Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“Give me that.” He took the letter from Giles, dropped it on the table, and brushed his fingers on his coat.

“It just came,” Giles said. “Sam brought it. It’s addressed to Galba.”

The door on the other side of the ugly front parlor opened. Hawker, compact, dark haired, deadly as a snake, dressed like a gentleman, strolled in. “I didn’t think you’d be fool enough to show up. There’s still time to turn around and run.”

“No, there isn’t. Hawk, look at this. Don’t touch it.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Hawker approached, feline and inquisitive. “Communication from the greater world.”

The folded paper was addressed to Anson Jones. That was Galba’s real name, not the name he used when he was Head of Service. Mr. Anson Jones, Number Seven, Meeks Street.

“What’s wrong with it?” Hawker took his knife out, twitched the blade under the note, flipped it over.

“It’s from a woman.”

“Not, in itself, a bad thing.”

In fifty words he told Hawk how the note had been sent. “And . . . I know the handwriting. This e with the sharp corner, tilted up. The bar on the t slanted down. I’ve seen that.”

“Where?”

“Not recently. It’s . . .” He shook his head. “A long time ago. Somewhere.”

“Part of life’s eventful journey.”

“It’ll come to me.” He pulled his knife and helped himself to Hawker’s. He steadied the note and slit the seal without touching the paper at all. “Don’t breathe.” That was for Giles. Hawker had already stepped back.

Hawker murmured, “You do realize we’re prying into the private correspondence of the Head of Service.”

“I know.” He laid the page flat, using the knife point to push the edges back. On the paper, line after line of numbers and letters. “And we have code.”

“Do we?” Hawker bent forward. “How dramatic.”

“A Service code.”

“A Leyland code.” Hawk’s finger hovered over the inkblot that marked it as Leyland code. “I don’t recognize the identifier.”

“One of the old ones. Before you came to the Service.” Code. Something about code . . . and that handwriting.

Then he remembered. He’d been thirteen or fourteen, sitting at a long table in the cold, bare schoolroom of the Coach House, painstakingly disassembling a code. The dark-haired girl beside him leaned over her slate, scribbling down the sharp little e and the slanted t, deciphering as fast as she could write. None of them could touch her when it came to code breaking.

Vérité. Vérité’s handwriting. Ten years ago, when he’d had a different name and Vérité had been his best friend. “I know who she is. I knew her when she was a child.” A particularly deadly child.

Hawk said, “A French spy, then. One of you Cachés.”

“One of us. Yes.” He flipped Hawk’s knife to hold it by the blade and handed it back to him. “I have to find her. Giles, go wash your hands. Don’t touch the letter again. Don’t let anyone get close to it till I come back.”

Giles said, “Why not?”

Hawker answered for him. “Because Galba opens mail addressed to that name with his own hands. There could be poison in the paper. Or smallpox. I saw that done once. We may be playing host to a weapon of the assassin’s trade. The woman who sent it is Police Secrète.”

“At one time, she was. I don’t know what she is now.” He wondered what else to say and couldn’t think of anything. “Tell Galba I’ll be back.”

“Giles will tell him.” Hawk was already grabbing his hat from the hideous sideboard.

“Hawk, you can’t help me with this. You know why.”

“Because you’re Thomas Paxton, infamous French spy.” Hawker’s dark face was inscrutable, his eyes cool and assessing. “I’d better keep an eye on you.”

“You’re on the sick list. You have a bullet hole in you.”

“Not a large one. We’ll argue about it as we walk. Lead the way.”

The hell of it was, he needed Hawk. He made the only decision possible. Somehow he’d make it right with Galba when they got back. “Then come on.”

A dozen people dawdled their way around Braddy Square or sat on the benches. Vérité was gone. Pax swung in a circle, looking for any sign of her.

Hawker caught up with him. “She has five minutes’ head start. Will she break into a run?”

With her training? “She won’t even walk fast. She’s gone three or four hundred yards.”

He and Hawk had worked together so long they didn’t have to discuss strategy. Hawk took off to the left, following the perimeter of the square, clockwise.

One person in Braddy Square would have noticed which way Vérité had gone. Sam was back at his accustomed post in front of the mercer’s, meditating on the distant clouds. He was willing enough to point to the corner where the Dancing Dog did its trade. “She went down there. In a hurry, she was.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if life were that simple? He fumbled a half crown loose from his pocket and held it up. “There’s two of these if I catch up with her.”

He made to tuck the coin back in his pocket.

“Down there. Morte Road.” The boy’s eyes shifted east. “She give me shilling to say she gone t’other way.”

Now they had a chance. He flipped the coin to Sam and said, “If I catch her, come find two more of these tonight at Number Seven,” and left the boy with a grin on his face.

He ran east, hearing Hawk behind him. The first corner gave no sign of her. No dark cloak. No woman alone. No woman the right size and shape.

“This is exceptionally futile,” Hawk said. “Except for Sam, who had a profitable morning. You bribe large.”

“Always bribe large, close to home.”

“A rule to live by. What are we chasing?”

“Long, dark brown cloak with a hood. Dress under it is dark blue. The woman’s thin, medium height, a bit more than twenty. Brown eyes. Black hair, short and curly. She’s pretty.” He corrected that. “She’s probably pretty. I didn’t see her face.”

“You didn’t bother to angle over and get a good look. You are a waste of balls, Mr. Paxton.”

“I didn’t let a woman put a bullet in my shoulder, Mr. Hawkins. We go left.”

They ran the next street without a glimpse of Vérité. At the corner, this time, he chose the right hand. There were more people on the street in this direction. Then, sixty feet ahead . . .

He slowed. “You see?” He shifted aside to let Hawker get a good look.

“Do we follow her, or do we collect her now?”

“We follow. You take the lead. And keep your face covered. If she makes a habit of watching Meeks Street, she may know you.”

“A joy shared by feminine multitudes.” Hawk stripped off his neckcloth and stuffed it in his pocket. He pulled a thin black neckerchief from another pocket and tied it in place around his neck, a fashion for laborers and small tradesmen. “Who is she?”

“French.”

“Not precisely a crime. More what Doyle would be calling a social solecism.” Hawk unbuttoned his jacket. Crushed the lapels tight in his fists and let them hang rumpled and slightly crooked. What had been fashionable now looked like a cheap imitation. “Hold on to this for me.” Hawker handed his hat over and ran a rough hand through his hair, putting himself another step downward on the social ladder.

“She may be armed. Don’t get close.”

“I never take chances,” Hawk said. He probably even believed it.

“I’ll signal when we need to change places.”

Hawk nodded, his eyes on the dark flick of a cloak in the distance. He reset his coat on his shoulders and hunched in on himself, losing an inch in height. Unrecognizable, he faded into the crowd.

Twenty minutes later, inconspicuous behind a handcart stacked with bales of newsprint, Pax watched Vérité open the door of a small church on Fetter Lane, just off Fleet Street. He was fairly sure she hadn’t spotted him. Ten years ago she’d been skilled in the game of follow and be followed, but he and Hawker had used every trick in the book to stay invisible. They were skilled, too.

An empty church. This looked like she was meeting somebody.

He picked a rectangular slash of shade at the doorway of a stationer’s across the street from the church, a spot just made for a man to be patient in. Fetter Lane wasn’t as busy as Fleet Street, but it was full enough of printers and booksellers, newspaper offices and taverns, that a man might stand here awhile, waiting for a friend and an innocent meal of chops and ale. Playing his part, he pulled his watch out and checked it. Still well short of noon.

He’d been carrying a newspaper for the last little while. Now he shook it open to hide his face. He signaled, Come here, by holding the paper with the first two fingers on his left hand spread and his thumb up.

A minute later, Hawk stopped at the stationer’s window and became absorbed in boxes of nice letter paper, a blotter with green felt, and a gold-plated pen set. He said, “The Moravian church. How religious of her. May I assume our quarry is a dedicated Christian reformer with a grim face and abominable taste in clothes?”

“Our quarry is a dedicated French spy.” Under cover of the newspaper, he slipped his pistol out and checked it. Everything in order.

“Doubtless she’s expecting others of her ilk,” Hawk said. “Or they’re already inside. And me with only two knives concealed about my person. If I’d had some warning, I’d have dressed for work.”