“I didn’t. I just figured it out. Perhaps I’m wrong.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Do you see Dame Felicity often?”

“When we’re both in residence down here.”

Rose leaned forward on her elbows. “Is she very good in bed?”

Stone was saved from that question by Dino and Viv, returned from their picnic, joining them for coffee.

23

Lance Cabot was in a meeting with an operations team about to embark on a mission when he was handed a note. A Brigadier Fife-Simpson to see you, it read.

“Tell him to wait,” he said, then continued with his meeting.

Forty minutes later the meeting broke up, and he buzzed his secretary. “Send in the brigadier,” he said.

A moment later they were shaking hands. Fife-Simpson was dressing a lot better than the last time he had seen him, Lance thought.

“Lance, how are you?”

“Very well, Roger,” Lance replied, waving him to a seat. “Coffee?”

“I had some while I was waiting,” Roger replied.

“Yes, sorry about that. I was sending a couple of young men off to their deaths.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell me about their mission.”

“You ‘don’t suppose’ correctly,” Lance said. “First, we’d have to clear you from your birth to this date, and you know how long that sort of thing takes.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I do,” Roger replied.

“Tell me, how long did it take to clear you at MI-6, after Admiral Sir Timothy Barnes shoved you down their throats?”

“Well, I don’t think it was quite like that,” Roger replied uncomfortably.

“Of course it was, Roger,” Lance replied. “You don’t actually think Dame Felicity was glad to see you, do you?”

“Dame Felicity has been very cordial,” Roger said stiffly.

“You and Sir Tim were at some school or other at the same time, weren’t you?”

“Yes, we were midshipmen at Dartmouth. He chose the Royal Navy, I chose the Royal Marines.”

“And now he’s First Sea Lord, I believe?”

“That is correct.”

“In a perfect position to throw a bone to an old midshipman chum.”

“I suppose you could put it that way.”

“The way I heard it was that you were about to be passed over for promotion for the second time, which would have necessitated retirement, when Sir Tim saved your ass, pulled you back from the brink. Did you once save his life, or something?”

“Something like that,” Roger replied.

“No, no, not his life, his career, wasn’t it? Sort of the same thing, I guess.”

“I’d rather not go into that.”

“Why not? Being queer isn’t a crime in Britain anymore—though it is, perhaps, a no-no for a high-ranking military member of the government. Whose arm did old Tim twist? The foreign minister’s, perhaps? After all, MI-6 comes under his purview.”