Something Brewing

  “Do I even want to ask, do I?” asked the Colonel. Ian had phoned her.

            He had realized that running from the Others would be pointless. Sure they might have another ten years of peace, but ten years isn’t that long when you have to reinvent yourself.

  “Thank you for coming,” Ian said.

  “Yes, well, don’t make a habit of this,”

  “Of course not,”

  “You and your friends should get out of here, and I don’t want to see you at the office until tomorrow, AFTER the funeral, is that understood?”

  “Yes,”

  “And get one of the paramedics to take a look at that eye,”

  “I’ve got my own doctor for that,” Ian said with a smile.

  “What should we do with her?” asked one of the Scorpions that came to assist with the clean-up. He had restrained Melisa.

  “Keep her locked up somewhere,” Dev said from the EMT van.

  “Yeah,” Ian agreed, “we might need her later,”

 

            Half an hour later Ian stepped into the emergency room as he had done almost a week ago. Danny saw him, then noticed the wound and led him to an open ward where she could treat the wound.

  “How did this happen, don’t tell me Ed shot you again,” she asked as she was cleaning the wound.

  “No, some Others agent cut at me, but I was faster than he could swing,”

  “Not fast enough it would seem,”

  “It could have been worse,”

  “I guess, this is going to leave one bad ass scar, you know that. You’ll be picking up women left and right,” she said very matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t want women, just need you,” he said and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Hold still, before I sow your eye shut,”

  “You free tonight?”

  “Now, working extra shifts, but I’m free tomorrow night,”

  “Good,”

 

            Ian went to the funeral the next morning. It was a beautiful ceremony, but since Monroe had asked to be cremated it wasn’t a very long ceremony. After the service the people who were closest to her stayed behind sharing memories of her life. Ian left soon after the service, he was eager to get back to work. He needed to find Thor, but he’d need the Colonel’s support.

  “That was a very moving eulogy,” he said as he entered her office. “Hopefully you’ll be able to do the same for me, one day,”

  “I hope to retire long before you die, Mister Erasmus,”

  “What’s going to happen to Isabel?”

  “I’ll adopt her. Monroe didn’t have any other family, at least not here in South Africa. I think she mentioned a distant granduncle or something in the States, but Isabel will be better off with me. I have a daughter of the same age, and it’s the least I can do,”

  “Yeah, so anyone find anything on Thor yet?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. If we don’t get a break soon, he’ll kill again, and now the media has got wind of this…it’s a nightmare,”

  “What if I told you I knew who his victims were, or at least how they are all connected?”

  “What do you know that we don’t, Mister Erasmus?”

            Ian looked around, then closed the door to the office and closed the blinds.

  “What I am about to tell you cannot leave this room,” Ian said seriously.

            The Colonel held up a hand to silence him then flipped a switch below her desk. Ian noticed the camera in the corner of the room power down.

  “Continue,” she said.

  “The men that were looking for me yesterday? They belong to a secret organisation. I used to work for a similar organisation known as the Agency. Completely independent from every country but we did work for anyone who asked. And who could pay.

  “We weren’t mercenaries, per say, but more like the Scorpions. We’d investigate and then react, with appropriate force. The Others, the agency that sent the men yesterday, they’d been enemies of the Agency for years, even before I joined.

  “The Others are bad people, where the Agency routed out corruption and espionage, they created it. Thor is targeting Others agents for some reason, that’s his MO,”

  “Any idea why?”

  “None,”

  “Does no one at the Agency know?”

  “The Agency is dead, I think almost all of the agents are…” Ian said and suddenly realised who might be behind it, “I think I’ve got a lead,” he said, got up and headed for the door. “I’ll tell you later, if I’m right,” he said and left.

            On the drive home, Ian started running through the names of the agents he had known at the Agency, as far as he knew they were all dead. But that was a very short list. Luckily he knew here he could get a relatively complete list of agents.

  “Ed!” Ian shouted as he entered the house. “Edward!”

  “What!” Ed shouted from the second floor landing.

  “Where’s that yearbook you made of the Agency before North Africa?”

  “You mean that yearbook you said was a stupid idea because it linked us to countless war crimes?”

  “Yes, that one,”

  “Basement, there should be a box marked Super Ducky,”

            It was at this point that Ian realized that Ed was only partially dressed. He also noticed a few other things; there were two glasses of half-drunk wine on the counter, high heel shoes at the base of stairs that did not belong to Danny, or Ed(at least Ian hoped) and a bulge in Ed’s jeans, of which the fly was down.

  “Ah,” he said “Sorry, I’ll leave you to your…frolicking,”

            Ed nodded and disappeared back into his room while Ian made his way down to the basement. He didn’t have to search very long for the box, as with everything in the basement, if you stumble around for a minute or two it’s bound to fall on your head. Or your foot if you were unlucky.

            Inside he found the leather bound journal that Ed had made, it was filled with photos. He made his way back to the kitchen where he sat down at the island and started flipping through the journal. As he scanned though each photo, he marked each member that he knew to be deceased, and those he was unsure of, he Googled.

            An hour later Ed stalked down from the second fool and Ian had gone through every photo in the journal. Apart from their photos, there was only one other man that was alive.

  “Robert,” Ed said somewhat confused as Ian punched in a number in his phone.

  “Hello, Thor,” Ian said when the man answered and he heard a cup break in the background on the other end of the phone. “The Dragon wants to speak to you, face to face. I’ll even be so friendly as to let you choose the location of the meeting,”

  “Very well,” said Robert, Ian could hear tension in his voice and could see shock on Ed’s face. “I’ll send you coordinates and a time. See you tomorrow,” he said and ended the call.

            Ian lowered his phone and closed the journal.

  “Robert? He’s Thor?” asked Ed.

  “Yeah,”

  “Are you insane, you just gave yourself over to him, do you realize that?”

  “Come on, Ed, you know me better than that. I always look at things logically. Always have a plan,”

  “That you do,” said Ed.

  “Aaliyah asleep?”

  “No, just not coming out. We weren’t really expecting company,”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, dude,”

 

            That night, Ian took Danny out for a romantic dinner, after which they returned home and spent most of the time on the roof in the company of Ed and Aaliyah. They were the first to retire, leaving Ian and Danny alone.

  “I found him,” Ian told her, “the man that killed Monroe and the others,”

  “So it’s over,”

  “No, but it ends tomorrow,”

  “That’s good news,”

  “If all goes as planned, yes, but…what I have to do tomorrow, it’s dangerous, and-”

  “Marry me,”

  “What?” said Ian, somewhat surprised by the sudden life altering question.

  “Well, not tonight, I just meant. You’re talking like you might not come home tomorrow, and I’d much rather have asked you than-”

            Ian placed a finger on her lips to silence her, looking deep into her eyes and smiled.

  “Not even death will keep me from coming back to you,” he told her before kissing her.

            After that, they headed inside to enjoy another night together. And they made sure that if it was their last night together, it’d be one they’d both remember.