QUIS CUSTODIET…?

By Valerie

There seemed to be less traffic than usual, and the taxi got me to the Academy of Fine Arts in no time, or so it seemed. I went in to the appropriate gallery and handed in my invitation, apologising for being so early. The woman smiled pleasantly, invited me to help myself to a glass of wine and look round the exhibition. Mr Alvarez, she explained, was expected but had not arrived yet. I did as she suggested.

The paintings were very much to Claudia's taste, and I was tempted to investigate a couple of them further, although it was clear most of the pictures came from private collections and were not for sale. But the man was a highly talented artist and deserved his success.

I was studying a particularly fine still life, when I heard raised voices and the name "Mr Alvarez" spoken loudly. The artist had arrived, and everyone was making a fuss of him. I slowly wandered back towards the entrance, using the screens as a shield, so that I could observe him discreetly. I found a good view of the back of his head - there was something disturbingly familiar about that short, brown, curly hair.

"How many are here?" I heard him ask in a husky voice. It's uncanny how a Spanish accent can make a notoriously gay man sound incredibly sexy.

"There's a promising number," the woman answered vaguely. "I expect people to start arriving within the next half hour. Why don't you help yourself to some wine?"

"Thanks," he said. "I will." He looked round, and as I caught sight of his face, I froze. This could not be! Not again! I walked round the screens, put my wineglass down on the nearest table and walked towards the exit, past the guest.

"Would you excuse me, please?" I said to the woman. "I need to get some fresh air."

"Sure." She sounded surprised. "Can I get you anything? A glass of water, perhaps?"

"No, no thank you," I said. "I just need some air."

As I fled, I thought I heard Alvarez ask:

"Is she alright?"

I hailed a taxi, which took me back to where I was staying.

So, now that I was not attending the reception, I had to decide what to do about dinner. The alternatives as I recalled, were either Chinatown or the hotel. Feeling totally unnerved, an unusual experience for an experienced spy, I decided not to venture out again. After all, I been in this country for barely twenty-four hours and needed time to acclimatise myself to the time change. That was what I told myself.

I went into the hotel restaurant. It was busy, even though the evening was still early, and I had to wait for a table. I perused the menu. Finally I was shown to a table and I ordered my meal and some mineral water to drink. I didn't trust myself with more wine.

My dinner, when it arrived, was an enormous piece of meat accompanied by an enormous helping of chips, or French fries if you're American, and a decent portion of salad as garnish. I sprinkled ketchup on the chips, not caring whether this was or was not in character, and tucked in.

I had eaten about a third of this death by cholesterol and was ready to admit defeat, when someone sat down at my table. I looked up into tired golden-brown eyes set in a handsome, weary and unshaven face, and reached for my handbag.

"My name is X," he whispered huskily. How unoriginal, I thought, as I opened my bag under the table and fingered my gun. "I can help you," he continued. He held my right upper arm in one hand, while with the other he reached into his inside pocket, took out a leather wallet and showed me his ID: Jonathan Ecks. A small improvement, I thought, as I put the gun back in my bag and closed it, though from his accent I would have expected a rather more Spanish-sounding moniker. He wasn't with the OSS, he was with the Other Crowd.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I think there's some mistake."

"No," he shook his head. "There's no mistake. British Triple S want Gregorio Cortez removed for some reason. That's why you're here. But they haven't told you the full story."

They never do, I thought. And neither will you, because you don't know it. But I said nothing.

"Cortez isn't the one you should be after," he continued, his accent getting thicker. "I can help you. If we work together, we can find out who is behind all this."

I waved to the waitress and signalled that I wanted my bill.

"Mr er, Ecks," I said. "I think you are making a mistake. Either that or you've watched far too many James Bond films."

The waitress came with my bill. I wrote my room number and signed. I noticed Ecks was watching and assumed he had noted the room number. Though if he was any good, he should know that already.

"Ms Clyde," Jonathan Ecks whispered urgently. "Think about my offer." I stood up and walked out of the restaurant, clutching my bag.

I was beginning to seriously doubt my ability to carry out my mission. I had just sat at a table with a man who so closely resembled Gregorio Cortez that he could be his identical twin brother. So when I finally caught up with my passenger, how would I know it truly was him and not my mind playing tricks on me again. Perhaps I should tell my contact when he or she finally got in touch.

By this time I had reached the lifts, I mean elevators, in the lobby, and I pressed the button with the 'up' arrow.

I wondered when and how my contact would find me. After all, I should probably have met up with him at the reception. SpecSec had made sure I had an invitation, and that would have been an innocent venue to chance upon a casual acquaintance. But not now, thanks to my panic. A good spy uses her head. I hadn't. And I had eaten in the hotel, not in Chinatown. My contact was going to have to find a good reason to come to my room, now. Unless I sat in the hotel bar for a while, which I had no intention of doing.

The lift arrived and I took it up to the seventh floor, deeply absorbed in my thoughts. I turned the corner into the corridor to my room and stopped abruptly. In front of me stood a man dressed in black, with black hat, cape and mask, a coiled whip looped round his belt, his sword aimed at my throat. He smiled.

"Did you miss me?" he asked.

I swallowed hard, before giving the prepared response.

"Well, um. This will take some time."

His grin broadened.

"We have all the time in the world," he replied. I relaxed and pushed the sword to one side, all the while wondering what Zorro was doing talking like a Spaniard. In my day he'd spoken with a smooth American accent.

"Well?" I asked. "What have you got to tell me?"

He put his finger to his lips as he did a three hundred and sixty degree sweep with his sword. The controls masked by the hand shield confirmed that there was a detector hidden in the blade. Of course he would have swept the whole corridor before chose it for our rendezvous, to make sure it was clear. He finished with a flourish and turned back to me.

"So what have you got to tell me?" I repeated.

He smiled.

"Be careful, Señorita, there are dangerous men about." I refrained from making the obvious remark. I rather expected his eyes to twinkle, but his hat brim cast a shadow, and as he was wearing the traditional mask, I could not see his eyes. But his soft, husky voice was beguiling. And familiar.

I stared sharply at him, suddenly on guard.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Men call me... The Fox," he replied lightly. "Your new itinerary will be sent to you here."

"When?" I asked.

"Tonight," he replied. "Oh, and your passenger has an appointment tomorrow afternoon, at two o'clock, which isn't on the itinerary. He's going to the Psychiatric Hospital. Now, if you will excuse me, Señorita?"

"Why?" I asked. "Why is he going to the psychiatric hospital?"

He shrugged.

"Adios, Señorita."

He bowed, and as the lift doors opened behind me, he swept past me.

I stared after him. Reality was getting weirder by the minute. I went back to my room, checked it and found it clean, shut the door, found the handset and touched Base.

"Report: contact confirmed." I typed.

"Updates?"

"Report: main itinerary will arrive soon. Updates already received."

"Good luck, Claudia."

I exited Base and opened the Bulletin template. Choosing my words very carefully, I composed a hopefully dispassionate account of what had happened so far. Then I deleted it. Dammit! I would see this through to the end! I was not giving up now!

By this time I was very tired due to the time difference, but it was still far too early to go to bed. I turned on television again, halfway through another film. This drama was set in Chile in the nineteen-sixties, but fortunately all the main parts were played by actors who spoke with American accents, including the British thespian playing the tyrannical family patriarch. I settled down to watch.

The action was tedious, with the girl refusing to marry the man her father had found her, and the patriarch's wife refusing to speak to him, and an aunt died, and the little girl had a birthday. It was all quite anodyne and harmless. Then suddenly the action jumped to the general election in nineteen seventy-one. There, amidst scenes of jubilation at the result, the heroine was reunited with her long lost lover. And guess what? The lover looked just like Gregorio Cortez and I had to turn the television off again. This wasn't funny!

I made myself a pot of coffee, poured a cup and drank it slowly. Then I picked up the Harry Potter book, opened it at the bookmark and read. I had nearly finished it, when the telephone rang. A package had been left for me in reception.

I took the lift down, collected the envelope, and took the lift back up to the seventh floor. Once back in my room, I opened the envelope and emptied out the contents. There was a street map of San Diablo - something I already had, of course, a road map of the surrounding area with an X marking a spot on the coast, a bundle of papers with an address and a summary of the Cortez family's movements. At last I was going to be able to work on my assignment. I sincerely hoped these briefing notes would include some indication as to why I was using the Claudia Jennings-Clyde persona.

I read through the notes and was none the wiser. That's not totally true. I knew far more about the Cortez family's life and about Gregorio Cortez in particular. But I still did not know why SpecSec wanted him dead. I perused the short schedule of Cortez' normal daily movements, as if the movements of any ex-spy could be called normal. We know how easy it is for spies to predict what Mr and Mrs Ordinary will do next. And as we make attractive targets, we try to avoid being predictable. But certain things have to be done at certain times, such as driving the kids to and from school. And until recently, Ingrid and Gregorio's lives had been as predictable as those of any Mr and Mrs Ordinary.

A successful Styx trip means there should be no witnesses, so the best time to catch him was when he was on his own. Looking at his movements, this was easier said than done. Of course I could have taken him out when he collected the kids from school, but I had been specifically instructed to leave them alone. This meant I had to lure him out to somewhere deserted. The question was, where?

I spread the street map out on the table and searched for somewhere secluded, where I could escort my passenger to the ferry. There was the San Diablo park, but that was full of attractions, such as children's play areas and refreshments kiosks to draw in the punters. Finding a quiet, out of the way spot required a detailed knowledge of the park, which I did not yet have.

The other major expanse of green surrounded the psychiatric hospital. My contact's words rang in my head: Gregorio Cortez has an appointment at the hospital tomorrow at two o'clock. I would have to check the place out first, but that looked sufficiently out of the way. And given the sort of patients that institution was home to, the grounds were hardly likely to be swarming with witnesses.

So tomorrow I would go and find him, escort him to the ferry and send him on the Styx trip, and then get the Hell out of this place! I set my alarm to wake me early, got undressed, removed my wig and war paint, bathed and went to bed.

That night I dreamt I was pursued down endless hotel corridors, unable to find my room or the way out, and I awoke in the morning feeling like I hadn't slept at all. I showered and dressed myself in comfortable clothes suited for the job in hand on a hot summer's day in Texas, with a hidden shoulder holster for my gun under my blouse, and I put on a new face. Then I went down to breakfast. This was uneventful. The Army of the Undead were not much in evidence this morning. Perhaps breakfast is a little early for the average convention attendee. To amuse myself, and to counter the spooky events of the last two days, I tried imagining Gregorio Cortez as a LARP fan. He would be a vampire, of course, with long dark hair, elongated incisors and deathly pale skin, wearing the elegant clothes in a rich red velvet, of a late eighteenth century or early nineteenth gentleman. This was deceptively easy and I smiled to myself.

There was a stand in reception full of leaflets of things to do in San Diablo. I took a handful of bumf, left the hotel and walked past the deli, round to the main shopping street. I wandered down, past a young, curly-haired man playing the trumpet with his right hand, his left hand tucked into his trouser pocket. So even prosperous San Diablo has its beggars, I thought, as I avoided looking at his face.

I took a trolley towards a fake destination, then changed onto another and eventually reached the psychiatric hospital by a circuitous route involving many trolley rides. I started to walk past the large, imposing gates. These were closed, with short circuit television cameras perched on top, pointing down, and a speaker box, through which visitors announced their arrival. I stopped and gazed idly through. The hospital building itself was mostly hidden from view, but I did notice some incongruous turrets rising over the treetops, as though the hospital were a folly in the style of a mediaeval castle.

I walked on, past the gates, aware that my casual observation had caught someone's attention, and the cameras were following me, crossed over the next road and went on down, away from the gates. I looked round, when I knew the cameras were no longer trained on me. Then I doubled back and proceeded to walk round the high perimeter walls. This took a long time - the grounds are enormous - and I was both hungry and thirsty by the end. I looked at my watch. Almost lunch time. I found a small café and bought a sandwich and bottle of water to go. Then I slowly wandered back to the gates, taking care to stay on the opposite side of the road, so that I wouldn't attract the attention of the cameras.

I still didn't know how I was going to get inside. I couldn't walk up to the gates and announce myself. My cover was as an art consultant, and as far as I knew, no modern day artistic genius was currently resident in the San Diablo Psychiatric Hospital, producing crazed pictures likely to be of interest to Claudia Jennings-Clyde. At least, my briefings had not mentioned any.

Then, as if in answer to my unsaid prayers, a pickup truck drew up and stopped opposite the entrance. The driver climbed down and walked over to the gates. The cameras swivelled and followed him as he spoke into the speaker box. This was my chance! I looked round to make sure no one was looking, then I scrambled into the back of the truck and covered myself with some old sacking. The driver came back, climbed into the cab, started the engine and as the gates swung open, we turned left into the driveway of the hospital. The truck drove up the splendid, tree-lined avenue - at least I assume it was splendid as I couldn't see that much - and then continued on round to the back of the building, finally coming to a stop in a yard. The driver climbed down and went into the building. I checked again that no one was watching, and that there were no cameras, clambered down and ran to hide behind some bushes.

The driver came back, accompanied by someone carrying some large plastic sacks, which he threw in the back. I felt glad I was no longer hiding there! The driver climbed back in the cab, reversed the truck, waived to the other and drove off. I watched from my hiding place as the man went back into the building.

I was inside! Now to find a good vantage point. This should not be difficult as the parkland had been landscaped and there was some high ground. And some of it even had enough shrubbery to provide cover for more than one adult! I moved carefully - it would have been very foolish to be found out at this stage - always checking that I was not being watched before darting to the next patch of cover. At one point I scampered to hide behind a tree, while the gardener trundled past, pushing a wheelbarrow containing a spade and a fork and other gardening implements. I watched as his overall-clad figure and head full of long brown curls disappeared from view, before I moved on.

Finally I found the perfect spot, in the middle of some thick, ornamental bushes. I was hidden from view but I could see the stretch of the drive between the gates and the start of the two lines of trees and the stretch from the end of the trees to the main building. Alternatively, I could try for cover among the trees that flanked the middle bit of the drive. But from where I was, there appeared to be little ground cover there, and any would-be assassin there would be very exposed. I would have to choose my opportunity very carefully, but I could do it.

I checked my watch. I still had time. I sat down and got out my sandwich and water bottle, opened both, and took a bite of the sandwich and a swig of water. I looked back at the hospital building. I was right. The place was a folly, in the style of a castle; but not the fairy-tale castle so familiar from Disney. This was much more grim and menacing in style. It looked like the ideal setting for gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe or Bram Stoker. Or how about, I thought, as a venue for the fantasies of the LARP fans attending the convention at my hotel? I giggled and finished my lunch.

I spread out my equipment in front of me. A radio controlled miniature rocket bomb was probably my best bet, as I could control the direction of its approach to divert any search parties away from me. I put the rest of my arsenal back in my shoulder bag and set up the small rocket launcher, checking that the remote control was properly synchronised. Everything was in place, and it was still not two o'clock yet. I settled down to wait.

I felt someone watching me before I heard the muttered four-letter expletive. I turned and stared into what looked like Gregorio Cortez' angry, twisted face and crazed golden-brown eyes.

"Bitch!" he snarled. He was still wearing the gardener's overalls, I noted. "You trying to take my mark?!" he demanded. "Huh?! You trying to steal a mark from Miguel Bain?!" I backed away from him. "Who's your contractor, bitch?" he yelled. I tried to reach inside my blouse for my gun. He grabbed my arm, grinning evilly as he pushed back his long curls with his other hand. "No, no, no!" he crowed.

I kicked his chest and sprang to my feet. Before he could recover, I pushed my way out of the bushes and ran as fast as I could.

"Bitch!" he bawled after me. "I will tear your heart out!"

I looked back. He was aiming what appeared to be a rifle at me. I ran on.

There was an explosion; something thudded against me, making me fall, and my chest hurt. As blackness descended I wondered why, if I had been shot in the back, I had a pain at the front of my chest.

***

I pulled at the straps round my wrists, straining to break free. I tried kicking my legs too, but I remained bound to the chair. I jerked my head to throw off the headpiece, whatever that was. One of the figures behind the large, white console turned to the other.

"You blew it, Juni!" someone shrieked. "Now we'll never find out why she wanted to kill Dad!"

"No," an unseen Gregorio Cortez said. "She's still alive. And we must keep her alive. It's important. It'll work."

"Leave this to me, little brother," a gruff but gentle voice said.

A figure in a white coat and surgical facemask loomed over me. He had a syringe in his hand.

I became aware of flashing lights. I was lying on my back on a stretcher on the grass. My body felt very heavy and a drip was feeding into my arm. An ambulance was parked nearby, its back doors open, its lights flashing. And there was a small crowd of onlookers, though where they all came from Heaven only knows. The hospital grounds were private property. Astride a motorcycle and wearing the requisite black leather jacket, Gregorio Cortez looked down at me, his hair pulled back off his face in a pigtail, his expression compassionate, as if he hadn't just shot me. I looked away into the camera lens of a paparazzo, just as his flash went off. Gregorio Cortez put the camera down, took a mini disc recorder out of his leather jacket pocket and checked it. Now it seemed I was seeing double! I shut my eyes.

"Hey! Hey!" a husky voice called.

I opened them again. A paramedic was leaning over me. His name badge said he was called Antonio. His wavy, brown hair hung loose around his gorgeous, tanned face, and his gentle, golden-brown eyes were kind. He smiled and winked. I tried to scream.

"She's going into cardiac arrest!" I heard Gregorio Cortez say.

"Another fine Machete product!" someone else commented.

***

I opened my eyes. I was on a hospital trolley. I still had a drip going into my arm, and other leads seem to go from my chest to boxes at my feet. I couldn't see what they were, but I assume they were monitors of some sort. Around me people in white uniforms walked busily here and there. I assumed I was in a hospital casualty - emergency room I corrected myself - with whitewashed stone walls. My body felt heavy. I couldn't move my arms or my legs or my head. So I just lay still.

I watched a crop-haired man in workman's dungarees fix something to a door. He glanced up, saw me staring at him, turned the screwdriver towards himself and pretended to screw something between his eyes. Then Gregorio Cortez put the tool back in his toolbox, picked that up and strode off. Some porters wheeled a trolley past. On it lay a heavily made up older woman, wearing clothes that suggested the phrase "mutton dressed as lamb". She stared vacantly at the ceiling, while beside her ran a young, suited and bespectacled Gregorio Cortez, stuttering wildly in lisping, Castilian Spanish. On a chair opposite, a sulky boy sat, wearing a straitjacket. The five-o'clock shadow on his face made him look quite sullen and rebellious. A nurse suddenly shrieked and someone yelled she would fetch some sticking plaster. As he watched the nurse's cut finger drip blood, the sullen, straitjacketed Gregorio Cortez quietly shut his eyes and slid to the floor. Meanwhile another Gregorio Cortez, wearing an old-fashioned white suit, held forth at length about the complexities of growing coffee, then suddenly burst into tears, lamenting:

"She's never coming back, is she?"

I had to get out of here! I had to escape! I struggled to move my arms, but they felt as though they were strapped down. I tried to swing my legs over the side of the trolley but I couldn't. My head felt as heavy as lead. There were wires still attached to my body. I opened my mouth to scream and suddenly my arms were free. I ripped the patches off my chest so that the wires were no longer attached and pulled the drip out of my arm as I sat up. I moved my legs and strong hands gripped me from behind. I felt the sting of a needle in my arm, saw the two people behind the big, white console look up in alarm, and everything went black.

***

I'm lying on the floor and it's very soft and comfortable. The walls look soft and comfortable as well. There's no chance of my hurting myself if I stand up, try to walk and stumble and fall. The padding will see to that. It's there to protect me. I can't walk too far, though. The room isn't very big. But I don't think I'll stand up at the moment. I can't move my arms to steady myself. I'm still wearing the white jacket. So my arms are crossed over in front of me and then tied behind my back. But I don't care. I'm quite comfortable, lying here on the floor.

The door opens and a woman comes in. She speaks to me in Spanish, the non-lisping sort of Spanish they speak here.

"No comprendo," I answer. "No hablo español."

She shrugs and then asks me, in English, if I'm going to be good. She calls me "Claudia", although that isn't my name. I can't remember what my name is. That's a good thing. They mustn't know my real name. She says that if I behave, if I don't misbehave, I can speak to Doctor Leal. She asks if I'm going to misbehave. I shake my head. She asks if I'm going to behave, if I'm going to be good. I nod. She smiles and leaves. The door opens wider and two nurses come in and help me to my feet. They guide me out, along a gloomy, grey, stone corridor, to the room where Dr Leal is waiting. It's dim in this room, and I can't see him clearly.

The nurses guide me to a chair and help me sit down. But they don't take off the white jacket. My arms are still crossed in front me and tied behind my back. Then they leave me alone in the dim room with him. He comes and sits opposite me. I don't want to look at his face. Instead I stare at the name badge on his chest. "Dr Francisco Leal" it reads. Francisco. That's a nice name.

"Claudia," he says gently. "Please help me to help you."

His voice is husky, sensuous. His Spanish accent lends it a certain extra sexiness. I can see him charming any and every female that comes his way.

"We need names," he says. "Please. Tell me everything."

You can't trick me into believing I'm having a nervous breakdown and spilling SpecSec's secrets! I know you're playing with my mind! I've been trained to resist! And I will resist! I have been trained…

I look up into wonderful, dark, mesmerizing, golden-brown eyes. The gentle humour and kindness in those eyes grips me. I want to lose myself in them. I stare at the rest of his beautiful face, his longish, gently wavy, brown hair, his earnest, serious expression. He's too gorgeous to be a doctor.

"Why?" I ask. "Why do you need names?"

He answers quietly.

"So that what happened to you, will never happen to anyone else. Ever."

I look at him.

I like you, Doctor Leal. You seem a nice, kind person, the sort of person I could trust. But I don't know any names. Upstairs don't have names. Our agents don't have names. We have personas, which we change as needed. I don't have a name. Only one person has a name, Doctor Francisco Leal, only one person other than you, Doctor Leal. The person who brought me to San Diablo in Texas, whose fault it is that I am now in this Hell, the passenger I was to escort to the ferry to send on a Styx trip, he has a name, Doctor Leal. He has a wife, and two annoying brats. He looks like you, Doctor Leal. He looks very like you.

What is his name? Tell me again why you have to know.

***

The relief of being away from that awful place! Who ever thought of setting a psychiatric hospital in a mediaeval castle San Diablo in Texas needs his head examined! But I was not crazy, so I just had to pretend I was getting better. I even gave that nice Doctor Leal the names he wanted, the mastermind Henry Cecil, the explosives expert Guy Fawkes, Flora MacDonald the local liaison officer, Neville Chamberlain in charge of European Co-ordination, that sort of thing. I don't know whether he believed me, but he asked me to write them down. Once they trusted me enough to take off the straitjacket, I took the first opportunity to escape that presented itself. My Mockney friend from SpecSec and a couple of other agents were waiting, as I slipped out, and they took care of me. And so here I was, back on the job, ready to escort Señor bloody Cortez to the ferry for his Styx trip. Boy, did I want to escort him to the ferry!

So I followed Cortez' trail into the hotel lobby, watched him get into a lift, noted which floor it stopped at, watched it come back down immediately. I couldn't believe he was that sloppy. I watched the doors open. The people waiting crowded in.

"Hold the elevator!" I called and pushed my way in. I pressed the button for Cortez' floor. Various people got out at intervening floors until I was alone. Excellent! Just how I like it.

The lift doors opened and the first thing I saw was Cortez' trail. Wonderful! I took out my gun and followed the trail, my eyes darting everywhere for telltales - he was bound to have planted miniature cameras - till I came to the bedroom. The door was open. I looked inside. The trail stopped in the middle of the floor… I took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The door closed behind me, and I heard the unmistakeable sound of a gun being cocked.

"Good afternoon, Ms Jennings-Clyde," Gregorio Cortez said, walking round in front of me, the Gregorio Cortez from the photograph, with slicked back hair and pencil moustache.

"Señor Cortez," I replied, lisping the "z". Gosh, those eyes were still magical and mesmerizing!

"You've been difficult to keep track of," he said. "I thought you had disappeared off the face of the planet."

"Really?" I countered. "I find that hard to believe."

He nodded.

"No," he said. "I knew you wouldn't believe the trouble I've had, trying to lure you here."

"After the week I've had? No. Forgive me, but I don't believe you."

But I wanted to. Because his husky voice with its sexy Spanish accent sounded so sincere, just like Doctor Leal's. And despite everything, I still believed in Dr Leal.

"Please sit down," he said, indicating a chair. I sat, placing my gun on the arm of the chair. He made no move to take it. He sat down opposite me, his gun also in full view.

"Well?" I said. "What happens now?"

"That is up to you," he replied. "Triple S want me dead. You have your opportunity."

"But it's not that simple, is it?" I countered.

He shook his head.

"No. It's not." He agreed. "Because Certain Parties want you dead."

I nodded.

"So what do we do?" I asked. "Walk out into main street at high noon and square up to one another, first on the draw, just like in a good old-fashioned western?"

He smiled.

"That is possible. Alternatively, we could each tell our respective superiors that when the time came, we couldn't go through with it."

"What?!" I spluttered. "After all I've been through, after being…" I was about to mention being cooped up in the psychiatric hospital in the castle and the many people I'd seen who looked like him, "After all the hassle I've had, tracing you here, do you really think you'll walk out of here alive?"

"Yes," he said. "And so will you. Unless, of course, you've lost the will to live." He paused, his beautiful golden brown eyes twinkling, then continued. "Think about it. What will you have to lose if you don't kill me? Most people would find it difficult to kill someone they've talked to in this sort of situation. What could they do to you? Throw you out of Triple S? And if they did, would that really be so terrible?"

"They could have me killed." I replied.

"One of their own?" He tsked. "No, I don't think so. What would be the point? What do you know? Believe me, it's easier and cheaper to change passwords and access codes than cover up a death."

I looked down. What could I do? What he'd said was complete rubbish, of course. SpecSec would have no problem erasing all signs of my existence from the face of the planet, but I couldn't kill this lovely, kind, gentle, gorgeous man, not at close quarters, not in cold blood. If only I'd been able to carry out the assassination in the grounds of the hospital, where I couldn't see for myself how decent he was. I picked up my gun and put it back in the shoulder holster. Then I stood up.

"You win," I said, "This time."

He stood.

"I hope that next time, we will both be on the same side, Ms Jennings-Clyde."

"And what side is that?" I asked.

"Good," he whispered.

Could I trust him? I very much wanted to. And his words showed me a way out of my present life. And suddenly that seemed very beguiling; whether or not SpecSec decided I needed escorting to the ferry.

"Señor Cortez, I'm going to turn my back on you and walk out that door. Don't break my trust in you."

"I won't," he said. He held out his hand. I took it. "Good-bye, Ms Jennings-Clyde." He raised my hand to his lips. I wanted to slap his face and melt into his arms. I did neither. Instead I withdrew my hand.

"Goodbye, Señor Cortez," I said. And with that I turned, walked over to the door, opened it, left the room, shut the door behind me and strode down the corridor to the lift. Cortez did not shoot me or detonate a remote charge. He stayed in that hotel room and let me walk away.

And that was the problem. He was honourable, open and honest, something SpecSec couldn't even try to be. But why stay with SpecSec? Why stay a miniscule pawn, to be manipulated at will by faceless bureaucrats and politicians? Why remain a puppet that can be imprisoned or killed just for doing her job. Did I really want to continue having my mind messed around, the way it had been on this assignment? Did I want know who had been messing around with my mind?

I stepped out of the elevator into the hotel lobby and looked around. My Mockney contact was waiting. I met his gaze and shook my head. Just then I caught a fleeting image in my mind of the whole Cortez family clapping each others' hands in celebration. I smiled. Then I walked across to hotel entrance and left, to start the rest of my life.

I don't know who wanted to make me believe I was having a nervous breakdown and give away SpecSec's secrets to that oh, so sympathetic psychologist of theirs. But I can guess why. That's one of the few things one can be absolutely sure of in this game. I've given up a lot for my employers, life, identity, but not any more. What I had just been through, the chair, the straps round my wrists and ankles, the people behind the large, white console, was too much. Cortez had shown me that. As of now, I no longer work for SpecSec, or Triple S or whatever they like to call themselves. I shall reclaim my name and my life. And if they try to make change my mind, well, I've been trained to resist. And I shall resist!

I wonder if any of the big art auction houses have any vacancies for consultants at the moment?

Author's note:

Apart from highjacking Robert Rodriguez' "Spy Kids" universe and pillaging practically every film I've seen featuring Antonio, as well as a few I haven't seen yet, I have raided various LARP websites, and plundered the following webpage quite shamelessly:

http://www.ravnos.com/kn/kayla/sdph.html

The idea of a psychiatric hospital in a reproduction gothic, mediaeval, Eastern European-style castle was just too good an image to ignore.

And thanks to Peggy, whose story "Please help me, I'm Crazy!" showed me the way in.