Angel and the Assassin: Be Brave

“Daddy, come to bed.” Angel held out his
    arms, but Kael wasn‟t ready yet. He wanted a whisky, and he needed to write up a
    debrief on the weekend and send it to Conran right away. But he was still
    distracted by Mattie Thornton and her similarity to Misha. So he kissed his boy and
    ordered him to lie down. The moment his head hit the pillow, Angel was fast asleep.
    In the living room, Kael swallowed a mouthful of whisky, took his leather-
    bound diary from his dressing-gown pocket, and began to write.

    I met Misha at my first self-defence class with SIS. I was 22 and she was 28,
    but she looked about 17 because she was baby faced and very petite. I walked into the
    room and stood beside her without even noticing she was there. Then someone
    pointed out the discrepancy in our sizes and everyone laughed, including me. I
    looked down at her, a 7-stone woman who was about five feet two inches tall. She
    couldn’t be an operative, at least not the kind I was being trained to be. I had no idea
    she had served eight years with the military and was an expert sniper.

    10
    Fyn Alexander

    I asked her what she was doing there and she said, “Same as you.” I laughed
    and said, “A little girl like you?” She called me a sexist arsehole and delivered a
    karate chop to the back of my right knee. I hit the ground and she stood there
    laughing at me along with the rest of the class, including the instructor. She said,
    “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
    Humiliated and angry, I was on my feet in about three seconds. I picked her up
    and said, “The smaller they are, the farther they fly.” I had no self-control in those
    days, and I wanted to kill anyone who got the better of me. I would have thrown her
    across the room if she hadn’t dug her nails into my face and nearly gouged out my
    eyes. The instructor walked over and ordered us both to sit on the floor cross-legged
    like little kids in school. Neither of us dared disobey him, anymore than my students
    would dare to disobey me now. Sitting there like that was more humiliating than
    being thrown down by a pocket- sized girl. Misha was tiny so she looked really cute
    sitting there. At my size I looked as stupid as I felt. The instructor stuck his finger in
    my face and said, “Cocky bastards get themselves killed.” To Misha he said, “And
    you ought to know better.”
    So there we were, sitting on the floor for the entire class throwing filthy looks at
    each other. When it was over and we were allowed to leave she invited me to go for a
    beer. I was stunned. I’d already decided I hated her. “I’m gay,” I told her.
    “I’m asking you to go for a beer not a fuck,” she said.
    “You’re buying,” I told her.
    She said, “Why?” She was always blunt like that.
    I said, “Because I’m going to be bruised from being knocked down and I’ve got
    scratches all over my face so you owe me.” I must have sounded very childish.
    “Is the pretty boy all worried about his pretty face?” She laughed.
    I told her to shut it. We went to the pub and drank a few beers, and before I
    knew it she had me in stitches telling jokes about the instructors. I never dreamt that
    day I would end up loving her, not as a woman, but as a trusted and dear friend.

    Angel and the Assassin: Be Brave

    11

    Chapter Two

    Secret Intelligence Service, Vauxhall Cross, London

    Kael‟s stress level soared as he walked into the ground-floor classroom at
    Vauxhall Cross. The German-language class he was teaching was not going well.
    The students talked to each other, asked stupid questions, failed to pay strict
    attention when he was speaking, and several women in the class who ought to know
    better actually giggled when he entered the room, whispering behind their hands
    like schoolgirls.
    Everyone in the class was over twenty-one, and they acted like five-year-olds.
    During last Friday‟s class, he had done what the masters at College Grange did
    when he boarded there from the age of twelve to seventeen; he threw chalk and
    blackboard erasers at them.
    Obviously the tactic had worked, because on this crisp Monday morning, the
    room fell silent when he entered.
    He took off his jacket, hung it on the hook behind the door, and sat on the edge
    of his desk in front of the class looking at the expectant, nervous faces before him.
    Half his class of eighteen adults was not present. “Did I frighten a few sensitive
    souls on Friday?” He raised his eyebrows.