They were called Minders, Chace was told, and she'd be much better off forgetting about them, as their life expectancy was short, their pay was horrible, their new boss was a nightmare, and they hardly did real intelligence work, anyway. Minders were to be tolerated, not admired. Minders were an evil and, many argued, not even a necessary one. If she thought they were James Bond, she was sadly mistaken, because James Bond didn't exist, and if he did, he'd have died long ago from terminal stupidity. Wouldn't she much rather continue her studies in cryptography?
Yes, thank you, Chace said, and I'd also like to take the Fast Driving Course, and the Escape and Evasion Course, and Advanced Small Arms Training, please, if you'd be so kind. And Flaps and Seals, of course. And Locks and Safes. And Explosives. And Night Operations. And anything else that you think a Special Operations Officer might need to know.
Right, look, she was told, we can see where you're going with this, and believe us, it's not going to work. First of all, Minders are almost always drawn from the military, understand? Prior experience, prior service, the SAS and Royal Commando blokes, they already know how to kill a man with a set of bicycle clips and a banana, they're halfway there, you see? That's one. And two, forgive us for saying it, but you're a woman. And there's never been a woman in the Special Section, and the new D-Ops, Paul Crocker, sure as hell isn't going to make you the first. And third, did we mention the part about Minders dying? Because they do that, quite a lot, actually.
So just forget about all this Minder nonsense, and if you really dedicate yourself to your Russian studies, why, what would you say to being posted to Moscow as the Station Number Two?
By the fourteenth week of the course, it was clear to all who were paying attention that Tara Chace was on her way to being one of the most brilliant agents to ever pass through the School. Her test scores, across the board, were stellar, as were her learning curve and her retention. She went from having never fired a gun to rating as an expert in both small arms and rifles. She became so vicious in hand-to-hand training that her fellow students first loathed, then actively avoided, sparring with her. When she was sent into Portsmouth on a practical to acquire an asset, given four hours to get from that asset not solely personal details, but also their passport and bank account numbers, Chace not only returned in three with all of the aforementioned information, but with her target's Jaguar, as well. That she'd targeted a lieutenant in the Royal Navy who should have damn well known better was simply the icing on the cake.
So it was that, when Paul Crocker, less than six months in as D-Ops and suddenly down to two Minders because of an unfortunate turn of events in Sudan, saw Tara Chace's file, there was really no decision for him to make. Contrary to what had been said to Chace at the School, Crocker didn't give a rat's ass that she was female; she could do the job, and he needed a warm body. But it wasn't enough that she looked brilliant on paper, and the last thing Crocker could afford in the Section was anyone-man or woman-who fancied himself the star of his own action film.
Chace was summoned to London for an interview, and by the time it was over, the School had received a call saying that she would not be returning, but instead was being posted to the Special Section immediately as Minder Three. Could they please send along her things?
It was as the new Minder Three that Paul Crocker walked her into the Pit, the basement office where the Special Section made its home, and introduced her to Tom Wallace, Minder One, her Head of Section.
For almost five years, Chace worked with Wallace, initially as Minder Three to his One, then as Minder Two when the Desk was vacated. He took her under his wing, taught her everything he knew. He led her by example, both in the field and in the office, and it was from Wallace that Chace learned that her most dangerous enemies, her most vicious battles, would be fought in the corridors of Vauxhall Cross and Whitehall, not in Mozambique or Vietnam. They fought together and suffered together and laughed together and worked together and the friendship that grew between them was the most precious and sincere that Chace ever had in her life. It was a friendship of equals, and in a world of secrets, bound by equal parts honesty and trust. They came to know each other at their worst, and at their best.
When Wallace left the Section to teach at the School, it nearly broke her heart, and Chace didn't understand why.
Then she stood on his little balcony in Gosport, watching as he stepped over the windowsill to join her, and all the illusions were swept away. She saw him as he was, herself as she was, and she knew she loved him beyond friendship, beyond anything she had ever imagined herself capable of feeling. She loved him absolutely and completely, and she understood that love was returned in full measure, and she saw how frail a thing it was, and how precious. The fourth time was when the nurse at the hospital in Keyleigh put her newborn daughter in her arms, the baby girl she named Tamsin, after her father.
The daughter that she and Tom Wallace had conceived less than a week before he was murdered in Saudi Arabia.
Lying in the mud at the base of the climbing wall, pelted with rain and soaked with sweat, Chace came back into herself, her head still ringing. Atop the wall, Minder Two, Nicky Poole, was shouting down at her, asking if she was all right. Chris Lankford, Minder Three, was already on his way down, and the drill sergeant who oversaw the obstacle course was sprinting toward her, telling her not to move for God's sake, carrying his first-aid kit.
Chace closed her eyes. She saw again what had been so obvious, so clear to her, as she'd fallen. It wasn't simply that she'd missed the handhold. It was that her left arm hadn't been able to fully extend to reach it, locking suddenly with the memory of the pain a man in Uzbekistan had caused her almost three years before. Things had gone wrong in Uzbekistan, and she'd ended up in a basement room at the Ministry of the Interior, where she'd been stripped, beaten, tortured, and nearly raped.
Now the pain was gone, only exhaustion remaining, and that, too, was being replaced by something else, the sense of a burden being lifted; the flooding relaxation that follows when a struggle has reached its end.
Three times a year, Paul Crocker sent the Minders back to the School for a refresher course. Three times a year, the Minders would spend two days going over what they already knew, acquainting themselves with new techniques and equipment. Three times a year, they would recertify in weapons and hand-to-hand, in cars and explosives and all other manner of tradecraft. Three times a year, they would run the obstacle course, crawling beneath barbed wire through mud and climbing the wall.
She couldn't count the number of times she'd run the course as a recruit. As a Minder, this had been her twenty-ninth.
This was the first time she had ever fallen.
With a smile, Tara Chace resolved that it would never happen again.