Chapter Text
Soho, London
The shop had been in the family for over two hundred and twenty years. Aloysius Zebadiah Fell had hung his name above the door – A Z Fell & Co – in 1800, and rather started a trend. Abraham Zuriel Fell had succeeded him, and Adam Zachary Fell after him. The first woman to hold the title of owner, in 1982, was Alison Zara Fell, maiden name retained for business purposes, and Alison’s husband, an unassuming chap whose family name held no centuries-long tradition, had yielded to the inevitable without much fuss. Their son grew up surrounded by the smell of dusty paper, adventuring in the stacks, exploring the whole world between the covers of the books, and satisfied with that small, beautiful, safe world until he grew up, and sought out wider horizons. But even with the whole exciting globe to explore, sometimes, it was good to come home.
Aziraphale Zephaniah Fell – surely a name that indicated every dark corner of the barrel had been scraped clean – sat back in his worn velvet armchair, on the threadbare rug, at the scuffed old desk, behind the till of the bookshop. Shostakovich was spinning gently on the platter of the old gramophone, he had a mug of cocoa to hand, and a second edition copy (the first editions were for admiring, not casually reading) of the collected works of Poe on the desk. From the mezzanine came the sound of his uncle Andrew, the Fell who currently did the day-to-day of running the shop on his busy nephew’s behalf, bustling about and pom-pom-pomming along with the music. All was calm; all was peace. All was right with the world.
The doorbell rang.
When Aziraphale had forced himself out of the comfortable chair and opened the shop door to the busy Soho street – it was two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, but that didn’t mean the shop was open, of course – there was a man on the doorstep holding a padded envelope and wearing beige shorts. “Hello, sir,” he said, unbearably chipper. “Party name of Fell?”
“Indeed.” Aziraphale took the parcel and signed for it, sighing deeply as he spotted the postage mark which gave the sender away.
“Marvellous place you’ve got here.” The gentleman, who looked mildly familiar, took a step back to admire the building’s frontage. “Quaint.”
“Quite. Thank you -” Aziraphale peered over the top of his reading glasses to see the International Express name badge “- Leslie.”
He tapped his peaked cap. “Have a wonderful day, sir!” he said, and walked away.
“I was doing,” Aziraphale muttered to himself. He shut the door and took the parcel to the backroom.
Aziraphale, by now inured to his employer’s methods, emptied the steel wastepaper bin and placed it sensibly nearby before opening the padded envelope with care. The hardback book inside slid out onto the desk. It was a badly foxed copy of Love in the Time of Cholera; at least the team in charge of hiding the IMF’s missives in plain sight had paid attention to the dressing down he’d given them when they’d butchered a rather rare first edition le Carré for a previous delivery. He flipped back the cover to see, as expected, the block of pages hollowed out and replaced with a screen. It blinked to life and scanned his retinas without even a by-your-leave.
“Agent Fell,” Gabriel’s voice scratched quietly from the built-in speaker, while the screen began to scroll through various informational images, “sorry to interrupt your vacation time. Unfortunately we’re going to have to cut that short. You will recall Professor Shirakawa; you helped him get out of a difficult situation three years ago. He got in touch asking for your help again. He’s been working in the Pathological Exploration, Strategic Treatment and Immunology Labs in Switzerland, and said he had something of great … concern to discuss. We let him know that you would be out to meet him next week, but then the news came in that Professor Shirakawa had died in a plane crash over the Sahara Desert, along with eighty-seven other passengers and crew. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find out why, and what Professor Shirakawa was doing for PESTIL that might have been worth killing him to protect.
“Come out to Seville, where Assistant Director Saraq will provide a full briefing and you will identify and assess what may be a valuable contact. Given the urgency, your team has been picked for you; Technical Specialist Shadwell and Agent Potts will be on the ground shortly. Your plane leaves Heathrow in two hours. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Agent Fell.”
Aziraphale closed the book lid and dropped it into the steel bin, where it began to smoke. Just beyond the backroom was the door to the alleyway where pallets were delivered; he left the bin out there until the sparks stopped spitting. His work phone came out of the drawer next and pinged with a new email once it was turned on; confirmation of a business class ticket from Heathrow to Seville under one of his established names, for which he would have to check-in in just over an hour. Hardly enough time for even the most hardened of cabbies to navigate central London traffic in time to get him there; he’d have to take the tube. The Piccadilly Line. In an unseasonably warm spring. Aziraphale allowed himself one last heartfelt sigh before he would have to get back into professional mode. He hadn’t known Professor Shirakawa well, but he had been a respected and diligent academic, quite convinced that his research with PESTIL’s funding was going to make the world a better place. He would be missed.
“Uncle?” he shouted. Andrew Fell stopped his humming and leaned over the mezzanine rail above the shop floor to see him. “Work called; I need to pack up and get to the airport right away. Sorry I won’t be around to help with the stocktake tomorrow.”
His uncle grumbled, annoyed on his behalf, and Aziraphale went upstairs to his flat to throw some clothes and books, the right passport and the matching credit cards into a carry-on bag, plus his emergency wallet. Professor Shirakawa had most certainly deserved a better end than a mysterious plane crash, and if Aziraphale could find out what had happened, he would be glad to do that much for him. That was the trouble with being dedicated to your job, he reflected. No rest for the … well, good.
Seville, Spain
Sunscreen, hat and sunglasses were all purchased at the airport, and all on him by the time he stepped out of Aeropuerto de Sevilla. He had left his emergency wallet containing his spare ID – a clean passport, credit and debit cards, 500€ cash, driver’s license, a whole spare life under a new name – in a safety deposit box at the airport. It was standard practice for him these days, to make sure that he had a secure way home from any country his work sent him to. Aziraphale made a point of learning from past experience.
There was a taxi outside in the sunshine with a driver holding a sign with a name matching his current passport, Mr Ostra. When the driver gave him the correct greeting, Aziraphale climbed in and tried to relax. He was expecting a cheap hotel on the edges of town but ended up being dropped outside a rather nice place near the centre. Reception gave him a key card and sent him to conference room B, where he had a deeply frustrating ten-minute conversation with Assistant Director Saraq, and then went to his room to shower and cool down.
Aziraphale was a good man, which meant he could never be an excellent spy. He cared too deeply, he worried too much, he had never fully thrown off the concept of guilt. It made him a good spy in many ways – he was loyal and reliable, he was prepared to give up his vacation time and travel internationally on an hour’s notice, he always saw his missions through – but it left him ill-prepared for the times when the job was truly heartless; when all that mattered was the outcome, and not the people wounded along the way.
This was going to be one of those missions, he just knew it.
Assistant Director Saraq was an excellent spy. She wasted no time on the pleasantries. “Professor Shirakawa died three days ago,” she said, and a photograph of the crash site flicked onto the tablet she had handed to Aziraphale. “When he contacted us last week asking for you, he stated that he wanted to speak to you personally, but was not distressed when we explained that you were unavailable for a few days. We had no reason to be concerned enough to call you in until this happened.” The new image was of a badly injured body being zipped into a bag. Aziraphale looked away. Saraq didn’t flinch.
“Did he say anything about why he wanted me? I haven’t seen him in three years.”
“He said only that he wanted someone he could trust, and that he would wait in Switzerland for you to arrive in person next week.”
“So this wasn’t a planned flight, then?”
“We think not.” Saraq paused, weighing him up. “How well do you know Agent Starr?”
Oh dear. “No better than I know anyone else in the wider teams.”
“Do you get along?”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“We disagree on our methods. What has Luke Starr done?” He just about held back the “this time” from his question. He’d never understood why Luke was such a favourite in the IMF.
“We’re not entirely certain, but he’s gone off-grid. He was the agent tasked to talk to Professor Shirakawa in your absence; he was the last person we know to have talked to him. And he disappeared three days ago.”
“Ah. May I … hypothesise?” Saraq gestured to indicate that he had the floor. “Let me see; last year I reported Agent Starr for taking bribes on a mission; I was called a boy scout and told to forget it. Two years ago Agent Starr was briefly suspended for use of excessive force after a family of four were killed in a car bomb explosion he planted in a public car park to eliminate the head of a minor terrorist cell; he was back at work within a month. And three years ago he was taken off the team co-ordinating Professor Shirakawa’s extraction from Johannesburg by me because I was deeply uncomfortable with his lack of caution around and inappropriate interest in the highly lethal pathogens which needed to be transported with the Professor. So my … hypothesis … is that you have a rogue agent, Assistant Director Saraq, and he’s taken matters into his own hands.”
She chewed her lip and knocked her knuckles distractedly against the arm of her wheelchair. “That’s my hypothesis, too.”
“Professor Shirakawa was a world-expert in immunology, which meant that he had access to some truly terrifying pathogens. To the wrong sort of people, they would be worth a great deal of money.”
“Yes, that’s my concern. PESTIL has confirmed that they have had a security incident, but they won’t admit to what just yet. And let’s just say, some activity has been noted in Agent Starr’s records which is now being considered in a new light.”
The conversation fell silent for a moment. “Why are we in Seville?”
“To find someone who can get us to Luke Starr.”
Good. Something productive. “An associate?”
“A past one. Tonya Crawley was linked to Luke Starr before he joined the IMF, when he was still with the CIA.” A grainy black-and-white security image appeared of a tall woman wearing a hat and sunglasses. It could have been nearly anyone. “It’s believed that she may have been an informant of his. Ms Crawley has a minor criminal record for art theft, a little fencing, nothing large-scale, and she rarely comes onto the radar at all; after her last brush with the law, she changed her name to Crowther, then mostly disappeared. We know that tonight she will be at an auction being held at the Museum of Fine Arts. She might be attending legitimately, or she might be casing the artworks. Either way, you need to make contact with her and persuade her to co-operate in sharing anything she knows about Starr’s likely whereabouts if he’s gone to ground, and work her way back into whatever operation he might be spinning up as our eyes and ears. In return, we’ll have her record expunged. You’ll be going in alone tonight; your team is flying in transatlantic, unfortunately. We didn’t want to use anyone from the European offices who had been on a mission lately with Starr.”
“Do we know anything else about Ms Crowther?” Assistant Director Saraq shook her head. “I hate to drag a civilian into these matters,” he said.
“She’s not a civilian, she’s a criminal. Find her and get her on board.”
So after a rushed room-service dinner, Aziraphale forced himself into the tux which was far too hot for this spring heatwave and took a taxi to the Museum, where his invitation to the private event was accepted unhesitatingly. Beyond the public spaces was a roped-off gallery displaying some fascinating examples of Spanish art and sculpture from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; a recent bequest to the Museum, a sign informed him, and probably well worth the attention of an art thief if one should happen to be in the area. The photograph would be less than useless in identifying Ms Crowther, since all it told him was that she was tall (or wore high heels), light-skinned and knew how to wear a hat with style. Heaven knew what she looked like now.
But Aziraphale was a spy, and a good one, and a minor inconvenience like narrowing down one hundred guests to find one art thief wouldn’t be close to the hardest thing he’d done this year. He accepted a glass of cava from a waiter – he was in Spain, after all – and started work.
An hour later, Aziraphale had assessed and discounted about half the room, mostly by listening in on conversations, recognising several aristocrats, diplomats and politicians, and, once or twice, picking pockets to check IDs. It would all have been much simpler if he’d had Shadwell in his earpiece as Technical Specialist, using a contact lens camera to run facial recognition scans, and the inimitable Agent Potts dressed up to the nines so they could tackle the room together. They would both be at the hotel by morning, and by morning no one knew where Ms Crowther would have got to, if he didn’t succeed in finding her now. He took up station behind a rather tall lady and her very short friend, taking in the artwork on the wall until he heard the friend call her “Edith”, and moved on.
There was another tall figure nearby, standing on her own, although Aziraphale had to squeeze past several gawking men to get close enough to see her properly. They were speaking rather disrespectfully about her in Spanish, and Aziraphale levelled a glare in their direction as he rounded a statue that was blocking his view. From this angle, her carefully styled hair fell over one eye and hid most of the side of her face, although her profile was …
… her carefully styled red hair …
… oh no …
They were a tall, slender redhead, with a glass of rioja in one hand, and the fingers of the other pressed gently to ruby-red lips, seemingly lost in thought. They were wearing a floor-length black gown with subtle shimmer, a green belt, and a golden snake around their neck, like a torc.
Damn it all, J always looked like temptation incarnate.
They had met up once since their weekend in St Moritz eighteen months ago, a chance evening in Gothenburg when they both happened to be passing through. They compared notes occasionally on locations they were visiting, on a very encrypted messaging app, but rarely did things line up. J had texted him to say “any chance you’re in Sweden?” and he, having been on a mission in Oslo at the time, had replied to say, “not yet – give me 48 hours?” He’d booked them a luxurious hotel room, and though much use had been made of the bed – and shower, and dining table, and the balcony, where J had pointed out some constellations then made him see stars – Aziraphale had got barely an hour’s sleep. He’d left at six that morning to catch a flight to Istanbul, still on his mission, leaving J looking thoroughly and happily fucked-out in the Egyptian cotton sheets, and wished afterwards that he’d had the nerve to ask for a photograph. Despite a few texts back and forth since then, they had been at least a continent, and sometimes a hemisphere, apart.
Well, they were a lot closer than that now, and it was a cruel fate that decreed this should happen just when Aziraphale was on a mission and on the clock, and could not afford the distraction.
What he ought to do was move on. There were dozens more candidates in the room for this Ms Crowther, and he knew that there was a charity auction planned shortly, and then some speeches, which would move everyone around the space and he could easily lose track of who he had already eliminated.
He really ought to walk away before J spotted him. He knew the effect they had on him.
Aziraphale made a point of trying to learn from past experience.
He didn’t always manage.
“What a remarkably beautiful sight,” he said as he stood beside them.
They glanced over at him, but the only sign of recognition was that the snarl died on their lips. “Hmm?” was all they said, in the end.
He gestured towards the painting. “The de Castro,” he clarified; it was a rather striking Madonna and Child. “Beautiful.”
“Indeed. Shocking to think it was locked away in a private collection until now, isn’t it?”
“Quite. Beauty deserves to be appreciated.”
“I agree.” He looked at them; it was the first he had seen of their eyes this time. Not genetic-anomaly gold now, but still enhanced, he thought; hazel brown with golden sparks around the centre. When he’d seen them in Gothenburg they had been natural chestnut.
“Are you in town on business, Mr …?”
“Ostra,” he said, extending a hand. “Zachary Ostra.” They shook. “Yes, as it happens. Are you here for work or pleasure yourself?”
“Oh, something of both, but mostly pleasure, Mr Ostra. At least I hope so,” they laughed, and he laughed with them. “Is your business going to keep you busy?”
“Unfortunately, it might,” he conceded, and they nodded, understanding his predicament.
“Then I shan’t keep you, Mr Ostra. Good luck with your business this evening.” And then more quietly, “and message me if you finish earlier than expected.”
“Sadly, I am right at the beginning of a project.”
“Ah. Good evening, Mr Ostra.”
“Good evening, Mx …?”
“Dr Crowther!” Someone dressed in the museum uniform was suddenly at their elbow. “Dr Crowther, the auction is about to begin, but I have an excellent seat reserved for you, ma’am, so if you would like to come with me…”
J hadn’t moved, but held a hand out towards Aziraphale, this time with a card between her fingers, and smiled calmly while his heart started jumping in his chest. “Antonia Crowther,” she said, “Dr Antonia Crowther.” She left with the assistant, and Aziraphale turned the sheet of cardstock over in his hands. Dr Antonia Crowther, she/her, Fine Art Acquisitions & Security. He had to draw on all his training not to curse aloud.
Two minutes after Antonia had taken her seat for the auction, the phone in her bag buzzed silently. She fished it out, and was not even slightly surprised to see a message from Angel on the encrypted app.
The three dots flashed up, disappeared, flashed again, and she took the message.
She put the phone away and focused on her bids.
“So I take it this is still business, not pleasure?” said Antonia, an hour later, out on the balcony. It had been the nearest private spot Aziraphale could find that wouldn’t set off a security laser grid.
“Unfortunately so. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise; I was only given a name.”
“I’m surprised; it’s not one I use often. Antonia does like to patronise the arts, though; give something back.” She accepted the drink Aziraphale offered her. He wished they were here for a better reason; part of his imagination which he did not want to acknowledge was having no difficulty picturing them here for purely social reasons, admiring the art together, enjoying the complimentary drinks, sneaking out onto the balcony to make out until her lipstick was smudged over them both. The black dress she was wearing covered her from wrist to neck to toes, even ascending up the column of her throat and stretching down her hands, not an inch of skin beside her fingers and her face visible, and she was easily the most alluring person he’d seen all evening.
Or perhaps the dress had nothing to do with it. Perhaps that was just her.
Thinking like this was not helping.
“Did you fair well at the auction?” he asked.
“Pretty successful; I didn’t get the Madonna but I’d had my eye on a sculpture of angels wrestling which I think I’ve just the spot for at home.”
“I thought you said it was a shame to have the Madonna in a private collection?”
“It is; if I’d won it, I’d have donated it to the Museum. Pretty sure that’s why they invite me to these things. As it is, it’s going to end up in someone’s villa all over again.” She sipped her wine and shrugged. “Can’t be helped. Now, how I can help you?”
“I, er,” Aziraphale started. Then stopped, and tried again. “I’m trying to track down a missing person; probably someone in hiding rather than involuntarily missing. Your name came up as a known associate, and since you had just purchased a flight out here, you were the easiest to find.”
“Oh. Well, I have an awful lot of associates, angel; I’m not in a position to share much about many of them. Client confidentiality, you understand. Rather essential in my line of work.”
“Of course, but the person I’m looking for might have – most likely has – stolen a highly contagious pathogen, and I need to contain this before we have a bioterrorism incident on our hands.”
She looked at him more narrowly. “Then I probably don’t know them. You know I don’t choose to do business with people like that. My … less than legal side of the business is mostly supplying private security companies these days, and that’s not even getting them things which are blacklisted, just getting them more quickly and with fewer hurdles. And the information trading … no one in that world wants their hands dirty with terrorism charges.”
She had explained her rather crooked morality to him before, he remembered. Still, the intelligence he had received was credible. “My dear, you’re an arms dealer, I’m sure you associate with-”
“No, I’m not, actually, these days,” she said, a sharp, offended edge to her tone. “If you’d asked how the business was going lately, I’d have told you it’s mostly legit. Specialty brokering, matching up customers with extremely niche suppliers internationally. The off-the-books stuff was only about fifteen percent of turnover last year; it was never more than thirty. And you’re acting very holier-than-thou considering that the most high-risk item I’ve bought in years was from you.”
“Well, I am holier than thou, quite a lot, that’s the whole point! I’m glad your business interests are legitimising, but the fact remains that you worked in the underworld for years, and you likely know all kinds of unsavoury types.”
Antonia folded her arms across her chest. Aziraphale received the definite impression that any invitation back to her hotel room that night was sliding off the table, and fast.
“So why on earth do you think I know a biological terrorist?”
“The, er, the name Tonya Crowther came up on a list of…”
“Tonya?” Sudden, absolute fury. “Where the fuck did you get that name? No one’s used that in fifteen years!”
“… list of past associates…” but she wasn’t listening.
“Fuck! No one calls me that, no one – ever! The only place Tonya still exists as a name is on the restraining order I’ve got against Luke Fucking Starr!”
“Luke Starr.” Aziraphale couldn’t put the pieces together fast enough to catch up. “Yes, that’s who I’m looking for.”
“Well, I am not! I don’t want anything to do with him, not ever, not again!”
“Did a … deal go badly?”
“What? No! I mean, yes, all the time if Luke Starr’s involved, but I didn’t do business with him.”
“I – I took it you were his informer, when he was with the CIA. He’s not a … past associate?”
The door to the balcony swung open soundlessly, and one of the henchmen Aziraphale recognised from his first meeting with Antonia stepped out. The pale man with scruffy blond hair looked ridiculously out of place in a formal suit. “Beg pardon, Dr Crowther, but the door’s not soundproof. Is everything alright out here,” he looked at Aziraphale, “or is someone at risk of slipping and falling off the balcony?”
Antonia leaned back against the stonework and managed a deep, not-very-calming, breath. “No, Hass; it’s fine. Thanks for checking up.” He closed the door again, and she stared out over the city for a long moment; she looked like she was counting to ten. Gradually she did seem to calm again.
“I haven’t seen or heard of Luke Starr in fifteen years. Is he still with the CIA or did he get kicked out in the end?”
“Kicked out? No, he was promoted to the IMF about five years ago.”
“You work with him?” The fury was layered thickly in her voice.
“Not any longer. I’ve made two separate disciplinary complaints against him over the years, not that either of them stuck. He’s been very much the golden child at the IMF. I’m afraid his … off-books dealings are only just coming to light. But I did work with him, a few years ago, and he may have leveraged that to kill someone who trusted me. I need to find him before anyone else gets hurt. And I need anything you can give me that will help.”
“I can’t help you with this.”
“You don’t have to know about his recent actions, but you might know other associates of his, or old boltholes, patterns of behaviour-”
“I can’t help you with this. I don’t know anything about Luke, at all.”
“Do you think there’s still any trust there? If you were to reach out, offer him an attractive opportunity – you wouldn’t need to carry it through, we only need enough response from him to pinpoint a location-”
“No.”
“- or if you were able to get into his inner circle again now, if he would trust you, then you might be in a position to gather valuable intelligence-”
“No!”
When she turned to face Aziraphale at last, she looked tired in a way he had never seen. The words forced themselves out. “Ex-boyfriend,” she said. “Luke’s my obsessive controlling sociopath ex-boyfriend.”
… oh …
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
“Hence … the restraining order.”
“Exactly.”
“And the man I’m hunting on suspicion of having killed a world-leading immunologist in order to steal and sell some of humanity’s worst bio-engineered pathogens.”
“Jesus Christ.” She looked out over the city again. “I haven’t a clue where Luke is these days; I left him fifteen years ago, when he was based in Seattle, but I had to disappear into a new identity to get away. I only ever use this name now when I’m working with the art world, which he never had any interest in, and I need to leverage the professional title. And I never – ever – use Tonya. That was his name for me.”
Aziraphale felt numb. “Thank you for correcting me,” he said, his voice hollow. “I won’t forget.”
“Ah, fuck.” Antonia crumpled back against the wall, her weight heavy against it. “Luke really turned to … to biological weapons? When I knew him, he was just taking bribes to make evidence disappear, some light fencing, insider trading; nothing that half of law enforcement doesn’t do if they think they can get away with it.”
“It looks that way.” In truth, Aziraphale’s phone had pinged three times during the evening with new pieces of evidence filtered through Assistant Director Saraq; what had looked like a hunch this afternoon was rapidly being corroborated by a pile of circumstantial evidence the forensic computing and financial investigators in the IMF were turning up. Luke Starr had attended an international drug development conference two months ago, ostensibly as a cover for a mission, and been making enquiries into pharmaceutical companies, digging through the detailed information the IMF held. There was evidence of several files and records having been deleted from IMF servers very thoroughly in the last three days, although no one had traced what exactly they had been yet. And there were some financial irregularities, sums of money popping into accounts and immediately disappearing again, which looked like computer glitches until someone had a reason to look closer.
“If he’s turned terrorist, it won’t be for ideological reasons; it’ll be for money. Man wouldn’t know an ideology if it smacked him in the head.”
“I’m so sorry to have brought any of this up with you at all,” he managed. “Please believe me, I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. I do believe you.” The briefest attempt at a slight smile flicked on her mouth. “You’re not a monster.”
“Was he … forgive me for prying but, the restraining order, was he…”
“Violent? Yeah, but not with me. And he always had people around who were happy to be violent on his behalf, so his knuckles never had to get skinned. Luke was controlling; acted like he owned me. And when I left, he just couldn’t let it go. That was when I first hired Hass and Līgo, when it became clear that American law enforcement really couldn’t give a fuck about restraining orders if they were against a CIA agent. Līgo and Hass; they help even the odds.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
She nodded and paced the balcony, and looked frustrated at her empty glass. “A biological weapon?” she said despairingly. “Seriously?” Aziraphale could not deny it. “Urgh – I probably do know someone who still knows someone in his circles. I did try to cut all ties but there’s only so many people in the weapons trade. I can – I can make a couple of enquiries, maybe –”
“No, Antonia, please don’t, you don’t need to do anything on this. Just forget I mentioned it, we’ll find another route.”
“Yeah, and I’m gonna feel great about that decision when there’s cholera in the water, or everyone’s coming down with … turbo-measles or the Plague or something. I can ask Ducky if he’s heard anything; Ducky’s got ears everywhere. Or Shax.” She paused. “You know, he … even in the middle of a big project, Luke would come out of the woodwork if he thought he could get me back. I know it sounds big-headed but I am very well aware he’s still looking for Tonya.”
“Oh no, no, don’t even think it, please!”
“To stop Luke selling bioweapons or getting into an agreement with the type of people who want to buy that shit? I don’t think I can justify doing nothing.”
“You don’t need to put yourself in such a position! I’ll find an alternative lead.”
“If you had a better lead than me, you would be there already.”
That was frustratingly accurate, and Aziraphale knew it. But still he could not let Antonia drop her guard to someone she had protected herself against for fifteen years. “Antonia –”
“Angel.”
There was no negotiation in that tone; the doubt had been driven out. Antonia had made a decision.
Aziraphale sighed. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No, I think maybe I do.”
“I should never have asked it of you.”
“Asked me to do what, angel? To do the right thing? ‘Bout time I had a go at that; I’ve tried everything else. Or is it the lying my way back into his inner circle part that you think you shouldn’t have asked of me? I do have to say, doing the right thing is a lot more underhanded than I was expecting.”
“I should never have asked you to put yourself back onto Luke’s radar. You’re not a spy; you’ve no training for this type of undercover work.”
She laughed, and he so wanted to believe her determined lightheartedness. “Oh, I can act, angel; I’ll be fine! I wouldn't have survived the underworld this long without some improv skills. I played Puck in a school production of Midsummer Night’s Dream when I was fifteen; I’m sure it’ll come flooding back. After all, all the world’s a stage.” She grinned.
Don’t go, he wanted to say. Don’t do it. I’ll find another way, I’ll find a safer choice, there has to be another option. He said none of it; she already knew it would have been a lie. I’ll keep you safe.
“Wrong play,” was what he said in the end.
She rolled her eyes. “Believe it or not, I have read one or two of them. Look, I haven’t finished seeing the exhibit yet, and I’m actually here because the Museum asked me to consult on their new security systems, so I have to go. We can talk later once I’ve had a chance to think, alright?”
What safety measures were the IMF prepared to put into this mission? Could he get satellite tracking, a back-up team, could he get full undercover support? Would the IMF agree to wipe any criminal record associated with Dr Crowther’s name, as well as whatever might have been on the deadname Luke knew? Aziraphale needed to talk to Saraq, and quickly, before Antonia agreed to something where the risks were just too high.
He nodded once, sharply. “Later. Yes.”