Set in Season One, between Rescue and War. The characters of Camille and Frank are the inventions of the authors.

Michael surveyed the party from the second floor landing, alert and content. No one looking at his calm face or impeccable tux would suspect the violence of his thoughts. His team was in place, his favourite 9mm was snug under his arm, and surveillance had just reported the mark's arrival at the palazzo.

This had been a difficult operation to organize. Claudio rarely left his Greek island fortress, letting couriers move his chemical weapons shipments, laundering money through a constantly shifting maze of on-line banking transactions and dummy corporations. But he had not been able to resist an invitation to the principezza's birthday. Vanity, and the desire to be one of the best people, were his blind spot as they were for so many people. Claudio had been unable to imagine a threat concealed under that invitation - her serene highness requests the honour of your presence. One corner of Michael's mouth lifted in what was for him a sneer of contempt. The distinguished guest list and historic setting lent elegance to the op; it took the mark off guard and added the challenge of carrying out the mission without a single wounded dignitary or damaged art treasure.

Then his mood shattered, as he caught sight of pale-blond hair swinging in the cut-out back of a black evening dress - below him. Nikita was supposed to be in place securing the rear staircase. Rather than call out via transceiver, and let Section know Nikita was out of place, he hurried down the stairs and took hold of that bare shoulder. With his other hand he tapped off his transceiver and then whispered through clenched teeth-

"Nikita, what are you doing here?"

The woman turned around, and a complete stranger met his eyes. She did not share Nikita's kitten prettiness, but a cooler and more classical beauty like the face on a cameo. Her face showed neither surprise nor irritation, but rather a distant politeness, and with a noticeable English accent she replied,

"Sorry, I'm not Nikita."

Her gaze went up and down him, slowly and appraisingly, the way he might look at a woman.

"Perhaps I wish I were."

Michael apologized, hoping the irritation was as absent from his voice as from his face, and strolled back to his point. He put his receiver back on.

"Why did I lose you, Michael?"came Birkoff's voice

"It couldn't be helped. People were too close. I need you to ID a guest, Birkoff. Strongly resembles Nikita - height, hair colour, dress. Nikita, you're in place?"

"Of course, and freezing my ass off . The back door's open so the waiters can duck out for a smoke."

"Then everyone watch out for this woman. English accent, Birkoff."

"I have several possibles. Can you tell me any more?"

Michael scanned the crowd again, looking for details.

"Alone. No jewellery except earrings, a small bag. Early to mid-twenties. A little slimmer than Nikita. At least as tall."

A rude noise came over his transceiver.

"Doesn't have your upper body strength."

The only response was another snort.

"Think I have her, Michael. Camille Arnessen, English mother and American father, family has money and connections, she does runway modelling. She was on the original guest list. Looks civilian to me."

"I just don't want anyone to confuse her with Nikita."

"She's collateral and I'm not?" came Nikita's sarcastic voice.

"You know I try to avoid civilian casualties," was Michael's response, his voice too flat for her to be sure he was also being sarcastic.

"Mark's on the move, Michael."

Michael sauntered upstairs. At the top he glanced back one last time, and found the English girl looking up at him. She smiled, and toasted him with her glass, before turning back into the party. Michael's suspicions were fading - just coincidence, and a woman who found him attractive and wasn't afraid to show it. He put his mind back on the job.

************

The op itself ran like silk: Michael dropped Claudio with a single trank-dart shot from the balustrade. Jeffrey caught the body and dragged it towards the back stairs. Michael holstered his gun and Nikita's voice crackled through - "We're in the van."

Then all hell broke loose. Police sirens seemed to come from everywhere and swirl around the palazzo like wasps.

"We've got incoming. Michael, what should we do?" Birkoff's voice had sharpened.

"Get Claudio out of here. I'll meet you at the substation."

Michael's immediate problem was the gun - no way of explaining that if he were searched and at the moment it also had fingerprints. Who the bloody hell had tipped the cops? The timing was too perfect to be accidental. He was looking for a quiet place to ditch the gun when a voice made him jump.

"So Nikita did run out on you?"

The English girl, Camille, but he shouldn't know her name. She must move like a cat. He took his hand off the grip of his automatic inside his jacket before he turned around.

"Something like that. And your date?"

"I didn't bring one. Looks like the carabinieri are going to spoil the party."

She wafted her glass in the direction of the main floor, where uniformed men were herding the guests away from the doors. "Maybe I could give you a ride?"

This was a gift from heaven for Michael, but he was far too experienced an op to take it at face value. Birkoff had only said looks civilian .

"Yes, thank you."

"This way."

She led him away from the party, and the Italian police, towards the family's private wing.

" My car's in the inner courtyard."

That could mean she was a friend of the family. In any case, Michael was glad he still had his gun, and a clip of bullets rather than trank darts in his pocket. She brought him through a sitting room full of comfortable rather than valuable furniture and down a circular staircase Michael remembered from the schematics. She really was taking him to the courtyard where the family kept their own cars.

"My name's Camille. What should I call you?"

There was no sign of hurry or tension in her voice or manner; she might have been strolling out of her own house, with one hand only lightly on her guest's arm. But it was an interesting choice of phrase.

"Michael."

"Well, the party wasn't a dead loss, then." She gave him another long look; it reminded him of Madeline, who could strip you naked and read your mind or assess your virility with a single glance.

And there really was a car, a dark-blue Mercedes with a driver, a stocky middle-aged man in a suit rather than a uniform. Michael couldn't tell if there was a holster under the loosely tailored jacket.

"Home early, Frank."

"Yes, miss." His accent was also British, though not quite as BBC as hers.

"Unless you'd rather we dropped you somewhere?"

Michael could have sworn there was no edge to the voice; he was perfectly free to say yes, thank you, I would rather.

"If you have no other plans?" He smiled at her.

"I do now."

She let Michael put her into the car, and settle himself beside her. His holster was thereby on the side next to the door rather than between them.

In the van, Nikita had taken off her shoes and dragged on Birkoff's jacket over her dress.

"Listen to this crap. Michael will pick up a girl anywhere if she can be useful to him." She rummaged through the jacket pockets for something to eat.

"Wait and see if she gets him past the police cordon," Birkoff responded , but it was amazing the way Michael collected women on ops.

At the gate, the police only spoke to Frank, and that in fairly laboured English. But Michael also understood the rapid whisper of Italian between the two officers - her mother is a dear friend of the princess and she was here for the private dinner. After a perfunctory glance at the papers Frank held out, they apologized, and wished them a pleasant evening.

"Okay, Michael's clear. He still has his transceiver on so I can track the car."

Operations' voice crackled through the speaker. "Switch the surveillance on him to the substation. Your job is to bring Claudio in. Any trouble with that, Nikita?"

Ops was daring her to react, and she was damned if she would oblige him.

"None at all. I can't see that Michael will need any backup." Nikita was certain Michael could manage this particular situation on his own, and she was in no mood to listen to him do it.

************

Camille's manners in the car were impeccable. She sat slightly twisted so as to meet his eyes and kept up an idle chatter about guests and clothes apparently for Frank's benefit. But below the level of the seat, her hand moved casually towards his knee, brushed it lightly. He felt himself tense and cursed mentally. Shit, he was too keyed up from the op, worrying somehow it had been blown, to react smoothly with this woman who was obviously just hitting on him. He put his hand over hers and replaced it on his leg. She smiled, and moved to sit against him rather than facing him, allowing her body to brush against his from shoulder to thigh. Even in the close quarters of the car her perfume was subtle, just perceptible when she leaned against him. Half on impulse, he bent to kiss her cheek; she tilted her head so that he could go further, along the throat to the hollow of her collarbone. His hand traced the neckline of her dress, cupped briefly the breast, feeling the nipple hardening against his thumb, as she arched against him.

"Not in front of Frank," she whispered, and he straightened up. But her hand stayed on his thigh.

In front of the hotel, Frank left the car to valet parking and went around to Camille's door before Michael could. He then went ahead of them into the lobby and spoke to the clerk. Camille paid no attention to him; she took this moment of privacy to let her hand brush up Michael's thigh and then over. Oh so lightly, but Michael was starting to sweat. He shouldn't be this jumpy with a civilian; she was taking control of the situation. What was the matter with him? Part of it was distraction, wondering who had tipped off the cops, but surely if there was any real trouble they would have called him in instead of switching him to passive surveillance. But he'd had his mind elsewhere without letting the woman notice it on other ops. What was different about this woman? He brushed her hair off one shoulder and kissed the warm skin beneath. The scent of her perfume was almost a taste. Her hair was unbelievably pale; he found himself wondering if it was natural, and how he would find out.

But then Frank was back, and they had to behave.

"Any messages?"

"Nothing urgent."

Again Frank went in first, opening the door to a suite and then holding it for them. Camille dropped her bag onto a side table, pulled off her diamond cluster earrings and left them beside it.

"That's all for tonight, Frank. Call me at the usual time in the morning."

She strolled ahead of Michael into the bedroom, and he found himself watching her hips move under the black jersey. She couldn't be wearing anything under that dress, with its halter neck, deeply cut out back and narrow skirt. They'd had to alter Nikita's so that the thigh holster wouldn't show. Undo the clasp at the back of the neck and the dress would simply slide off. But he had to stop thinking like this, if he could call it thinking. He needed to keep alert. Just because he was out of the party didn't mean he was out of danger.

While she had her back to him, he closed the bedroom door and did a desperate gymnastic wriggle so that he could slip his holster off with his tuxedo jacket. She was doing something with a remote control. He tensed again, his mind switching back to operational status, but it was apparently only the stereo control. Jazz began to filter out of invisible speakers, a woman singing in French, something about broken hearts and lost love.

"Do you like Patricia Kaas?"

For reply he took her into his arms and they began to slow dance.

"L'amour est-il si presse
De toujours vouloir s'en aller?
Dites-moi si vous savez
Ou s'en vont les coeurs brises
Quand ils ont fini d'aimer."*

Without heels she was as tall as he was - their mouths on a level. She didn't taste of alcohol, only of herself, warm and sweet. Her hands went from his shoulders down his back, pulling him in closer. She rubbed one thigh between his legs, and laughed very softly at what she found there.

"Impatient, aren't you?"

"You're irresistible." And the scary thing to Michael was how much truth there was in the line he'd used so often. From the neck up, he was trying to stay an op, but the rest of his body had stopped even pretending. His hands strayed down her back, and inside the dress. No, she wasn't wearing anything underneath but skin like silk. He cupped her briefly, but holding her this closely made him ache unbearably. The zipper had started to dig into him. He didn't lose control like this even with Nikita. What was wrong with him? That corner of his brain which Simone had trained, which never stopped working, had the uncomfortable answer waiting for him.

"This is what it would be like if Nikita wanted you - if it were her mouth open to yours, her hands scratching down your back until you arch like a cat."

Camille's hands moved around Michael's waist to start on his shirt buttons.

"You first, you have more on," she whispered, kissing the bare skin she revealed from throat to belly. Michael exhaled as he felt his shirt fall from his shoulders, the material caress his already sensitive skin. He knew her mouth was so close now, her hands on the belt buckle. Michael began to wonder how long he could stay standing.

"Mais certains soirs
Malgre tout je te regrette
Et je me dis
Qu'il reste une chance, peut-etre."*

"Lie back ."

Michael realized that she had moved him towards the bed with little pushes as she slid the belt out of its loops, dropping it in their path. He caught her to him once more, and kissed her hungrily in anticipation of the release she was about to give him.

With one final touch Camille pushed Michael onto the bed. She pounced, curling beside him like a cat. Michael noticed her lick her tongue along her teeth and for a moment he had the sensation of being the antelope instead of the lion. Michael could feel himself tensing. Although he knew that he was beyond being able to tell his body not to react, the other part of his mind knew that he needed to stay alert and keep himself safe. Camille slowly undid the top button of Michael's pants, licked downwards from his belly button to the zipper pull and grabbed it with her teeth, pulling it down. Michael knew this was way past safe, but he was beyond caring.

Unmindful of the inner chaos of Michael's thoughts, Camille contented herself with provoking simple, physical reactions . Michael's eyes widened and all thoughts of safety and operational parameters disappeared as hefel t himself rising again and again towards climax, only to be pulled back by Camille's expert tongue. Michael could feel his hips moving with a rhythm beyond his control. A part of his mind was slightly irritated that it was Camille who was controlling his body rather than the other way around, as was his general modus operandi.

All of these thoughts however, were pushed into the background as Michael's primitive brain took over. Sensation too intense to be pleasure or pain flowed over him. As though he were watching a film, Michael could hear ragged breath and sounds that seemed to rise unbidden from his chest. He groaned, about to explode; he felt a gentle, but firm, scraping of teeth on the underside of his penis.

"Camille!" he pleaded, his fingers digging into the bed.

"Impatient, good things come to those who wait, " Camille teased, shifting him from her mouth to her hands, her fingers pinching and caressing, leaving Michael unable to say anything further except an urgent

"Please" through clenched teeth.

Camille took him deep into her into her mouth again, pulling his shaft through her teeth, and then began nibbling at the tip. Michael couldn't stop moaning and thrashing on the bed. Camille slid her hands under him, cupping his buttocks, using her fingers to open his cheeks, massage his testicles and guide his thrusting penis into her mouth.

Michael's breath was coming hard and fast through his teeth. Camille watched as drops of sweat gathered on his forehead and chest, and knew that he was not going to be able to hold it much longer. At that moment she bit, not hard enough to hurt him, just enough to shock him into release. Michael cried out as he arched, his body shuddering before he slumped back onto the bed.

Camille smiled as she licked her lips. Michael opened his eyes, sat up and pulled her into a kiss, his hands fumbling for the clasp at the back of her neck, letting the material fall and reveal breasts just big enough to fill his hands. He outlined with kisses the sensitive skin from earlobe to throat and then bent to her nipples. Michael felt himself becoming aroused again; she was intoxicating.

************

Suddenly Michael heard a phone ring, and jumped in spite of himself. After a brief pause, Frank knocked on the door.

"Your mother."

Camille rolled off Michael and reclasped her dress around her neck.

"She has infallible timing."

Alone on the bed, Michael felt as though cold water had been poured over him. He came to a sudden realization that he had been willing to use this woman not for cover or as a contact, not even because he wanted her, but solely to act out his fantasies about Nikita, as though she were a whore he'd hired. How Simone would despise him - he could almost hear her say "only marks act like tricks". By the time Camille came back from the other room, Michael was completely dressed again.

"I should be going anyway. It's late."

"Perhaps Nikita has changed her mind and she's waiting for you."

Michael was not too preoccupied to notice the edge to that remark. So Camille had guessed that her resemblance to Nikita was the reason for Michael's attraction.

"I doubt it. Thank you, Camille."

She saw something in his face that took the mischief out of hers.

"Don't worry about it, Michael."

Michael was in the elevator when his comlink went live and Birkoff's voice came through.

"I don't know if you're clear to respond, but Ops wants you in now. A car will be at the hotel entrance. Make some excuse."

"On my way."

He would have preferred to walk in; he needed the exercise and the cold night air. But he made the best of it by stopping the elevator and taking the stairs the rest of the way down. After some of the sensei's breathing drills in the car, he felt more like himself when he entered the substation.

Nikita was waiting, of course. She uncurled herself from Birkoff's desk, snapped her gum, and smiled.

"Tough luck, Michael."

He ignored her and addressed Birkoff. "What's happening?"

"Not our screw up, but a big one. Operations is on the phone to George, yelling and pacing around. Seems that Claudio was somebody else's informant, and the police raid was cover for their retrieve. But nobody told us about it."

Michael closed his eyes. Operations was going to be looking for a scapegoat to sacrifice on this one, and he was the logical target.

"Do I have time to change?" Michael wanted to be in his own clothes to meet Operations.

"Sure. The rep from Interpol's due here in a half-hour."

************

Michael spent twenty minutes of it in the shower, five getting into his usual black-on-black, and was waiting with Madeline and Operations when the representative arrived. To all their surprise, it was a woman, so perfectly tailored and made up that she might have been twenty or forty: blonde hair in a sleek roll, dark glasses, a charcoal-grey suit that fit her like a glove from throat to knee, black leather gloves and boots, elegant and French as a Deneuve for Chanel ad. Michael saw Madeline study the outfit, and wondered how soon they would see her in a similar one. It would have to be a different shade, though; that grey wouldn't go so well with auburn hair. And how like Madeline to be able to think of clothes when they were about to eat crow for stealing another agency's informant and compromising their operation.

Operations clearly didn't care if she had arrived stark naked. With the thinnest possible veneer of politeness over ice-cold fury he made the introductions.

"Madeline, Michael, this is Joceline." He didn't quite get the right pronunciation.

"Michael was team leader on the retrieval."

Joceline declined to take that up.

"No one regrets this unfortunate misunderstanding more that we do."

She had the formal, over-careful English that announced her foreignness more than any accent could.

"Your people seem to have ...performed flawlessly. No casualties on any side."

Michael couldn't be sure there had been a hesitation. But something else bothered him about Joceline. The name meant nothing to him, he didn't recognize the voice, but she seemed vaguely familiar nonetheless.

"When did you realize there was another team in place?" - and why didn't we? Ops' unspoken question was conveyed by a hard glance at Michael, who had no good answer to it.

"A closed black van with an untraceable license. Our team leader made a tactical decision to withdraw and investigate rather than risk an armed confrontation within the party. Too high a risk of hostage-taking or unacceptably high-profile casualties."

Michael exhaled slowly through barely open lips, the sudden fear that he had tipped them off dispelled. Joceline turned towards him, as though she had heard that breath, and then back to Operations. Michael began to look at her more closely - her ears, the line of her throat, the shape of her mouth. A single drop of sweat, ice-cold, ran the length of his spine.

"But this is a matter for my directors to take up with the Agency rather than for us to dispute. If Claudio is ready to be transported?"

"We need a little longer to prepare him." Michael knew and probably Joceline knew that Madeline meant to rinse the drugs out of his system and patch him up.

"I would be happy to entertain our guest," to move himself out of Operations' reach, was Michael's thought, and also to deal with the panic he was fighting to control.

"Good idea, Michael." Madeline smiled at him, and went off towards interrogation.

Once they were alone in the common area, Joceline began to whistle very softly - the song from Camille's hotel room. Michael stopped dead and looked at her. She tilted down the dark glasses and he saw Camille's aquamarine eyes. Then she put the glasses back.

"How did you recognize me?" Michael's voice was barely more than a whisper, his lips hardly moved.

Camille picked up that he was worried about surveillance. She linked her arm through his and started walking again before she answered, in her own English voice.

"It was my op, and I knew there was no one on the guest list or on staff named Nikita. Then I noticed your holster."

"You weren't armed." No matter how distracted he had been, he could hardly have missed that.

"You didn't search my bag."

"And your comlink was in your earrings. Why did you pick me up?"

"To give us time to ID you. I already knew you were the shooter."

"When you toasted me." He remembered looking down at her at the party.

From behind, where Nikita was watching, they appeared to be enthralled in a private conversation, heads close together, Michael's hand resting gently between Joceline's shoulder blades.

"I guess he never stops working."

"Well, maybe he's feeling frustrated." Birkoff smirked. He only risked this comment because he knew that no one but Nikita could hear it.

"Poor baby. I'm going for coffee. You want something?"

Michael thought over what had gone on at the party and after, how he had been systematically separated from his team, his gun, his clothes and finally his self-control. He hadn't been so thoroughly fooled by a woman since ... since Simone had decoyed him away to go after Sparks herself.

"And if I hadn't been from Section, what then?"

Camille chose to ignore the sudden sharpening of his voice. "Frank would have given me a different message. You were on the 38th floor of a building with sealed windows and no balconies, ten feet away from your holster. But it didn't come to that."

"How far would you have gone?"

"Under the same circumstances, how far would you have gone?" Camille smiled at him. He left the remark alone.

"I don't understand - you have an outside life. Birkoff identified you."

"That's my real life. I only do a few jobs a year, places like that party where Camille Arnessen can go freely and Interpol can't. It's a good cover; not even Section One thought a blonde model might be an op. So much less suspicious that being the invisible man."

"That's why you didn't tell Operations about me."

"It would have blown my own cover," she agreed.

"Why did you get involved with Interpol? You have an outside life."

"Family tradition. My father was a Green Beret in Vietnam, my mother's father was in the OSS during World War II."

"Have we ruined your relationship with Claudio?"

"Not at all. He'll be even more co-operative now, after what we've rescued him from." She glanced back over her shoulder, but no one was nearby. "The blonde at the computer station, that's Nikita?"

"Yes."

"I can see why you mistook me for her. But why did you assume she'd be out of place?"

"She'd have had a perfectly good reason, in her mind." Michael spoke with the bitterness of experience.

"I don't know why you're not sleeping with her, and I'm not going to ask. That's personal. But here you need to trust her, or cancel her, Michael. Covering for her just gets both of you into trouble. What if I hadn't been Interpol?"

"I know." But so far he had been unable to do any of the above. He heard footsteps approaching, and took his hand away from Camille.

Camille switched back to Joceline's accent. "Are we ready to leave? Then thank you again for all your cooperation. Goodbye, Michael."

She went off with Madeline, leaving Michael to watch them go. His face was expressionless, cold as marble. Nikita slouched up from the opposite direction, coffee mug still in hand. She also watched the two impeccably dressed backs for a moment.

"I suppose that's what Ops wishes I were like. Do you?"

"No!" The word escaped from his mouth with more force than he had intended. But Simone's cool brain in Nikita's body was not something he wanted to deal with. Then he re-established his calm facade.

"You're fine the way you are."

"Thank you." Pleased by what she took as a compliment, Nikita found herself smiling at Michael's back; he had already turned away. The smile faded and she muttered "bastard" as she walked back towards Birkoff's station.

The End

*Translation of song lyrics: Patricia Kaas, Scene de vie, CBS, 1990, "Ou vont les coeurs brises" by T. Delaunis and C. France.

Is love always in such a hurry to leave?
Tell me if you know,
where broken hearts go,
When they've finished with love.
But some nights, I miss you
In spite of everything
And I tell myself
There's still a chance, perhaps.

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