Work Text:
In a nondescript building somewhere off Whitehall, Archie Curtis sits in a mostly unused office and waits.
It is, in the most technical sense, his office.
He is, in the most technical sense, a high ranking member of a clandestine intelligence organization dedicated to maintaining the king’s peace.
In reality, sometimes it feels rather like the bulk of Curtis’ job is liaising with people who are better fobbed off on a baronet than speaking to anyone actually in charge. He’s a front man, and as the Private Bureau has slid steadily farther into the shadows of the strictly unofficial, it’s not much to keep him busy.
He doesn’t feel like a secret agent, least of all on long evenings when he catches himself for the umteenth time peering bootlessly at the opaque nighttime window. He doesn’t much look like a secret agent. He looks like a staunch and greying Englishman with a paunch, albeit one short of a full complement of fingers.
Curtis likes to think he could still hold his own in a scrap, old wounds and creaky knees notwithstanding. But some years ago, his newly minted superior had rather acidly explained to him that he should not expect a resurgence of cloak-and-dagger work, because the bureau chief of a clandestine intelligence organization didn’t need a large-ish potential liability charging about in the line of fire. Curtis had taken a moment to digest that, then smiled and said that he loved Daniel, too.
Because here’s the fact of the matter, really: Archie Curtis’ job is keeping Daniel da Silva out of trouble, and it’ll do well enough.
If the unobliging bugger ever shows his face again.
“Wool gathering, Curtis?”
“There you are!”
“Waiting up for me, dear heart?” says Daniel da Silva, the layers of sarcasm and sentiment as reflexive as a prayer. He hasn’t taken his coat off yet.
“Just tidying up some odds and ends. How was your jaunt to the countryside?”
“Oh, you know. Found three bodies. Fixed an inquest. Learned a salutary lesson about sending a marquess’s son to do an East End pool sharp’s job.”
“Missing field work, are you?”
“Not this week, I’m not. Curtis, buy me a drink.”
They aren’t at liberty quite yet, of course.
Daniel sorts through papers like a gamester while Curtis apprises him of his own doings: the too-canny reporter he’s tasked someone to chase away from the High-Low story, the corrupt police officers they’re in the process of nailing thoroughly to a precinct wall. He’s had the broad strokes of the state of the Zodiac case, and the autopsical details can wait for daylight. He asks after Merton and the other Bureau chaps, and the variously bereaved. He asks, when a decent interval has passed, after Kim Secretan.
“Sacked him,” says Daniel succinctly.
“Mm,” says Curtis.
“Gin,” says Daniel, and he marches for the door.
They had met Kim Secretan socially, at a country house party with a refreshingly minimal level of intrigue and international incident by Daniel’s standards. Back in London, Daniel had surprised Curtis by asking what he thought of “the charming Lord Arthur.” He hadn’t thought much, beyond an old soldier’s natural contempt for an upper class war shirker, touched distantly with pity for the all too obvious misery and self-loathing behind the young man’s slightly manic affect.
“Secretan? Too bad about that one. If he wants to throw his life away he could’ve managed it more neatly than by drinking too many cocktails and driving too fast.”
Daniel’s smile had been positively ophidian. “You know, that is very nearly exactly what I was thinking.”
Curtis had taken something of an interest in Secretan, after that.
He was a difficult man to like, with a shallow, modern sort of charm he wore like a suit and an acidic tongue he drew like a knife, and far too given to poetical quotation. Quite like Daniel, in that regard.
He was a difficult man to dislike. At least for Archie Curtis.
“I know you said Secretan was getting…squirrely, was it?”
“Among other things.”
“Which is different from his usual…nervy whippet, I believe?”
“It is an inescapable comparison. Rat-faced, overbred, prone to attacks of the shakes. And I, in my folly, forgot that nervy dogs will bite.”
“He never turned traitor, surely.”
“Because he’s so bloody trustworthy?”
“Because you sacked him but left his bollocks intact.”
“Fine, he didn’t turn traitor, if by that you mean throw in his lot with Zodiac or sell state secrets to the highest bidder.” Daniel glares into his gin and taps a finger on Curtis’ dinner table, one, two, three. “Say rather…he got confused in his loyalties. He forgot which hand feeds him. So he can clean up his own messes now, the sneaking cur.”
“Mmm.”
“Don’t get sentimental about your pets, Curtis.”
“Rather harsh, don’t you think?”
“It’s what your uncle told me, more or less, and on more than one occasion.”
That Curtis could well imagine. There had been a series of conversations, back when Sir Maurice Vaizey was contemplating maneuvering Daniel into line for leadership in the Private Bureau, that Curtis had never felt the need to share in their particulars.
One of them had taken place in Sir Maurice’s private office at his home, Sir Maurice occupying an oversized desk and a conveniently ambiguous space between Curtis’s uncle and his chief, which made it doubly difficult to tell him to toss off. “He’s your partner, and I’m asking you to be honest. Is he too soft?”
“Soft, sir? Are you joking?”
“You were an officer. You understand looking at the board, and giving orders, and making decisions that have consequences, bloody ones. Da Silva has certainly never been that.”
“Da Silva’s service—”
“It’s not just that he’s a damned pacifist. He’s a slippery bastard—hush, boy, you know I mean it as a great encomium—he’s a slippery bastard, but I worry he’s got too many scruples and not enough nerve.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say so, sir. Fighting ability aside, you’ve never faulted da Silva’s nerve. And you’ve never credited him with scruples.”
“Ha! You’re right. Half the reason he’s so cursedly useful is that he lacks a gentleman’s sensibilities. Well. We call it a gentleman’s game, but it’s not anymore, and it probably never was. It’s a dirty business.” He looked tired, then, hag-ridden even. It was a momentary slip. “It’s not enough to be ruthless with your enemies. You recruit assets, you use them, and sometimes you discard them. Is da Silva up to the job?”
That was years ago, now. And Daniel—well, Daniel was very good at his job.
“He was useful, but he got soft,” Daniel says, in uncanny echo of Curtis’s thoughts. “He was only good to me as long as he had nothing much to lose. An excellent find, but I always knew Secretan wasn’t long for this world. Either he’d be recalled to the bosom of his noble family, or he’d get himself killed.”
Curtis raises his eyebrows at that appalling bit of cold-bloodedness. Daniel’s lip twists in reply. Curtis says “Seems to me he hasn’t done either of those things.”
“Not yet. But it comes to much the same thing. Secretan’s an aristocrat. Push comes to shove, his sort stick together. A trail of bodies, and he’s trying to save the pretty little viscount’s daughter her reputation.”
“I wouldn’t have suspected Secretan of chivalry.”
Daniel blinks slowly and turns an astonishingly malevolent eye on Curtis. “Chivalry, is that what it is? Just trying to do the decent thing, eh, Sir Archibald? Sort it out quietly, just us gentlemen?” He asks poisonously.
“Now see here,” Curtis protests, stung, but Daniel is crouched and hissing like some large and angry species of feline.
“He had a job to do. That’s what he needed, and that’s what I gave him, a proper job to do and the resources to do it, and an ear like bloody Mother Superior for his hand-wringing, and all he had to do was report back and not decide his lordship knows best and debriefs are for other people, and not forget the objective in the midst of his bootless sensibilities, and not go haring off on his own self-appointed separate mission, but no, Lord Arthur Aloyisius de Fuck-all Secretan needs must be the sole survivor of his own private tragedy all the bloody time, treading the tracks of exile and fucking us over.”
Daniel never shouts, instead opting to terrify his underlings with brutally calm set downs, but his voice is ringing slightly by the time he reaches his period.
Words. Words are not Curtis’ tool of choice, but Daniel would not welcome touch in this moment.
“I’m sorry,” says Curtis, because it seems like the thing to do.
Daniel’s glare is a little more half-hearted this time. “You’re the one with strong feelings on not keeping pertinent information from your colleagues. Secretan’s got a tongue like a corkscrew, but I didn’t realize quite how comprehensively he was hoodwinking his own side.”
Curtis must not keep his feelings off his face, because Daniel snorts.
“Yes, you needn’t say it. I’m an honest man, that hates the slime that sticks on filthy deeds. You may call me a hypocrite and a panderer and a user of men–”
“I will call you no such thing, but you must recognize the, uh, poetic irony?”
“We’ve had words about literary criticism, Curtis.”
“He lied.”
“Yes. He’s a liar. It’s what he does. And he may lie to his marks. He may lie to his enemies and his intimates and his fiancee and his bloody bookseller. But I told him from the outset he was not to lie to me. I told him he didn’t have to.”
An excellent find. Only good to me as long as he had nothing much to lose. Not a lie. Not quite truthful.
“You recruited Secretan because you wanted better for him.”
“No, I recruited him because he has a knack for betrayal. More fool me for forgetting it.”
Curtis sips his brandy. Daniel slams back and refills his gin.
“So what happens now?”
“Now? I go back to work. Merton came out of this all right, if no one else did. His boys will be trawling through Capricorn’s documents for days. The estate will be a mess. I gather Secretan’s engagement to the viscount’s daughter did not survive the excitement.”
Curtis hasn’t met the girl, but she doubtless deserves better.
Nothing much to lose.
“So Secretan’s on his own, then.”
“He did choose the lone wolf route. He must alone his care bewail. Preferably from a good long distance.”
“What about the bloody bookseller?”
“Ah. Well.” Daniel stares moodily into the middle distance. Curtis takes a moment to estimate how much gin has been consumed, before giving that up as a bad job.
“The bloody bookseller will be all right, so long as he doesn’t drop any more bodies in nightclubs. Secretan all but begged on bended knee to keep his name clear, before he torched his own credibility, I mean. If he keeps his head, and if Secretan doesn’t run him off…and if he isn’t driven to murder the man himself…”
Curtis snorts. Daniel manages a sardonic smile.
“I said Secretan was going to get himself killed, and he doesn’t need Zodiac for that. But I suppose it is just possible that joining cause with a trench raider – yes, did you not nab his file? – a bellicose bookseller who seems to take some interest in Secretan’s wellbeing and vice versa…it might do some marginal good for his odds of survival. Shan’t speculate what it will do to the literary world, mind.”
“I’d quite like to meet this bellicose bookseller of yours.”
“Absolutely not. On brief acquaintance, Darling seems to be just as bull-headed and troublesome as the War Office suggested. At least he can recite his lines at an inquest; that blank-faced military demeanor of his can cover all manner of sins. What a pair. If I could filter and combine them like an alchemist of old, I’d have about two thirds of a good agent.”
“...Is that so?"
Daniel shoots Curtis a glower. "But you will not be meeting either of them because I'm nauseated by both their faces. No, Secretan must tread the stranger paths of banishment, with or without his bookseller.”
"As the chap said. So, er, they go back to the bookshop?”
"Or to the devil.”
"Quite. And you think this banishment will keep them out of trouble?"
"Well I daresay hope springs eternal. Secretan won't be bringing his trouble to my desk, at least. He can clean up his own messes and fix his own problems, and pine from afar, damn him.”
Curtis chokes on an ill-timed sip. "Pine, Daniel?"
Daniel smiles thinly. "Exiles yearn for their liege lord, do they not? Forþon wat se þe sceal his winedryhtnes leofes larcwidum longe forþolian..."
"And that is quite enough of that!" Curtis announces in alarm, and swipes the bottle of gin away before Daniel can either pour or spill the remnants. An Anglo-Saxon quantity of gin, that's where they are. But Curtis, though not a fanciful man, imagines he can see the hard edges of DS receding just enough to let the young scholar of poetry out, and that may be worth the incomprehensible mutterings.
"Daniel.”
“Archie.”
“You’ve done well.”
“Don’t you dare get sentimental on me.”
“All right.”
“Archie.”
“Daniel?”
“Take me to bed.”
Curtis gathers up the glasses and bottles and fixes Daniel a bitters and soda, setting about the small domestic rituals and preparing for the morning, and the morning head it will likely bring.
Will they need DS back tomorrow, or can Daniel da Silva be spared for a day or two? Good Lord, what a week.
Well. He can have a word with his superior, come morning. After all, Curtis has a job to do.