NOTE TO READERS - Thank you for sticking with this latest Sexpionage story. I realise that the narrative is currently focused on build up and background, especially regarding Grace Miller, but let me assure you that it will make the 'peril' more satisfying when it comes, and it does come, over the next days and weeks. Thank you as always for your brilliant support.
Oxford, Spies and The Secret Service (3)
Agent’s Quarters, Fort Monckton, Stokes Bay, Gosport, Hampshire, UK
“You’re getting a field op.”
“No, of course I’m not … how on earth could I, I’m only seven months into the course?” Grace Miller’s clipped Stockbroker belt tones answered the statement from her fellow trainee with a firm rebuff.
“You’ll see,” the male voice responded, “I heard the rumours at the weekly trainee update, you know the one you missed because of the extra training you were selected for!” His intonation was pointed as if to say ‘so why else do you think you’re getting the additional classes?’
Grace shook her head and headed on down the corridor towards her own room. Although she had dismissed the words, hearing that she was up for mission selection excited her beyond belief.
She had closed the room door no more than a second or two earlier when her phone rang.
“Mummy …”
“Grace, hello princess it’s father.”
“Oh, hello daddy, but you’re on mummy’s phone?”
“I know dear, she was all set to call you, and she is here waiting, but I wanted to tell you first.”
“Ooookay,” Grace was now on her guard. “Tell me what daddy?”
“Your mother and I are going abroad for maybe a year.”
“Oh … what? Why? Where to?”
Her father laughed. “That’s a lot of questions darling, but I have resigned my partnership from the firm and so now we have the time …”
Grace knew that such a venture for her parents was always about having the time, never about the money of which they had more than enough.
“… so, we’re heading to New Zealand to visit your brother, and then moving on to Asia …”
“Wow, okay that sounds … really great.”
In all honesty Grace was a little upset. She liked having her parents just a few hours away, it provided security when her daily life offered little. But it was their life …
“When are you going?”
“Next week darling, and so we wanted to let you know in good time just in case you found yourself on one of those secret missions and couldn’t talk to us … you know.”
“Oh daddy, I’m still just a trainee Agent, I will be here whenever you want to call.”
“Okay princess, let me put mummy on.”
******
It was just a solitary hour after that call with her parents that Grace Miller, her stomach doing somersaults riddled with nerves, found herself in a military vehicle being driven to see the Head of MI6 at his office in Vauxhall, London.
MI6 SIS Building, Lambeth, London, UK
Grace reached the large opaque glass door at the end of the hallway and, with trembling hands, she knocked.
"Come in." The clipped voice shouted from inside, and the young girl pushed open the door to see inside the office of … Maddie, Roger Moore’s PA.
“You must be Agent Miller?”
“Trainee Agent Miller, yes that’s right.”
Maddie smiled knowingly and indicated that Grace should take a seat.
Feet tapping, knees bouncing one on top of the other, lip biting … Grace had never felt so nervous. Then, after what seemed like hours, but was really only minutes, Maddie indicated that she should ‘go on through.
Roger Moore sat behind the desk; brow furrowed at his computer.
And so, she waited ... the only noise in the room was the click-clack of the keyboard as the Head of MI6 remained focused on the screen of his computer. He seemed content to let her stew in the silence. Grace watched his long fingers flick pressing each key with deliberation. She waited politely, but it was several awkward moments before he looked up to acknowledge her.
“Sit.” She did.
“Agent Miller …”
For a moment Grace thought about correcting him, but even she realised that you did not correct the Head of MI6, especially not to tell him that you were still only a Trainee. She could hardly believe that she was here sitting opposite him.
“Yes … Sir,” she replied.
“Hmmmm, so … Grace Miller, twenty-one years old, First Class degree in Mandarin and Arabic from Oxford? Which school?”
“Oh erm, Christ Church … Sir.”
She watched as he nodded sagely.
“Tell me about Professor Huan Chu, Agent Miller.”
The question clearly took the young trainee Agent by surprise. “Y … you mean my Professor from Oxford?”
Moore nodded.
“Oh, erm, he was …” Grace was clearly stuck for words.
“Did you like him Agent Miller?”
“He was a good teacher yes, I guess, I never really thought about it … Sir.”
Moore smiled as she remembered to add the appropriate suffix.
“Would you be prepared to get to know him a little better.”
“Sir?” Agent Miller furrowed her brow clearly in need of further explanation. She recalled the brief ‘encounter’ that she and the middle-aged professor had shared, if shared was the right word, when she was under his tutelage. An encounter that she had quickly nipped in the bud.
The Head of MI6 pressed his intercom. “Maddie please send in Agent Novikova.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Sir, you mean THE Agent Novikova?”
Roger Moore smiled and nodded. “Yes of course the very same.” And right on cue the door to his office opened and in walked the gorgeous blonde with the very chequered past, accompanied by two other Senior MI6 Officers.
Mews Apartments, St Aldates, Oxford, UK
By 6pm that very same evening Agents Novikova and Miller had been moved into a small apartment on St Aldates, in Oxford town centre, just a few minutes from Christ Church, an area known very well by Grace Miller.
“I really cannot believe this,” Miller said as she flopped down on the couch. The apartment was not just fully furnished but also fully stocked, as Ekaterina had discovered to her delight when seeking out a bottle of Vodka.
“What, you’re not excited?” She said to the younger girl.
Grace shook her head slowly in contradiction to her words. “Yes of course I am, it’s why I signed up. But …”
“But you’re only seven months into the training course and feel totally unprepared to take on an assignment like this.” Agent Novikova attempted to voice Grace’s concerns on her behalf.
“Well, yes, kind of.”
Handing the younger Agent a tumbler containing several ‘fingers’ of Absolut, Kat sat down beside her. “Listen it’s not like you’re on your own, and if we play this by the book you won’t even have to fuck this Professor guy or anything…”
Grace’s eyes opened wide, she hadn’t considered that ‘fucking’ her old professor was even a remote possibility!.
Kat continued, “… just reintroduce yourself, meet him once or twice, entice him to a bar or something, and then offer to bring him back here. When you get back, make sure he is suitably compromised and then I will be waiting, camera in hand …”
“But what then?”
Agent Novikova laughed outwardly, but in her mind she wondered whether it really was too early for Agent Miller to be let loose in the field. But then again, Grace already knew this guy, so her involvement made sense. However, it was also Kat’s first time back in the field, since … since … Belarus
(see Death by Crucifixion). She hoped that Roger Moore knew what he was doing!
“Then we interrogate him to find out exactly what Government secrets he knows and who he is selling them to, before we report back to HQ …”
******
Ekaterina woke. Sweating. Heart thumping in her chest. She threw the heavy blanket aside, and took deep, deep breaths. The nightmare receded, but the crying remained, those same awful sobs.
Grace stood at the older girl’s door, wondering what to do. Acting naturally, she moved towards Kat’s bed and climbed in, drawing the covers back around them, both. The younger Agent reached out and stroked Kat’s long sweat-drenched blonde hair. She tried to be as quiet as possible, not wanting to wake her colleague, the beautiful girl who was now also her house-mate.
“Shh. Shh. Kat, it’s okay. It’s okay,’ Grace whispered as she wrapped her arms around the nubile, yet ravaged body next to her.
“Please stop crying Kat. What’s wrong?”
“I … I … can’t tell you,” she whispered between sobs, jerking herself awake. Grace continued to stroke the naked back exposed before her, Kat’s sleep shirt having ridden higher towards her shoulders. Fingers moved cautiously and with a sickening awe at the scars and welts that remained despite the hours of plastic surgery that the older Agent had undergone.
“Tell me about the scars Kat. I know what happened to you, but please, you tell me, in your words, then we have no secrets.”
“I … I … can’t talk about it, I’m sorry Grace.”
“Why not? I’m your friend. I won’t repeat it. I won’t tell anyone else who doesn’t already know. I want to be your friend as well as your colleague Kat?”
Dextrous fingers continued to trace the indentations around the older girl’s spine, and then her shoulders, and hips …. Counting the raised marks. Stroking her hair.
“Please tell me Ekaterina …”
Slowly Agent Novikova turned to face her young co-Agent. She sniffed the tears away.
“Do you really want to know,” Kat said swallowing her sobs.
“Yes, really, please Kat.”
The older girl nodded and then began to tell her story …
To Be Continued …
