A Portrait of Loyalty (The Codebreakers Book #3)

by Roseanna M. White

  So why did his heart stutter over that dearest? She’d said it only to preserve the anonymity he was clearly striving for. He knew that. Even so. No one had ever called him by such an endearment, other than his own mother. Alyona certainly hadn’t.

  It made a bit of the tundra thaw.

  They ambled toward the tree as if they were just two carefree Londoners out for a stroll. But Zivon was careful to keep his back to the other Russians.

  Once at the tree, Lily raised her camera again, but she didn’t look through the viewfinder. She looked at him. “Talk.”

  First, he took in a long breath. “Apologies. It is probably nothing. It is only . . . there were men speaking Russian over there. And one of them is an old acquaintance. We served together in the Foreign Ministry before the war.”

  Which meant that had the two spotted him, Fyodor would have called out an enthusiastic Marin! while his cousin was calling Filiminov!

  Disaster.

  Lily blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  He exhaled. “Of course. Apologies again. I have not announced to anyone in Russia that I am here. Given the target I painted on my back, it seemed wisest to remain incognito for a while.”

  She glanced past him, though only for a second, then she looked at her camera. That, as much as the soft padding of feet over grass and the voices, now speaking in French, talking of the theater and children and Kira, told him that the men had emerged. “Do you fear they’re Bolsheviks?”

  “No. But that does not mean I can trust them. They could say something careless in the hearing of someone with soviet ties. They could mention me in a report that makes its way back to Russia. They could . . .” They could ruin his every plan. His whole purpose.

  “Zivon.” She breathed his name so softly he barely heard it. Yet it zapped him like a live wire, pulling his gaze to hers from where it had drifted to the pattern in the tree bark.

  No one had said his first name in weeks, other than when it was attached to his surname in an introduction. No one had called him by it. The closest anyone had gotten was Camden using “Ziv.” But that had never been his nickname. That wasn’t him.

  She offered no apology for the liberty either. No, eyes steady in that way she usually reserved for whatever she saw through her camera’s lens, she reached up and touched her fingertips lightly to his coat. Over his heart.

  Over the encrypted message, ready to send, and the photograph of two German officers, where the papers were hidden away in his pocket.

  She shook her head. “You cannot trust your enemies. And if you do not trust your friends, then who do you trust?”

  Perhaps she meant it to be a rhetorical question. But the answer resounded like a gong. “No one.”

  She didn’t shake her head or pull away or do any other logical thing. No, she sighed. And she rested her whole hand there, over all his worst secrets that she didn’t even know existed. “Not even God?”

  “Of course I . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence. It would be a lie, much as he wished it weren’t. He let his eyes fall shut, to close out the image of her earnest face. “I want to. I try to. But He has taken everything, Lily. Everything. My parents. My brother. My career, my home, my future.”

  She didn’t react to his liberty-taking with her name. Except that when she spoke, her voice seemed a few degrees warmer. “No. Not that. As long as you have breath, you have a future. One only He can see.”

  Zivon could catch glimpses of it too. Logical conclusions to the patterns in play. Cause and effect. Actions and reactions. He just couldn’t foresee the surprises. Evgeni vanishing, likely dead. The introduction to a friend like Clarke, who shared so many interests.

  Lily Blackwell, who could see beauty in a world he swore had been emptied of it.

  The footsteps of the Russians had faded away, the ambassador and his cousin clearly not wanting to be overheard either. But new ones approached from the opposite direction—familiar ones. Ivy and Clarke would double back to join them soon.

  He covered Lily’s hand with his. “Thank you. For reminding me of that. And . . . and for calling me by name. Your parents may not approve, but it has the sound of music to my ears.”

  Her smile had the look of sunshine. “Then I shall continue to use it—as you may use mine. If you like.”

  He let her pull her hand away, given the approaching steps. But he smiled in return. “I like this very much.”

  Ivy and Clarke’s laughter intruded then, and they rejoined them for the walk back to Curzon Street. He and Clarke parted ways soon after. Usually they kept each other company on the tube ride home, but he knew Clarke was meeting a cousin who was in London on leave tonight.

  Which was why Zivon had that encrypted message and the photograph in his pocket. He’d been planning on dropping by the embassy again as they were closing. And because it was his plan, his feet took that familiar path.

  But as twilight spread its wings over the city and he looked up at the building’s proud façade, he paused. If you don’t trust your friends . . .

  He sighed. This game he was playing had seemed the wisest course. The only course. The only way to move the pieces on the board. This was what his division in Moscow had always done. Decide what information to give, what to retain, what to do with it.

  But this wasn’t Moscow. He was no longer the second in command of the codebreaking division, a man of vital importance to the entire intelligence operation.

  Be still, and know that I am God.

  If Zivon sent this message to Maklakov, deliberately undermining the allies he’d decided to join, the ones he hoped to serve out the war beside . . . If he deceived them, even though it was for the greater good, then how could he possibly expect their trust in return?

  The ruby ring rested heavily against his knuckle. He wanted to help his people. His country. His czar. But the how surely mattered. And was this the kind of man he wanted to be? The kind who would look only at the ends and not question the means?

  He pivoted on his heel and strode away from the embassy. He didn’t know how to untangle the web he’d already created there. But he could make different decisions moving forward. Better ones. He set his course for the Old Building, somehow not surprised when he spotted Admiral Hall just exiting as Zivon drew near.

  “Admiral! Could I be spared one moment of your time?”

  Though his driver already had the rear door open for him, Hall steered himself away from the car. He wore, as always, an easy smile. “Marin. What can I do for you?”

  “It is, I think, the other way round.” Who do you trust? The answer couldn’t be no one. He’d chosen this ally. This life. It was time to act accordingly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph. “My brother had this in his passport. I have been trying these weeks to determine why. Who the men are. But I have not the resources—or, perhaps, the ability—to answer those questions. Perhaps you will have better luck.”

  Hall took the photo, studying it with that blinking gaze of his. When he looked up, Zivon could read nothing in his eyes. “Curious indeed. What do you know of your brother’s alliances? His role in the war?”

  They were questions Zivon would have asked anyone else. Still, they made his shoulders edge back. “He was a lieutenant in the army. Well respected. Certainly not the sort to collaborate with Germans, if that is what you mean. But . . .” He deflated a bit. “To be truthful, I do not know much about his activities in recent years. We have scarcely seen each other since the war. It had crossed my mind that perhaps he had been an intelligence officer for the army.”

  “Perhaps.” Hall flipped it over, frowning at writing on the back. “What does this say?”

  “Second day of February of this year. That is all.”

  The admiral’s gaze went distant for a moment. “Hmm. You all were out of the war by then.”

  “This is true. But many of us still saw the Germans as a threat. I know my colleagues and I continued to do our work as we had
always done. We were surely not the only ones.”

  “Hmm.” Hall tapped the photograph against his gloved palm. “I’ll see what I can discover. Have my photography expert take a look. If I learn anything of interest, I’ll certainly let you know.”

  That was more than he likely deserved, after keeping it hidden so long. Zivon gave a short bow. “Forgive me for not turning it over more quickly.”

  “Heaven knows you’ve had enough else to worry over. Have you heard anything yet from your brother?”

  How could it ache each and every time he thought of his brother’s silence? Zivon shook his head. “I have posted several letters to our rendezvous. And I have asked the ambassador to have his Parisian counterpart look for him. Nothing.”

  Hall slid the photo into his jacket pocket. “I’ll have my people look too. No offense to Maklakov and Nabokov”—he flashed a smile—“but I daresay my agents will be able to turn him up far more quickly than they can.”

  Zivon shouldn’t have been surprised that Hall knew the ambassadors. It seemed he knew everyone. Which was no reason to be nervous . . . not when they were allies. “Thank you, Admiral. I cannot adequately express my gratitude.”

  “If you have a photo of him, that would help.”

  Zivon nodded. It would require destroying Evgeni’s false passport, but that was the only picture he had, now that his album was gone. “I will bring one tomorrow.”

  And pray he’d just done the right thing.

  10

  FRIDAY, 19 APRIL 1918

  Lily jumped at the knock on the door, looking up from her retouching desk at the OB for the first time in . . . she didn’t even know. The crick in her neck said it had been quite a while. Sometimes it took a ridiculous amount of time to get her changes to look natural. Real.

  “Come in.” She had nothing light-sensitive out at the moment, just her scalpel and a slew of photographs she’d pulled as possibilities for her latest creation. The admiral had asked her to take an image of an officer on a horse, alone in a field, and put a crowd of Austrian soldiers around him. She had no idea why, but it had proven quite a challenge to integrate so many new figures without making it look clearly fake.

  The door opened, and Barclay Pearce stepped in with his usual grin. “Have you got that U-boat picture ready?”

  “Of course.” She motioned to a photograph sitting on another table. The only change the admiral had asked for on that one was to blot out the designation painted on the side and replace it with another.

  Simple. Easy. It had taken only a few minutes. But ever since that conversation with her mother . . . “Do you know why he needed it?”

  Barclay’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “I’m afraid the admiral doesn’t always explain himself to the mere errand boy. ‘Theirs not to reason why’ and all that, I suppose.”

  Lily huffed and folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t much fancy ending up like the Light Brigade, thank you.”

  He chuckled. “You won’t. If either of us does, it’ll be me. I’m the one he tasks with slipping into government offices and depositing these.”

  “What?” She snapped up straighter, eyes wide.

  Barclay apparently thought her reaction as funny as the assignment itself, given his laugh. Sometimes she wondered what was wrong with that man. He was already halfway out the door again. “Don’t fret, Lily. It’s all on the up-and-up. Mostly. Oh!” He poked his head back in. “Hall, Margot, and I were chatting this morning, and it came up that she’s still looking for a photographer for her wedding. We recommended you. Hope you don’t mind.”

  And how could he shift so quickly from what sounded suspiciously like breaking and entering to wedding photography? “Margot?” Margot De Wilde, he must mean. She didn’t know the young lady well . . . and frankly, found her more than a little intimidating. “I’ve been meaning to ask how the two of you are related.”

  “She’s my sister.”

  Lily lifted her brows. She knew for a fact Miss De Wilde had come here from Belgium at the start of the war—and that Barclay had been born and raised in the streets of London.

  Not that such facts could ever move that grin of his. “My sister married her brother. Ergo, she’s my sister.”

  “Ah.”

  “Mr. Pearce.”

  Barclay snapped straighter at the voice, though his salute somehow looked more satirical than military. “DID. On my way out now.”

  Lily cast a panicked glance down at the note Admiral Hall had left for her with her current assignment. He hadn’t mentioned a time he needed it by, but he rarely checked up on her unless there was a strict deadline.

  “Sorry to interrupt you, Miss Blackwell.” Hall strode into the room and closed the door behind him, a sure signal that whatever he held in his hands now was sensitive.

  But she breathed a sigh of relief at seeing he carried something new and that she hadn’t missed a deadline. “Not a problem, sir. It’s coming along well.”

  “Excellent.” He held out the paper in his hands. “Would you take a look at this for me?”

  “Of course.” She took it, not bothering to ask what she was looking for. Whenever he asked her to examine a photo, he gave no information on it. Nothing to bias her, he always said.

  “Well, first off, it was clearly taken with an inexpensive camera. The whole thing is out of focus—not badly, but a bit. Enough to tell me the user was either a novice or in a hurry.” She reached for her loupe and traced it over the edge of each figure—two German officers. “It’s genuine, I think. No edges to indicate a scalpel has been at work. Even if it had been reshot out of focus to cover such tampering, I can usually see a slight line under magnification.”

  The admiral took a seat in the second wooden chair. He made no effort to look at it over her shoulder. He never did. “Very good. That covers the physical photograph.”

  “So now the subjects.” She set down her loupe again and sat back to study the image as a whole. She saw more photographs by far than anyone else in the intelligence division, so Hall often called on her to identify objects, locations, even people. It was why that pin-studded wall behind her proved so useful. “Looks like France, based on the scenery. The Lorraine region, perhaps?”

  “That was my thought. Though it could as easily be Belgium or the Rhineland.”

  “Mm. It could be, of course. But . . .” Setting that photo down, she spun for her filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. It only took a minute or two of riffling through her files to come up with the one she wanted. “There.” She set it down beside the new one. “If you look at those hills in the background . . .”

  “They do appear to match.” Hall nodded. “And we know the location of this older one without question—definitely in Lorraine. Excellent eye, Miss Blackwell, as usual.”

  She would have smiled at the compliment if her attention hadn’t moved to the figures. “The men, though. I don’t believe . . .” She hated to say she couldn’t identify someone, or that they’d never appeared in film she’d developed before. With a gusty exhale, she shook her head. “I don’t readily recognize them, so they’re certainly not frequent players. But I’ll look through the archives again.”

  “In your spare moments. And as you do, keep an eye out for this fellow too.” He slid another image across her desk toward her.

  This one was small, no bigger than two inches square. Clearly a passport photograph. Still holding the first picture, she picked up the second. And frowned. She was quite certain she’d never seen this face before; he was handsome enough that she’d have noted it. But that wasn’t what made something odd and cold curl up inside her.

  Despite being completely unfamiliar, the man was, well, familiar. The eyes. The mouth. But where . . . ?

  She flipped it over, in case there was writing on the back. There wasn’t. But she did the same to the larger photo, quickly finding the single line at the bottom. The single line written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

  Cyrillic—Russian. Her gaze
shot back to Hall’s as the familiarity clicked into knowledge. “Is this Evgeni Marin?”

  The admiral blinked at her. “Did I say it was?”

  She placed both images on her desk. “This is what I do, DID.”

  He chuckled. And stood. “I told Mr. Marin we would try to locate him. This is simply my first step.”

  Looking for him in the photographs his field agents had taken over the last four years? And then adding in the larger photo . . . it didn’t make the cold knot unravel any. “Should I . . . should I be careful? Around Zivon, I mean?”

  Hall paused, half turned to the door. “You’ve never been one to open your heart too quickly, have you? Not like your sister.”

  It sounded like a compliment, yet landed like an insult. To Zivon as well as her, in this case. “Is that your answer?”

  Something shifted in his eyes with his next blink. “Do you think I would have hired him if I didn’t find him trustworthy?”

  No. Or at least most people wouldn’t have. But Hall could very well subscribe to the “keep one’s enemies closer” philosophy. “You could answer with a statement, you know, instead of another question.”

  “Could I?” With a wink, he opened the door. But then he stopped, dragged in a deep breath, and turned back to face her. “Because you are the daughter of one of my dearest friends, I will say this—Zivon Marin is either the greatest asset or the greatest enemy I’ve ever encountered. I think he is the first. But I can’t dismiss the possibility that he is simply more clever than I.”

  Something everyone who served under him, herself included, had always thought impossible. People may be more intelligent, like the enigmatic Margot De Wilde, for instance. But no one was more clever.

  He shook his head. “There is still much about him I don’t know. And you’re aware of how I feel about unknowns.”

  She did. She spent hours upon hours each week trying to fill in the blanks for him, using the images sent from agents all over the world to do so. Her throat dry, she could only nod.

  He said no more either, clicking the door shut behind him.