A short, strange story that came from Ruth not wondering how she'll be remembered. Thankyou to everyone who's reviewed my stories so far, it means the world. I'd like to hear what everyone thinks of this…
Wes isn't sure he ever really wanted to be a spy. He sort of fell into it, after his dad died and Harry finally poured out the truth over seven hours and three bottles of whisky.
He likes the thinking through, the problem solving, the research and consideration and looking at issues from every possible angle. He likes order and reaching correct decisions. He likes seeing things nobody else does.
He doesn't like the way they tell you what to think. Especially not now.
Today's topic, traitors in the service. What makes them, how to spot them, what to do. What not to do. And why they must be utterly despised.
Most of all, Wes hates it when they talk about people he knows. His mum and dad. Harry, inevitably. Aunt Jo and Uncle Zaf. Today, it's Ruth Evershed.
"Which is the more dangerous?" the tutor – Wes can never remember his name – is droning on. "The traitor working for their own ends, money or renown? No. They're easy to control. Danger comes from those, like Miss Evershed, who truly believe their cause to be just."
Rissa Foster (Wes has always sort of fancied Rissa Foster, with her pale hair and perfect elocution) interrupts him, as she often does.
"She had a point. Not the whole subversive terrorism traitor thing, obviously, but what happened to those men at Cotterdam was disgusting."
She's trying to be sweet. A comment like that could get her kicked out, if she wasn't their resident gadget whiz, Malcolm's star pupil. Good geeks are hard to find. But, still. She's making the wrong point.
The tutor speaks in one breath. "Thankyou Miss Foster for your point but we all deeply regret the incident at Cotterdam if we could just move on…."
Rissa sits back because everyone knows she's won. The tutor worked for Oliver Mace during the Cotterdam Investigation.
Wes remembers Ruth. Not well. But mostly he remembers sitting with her in the local park when Dad was busy or not inclined to take him out. She tried to teach him chess, his earliest lessons in strategy, when all he wanted to do was play in the sandpit.
She was…motherly. Not like his mother, more like someone's perfect image of what a mother should be. She wore long skirts and scarves and didn't act like a traitor. At all.
Wes likes to turn things over in his mind, to think and re-think and see all possible angles. He likes to query and question until everything comes apart and he can push all the pieces back together, moving them over and over and making them fit.
"You were at 5 in 2006, weren't you, Malcolm?"
He's instantly wary. This boy is Adam Carter's son; he always knows more than he's letting on.
"Yes. Difficult year indeed." And it's back to the gadget he's dismantling, something fascinating retrieved by Zaf at 6 and sent back for his special attention.
Wes chooses his next words with care.
"It must have been strange. Fundamentalists had their own agenda, right? Never knew who you could trust."
Malcolm almost takes his thumb off with the pliers. His spine straightens and Wes knows that if he's going to get an answer, this will be it.
It comes, clipped and practised and so very unlike Malcolm.
"Ruth Evershed was a loyal agent and a brilliant woman. I'll say no more on the subject."
Wes says, just because he wants to tell someone,
"She taught me to play chess."
For one moment Malcolm looks wistful.
"She taught many things to many people, Wesley."
Rissa is sat in the corner, programming some fragment of data. Her head tilts and Wes wonders if she's listening, but those gold varnished fingernails don't stop, and she doesn't look at him.
He'd thought maybe the conversation was over, but he's not surprised when Malcolm looks up again and murmurs,
"None of us ever know what our legacy will be" and then steels himself, smiles warmly at Wes "except your parents, of course. They left a fine one."
When Wes was eleven his father told him the truth.
Only a tiny fragment of it, of course, never the whole truth. Not even close. But Wes remembers it, correctly or not, as the first true thing either of his parents ever said to him.
Adam used to drink a lot, and Jenny used to try and hide it, stowing bottles and washing glasses and leaving breath mints on the coffee table.
That night, he'd gone to Ben Asquith's Halloween party. They'd shown something, he didn't even remember what, with knives and girls and blood, and it had scared him. Enough to come down in the middle of the night, when Jenny was asleep, and see his Dad at the kitchen table pouring another glass of Tennessee's finest, and ask a stupid, childish question.
"Dad, why are you sad?"
Adam had tipped back the whiskey and said, loudly and with only the slightest slur to his voice "I've lost a lot of friends."
Three weeks later, he was dead. Not in the field. Not shot or stabbed or blown up by Al Qaeda. Dead of liver failure caused by acute and prolonged alcoholism, said the doctors. And no matter how often he heard it, Wes couldn't get the idea out of his head; his Dad had died of loss. Of sadness.
"Dealing with a traitor is like using fire to extinguish a candle." The tutor (Marsden? Marsters?) begins. Clearly, he doesn't have a way with simile.
"How do you know?"
For an instant he doesn't realise it's him who's spoken. Wes is the eternal observer; he likes to watch, analyse, interpret. He's never wanted people to look at him. And yet, he remembers Malcolm's words, the tilt of Rissa's head, something Jenny said once about standing up for what you believe in. A white hospital room with an empty bed. And he knows he has to do this.
"What?" Marsden, he is fairly sure it's Marsden, is clearly taken aback.
Wes' voice is stronger as he continues.
"How do you know? You told my Dad that Angela Welles belonged to all things holy, and it was a lie. Or, at least, you were wrong. How can you know who's a traitor and who isn't when you don't even look at the facts? You were in Mace's office, you were complicit. Why should we trust you now?"
Wes is even safer than Rissa; he belongs to the legend of Adam Carter.
The tutor, it seems, handles all interruptions in precisely the same way.
"Thankyou Mr Carter for your point but this is the approved material if we could just move on…."
Wes can't move on, not ever. But he doesn't expect this small fraction of a man to understand. If people who are decent and moral and highly principled cannot demand for themselves a legacy, what is there left for any of us?
He goes to see Malcolm, but the older man is missing. Nobody knows where he's gone, but the wires on his desk are still warm and lifelike. Wes wonders if he's heard what he said to Marsden. He thinks probably. Malcolm has a way of finding things out.
"Don't touch those, Wes, they're fragile. You'll break everything."
The voice isn't his, it's hers, and her long blonde curtain of hair fills his vision as she moves in front of him, seats herself at Malcolm's desk.
He watches her for a minute. Her eyes are alive; the way she holds the wires is like a lover's caress. Wes has never felt that connected to anything, anyone, his whole life.
"Why do you like machines so much?" It's a genuine question, as much as anything he says is ever not calculated, worked through a million degrees of prediction and probability.
She shrugs. Her reply surprises him.
"Machines always tell the truth."
Wes smiles. It's been a long time since anyone's surprised him.
There's a pause, but not an uncomfortable one. He thinks maybe he'll go one better and surprise himself.
"I was thinking maybe we could have dinner sometime, or a film?"
She doesn't look at him, but she does whisper "I'd like that" and give the contraption spread in front of her the tiniest of smiles.
He turns to leave, but before he can go, she calls after him.
"I liked what you said today."
"Yeah?"
"Mmmm. You've sparked quite the debate. Traitor, Heroine, Murderess. Twenty-two people downloaded the Cotterdam file."
Curiosity is one of the only things that can be relied upon. People will doubt everything they're told, no matter how reasonable it seems. It is his curse; Wes tries to pull things apart, tear them open and get at the very core, searching for the truth.
It's not much of a legacy, but it's all he can give.