like me don't get summoned to the office of the D-S-F. It just ain't done. But that's what happened. Found myself sitting in his office getting the dressing down of a lifetime. Didn't matter I didn't know, obviously. But it was delicate, it turns out. He didn't want to risk social or political embarrassment as he had political aspirations or some such, so he needed me to keep quiet about it. But he also couldn't let it go that I'd shagged his wife. So I signed an NDA, got summarily booted, and got a referral to work for a bloke who could use my skills."
"Pugli?" Bryn asks.
I laugh. "Nah, nothin' like that. He was former SAS like me doing security work. Pugli came later, when the more above-board work dried up and it was take the offer or start working the grease baskets at the local chippie."
Zurich, 0700 hours. Bryn is asleep against the window, mouth slightly agape as she snores softly. We've chased this fuckstain from Geneva to Zurich and now we've lost him in Zurich—he played a trick on us, using several identical decoy cars in a game of shuffle. I'm exhausted, irritable, hungry, and antsy for the boring fucking slow chase through the lush Swiss landscape to be over.
