Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
AFTER THREE MONTHS with Black, I became aware of a gradual shift.
I’d stopped worrying whether I’d stick around until the half-year mark to collect my money and get out of there and instead started questioning if I was good enough. Would he want me to stay?
Rather than deliberately antagonising him, I found more and more that I was seeking his approval, although I still managed to irritate him effortlessly.
At the beginning of month four, he came down to breakfast smiling. I’d seen that look before. Usually, it meant I’d finish the day black and blue with my brain about to explode.
“What now?” Did he want me to learn Icelandic? Take on gang members armed with only a fork? Build a road bridge out of toothpicks? By that point, nothing would have surprised me. “Go on, give me the bad news.”
He took his egg-white omelette from Mrs. Fairfax and added an avocado on the side. “I’m going to teach you to fly.”
I put my slice of toast down. “What, like in a plane?”
“Unless you sprout wings between now and ten o’clock.”
A plane it was, then. A T-34C Turbo-Mentor to be precise. The US Navy used them as training aircraft, but Black had scrounged one up from somewhere. He flew a few circuits of the airfield and explained the controls, then handed me a bunch of manuals.
“Some bedtime reading,” he said.
I groaned. At least it was better than the book on rifle sights he’d made me read the week before. “When do I get to drive the plane?”
“When you’re ready. And you’re not to fly like you drive. I don’t think my heart would take it.”
“I’ve never crashed.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
Three more days passed before he let me get behind the controls. I was scheduled to fly for two hours a day, but I found myself extending that time because I enjoyed myself so much.
And once I’d mastered the plane, Black turned up on the back lawn in a helicopter.
“I thought you’d enjoy trying that too,” he said.
My eyes lit up like a kid on E-numbers. “I think you might be right. Again.”
Despite the time spent flying, Black didn’t let up on the physical training. One weekend, he called in a favour from an old friend and took me along to the Naval Amphibious Base at Little Creek where he and Nate used to be stationed. They’d spent several years in the Navy SEALs before moving on to the CIA, in some special division they were both so cagey about that I didn’t even know its name.
“I want to see you go around the assault course,” Black said. “Find out what you’re capable of.”
“Is it difficult?”
“They call it the ‘Dirty Name.’”
That didn’t sound good.
Nate came with us, his usual happy self. People had obviously been informed of our arrival because a small crowd gathered to watch.
“Why is there an audience?” I asked.
“The last woman to attempt this got picked up by an ambulance before she got halfway around,” Nate told me. “I guess they’re looking for some entertainment.”
As I stood around at the start, wearing a pair of woodland BDUs tailored to fit me, I heard people whispering. It made me nervous, something I was unaccustomed to.
“She’s tiny—no way she’s getting round,” one guy said.
“What’s this? Barbie does Navy?” another commented.
“She’s with Black,” a third put in. “Would he have brought her if she didn’t stand a chance?”
And so it went on. “Are they running a pool on me?” I whispered to Black.
“I’ve just bet a hundred bucks that you’ll get around in twelve minutes.”
Great, no pressure or anything.
“Go,” Black said.
First came the parallel bars. I had to shuffle along them, hop through a bunch of tyres, then vault over a wall higher than my head. And they called that the low wall? At least there was a rope to help me over the aptly named high wall that came next, but my arms burned by the time I reached the top. I got a mouthful of sand as I crawled under the barbed wire that came after it and headed for the cargo net.
“Two minutes,” Black called from behind me. The git wasn’t even puffing. The net stretched into the sky, almost as high as Riverley, it seemed like. Thankfully, I’d had some practice climbing up and down the balconies to avoid Alex and his boxing gloves.
The balance logs were easy, but the next obstacle not so much. That involved swinging from one rope to another via a hoop in the middle, but my arms weren’t long enough. In the end, I leapt for it, grasping the ring by the tips of my fingers.
“Four minutes.”
Next up came the beams that earned the course its moniker. I had to hop from one to the next, but if the gap was close enough to jump, the next log was too high. A series of wild leaps and a lot of luck got me over them. I glanced back in time to see Black and Nate springing between them gracefully, barely breaking a sweat.
The weaver was next, an arrangement of horizontal beams I had to wriggle under and over a few feet off the ground. I cracked my hip off one and didn’t bother to muffle my curse.
Black laughed behind me. “Get on with it.” What did he think I was doing? “Six minutes.”
The rope bridge gave me a welcome break—I’d come across worse than that in the kiddie park in London—but the climb up a series of four platforms, each one six feet higher than the last, nearly killed me. Being shorter than the average SEAL left me at a definite disadvantage. To get down, I slithered along a zip line on my stomach. Navy men, it seemed, weren’t allowed the “zip” part.
“Eight minutes.”
The monkey bars came next, and I paused to wipe the blood off my hands. I’d cut my fingers on the rope, and if I wasn’t careful, the wetness would cause me to slip.
The second lot of tyres and the wall I had to traverse sideways wouldn’t have caused me a problem if I’d had to tackle them at the beginning, but looking up at the vertical surface after the horrors I’d already been through, I almost quit. I doubled over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
Black paused beside me while Nate carried on. “You can do it. You’re not stopping now.” He crouched beside me. “I’m not carrying you.”
No way would I suffer that indignity. I straightened up and leapt across the wall before stumbling over the finish line in…
“Ten minutes.” Black turned to the crowd. “Pay up, boys.”
I leaned against a log, panting a sigh of relief that I hadn’t needed medical intervention or let womankind in general down. I wanted to collapse, but that would have made me look weak.
One of the Navy instructors came over and clapped me on the back, nearly bringing me to my knees.
“I suppose you’re planning to keep her?” he said to Black.
“Yes,” he replied, the king of one-word answers.
“Shame. I’m sure the people at your old unit would be interested in offering her a job.”
“She’s not for sale.”
“Hello? Living, breathing person here. Stop talking about me as if I’m an inanimate object.”
Black smiled. “The people at my old unit would have a hard time dealing with her mouth. She never stops talking back.”
I was nicely cross as he steered me back towards the helicopter we’d flown to the base in. “You might have effectively bought my life for six months, but I’m still human, even if you do expect me to act like a robot most of the time.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. My life’s an automated production line, one activity after another. No time to think. No time to relax.”
He stopped mid-stride.
“Is that what it’s like?”
“Surely you must have noticed?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I only wanted to see what you could do. You’ve been so good at everything that I’ve just kept pushing you.” He sighed. “I got carried away. I don’t want you to feel like a robot.”
Before we took another step, he got on the phone and cancelled my evening German lesson then found Nate and postponed my afternoon electronics session.
“When we get home, change your clothes and we’ll go out. Anywhere you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure. If you need a break, we’ll take one. Now, you’re flying back.”
Once I’d parked the helicopter, I walked stiffly to the house. Despite my level of fitness, the Dirty Name had taken its toll on me.
“So, what do you want to do?” Black asked.
“Nothing. I want to do nothing.”
“How about doing nothing in the Jacuzzi?”
“As long as you don’t decide to see how long I can hold my breath underwater.”
“Cross my heart.”
After Black and I were both shrivelled, we went out for dinner.
“You pick the restaurant,” I told him, since I still hadn’t explored the local area. “As long as it’s nothing too healthy.”
I was sick to the back teeth of eating salad and grilled fish and chicken and steamed vegetables, which was what Toby, who Black had hired as my nutritionist the week before, fed me most of the time.
“Italian?” Black asked, looking hopeful.
I’d discovered that was his favourite. “Fine by me.”
I ate until my jeans dug into my waist, and even Black, the epitome of self-control, leaned back in his seat and groaned. He was opening up to me more now, and I to him. We’d both been robbed of our childhoods, and I found it cathartic to talk. That evening, I told him things I’d never admitted to anyone, not even Jimmy. Black heard how my mother washed her hands of me as soon as I was old enough to crawl, and the moment I could walk, how I’d had to look after her rather than the other way around.
“Hey, you haven’t lived until you’ve cleared up your mother’s vomit after another heavy drinking session or thrown away her used needles.”
I took another sip of wine. Black turned a blind eye to my age, and because he was with me, so did the restaurant owner.
“You should have been taken from her at birth. Couldn’t anybody help you?”
“The care system was worse. At least with my mother, I had more freedom. In foster homes, there was always someone checking up on me. I hated it.”
“Makes my life look idyllic, even if I didn’t think so at the time.”
Black came from old money, hence the massive houses and fancy toys. His ancestors had been big investors, first in gold, then property, and latterly oil. Although his early years had been pleasant, when his parents died in a car crash on the eve of his sixteenth birthday, he’d grown up fast.
“I was supposed to move in with my aunt, but Satan would have to live in an igloo before I’d set foot in her house. You’ll meet her one day, and then you’ll understand why.”
“So what did you do?”
“A friend of my father’s helped me out. He altered some records and got the court to appoint him as my guardian, then signed off so I could join the Navy at sixteen.”
“When you say altered some records…?”
“When I said I was twenty-five, I meant twenty-four.”
Suddenly, his willingness to help out with my age issue made more sense.
Black’s father had split his job as a CIA agent with managing the family investment portfolio, and Black followed in his footsteps until he decided to quit the government agency and branch out with Nate instead.
“I was sick of the bureaucracy,” he said. “Do you have any idea how many forms you need to fill in when you shoot someone?”
“It’s not a problem I’ve ever come across, no.”
“And it’s not only that. Some of the people who spouted enough half-truths to get elected had a habit of making messed up decisions, and I was stuck following their orders. If I’m going to die, I’d rather do it on my dollar.”
“So you just quit?”
He laughed. “Not exactly. Now I’m a consultant. They don’t have anyone else who can do what Nate and I do, so now we can charge what we like and kick the rubbish back to them.”
“Is that where you go when you disappear?” He’d been gone a few times, ranging from a day to a week.
“Yes.”
“What do you have to do?”
He stared at the wall over my shoulder as the mask he wore with everyone else slotted into place. Inside, I groaned. Just when I thought I was getting somewhere with him.
“Maybe one day I’ll tell you. But not yet.”
That hurt more than I cared to admit. I wanted him to trust me, but clearly we still had a way to go.
From that day onwards, Black made sure I got one afternoon off each week, and he nearly always joined me so we could do something together. Sometimes we’d go for a walk, or out in his plane, or even just sit in with a movie. We both liked action films, although neither of us could resist pointing out all the operational errors as we watched.
We spent a couple of days in England, with Black’s house now blessedly free of decorators and paint smells. He still expected me to train, but I managed to find a morning to visit Jimmy.
He gave me a bone-crushing hug. “Amanda! We thought you’d forgotten us.”
“I’d never do that.”
“He treating you okay?”
“He’s a tough guy to work for, but he’s fair. I’ve learned a lot.”
He looked briefly disappointed. “No chance of you coming back, then?”
Was there? I came to the realisation I didn’t want to leave America. Riverley felt like home now. But what if Black didn’t want to keep me when my time was up?
I pushed that thought out of my mind and shook my head. “Sorry, Jimmy.”
He shrugged. “It was worth asking.”
“What’s up with the new girl?”
I’d said hello to her when I came in, and she seemed nice enough, but there was no way her chest wasn’t surgically enhanced.
“Nothing. The men love her, and it was mighty kind of Black to provide her, as well as the cleaning crew. The only problem is she can be a little slow. It took her a week to learn how to swipe the membership cards, and she’s still struggling with the computer.”
“She’ll learn. It just might take her a while.”
Like a year or two.
The day we were due to fly back to the States, Black surprised me.
“I thought we’d go home via Paris. I have a meeting there, and it’d be good for you to practise your French.”
Well, I wasn’t going to say no to that.
While Black did his business stuff, I spent a pleasant morning climbing the Eiffel Tower, using the steps all the way. Not just because Black would have gone mental if he found I’d used the elevator, but rather my mindset had changed, and I’d have been disappointed in myself if I’d resorted to cheating.
At lunch, Black made me do all the ordering even though he was, of course, fluent in French, then we spent the afternoon exploring the Louvre. Black had several paintings on loan to the museum, so the director came out and gave us a personal tour.
The two-bedroom suite in the Ritz where we stayed for the night was easily the most beautiful place I’d ever been. Before dinner, we swam laps in the indoor pool then availed ourselves of the sauna.
“I should get one of these,” Black said. “We could use it on our afternoons off.”
“I’m surprised you don’t already have one.”
“I wouldn’t have used it before. It’s not just you who’s changed in these last few months.” He fell silent, thinking. I leaned back against the wall and nearly burned myself. Black laughed as I shot forwards, trying to look casual.
“We should go and get dinner,” he said. “Before we cook all the way through.”
“We’re eating French tonight. Even you can’t be so much of a heathen as to eat Italian in Paris.”
The next morning we flew back to Virginia, and it was nose to the grindstone again. Or rabotat’ kak loshad’ as Alex, who was waiting for me when we arrived, would say. He insisted on teaching me Russian while I exercised—you know, kill two birds with one stone.
Or in his case, kill one bird with a set of dumbbells and a pair of running shoes.
While I was busy training, Black and Nate worked ever-longer hours as their company, Blackwood Security, Inc. got busier. In the last month, they’d rented an office in Richmond and hired a secretary to answer the phones and sort out their diaries. They’d also taken on a few permanent staff—a small team of bodyguards and a couple of investigators to start with, all carefully hand-picked and vetted—but they were still rushed off their feet.
A fortnight after we got back from Paris, Black arrived home late one evening, dark circles under his eyes showing how little sleep he’d got that week.
“Rough day?” I asked.
“Nothing unusual.”
“Why do you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t need to work, do you? You could retire right now. Buy yourself a set of golf clubs and a tropical island.”
He reached forward and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “It’s the only thing that makes me feel alive.”
I thought he was going to say something else, but he took a step back.
“Even if it kills you?” I asked.
“I have to do it.”
By then, I’d felt the rush that came with achieving the impossible. I understood what he was saying and gave him a small smile.
“Just be careful. Who else would I share the jacuzzi with?”
He laughed then turned serious again. “Diamond, I’ve got a job for you.”
It was the first of many times over the years I’d hear him say that.