“No.” She forced the words out past the pain and the blood. She needed me to know the truth. “I killed Blue and Katt. Tried to kill Walker. Even sabotaged my own sub at the loch, so I wouldn’t be suspected. I thought . . . it was my duty. To win the prize at any cost.”

“Honey . . .” I said, but the hard knot in my stomach wouldn’t let me say anything more.

She smiled briefly, showing perfect teeth slick with blood. “Never fall in love with another agent, Eddie. You know it’s never going to end well.”

She died in my arms. I held her for a long time.

It all went bad so quickly.

CHAPTER NINE

The Spying Game

Why be an agent? All right, you get to play with all the best toys, you get to see the world (though rarely the better parts), and now and again you get a real chance to stand between humanity and the forces that threaten . . . You get to be a hero, or a villain, and sometimes both. But what does any of that buy you in the end? Except death and suffering and the loss of those you care for. What makes a man an agent? And what keeps him going, in the face of everything?

Why be an agent?

Walker and I stood together in a dirty backstreet, looking down at Honey Lake’s body. I’d like to say she looked peaceful and at rest, but she didn’t. She looked like a toy that had been played with too roughly, and then thrown aside. I’d seen a lot of people look like that in the years I’d spent playing the spying game. When all the fun and games, all the adventure and romance, adds up to nothing more than bright red blood on a white jumpsuit.

“She was a good agent,” said Walker.

“Yes,” I said.

“She wouldn’t want us to just stand around, waiting to get caught.”

“No.”

“My teleport bracelet is gone,” said Walker, looking at his bare wrist. “Yours too?”

“Yes,” I said. “Honey’s bracelet is gone as well.”

Walker sniffed loudly, shooting his impeccably white cuff forward to cover his wrist. “Peter must have taken them with him.”

“Only one way he could have done that,” I said, still looking down at Honey’s body. “Peter must have been working with his grandfather all along. The Independent Agent always intended for his nephew to win the game, to keep his precious secrets in the family. This whole contest was a setup to establish Peter King as the new Independent Agent. I should have known. It’s always about family. The rest of us were just here for show. Window dressing for Peter’s great triumph.”

“And we’re left stranded in Roswell,” said Walker. “With a dead body at our feet and the local law no doubt already on their way, tipped off by an anonymous source. How very awkward. Time to be going, I think.”

“We have to go to Place Gloria,” I said. “Alexander and Peter have to pay for this.”

“Yes,” said Walker. “They do. I’ve always been a great believer in an eye for an eye, and a death for a death. Comes of a traditional public school upbringing, no doubt. Unfortunately, getting to the Independent Agent’s private lair isn’t going to be easy. We can’t be sure Place Gloria is where or even when we think it is. Remember the flux fog? The exterior we saw may have no connection at all to the more than comfortable retreat we walked through.”

“You’re just talking to distract me,” I said. “I appreciate the thought, but don’t. What are we going to do about Honey?”

“Communications should be working again, now that the alien mound has been destroyed,” said Walker. “We’ll call her people and tell them what’s happened, and they’ll get the local people to do what’s necessary. The Company’s always been very good at cleaning up after itself.”

I looked at Walker, and to his credit he didn’t blink. “Just walk away and leave her?” I said. “Leave her lying here in the street, alone?”

Walker met my gaze unflinchingly. “You’ll pardon me if I’m not overly sympathetic, Eddie. She did try to kill me back in Tunguska. And she did murder poor little Katt and your friend the Blue Fairy.”

“I know,” I said. “She was an agent.”

“Yes,” said Walker. “And that’s why she’d understand. In the field, you do what you have to do. She wouldn’t have hesitated to walk away from you and leave your body to be taken care of by the Droods.”

“Is this why we became agents?” I said, and was surprised by the bitterness in my voice. “To play games, to chase after secrets that are rarely worth all the blood spilled on their behalf . . . To end up stabbed in the back, just when you thought you’d won, bleeding out in some nameless backstreet . . . With most people never even knowing who you were, or what you did, or why it mattered?”

“You can’t work in the shadows and still expect applause,” said Walker. “The right people will know, and sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.”

“Anything for the family,” I said. “Anything for England. For humanity. But for us? What about us, Walker?”

“Duty and responsibility are their own rewards,” said Walker. “Old-fashioned, I know, but some things don’t change. The things that matter. We do it because it has to be done. We do it because if we don’t, who will? Who else could we trust to do it right?”

“She shouldn’t have died here,” I said. “Not like this.”

“It’s always somewhere like this,” said Walker. “That’s the job. Did you . . . love her, Eddie?”

“No,” I said. “But she was . . . special. If things had been different . . .”

“If,” said Walker. “Always the harshest word.”

“Why did you become an agent, Walker? I had no choice; I was born into the family business. So was Honey, I suppose. But why you?”

“For the sheer damned glamour of it all,” said Walker.

I couldn’t manage a smile for him just yet, but I nodded to show I appreciated the effort. I turned my back on Honey and walked away. Walker strode calmly along beside me, flourishing his furled umbrella like an officer’s stick. Say what you like about Walker, and many people have; the man has style. We left the back lot and the empty street behind us and went back into the town of Roswell to walk among sane things again.

“We can’t let Peter take the prize,” I said. “Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after what he did. He’s not worthy.”

“I’ll see him damned to Hell first,” Walker agreed cheerfully. “And his bloody grandfather too. Peter must have been the one following us earlier. I said it had to be a professional . . . He probably changed the settings on his teleport bracelet while he was still in the Sundered Lands, leaving ahead of us so he could arrive here separately.” Walker frowned. “Surely he couldn’t have known about the alien threat in advance . . . No . . . No; must have come as a very nasty surprise to find he was trapped here with the rest of us. That’s why he stayed well back until it was all over, before making his move.”

I nodded. I didn’t really care. It was just details.

Walker found a public phone and told the CIA about Honey. I contacted my family through my torc. That wouldn’t have been possible with the old torc, supplied by the corrupt Heart, but Ethel’s upgrade to strange matter had gifted us with many new options, some of which we were still getting used to. The Drood communications officer was all over me the moment he recognised my voice.

“Where the hell have you been, Edwin? We haven’t been able to reach you for days! You know you’re supposed to report in regularly.”

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“But where have you been? It was like you’d dropped off the whole planet! We’ve had the whole family searching for some sign of you. Even Ethel couldn’t locate you, and she sees in five dimensions!”

“Good for her,” I said. “Now shut the hell up and patch me through to the War Room. I want to speak to the Matriarch. The whole game’s gone to hell, and the Independent Agent has screwed us all.”