omar | TLV: IC Inbox

Thought you was supposed to be taking care of me out there, man. Starting to sound like this ain't much of a vacation at all.

...I got distracted by how neat Kowloon used to be.

All right, a vacation. Um- beaches? Batu Ferringhi up in Penang, if you want to see where I was born. White sand, lots of honeymooners, that sort of thing.

Doesn't have to be no beach.

[There's something a little funny, a little reticent in his voice. A little guilty, still.]

River, jungle, all that work too.

Well, you should come, that's exactly what it's like. If we can find someone to let us into the Enclosure-

[Happily.]

[A brief pause, like he's waiting for something, then--]

You got a warden you can ask, yo.

Oh. Do you think she'd-?

[Ricki hasn't mastered going to Anya for anything.]

Expect she would if you did.

[He really hesitates. Laughs at himself, and shakes his head.]

Can't. I'm so sorry, darling, I'd really like to, but I'm- it's silly, but I haven't been able to ask her for a thing yet, and if I start now I'm never going to be able to stop wondering what I'll have to give up in trade.

Guess we plum outta luck, then.

...I'll ask her. I can't not, it's- you've got to see it.

[Nervous, but excited, but nervous- he qualifies.]

But it might take me a month to get up the nerve. I barely made it down to Paris, even asking to get out was--

Y'all have the phrase day at a time back in the day, Ricki?

Not in my life. [He admits, laughing, entirely at himself.] Nothing but power plays and long games, for us. But that's a waltz I'm doing all on my own, and this is a very, very good excuse to learn to stop dancing.

[He's not laughing along, this time.]

This a good place to learn it. How you gonna plan for a month from now?

Yes, but when I don't plan, I don't sleep.

[There's a lot he could say to that, but he's not actually trying to pick a fight, at least not in the middle of the worst fucking night, darling. He settles, quietly smoothing out his own rumpled feathers on his end.]

What kinda plans you been making?

[He hums, tries to think about it.]

I spend a lot of time thinking about someone from home arriving here. Peter Guillam, Bill Haydon. What kind of trouble would I be in, what kind of damage control am I going to have to run if George Smiley in his spectacles knocks on my door? Who would they be- warden, inmate, warden.

[Well, that's interesting, anyway.]

Other acrobats and circus clowns?

Story for you?

[Apologetic and soft; he knows, he knows he's being demanding and terrible, but hopefully Omar will be forgiving.]

This one's a big one. This one is how I, after twenty years of good service, tried to retire.

[This time, he really feels like he's the one being demanding. Or hovering on it, anyway, with all the buttons he feels himself wanting to push tonight and just barely isn't. Ricki's reticence -- about Anya, more importantly to Anya -- suddenly grates more than usual, and for some reason, it grates all the more in light of this sudden resurgence of Puerto Rico in Omar's mind. That and this lingering sense of debt to Reynaldo, to whom he really owes nothing at all... except that this idle fantasy he really has been imagining these past few days was once a possible future belonging to someone else. An actual cabin on an actual beach that isn't his to share.

It's all unsettling and irritating in ways he doesn't want to indulge any more right now, or at all, so he settles in and tries to fix his mind to listening. This is a big one, Ricki says, and he does want to know. He closes his eyes on his end and leans back, trying to clear his head.]

Go on.

Almost a year ago now, I was doing a job in Istanbul.

[Ricki might pick up on it- maybe he does- maybe he'd do something about it, if they were in person. But instead he goes on talking. The texture of the sound changes; he's lying down with his head on the pillow, with the device in close.]

They had me following a trade delegate. This Russian named Boris. He was a boozer, a party animal, so the local men were having trouble keeping in his footsteps. They thought they might be able to turn him with one of your honey traps, convince him to man a box- but when I got there I realized it was much worse than that. He was a hood, a Moscow trained man if I ever saw one. He might even have been on the look out for someone like me, trying to lure me in to work a soft target, and then get me into an ugly double-double game on the other side. I wired home, no sale, and decided to just watch his apartment, maybe burgle the place, see if I could find something worth the hotel and airfare.

[Ricki always has to ease into the language of Omar's stories, and Omar tends to have to do the same for his. Some things get translated automatically -- honey trap, he already knows. Others, like man a box, get filed away for later reference. The gist is clear enough, though, and it's not hard to follow along with this one.]

Which y'all did.

[Or there wouldn't be a story, he assumes.]

I saw him through a window, beating his wife.

[He answers, letting out a long breath.]

A slip of a girl, and another operative. I went to go check up on her, offer a gentle shoulder. I'm good with women, and I know them- I know when they have secrets. I had a feeling about this girl.

[Omar hesitates, this time. He'll cheerfully admit that he's the last person suited for Ricki's craft -- if he ever were any kind of spy, he'd be the one in the James Bond model -- but he already has a bad feeling that he might know where this is going. He's heard too many of these stories from him now.]

...a'ight. Still with you.

"Your man's a bit of a bastard, isn't he?"

[Ricki asks, recalls, the voice that just makes people melt to do whatever they can for him, with a solicitous;]

"I came over to check you were all right."

She let me in. I was a businessman, it was a holiday romance- convertibles down port side streets, with her split lip and bruised jaw healing slowly. I didn't sleep with her. I hardly had to, she needed someone so badly. [And here's the twist, the way this story is unlike any of the others;] And anyways, the moment she had me alone, one sunny day, away from any ears, she put her small hands on mine and told me that she knew who I was, and that I had to get a message back to Control for her. That- that's not language you guess at, it was credible. She had gold for him.

[It's honestly not a surprise at all to hear it. It is a twist, but it's one he saw coming this time, no blind-siding like the Leamas tale. He suspects there's at least one more ahead.]

Bet she did, at that.

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