[identity profile] 400-years-young.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] hh_mirror
It was possible that when he finally turned mortal, John Amsterdam would drop dead from centuries of smoking.

Smoking had been a recreational activity well before the European settlers had arrived, and it had spread through the colonies like wildfire. John had picked up the habit at fourteen, right off the boat. He had tried to give it up like drinking, but had only succeeded in cutting back. Besides, a guy as great as him needed a few bad habits. So he indulged in his habit now, trying not to think of anything besides the smoke curling over his head.

Date: 2008-06-24 02:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
Reilly has his own stash of his preferred vices in his room, of course, but he enjoyed the atmosphere at the Little Green Apple. He stopped in from time to time to try out the house's latest exotic concoctions and to keep his ears open to whatever his Slytherin housemates might be up to.

It was also nice to be in a smoky bar again. The shift away from smoking in public places was one that would never sit well with him - who, after all, would want to know what a London pub really smelled like underneath all the cigarettes, cigars and pipes' smoke?

Reilly turned at the bar to survey the room, and noticed a familiar face settled in comfortably with a hookah, looking up at the tendril of smoke floating toward the ceiling.

He ambled over and set his drink down on the table beside John Amsterdam. "Is that tobacco, or something that lets you see the mysteries of the universe in that smoke?"

Date: 2008-06-24 02:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
"Spoken like a true detective. Thanks, but I've never been altogether comfortable with that contraption. Seems a bit like playing the bagpipes." He opened his cigarette case (his spare case; Claire Tourneur still hadn't returned his favorite) and rolled one between his fingers. "I will beg a light off you if you've got one, though."

Date: 2008-06-24 03:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
"Ah, I see. Well, one's got to start somewhere. The spell's not that hard; it just takes a certain knack for subtlety."

He drew his own wand from an inside jacket pocket. "Incendio. There. See?" He lit his cigarette off the small flame at the wand's tip, then muttered a quick extinguishing spell. The wand instantly became just a wand again.

"I can't imagine everyday magic like that would have any steeper a learning curve than learning modern technology," he said after a drag on his cigarette. "I'm still having trouble keeping all the little handheld computer things straight, much less how to use them. Cell phones, PDAs, GPS..."

Date: 2008-06-24 03:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
"I'm not sure that makes me feel better," he replied with a chuckle. "It's not that I can't see their usefulness. I can recall many a situation from my youth when any one of these gizmos would have been a godsend. It's just mastering the software that's giving me a headache."

Date: 2008-06-24 03:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
"My thoughts exactly. Although you'd still have had a problem with encryption, just as we did with radio contact - the Germans had quite the ear for things the Allies didn't want them to hear." He picked up John's phone and flipped it open. "That's a camera lens, of course, and won't these things transmit photos to other phones more or less instantly? That would've come in handy when I stole the Naval gun plans from the Hamburg shipyards."

Date: 2008-06-24 03:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
Reilly laughed. "Exactly my reaction the first time I went out to modern London! Even the ones with little boxes in their hands looked barking mad to me." He paused for a sip of his drink, a nicely aged apple brandy.

"I did a stint with the FBI - a short one, the Fifth Column was sunk in too deep there for me to do much good - but the CIA's after my time. I'm trying to catch up by reading, but, well, they keep redacting all the good parts. What did you get up to for them?"

Date: 2008-06-26 03:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
Reilly's eyebrow arched. "What do you think?" And he nodded. "Fair enough. Shall we flip for who goes first?"

Date: 2008-06-26 04:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
"Ahh yes, when is it ever not a glorified version of office politics, this game?" Reilly took another sip of brandy. "I faced a similar problem in my time with the FBI. I would identify emigres I knew to be Bolsheviks; they would be taken away to be interrogated, often by knuckle-dragging Klansmen, even though I'd forbidden my subordinates to hire them; and somehow they'd always wind up too badly injured - or killed - in the course of the 'interrogation' to tell anything too useful."

He took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled. "It seemed the harder I tried to get the Bureau to fight the Bolsheviks, the more roadblocks my superiors put in front of me. It wasn't long before I went home, to put a stick in their spokes my own way."

Date: 2008-06-26 04:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
"No, no, on some level or another I was always a spy. I wanted - I needed to be a player at the big table. I made and lost fortunes, worked at cover jobs, some of them quite interesting. But I always had an agenda running alongside, either MI-5's or my own or both."

He puffed on his cigarette again, tipped the ashes into a silver ashtray. "Take my trip to Paris in '04. Officially I was there chasing my wayward wife. Unofficially I was there to weasel oil concessions out of the Australian land baron D'Arcy, under the noses of the Rothschilds, who were wooing him intensely. Which I did, quite dashingly if I say so myself - I got on board the Rothschild's yacht by disguising myself as a priest. The deception couldn't last, of course, but I'd managed to drive a substantial wedge between D'Arcy and the Rothschilds' plans before I got tossed out, and he came to us. From there it was simply a matter of getting the papers signed and delivered before they could catch up to us."

Reilly gazed into middle distance. "Even more unofficially, I was in Paris to see my sister Anna. For years I'd let her believe me dead; it was how I made my escape from home as a boy. It was undoubtedly not wise, but - can you imagine what that was like, having the chance to see someone I had loved in another life again?"

Date: 2008-07-10 12:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com


Reilly shrugged. "Up to a certain point it was - my plan was to watch her from afar, make sure she was well and happy, and got spotted. Accidentally? Accidentally on purpose? Who knows. It happened, and we just - went from there." He sipped his drink. "I agree the celibate life would be a waste of perfectly good virility. Can't see how it would interfere with a life goal, though, unless you've a burning desire to found your very own nation-state?"

Date: 2008-08-18 08:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidney-reilly.livejournal.com
Reilly looked off into middle distance. "I'm not quite sure I believe in the concept of the One. It's a lovely idea, but it seems rather a bit too good to be true." He tilted his glass toward Amsterdam. "And it certainly stacks the odds against us mere mortals if it is, now doesn't it?"

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