InsaneJournal

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Entry tags:	gambler, keptverse

The Gambler – Part Four
This is the fourth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Four

George walked into the kitchen, eyed Richard, and switched the kettle on. “Good afternoon,” he said.

They were still eating lunch – or Richard was moving food around his plate, and Gerard was nursing a second mug of coffee. “Hey,” Gerard said, equably. “Aren’t you early?” He squinted at this watch. “No. we’re late.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Put him in his room,” Gerard said. He glanced at Richard. “Soon as he’s finished what he’s got on his plate.”

George made himself a mug of tea. He sat down at the table. He said nothing, and said it with visible disapproval and impatience.

Gerard grinned, amused. “Eat up, Richard.”

Richard put his fork down. “I’m not hungry,” he said, almost steadily, and looked across the table to meet Gerard’s eyes.

“I don’t care. Just eat the damn food,” Gerard said. He was startled and annoyed when George laughed, even if he could see what George was amused by.

“It’s a problem, isn’t it?” George said, to Gerard. “How do you punish him? Force feeding?” He glanced at Richard. “Don’t get too complacent,” he added. Sometimes his voice could go completely flat, affectless: it was like that now. “Sam might not want you dead, but I’d have killed you. I still may.”

Richard’s eyes flickered to George, and back to Gerard. His hands had dropped from the table.

Gerard stood up and went round the table, giving George a tap on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said to Richard. “Don’t panic, nobody’s going to kill you.”

After a moment, Richard stood up, and Gerard caught hold of his wrist: his pulse was racing.

They went upstairs: at the door of the holding cell, Gerard patted Richard down. There was nothing in any of the pockets of his jeans, nothing held beneath clothing. “Okay. We’ll be done in an hour or two. Probably. In you go.”

“Sam,” Richard said.

“What?”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“You won’t be allowed out of this room unsupervised,” Gerard said. “And you won’t be able to take anything in here with you again. You got that?”

Richard nodded.

“No one is going to kill you,” Gerard repeated. “You got most of my kids mad at you, but not that mad.”

Richard nodded again: his mouth worked. “I didn’t – ”

“Richard, we know what you did,” Gerard cut across him. “We know what websites you looked at, what pages you looked at, and how long you looked at them. We know whose laptops you used. We know what phone calls you made, and who to. We know whose phones you used. We know it, Richard.” He closed the door.

Downstairs, George hadn’t even finished his first mug of tea. He eyed Gerard thoughtfully as the other man sat down: he had a look of ironic amusement.

Gerard picked up his coffee. He eyed George back.

“Did he panic?” George inquired. He sounded interested.

“No,” Gerard said. “Not quite.” He drank coffee. He wanted to set Richard aside. “George – last night. When did you know that Richard had access – that he was the leak?”

George set both his hands together in front of him. He met Gerard’s eyes. His voice was dry and firm. “I set about looking at the records after you sent the revised report to Commerce. The first anomaly I noticed was on Doctor Scully’s phone: intensive use, Thursday afternoon, at a time when Dana had been supposedly at work in the clinic. When I remembered that at some time on Thursday Richard had voluntarily shut himself up in the holding cell and stayed there until you sent Benton to get him out, and when I checked the numbers and found that the last number called from Dana’s phone was that of Charles Nicholls, then I knew Richard was the most obvious source of the leak to Doctor Nicholls. The rest…” George shrugged. “Richard was enterprising. You’ll want to discourage that, if you keep him.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“It only became a significant concern when I realised how much access to the outside world Richard had taken. Even then, the risks of stopping the flight were clearly higher than the odds that Richard was a very well-buried mole. I’d looked up his records quite thoroughly the Sunday after you bought him.”

Gerard leaned forward a little. “It wasn’t your job to decide that,” he said. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“It is my job to assess these risks,” George said, just as coldly.

“The decisions are mine.”

“Adam, Benton, and Ray were in the drop zone by the time I knew what Richard had been doing: we couldn’t communicate with them without risk. The foreign delivery was due. If Richard knew what we’d been doing and had told Commerce – and I remind you there was and is no evidence that he had – then all three of them were lost and our mission was fatally compromised. The only thing to do by the time I knew it was to wait for them to make their report, and to immobilise and secure Richard. It didn’t seem to make much difference what order we did it in. I didn’t tell you until we knew the three of them were safe, that’s all. It was no more than half an hour, I give you my word – from when I guessed it was Richard to when I told you.” George said it all coldly and evenly, apparently with complete indifference to Gerard’s reaction: but then he disarmed most of Gerard’s anger by leaning forward and saying, “Sam, I just didn’t see why you had to have that worry.”

George in full protective mode: Gerard’s smile was entirely internal. “Because that’s my job,” he said finally, leaning back again. “You know it is. You wouldn’t tolerate that either if you were in the hot seat. Half an hour now, a couple of hours next time, half a day after that? Don’t ever do that again. And don’t yell at my kids, either. Even if we are a bunch of bloody amateurs.”

George looked caught out: as embarrassed as he ever looked. “Ah,” he said. “I didn’t intend you to feel yourself included.”

“Why not?” Gerard did smile then. “Like I told Will. I’ve never done this before. And no one’s paying me to do it. You’re the only pro in this crowd.”

George nodded: embarrassed, amused, and caught playing protector. He finished his tea, set the cup down, and said “And with regard to the new cases?”

“Yeah, we should look through them. The files are all on the other side.” Gerard stood up, and grinned widely. “I’ll tell anyone who asks that’s what you came for.”

“No one will ask.”



George was gone in two hours. Richard had been lying flat on the floor of the holding cell, Gerard guessed, for at least part of the time; it wasn’t a quick position to rise from when Gerard came in.

“Relax,” Gerard said: “We’re going out for a walk.” He let Richard out ahead of him, and down the stairs: in the hall, Richard paused, looking back at him,

“Round the house,” Gerard said. “It’s not raining.”

Fresh air and exercise. If the armoury was locked down, and two people were willing to supervise, Richard could use the gym. If no one was working in the lounge, Richard could watch DVDs on the TV.

“We were real busy this past week,” Gerard said. “You should get to go out more. Remind me if I forget.” Giving Richard more than he needed in order to be able to take what he didn’t need away from him was the only way to punish him: that or kill him. And it certainly seemed like he were going to need ways to punish Richard.

Richard’s eyes went to the wired wall around the garden the moment he stepped outside: he looked at Gerard only after he took hold of Richard’s wrist.

The death the wall would give was the death Commerce would give its convict slaves. Gerard had warned Richard of it in explicit terms, to keep him away from the wall: but it seemed to fascinate Richard. Gerard didn’t think it was a rabbit fascinated by a snake: Richard was not prey. Gerard kept a firm grip on his wrist as they walked, twice, around the house.

“Sit down there,” Gerard said, pointing at the sofa. “Pick something you want to watch.”

Richard looked at him, He still didn’t speak, but his face could be very expressive, and what it was expressing was You’re kidding me.

“The hell,” Gerard said, answering the look. “Just do as you’re told, OK? And try speaking. I told you about that.”

“Yes, Sam,” Richard said, and sat down, leaning sideways to look at the shelf where Gerard kept the British DVDs.

Ordering a new mattress for the holding cell – and a sleeping mat, that could be rolled up and put away, for Gerard’s bedroom – took all of ten minutes. Richard had three DVDs on the table in front of him.

Two were from the British collection: Eddie Izzard, that was Giles, and All Creatures Great and Small, that was Adam. One was from the regular shelves: an approved remake of Casablanca that came out two years ago that someone had given him as a joke of sorts: Sam the piano player was Rick’s body slave.

Gerard picked up the last, staring at Richard, glancing down at the blurb on the back. Richard looked back at him, completely expressionless. If he’d done it on purpose, he wasn’t giving anything away. Impossible to prove, one way or another, without an interrogation as humiliating for Gerard as it would be agonising for Richard, over a damn DVD.

Not a game Gerard intended to play. He reshelved it and glanced at the other two: British comedy of the kind Giles liked, and some kind of show about a Yorkshire vet. “Okay. Put that on.”

He sat down on the sofa. When Richard had put the DVD in the player, Gerard patted the sofa beside him. “Sit down,” he said, as Richard hesitated.

Richard sat on the edge of the sofa; Gerard took hold of his arm and pulled him back, settling him to lean against his shoulder. “Get comfortable. Let’s watch this.” He had two hours to spare and there was no game on: this wouldn’t have been his choice of ways to spend them, but there were worse ones.

Richard, tense for a while, eventually relaxed: not all at once, but as if it was too difficult to keep holding himself rigidly still. The show wasn’t bad, either.

The phone rang just as a new episode was starting. “Yeah, this is Gerard.”

The voice was Commerce. “This is the department of fugitives, Mr Gerard.” They never identified themselves by name, only by office. “A household in DeKalb reports two slaves have absconded.”

“What?” Gerard let go of Richard and stood up.

“They went missing since midnight and eight o’clock this morning. We believe their collars may have been removed.”

The slaves could have been stolen – collars would be the first thing to go - or they could have got them removed themselves, if they knew how, thinking it would make it harder to track them.

“You have been informed as a courtesy. We do not believe we will require the assistance of the US Marshal’s service to retrieve the fugitives.”

“Send me over everything you’ve got on the household and the slaves. All of them,” Gerard said.

“Certainly, Mr Gerard. The fugitives will be rendered to you after capture.”

“Sure they will,” Gerard said out loud, after the connection was cut. Richard was staring up at him. There was no time. All his kids were on speed-dial from his phone.

“Adam,” Gerard said. “We got two runners. They started from DeKalb, they’ve had up to sixteen hours start. I want you and Giles to get out there. I want these two found, I want them here.”

He had the same conversation with Giles, and closed the connection, looking down at Richard. There had to be time to deal with this. The point of having a canary was to keep the canary visible: Richard was of no use kept in the holding cell. Gerard had been OK with that as a temporary measure when he thought it was keeping Richard calmed down. But long-term, it didn’t do. “Stay where you are,” Gerard said. He went back to his laptop.

The material on the household and on the slaves, with the files on the two who had run, had already been sent over in a set of large, indigestible, and locked files. Material information would have to be retrieved and sent to Giles and Adam: George was busy on the next set of Commerce files. Dana, Ray, and Benton were all due Saturday at least off if they were going to be functional, and Willow was going to be needed –

“Richard.”

Richard stood up, turning, staring, wide-eyed.

“I don’t want to lock you in your room for the next few hours, but I can put you in leg-irons where you are. Or if you sit where you are with earphones in and don’t say one goddamn word and don’t move, I don’t have to do that either.”

Richard’s voice was rusty and shaking. “I’d rather you locked me in my room.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t always get what you want, do you?”

to part 5