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Breathe out.
Long and slow, every ounce of breath out. Hold. Feel the muscles relax, bones shifting slightly. Feel the heartbeat slow, the mind calming.
Breathe in.
He blinked, slowly and deliberately; clearing his eyes and bringing focus back as he opened them. The image in the telescopic sight jumped back into sharp clarity, filling his world with the scene playing out four city blocks away from him. The brick wall of the embassy building framing a single window of flat, unreflective glass filled the eyepiece, and beyond the glass a room, bland and institutional, lit with harsh, fluorescent lighting.
The Black nation’s top agent had watched this same view for three hours now through the scope of his rifle, prone on his belly and well out of sight on the roof of an abandoned department store. And he would lay here for as long as he had to, for as long as it took, because intelligence today had said only one thing: “The agent code named White will be at the White nation embassy today. Priority target.”
***
The sun had been hot, blazing through the thin overcast layer that tried miserably to shade the practice range. How many hours had he been there that day? He couldn’t tell. The only time that mattered was the count of his heartbeats and breaths.
“You’re the best in the current batch, soldier, else you wouldn’t be here.” Her voice startled him, making him jerk enough to destroy his aim down range. He cursed more at that than the surprise.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, trying to stand and salute and not become tangled in his sniper sling all at the same time. She smiled, that bright, lovely smile she only rewarded the best with. “But it’s not enough yet. I can’t do it every time.”
“Not even the best sniper can,” she sighed, “that’s not what matters. It’s making the right shot hit when it needs to. Do that, soldier, and you’ll be the best there’s ever been.”
***
The gloved hand grabbed his wrist with a bone-grinding grip, twisting until his fingers went numb and dropped the short-bladed knife. Black swore, punching out with his free hand, trying to drive White away. The other spy stepped back, dazed as the blow smashed into the bridge of his nose, but turned the retreat into a yanking jerk that brought Black to the floor.
White was on him in a moment, fists seeking flesh, with a snarl twisting his long face. Black tried to roll to avoid the blows, but found himself pinned under the other’s weight. A hand, grasping for purchase, found White’s collar and jerked downward, trying to at least rob the blows of their momentum. White shot a hand out and grabbed Black’s throat to stop himself being pulled.
It was like being pistol-whipped. The shock, the sudden emptiness in his mind, stopped anything from registering until he was jerking away, rolling free, and standing. The taste in his mouth, his own blood mixed with a cooler, metal and tobacco taste, the feeling on his lips. White had kissed him. He could feel the other spy’s lips on his own, a lingering tingling well after it was gone. He turned, eyes and face open in surprise.
White met him with a raised, club-like baton, and smashed his face in.
***
There was still no sign of movement in the embassy.
He had chosen this position carefully, based on a survey of the building’s blueprints, as the window into the office of secretary to the head of White nation Intelligence for this region. He had seen the man enter earlier in the morning, passing through the front office where the window was to his own beyond, but there had been no sign of the secretary yet. Her absence made Black nervous.
Perhaps the intelligence had been wrong; it had been before. Perhaps White was thousands of miles away, or Black had chosen wrong when he had guessed where in the building White would come. But he would wait, here in the meager shade made by his camo-net, letting the sun beat down the rooftop around him, patent as a stone.
But his gut told him he was right: White would be here. All he had to do was wait.
***
He awoke from unconsciousness with White’s snub-nosed pistol aimed at his face. Arms handcuffed behind his back, legs shackled loosely to one another, his clothes gone. Only the last made him pause, staring at White. Six months since their last meeting, since his nose and cheek had been broken, since they had kissed. He started to speak.
“No. You get no say in this,” White growled. His eyes burned a dark, smoldering color in the dim light of wherever they were. A gloved hand grabbed Black’s shoulder, shoving him onto his side.
Black did what his training told him to do. He closed off everything from his mind, ignoring his body and what was about to happen to it. This came with the job. It happened. He did not fight, he did not resist.
When White made him open his eyes and watch, he wished he had never seen the look on White’s face.
***
Eight months later Black botched a theft inside a White military research bunker half way around the world. The alarm screamed, booted feet pounded on industrial carpet, and doors sealed themselves. Black only knew one tactic, and that was to hide. Curled into a crawl space between two massive banks of computing equipment in a disused section of the bunker’s basement, he waited.
Two hours passed, then four, then eight. He heard the occasional booted tread approach, then retreat, never checking where he was hidden. He heard voices, often angry, then more annoyed, but only rarely.
Ten hours. He heard two voices and pairs of footsteps approaching. One made him freeze. White’s voice. White rounded a corner, and was visible through the crack in the paneling where Black was hidden for a moment. He looked right at the spot where Black was hidden, then away to whomever was with him.
“He’s gone.”
Two hours later, when lockdown was removed, Black used the utility tunnel he’d gained entrance through to leave. In White’s tight handwriting the words “You’re welcome” were chalked on the inside of the door.
***
The secretary came into her office an hour later. The day was more than half over now. She had appeared out of sorts, nervous and anxious, as she had shoved her way into the office and set down her purse on the desk. She had called someone on the office phone, apologized profusely for a few moments, then settled down a bit.
Even afterwards, she still seemed nervous and under stress. She fidgeted and looked out the window every few minutes. Black frowned, watching her behavior with growing concern. Had she simply had a bad morning, or did she know he was here? Yet even as she kept glancing out the window, she never raised an alarm.
Black remained still, watching her.
***
“Poison? Really? In my drink!” Black nearly spit the words at the struggling White nation spy as he held him pinned to the wall, arm bent behind him, gun to the back of White’s blond head. “I was going to ignore that you were even here, going to just go about my mission!” I was going to, he did not say, pay you back the favor and let you live.
White tried to speak, but Black cut him off too fast. “Whatever’s wrong with you, whatever sick game your playing with me, it ends here. Right now.”
The noise that came from White made Black pause long enough White could speak. The words made him release White.
But Black never lowed his gun, never dropped his aim, even as White walked from the room.
Black could still taste White’s kiss on his lips days later.
***
Their meetings were sometimes random, sometimes coordinated. They never sought contact unless mission orders dictated it, yet some meetings were purely coincidental. They could not risk anything more. No contact, no messages, no communication.
No trust. No secession of hostilities. Never being off guard.
Once in a hidden corner of a major military manufacturing center, cold cement and rusting metal surrounding them. A hand around White’s throat, White’s ivory handled dagger at his own. The cold steel on hot flesh had nearly driven him out of his mind. He had stolen back a roll of microfilm from White’s pocket in the process.
Again one night on a beach two miles from a submarine base: White had intercepted him as he was about to arm a short ranged missile to take out the base. In the moonlight, the enemy spy’s hair was silver, his skin as white as marble. Black wanted to touch every inch. He awoke naked and handcuffed on the sand at dawn, just as the tide was licking his feet.
He only wished, just once, it could be without the violence between them – without everything else attached to who they were. It couldn’t ever. It would never. There would always be that between them, and they had to remind themselves of it every time.
It can never be anything but this.
***
The normal working hours of the embassy were coming to a close. The secretary was still nervously glancing out the window, now alternating with her watch. Black frowned.
There was still no sign of White.
Shadows lengthened, and the air began to cool. Black dutifully adjusted his aim, careful to minimize movement.
The phone on the desk must have rung. The secretary jumped slightly, then answered it. She nodded and seemed to be lost in thought as she listened to it. She hung up, and dialed another number immediately. The conversation was brief. She hung up again, then began to gather her belongings.
As the door shut behind her, Black began a litany of curses in his mind.
***
White vanished off the intelligence radar for nearly eight months. No sign, no mission orders, no personnel updates, no confirmed kill. It was as if he simply no longer existed.
Two months in, he was given orders to locate the rival spy. His superiors knew the other was dangerous; and he was even more so if they did not know where he was. Black gladly complied. He combed the data, dug through his nation’s networks and contacts. There was no sign.
Four months in to it, Black began his own hunt. City after city, he searched personally, checking his own contacts and his own information network. He pulled more morgue drawers than he ever wanted to open. His heart felt as if it were trying to break with each one. There was still no sign.
Six months in, Black was under pressure from his superiors to give up the project, to abandon it in favor of another mission. He told them in no uncertain terms that this was his priority, and it should be theirs’ as well. They laughed at him, and told him White was dead, that he should celebrate. He only cursed them and continued to search.
***
After seven months he found a cold trail, and followed it half way around the world to a small ski town. It was early fall, before the season began, and finding White had not been hard in a town so small. Civilian clothes, longer hair, round wire-rimmed glasses perched on that thin, angular nose: even then he knew White from across the café’s main room. For once, the look on White’s face had been impossible for him to read.
Fear and anger gave way to gut wrenching relief. It overwhelmed them, for once overcoming mistrust and other loyalties. They made love on the hearthrug of White’s hotel room with nothing between them but their own skin. No violence, no pain, no other obligations: only the desperation of separated lovers reunited.
Black awoke to a paid hotel bill and a note in tight, careful handwriting. “We can never do that again. Next time, I will kill you.”
***
Twenty minutes after the secretary left, the director opened his office door. He did not have his coat or briefcase, only a folder in one hand. He stood in front of the secretary’s desk, one hand in his pants pocket, glancing around, often checking his watch. The man was nervous, and clearly waiting for someone.
Black’s heart raced. He tried to slow it, to bring his breathing and pulse back down. He focused hard to keep his aim fixed. It would not serve to undo hours of careful adjustments when it seemed very likely the target would be present shortly.
Breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold: over and over until his pulse slowed to match his breathing. But adrenaline made his nerves sing and his blood burn.
He licked his dry lips, tasting city air and his own flesh. Soon.
***
Shock and disbelief had become anger, cold and hard in his gut. The flames started by the explosion licked at the sky; smoke billowing up from the wreckage of the apartment complex. Black wiped blood from his eyes, running across his face from one of numerous cuts from the shrapnel, and cursed as another spasm of pain lanced up his right leg from the ankle he was sure was broken.
The bomb had been in the middle of his kitchen, enough explosive to do ten times the damage needed. He had only survived because he had dived off the balcony, likely how he had broken his ankle, then plunged fully dressed into the complex swimming pool. He had felt the heat of the explosion and the concussive force touch him just as the water closed over his head.
Now, wet, cold and bleeding, the only thing that he could think was that the bomb has been White’s. It had his signature building style, too fancy and dramatic, and far overkill. White meant what he had said, and had tried to kill him.
Tried and failed.
Black fished his car keys from a sodden pocket and limped over to the non-descript vehicle in the lot next door. White would have to try harder, and get to him before Black killed him first.
***
He pressed the muzzle of the pistol against White’s neck, pushing hard to keep White’s attention on the weapon. He held him pinned face first against a brick wall, arm bent back in an ever tightening grip. Black could feel bones grinding against one another, feel White struggling to find purchase to get away. Black only held him, trying hard to ignore the smell of the other man’s skin, so close to him.
“It’s in my right coat pocket.” White hissed, his voice slightly higher pitched with strain.
“I don’t care,” said Black.
“What the hell do you want then?” White asked, nerves creeping into his voice.
Thoughts raced in Black’s mind. I want you, I want us, I want not to have to do this, I want to sleep at night without the nightmares, I want you next to me every night, I want ….
“I want you dead,” he said, the voice dead even to his own ears.
White struggled, strength seemingly renewed. Black felt his finger tug on the trigger, hard metal cold even though the soft leather of his glove. His mind swam, his nose full of that smell of flesh and fear. He leaned forward, pressing White against the wall with his own body weight until his lips were only centimeters from White’s ear.
He whispered softly, lips barely moving; “I know why it can’t be anything but this, now.”
Black drew away, shivering, cursing himself. White turned like a snake, hands coming up in fists. Black swung once, feeling his knuckles crack as they hit the side of White’s head. White slumped, falling amongst the litter in the alleyway. Black bent and checked for a pulse, laying White in a more comfortable position, and then kissed him.
Because, he said to himself as he turned to walk away, now I can’t kill you.
***
Breath froze in his throat. The door opened, and a tall, white clad figure entered. Silvery blond hair under a broad white hat, clear eyes sharply aware as they swept the room, a face burned into his memory looked nearly dead at him before turning towards the director. Black’s heart pounded.
White smiled, but the expression did not touch his eyes. He reached out a hand, either to take the folder or to shake. The director’s face flinched for a moment, then he lifted his hand from his pants pocket.
Time froze for Black.
A silvery revolver glinted in the late afternoon sun, White’s eyes fixed on it as reflex began to take over and he dived for the floor.
Breathe out. Hold. Pull.
Two shots rang out, close together, and the thick pane of glass shattered, blinding him to all but the sudden spray of blood and brains.
Breathe in.
***
Black sat alone, huddled in a dark corner at the end of the bar. Dark wood and dim lights hid him in the gloom, and even if the bar hadn’t been empty except for him and the bartender, he would have been nearly invisible.
He drank another sip from his drink, aware painfully of how it dulled his senses but not the seething storm of thoughts in his mind.
The bells by the door jangled discordantly, and a blast of cold late autumn air gusted in around the figure that entered. He eyed the person, then felt his face go slack in shock.
“Sir!” His hand nearly snapped up in a salute, a reflex older than any of his self-preservation. She turned to look at him as she walked in, her eyes first puzzled, then recognition dawning.
Age had been kind to her. White hair, still severely cut, framed a face as tan and hard as old leather. But it smiled with practiced grace, her eyes lighting slightly at the pleasure of seeing and old and familiar face.
He offered her the seat next to him, bought her a drink, and heard his name spoken for the first time in nearly two decades. He tried not to wince at it, but rather enjoyed the distraction.
***
“You know they sent me to find you.” He frowned, glaring. “It must be bad, if they dig me up out of retirement, and the psyc guys at that.” He stayed silent, watching her with distrust. “I knew where they shipped you off to, after you left. No one talks about it, but we all know what those orders mean. But you were my best student, even after all this time I’ll say that. I’m glad you’re alive.”
He finally spoke. “Did they tell you why they wanted me found? Why they wanted you to talk to me?” She nodded only slightly, as if knowing that what she had been told was likely not the truth.
“They think you might defect, or may have already. But you’re too valuable to simply shoot down.” The tone of her voice was icy.
“I’m not going to. You can tell them that. I simply…I needed some time to think.”
“Let me ask you this, and you answer me, soldier. When you make the shot, is it the shot that counts? The one that matters?”
He started, looking at her. How much had they told her? How much had they learned from the surveillance tapes.
He remembered in vivid detail still, White diving for the floor, the director aiming at White’s back, then his own shot ringing through the glass, shattering it, before tearing the man’s head in half. The man, not even quite aware he was dead yet, still managed to fire, his shot going wild. And then White getting away, scrambling out of the office, before Black managed to load his own gear and evacuate his position.
“Yes,” he said, looking at her. “I can still make the shot when it matters.”
She nodded. “Good.”