Chapter 9

"Jack Starbright, eh?" Alan Blunt said, a light in his eyes as they cast toward Joe Byrne. "Why, the last time I checked, she was six feet under. Why do you want to know where a dead girl is?"

"Alan, your games are over and you got Alex to do as you wanted. Don't you think it's time to let him out of this web of lies?" Joe stated in all seriousness. He'd never liked the idea of a child working as a spy. There were too many things that could go wrong with that scenario. He needed to let Alex out of the game and let the young man get on with his life. There would be less paperwork for Joe and he wouldn't have to worry about hunting Blunt down again either.

"I suppose you're right," Alan sighed as he finished off the scotch. "Besides that, without being the head of an agency means I can't use him as my pawn anymore anyway. I can tell you where she was last I checked, but she's probably not there anymore and I can tell you that the men are no longer under my control."

"I misjudged you, Blunt," Byrne said as he had his men preparing to write down everything he said.

"How so?" Blunt said with a smile.

"You aren't that wise if you allowed your hold over those men to slip and falter just because you lost MI6."

"You make it seem like they were outside agents," he replied, coldly.

"Wait, what?" Byrne looked at Blunt confused. "You mean they're not?"

"Of course not!" Blunt laughed as he looked at his old friend. "They were just soldiers following orders. Then, towards the time I was forced to resign, they went rogue and my final assignment to them, to save Jack and hide her in case we needed Alex to come to us again, went slightly... awry."

Byrne's mind instantly went into a mode change as he tried to understand the implications of the rogues. He began to process how they could account for many of the things that had been left unanswered after the operation.

"Were they the ones that flew the helo you sent after Alex as well?" a familiar voice asked as the head of MI6 walked into the door.

"Ah, Mrs. Jones," Blunt said with a cocky grin. "Glad to see the position I so graciously poised you to take is suiting you well."

"Don't give me that, Alan," she said with a disgusted glance before she turned her attention towards Joe Byrne. "As for you. When were you going to talk to me about the happenings surrounding Alex?"

"All in due time, Mrs. Jones," Byrne replied. "My immediate priorities were of my country, which, by the way, Alex is now a citizen of."

"Alex is under the protection of MI6 as well, Joe," she retorted, stopping and placing her hand on her hip.

"I was going to tell you once we had a firm hold of him, which, I'll let you know, that we do now," he explained, placing the Scotch back in the drawer.

"What do you mean, 'a firm hold of him'?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"He's safely in our custody."

"Why did you take him into custody? He's got nothing to do with the recent goings on."

"Except that he's the target of these rouges that Alan sent out."

Mrs. Jones walked to the window, staring out at the city below them. Her emotions were hidden behind the mask of calm collection as she stared off in the distance.

"My organization will take the Pleasures and Alex off of your hands," she stated simply, not looking at the deputy director of Central Intelligence.

"I'm afraid that's impossible. They're no longer citizens of the U.K. And Alex's dual citizenship was recently revoked and he's solely an American."

"That's such a simple thing to handle," Mrs. Jones replied, turning on Joe. "What's the real reason you won't give us Alex?"

"I'm afraid that's strictly confidential, Mrs. Jones," Joe answered, turning and walking back to his desk.

"Oh what horse-shit, Joe," Mrs. Jones answered, her anger starting to show slightly as she walked over to his desk and slapped her hand down, staring intensely into Joe's eyes as he sat behind the desk.

"Go on, Joe," Alan stated, making his presence in the room obvious again as he gulped down the last of his Scotch. "Tell her exactly what it is you have planned to do, here. How you're going to bait them out using Alex. How you're going to lead Alex on so he'll go along with it."

Joe stared incredulously at Alan.

"What the-" he began.

"Oh, please," Blunt stated, standing and adjusting his blazer and brushing off the Irish pennants that had been caused by the rough treatment of Byrne's men. "You act like it's so hard to see when someone is using their pawn? Especially someone as well versed in the game as myself?"

Mrs. Jones' expression solidified into a more aggravated look, but she managed to keep it from boiling over.

"Is this true?" she asked as the turned her attention from Blunt back to Byrne.

"Look-" Byrne began again.

"No, you look," she interrupted. "I'm taking Alex and the Pleasures back to Britain, with or without your approval."

"And how do you intend to do that? You don't know where Alex is and we haven't got the Pleasures in custody."

"What?" she stated, surprisedly. "Why don't you have them in custody? If there's someone after Alex, they'll surely hunt them down to use against him!"

"I'm well aware of this Mrs. Jones, but they weren't our priority."

"Of course not. You just wanted your bloody pawn!"

"I assure you-"

"I don't want or need your damned assurance. I will find the Pleasures, and will take Alex back to Britain and arrange for protection, myself."

"And if you do so, it will be considered a breach of international relations and, quite possibly, an act of war. We wouldn't want that, now would we? It's already bad enough your rogues have killed dozens of Marines, soldiers and sailors." Byrne stated, his face locked in determination.

Mrs. Jones was struck silent. She knew he was right but she couldn't think of a way that she could successfully commit these actions without appeal from the U.S. government.

"Besides that, Jack Starbright is still alive," Byrne stated simply.

"That's not possible," Mrs. Jones said, shocked. "Alex watched her die himself."

"He saw what they wanted him to see," Byrne stated as he put his hands together in front of his mouth. "You see, after interrogating many of the men who were working for Scorpia, we discovered that the prisoner located in the cell Alex identified as Ms. Starbright's had been taken and the security agents in the immediate area were killed. Including an undercover operative of mine. The men that did it, we knew, had to be of some intense background training. After some investigation and recent activity with the same modus operandi, we were able to get enough information on the men to identify them as British.

"At first, we thought they were contractors, seeing the false credentials they'd made. None of their equipment was standard. It all seemed like a mixture of many organizations. That's when we heard the reports from other intelligence agencies having men killed and stripped of equipment after what could only be described as intense torment. Lord knows what these men were told. Then, we managed to find they were in Cairo when everything was happening and, after finding out recently from you about Alan's activity to keep Alex in line, we thought that he'd hired contractors to do the work, that way the men would be freelance and untraceable. When you walked in, Alan had just told me that these men, were, in fact, agents from MI6. Now that that is in the open, I need your personnel files, Mrs. Jones."

Mrs. Jones stared at Byrne as he explained himself to her and absorbed as much information as she could from the statement he'd just made, before nodding her head softly. Just as she opened her mouth to negotiate terms to the information, Alan piped into the conversation with a smirk.

"That would be a waste of your time, Byrne," he explained, his smirk crooking his lips in an evil way. "You see, before the mission in Cairo, and without my knowing, they destroyed their personnel files to make them untraceable."

"What?" Byrne asked, the color draining from his face as he realized what could possibly be his only lead was now gone.

"It's true," Blunt stated, with false pity.

"Damn!" Byrne shouted, slamming his fist down on the table. "You son of a-"

"But!" Blunt shouted over Byrne before he could continue. "I believe I could possibly get you more information."

Byrne froze, staring at the man, and Mrs. Jones turned her gaze to Blunt, knowingly.

"What are you really doing this for Alan?" she asked, skeptically. "What's in it for you? These men's actions could easily get you locked away in Gibraltar or Guantanamo."

"Well, I'm not going to just give you the information," he said, his smirk growing into a cocky grin. "Not without an insurance policy."