The Silver Thread (51 page)

Cyril’s upper lip twitched in amusement as he took another puff. He waited for more details, but she offered none. All she did was shift uncomfortably in her chair.

“I didn’t see any of that information noted in the digital copy of his file,” he finally said, watching her carefully from across his desk. “Don’t you think the reason why our best raven can’t fly anymore seems the sort of thing worth mentioning?”

“Not at all,” came her breezy reply.

“So you mean to tell me that you thought it important enough to update his current mailing address in America, but not the fact that he’s married, let alone who he’s married to?”

“I only updated his mailing address for payroll purposes. Why are you so curious about him anyway?”

“How could I not be curious about Talvi?” Cyril asked, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve worked not only with his father, but with his brother-in-law as well. I hired him on pure instinct, and he turned out to be the most naturally gifted operative in his area of expertise. Now he’s gone, along with the hard copy of his personnel file. We also can’t seem to find the hard copy of the Paris investigation you were both working on, so I hope for everyone’s sake that you miraculously had them at your flat.”

Merriweather’s nostrils flared and her heart started racing, but she wasn’t about to admit fault. Without taking his eyes off of her, Cyril pressed a button on his phone. His office door carefully opened and the half-troll guard stepped in.

“Yes, Mr. Sinclair?”

“What’s the status of the materials you confiscated from Ms. Narayanaswamy’s flat?”

“Still sorting through the papers, sir. Nothing yet, although she had Marinossian’s laptop in her possession,” he grunted. “And all the information on it seems to be written in a version of Fae, but none of the fairies can decipher it.”

“Would you be so kind as to bring it down to the second floor?” Cyril asked, handing over the laptop, case and all. “I’d like the cryptology lab to have a proper look at it.” The guard nodded as he took it into his huge hands and disappeared from the room.

“What’s going on around here?” Merriweather demanded, her eyes blazing furiously. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Then why was Talvi’s laptop in your flat?”

“I was going to compare his notes with mine, but I wasn’t able to.”

“Then please explain this,” he said, and played the video he’d cued up on his computer. It depicted Merriweather walking to her office door in a short skirt and low-cut top, fussing with the handle for some time before storming away in frustration. Cyril skipped forward until she reappeared with a guard, who unlocked the door for her and was rewarded with a sloppy, wet kiss. After slipping into the office for a short eternity, she left with two thick paper files clutched against her ample chest. Cyril stopped the video and turned back to Merriweather, whose blood pressure was skyrocketing. “The oldest trick in the book, and yet our staff managed to fall for it.”

“That wasn’t
me
!” she screeched with an incredulous expression. “I don’t even
own
a blouse like that!”

“If that wasn’t you, then where have you been for the past thirty-six hours?”

“At home,” she said, still looking at the frozen video in disbelief. “I put in a few extra hours with Stephan on Friday, and then we left for the weekend.”

“Did you actually see him leave the building?”

“No. I went straight home.”

“Is there anyone who can verify that statement?” Cyril asked. “How about your neighbors?”

“The Stanleys are on holiday in Bermuda and I haven’t seen the Smiths in a week.”

“Did you socialize with any lady friends?”

“I don’t particularly care for having lady friends.”

“Then a gentleman friend, perhaps?”

Merriweather rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“I see,” he said slowly, tapping the end of his cigarette into an ash tray. “What exactly did you do all weekend?”

Looking deeply into Cyril’s eyes, Merriweather played back the events of her time off. A robotic vacuum scuttled back and forth across her floor while she typed away on her laptop. Bad reality television played in the background, functioning more as white noise than entertainment. Lunch was a cup of instant noodles. Dinner consisted of the same. She closed her laptop and climbed into bed only to lay there for an hour before opening her laptop back up and going back to work. Cyril sighed and gazed at her with pity as he took another pull from the end of his cigarette holder.

“The guard in the video may have fallen for that performance, but I certainly didn’t. In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you tarted up in such a fashion. That being said, your conduct as of late concerns me to no end. It’s one thing to cut corners and bend the rules every now and again, but you’ve taken to outright ignoring them. There was absolutely no need for you to reassign agent Marinossian in the middle of a productive, ongoing investigation. His work was excellent…and he finally learned to bloody type, for gods’ sakes! There was also no cause for you to tamper with his file, let alone deactivate it without my expressed permission. There
was
, however, an absolute need for you to conduct a thorough background check on your latest personal assistant. What military academy did Stephan graduate from, by the way?”

“I don’t remember, but I could look it up if I still had my laptop,” she said testily.

“It’s my opinion that you don’t remember because you never looked it up in the first place,” Cyril suggested, looking at her with both disgust and grave concern. “I say this because if you
had
looked it up, you would have noticed that the academy he graduated from has been flagged for accepting students from extremist organizations such as the Pazachi. If only we knew of someone who’d recently kicked that hornet’s nest. Oh wait…we do.”

Merriweather inhaled sharply as Cyril pointed this out, and the last of her petulant attitude drifted away just like the grey smoke rising in the air above them.

“The moment your uncharacteristic behavior was noticed on the security cameras, we checked your office and discovered it had been ransacked,” he finally said. “When we tried contacting Stephan for his side of the story, we discovered that he’d turned off his mobile’s GPS, which lead us to review his file, which appeared just a tad too well-groomed for our liking. Of course, his alma mater maintains that he’s as straight-laced of a cadet as they come, but I believe that he’s a doppelgänger or at least the victim of one. Who knows if the real Stephan is even guilty of anything, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Either way, he managed to infiltrate us at our weakest link, and you rolled out the bloody red carpet for him.”

Merriweather blinked her eyes in disbelief as she processed what he was telling her. Ignoring her expression, Cyril went on.

“I know you’ve had a difficult time finding the right personal assistant to help you with your workload, but if I had any notion of how severely overwhelmed you were, I never would’ve given you more work to begin with. It’s not a sign of weakness to say no or to ask for help, but you seem convinced otherwise, and now you’ve put me in a position I never dreamed I’d find myself in,” he explained. He looked deep into her eyes, and Merriweather began to catch a glimpse of how far the depth of his disappointment and frustration went.

“Every time we had a progress meeting, you insisted that you had things well under control, but it turns out that you’ve been misleading me all this time, along with the rest of our organization. You’ve most likely been misleading yourself even longer, and as much as I hate using that term, if I were to suggest to the other directors that you knowingly
lied
to me, you might very well be charged with high treason.”

Merriweather tried to respond, to apologize, to say anything at all, but all that came out was a garbled sob. She clapped her hand over her mouth as the tears gathered in her eyes, unable to look Executive Director Cyril Sinclair in the eye.

“Your unhealthy obsession with your career transcends the definition of a workaholic, Merriweather,” he continued. “It’s not a passion for you anymore; it’s become a self-destructive crutch—it’s no different than drugs or drink or any other vice. There’s a damned good reason why I encourage long holidays and the occasional hiatus when necessary. What happens when our minds and our bodies aren’t in top form?”

“Mistakes,” she said quietly looking at her knees.

“Not simply mistakes. Because you were too proud to ask for help,
innocent lives
are now in danger!” he snapped, pounding his desk with his fist so hard that she jumped in her seat. “We’ve discovered that a plane ticket to America was purchased through your business account on your office computer, along with one from Portland to Prague. I’ve already sent a lookout team to the Czech Republic, but we haven’t been able to reach Talvi to alert him. It seems he’s had his mobile turned off for the past few hours, which is both a blessing and a curse. When he turns it back on it will allow Stephan to trace his GPS coordinates with the phone you so eagerly gave him. I thought about deactivating Talvi’s mobile, but without an office in North America, it’s our only way of contacting him in time. You’ve basically put a flashing target on my best field agent’s back, and now anyone standing within a few meters of him might be nothing more than collateral damage.”

“Dear gods—” Merriweather squeaked, gripping the armrests of her chair. Her head was spinning so hard that she felt nauseous. “What should I do?”

“Get ahold of Talvi and his wife before Stephan does,
obviously
,” he said irritably, stubbing out his cigarette. “If I were you, I’d be ringing my lead partner every other minute to warn him of the potential threat headed his way.”

“Of course I’ll do that, though Talvi hasn’t been my partner for decades, and he was never my lead,” Merriweather timidly corrected him.

“He is now, if he’ll even work with you after what’s transpired. As far as I’m concerned, his file was mistakenly deactivated due to poor judgment on your behalf. I’ve already increased his security clearance level from what it was prior to this debacle. I only hope that it’s not too late for him to make use of it.”

“What clearance level did you give him?” she asked, feeling utterly humiliated.

“I’m afraid I can’t share that information with you, as you are now a level four.”

“A
level four
?” she cried out. “A bloody level
four
? Why, even the cafeteria staff gets a level five!”

“Yes, I know. We should never underestimate the incredible power of those who handle our food supply,” said Cyril, ignoring her tantrum. “Effective immediately, you are hereby relieved of your role as Director of Modern Intelligence. You will continue to serve as a junior field agent until further notice.”

“
A junior
field agent?” she gasped.

“Would you rather I place you on administrative leave?” he inquired with a severe glare. “Because that’s what the other directors advised me to do, and I have to say it’s probably the wiser of the two options.”

“How could it be wiser to have me sit at home doing nothing?” she argued. “The other directors haven’t got a clue how essential I am to the embassy’s mission!”

Cyril’s eyes widened with amusement, although he didn’t smile.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Ms. Narayanaswamy. We’ve already taken care of redistributing your unfinished workload. You might want to clear your personal items from your office on your way out, seeing as how you aren’t stationed there any longer.”

Merriweather was at a complete loss for words. All she could feel was shock and shame as her entire world crumbled to pieces right there on Cyril’s office floor. She slowly nodded her head, indicating that even serving as a lowly field agent was better than being out on administrative leave.

“You will report directly to me until your new lead partner has agreed to take you on. Your new partner may not end up being agent Marinossian,” Cyril continued as he turned to his computer. “Nevertheless, your first task is to contact him and bring him here so he can be briefed on the situation at hand. Naturally the change in your rank will be reflected in your wages, but I’ll see to it that your unused vacation and sick time is promptly paid out at the higher rate. Hopefully that will give you the time and resources needed to accomplish some much-needed personal reflection and growth. I’ll need your keys, please.”

Her hand shook as she dug a heavy key chain from the bottom of her bag and exchanged them for a much smaller, lighter set. Cyril pressed a button on his phone and the half-troll security guard entered the office again, offering Merriweather an arm that was as thick as a tree trunk. Stunned and trembling, she could hardly feel him help her out of the chair, let alone feel her legs carrying her body to the door.

“It’s not personal, junior agent Narayanaswamy,” Cyril said as multiple lines of his phone began to ring at once. “Sometimes we have to take a few steps back before we can move forward.”

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