Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

Damned if he’d make it that easy for them.

In the false bottom of the bag he carried a dozen letters, correspondence from Paris to the Meeks Street headquarters. They’d made their resident traitor the courier on this trip. The ways of the British Service were mysterious indeed.

Maybe Carruthers knew this particular burden was the best way to get him to London alive, and as fast as a horse could travel. That might be what she had planned. The British Intelligence Service worked five or six levels of subtlety deep.

He was carrying a copy of his confession with the other messages. That last week in Paris he’d written out a lengthy account of his life, with particular attention to the ways he’d betrayed the British Service. He was also delivering a final report on the whole matter from Carruthers, Head of Section for France, to Galba, Head of the British Service.

He could have opened that. He could have lifted the seal and replaced it undetectably when he was eight. Twice, he’d taken that report out from the other letters and thought about reading it.

Snare after snare. Temptation after temptation. Maybe Carruthers advised a swift and final end for the man who called himself Thomas Paxton. What did a man do when he opened that letter and found his death warrant?

He’d never know. Both times, he’d put the report back with the other letters and repacked the bag. He hadn’t taken the bait, if it was bait. He didn’t have much honor left—just a patched-up, threadbare rag of it—but he would have used the gun on himself before he lost the last of it.

He ran the back of his fingers across the window glass, feeling the ripple in it, feeling the cold. Trapped inside the glass, pinpoint bubbles glinted silver.

Galba wouldn’t be content with killing him. Galba would want to pry the top off his soul and drag every one of his slimy secrets out into the sunlight.

Mugs clicked behind him. A chair scraped on the floor. The barman cleared tables. Two plump women walked past the Dancing Dog, side by side, one neat in dark green, the other in dark blue. They leaned together, their heads close, their handbaskets bumping, steps matched, a picture of old friendship and a lifetime of confidences shared. He’d have sketched them in quick slashes of watercolor, then stacked up ink in a blunt, dark splotch on the pavement at their feet to give them a single shadow.

On a bench in the square, a man unfolded a cloth across his lap and took out bread and cheese, enjoying an early lunch. The woman he’d been watching tossed another wide circle of crumbs and her cloak flowed like water falling. Sparrows hopped and scuttled madly left or right around her feet. He’d do that lone, self-contained figure in chalks, the sweet curve of her cloak laid in burnt sienna over indigo. He’d thumb in one soft smudge of pale amber under her hood, where the plane of her cheek showed. He would have liked to see her face.

There. That was her last handful of bread. He watched her dust her fingers and motion to the boy lounging on the step at the mercer’s. Sam, floor sweeper, delivery boy, holder of horses, one of the fixtures in the neighborhood, ran over to conduct business. He took coin, accepted a letter, and headed down Meeks Street.

She wasn’t here to feed sparrows, then. The calculations that always churned in the bottom of his mind broke the surface. Why would a woman send a note from the middle of Braddy Square instead of from her own front door? Why not drop it in the post? Why was she wearing her hood up on a fine day like today?

Life was full of mysteries he’d never solve. Maybe that was a love letter she was sending. Maybe she’d spend the afternoon naked in the arms of her man.

Enjoy yourself, pretty lady. His own afternoon would be less pleasant. Time to get on with it.

His mug of ale was still full when he slid it onto the nearest table. He set a coin beside it and picked his bag up, taking it left-handed so he’d have his knife hand free. Nobody looked up to see him leave. It was a point of pride to him that nobody noticed.

He checked to make sure he wasn’t followed out of the Dog. It was habit. Just habit. He had all the habits of a spy.

Cami trailed her messenger lad to the top of Meeks Street and stood watching him strut down the pavement. He was brisk as any boy who knew eyes were on him.

The church bells finished up the count of eleven. Her flock of birds flew away to do bird errands now that she had no more bread for them. Probably their lives were full of whatever troubles birds fell heir to and all that cheery chirping and hopping about was a deception. She was something of an expert in deception.

When she paid the boy tuppence to deliver the letter, she’d pressed a shilling into his hand on top of it. “If they ask who gave you the letter, describe someone else. If they ask where I went, point the other way.”

Her family—the Baldoni—used to say, “Prepare for many evil eventualities. Some of them will arrive.”

The air settled around her, still and heavy. The sky over London was white, opaque and dull as cheap crockery, full of bright sun. Her boy turned at Number Seven, tripped up the stair, and stood waiting for an answer to his knock. She waited also. She’d stay to see this letter delivered. There was too much at stake to take that for granted. Inside the shell of calm she’d closed around her was a chaos so loud she couldn’t think. It was fortunate she’d made her plans beforehand and needed only to follow the path she’d laid out.

From the corner of her eye she saw the shift of light. A man walked toward her across Braddy Square. For a sharp instant, she was afraid.

But no. She wasn’t in danger yet. She had an hour before she walked into the trap laid for her.

She turned away, not sharing her face with this man passing by, being careful. In the long, soft years since Paris, she hadn’t forgotten the rules.

She collected only a glimpse of him as he walked past her and continued down Meeks Street . . . a tall, long-limbed man, dressed in dark traveling clothes, somewhat dusty. He wore well-scuffed riding boots, riding gloves, and a soft, broad-brimmed felt hat that shaded his face. He carried a valise and moved fast, with the clean grace of an athlete. Something about him made her think of a man trudging uphill with no end in sight. If she hadn’t been supplied with a sufficiency of troubles of her own, she would have been curious.

Far down Meeks Street, her messenger boy delivered the letter, gave a cheeky salute to the house, and was down the stair before the door closed behind him.

That was done. Whatever happened to her in the Moravian church on Fetter Lane, that message was safe. There should be no repercussions. She’d timed its delivery so the men of Meeks Street would decode it only after she’d completed her business with the blackmailer.

She crossed Braddy Square in the direction of a godly church where an ungodly meeting would take place. She looked back once. She wasn’t really surprised to see the man with the valise climb the stairs of Number Seven Meeks Street.

Pax put one foot in front of the other for the last thousand steps, not letting himself slow down.

Meeks Street hadn’t changed. Ugly prosperous houses lined both sides of the street, the doorknobs polished and the steps well scrubbed. Some houses were shut up tight, keeping the air out, but most had the window sashes up. Muslin curtains rippled, lipping in and out over the sills. The linden trees were turning yellow. Gray smoke from the kitchen fires slanted off the chimneys and spread out to disappear.

Number Thirty-one was still ruled by the sleek black tomcat that played sentry on the garden wall. Number Twenty-three had added five stone urns along the front, carrying five yew trees shaved and clipped within an inch of their lives. At Nineteen, a dog stuck a yapping muzzle through a gap in the iron gate.

All familiar. He didn’t belong at Meeks Street anymore, but it felt like coming home.

Down the street, Sam had delivered that woman’s message to Number Seven.

He glanced back over his shoulder. The woman in the dark cloak was gone. She’d waited just long enough to see her letter delivered. Gone . . . and she left the air behind her shimmering with intention and planning.

I don’t like this.

Young Sam swung away from Number Seven, errand completed, and headed back to the square, running his fingers along the iron palings, whistling, pleased with himself.

Why didn’t she want to come to Number Seven? He took the steps fast. For the first time in two weeks, he had a reason to be in a hurry.

He pounded the knocker and left his hand spread flat on the door, willing it to open. The door was painted Prussian green with a little black in the base. The knocker was brass, in the shape of a rose. Forty years ago they’d picked the rose knocker out of the ruins of the old headquarters after it burned. The plate to the right of the door read, The Penumbral Walking Club.

He didn’t have a key. Nobody got past the front door of Number Seven unless somebody let him in.

He pounded again. Where was Giles?

The lock disengaged. Giles, a sturdy, open-faced sixteen-year-old, opened the door, letter in hand. He said, “Pax.” Nothing but surprise and pleasure in his voice. “You’re back. Hawker said you’d be here in a day or two. Grey’s landed in Dover—”