Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“They leave the kegs of gunpowder . . . somewhere. Then the empty cart goes north.” Pax drew a line in the flour on the table with his finger. “Up this street, headed back to where it was rented. That’s here.” He touched a spot. “Livery stable.” More strokes to show more streets as he named them. He held his breath when he leaned over to study the lines, not disturbing the lines in the flour. Straightened. “Crown Street, Sutton, Denmark, Rose. Those are all possible lines of approach to the livery stable. But he doesn’t take them.”

She let her open hand hover over the rough map. “He comes this way.” That was the streets south and east of Soho Square. “Through here. By way of Moor Street.” She took her hand away and went back to staring at the table. “They left the gunpowder somewhere south and east of Moor Street.”

“Well, that doesn’t leave much to blow up, does it?” Hawker, tightly, sarcastically polite, stopped striding up and down the room and came over to frown at the impromptu map. “Maybe three-quarters of London. I’d start with the mint, myself. Then maybe the royal family. Or London Bridge. I’ve always had a fancy to blow up London Bridge, myself.”

“London Bridge is falling down,” she said softly, to annoy him.

Pax ignored this little byplay. It was not the least of his many fine qualities that he felt no need to protect her from his deadly young friend. He made a square in the center of his map, empty of flour. Soho Square. “The man we followed yesterday when you left the Moravian church.”

“Now dead,” Hawker muttered.

“The man I followed on a long tour of Soho,” she agreed. “Drink to drink, tavern to tavern. One of those boring afternoons.”

“Not boring for somebody with his eyes full of poison,” Hawker snapped.

Hawker was one of the several men in London who’d be happy to lock her up indefinitely. His eyes were full of iron doors shutting behind her and the keys sent to problematic and distant storage. No bonhomie in that direction.

“I lied,” she said. “I wasn’t bored. I had curs yapping at my heels. Now look at this . . .” She held her hand out flat, palm up, knowing Pax would understand what she wanted.

He did. He slapped the hilt of his knife on her palm. She said, “If you will pay attention . . .” to Mr. Hawker and began marking alleys and side streets, gently, precisely, with the tip of the knife. “The man we followed went like this. And this. And this.” She looked up and smiled at Hawker as one might smile at a large, mean dog who was safely on the other side of a fence. “Look at where he crosses his own path.”

“Staying in territory he knows,” Pax murmured.

“That’s good. I see it. Yes.” Hawker, the trail in front of him, forgot to be angry. “We have more. Wait.” He swung away from the table and came back with two of the china comfit boxes. One with small violet pastilles. One with lemon drops. “We have early reports from the men out walking sketches around.”

Pax said, “Anything solid?”

Hawker shuffled a dozen pastilles into his hand. “It is a wonder and an amazement how many shifty-eyed Frenchmen were lurking around this city last week. Doyle sieved out a few reports from the dross. And these are . . .” Rapidly, Hawker set seven pastilles in place. After a pause he added another two, further south.

“The henchman died here.” She took a lemon drop and set it in place. “The livery stable where someone rented the wagon . . . here.” More lemon drops. “The taverns he visited.”

“The alleys he stopped to piss in.” Hawker started placing more lemon drops down.

She said, “I doubt—”

“Men don’t just use any old alley.”

Pax sprinkled flour and drew in streets and alleys ahead of them. They were wandering off the map a bit, outside Soho proper.

“It’s not simple.” But there were patterns. Men always made patterns.

Pax drew back and watched them place the last markers. There was a concentration about him now, a driving, intent focus. She imagined him in some Piedmontese farm kitchen, surrounded by rough, hardened men, all of them tired and dirty, armed with a mix of old muskets and new rifles stolen from the French. She could see him listening to reports. Pax was a man who’d listen more than he talked. He’d be totally absorbed, seeing every detail, the way he did now.

Maybe he’d make a map like this on the farmhouse table, using corn meal that could be scattered and erased in an instant. Maybe he’d stand and stare down at it and his men would get quiet.

“This”—she set down her last marker—“is the hat shop where Lilith remembers seeing that hat.”

Pax stood frowning.

Patterns. She let herself stop thinking. When her mind wasn’t yelling at her, she could see them. “Look here. The man we were following didn’t go here. He went around it.” She circled a space on the map.

“Inns? That’s what he’s not going near.” Hawker was talking to himself. He leaned close, absorbed. “The Angel? But you have to go through the central court to get to the rooms. Everybody can see you. The Boar’s Head?”

“Fielding’s Inn,” Pax said suddenly. “Large, rambling, disorganized. That’s what he’d choose.”

Hawker said, “They may already be gone.”

Pax was already running for the door and didn’t slow down for them to catch up.

When Pax climbed the stairs at Meeks Street, Grey was waiting for him. Grey held the door open, not saying anything.

The Head of Section for England didn’t answer the door at Meeks Street. Pax followed him through the ugly front parlor, where none of the reds matched, into the white, calm hallway.

They went six paces in silence. “The Merchant got away,” Pax said. “We found the rooms he’d been using, but he was gone. We missed him by an hour.”

Grey said, “Hawker told us.”

“The Merchant has a woman and three or four men with him. Stillwater and Tenn are asking questions, house to house, up and down the street. We haven’t found where he stored the gunpowder. Probably a good ways from where he was living.”

Grey turned and blocked the hall. “You lied to me. From the beginning. Every day.”

There was no part of returning to Meeks Street that was easy. This meeting was harder than most. “For years.”

“You lied to men who trusted you. Any hour of the day or night you could have walked into my office and told the truth.”

“I have no excuse.”

Grey had been a major of infantry before he came to the Service. He didn’t smile much. He wasn’t smiling now. He looked like a man about to convene a court-martial.

Grey said, “I didn’t think you were a coward.”

“I did it to stay in the Service.” The Service was all I had.

The fist came out of nowhere. Pain hit like lightning—big, bright, white, and sudden. Black spilled down over everything.

When the world came back, he was on his arse, his back against the wall. His jaw stabbed agony. His head was solid pain from one side to the other. He leaned his head on the plaster and waited for the hall to stop tilting sideways.

Grey said, “Is there anything else you’re lying about?”

“Yes. At least, there’s things I’m not saying.”

“Damn you for that. But at least it’s honest.” Grey reached a hand down.

He took the hand and got pulled to his feet. The trick was keeping his head level. His brains would stay in the braincase if he kept his head level.

“If you ever lie to me again,” Grey said, “I will kick you into Northumberland. You’re holding on to a place in the Service by the skin of your teeth, Mr. Paxton. Don’t repeat your mistakes. And now we have kegs of gunpowder to deal with. Galba’s office. Now.”

Grey walked away and left him holding on to the wall.

That clears the air, doesn’t it? He’d been dreading the meeting with Grey. Turned out he didn’t have to say much of anything at all.

He’d take a brief rest against the wall here. Yes. That’s the ticket.

He didn’t open his eyes when boots came down the stairs. That was Doyle’s walk.

Doyle said, “Galba’s waiting for you.”

“Grey told me.” It hurt to talk. He fingered along his jawbone, but nothing seemed to be broken. Grey was an expert when it came to unarmed fighting. “I may be just a minute getting into motion.”

“Grey’s annoyed.”

“I have figured that out.”

“He’s kicking himself he didn’t notice one of his agents was in trouble.”

“We’re spies. We’re secretive.” The edges of his sight were no longer fading into black. Now he’d walk down the hall to Galba’s office. That was next on his list of challenges for this afternoon.

“A senior officer’s responsible for his junior officers.” They started walking the hall. Doyle was in no hurry. Just as well. “It’s the army way.”

“Another reason to stay out of the army.” He tasted blood, but when he swiped across his mouth none came off on his hand. No split lip. Grey had delivered a clean, precise blow, making his point with skill and economy. “I lost the Merchant.”

“You found him in the first place, with all of London to sieve through.”

“We won’t find him again. He’s in his final retreat, safe and secret. And the gunpowder’s somewhere safe. He may already have planted it. We have one more chance at him. Hawk gave you the details?”

“Semple Street, Number Fifty-six, eleven in the morning on Monday,” Doyle said. “I tortured it out of him.”