Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

Giles stood back to let them in. Doyle went first and took the candle from Giles’s hand to light one of the lamps lined up on the table.

“Well, that’s coincidental. I’m annoyed, too.” Hawk walked through the door. “Damn if it does anything but rain in this city. Give me the key and I’ll lock the weather outside.”

I’m wet. He knew that in some distant, unimportant way. He was stiff with cold and just on the edge of shivering. They all were.

He left his hat on the ugliest sideboard in Europe and followed Doyle from the parlor through the door into the hall. He’d been ready to face Galba a dozen hours ago and lay down all the truth he had in him. Now he was going to lie.

Giles locked the parlor door and caught up behind them in the hall. “Food? A bath? Do you want to change?”

He shook his head. “Just Galba.”

Nobody who held the position of doorkeeper was a fool. Ten years ago it had been his work. Now it belonged to Giles. This wouldn’t be the first time Giles opened the door in the middle of the night to an agent, tired and dirty with travel, who needed to talk to the Head of Service.

Probably the first time he’d let in a traitor.

Galba will send the boy away on errands if I have to be killed. They won’t let Giles know about it till it’s over.

He wondered how they’d get rid of the body. That was the kind of job they’d have given him, if he hadn’t been the one getting killed.

Doyle said, “Tea. Food. A dry blanket. Bring them to the office.” Giles took off running, headed for the kitchen. Doyle’s eyes went to Hawk. “You go upstairs and change.”

“Later,” Hawk said.

Doyle said, “Now. That’s an order.” When Hawk just kept walking, he added, “Galba’s going to say the same thing. You’re not part of everything that goes on at Meeks Street.”

“I’m part of this,” Hawker snapped.

“Laisse tomber.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken French till it was out of his mouth. “Let it rest.” He must be staggeringly tired to make a mistake like that. Or maybe he just couldn’t play a part anymore. Not with Doyle. Not with Galba. Not with Hawker. He went on in French, “I’m a spy. I’m a traitor.” Hawk had to understand where they stood. “You can’t help me. Step away.”

“Oh, that’s good advice. A veritable fount of wisdom is what you are. Having failed to get yourself killed in Paris, you come riding in from France like a bloody migrating sparrow to see if they’ll do it here.” Hawker spat that out. “You couldn’t just walk over to the Police Secrète and let your erstwhile employers do the job, because they might not make you suffer enough. No. You come to let the Service do it. God, if I ever met such a pigheaded cully.”

Doyle used his teeth on a fingertip to take his glove off. “‘Erstwhile.’ I like that.”

“My never-ceasing endeavor to expand my grasp of the King’s English,” Hawk said. “What’d you grow up speaking, Pax? French?”

“Danish.” A relief to tell some truth. He was tired of lying to his friends . . . to the men who would have been his friends if he’d been honest.

Hawk said, “Not my first guess. We are in for some interesting revelations, aren’t we?” And to Doyle, “Do you know what Galba’s planning to do with him?”

“No idea.” Doyle switched the lamp to his other hand to take off the right glove. “He’ll do it whether you’re there or not.”

“So I should wander off and warm my feet by the fire while you and Galba gut him like a mackerel. I think not.”

Doyle, imperturbable, stuffed the gloves into the pocket of his coat. “I won’t kill him at headquarters, will I? Not when I got all London to be murderous in. I’ll let you know what’s decided. Trust me with this.”

“I do. I’m coming in there anyway. You’d have every agent in England in that room if they could fit.”

“Which would serve no purpose, except irritating Galba.” Doyle’s eyes slid toward the office of the Head of Service at the end of the hall. “I’ll speak for you, Hawk.”

His friends. He’d wondered where Doyle would stand in the matter of punishing the traitor in the British Service. Now he knew. Doyle and Hawker were going to fight for him. Madmen, both of them. Legendary madmen.

They’d picked the wrong battlefield. They didn’t know how much he had to confess. They didn’t know he had more lies to tell.

Doyle said, “What Pax has to say will be easier if you’re not hearing it.”

“Embarrassing revelations in the spy trade. We’ll all be awkward together.” Hawker hadn’t even slowed down.

The mirror at the turn of the hall showed their approach, Doyle a little behind him, Hawker a little ahead. When they got there, his reflection pulled the knife from inside his coat and laid it on the table. His gun went beside that. Then the wrist knife from its sheath. The boot knife came next. The wire in his sleeve. A pointed steel needle eight inches long. Vérité wasn’t the only one who walked around armed to the incisors.

Doyle caught the significance at once. Hawker, a second later. An agent goes armed. An enemy under parole doesn’t carry weapons into the office of the head of the British Intelligence Service.

Doyle set his hand flat on the door of Galba’s office. “You ready?”

The house was silent. If anyone was awake upstairs they were staying out of this. He was acutely aware of Galba, on the other side of the door, listening and waiting for him.

He caught a last glimpse of himself in the mirror. This is what a man looks like when he walks out to face a firing squad. “Let’s get this over with.” He pushed past Doyle into Galba’s office.

It was as hard as Pax had expected. He walked through the door Doyle held open, took three paces into Galba’s office, and faced the Head of Service. “I have a report to make. You have to hear me out.”

Galba sat at his big desk, a wide-shouldered, massive man with a mane of white hair, wearing a red banyan and an expression of impatience. “Let us not be dramatic. I have always trusted your sense of what is important, Mr. Paxton. I doubt that has changed. Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand.”

Galba said, “I didn’t ask what you’d rather do. I said, ‘sit down.’ You’re bleeding.”

“It’s not important.”

“That’s something else I didn’t ask you. Will,” Galba turned to Doyle, “why is he in this state?”

“He fell asleep on the way here and he needed sleep more than he needed fixing a minor wound.” Doyle divested himself of his greatcoat and looked around, deciding where to put it. He chose a straight-backed chair under the window. “It’s barely leaking by now.”

“Other injuries?”

“None.”

“I need not have asked.” Galba shifted mail from the center of his desk to the side. “Adrian. It appears you expect to join this conference. Why?”

Hawker had planted himself in the doorway. “I am an ornament to any conversation. And while I’m here, you won’t dispose of him.”

“It’s too late at night to deal with this,” Galba said. “Will?”

Doyle eased himself into the shabby, comfortable chair to the right of the desk and stretched his legs out long. “Let him stay.”

Galba said, “Paxton?”

It took him a second to realize Galba was asking him whether Hawker should stay. “He’s not necessary.”

“Well, that’s duly noted.” Hawker walked past him and put his hand on the back of a chair, looking down at Galba.

Galba’s eyes were chips of blue ice when he contemplated Hawker. “Let me sum this up for you, Adrian. Over the last four days, with considerable effort on everyone’s part, we have closed your bullet wound and brought your fever under control. You were ordered not to leave the house until Luke pronounced you fit for duty. Was there some part of that order you didn’t understand?”

Hawker shook his head. “No, sir. But I—”

“You not only disobeyed my direct orders, you did so at Mr. Paxton’s behest. No one is better aware of Paxton’s anomalous position than you, yet you went without hesitation when he called. Do you expect to be rewarded?”

Hawker never did have the sense to stay quiet. “You’d do the same.”

Galba’s eyes didn’t waver. “That is the sole reason you’re in less trouble than you deserve. Go. You may return here after—” He interrupted the objection before it was spoken. “After,” he repeated, “you’ve changed clothing and dried your hair. I’m the one who will have to face Doyle’s formidable Marguerite if you die of fever.”

“I’m not going to die of—”

“Did I express a desire to discuss this? Go.”

Hawker left without a word. The hall outside was silent, but he was probably running upstairs, rather than lurking and eavesdropping.

“Mr. Paxton.” Galba’s eyes shifted to him. “I told you to sit down.”

“I’ll stand. It’ll keep me awake.”

Ten years ago, he’d faced Galba across this desk, with Doyle sitting in that same chair. He’d been fourteen and he’d told them he was Thomas Paxton. His life in the Service began with that lie. Tonight, in the same room, before the same men, that life ended. He’d come full circle.

Ironic. “I’m not Service. I don’t have to obey orders.”

“An interesting argument. I’d expected a somewhat more penitent return.” Galba removed a packet of papers from the drawer of his desk. “This doesn’t contain a resignation. Does Carruthers have it?”

“She didn’t ask for one.” His eyes no longer held a scorpion sting from the snuff mixture, but they felt gritty from tiredness. “I’ll write it out when I’m done here.”