Joanna Bourne - The Black Hawk

“What do you think that is?” Pax said, meaning the instrument everybody was so fascinated with, inside.

“Sextant maybe. A small one. And that’s the case for it.”

“We don’t buy from her,” Pax said. “The Military Intelligence boys do. The navy officers. The Ethnological Club. The Service goes to Barnes instead.”

“That’s tactful of us.”

“We like to think so.”

Voyages designed and sold gear for travel to the far corners of the globe. Now that the war was over, Englishmen were pouring out of dull old England, headed to Egypt, South America, India, and every port in the Orient. Voyages was the first stop. They knew what you needed. They’d buy it for you or make it, and pack it up neat. The expeditions Justine supplied never ended up hiking through the monsoon in wool underdrawers. Her guns didn’t misfire during some sticky dispute with Afghani bandits. That clerical gentleman with the umbrella wouldn’t run out of soap and ipecac while he was bringing enlightenment to the Maori.

Voyages also did a roaring trade in luncheon hampers with nested teacups and a little brazier for under the teapot, suitable for picnics when exploring the far reaches of Hampstead Heath with an elderly aunt.

“She makes a good living,” Pax said. “Half of England’s traipsing around the remote and uncomfortable.”

“Getting bit by snakes and skewered by the outraged local inhabitants.”

“It’s the English way.” Pax refolded his arms. “Those two don’t look like they’re leaving anytime soon, do they?”

The black man placed another enigmatic metal instrument on the counter. A theodolite. Everybody took a look at it.

“Not soon,” he said.

Pax shifted an inch, edging out of the path of a persistent drip coming down from the roof. “Speaking professionally, if I wanted to kill Justine—just a simple death—I’d shoot her in the shop.”

“Speaking professionally, that would be a wise choice.” He kept his voice level. Rage had been simmering away inside him for a good long while. He’d keep it there, boiling away in his gut, till he needed it. “They waited till she came to me. They must have known she’d come.”

“Then they know her. They can predict what she’ll do.”

“A small, elite group. The man who did the stabbing was watching her and waiting. Probably from . . .” He looked up and behind him, got rain in his eyes. “One of these windows.”

“I’ll bring the boys. We’ll start asking questions, up and down the street.”

“The pub over there has a front table with a view of the shop.” In the last two years, he’d sat there sometimes, pursuing a lengthy acquaintance with a glass of gin, knowing Justine would walk by and he’d get to see her. There could not be anything in the world more pitiable than a man afraid to face a woman. Unless the woman was Justine DuMotier. “Ask in the shops if anyone’s been looking in that direction. But it’ll turn out to be a room upstairs.”

“One of those.” Pax glanced across houses, assessing likelihoods. They’d avoided ambushes in the war years, knowing where shots were likely to come from. Sometimes, they’d been the men doing the shooting.

That was the dark secret of the assassin’s trade. It’s not that hard. A stab in the alley. The pull of a trigger. People were so damn fragile—ten breaths or two minutes bleeding separated life and death.

Justine had turned out to be hard to kill. A nasty surprise for somebody.

Pax said, “Looks like they’re winding up.”

The pair in Justine’s shop finally agreed that the first mechanical device, whatever it was, suited their purpose. The black man set it carefully in a box, left the room to go into the back of the shop, and came out with brown paper. There was more talking, all round, while he wrapped the box. Everybody nodded and shook hands. Then the two men left the shop and walked down Exeter Street in close conversation.

He said, “And we have the place to ourselves.”

They crossed the street. Pax, beside him, watched the right hand. He watched the left. He didn’t feel eyes on him right at the moment. But then, he’d been wrong about that on some notable occasions in the past.

At the door he pulled his hat off and shook the rain off. He set it back on his head so he’d have both hands free.

The bell jangled as they walked in. The black man, Mr. Thompson, looked up from a book, open flat on the counter. His eyes slid across Pax. He saw Hawker and knew him.

THOMPSON WAS WELL OVER SIX FEET TALL AND WORE the intensely black skin and long, sharp features of East Africa. He dressed plain as a Quaker, in black, his shirt and cravat startlingly white. His face stayed impassive, but his eyes snapped to alert. He called, without turning, “Mr. Chetri.”

Someone moved in the room in back. A chair scraped. Footsteps padded softly. The other clerk came in from the back, polite and attentive. His eyes fixed on Adrian and narrowed.

This was Chetri, no other name known for him. Like Thompson, Chetri had worked for the French in the East and around the Mediterranean. He was north Indian, gray-haired, fine-featured, square in body, quick of movement.

For a long moment both men found Adrian Hawkhurst absorbing. Two critical examinations plucked over him, head to foot. Assessing.

He’d seen these two any number of times from a distance. Studied them through the window glass. Quite the little nest of retired French agents here on Exeter Street.

“Something has happened to Mademoiselle Justine.” Thompson spoke fluent English, with the cadence of the African language of his birth underneath and a French accent overlying it all. “Tell us.”

Behind him, Pax threw the bolt on the front door and turned the sign to Closed. He could be heard, walking down the shop, pulling the shades down over the windows.

Chetri came to the counter and held the edge, tight fingered. “You have news of Mademoiselle?”

Thompson said, “There has been no message. I opened the shop myself, yesterday and today. This has never occurred.”

“Always, she sends word if she will be away.”

Time to say it. “She was hurt, but she’s alive. She was in an accident.” He watched the faces, eyes, hands, the muscles around the mouth, knowing Pax was doing the same, making the same assessments he was.

Shock. Worry. Their eyes turned to consult back and forth. Natural to do that. It rang true. He read relief in the way shoulder muscles relaxed and breath leaked out. In fingers loosening. They’d expected to hear Justine was dead.

An emphatic foreign phrase from Chetri. That was a string of syllables to save in mind and ask an expert about when he had a chance.

Thompson stepped closer. “How is she hurt? Where have they taken her?”

“She’s safe.”

“But she did not send for us.” Thompson said, “She is badly hurt, then.”

“Safe.” He could give that reassurance. “She’s out of danger. She’s asleep now, but she was awake and talking a little. We had the best surgeon in London working on her.”

Chetri pressed fingertips hard to the wood of the counter, making tense brown pyramids of his hands. Holding still. “She is at Meeks Street? It must be, or we would have news. I will close the shop at once and return with you. I will see her.”

Nobody was getting close to Justine. “Maybe in a few days.”

“I am not merely an employee of Mademoiselle. We are friends. My wife and daughter will be honored to care for her. They have some skill in nursing. I must—”

Thompson interrupted. “You won’t be allowed in. Look at him. He won’t let any of us near her. Not even Nalina.”

“Who knows a hundred herbs of healing. These British will kill Mademoiselle with their ignorance. I will go to her.”

“And be turned away. Why should they trust you? Or me? Or Nalina?”

“Pah.” Chetri shook his head impatiently. “We are hers. Does he think she is a fool to keep enemies this close?”

“He thinks no one can be trusted. Would you wish him to be gullible?” When Chetri said nothing, Thompson said, “If she cannot defend herself, he must.” He turned. “Ask your questions.”

Pax had been walking around the shop, poking into things, opening up the wooden medical boxes and peering in at the bottles and muslin bags inside. He looked over. “When did you last see her?”

Tuesday, it turned out. Mr. Chetri came from behind the counter to stand at the head of the long table and put his hand on the back of one of the wide wooden chairs. “Here,” he said. Mademoiselle had taken breakfast here that morning. A roll and coffee, as always, while they prepared the shop for opening.

Thompson said, “The bakery boy brings the newspaper as well as bread. I make coffee for her myself, in the manner of my homeland.”

“The coffee is not important.” Chetri made a chopping motion. “It was not yet seven. This is what happened. Mademoiselle tosses the newspaper down and leaves the shop, hurrying as if devils pursued her.” What devils, he could not say. One did not demand of Mademoiselle Justine where she is going or why.

She had returned three hours later. Perhaps four hours—before noon—and still hurrying.

It was raining heavily by that time and Mademoiselle was soaking wet. There was one client in the shop. The foolish young man from Oxford who wished to collect little bugs in the Hindu Kush. He would be shot by tribesmen almost at once, unfortunately. One preferred repeat customers. But Mademoiselle said nothing to him. She went upstairs—

“She took newspapers with her,” Thompson interrupted. “She took last week’s newspapers from the back room and carried them upstairs with her.”