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Need to Know
Part 5
By: T.G. Browning
Kevin stood up, abruptly feeling a deep sense of gratitude to the man. If what he suspected was true, was true, then Marlowe had painted himself into a corner with no way out. “I’ll think about it.” He paused. “The information.”
“Already, ah, deodorized, you might say. I took care of it. A critical paragraph missing is all that was required. You do very good recovery, by the way.” Marlowe stood.
They shook hands and then Marlowe abruptly snapped his fingers.
The room brightened and again, the sounds of human activity wafted from the synthetic street outside. They were, after all, underground. Marlowe said, “You won’t change your mind?”
“No way. And here’s what I think of your offer.” Kevin abruptly hit him as hard as he could in the mouth and then danced with pain as his hand reported that teeth were much too hard to hit with knuckles, except for knuckleheads. Marlowe catapulted over the chair and got up slowly.
“Well, at least you didn’t try to kill me. I half expected that.” As he rubbed his jaw and then calmly spat out a tooth, his gave Kevin a brief thumbs up and grinned.
Kevin just shook his head and his hand as he walked for the door.
He never saw Marlowe again, either.
Behind him, Marlowe closed the door and muttered to himself, “God, he is a quick study.”
13: Interlude Revisited
Marlowe was quite surprised at the mildness of the rebuke. It was agony and it seemed to go on forever, but the damage was repairable and he was whole. He had expected to find himself in pieces. He might actually get to his five hundredth birthday, after all.
Much later, eons later it seemed, he sat alone in the dimness of a sanctuary that truly was safe. His primary patron still trusted him, as much as ever, which was to say only partly, and did understand that an agent, of any sort, still needed some privacy, occasionally. Especially when healing up.
Marlowe heard a stirring behind him, in a chair normally reserved for books that he cherished. The faintest of fragrances, a pair of scents actually, wafted to him and after a moment, he relaxed, recognizing both of them. Roses, from the Middle East somewhere, he thought. Nutmeg.
The spice trade had always been her special joy, he recalled.
He frowned, now following the logical thread backward to divine what the purpose of this meeting might be and then sighed. His cover was truly blown.
“How long have you known?”
The was, again, the sound of stirring. Silk, he thought.
“1905.” The voice was feminine and husky, sexually stimulating would have been a clinical way to describe its magic sound.
“Ah, yes. St. Petersburg. I rather thought that a convenient outcome. I got careless I see.”
“Not terribly so. I covered for you.”
Still without looking, Marlowe asked, “Why, Hecate? We’ve never been allies.”
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