63: Proposition

Scarlett O’Maera was hungry.  Tired, too.  That’s not to say her captors weren’t feeding her, or were depriving her of sleep; it was all self-inflicted.  She was a bundle of nerves, unable to sleep and totally without appetite.  She’d been told that she would be kept in this cell until the Kelly brothers’ trial was over, at which point her fate would be decided.  The only visitors in the last week had been the various MPs and Masters-at-Arms delivering her meals.

“Stand please, ma’am,” came a voice from outside the cell, making her jump.  She got to her feet slowly, keeping her eyes on the baton hanging from the MP’s belt.  They hadn’t beaten her so far, but she wasn’t eager for them to start.

“Step back, please.”

Scarlett moved to the back of the cell.  The MP unlocked the door and slid it open.  A figure in the shadows of the corridor beckoned for her to step out.

“Come on, we need to talk.”

The voice sounded familiar.  She walked slowly out of the cell.  The figure shifted, and a beam of light slid across his face: it was Lieutenant Kelly, wearing a neatly-cut uniform blazer and carrying a white-topped officer’s cap under his arm.

Sam led her through the building, finally winding up in some sort of small meeting room.  “Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the table.

They sat opposite each other, and Scarlett folded her arms.  Sam leaned his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers in front of his face.

“So, what did you want to say,” she said hoarsely, not having spoken in a couple of days.  “I take it you’ve been acquitted, eh?”

“Yes.  How does it feel being a defector?”

“Much the same as bein’ a traitor, to be sure.”

Sam leaned forward more.  “Y’know, I notice you haven’t been taking every opportunity to spout party doctrine and tell me that ‘capitalism is a plague’, et cetera.  I’m willing to wager you’re not so much a hardcore Socialist as you are a hardcore patriot whose homeland happens to be the seat of the CSTO.  Am I right?”

“Aye, you’re dead right.  Seeing as I’m no surrounded by me ‘comrades’, I can be honest and say I’m a capitalist at heart, really.  A ‘material girl’, or call it what you will.  However, I’ll be a Socialist for just as long as Ireland is run by Old Man Noonan, but no longer.  Just as I said—that night ye put a gun to me noggin—I’d die for me country wi’out hesitation.”

“Okay,” said Sam evenly, “I’ve got a new deal for you.  It’s probably the only way I can guarantee you’ll stay out of a POW camp.”

“I’m listening.”

“You want to end this war, don’t you?”

“Damn right.”

“You don’t care which side you’re on, so long as you don’t betray Ireland, right?”

“Aye.”

“Would you be willing to operate as part of a team of specialists, behind Socialist lines, gathering crucial intelligence?”

“I thought you just said ‘without betraying Ireland’.”

“I’m not talking about finding weak points in fortresses or working out where to set off a bomb.  Leave that stuff to MarSOG, or the SAS.  I’m talking about gathering intel that can bring this war to an end.  Political manipulation, starting revolutions, extraditing critical persons, disseminating propaganda, raising resistance movements.”

Scarlett’s stony expression slowly gave way to a grin.

“Now yer talkin’.  But, theoretically, what happens if I say no?”

“You would theoretically end up in a theoretical cell in solitary confinement in a theoretical black site that would theoretically be on some far-flung crapsack of a planet.  You probably wouldn’t be released until the end of the war, if at all.  Theoretically speaking, of course.”

There was a pause.

“Sarky bastard,” she muttered.  “Okay, count me in.”

“Good.  We leave now, ship’s waiting for us.”

“What, wait, hang on… where we goin’?”

“All over the place.  You’ll see.”