Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“That must have amazed him.”

“I’m supposed to follow you today when you leave, sticking to your trail through the byways and alleys of London. The theory is, you won’t do anything suicidally stupid if I’m there to be a good influence. Yes, I thought you’d find a chuckle in that.”

That was the deft hand of Doyle, ordering Hawker to do what he’d do anyway. Doyle sent a flanking column of artillery and the light infantry, when he sent Hawker after him.

He wiped his hands on the damp cloth, getting the last of the charcoal off, rolled his cuffs down, and buttoned them. He was stiff from sitting so long. He stood and linked his fingers and stretched.

A horse stopped outside the house. There was a low murmur of voices on the steps. Visitors.

“He’s back.” Hawker’s voice held relief and amusement in the two words. “Grey. And he’s brought his French spy with him, tra la. Just what we need, more French spies about the place.”

Grey, Hawker, and Doyle. All the men from that last mission were home now. “They were worried about you three, in Paris. When I left, they weren’t sure whether any of you were going to make it to England.” That was one last man to face and admit treason to. Grey, Head of Section for Britain. The man he’d worked for these last six years.

“Grey’s dallied and been lackadaisical in returning from France, for which no one shall blame him, considering the company he keeps.” Even before knocking sounded below, Hawk was away from the window and out the door of the study. At the top of the stairs he stopped short and held his arm out to block the path. “Wait.”

They stood overlooking the hall. Below, Giles came at a run and unlocked the door to the front parlor. A minute later, Grey came through, grimly determined, pushing a young, dark-haired girl ahead of him, protesting, lovely and panicked and fiercely courageous. The two passed without looking up, headed for the back of the house, toward Galba’s office.

“We got her away,” Hawker said under his breath. “And she has not given him the slip, despite having some skill in that activity. They’re safe. Both of them. Sometimes we get lucky.”

“Who is she?”

“Not one of your Cachés, so you don’t need to fabricate complicated lies for her. How nice to deal with French spies who aren’t Cachés.” Hawker spun on his heel and strode back down the hall, stripping off his coat as he went. “I have to get down there and see she isn’t bullied. The shirt’s good enough, but I need a different waistcoat. A different coat, too. I need clothes.” He swung into the second-floor staircase and took the steps two at a time.

“Hawk, if there were ever a man not in need of clothes—” He caught the coat Hawk threw at him from the top of the stairs.

“My baggage is strewn around the German countryside. Long story. That was my eventful July. I barely touched foot in England before they sent me to Paris. Then I escaped France with the clothes on my back, which were not improved by immersion in seawater, thank you very much. I’ve been borrowing from Giles, who dresses like a schoolboy.”

“He is a schoolboy.”

“No excuse. You, however, left a trunk of clothes up in the attic, in the slops chest. I recall one waistcoat and jacket. It’s not one of your usual shades of mud color, and it’s well cut.”

“I was pretending to be a very bad artist. Hawk, I hate to be the one to tell you this—”

“But they won’t fit?” Hawker turned back and grinned. For about ten seconds he looked his age. “They’re clothes from before you got so unnecessarily tall. Pax—” He stopped, hand on the newel post.

“What?”

Hawker’s face didn’t change at all. “I’ll be five minutes, getting into a waistcoat. Then I’ll go to Galba’s office. No telling how long I’ll be there. Plenty of time for you to just walk out of here.”

“You’re determined to get yourself into trouble, aren’t you?”

“I think of it as my area of expertise.”

If Cami goes to the Merchant alone, he’ll kill her. The Merchant didn’t leave witnesses alive behind him.

He stared at the wall for a minute, seeing the exact color, the tiny imperfections in the plasterwork, the hard, unbreakable reality of it. There was no way out of this choice he had to make. He said, “I’ll be in Berkeley Square at noon, meeting Cami. Follow her when she leaves. If I’m not there to keep her alive, it’s your job.”

“I’d just as soon not.”

“Hawk . . .”

“Yes. Yes. I’ll keep her breathing. I am continually doing work I don’t enjoy.”

And so he gave Cami to the Service and pulled Hawker neck deep into this mess. “If they ask you where I am, don’t lie.”

Hawker said, “I’ll make sure they don’t ask me.”

The coach was sturdily built, a little shabby, and entirely anonymous. It could have rolled down any street in London without attracting a second glance. Soon, it would.

They’d hidden it in the yard behind the cabinetmaker’s shop, between high stacks of wood, in the narrow space used for deliveries. The simple modifications needed had taken three days because the cabinetmaker, Moreau, could not be set to work at night. His neighbors would find it unusual to hear hammer and saw past the setting of the sun.

“Almost done.” The man called the Merchant spoke encouragingly. “There are only—Jacques, how many?—only a half dozen still to go.”

He listened, with every appearance of sympathy, to the boy’s complaint that no more kegs would fit.

“They must,” he said. “We have measured very carefully. Come, you can do this. I expect no less of you.”

He’d placed himself where he could watch the small kegs being carefully fitted under the seats. The boy was nimble enough to reach into every corner. He would accomplish this task.

It was not necessary to threaten. The boy was well aware that his parents and young sister and the servants of the household were already locked in the cellars.

“You see. And now just three more. Shift everything to the right, only an inch. You are almost there.”

Soho was a busy, noisy quarter of the city, with many men making deliveries to many workshops. The business here would be done before men passing by took interest in the ordinary task of unloading a wagon on the street.

Jacques and Hugues carried kegs of gunpowder in through the shop, out to the yard, and handed them one by one to the boy to put in place under the seats.

The Moreaus’ son was a brave boy, steady with his hands. He barely cried while he worked. In many ways, a child this age was the most satisfactory of all assistants.

“That is the last of it. See, it all fits neatly. I told you it would. Go with Jacques now. You have served France well, and no harm will come to you, I promise.”

The last delicate manipulations, he performed himself, checking every inch of the long fuse line that snaked back and forth, attached to the underside of the seat.

Jacques returned and stood outside the coach, waiting. “Do you want them dead?”

“None of them have seen my face, except the young boy. It’s better they live for a time.” Because it would do no harm to explain, he added, “Dead men begin to smell.”

Jacques nodded, understanding the principle.

He gave the connection of fuse to keg his intense concentration, then double-checked his work. Most mistakes are made in the small, easily skimped tasks.

“You are wondering why I leave matters unfinished? The Moreaus will continue to serve us. I have arranged for a letter to be posted in three days, accusing them of complicity in this outrage . . . of exactly what they have done, in fact. The authorities will find them in that cellar and discover the evidence we shall leave behind. They will doubtless hang at least some of them. They will be martyrs to the Revolution.”

He closed the cushioned seat top down and secured it in place with a padlock. Two inches of fuse emerged through a drilled hole, ready to light.

“A good reason to keep them alive,” Jacques said.

“Let us hope they die bravely when the time comes. You may leave them some water. We are not needlessly cruel. And reassure them that they will be safe.” The Merchant climbed from the coach and set the door closed behind him. “There is no more deeply satisfying work, no higher cause, than the Revolution.” He patted the side of the coach as if it were a great horse. “I feel honored sometimes.”

“We are very lucky,” Jacques said.

Baldoni make grand gestures. They paint a broad canvas, as it were. They drink deeply of life and frequently do not live to a great old age because of that tendency.

Cami carried misgivings and a loaded gun as she walked toward Gunter’s Tea Shop. Neither of these was likely to prove useful.

Last night, she’d kissed a man and been shaken by the suddenness and intensity of her desire. What she did not know was whether this came from fear and excitement and, frankly, a certain lack of clothing. Or was it because he was a friend and she’d never kissed anyone she cared tuppence about?

She only knew that it had not happened to her before, and if she turned away now, it might never happen again. That was why she came to Berkeley Square. Not because she was foolish or because she calculated a use for Mr. Paxton of the British Service. She came because she was Baldoni.