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***
Broughton doesn’t seem to like the welcome she got in Berlin—joyride with the Ruskies and all.
He says he wanted to see how she’d handle it, so sue him.
She says it doesn’t seem to be that healthy spirit of collaboration she was promised by the bigwigs back in London.
His laugh is bright, if slightly unhinged.
“Every man for himself,” he says—and doesn’t even lie, for once.
Broughton levels him with a hard stare that would’ve definitely sent a weaker man running, but she knows the rules of this game. From what he’s heard, she plays damn well, too: so either he gets a brilliant partner, or all of this ends in a disaster of epic, entirely unfuckable proportions. Not quite the scale of the whole Soviet regime collapsing, but only a tier or two below that.
(In the end, it goes down both ways simultaneously—but eh, technically he was still correct.)
***
James Gasciogne is sent to Berlin in 1988 on orders of C himself: David is told that a skilled field agent in exchange for cutting down on largely useless support personnel in Bonn will be a fair trade.
He is just a chief of Berlin station, one constantly running out of operatives as the foundations of the Wall itself are eroding, so who the fuck is he to object.
James Gasciogne has the steady hands of a scalphunter, an array of well-worn accents, and a childlike, irresistible curiosity about the seedy nocturnal scene David had long since grown used to traversing alone. He also has a sharp, English kind of dry wit that David so sorely missed, a pretty face, and damn great legs.
All of that, David finds himself thinking just a week in, even before they start to fuck, is a hell of a liability.
(It is, in all the ways he expected it to be. Coincidentally, it also saves his life.)
***
The Wall, the crossings, the lowlifes, the punks, the anarchists, the dealers, the operators. He’s forgotten more about this city than Broughton will ever know, so he can keep up just fine, thank you very much.
Which is why, while she’s gallivanting around fucking impressionable girls and whatnot, he gets his hands on the list.
David firmly believes a strong sense of curiosity is a job requirement; that’s also the main line of defense he always stuck to on rare occasions of being caught red-handed.
He reads it, naturally.
There aren’t that many surprising entries; not for him, not after almost a decade in this city. But one of the few unexpected ones reads like serious trouble, at first.
And then, two cigarettes later, like an opportunity.
(He doesn’t bet on her sentimentality—rather, on her desire to finally fuck off and never look back. He knows that one intimately; never expected to succumb to it, but no one expected the mighty red bastions to start crumbling, either.)
***
“…We have an ecosystem here, you see. A complex kind of balance,” he remembers saying to Gasciogne at the tail end of yet another night out together, drunk and suddenly overtaken by a rare, dangerous urge to say something truthful.
James wasn’t privy to the checks and balances that kept all bosses satisfied and most operators in Berlin alive, but he knew enough to shut David up right then and there—with a hand on the fly of his acid-washed jeans—before he could say anything factually incriminating.
Bless him, he always picked the wrong people to stay loyal to.
But the truth is this: David Percival is a station chief, self-proclaimed naturalised denizen of Berlin or not. It’s his job to move people and information, make arrangements, negotiate with other residences. He can do the legwork—he’s excellent at it—but he’s the only agent runner MI6 has left in Berlin.
So that’s what he keeps doing as the chaos engulfs both sides of the city. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before.
He lets the Eastern run the French and vice versa, until the frog-eaters finally have something solid to trade for a tip about how to resolve their predicament. A source, they say; Stasi, no less.
He christens him Spyglass and lets Merkel look after the man on the eastern side, graciously sharing the first scraps they get—at least until Spyglass finally coughs up something he believes to be his golden ticket into capitalist heaven; then lets Gasciogne take point during the handover.
(James was excellent, too. It’s not that far-fetched to assume it was his sentimentality that got him, not some KGB prick with a kill count higher than his IQ.)
***
“You’ve been a naughty girl, Lorraine,” he says; stops.
David considered confessing he’d wanted to do this long before Gasciogne was killed, long before the list surfaced: but that would be a lie she’d had caught easily.
Before, he was a damn straight arrow—and London knew it, even as they maintained the story that their wayward son had gone native; he’s been led to believe M enjoyed using the word feral on occasion. Before, he’d send a message to London faster than a hooker could snort a line off the table.
Now, he only wants some people to die, and the rest to live. Frankly, he’s still getting used to such unrestricted thought process; but that's the real reason why David Percival is now sitting in front of a Satchel herself, sober as a monk—by his own standards, anyhow—and contemplating just how far a definition of treason can be stretched.
Broughton stares at him from his worn-out couch, entirely unmoved and slightly bored.
Still, if she made this easy, he’d be damn disappointed.
“And right now, you’re probably calculating how to pin it all on me instead,” David says, making a deliberate, almost obnoxiously long pause after, one that—finally—leaves her visibly irked.
He gulps down some of his tasteless, warm beer from a sticky bottle; allowing time for her to recalculate and himself to focus on the weight of the gun tucked under his belt.
“...Now, what if I’m considering letting you?”
***
Gasciogne never mentioned her. He was professional enough to leave past lovers where they belong: in the closets, between the lines of old assignment reports, away from dissecting eyes of verbovshiks looking for the soft spots to sink the hooks in.
He was good at surviving this game—until, well.
Then again, this whole spy business runs on exploiting the inevitable human error—just like the mistake David himself makes. He doesn’t notice anything amiss that night, because he’s coming down from several highs: including the one that watching James on his knees always gives him.
That night, David doesn’t think he’s talking to a traitor, or a communist—or, god forbid, a fool still enough in love to sell himself out.
“...I deal with them, sure; but who doesn’t? They’re lost about what’s happening back home, with Gorbachev eroding the very foundations with his glasnost. Center is losing grasp on satellites—would be a shame not to shake the tree so ripe.”
A list like the one Spyglass promised would never slip through the cracks otherwise, and all sides know it. No shame in admitting he’s taking the path of least resistance.
“I think the Wall has two months left, at best. No need to play some intricate game anymore. We just tell them we’re open for business—and then pick and choose the juiciest bits of the Motherland they’ll try to sell off.” David scoffs, lighting both of their cigarettes; an insane conversation with their jittery Stasi defector three days ago has been playing through his head ever since. “Record of all their moles since Kim Philby—can you fucking believe this? Won’t be surprised to see Satchel on the list.”
(That night, James listens, nods, and pretends to soak in the wisdom. The next day he crosses to the East to get the watch from Spyglass—and gets himself very, very dead.)
***
She keeps staring at him—long and hard, as if every lesson she ever took on unassuming behavior had utterly failed her.
“It was Satchel who informed the Soviets about the handover,” Broughton says thoughtfully; then leans in, placing her elbows on her knees. She’s unsettling as all hell—David marvels at the bravery of anyone who’d ever hit on her—much less fucked her. “On the night James Gasciogne died.”
They’re still talking, but it already feels like she’s twisting his fucked up wrist: James—ouch—Gasciogne—ow—died—crunch.
David exhales the smoke as steadily as he can under the circumstances, and decides he'll do his level best to avoid the hand-to-hand part of this conversation.
“He was not supposed to die,” she continues, cutting to the point David planned to clarify in a circumvent way with terrifying briskness: no dramatic pauses, not even the decency to give him a moment to digest. “You were, or whoever else you’d send. Not James.”
…If Gasciogne knew he’d tipped off Satchel herself about the handover and still went, he was a sentimental fool—twice.
Still, probably better than a communist, David thinks numbly, as Broughton leans back on the couch and mercifully lets the dark room lapse into silence.
She doesn’t break eye contact first, as usual—but David likes to think he was close to winning this one; if not for the cigarette finally burning down to the filter and scorching his fingers, he might’ve held out longer.
“How about,” he says pleasantly once he vengefully stamps out the butt in the ugly ashtray, “This time, no one dies? Except for Bakhtin, but that fucker had it coming. Any other Ruskies stupid enough to get in the way—but that’s it. How about that?”
“For James Gasciogne,” she says, her voice uncharacteristically soft for one fleeting moment; it’s neither the question nor the answer, landing somewhere in between.
So, probably both.
“For James Gasciogne,” he agrees, amiable.
And right now, David is as amiable as he’s capable of being.
He hopes Broughton appreciates it, because he doesn’t like her much. Neither as a colleague—fucking turncoat—nor as a contender for the heart of a man now irrevocably unavailable. He even throws in his most charming smile.
It’s doesn’t do much besides reminding her to shake off her momentary melancholy.
“In that case, Percival,” she says, crossing her long legs in a practiced, mouth-watering way, “How undignified would you like your grand exit to be?”
(He wants some people to die, and the rest to live. He never considered a retirement before, but now, oh. The Cold War is about to end, and the opportunities are almost endless.)