Fidelity by Jan Fedarcyk

long time since she’d talked to any of them.
    The evening dragged on happily till towards midnight it was just Kay and Torres, neither of whom were what could be called strictly sober. Torres had taken to being shot in the leg with impressive fortitude, using it to coax drinks out of everyone long after he was on the mend. Another month or so and he wouldn’t even need the cane. Was it good luck that the bullet had not found itself six inches upward, in his knee, or was it bad luck that the bullet hadn’t found itself six inches to the right or left and missed him altogether? These were the sorts of questions Kay found herself asking several hours into her farewell party.
    â€œMoving on from us, Ivy?” Torres asked. Slurred.
    â€œOnly in body and spirit,” Kay said.
    Torres laughed. “And what do we get to hold on to?”
    â€œA fair portion of my liver.”
    â€œWe’ll take it,” Torres said, “we’ll take it. Who you going to be working for up in the big city?”
    â€œSusan Jeffries, in counterintelligence.”
    Torres laughed. “You’re working for Frowny?” He shook his head as if Kay had just told him she was planning on jumping off something high onto something hard. Then he beckoned the barman for two shots of Jameson. “Good luck.”
    â€œ ‘Frowny’?”
    â€œYou never read John le Carré? What the hell kind of spy are you, Kay? Frowny, like Smiley from the old novels.”
    â€œI did read John le Carré,” Kay said, “although none of you apparently did with any clarity, because the joke with Smiley was of course that he never smiled. And besides, his name was George Smiley, it wasn’t a nickname.”
    â€œOh,” Torres said, shrugging. “I guess we’re not as clever in the FBI as they are at MI6.”
    â€œA bunch of loose-tongued intellectuals, the lot of them.”
    â€œGod bless America,” Torres said.
    Two shots of Jameson disappeared down two gullets.
    â€œSo it’s counterintelligence work for you, then? Going to make sure the Russians don’t invade North Dakota? I saw that in a movie once.”
    â€œThat sounds like a stupid movie.”
    â€œIt was, but I think they remade it.”
    â€œSounds like the kind of thing they would do.”
    Torres laughed. “You’re all right in my book, Ivy,” Torres said. From Torres it represented a ringing endorsement. “Not everyone has what it takes to do this job, but I think you do. If you can keep your head down and manage not to piss anyone off.”
    â€œGod willing,” Kay said happily, calling for the check.

PART 2
    Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.
    â€”JOHANN GOTTFRIED SEUME

10
    G ROUP C HIEF Mike Anthony cupped his hands in the basin, filled them half with water, dumped it and brought his damp fingers up against his hairless scalp. Balding since his twenty-third birthday, homely long before that. Anthony looked at the reflection in the mirror with the sort of unflinching honesty that he had always prized as the foremost asset of the intelligence professional: the ability to see reality as it is, rather than as one might wish it to be. How many otherwise excellent case officers, women of sharp mind, men of firm character, had come to ruin because of this simple inability to identify and adhere to the hard, unpleasant, sharp-edged facts of existence? Insisting all was well when this was clearly not the case, maintaining absolute certainty in their sense of direction even as it led them off a cliff? A truth was a truth was a truth, however unpalatable one found it.
    He dried his fingers on a paper towel, threw it into the bin and fixed his tie. No, never a handsome man, not the one you first noticed on walking into a bar, but then again Anthony’s was not a trade that prized good looks particularly. Indeed, his sheer unobtrusiveness had proved a virtue