She was less certain about what she would say to Henry when he got here… if he got here. No, when, definitely. Henry wouldn’t stand her up, if for no other reason than to continue interrogating her. Or to apologize, although she had a feeling Henry didn’t do that a whole lot. Some people would not, others could not and they’d do anything to avoid it. Even ask someone out for a drink.
By contrast, she had seriously considered standing him up. She still wasn’t sure that having a drink with him was a good idea, not after the way he had treated her. What kind of person talked that way to someone they’d just met—especially a grad student on minimum wage? She knew what her father would have had to say about that. The two fishermen waiting behind Henry hadn’t heard the whole conversation, just enough that they had both given him a funny look as he walked away. They had given her a funny look, too. She’d just shrugged and said, “The customer’s always right,” and distracted them by getting right down to their business.
Flowers suddenly appeared on the bar in front of her, a colorful mix of blossoms not overly elaborate but more than something you’d grab at the last minute from a convenience store; definitely suitable for an apology. Henry Brogan sure knew how to do things, she had to give him that. As she turned to smile at him, she felt her face suddenly grow warm. Dear God, she was blushing like a kid, she thought, mortified, which only made her face grow even warmer.
“Aw,” she said, trying to think of some way to cover.
“Sorry about today,” Henry said, taking the stool on her right. “Old habit. I don’t trust easily. You probably don’t, either.”
Her heart sank; so much for her hopes that he was done being paranoid. “Why would you say that?”
He put a blank 8x11 sheet of white paper on the bar beside the flowers. She looked from it to him, shaking her head a little. “I don’t—”
Henry turned the paper over and there it was—her own face staring up at her from a color photocopy of her Defense Intelligence Agency ID badge. It was blown up to five times its normal size, so her full name—Danielle Zakarewski—was easily readable. So was her signature.
Danny slumped on her stool as all the energy she had marshaled for the evening drained out of her. She leaned an elbow on the bar, rested her forehead on her hand for a moment. “Where did you get that?”
“After twenty-five years of faithful service, you make a few friends,” Henry said. But his voice sounded gentle, not triumphant. He wasn’t gloating. It was one more way in which Henry Brogan had surprised her. Although maybe it shouldn’t have—all the information she had on him indicated he was a decent guy.
Danny finished her drink in one long pull and didn’t quite bang the mug down on the bar. “Well, now I’m burned,” she said, feeling herself sag a little more. “I’m toast. I’m burned toast.”
“Not your fault,” Henry assured her in the same kindly tone. “You were good. Buy you another boilermaker?”
She nodded glumly. A fine development this was, she thought. In the space of one day, her career had gone from on the rise with no end in sight to something you’d scoop up and bag while walking your dog.
“That’s a cop’s drink,” Henry said as the bartender put the mug and shot in front of her. “You got cops in your family?”
“My father was FBI.” In spite of everything, she couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice. “And pretty big on serving your country.”
“‘Was?’” Henry asked.
Nothing got by him, Danny thought. Whereas she hadn’t even noticed when he had taken the photocopy of her ID off the bar. This day just kept on getting better.
“He died off-duty,” she replied. “Trying to stop a bank robbery.”
“I’m sorry,” Henry said, and she could tell he meant it.
Before she could do something stupid like start choking up, Danny poured the whisky into the beer and picked up her mug. Henry picked up his own drink and clinked it against hers before having a sip.
“Your file says you were Navy,” he said. “Four years with the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.”
“I did like the sea,” she told him. “What I didn’t love was living in a tin can with a couple hundred sailors.”
“That still beats a bunker in Mogadishu,” Henry said drily.
“Yeah, I’ll give you that one,” she chuckled.
“After the Navy, you opted for the DIA, defense clandestine services,” Henry went on. “Recruiting and running assets. Not a single demerit. And then Internal Affairs put you on a dock to watch a guy who just wants to retire.” He gave her a sideways look. “That didn’t bother you?”
Danny smiled. Every agency had a lot of status-jockeying; it was as much a part of intelligence work as it was in the civilian corporate world. She decided to change the subject.
“You know what he loved most about the Bureau, my father?” she said, taking another sip of her boilermaker. “The letters: FBI. He said they stood for Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. He talked about that a lot—in between boilermakers—” she lifted her mug slightly. “How the very name of the place reminded him every day how to behave. ‘Live up to these words,’ he’d say, ‘and I don’t care what you do for a living, I’ll be proud of you.’ I hope he is.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Henry said, as if he were actually in a position to know.
In spite of everything, Danny felt surprised and touched. For a moment, she wanted to tell him that meant a lot coming from him, and then caught herself. She was still on the job even if she was toast, and she had to behave accordingly. She was professional toast.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have another boilermaker.
Night had fallen by the time she and Henry left Pelican Point. Despite the less-than-optimal circumstances, she had found herself enjoying the evening immensely, trading stories with a man who was pretty much a DIA legend. Of course, she had been careful to edit what she told him and she knew he must have done the same. Still, this had been more fun than the last few dates she’d had. Maybe most of the dates she’d had. Or all of them.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye, Henry,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound quite as sorry about it as she felt. “It was nice surveilling you. And thanks for the flowers.” She held them up. “But I’ll probably be off to somewhere else tomorrow.”
“ Need a lift home?” he asked.
Danny shook her head. “My building’s right here.” She gestured at the apartment house barely fifty yards from where they were standing. She liked Savannah with its Historic District and riverboat cruises and the lively City Market, and she loved living near the ocean. But she sure wasn’t going to miss this place. The agency had insisted that she live there—it was so close to the marina she could see the parking lot from her living room—but the paper-thin walls and the lousy Wi-Fi had been the bane of her existence.
She offered him her hand for a goodbye shake, then held onto him for a few extra moments. “Henry…why are you retiring?”
He hesitated and she knew he wasn’t deciding which lie to tell.
“I found myself avoiding mirrors lately. I decided to take that as a sign.”
That would be Integrity, Danny thought; it went with his Fidelity and Bravery.
“You watch your six out there,” Henry told her.
“You too,” she said, laughing a little, turning toward her apartment house.
“Goodnight, Toast,” he added.
She laughed again but she couldn’t help feeling a little melancholy, too, as she headed for her front door. Every so often, she had one of those moments of clarity when she realized what a lonely way of life this was. The job required her to be among people but never as one of them, never with them. Not even other agents, not really; you always had to keep a bit of a remove between yourself and your co-workers, not get too attached to anyone emotionally. If they got killed, if they changed sides or turned out to be a double agent, an emotional reaction could screw up your thinking, make you hesitate or do the wrong thing. That was a great way to get yourself and everyone else on the job killed, or worse.