Rogue Spy

Fifteen

Pax’s hands closed convulsively. Not by his will. Not by his intent. He couldn’t help it.

Vérité explored the confines of the hold he had on her, being irritated, talkative, and close to naked. Where she wasn’t soft skin, she was the slide of the thin cloth that barely wrapped her up. Her breasts grazed his chest, swift and startling. Her belly slipped across his. She was everything womanly—strength, softness, mystery. Since she was Vérité, she added a good dollop of deadly to the mixture.

He had a cockstand the size of a pine tree.

You don’t think of her that way, a voice inside him said.

But he did.

She’s not twelve anymore.

He wanted her in the most straightforward, simple, earthy way. Maybe it had started when they stood facing each other in the church. Maybe before that, when he watched her cross Braddy Square in a long, lithe sweep of brown cloak. Maybe when she became exquisitely lethal and attacked him.

Her hair brushed his face, tightly curled, glossy, feather soft, smelling of wood smoke and snuff. It grabbed him and pulled him into memory, into the years of the Coach House. In the stark dormitory under the rafters, two dozen starved, savage, brilliant children slept on mats on the floor, huddled together in the cold dark, sharing blankets. Vérité used to fit herself beside him, snuggled up to keep warm, her hair tickling his nose.

The way it was doing right now. If he chose, he could lower his head to that bedlam of curls and breathe her in. He could sort through the waves and semicircles with his lips. He could drop his hold on her arms and put his hands to her breasts and run his thumbs across her nipples, back and forth, learning them by touch, feeling a miraculous response in them.

He’d painted women clothed, naked, and at every stage in between. This was different. Vérité was more than an image made with pigments and brush. More than blended color and the fall of light. She was touch and smell and taste, breath, life, pulsing blood.

He’d seen the dark fuzz between her legs through the linen of her shift. The image filled his mind. He imagined stroking that soft kitten. Touching Vérité, pleasing her, enticing her. Persuading her down into the straw.

The unbearable sensuality of the image climbed out of his groin and plucked at every nerve in his body. His body tightened like iron bands.

That wasn’t for him. Not with Vérité. Not with anyone.

She gave an impatient, determined shove at his chest. “I can’t talk like this. You’re just bullying me. I’m not trying to run.” Her voice came up, muffled, from the region of his cravat. His coat was pushed aside where she twisted against him. Any minute now, she was going to brush up against his cock.

Then she did exactly that. She gave one startled jerk and went absolutely still. He felt her vibrate with her heartbeat.

She whispered, “Let me go. I said I’d tell you what you want to know.”

If he didn’t let go of her now, he might not be able to.

He opened his hands and stepped away and away, keeping an eye on her, till he felt the storeroom door at his back. He reached behind him to open it and let more light in.

She didn’t try to hide herself. She kept her arms at her sides, her fists clenched. Her skin was pale as milk in this weak light, a sketch in pastel, laid down in thin shades of color. She looked scared and sneaky and determined. A warrior maiden, utterly indomitable in a shift that didn’t cover half of her.

She was beautiful. Add that to the list of complications.

She was also cold. He’d dragged her out of her warm nest and left her shivering in the damp air.

He gathered up her cloak from the floor and tossed it to her across the space between them.

“Thank you.” Gravely, she organized it in her hands, turned it right side out. “There are some complications it is better to ignore.”

That was Vérité, being direct.

“I intend to,” he said.

“Then we both shall. Why are we still alone? I keep expecting your friends to arrive in a great thumping vehemence. I don’t hear them.”

“They’re waiting outside.”

“So you came to take me alone. That was either a mistake or very subtle. I don’t think you make many mistakes.” She circled the cloak around her and was enveloped in darkness. Only her face showed and her feet, white and vulnerable against the wood floor. “This is better. Ask your questions.”

She didn’t look at where his cock was hidden under his coat, being obstreperous.

It wasn’t that easy for him to ignore what his body demanded and demanded.

He thought, You can’t have her. But the corridors of his mind were crowded with old choices, clamoring to be reconsidered. The rules for every other woman on earth didn’t apply to Vérité.

I want her. That was the path to madness and beauty. I could convince her. She knows what I am and I could still convince her.

He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly.

Deliberately, he ran his hand into his sleeve and found the old burn scar on his forearm. The skin was thin there. The surface of the scar felt nothing. Beneath that, there was no protection against pain. It lurked there, waiting for the slightest touch.

He dug his nails in deep, found pain, and held on to it till he was in a place clean of thought and feeling. Till the universe narrowed to a single cold, spiked, dark point.

When he stopped and pain receded he felt empty. It hadn’t helped at all. Vérité was still beautiful and he still wanted her.

He said, “Tell me what you know about Smith.”

Her eyes, wide and dark, didn’t waver. “Almost nothing. There. That was simple.”

“Tell me this nothing.”

“What do you need to know? I can tell you that he tells lies the way other men breathe.” Her fingers made a knobbly half-moon at the front of her cloak, keeping it closed around her. “I don’t think I got ten words of truth out of his mouth the whole time I was chatting with him.”

Vérité had seen to the root of the Merchant. He was a man constructed of lies. “What else?”

“He wears London tailoring, expensive tailoring. His gloves are French. I didn’t notice that when I was talking to him, but I see them now, in my mind. London boots. London hat. Good, solid quality. Almost new. You could hunt down his bootmaker and his tailor if you have the time to fritter away. It won’t lead anywhere.”

“Probably not.” The Merchant liked good clothing. One of his vanities.

“I will point out what you have already figured out. He set only one man to follow me through London, so he doesn’t travel with multitudes.”

The Merchant was a weaver of grand schemes, but schemes he could accomplish with a few like-minded fanatics. He’d have a small band with him, loyal to the death.

She was stalling for time, and he didn’t have a lot of it. Doyle would get impatient after a while. He said, “Tell me more.”

She reached up and rubbed her nose, buying another second or two. “I wish I could be sure you aren’t working for the French.”

“There are no guarantees. Tell me about Smith.”

She didn’t answer directly. “The problem is, we’re both lying about some things. We’re lies within lies within lies, you and me, like Chinese puzzle boxes. Boxes within boxes.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re loyal to somebody. That’s your nature. Loyalty. I just wish I could figure out which side you’re on.”

She didn’t know him as well as she thought, if she believed he was loyal. The last person on earth he’d been honest with was facing him right now, across this chilly storeroom.

In her bare feet. He said, “The floor’s cold. Go stand on the straw over there.”

“Excellent idea. Thank you.” As she walked across the room, she ignored the pile of guns and knives and lethal instrumentation tucked away under the table. Of course that entirely convinced him she’d forgotten their existence. “My toes thank you as well.”

They were pretty toes. He wouldn’t think about kissing from one toe to the other. Sensitive toes and pink as seashells.

She sank to her knees in the straw, wriggled to sit cross-legged, and pulled the cloak around her, doing a good imitation of a hen settling its feathers on the nest. She picked an angle where the light fell on her face, demonstrating that she didn’t have a thing to hide.

He hoped he hadn’t missed a weapon or two, hidden in the straw. Not that Vérité needed weapons.

She was still talking to herself. “I will entertain the hypothesis that you turned English. If you were Police Secrète, I’d already be dead, killed in my sleep a minute ago. All this breathing I’m doing is the argument you’re not French anymore.”

He crossed the room till his boots touched straw. “I never was French. Let’s go back to that meeting in the Moravian church.”

“It has not wandered far from my thoughts. As I say, I came to be blackmailed. Aside from the surprise of meeting you, all went as expected. I met Smith, who threatened to uncover me to the Service. Treason was mentioned. And the slitting of throats. Also torture and imprisonment and the futility of panicked flight.”

“Many and varied threats.”

“One could almost believe you were there, eavesdropping. Yes. Many and varied. After the threats and dire predictions,” she set her hands free of the cloak and gestured out a dire prediction, “we discussed blackmail like civilized people.”

He said, “Smith wants the Leyland codes.”

He caught the split-second hitch in her breathing. “You’ve deduced a great deal.” She said it calmly enough. “Yes. I was placed with the great codebreakers of the age, the Leylands, my impractical, dithering old ladies. It’s been an education living with them in Brodemere, though not a terribly useful one. Did you know I can now speak four dead languages?”

He caught something in her voice. A sadness around the edges of the words. “You can’t go back to them again.”

“Do you think I don’t know? The note I sent to Meeks Street contains my goodbye.” She held her hands out like cups and turned them over with a dreadful finality. “That part of my life is finished.”

The Tuteurs at the Coach House used to rap her knuckles with a cane when she talked with her hands. Un-English, they called it. Pas suffisamment anglais. They never broke her of the habit.

He said, “I’m sorry.”

“There are inevitabilities.” She turned her head away. “I was always packed and ready to run. I had longer than I expected.”

“Smith promised you could go back, I suppose.”

“For a mere soupçon of a treason I can remain Camille Leyland, he says. The British Service will remain in blissful ignorance, he says. A single code and I’m free of him forever.”

The cynicism in her voice was reassuring. “He lies.”

“I wouldn’t believe him if he recited the alphabet. He wants the Mandarin Code.”

He searched his memory. “Not one I know.”

“At some point you may turn your attention to how Mr. Smith knows about it. I suspect Military Intelligence, myself.” She patted the straw next to her. “I wish you’d sit down.”

“So you can attack me more conveniently?”

“There’s no convenient way to attack you, Devoir.” She shook her head sharply. “No. I’m calling you Pax now. Pax, you have friends outside. You have the British Service at your disposal. I can’t fight all of you. I’m trying to negotiate a truce. For God’s sake, sit down and talk to me.”

“A truce?”

“Some semblance thereof. I’d give you promises of good behavior if it would do any good.”

“I wouldn’t believe them.” But he folded himself down next to her, his shoulder beside her shoulder. Nothing could be more platonic and uninvolved than the two of them, side by side, not touching.

She said, “This is better. You aren’t Devoir, but in a poor light I can almost fool myself into thinking you are.”

It was just as well she couldn’t see into his head. Right now he was imagining how easy it would be to slip that cloak away from her shoulders. In this light, her skin would glow white as the moon.

His mind took off like a runaway cart. Vividly, he saw himself pulling her down beside him in the straw. In his imagination, she was more than willing. He saw himself stroking her shift up and up her thigh, revealing the soft, dark tangle between her legs. Hidden at the center, carmine and rose madder.

Enough. He wasn’t going to touch her.

He slowed his breathing. Wrenched his mind back from the brink of some madness. Curled his hands on his knees, relaxed and harmless.

He was in control. Always. That didn’t change no matter how many damned, beautiful, half-naked old friends he sat next to. “Tell me about Mandarin.”

Starkly, simply, she said, “Mandarin replaces Peacock.”

That was a drench of cold water in the night.

It replaced Peacock. That made Mandarin the new code for private communication between Galba, Head of Service, and the twenty-four Heads of Section across Europe. Code for the most secret of secrets.

He swung around in the straw and knelt, confronting her. “You aren’t carrying that around, are you?”

“Not being mad, no. Even Smith—who thinks I’m stupid as an owl—didn’t expect me to arrive with Mandarin in my pocket. I’m to bring it to our next meeting.” She gave one of her almost shrugs. “Where he intends to kill me. Or possibly kidnap and torture me. We will see.”

She knew the importance of what she’d just said. She watched him, hiding the ferocity of her attention under half-closed lids.

The next meeting. This was why he’d followed her across London. This was why he’d come into Braid’s Bookshop alone. She could tell him a time and place where the Merchant would be. “You have your own plans for that meeting,” he said. “He won’t realize that. He underestimates women. You, he wouldn’t understand at all.”

“I am opaque and mysterious. Tonight, however, you will see my forthright side. Ask your questions.”

They were inches apart, with shadows and silence around them. Her pupils were huge. The chaos of her curls fell across her forehead and around her cheeks, making her look ridiculously young. Under her cloak, she pulled her knees to her chest, becoming small, emphasizing how slight she was. How unlikely it was she’d attack anybody. Nobody could be more harmless.

He said, “Why did you meet Smith in the church?”

“The blackmail letter—”

“—Would send you racing to the nearest port, not trotting tamely up to London. You’ve been ready to run for years.”

He watched her decide what to say, thinking it over carefully. Vérité had been rash sometimes. Cami was older and wiser. She picked out a few words. “He offers me something I want.”

“You must want it badly to come strolling under the nose of the Service.” He let impatience into his voice. “What could be that important?”

“You don’t need to know.” A sharp shake of her head. “It’s something the British Service would toss away without regard or interest.”

“What?”

“Consider this instead.” She raised her index finger. “He still wears French gloves. He hasn’t equipped himself head to foot in English clothes. That argues he hasn’t been in England long.”

“Reasonable assumption.”

Two fingers. “He wants Mandarin. Only Mandarin. He’s gone to remarkable effort to get it. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“One specific code implies one very specific need.”

“One operation. Perhaps the Service can imagine what it is. I cannot.” He heard the small clicking sound of Vérité tapping her teeth together. She used to do that when she was adding facts up, seeing patterns in them. Her mind had always fascinated him.

She held up a third finger. “I have one last conclusion about Mr. Smith. He’s not only newly come to England, he’s working on a tight budget of time. A strict, short allotment of days. Maybe even hours. He was fussy about when and where we meet. It’s important. He was angry. I saw one flash of it in his eyes when I tried to change the place and day.”

He knew that anger. No raised voice. No warning. It only showed in the eyes and in the curl of a lip. To a child, it had been terrifying. For an instant his flesh shrank under old pains. Memories of old beatings. The monster had possessed a heavy, self-righteous fist. “He gets angry easily.”

“You know him well, then. I thought so, from your voice.”

There were spies of skill and training. Spies of intuition. Cami had become both. She tilted her head to the side and studied him. “You hate him.”

He didn’t answer her.

For what the Merchant had done to his mother, he would die. Bare hands, gun, knife. It didn’t matter so long as the Merchant lay dead on the ground at his feet. This time, he’d be sure the job was done right.

“‘It is better to be the rider of a great hatred than to be the one ridden.’ My family says that and I share it with you. They have a great many wise sayings.” She let her hand drop to her side. “The meeting place is the last important thing I know. The only secret I’m withholding. If I tell you where and when the meeting is, will you let me go free?”

“No.”

“I see.” She closed her eyes and put her forehead down on the cloak where it covered her knees. She sat that way, breathing quietly, her eyes closed. When she spoke again, it was in the most ordinary tones and her voice was muffled against her cloak. “If I don’t walk down a certain street, on a certain day, at a certain hour, Smith will turn into smoke and blow away. You’ll lose him.”

“Tell me the meeting place.”

She looked up to study the straw and floorboards in front of her. “My head is so full of secrets it rattles when I walk. Your Service will lock me up like the Crown Jewels. They’ll send a substitute to that rendezvous or try to ambush Smith on the street. And it won’t work.” She met his eyes. “You have to let me go so I can meet Mr. Smith.”

“So you can pursue some private exchange with him.”

“If you let me go, you can make sure he dies. You, yourself. There will be no political bargaining that trades a French spy for an English one. No imprisonment he can escape from. No bribes that open doors for him. If you let me go, here and now, I will give you his death, into your own hands.”

“You’ve found a way to tempt me.” Wise little Vérité, with her pithy sayings, had most certainly grown up. She’d emerged as Cami, with a cynical, supremely clever understanding of her fellow man.

She said, “If you take me to Meeks Street, your superiors will tell the Foreign Office and Military Intelligence. The Police Secrète will know within a day. Military Intelligence is riddled with French spies. Maybe the Service is.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I know two French spies placed right in the heart of the Service.” She grinned suddenly, a wry, feral twist of the lips, and he saw the old Vérité again, inside this new Camille. “We were good, weren’t we? Except, I never spied. I committed a thousand lies, in every way, right and left, but I swear I never passed code to the French.”

“I believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay for all the spying I didn’t do. If the Service doesn’t kill me—regretfully and humanely, the way you’d put down a good dog—they’ll keep me locked up till my secrets cool. Years and years. Unless the French dispose of me. Unless Military Intelligence gets me, which they will, because my crimes fall within their authority. Then I am dead.” She reached her hand out from under the brown wool and laid it on his arm and watched it there, as if she wasn’t sure what it might do. “Do you remember what we swore, all those years ago, in Paris, in the Coach House? The Oath of the Cachés?”

“Childish drama.”

“Your idea. Your words.”

“I was dramatic in those days.”

When he’d come to the Coach House, the Cachés were preying on each other. The strong ones took food and blankets from the weak.

He’d put a stop to it. He wasn’t the biggest. He wasn’t even the best fighter. But he was used to getting hurt and he had nothing to lose. He fought with a ferocity none of them could match. In a week, he had most of them behind him. In a month, he had them all.

The Oath of the Cachés turned a dozen vicious, broken children into a wolf pack, faced outward against the world. “I made that up because we needed something to believe in. We needed magic.”

She recited softly, “‘To the last extremity, I will never betray another Caché. We are one blood.’” She said it in French, the way they’d said it, crouched in a circle on the floor of that cold attic dormitory.

He hadn’t thought about the words in a long time.

She said, “So far as I know, none of us broke the oath. Will you give me to the British Service?”

“I have an oath there, too.”

“I’m no danger to England. I swear it. I’ll come to the meeting place with you. I’ll be the bait in your trap. I’ll give you Smith’s head on a platter.” Her fingers tightened. “But don’t give me to the Service. Let me go. I’m asking for my life, Pax.”