The man hums skeptically. "Aren't you a bit joyless to be frequenting disreputable clubs, my steadfast Mr. Ralston?" He arranges his face into a look that's somewhere between pained and constipated, an apparent imitation of the grim young traitor. "And besides - the imitation of virtues, at times, leads to their practice. Perhaps the hope is that you'll develop some filial piety."
(Whoever this man is, he may well be as adept as Ralston himself at making enemies, though by very different mechanisms.)
"My name's Byerly Rutyer." A droll little smile; Ralston knows full well that's not the man's real name. But at least it's a handle.
Then a flick of his fingers produces a lighter. It's tossed to Ralston - tossed towards the side holding his cane, so that Ralston will likely either have to release his prop or fumble it. That may or may not be an act of deliberate cruelty. Rutyer doesn't exactly give off an impression of nimble athleticism.
He opts for the latter, the lighter bouncing off his person and dropping into his lap with an unceremonious and barely there noise.
"Aren't you a bit much for this flat? What will the neighbors think," he says, black look deepening as the stick is draped across his thigh and the other half of the little sofa. Only afterward does Ralston retrieve the lighter and once the cigarette is lit, he fails to toss it back again. Instead, the lighter is laid alongside the cheap ashtray on the crowded little side table nearest his elbow.
Rutyer's grin broadens in response to the pettiness of the gesture.
"Even Auntie needs disreputable nephews who've fallen on hard times," he replies. Then, with a little gesture of his elegant fingers, "The neighbors know me by now. Last night they were treated to some drunken caterwauling through the walls. The trick, you see, is to be embarrassing enough that they don't want to meet my eyes, but not such a menace that they call the fuzz. - Brighten up, Ralston; you're going to seem like a good boy by comparison. That's nice, isn't it?"
He throws his arm over the back of the chair he's in, leaving his hand to dangle in a particularly indolent manner. His hips tilt so that he's sitting at a slant - somehow seeming to disrespect the propriety of the space without actually slouching or setting his feet atop any tables.
"So back to my question, dear fellow. The one you actually need to answer. How's work."
That's nice, isn't it? That bothers him too. It shows in his face—some twitch of the lip around his cigarette or a flicker of the eye near the curve of his hand. Maybe it's disgust. Apparently he wouldn't be the first person to feel that way.
(Nevermind that it's shades of the role he'd imagined himself playing. Here comes that dreadful young man preying on an old woman's sentimentality, he'd pretended. The possibility that the impression he'd been giving everyone in the hall, including the woman who'd played house here in these rooms, might have been something entirely more dreary—)
The long drag he pulls from the cigarette rather than immediately answer has a grudging air to it.
"It's seven hours bent over datasets in the company of an Anglican and a man who's made more progress with the secretary than he has his work. How do you think it is?"
It's true that a clever and unruly dog being walked by a new hand may test the leash a bit. To a point.
"The Americans have re-opened their communications with us though. Apparently we're trustworthy again." His mood isn't quite dark enough yet for the humor to be entirely lost on him. "So if you're here to retire me, you may want to stave off the impulse for a few days until whatever they're sending comes trickling down to my desk."
A new handler, likewise, will test his new little mutt. (A mutt, to be sure, not a purebred.) Lay out treats to see what most makes the creature salivate. Walk him around the neighborhood to see where he balks, what he fears. A loud noise? An unfamiliar texture on the paw? Women, men, shouting children?
Where he's slouched, Ralston's mouth slants in the direction of humor that's no less sullen than anything that came before it. Funny.
"Off the top of my head? Take what I've just told you. Maybe whatever American intelligence I've my hook in is worth less than seeing Britain's continual relegation to the children's table. Burning me now right as they're patching things up could be highly embarrassing."
Or maybe someone has got the wrong impression and thinks his frustration with failing to convince anyone to let him on the production floor was to cover slow walking the work. Cowardice, maybe. Or maybe someone has got to him and he finds the idea of redeeming his reputation at home appealing. Or, or, or.
"Personally speaking, I'd prefer an alternative. But I can't pretend not to see the logic."
Another long drag of the cigarette demands management of the ash formed at its end. Ralston fires sidelong look in Byerly's direction as he knocks it free into the cheap ashtray.
"You can accuse me of being paranoid at any point, by the way."
"What a cruel thing that would be to say," comes the guileless response. "I'd never insult you like that."
There's truly something strangely decadent in his manner. It's true enough that Ralston is a paranoid man, and he'd likely be suspicious of any change. But even a less-jumpy asset might be unsettled around this fellow. Normal contacts are typically stolid, serious almost to the point of being dull. There's lies, there's double-talk, but always in the service of some greater goal. Who has time for play when you're expected to produce intelligence with Stakhanovite vigor? So the natural conclusion might well be that this man is not here with the goal of intelligence collection.
But surely even amongst the gray, lumpen, joyless ranks of those out East, there's some variation, right? Some oddballs? Surely it's not that he has some special dispensation for eccentricity because the work he does is of a particularly unpleasant sort. Right?
Maybe. Because the man evidently relents, saying finally, "Don't be so hard on yourself, Ralston. You're doing fine work. It would be wasteful indeed to lose you."
It's the sort of reassurance that ought to smooth various bristled hackles. Who wouldn't be relieved enough to receive a pat on the head over some more uncomfortable or finite alternative, and so forget whatever other qualms they might have had otherwise?
"Don't do that."
Mr. Ralston, apparently.
"Laugh all you like at anyone else, but I don't enjoy being played with," he says, balancing the cigarette on the ashtray's edge. "I take it very personally."
The man's smile changes its shade just a little bit. It turns just a little sharper. His dark eyes narrow just a touch. It gives a fleeting impression of an intelligence far sharper than might be suggested by the louche indifference of Rutyer's prior expression.
(Ralston, it seems, is an open, bleeding wound. Is this truly a good idea? Is he like this with everyone? How simple it is to manipulate a man when he opens his chest and invites you to grasp his heart. Is he safe?)
"What a cruel thing that would be to do," Rutyer says after that flicker of his eyes, a droll little smile lifting his lips as he echoes his previous statement. Then - "Do you think so little of your work?"
In answer, Ralston's eyebrows rise. He smiles without showing any teeth. The sullen parody of humor either comes naturally, or is a jab directed at Byerly's eccentric streak of apparent predisposition toward amusement.
"Ah." His fingers touch his lips, and his eyes crinkle in amusement. "So in this scenario, we're fools who cannot recognize genius. Is that it?"
There isn't much danger in Rutyer's tone. Certainly not. But it's hard to escape the sense that that's a dangerous question - Moscow is prideful, after all. Surely its sons are, too.
He ought to leave the cigarette smoldering at the ash tray's edge. It would be admirably cold blooded of him to slouch there on the chintz sofa, batting around the metaphorical edges of this enclosure, and be unaffected by having so little to do with even hands. But here, Ralston can't help himself. He fetches the cigarette up and makes to tuck it back at the corner of his mouth.
"No, I'm merely smart enough to be aware of the fact that I'm not the only moving part in this. Isn't that the whole point of you people?"
The man who calls himself Byerly Rutyer. Whoever it is in Moscow who's telling him what to do. The Central Committee. Et cetera.
"Each one of us interchangeable cogs in the cold cruel machine?" The smile broadens just a bit. If this man is a cog, he's a misshapen one, to be sure.
At long last, Byerly pulls out a cigarette of his own from a pack of Player's Navy Cut. He doesn't light it quite yet - he will, after all, have to stand and go for his lighter to do so, and his intention is to stand only when he is emphasizing some point or another - but instead simply holds it, rolling it between his fingers.
"You're not the only moving part - true enough. But you're not one easily replaced, either." A little quirk of a smile. "In spite of how you treat yourself."
"Too joyless for disreputable club and yet managing to treat myself poorly. My, I am talented."
It's not what he'd meant—little working pieces, easily replicated or substituted. No, that hadn't been his point at all. But it hardly matters. So long as the man sitting across from him finds some measure of satisfaction in the answer, that will do.
(Later, maybe, he will wonder if there's any significance to the fact that Byerly interpreted it so.)
"In the interest of saving us both the time of me asking questions which have no answers, is there anything you have been permitted to tell me? We can get it out of the way all in one go if you like."
(There is much he could tell Ralston, if he wished to. It's not outright forbidden. He could speak of the German knight-magicians who'd been granted, centuries ago, land and titles in Latvia. The long line of Countship that had passed from father to son. The valor of forefathers shown on the Eastern Front. The cousin who conspired to take the life of the mad monk whispering in the Tsarina's ear. The allegiance to the Whites in the wake of the Revolution.
(The young boy, raised in Berlin, raised in Paris, watching his mother trade her few remaining jewels for food. Hearing the murmur of others who spoke his tongue - his tongue, not the tongue of the cities he lived in - who murmured of life back in Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad. The shedding of vanity to be found back there, the rejection of indifference, the rejection of elitism and the capitalist scramble. After the war, the offer of citizenship, of return. The journey back.
(What he found there. What he is now.
(But he is not one to bare his heart.)
"About our new partnership?" he asks instead, eyebrow arched. "Or about your next job?"
This, the traitor with the scowling face and the heavy brow that has turned his steel colored eyes very black in the little sitting room, he doesn't qualify with preference. The security of his neck is one thing. Semantics are apparently another.
He hums thoughtfully. Stands, finally, and snags the lighter between two tapered fingertips. Elegance in his manner.
"I suspect that you were taken to be - hm - a bit too...unconventional for Auntie. She's a good woman." So she didn't deserve you is unspoken, but rather clear. "So we're to improvise together." His fingers snap in an odd little jazz beat that overlays the music strangely.
"Doesn't that suit you well?" Then he lights the cigarette and takes a long drag.
Maybe he'd frightened her. It's a thought that flickers unbidden at the edge of his fingertips, a brief punctuating mark of pleasure and ego that's dismissed as quickly as rises. Unlikely.
He raises his chin a little, but otherwise doesn't sit up out of what constitutes as Byerly's shadow. The question he wants to ask, he bites back and the smoke curls out of him on exhale as if whatever he's holding there on his tongue is starting to char.
Byerly smiles, and nods. And then, quick as a fleeting thought, he adds, "And I understand you're not always to be trusted around old ladies."
And then, with absolutely no change in tone, as if that didn't come from his mouth at all, "But for your next job. We do have something, actually, even before the Americans come through."
Most people having achieved a sense for normalcy after doing something dreadful have the good sense to at minimum feign embarrassment at having holes poked into the illusion. Michael Ralston, with his stick across his lap and his attention gloomily fixed on Byerly through the drifting haze of smoke, doesn't blink.
"It's our belief that a colleague of yours - a certain Dr Smith - is being trained as an asset by our most kind and generous counterparts in Whitehall. You know the man, I believe?"
A drag on his cigarette; a curious tilt of his head.
Now there, something in that warrants a reaction—a flicker of the dark eyes, something in his face narrowing with disapproval.
"I do. You're certain?" Of course they are. Or at the very least, asking the question here like this won't make a lick of difference and so he briskly moves past it. "Why not. He has the face for it."
Unassuming. Which may count as an insult to the both of them in this room as well, nevermind how Byerly Rutyer dresses.
"I endeavor not to have strong opinions about anyone too stupid not to know better. It makes all our lives more pleasant."
Smith, methodical and intelligent and reliably likely to select the most uncreative yet technically correct answer to any given problem. No wonder Whitehall has decided they like him. Creative thinking is a natural irritant to those people.
(Imagine chasing Dr. Smith when there are better options at your fingertips. Maybe if he himself were arranged to be concussed once or twice, Ralston thinks, then maybe he would start looking appealing to the SIS as well.)
The long, punctuating drag he takes on his cigarette is more dismissive than it is anxious.
"I have full faith in your ability." There is a tendency amongst assets, at times, to overstate the level of danger or effort involved in doing something that is - at the end of the day - rather ordinary. It's a frustrating one, because one does not want to actually send one's people into difficulty. Teasing out what is simple complaint and what is true warning - Well, it's tricky. But even with limited knowledge of Ralston, this seems to be the former rather than the latter. (Rutyer suspects it often will be.)
"Though I have my doubts that you've ever not had strong opinions about someone."
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(Whoever this man is, he may well be as adept as Ralston himself at making enemies, though by very different mechanisms.)
"My name's Byerly Rutyer." A droll little smile; Ralston knows full well that's not the man's real name. But at least it's a handle.
Then a flick of his fingers produces a lighter. It's tossed to Ralston - tossed towards the side holding his cane, so that Ralston will likely either have to release his prop or fumble it. That may or may not be an act of deliberate cruelty. Rutyer doesn't exactly give off an impression of nimble athleticism.
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"Aren't you a bit much for this flat? What will the neighbors think," he says, black look deepening as the stick is draped across his thigh and the other half of the little sofa. Only afterward does Ralston retrieve the lighter and once the cigarette is lit, he fails to toss it back again. Instead, the lighter is laid alongside the cheap ashtray on the crowded little side table nearest his elbow.
Petty.
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"Even Auntie needs disreputable nephews who've fallen on hard times," he replies. Then, with a little gesture of his elegant fingers, "The neighbors know me by now. Last night they were treated to some drunken caterwauling through the walls. The trick, you see, is to be embarrassing enough that they don't want to meet my eyes, but not such a menace that they call the fuzz. - Brighten up, Ralston; you're going to seem like a good boy by comparison. That's nice, isn't it?"
He throws his arm over the back of the chair he's in, leaving his hand to dangle in a particularly indolent manner. His hips tilt so that he's sitting at a slant - somehow seeming to disrespect the propriety of the space without actually slouching or setting his feet atop any tables.
"So back to my question, dear fellow. The one you actually need to answer. How's work."
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(Nevermind that it's shades of the role he'd imagined himself playing. Here comes that dreadful young man preying on an old woman's sentimentality, he'd pretended. The possibility that the impression he'd been giving everyone in the hall, including the woman who'd played house here in these rooms, might have been something entirely more dreary—)
The long drag he pulls from the cigarette rather than immediately answer has a grudging air to it.
"It's seven hours bent over datasets in the company of an Anglican and a man who's made more progress with the secretary than he has his work. How do you think it is?"
It's true that a clever and unruly dog being walked by a new hand may test the leash a bit. To a point.
"The Americans have re-opened their communications with us though. Apparently we're trustworthy again." His mood isn't quite dark enough yet for the humor to be entirely lost on him. "So if you're here to retire me, you may want to stave off the impulse for a few days until whatever they're sending comes trickling down to my desk."
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The man's voice curls like the smoke.
"Why would that be my intention?"
A new handler, likewise, will test his new little mutt. (A mutt, to be sure, not a purebred.) Lay out treats to see what most makes the creature salivate. Walk him around the neighborhood to see where he balks, what he fears. A loud noise? An unfamiliar texture on the paw? Women, men, shouting children?
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"Off the top of my head? Take what I've just told you. Maybe whatever American intelligence I've my hook in is worth less than seeing Britain's continual relegation to the children's table. Burning me now right as they're patching things up could be highly embarrassing."
Or maybe someone has got the wrong impression and thinks his frustration with failing to convince anyone to let him on the production floor was to cover slow walking the work. Cowardice, maybe. Or maybe someone has got to him and he finds the idea of redeeming his reputation at home appealing. Or, or, or.
"Personally speaking, I'd prefer an alternative. But I can't pretend not to see the logic."
Another long drag of the cigarette demands management of the ash formed at its end. Ralston fires sidelong look in Byerly's direction as he knocks it free into the cheap ashtray.
"You can accuse me of being paranoid at any point, by the way."
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There's truly something strangely decadent in his manner. It's true enough that Ralston is a paranoid man, and he'd likely be suspicious of any change. But even a less-jumpy asset might be unsettled around this fellow. Normal contacts are typically stolid, serious almost to the point of being dull. There's lies, there's double-talk, but always in the service of some greater goal. Who has time for play when you're expected to produce intelligence with Stakhanovite vigor? So the natural conclusion might well be that this man is not here with the goal of intelligence collection.
But surely even amongst the gray, lumpen, joyless ranks of those out East, there's some variation, right? Some oddballs? Surely it's not that he has some special dispensation for eccentricity because the work he does is of a particularly unpleasant sort. Right?
Maybe. Because the man evidently relents, saying finally, "Don't be so hard on yourself, Ralston. You're doing fine work. It would be wasteful indeed to lose you."
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"Don't do that."
Mr. Ralston, apparently.
"Laugh all you like at anyone else, but I don't enjoy being played with," he says, balancing the cigarette on the ashtray's edge. "I take it very personally."
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(Ralston, it seems, is an open, bleeding wound. Is this truly a good idea? Is he like this with everyone? How simple it is to manipulate a man when he opens his chest and invites you to grasp his heart. Is he safe?)
"What a cruel thing that would be to do," Rutyer says after that flicker of his eyes, a droll little smile lifting his lips as he echoes his previous statement. Then - "Do you think so little of your work?"
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"Now, that would be funny."
Does he seem like that breed of masochist?
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There isn't much danger in Rutyer's tone. Certainly not. But it's hard to escape the sense that that's a dangerous question - Moscow is prideful, after all. Surely its sons are, too.
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He ought to leave the cigarette smoldering at the ash tray's edge. It would be admirably cold blooded of him to slouch there on the chintz sofa, batting around the metaphorical edges of this enclosure, and be unaffected by having so little to do with even hands. But here, Ralston can't help himself. He fetches the cigarette up and makes to tuck it back at the corner of his mouth.
"No, I'm merely smart enough to be aware of the fact that I'm not the only moving part in this. Isn't that the whole point of you people?"
The man who calls himself Byerly Rutyer. Whoever it is in Moscow who's telling him what to do. The Central Committee. Et cetera.
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At long last, Byerly pulls out a cigarette of his own from a pack of Player's Navy Cut. He doesn't light it quite yet - he will, after all, have to stand and go for his lighter to do so, and his intention is to stand only when he is emphasizing some point or another - but instead simply holds it, rolling it between his fingers.
"You're not the only moving part - true enough. But you're not one easily replaced, either." A little quirk of a smile. "In spite of how you treat yourself."
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It's not what he'd meant—little working pieces, easily replicated or substituted. No, that hadn't been his point at all. But it hardly matters. So long as the man sitting across from him finds some measure of satisfaction in the answer, that will do.
(Later, maybe, he will wonder if there's any significance to the fact that Byerly interpreted it so.)
"In the interest of saving us both the time of me asking questions which have no answers, is there anything you have been permitted to tell me? We can get it out of the way all in one go if you like."
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(There is much he could tell Ralston, if he wished to. It's not outright forbidden. He could speak of the German knight-magicians who'd been granted, centuries ago, land and titles in Latvia. The long line of Countship that had passed from father to son. The valor of forefathers shown on the Eastern Front. The cousin who conspired to take the life of the mad monk whispering in the Tsarina's ear. The allegiance to the Whites in the wake of the Revolution.
(The young boy, raised in Berlin, raised in Paris, watching his mother trade her few remaining jewels for food. Hearing the murmur of others who spoke his tongue - his tongue, not the tongue of the cities he lived in - who murmured of life back in Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad. The shedding of vanity to be found back there, the rejection of indifference, the rejection of elitism and the capitalist scramble. After the war, the offer of citizenship, of return. The journey back.
(What he found there. What he is now.
(But he is not one to bare his heart.)
"About our new partnership?" he asks instead, eyebrow arched. "Or about your next job?"
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This, the traitor with the scowling face and the heavy brow that has turned his steel colored eyes very black in the little sitting room, he doesn't qualify with preference. The security of his neck is one thing. Semantics are apparently another.
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"I suspect that you were taken to be - hm - a bit too...unconventional for Auntie. She's a good woman." So she didn't deserve you is unspoken, but rather clear. "So we're to improvise together." His fingers snap in an odd little jazz beat that overlays the music strangely.
"Doesn't that suit you well?" Then he lights the cigarette and takes a long drag.
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He raises his chin a little, but otherwise doesn't sit up out of what constitutes as Byerly's shadow. The question he wants to ask, he bites back and the smoke curls out of him on exhale as if whatever he's holding there on his tongue is starting to char.
"It suits me better."
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And then, with absolutely no change in tone, as if that didn't come from his mouth at all, "But for your next job. We do have something, actually, even before the Americans come through."
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Yes, that's true.
"Go on."
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"It's our belief that a colleague of yours - a certain Dr Smith - is being trained as an asset by our most kind and generous counterparts in Whitehall. You know the man, I believe?"
A drag on his cigarette; a curious tilt of his head.
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"I do. You're certain?" Of course they are. Or at the very least, asking the question here like this won't make a lick of difference and so he briskly moves past it. "Why not. He has the face for it."
Unassuming. Which may count as an insult to the both of them in this room as well, nevermind how Byerly Rutyer dresses.
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He goes on, “You know how to go about it. No need to ingratiate or to wheedle - just acquaint yourself.”
Then, “You dislike the man?”
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Smith, methodical and intelligent and reliably likely to select the most uncreative yet technically correct answer to any given problem. No wonder Whitehall has decided they like him. Creative thinking is a natural irritant to those people.
(Imagine chasing Dr. Smith when there are better options at your fingertips. Maybe if he himself were arranged to be concussed once or twice, Ralston thinks, then maybe he would start looking appealing to the SIS as well.)
The long, punctuating drag he takes on his cigarette is more dismissive than it is anxious.
"Finding the time will be difficult."
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"Though I have my doubts that you've ever not had strong opinions about someone."
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