The Otter and The Owl

The Otter and The Owl

Chapter One

Seattle | Today

A gray day, windy and with rain threatening to kill the sun, again. Rain, rain, and nothing but more gray rain for days. Or had it been weeks?

The old man lived in a striking gray house perched above the gray Pacific, and so intent was he to live in gray anonymity he had even had the original shake roof pulled up and replaced with a gray standing seam metal roof. At least, he thought, the new roof sounded nice in the rain.

His foppish gray hair had long since turned white and with the change, like the inevitable change of seasons and the falling leaves of autumn, his legs had begun a falling of their own. Quite normal, he realized, in the usual seasons of man. It was a day to day thing these days, this sustained autumn of his, but he took all this too in his stride. He was anything but bitter and was in fact rather satisfied with the remnants of his life.

His name, of course, was Grey. Patrick Grey. And for most of his life he had been a spy. MI6 and all that. But all that had been in another life, a life he had tried to forget for a time -- before he realized the pointlessness of the exercise. He'd been retired for a few weeks when he'd run over the bright idea of writing his memoirs -- only to be reminded of the dour vicissitudes of his office, re: The Official Secrets Act -- so he'd taken the easy way out. Taking a road more or less well traveled, he'd started writing novels. Trashy spy novels. Airport novels of no real import, however his publisher had inflated his involvement in that other world into the balloon-sized, ego-feeding nom de plume of Patrick Whats-his-name. Oh yes, Grey. And very much not Gray, thank you so very much.

But then he'd penned a book of some -- import. He'd ruffled a few feathers, so many that he realized his time had come and gone. And come again.

He'd grown up very much his father's son, on a rather large estate south of Cheltenham, on lands of neatly rolling hills and narrow country lanes lined with stout English oaks and low rock walls. And speaking of rocks, his family estate had been located quite near a formation known locally as the Devil's Chimney, a smallish spire that stood above the village of Leckhampton Hill. Old spies, the young boy learned soon enough, were quite often put out to pasture along these very same narrow lanes. His father chief among them, as it happened, when his own season came.

Now he lived in Seattle just south of Ballard Locks, hard by the railroad tracks. On weekend mornings sailboats motored by as if lost in the ironies of their dependence, while he sat watching from his wheelchair hoping the painkillers might actually kick in and work again that day. But on this Monday morning no motoring sailboats were to be found plying the waters off his deck, though a somewhat large fishing boat had just transited the locks and was even now headed out into Puget Sound, trailing a whirling stream of white birds screaming for a handout. Screaming, like the homeless children by the freeway caught up in another wayward gyre.

He looked at his watch, a beat up old Submariner that had come along for most of the ride, and he winced at the pain in his hips and knees before he turned in his chair and stared at his nemesis. His piano, an iterative variation of the same creature that had defeated him his entire life. This one a Yamaha, a smallish grand with a sumptuously mellow way with words, and he hated her. Positively. The way Odysseus hated the Sirens.

Was that because of the way she called out to him? Seductively, and with glowing words full of promise and praise. Yet she was the last accursed bitch in his life, the last one standing, the one who just didn't know how or when to let go. A trait not shared by all the other women he had known. No, this last had triumphed by attrition and most certainly not by wit and wisdom.

The walls were white inside his gray house. The cabinetry in his kitchen was white, the countertops too. Bookcases in the living room were white, the leather upholstery around the room too was purest white. The original Douglas fir flooring was varnished to a high sheen and lay there in stark contrast to almost everything else in the room, for even the brick fireplace had been painted white. Only the bricks inside are black, but that was another story.

But hanging there on the chimney above the hearth was the one blast of color in this otherwise unremittingly white room. An ornately framed piece waiting to been seen and admired waited there, a kimono of deepest red silk flanked by a samurai's two swords; the long killing sword and the shorter, much sharper blade used to commit ritual suicide. Seppuku, right? Wasn't that the word? All three pieces, the kimono and the two swords, were ancient, and yet they each had a story of their own to tell. A lone recessed light in the ceiling shone down brightly on them, imploring them to speak, to tell their story to all who passed by, but the gilt frame contained them all. Or, perhaps restrain is the more apt choice, as we shall see.

But for now their only voice resides inside the man in his wheelchair, and to this day he still resolutely refuses to utter even one word about their former lives.

Oh, how they cried out, begging to be heard -- even if just one more time.

+++++

A knock on the door -- so easily ignored. Pointlessly so, of course.

Then the sound of a key in the lock and the tall varnished fir was easing open once again, slowly, surreptitiously, as if letting fresh air inside this mausoleum was a sin beyond redemption.

He winced as he looked at his watch, again. 'Oh hell, is it Monday already?' he sighed. Inevitable Mondays, again and again.

"Patrick? Are you ready to go?"

It is Carolyn, his agent. His last friend on this Earth, the last one standing who no doubt will discover his lifeless body one day, and perhaps in this very room. "I think I might need help with my shoes this morning," Patrick replied, the words poised to cut, perhaps like the short blade over the fireplace might -- if given half a chance.

She walked-in and saw him sitting there in his chair, looking out over the water -- and for the life of her she still thought he looked like some kind of peregrine man-beast, perched on the edge of forever and waiting to take flight to God only knew where. She looked down and saw his bare feet, the forlorn hammer-toe on his right foot, the yellowing toenails so out of place, in character almost simian. She went to his bedroom and saw the clothes she had laid out two days ago -- still and untouched.

"Did you shower this morning?"

"No. Did you?"

"Patrick! It's a book fair, not a trip to the zoo! Actual people will be there, they are coming to hear you speak. To listen -- to you!" She came and sat on the coffee table and smiled into the gales of his obstinance, meeting his stoicism in her own headstrong way, which was of course the only way he would tolerate her. "Can you lift your leg?" she added.

He tried once then shook his head. "Not today."

"Is it much worse?"

He looked away, looked at the white seabirds swirling behind the fishing boat and he wanted to be with them out there, screaming.

She lifted his leg until he winced -- but she quit there. "I think today we'll go with the clogs? Does that sound alright to you?"

He shook his head. "No, that doesn't sound 'alright.' Not at all, as a matter of fact."

"What are your sugars?"

He shrugged.

She picked up his phone and entered the code, looked at the readout from his glucometer and sighed. "Patrick, if you stop taking your insulin you're going to die. Do you hear me? That means you close your eyes and you stop breathing. Understand? It's a fact of life even you should be aware of, okay?"

"Not your life."

She sighed, if only because they'd had this conversation before. Too many times.

She went to his closet and found a pair of old gray Stegmann clogs neatly tucked away in their original box; like all his shoes they were boxed and put away clean after each wearing. The felt had been, she saw, recently brushed, and the cork footbed neatly oiled...but that was just Patrick being Patrick. He had turned neatness into a fetish, and though he had a housekeeper that came by twice a week he ended up cleaning the floors after the old woman left, pushing her lingering dust out the door from the comfort of his wheelchair.

She slipped the clogs on his feet then wheeled him to the door.

"Has it rained yet?" he asked.

"No, not until noon -- at least that's the forecast," she said as she wheeled him out to his van. Modified to allow some semblance of mobility, the door slid open at the push of a button and the ramp inside began a long, tortured process of unfolding itself, making ready to haul him up into the belly of the beast. He rolled onto the ramp and turned just so, allowing the clamps to engage the wheels and so to hold him securely in place while Carolyn drove him downtown.

"What have you got me doing today?" he asked. "Not another reading, for heaven's sake?"

"No, no, just anecdotes and then a brief Q and A, followed by a signing."

"Oh...joy..." he sighed. "And if I should, per chance, soil myself again?"

"Please don't, Patrick."

He looked out the window as his van turned into a vapidly huge downtown parking garage. "Why do you keep doing this to me, Carolyn? I mean, besides the obvious commercial exploitation of a helpless old man -- what's in it for you?"

"Another book, dear Patrick. Like your fans, I absolutely yearn for your next book."

"Bosh. You are so full of it it makes my head spin."

"Hey, hope springs eternal."

"Does it, indeed? How sweet for the both of you."

She parked then wheeled him into the book fair and people pointed at him as he wheeled by, all the way to the conference room where his pithy anecdotes and all his answers from on high were supposed to come down as received wisdom. The room, he noted, was full, and there were two tables stacked high with new books waiting to be purchased and signed. What Carolyn called 'money in the bank' but which was, in the end, anything but. He looked at the stacks and shuddered at all the blood spent on those pages.

When he wheeled out in front of the assemblage he looked over the crowd, meeting a polite smile here and there with one of his own, until his eyes came to rest on a rather tall, willowy woman standing against the back wall. Black dress, the same black hair and yes, he saw she was older now, older than the last time they'd danced this dance, but now she was staring at him, an old scowl played in a minor key -- until pale recognition registered in his eyes and on her face. Then she smiled and walked away, her apparent triumph complete. For the time being.

+++++

"What happened out there?" Carolyn asked. "It's not like you to get nervous in front of an audience like that..."

"I thought I saw a ghost."

"A ghost?"

"Yes. A ghost of my very own, let's call it my Ghost of Christmas Past."

She shook her head and grinned into the rearview mirror. "Well, you did good today. Lots of positive feedback."

"So, does that mean you sold a few books."

"Well yes, we did, as a matter of fact."

"And do tell, but how many people complained about my shoes? Or my lack thereof?"

"Everyone, Patrick! Why, just think about it, would you? Everyone there, absolutely everyone -- wanted to know all about your feet!"

He crossed his arms and grumbled at her reflection in the little mirror. "And to think, I didn't even shit myself. What a wasted opportunity. Don't you find that ever so thoughtful of me?"

And that purchased a few minutes of silence.

"Do you need to stop at the market before I drop you off?"

He sniffed once, wanted to sigh at the indignity of his existence but thought better of it. "If you can spare the time, yes. I need a few things," he said as he -- reflexively -- reached inside his jacket, hoping to feel the reassuring cold steel of his little Walther. But no, not this time, for time had erased even that most primal level of reassurance.

"Trader Joe's?" she asked.

"Please," he said, feeling chastened. "If you don't mind."

She helped him out of the van and watched him roll off into the little market, pulling out her cell phone to catch up on all her missed texts and emails as she got behind the wheel to wait for him, yet for a moment she thought she spotted the woman in the black dress that had so rattled Patrick at the fair. Getting out of a taxi, and now she was following him -- at a discrete distance -- into the store.

"Now just what the hell is this all about?" she muttered, lifting her phone and firing off several images of the woman. Big black sunglasses, black heels and stockings and a bright white handbag. Incongruous, just like Patrick. And out of place -- again, just like Patrick. She saw the taxi pull away and thought to snap a few pictures of it, too. Not sure why. Call it instinct. Or maybe she'd read too many of his books?

+++++

He spent a good deal of time in those days looking over freshly picked mushrooms. He'd recently read that several key varieties stop the spread of vascularization around new tumors, in effect killing them before they could grow dangerously large, so now he added copious quantities of the things to almost everything he cooked, but especially his omelets. There was a new shipment of good looking shiitakes being put out on the shelves, and he waited until the stocker finished up then moved in to grab a couple of quart-sized containers.

And that was when he felt her hand on his shoulder, and he felt the same electric feeling he always had -- almost from the beginning of time. He took a deep breath and relaxed, leaned back in his wheelchair...

"I can still feel you, you know. Like a summer breeze chasing away the last chill of winter."

She moved to his side, so he could just see her. "Some things never change." Her English was still flawless, her voice the same immeasurably soft cocoon, yet her hand stayed on his shoulder.

"So? Have you come to kill me this time?"

Her hand lifted, but then she leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "No," she said once she was standing again, "I have come to say goodbye. To you."

He wheeled around and looked up at her, sudden fear now in his eyes. "Akari? Tell me everything?"

She looked around the crowded market. "Surely not here, Jeremy."

He reached up and took her hands in his. "You are not well?"

"I am not well. Now, may I help you shop for mushrooms, or do you have enough?"

"Fresh fish is the only other item on my list."

"You are finally taking better care of yourself?" she asked.

"Me? Oh, no, the fish is for a friend of mine."

"Truly? You finally have a friend?"

"Truly. I have a friend."

"Jere, this is a most unexpected development..."

"Oh, wait 'til you meet her. You'll fall in love, just as I did."

He wheeled over to the fish counter and, Akari noted, the man there had a package ready and waiting, and she smiled -- because that was so like the Jere she had known all her life. Patient routines, and yet never an unplanned for intercession, never the unexpected. But now, with his shopping out of the way, Jere turned and wheeled his way to the registers. "Do you need anything?" he said once there, and he smiled at her reluctance when she gently shook her head and said "No."

Like everything where 'Patrick Grey' was concerned, Carolyn was not at all surprised when he came out of the market with the elegant woman in tow, and now walking almost by his side. Yet how odd they looked together, she thought. She walking one step behind and to his right, like she was playing her part in an ancient, ritualized dance of some sort -- yet even so she sensed one belonging to the other. The stranger's massive sunglasses were gone now, too, and she could see the woman was part Asian, possibly Japanese-American, but whatever else she was -- quietly refined elegance defined her perfectly. Precisely so, in fact. So of course Carolyn was instantly on-guard and also a little jealous, for she had been the spy's agent and his sole care-taker, and for almost five years. At least ever since he had moved to Seattle, right after the wild success of his last book.

But watching him now with this strange woman by his side, she realized he was still an enigma -- and that he would probably always remain so. Or maybe, she thought, he was more like a series of interlocking riddles -- and that like icebergs on a flat sea in the middle of an April night, the most dangerous parts of the man seemed to remain perpetually just out of sight, lurking beneath an inky surface of swirling complexities. Like waiting to inflict his next fatal wound, no doubt...

Chapter Two

Whitehall | Yesterday

The assignment was simple enough.

Someone in MOD had decided that solar panels were soon going to be the next Big New Thing and that some of the most interesting, cutting edge research -- in something called stochastic chemistry, for God's sake -- was taking place in Japan, at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. Soon enough, word was coming in via Hong Kong that agents, in other words -- spies -- notably from the PRC, were mounting several penetration efforts to learn more about the manufacturing processes these new developments would require. Also, there were some in both London and Washington that thought these efforts might somehow be directed at sabotaging this research.

Yet all this was just an elaborate ruse. A legend. A cover story.

And Jeremy Fontaine was uniquely suited to such an assignment. Of impeccable pedigree -- being an Old Wykehamist of the Consanguineus Fundatoris variety, Fontaine was not simply Trusted. That was a given, a matter of pedigree and to an extent a question of political inheritance, his unsullied birthright. Fontaine's background in physical chemistry, it was said, as well as the many years he'd spent in both Hong Kong and Japan, were a necessity -- given current circumstances -- so now all that stood in the way of his being assigned was his total lack of interest in working for MI6 ever again. Or so the story went.

Fontaine was not now and had not ever been a field agent of the usual sort; indeed, he possessed neither the physical properties nor the survival instincts of that peculiar species. No, Fontaine was an analyst of the most esoteric information imaginable, so an analyst of the most unusual sort. He was an academic and perhaps would have lived a more or less contented life in the classroom, had he chosen, perhaps, to remain at the little school on College Street, but his life had been governed more or less by an inertia that circulated in the bloodstream of all the various Fontaines. Growing up in Cheltenham's shadow, his was a brew long steeped in the life and lore of The Service. On long walks with his father among the many wooded trails that encircled the Chimney he'd heard of little else, and in this manner his upbringing was but an echo of an echo. Yet Jere, as his mother called him, also possessed more feminine inclinations, notably for poetry and playing the piano. And perhaps it was this dichotomy that, more than anything else, formed the young man. It had always been the boy's innermost desire to study Letters at Cambridge, yet time and paternal disinclination dictated he take his first doctorate in Biochemistry from Oxford. Young Jeremy was, you see, a product not simply of unchecked desire. The times he lived in, perhaps more than anything else he was willing to admit, shaped the man he would become.

Born during the closing moments of the war, he experienced the great upheavals of the 50s and 60s firsthand, and yet you could also say these tectonic shifts also fed his more feminine side. He read Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his holidays away from school, and when no one was in the old house he played music as disparate as Jerry Lee Lewis and Glenn Gould -- until he fell head first into his Japanese phase. When Jere turned up at Oxford in 1963, he was among the first students to take classes in the new East Asian Studies department, but that year was also marred by many other pivotal personal and political events.