Chapter 7.2

Emmerson Lee went very differently compared Carswell Jessup; we found him having lunch with a woman in a pretty, small café, outside, where the blossom trees arched above them and rained tiny pink petals when the wind blew. Emmerson Lee was in his thirties with mousy hair containing flicks of grey. He wore a casual grey suit and a blue tie. The women sat opposite him was a little younger and the way they interacted suggested it wasn't a business lunch. In my opinion he looked happy- too happy for someone who would be betraying the women he was eating with. They laughed and chatted freely without a care in the world and I wondered if we had the right person.

We watched him in the car parked across the street; after lunch they ordered coffee, and by the time they'd finished it, it was well over two hours we were sitting there. Quin was getting frustrated with the wait and bobbed his knee up and down impatiently, which vibrated the entire back seat and led to the complaints of the solider sitting with him. "Sit still man! You should learn to have some patience!"

"Shut up! I have patience, I just don't like sitting around!"

"You realise that's a contradiction?"

"Quiet the both of you! He's on the move!" Rickon hissed from the front seat. Emmerson Lee paid the waitress and leaned over the table to kiss his lunch date goodbye. Definitely not a business date. She smiles and waves goodbye, climbing into a small red car parked at the curb near the café. He lingers, watching her, until his eyes rest in our direction and for a second his face turns to panic before promptly masking it with a neutral expression and swiftly walked in the opposite direction. When he sees our car following him, his pace quickens and he darts down a side alley, shifting into a run. Rickon pulls to a stop "Quin, Xeon after him. I'll cut him off in the car!" They're barely out of the car when we're zooming down the road again, looking for a right hand turn to meet him off at.

We swerved down a one-way street, narrowly missing a cyclist, and causing a torrent of horns blasts as we pulled out at the adjacent street. In the distance Quin had almost caught him and Xeon wasn't far behind. We accelerated and overtook them, cutting off his escape. When he saw us, his eyes turned more frantic; desperate, he turned a took a swing at Quin, who expertly parried it and twisted his arm around his back, demobilising him. In seconds he was bundled into the back of the car, next to me, and Xeon climbed in the front. Emmerson Lee eyed me feverishly, hunched over as if he was expecting Quin to hit him.

"Why did you run?" Rickon asked in a monotone voice.

At the sound of his voice, he started rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. We stopped after a couple of blocks to change the number plate- ambushing him in board daylight in the middle of the street hadn't been part of the plan. If only he hadn't recognised the car, but due to his reaction is was quite likely that he was the one that had betrayed Garlantia. We couldn't afford to wait until he was alone, he could warn the Paelan government before we could get to him again. Our entire operation relied on being covert, once that disappeared, we had to act.

This time we headed out of town into a small collection of trees too small to be called a forest but desolate enough for our means. Quin struggled with the snivelling man, pulling him from the car. We walked for a few minutes into the treeline, where they tied him to a tree, hands bound to low growing branches, almost like a crucifixion.

"What do you want?!"

"We only want to know the truth and we'll let you go." Rickon lied with a bored expression.

When Xeon produced the needle out of his back pocket, he fought against the ropes, pulling and convulsing violently until his bindings bit into his flesh, turning them bruised and bloody.

"NO! not that!" He struggled against him as he stabbed the needle into his neck.

Quin, only now, waits patiently for the drug to take effect; the struggles become more and more pathetic until he's hanging limply by the ropes binding his arms as his feet struggle to keep him standing.

Rickon resumes the same line of questioning. "Give me your name."

"Emmerson Lee." He muttered.

"Where do you come from?"

"Pykon." He answers, presumably a province of Garlantia from the lack of reaction.

"Which country are you loyal to?"

"I don't know…. I didn't mean to do it… I just don't want to… do this anymore. I love her… I don't want to anymore. I just do want to." He stuttered, looking utterly confused and conflicted, with rivers of tears streaming down his face.

A spark of interest ignites in Rickons eyes, and the first time in an age, he looks interested. "Who don't you want to betray?" He asks.

"My wife." He weeps.

"Was it your wife the women you met this afternoon?"

"yes."

"Did you betray Garlantia by giving false information?"

"I didn't want to hurt her anymore. I could take it... I felt to guilty. I love her…" New torrents of tears gush down his cheeks as he stumbled through words, half obscured by snivelling and snot.

"Did you betray Garlantia?" He repeated the question with more force.

"Yes… Please just make it stop!" he begged.

"Not yet. One more question. Does your wife know?"

"… Yes."

He cuts him free, but he's too out of it to even stand and flops into a heap at the base of the tree. Rickon takes a spare gun from his waistband and puts it into his hand, curling his index finger around the trigger, pulls back the hammer and raises it to his temple. Then applying pressure to his finger… BANG!

"We need to get the wife too." Rickon mused, completely ignorant of the mess of brain matter and blood he'd made, he rummaged through his pockets and took out his phone. For a spy, he had terrible security. He gave a quick look through the conversation between him and his wife, Rose Lee, and conducted a message for her to meet him at the same café the next morning.

Once back in the city, I was instructed to buy two rooms for the night at the cheapest hotel in town. While my accent did not match that of a Paelan, a Reagan child was a hell of a lot less suspicious than Garlantian man who wasn't supposed to be in the country. They were careful to only speak in hushed tones, in case the thin walls betrayed them.

While not a stark as Garlantias capital, poverty was an issue in every country. The pretty little café we saw this morning was situated in the riches parts of town where people could afford such luxury. The hotel was across town from that, with mouldy beds, curtains that wouldn't meet and a bad damp problem, it was far from luxury, but it was better than to camp outside in the cold and wet. The floor was bare, with musky wooden floor boards that creaked when you moved, but once I'd made my little nest with a worn blanket and some extra clothes for a pillow, it wasn't too bad, and I easily fell asleep.