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The Longest Day
by Allthinky
The Longest Day
The adrenaline Kelly had been running on all day had finally given out on him; Scotty had been able to see it on that back street when Kelly'd slumped back against a wall, listening to Boris's confession. Another woman dead, because of the job. On Kelly's watch, more or less. When the police came, Scotty and Ivan had managed to convince them that the dead man was the bad guy, and that they would all come to the station the following afternoon (siesta was so convenient, sometimes) to give their official statements.
Now, back in the hotel room Scotty had booked while he had waited for contact from his Don Juan-playing partner, he got Kelly out of his long leather coat (they'd had such a time last week shopping for the thing, after Kelly decided he needed a more skulky coat, for skulking around in, and they'd only been able to find about six thousand of the them there in Sevilla, and Kelly had only wanted to try on about five thousand of them) then he watched as Kelly wandered to the bedroom.
"Hey," he yelled, all thoughts of propriety having been banished early this morning. "Don't fall asleep in there until you drink some water. And take some aspirin!"
In answer, Kelly's hand appeared in the doorway for a moment, and flapped at him.
Scotty shrugged and tossed the coat onto a chair, and thought about whether Kelly needed a brandy, or food, or ... well, probably just sleep. It had been a long day - long couple of days - for both of them. Just for a moment, he let himself recall the morning, and how much things had improved since the phone had awakened him from a very unpleasant doze.
***
When Scotty had gotten the call, he'd already been certain, for six hours, that Kelly had been made and then killed. He almost hadn't answered the phone, being so convinced that someone was calling to ask him to identify a corpse. Hearing Kelly's voice had been like Christmas and the day he'd gotten the letter about the Rhodes Scholarship all wrapped up in one moment; he'd sunk down in a chair due to his suddenly liquid knees. He'd tried not to think about why his partner had sounded half drunk and seven eighths dead, able only to express an urgent need for Scotty's presence. That, and something about a dead woman.
There was a girl, all right. It was about as bad as he'd imagined. A very basic part of him had been screaming to get out of there, get Kelly out. He'd stomped on it - he had a lot to figure out before they could leave that pit, and before he could let Kelly be seen outside the room.
Getting Kelly to help with the figuring out had been agony. The assignment had been no more tawdry than many, but Scotty hadn't had to get this close before - hadn't had to face the concrete fact of Kelly, the girl, the love nest (if not the one chosen by the Department), in cases like these. Scotty's anger at himself and at Kelly had ebbed at only one point: when Kelly had denied killing Markova. Scotty hadn't asked whether, but why, and Kelly hadn't missed a beat. It hadn't been too much help, though, in the bigger scheme of things.
What Kelly could recount had convinced him that Kelly's cover had been blown; they had maybe hours, maybe minutes, to start putting together a way out. Scotty was trying hard not to contemplate the possibility that whoever had killed the girl had also made a call to the policia, who were even now on their way, probably still smarting from losing their Fascista friends and happy to beat up a couple of ugly Americans in an ugly hotel in Sevilla. Once they had their hands on Kel, the game would be over. Kelly would disappear into the Spanish legal system, but he'd never actually make it to his trial; Washington wouldn't want to risk Kelly being interrogated by a foreign government of uncertain allegiances.
A growing sense of dread had made Scotty angry; in his haste, he'd been manhandling Kelly just to keep him upright, and Kel's continued lethargy had just about managed to get on Scotty's last nerve, even as he reminded himself that it wasn't actually Kelly's fault that he'd been drugged. Probably. He'd even had to stop himself from slapping the guy, which he knew wouldn't help. But he'd been getting more and more desperate in his efforts to get Kel to realize just how dire the circumstances were.
And then there had been that knock on the door.
Certain that he'd only be putting off the chambermaid, he'd opened the door without much thought. The appearance of Boris and Ivan had at once stopped his brain short and informed him that his sense of peril could, indeed, increase. His brain had stepped up then to inform him that the odds against them showing up randomly at that particular hotel looking for Zili Markova just hours after her murder were astronomical. He'd played it cool, though - he and Kelly were vulnerable. Luckily, he'd had just enough leverage to get Ivan to agree to give them some time.
After they'd left, he'd redoubled his efforts. The worst-case scenario had just shifted from Kelly's assassination by their own employers to the unthinkably worse.
With the appearance of their Soviet colleagues, and with Boris's accusation against Kelly, Scotty's attention had split, one part of it waylaid by his worst solo case to date. So far as he knew, Kelly hadn't ever seen the file on Harold Jones, or the attendant audio tape, and Scotty hoped he never would. Jones, who'd joined the service back in '57 and served without distinction for several years, had in 1964 been fingered by the KGB as the murderer of a Russian agent in Paris. He'd then been spirited behind the Curtain before any friendly agent could make contact. His burnt and twisted corpse, missing fingers and toes and eyeballs and genitals, had been returned to the Department a month later, along with a salutary audio recording of just how he had died.
Kelly hadn't been there; he'd been away on assignment. Scotty, with the wonderfulness of his language skills, had been assigned to listen repeatedly to the tape to glean what he could about the KGB and associated agents who'd been recorded in the act, the location where it might have happened, whatever he could figure out. Afterwards, he'd spent most of an evening being sick in his washroom and writing a handful of very soothing, very heartwarming, and very fictitious letters to his mother.
So, that morning in Sevilla, all the while he'd been bullying Kelly into remembering what he could of the previous night, that tape recording had lurked in the back of his mind. Except it was Kelly's voice he was hearing, screaming and begging for his own death, rather than Jones's. And it was Kelly's body taking the blows. If he failed, Kelly would end up where Scotty could never get to him. A Black agent couldn't find any cover behind the Curtain - especially once the KGB had circulated what was known about Kelly's partner, the man most likely to try to mount a rescue.
Even as he'd bullied his partner, he'd thought about taking Kelly and running, but the KGB would find them, if the Department didn't. The only way out Scotty could see was proving Kelly's innocence, somehow.
He'd kept a tight grip on all of this, despite the flowing adrenaline and miasma of attendant nausea, because while Kelly needed to snap out of his fugue, he didn't need to twig to the depths of their predicament. All Scotty needed was for Kelly to become the self-sacrificing idiot he could be when he felt he was putting his partner in that kind of danger.
Carefully, if not gently, he'd gotten Kelly to tell enough of the story to get them started. Getting out into the air and moving cleared Kelly's head a little, although he was still moving slow - the lovely Lita might have gotten him arrested if Scotty hadn't been there to hustle him out of the place. He'd barely gotten his breath back from that when that New York-style cabbie had nearly run them down; once again, Scotty'd had to scramble to protect Kel. The look on Kelly's face after he'd peeled himself off the wall had had Scotty worried that his manhandling had broken a rib, but it turned out to be another brainstorm. While the memory itself didn't pan out, the legwork had paid off all too well. Just as Scotty had hoped, one clue followed another, until he'd heard that voice in Russian in the back of the Spanish caf that had been Zili's last sanctuary.
At that point, the road ahead had seemed eerily clear to him, and Scotty had dragged Kelly kicking and screaming into the Istanbul plan. And after the trap had been set, he'd even managed to get Kelly back to the hotel for some food. Noting that the shocks of the day were catching up, he'd prescribed a shower and a change of clothes for Kelly - and then insisted that the man wear his brand new spy coat, in order to ward off the night chill. At that point Kelly had started calling him "mother", and the whole caper started feeling a little more manageable - more like any other assignment, and less like they'd wandered into some other universe designed by Kafka and managed by Stalin.
***
Stalin. He'd said some stupid things to Ivan and Boris today. Part of his desperation. He could almost feel that worry take hold of him. He realized he'd picked up Kelly's coat again, at some point in his ruminations, and was clutching it like a lifeline. It reminded him that he should probably check to make sure Kelly had actually gotten out of his clothes and into a bed - he'd be sore enough in the morning without the added discomfort that came from sacking out all night fully dressed.
The bedroom was empty, though, and he felt a brief frisson of fear that the KGB had come back for Kelly after all, when he heard a sadly familiar sound coming from the bathroom.
Even as he tapped the door twice and pushed in, he could hear the toilet flushing. Kelly was hunched over the sink in an echo of his posture in that disgusting medieval chamber this morning. Only now, he was brushing his teeth.
"Sorry," Kelly mumbled, sounding miserable, "there goes that expensive dinner you guilted me into eating. Never let it be said that fried shrimp is just as good coming back up as it was going down. Um, you probably don't want to use your toothbrush anymore, either." With that, he tossed the toothbrush toward the wastebasket.
Scotty straightened Kelly up with one hand on his shoulder, then guided him gently into the bedroom.
"Never let it be said that you know how to make charming conversation, Herman," he offered in return, as he sat Kelly down on the nearer bed. "Now stay there," he added, patting him on the shoulder.
"Oh, really? I was just wondering if you wanted to go take in a lovely Flamenco show, or maybe a late supper, and then --"
Scotty could hear the exact moment when Kelly's clever patter got the better of him, and he had to swallow against a rising gorge. Returning from the washroom with a glass of water, Scotty handed it to his miserable partner.
"Hey, slow down, Hobey," he cautioned, as Kelly seemed virtually to inhale the water. Kelly, however, seemed to have it under control.
"I'm alright," he muttered, setting the glass on the bedside table.
"So, you about ready --" Scotty began, figuring that it was about time for all worn-out secret agents to be getting to bed. But Kelly, as usual, was resisting the program.
"Scotty?" he interrupted, and waited 'til their eyes met. "Scotty, I'm sorry."
As usual, Kelly's apology was fraught with all kinds of things he wanted to say but couldn't - which was just as well; Scotty wouldn't know what to do with them.
"Don't worry about it, Kel. You've had a long day, man. Things will look a lot better in the morning."
Kelly looked down again.
"I doubt it."
Scotty sighed. Could nothing about this crummy day go easy?
"Well, look, Duke. How 'bout you give it the old college try?"
Surprisingly, Kelly snorted, and looked back up at him, a deep fondness in his previously desolate features.
"Okay, Mom. I'll try."
Then, with a crooked smile, he made to stand. Scotty couldn't believe it.
"Now where are you going, Herman? You're sitting on the bed, where you're gonna sleep! Where do you think you need to go now?"
Looking bewildered, Kelly lowered himself back to a seated position.
"Was gonna get another glass of water, man. I'm thirsty, is all." Kelly's tone approximated that of a long-suffering orderly explaining to a mental patient the need for basic hygiene.
In that moment, all of the frustration and anger Scotty had tried all day, with varying success, to avoid unleashing on his unusually hapless partner just melted out of his body through his fingers and toes. He wouldn't have been surprised to find himself standing in a puddle of fetid muck, so tangible was the change of tides.
Kelly was still looking at him as if he expected another wave of righteous, yet unprovoked, castigation.
"Naw, it's okay, Duke. You've been through the wringer today. You could ask me to get you a glass of water, just this once."
He patted Kelly gently on the shoulder, then slid his hand around to squeeze the back of his neck for a moment. The movement brought forth an image of his partner, hands frantically kneading at his temples and forehead, trying to shake the aftereffects of the drug.
"How about a couple aspirin, too, while I'm up? Think you can keep 'em down?"
A deep breath, and a careful nod.
"Yeah, man, I think so. Thanks."
Standing in the tiny bathroom, Scotty had a moment to consider that his partner really had been through the wringer today. Remembered the look in Kelly's eyes when Scotty outlined the plan to get Boris, that Scotty would play bait and Kelly backup. For just a second, Kelly had wanted to object, but with one look Scotty had been able to remind him that he wasn't in any shape to be outrunning bad guys. And Kelly, so rarely willing to accept his limitations - but always ready to believe in his flaws -- had just nodded, and pleaded with Scotty to be careful.
As he returned the aspirin bottle to the little shelf above the sink, Scotty caught sight of himself in the mirror there. A long day, he told himself. Things will look better in the morning.
Kelly was still sitting on the bed, unbuttoning his shirt with about as much grace as he'd displayed early that morning when attempting to dress. He managed to get out of the thing and then tossed it toward the foot of his bed before accepting the aspirin and the glass. Scotty found himself unable to tear his eyes away from Kelly's right biceps, bruised a deep purple. He remembered only too well the grip he'd had on that arm, trying to hold his partner up and shake him alert.
"Hey, Scotty?" Kelly's eyes were large, and more than a little regretful. "Scotty, it's okay." He grabbed Scotty's wrist, shook it a little. "Don't worry about it, man. It's over - you and your magic brain got the job done, once again, and all is as it should be," he looked down for a moment, his hand still gripping Scotty's wrist, "except for the part where I blew the assignment."
Scotty felt something in the world shift, as if an equation had just come out correct to the last decimal place, a plumb line come down true. He turned his arm just enough to take Kelly's wrist in his own hand briefly, and then let it go.
"Don't speak too soon, Duke - I've got an idea about that. I mean, Ivan does owe us something, doesn't he?"
Kelly looked up again, eyes shining in amused, if exhausted, hope.
"The wonderfulness of your mind, Holmes. I have complete confidence in your scheming self to get me out of another jam."
"Well, you got in it with help; why shouldn't you have some help getting out? Now, how about a back rub? Something tells me you won't be any good tomorrow unless we work out some of that tension you've been running on all day."
Kelly groaned and fell backward onto the bed.
"I doubt I could stay awake for it, man. Anyway, you had about the same day I did, didn't you?"
"You don't need to stay awake, Duke - it'll be easier if you're not fighting me on it. And you gotta remember, I didn't start out the day with a three-alarm hangover."
He tugged lightly on one forearm until Kelly got himself turned over and stretched out lengthwise on the bed.
"Have at it, man. Just be sure to still respect me in the morning."
As expected, perhaps, Scotty chuckled.
"What makes you think I respect you now, Herman?"
But Kelly said nothing, just lay there with his eyes closed and grinning like a dummy while Scotty went for the bag where he kept the liniment.
Tomorrow, they'd have all morning to work out their story, and make a preliminary report to the Department. He was pretty sure Ivan would agree to a small exchange of information in return for some small elisions from their formal report to Washington. And then, because Kelly would just about then be ready to slide back into the black pit of despair that would always cloud this assignment, Scotty was going to suggest they take in a movie. Poitier and Widmark's new spy flick had finally come to Spain, and nothing was better for Kelly than laughing at the goofiness of a Hollywood spy movie. And nothing was better for Scotty than laughing along.
And the day after that could just take care of itself, for a change.
The End
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