This story copyright © 2004 Mia McCroskey
Characters from The Avengers and other sources are the property of their respective owners.
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Steed plays voyeur
Emma learns new tricks
Chapter 1
"Yes sir, I'm certain. No, I know that she is new to us, but she has already proven herself quite admirably," John Steed rose from his desk chair and paced in a small circle as he spoke. "I trust her implicitly, and she meets all of the requirements for the job. Right. Beautiful, brilliant, and she can take care of herself."
The buzzer rang, drawing his eyes up the steps toward the door.
"Hold on, General. That's her now." He set the telephone receiver on the desk and took the steps two at a time.
He opened the door to admit Emma Peel, and as usual the sight of her made his breath catch in his throat. He automatically leaned close to kiss her lightly on the lips, a pleasure he only allowed himself in their homes when they were not working. She reached up to caress the side of his face and his eyes widened as they slipped into the warm, brown depths of hers.
"Come in," he said softly. "I'm just speaking to General Collins."
He turned and went back down to the telephone, leaving Emma to shut the door. She came down the stairs and tossed her black and white fur over the back of a chair.
A month ago she had signed the Secrets Act and agreed to work with Steed. Since then he had sought her assistance with four cases and she had enjoyed every moment of their working relationship. But she had enjoyed their personal relationship even more. It was playful, romantic, seductive, and growing deeper each day.
"Thank you General. I'll find out and have the plan to you this evening. Yes sir. Good afternoon," Steed replaced the receiver on the telephone and turned to face Emma.
"Find out what?" she asked, smiling at him over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen door. He followed her, watching her check the water in the electric kettle and plug it in.
"Salt," he said automatically as she moved toward the shelves of canisters. She reached for the canister so marked and carried it to the counter where a teapot sat upside down in the dish drainer. It pleased him that she had so easily accepted his eccentric kitchen storage system. "Would you like to join me in Berlin?" he asked as she spooned tea from the canister into the teapot.
"Today?" she asked, only half joking.
"Tomorrow."
She put the cover on the canister and returned it to its place on the shelf, then faced him where he stood leaning against the doorjamb.
"And just what is it that the General wants me to do there?" she asked, reaching up to brush the stray lock of hair from his forehead.
"It's what I want, actually. We've located a man in the American sector of Berlin who was responsible for the deaths of countless innocent civilians during the war. The war crimes tribunal refused to indict him -- insufficient evidence, they claimed. We want him."
"But if the evidence is weak --."
"We have overwhelming evidence. We just can't share it."
"Not even with me?"
"If you agree to help."
"Of course," she sighed with a smile. Then she turned back to the kettle, which was boiling.
"Of course you'll help?" he asked, stepping up close behind her. She bent her head to inhale the aromatic steam from the teapot as she poured the water over the tea. Steed drew her hair to one side and kissed the back of her neck, his breath making her whole body tingle. She set the kettle down and picked up the teapot to swirl the water around, unwilling to move as long as he continued to kiss her.
"I think it's steeped," he whispered near her ear, jolting her back to reality. She inclined her head to turn it and look at him over her shoulder.
"Of course I'll help," she said.
"This is the man -- Max Prendergast," Steed handed Emma a very thick dossier in a portfolio stamped Top Secret. "He's in Berlin, but we don't know for how long. It's going to take a few days to arrange everything -- papers to be signed by men who don't want to sign them, a team to get into place. We have one man on him now, but he'll need to sleep sometime. We need to get there and capture Prendergast's attention enough to keep him there."
"So I'm to be a diversion?" she asked.
"I think you can be a very pleasant diversion," he agreed.
He'd known Emma for six weeks and worked with her for a month. Ordinarily that would not be enough time for him to assess a new partner's skill and reliability. But Emma Peel was hardly ordinary, and Steed was utterly confident that she was perfect for the job at hand. She would have him wrapped around her little finger if he let her, he was certain she could keep Prendergast in Berlin for a few days without even trying.
Emma opened the file to look at the photograph, which she could tell was an eight by ten blow-up of part of a larger picture. It showed a short man in a suit -- the shape of the lapels looked like it was the 1940s -- standing in a crowd of people, some in German army uniforms, along what was probably a parade route. His right arm was raised, perhaps in an innocent wave, perhaps in a Nazi salute. Aside from a general sense of his appearance, she could glean very little from the image.
She sat down on Steed's sofa with the file in her lap and drew her feet up under herself. As she began to read she was vaguely aware of Steed moving around the apartment. After a while he placed a fresh cup of tea on the table in front of her. She paused long enough to take a sip -- it was prepared exactly to her taste -- and look up to thank him. But he had moved away, not needing her acknowledgement of his kindness.
Max Prendergast had betrayed thousands of French and Polish refugees. He had accepted their money in payment for passage to safer lands on retired merchant ships not seized by the war effort. There were no such ships, and increasingly fewer safe lands in the latter months of World War II.
As she read Emma was drawn back in time twenty years to when she was a child living with her mother in Suffolk. Each evening they would sit in the parlor captivated by the news of the war on the radio. They listened mostly for reports of conditions in London where her father had remained. But young Emma had absorbed the vivid reports from war correspondents, creating childish mental images of the ruined towns and scattered, frightened people. And at the time the true horror of the Nazis was not yet fully known -- news of the death camps had only come much later when the Knight family was reunited and Emma's sense of security had returned along with her beloved father.
With the clarity of hindsight she wondered how those poor, desperate people could possibly have believed Prendergast. How could they not have known that all ships that could still float had been seconded by whichever government could claim them?
But for some reason they had believed him enough to hand over huge payments in advance for passage to safety and freedom. And they'd traveled, sometimes on trains arranged by Prendergast, sometimes on their own, to the locations where he directed them. The lucky ones waited there, starving and desperate, and eventually gave up and drifted back into their ravaged homelands. The unlucky ones had been sent to locations that were targeted by the allied forces. They were killed by the thousands of bombs dropped by American and British airplanes.
The evidence against Prendergast had been gathered through covert means over the ensuing twenty years. Emma was surprised to see Steed's scrawled signature on more than one report. What little she knew about his past was now augmented by the fact that he had been active in Europe after the end of the war. She wanted to ask him about it, but she had to set aside her curiosity for the moment and concentrate on the matter at hand.
This secretly gathered evidence along with the horrible fact that many of Prendergast's victims had died by Allied bombs, explained why British Intelligence had not wanted to share its knowledge with the war crimes tribunal. If Prendergast had been a Nazi it might have been easier to publicly decry him. But to Emma's mind he had been just as bad as the men who sent Jews to the death camps: a mercenary taking advantage of the misery and chaos of war.
By the time she had finished reading the dossier her heart was heavy with grief for the thousands of lives ruined or lost due to Prendergast's actions. She was filled with loathing for a man she had never met, and whom she had already agreed to try to seduce. As she closed the file, staring into the space above the coffee table, Steed was there beside her. She realized that despite his seeming distraction with chores around the house, he had been watching her, waiting for her to finish reading. And he knew how she would feel learning about the vile secrets he had been carrying around for many years. He took the dossier from her and set it on the table, then sat back and wrapped his arms around her.
A month, she thought, snuggling instinctively against him, inhaling his scent of good cologne and freshly laundered clothes. And I crave the comfort of his touch like I never did Peter's.
"You don't have to do it," he said.
"I've read the file Steed, I'm committed."
"It doesn't matter. I'll handle it," he insisted. She noted that he did not say that he would lie and say she hadn't read it. No, he would honestly admit to the General that she had read it and refused, and his recommendation to use her was a poor one after all.
"No. I'll do it," she repeated. He believes in me. I won't let him down.
"You aren't to --," he paused, his expression somewhere between pained and embarrassed. She arched her brows in inquiry. "It's up to you how far you take it, so long as you keep him interested."
Emma had the distinct impression that Steed's feelings were exactly contrary to his words. He wanted to forbid her to use physical seduction. He concealed his possessiveness of her very well, but she sensed it. She knew he wanted her, and she was gradually allowing herself to want him, too. But not yet. Not when it could complicate things so much. If it ruined everything she wanted to have the memory of these days working with him first. And if that was selfish, she didn't care. She had been raised to identify what she wanted and get it when she could. Right now she wanted this -- the excitement and challenge of his world. Soon enough she would succumb to her physical desires. But before she did she hoped to make an emotional connection with Steed that so far he had deftly evaded.
She wondered as she went home and packed whether she could do what was being asked of her. She understood how men behaved in the business world. She was her father's daughter: intellectual, studious, adventurous, ambitious. She had never been a coquette. She knew how to flirt when she was attracted to a man, but this assignment is going to require taking it to a much higher -- or lower -- level.
She smirked at herself as she folded a black lace negligee into her bag. Then her face fell as she remembered that it wasn't Steed who she would be flirting with, but a loathsome criminal. She did not want to use that negligee. It was testament to her loyalty to Steed that she was packing it. And ironic that he definitely did not want her to use it either. If it came down to actual physical seduction she had no idea what she would do. She did not engage in casual sex, and she had not been to bed with a man since Peter died. She had identified the next man she would make love to, and he was not Max Prendergast.