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Date Posted: 20:54:50 06/28/10 Mon
Author: MadameDarque
Author Host/IP: 209-204-181-74.dsl.static.sonic.net / 209.204.181.74
Subject: Semper Eadem 1/1
In reply to: MadameDarque 's message, "Semper Eadem 1/1" on 20:41:49 06/28/10 Mon

1989

Morning in Section One dawns in a cacophony of voices—computers powering on, machines whirring to life, footsteps on the floor, and whispers of conversation. The clock proclaims that it is early in the morning; above the inhabitants of Paris might be strolling to work, buying a baguette, or greeting their loved ones. They go to their jobs, oblivious to the different kind of work that takes place beneath them.

Madeline observes the activity with pleasure. This is her calling, she knows—to take this mess and turn it into something efficient. Paul’s job is to inspire. Her job is to create.

Thinking of Paul, she decides it is time to give him a status report. She walks across the floor to the Perch, smiling as the rabble immediately clears a path. They have nothing to fear from her—for the most part—but Madeline finds it useful to maintain the impression that she could murder them in a gruesome way at any time she wishes.

Which is not entirely untrue.

After climbing the familiar stair’s to Adrian’s—no, Paul’s—office, she frowns at finding it empty. As she approaches the window, she sees a small note bearing two words penned in an untidy large scrawl:

“Tower conference room.”

Rolling her eyes indulgently, Madeline pockets the note and makes a mental note to remind him not to be so careless. Although no one knows the code to the Perch office but her and Paul, she still dislikes the idea of the head of Section One leaving scraps of paper detailing his exact whereabouts lying around.

However, she makes the necessary detour down the stairs and through numerous hallways, wondering why he insists on meeting in the conference room when the Perch would be perfectly adequate for whatever purposes he has in mind—and in any case, she has far too much work on her hands this morning to countenance any activity other than completing the profile for the Cadiz mission.

If she’s being honest with herself, Madeline doesn’t like the Tower. It was Adrian’s in-Section residence for over twenty years, and despite the extensive redecorating that Madeline personally oversaw, it still feels too much like a remnant of the past. In fact, it is the one place in Section where she can actually feel the older woman’s presence, like a hand on her shoulder. It makes her shudder just to think of it.

When she reaches the oak-paneled door Madeline steels herself against any dark memories that might return on her entrance to the place. She has no use for the past, only the present, and the future that she will help create.

Even having schooled her face into a studied expression of neutrality, Madeline still cannot control a little gasp of shock when she sees the conference room. The table and matching set of computers remain in place, but said table is overwhelmed with large quantities of food—numerous varieties of fruit, along with croissants and toast, muffins and scones, coffee and tea. Standing beside it all is Paul, looking very pleased with himself.

“Well? Do you like it?”

She stares in silence. In truth, she doesn’t know what to say. “I…came to talk about Cadiz,” she finishes lamely.

Paul laughs with a mocking expression of hurt. “And so we shall. As soon as you’ve eaten. Or while we eat, if you prefer.”

Madeline smiles, because it is very thoughtful of him, if a bit juvenile and overly extravagant—rather like Paul himself, she thinks wryly.

“Well, I had hoped to go live with the mission in twenty minutes—"

“They’re en route,” he interjects smoothly. “Jurgen is handling the initial approach.” When she still looks doubtful, he sighs. “Madeline. Look at yourself. I don’t think you’ve slept in the last two days, and God knows when you last ate. I can’t have my second-in-command dying of malnutrition.”

Madeline flushes. “I do eat,” she protests, “when the situation allows it. Surely you are aware that we have massive amounts of work ahead of us consolidating our position? We can’t afford---”

“You are doing excellent work,” he interrupts again. “And I intend to allow you to continue it. While you eat.”

Her native stubbornness makes her want to spit back a retort, but beyond that initial instinct she knows that he does this because he cares for her, which alarms her almost as much as it pleases her. And she is hungry after all.

With a shrug, she sits down on her side of the table and delicately picks up a piece of fruit. Grinning boyishly, Paul takes his place opposite her with an air of triumph.
Slowly, they eat and begin to talk of the mission.

******

Within days, the breakfast meetings have become a staple of their routine. Paul is satisfied that she is taking time away from work to eat at least once a day. To Madeline, it is a symbol, not only of the solidarity of their relationship, but as a banishment of the past---for she sits at Adrian’s table and eats the food from her kitchen, cooked by the chef she employed—and now Madeline can walk into the suite of rooms they call the Tower and no longer feel the ghost of that remarkable woman.

It is a few weeks after their first breakfast meeting that Paul brings up that particular ghost.

“Do you think we should have her murdered?” There is no need for clarification as to who he refers to. “Enough time has passed.”

Madeline shakes her head. “Even if we succeeded, George would know it was us. And in any case, what’s the point?”

Paul makes an airy gesture. “Deter the loyalists. Remove a perpetual thorn in our sides. Honestly Madeline, you can’t believe that she isn’t spending every moment of her ‘retirement’ plotting against us.”

She cradles a cup of tea in her hand. “No, I don’t dispute that,” she says quietly. “Which is exactly why we shouldn’t kill her.”

Paul frowns; such twists of logic are contrary to his nature, she knows. “Care to elaborate?” he asks, somewhat testily.

“Killing Adrian wouldn’t flush out her organization,” she explains patiently. “It would merely deprive them of a strong figurehead. They would scatter. What we need is a way to draw them out.”

Paul looks thoughtful. Slowly, he repeats, “draw them out…that was one of Adrian’s favorite techniques, was it not?”

Madeline smirks. “Yes.” They exchange glances; that is all that is needed.

They share a moment of intense satisfaction before Paul breaks the spell. “What’s on the agenda today?”

She promptly begins, “Burundi run-through, meeting with George and the Oversight heads at twelve…” --here Paul makes a noise of disgust that Madeline shares in sentiment, “…and a meeting with the six-month recruits afterwards.”

At this, Paul guffaws. “Six-month recruits? Doesn’t Operations have better things to do than intimidate a bunch of teenagers, most of whom will not live to see the end of their training?” He sets his cup of coffee down with feeling. “Whose idea was this?”

“Mine,” she responds coolly. Over his protests, she continues: “These are the first group of trainees who have not experienced a Section under Adrian. They are the operatives who will replace the loyalists. It is imperative that you show yourself to them. Make them respect and fear you.”

Paul smiles. “I thought that was your job.”

“We’ll have to share the burden. It’s the only way to erode what’s left of Adrian’s influence.”

Paul nods, and she knows that he understands. After a moment, he voices what they are both thinking:

“Adrian, Adrian. Why does it always have to come back to her?”

“We usurped the crown and didn’t kill the monarch,” Madeline says calmly. “That never ends well.”

******

The recruits sit, nervously awaiting the arrival of the mysterious Operations. Madeline can anticipate all of their thoughts and finds them predictable, but that is to be expected. They are strangely unmolded, these recruits who have only been in Section for six months—Madeline finds that in of itself a foreign concept, she who has spent her entire adult life within the organization. It is not easy to tell which of them will fail and which will survive, although there are some signs; a beautiful Asian woman sitting up straight, a look of steel in her eyes; a man with a keen, wary expression usually only found on the more hardened operatives—she is almost certain that these have potential.

There is one recruit in particular who catches her eye. He is sitting apart from the others, and his good looks alone would have been enough to merit attention. He is young, perhaps in his early twenties, with auburn hair worn long and striking green eyes. Rather than look away, as the others do when her gaze passes over them, he stares boldly back. Interesting.

She continues to look at the recruit as the sound of footsteps announces Paul’s arrival, waiting for his eyes to drop before Madeline redirects her attention to Paul.

Without a word of greeting, Paul reaches into his jacket and pulls out his customary pistol. Wide-eyed, the trainees stare in fear and more than a touch of awe.

“The work we do here is very important. No doubt most of you lived staggeringly useless lives before this—but that doesn’t matter in Section. Now you have a chance to make a difference. You may make something of it, or you may fail.” He grimly holds out the gun. “And I’m sure you’ve all been enlightened as to the cost of failure.”

Madeline smiles reassuringly at the recruits. Oh yes, good-cop-bad-cop may not break the hardened terrorists she sees in the White Room, but it works perfectly well for naïve trainees.

Thoroughly intimidated by Paul’s speech, the recruits fumble through the demonstrations of their martial arts skills that follow. All but one. The young recruit performs brilliantly, and Madeline does not fail to notice this, gesturing discreetly to Paul.

“What’s your name?” she asks, coming to stand by his place.

“Michael Samuelle,” he answers, not pausing between roundhouse kicks. The insolence is faint, but there, and Madeline smiles at the artful way it is delivered.

“I am Madeline. Second-in-command.” At this, he stops and turns to her with an almost apologetic movement of his head, taking her hand in his surprisingly cool palm, all in seemingly one movement. By this time, Paul has reached them.

He looks irritated at Michael, not the least of which because Madeline seems to be engaged in an extended handshake with the recruit, but also because he seems to have failed to intimidate him. Madeline smiles again. She knows him all too well.

“Operations,” she says, using his formal name in public, “This is Michael Samuelle.”

Paul stares at him with barely disguised hostility. The young man looks at him coolly in return. Inexplicably, Madeline feels that they are on the brink of something—if she inclined to the maudlin, she would say it was tragedy.

“You’re a very good fighter, Michael. I was watching from over there.”

Michael inclines his head. “Thank you.”

“You know what I think?” continues Paul, “I think you should be promoted to Level Three, effective immediately. What would you say to that?”

Michael is good at hiding his emotions, but not good enough for Madeline. She notes the dilation of his pupils, the short intake of breath. No, he is not quite good enough. She will teach him.

“I would thank you, sir.”

Paul grunts in acknowledgement. Meanwhile, their conversation has been overheard; for now it seems the whole room has stopped practicing and is instead eavesdropping feverishly. Paul turns around sharply, Madeline following behind, causing a ripple throughout the room.

At the top of the stairs, he turns. “Continue!” he barks, and Madeline leads the way out.

*****

“Why did you do that?” she asks evenly as they walk along the corridor.

Paul shrugs. He seems unnerved by the encounter. “Playing God, I suppose. The poor kid will be dead in two weeks.”

Madeline shakes her head. “No, he won’t.”

He stops walking, a strange look of urgency in his eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

“Intuition,” she says. “Normally not something I would rely upon, but there is something extraordinary about that young man. You felt it too, I saw.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “I suppose that’s what made me do it.” They continue to walk, until he changes the subject abruptly:

“How’s Charles?”

She shows her displeasure with a tightening of her mouth. This is the forbidden subject between them, the thing they have agreed without words to never discuss.

“Fine,” she says curtly, and walks in the other direction.

It is ironic, then, that later that night, when she’s come above the surface to the real world of metros, stoplights, and cafes to make her way to her apartment, that the same topic is brought up again, with a slight altering of names.

“How’s Paul?”

“Fine,” she says for the second time that day, and wonders how she of all people ended up in this tangled mess of feelings and emotions.

Her marriage with Charles was one of convenience, forged during the days of conspiring against Adrian. He needed her influence as much as she needed his loyalty, but then he had to fall in love with her, the fool, and endanger himself more than he could ever have imagined. And if that were not enough, she had to come to care for him, not in the way she cares for Paul, but in a much simpler way—a love not born out of hate and need and passion, but more of the civilized domestic partnership that she finds she now craves too much to give up. And even if she did, she doubts that would halt Paul’s maniacal hatred of the man.

Charles, his sandy hair combed immaculately as always, stares at her with those piercing blue eyes that remind her so uncomfortably of Paul, and takes her hand. No, her limp touch tells him, why do you have to do this? If you didn’t love me he might leave us alone. I can’t stand against him, but I won’t give in to him either. I have given him no choice. You have doomed yourself.

“Do you know why he hasn’t been sending me out?” Charles asks anxiously.

She forces a smile. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You deserve a break, in any case.”

Madeline kisses him in an attempt to distract him from the guilt she is not entirely sure she can keep from her eyes anymore. But he pulls away, and says with a strange mixture of innocence and resignation:

“You know it’s not right, Madeline. I’m a Level Five operative. I need to do my job.”

“And you will.” She rests a hand on the front of his shirt. “In fact, when I write the profile for Antwerp I’m going to personally request that you lead the team.”

His eyes light up. “Thank you, Madeline.”

He kisses her affectionately on the cheek, and later when they’ve gone to bed and he’s asleep beside her, Madeline indulges in a moment of thoroughly unproductive hatred for Paul and his petty jealousy.

*******

“I see that you’ve requested Charles lead the Antwerp mission.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” she says crisply.

Paul leans against the window of the Perch, drawing on his cigarette. “Why?” he asks simply.

She raises an eyebrow. “Would you perhaps like an overview of his qualifications?”

He shakes his head, putting out his cigarette in one of his ubiquitous ash trays. “No,” he says slowly, staring at her, “I want to know why you want me to work with that son of a bitch. I hate him, you know that.”

“Your personal relationship,” she says coldly, “has no bearing on the fact that he’s a Level Five operative and a tremendous resource for the Section. It’s foolish to let him idle.”

“I asked you to cease…cohabitating with him,” he snaps. “There is no reason for the marriage to continue.”

She ignores that. “This is important, Paul. If you don’t send him out, I’ll resign.”

“Resign?” He laughs. “No one resigns from the Section.”

“I am aware of that.”

He stares at her in disbelief, then mounting horror as he comprehends her meaning.

With a crash, he slams his fist on the ledge. “Damn it, Madeline!” She waits for the storm to pass. Then he glares at her and says, “Fine. He goes.”

Madeline leaves without a backward glance. She regrets the ugliness of the scene, but it is the only way to save Charles. Paul will eventually contrive some way to kill him if he remains in Section, of that she is sure. But now she controls the situation. There will be a convenient way to set him free on the mission, perhaps with a faked death to satisfy Paul. It is risky, and even if it works she will most likely be sending him straight into the comfort of a Red Cell prison, a hazard she allows only because she is certain there is no danger of Charles revealing crucial intel.

She surprises herself with the lengths she is going to for a man she doesn’t even love. But Madeline knows this isn’t really about Charles—it is about her and Paul, and her refusal to surrender her identity to his possessiveness. And above all, she knows there is a part of her that would rather die than see an innocent man murdered, for no crime other than having the temerity to love her.

******

She is waiting for him at the end of Van Access. Charles looks exceedingly happy to be back in command, and his team equally happy to have him. When he sees her he smiles dashingly but does nothing more. There can be no displays of affection at Section, especially for those of their position.

So he gives her a surprised look when she touches his arm and says, “Wait,” in a soft voice.

“What is it?” he asks, looking concerned.

She opens her mouth, not sure what she meant to say. “Be careful,” she says, although that’s not what she meant at all.

He smiles kindly and turns to walk out of Van Access, and when she thinks of him later that will be the image she sees, Charles dressed in his combat gear and smiling at her, walking down a tunnel out of her life.

She goes to her office to monitor the mission. She listens to the gunfire, the muffled orders; the sounds she knows all too well. Madeline hears Charles’s voice, “Hostiles engaging—“ and she pushes the button to cut him and the team of abeyance operatives she had specifically assigned to the team off.

After that, she has work to do.

*****

Charles is alive. She observes the communiqué on her computer, a cold sense of triumph enveloping her. She has preserved his life, although most likely not much of a life at the moment, trapped in some dark Red Cell prison, but she has confidence in his resourcefulness. He may live a freer life than any of them.

But she has not won yet. With almost clinical interest, Madeline observes the file being re-routed, and then simply…disappearing. A quick typing in of the necessary codes makes it clear that the commands are coming from the Perch.
She can imagine Paul now, jubilant at this great stroke of fortune that has saved him the trouble of murdering his rival and facing her resentment. He cannot murder Charles now, deep as he is within the Red Cell apparatus. And why would he need to? Madeline feels pride at the perfection of her logic, while at the same time feeling something has perished within her.

But Paul is not stupid. He realizes as well as her that there is no such thing as good fortune in Section. But he will let it be, and so will she. And maybe finally this thing can be put to rest between them, the wedge that threatens to drive them apart and destroy their remarkable partnership.

*****

“I am very sorry about Charles.” When she looks skeptical, he elaborates: “Not for him. For you.”

“I didn’t love him,” she says steadily.

Paul looks distinctly guilty, and Madeline realizes then that he is asking her forgiveness, not for murder but for driving them to this point. She is silent while she butters a scone.

At length Paul speaks again. “Do you ever think of her, up here?”

“Yes,” she says frankly. The two of them are finished with deception. At least for the moment.

“I wonder sometimes how she did it,” he says, as if the words are bitter in his mouth. “How she kept her grip on reality. I sometimes feel I’m not strong enough.”

She thinks for a moment. “Adrian was stronger than us individually,” she admits. “But together we defeated her.”

“We gambled and we won, Madeline. How much longer will our luck hold? Against George? Against Mr. Jones?”

“I do not rely on luck,” she says quietly.

With that, they turn to their monitors and talk of other things.

~fin.

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