The London Restoration

by Rachel McMillan

  “Brent!” Diana sent him a warning glare. “Simon, do you remember the old law of sanctuary? If someone was on consecrated ground and protected by the church they could not be harmed or incarcerated?”

  “An old law.”

  “A very old law.” Brent nodded.

  “Maybe in practice. But in theory”—Diana warmed to her idea—“if Eternity is a ring of men moving through cities to find safety to protect themselves while passing on these official secrets, then of course the churches would make sense.”

  Simon nodded. Diana looked to Brent.

  “What do you actually want of us, Simon?” Brent asked. “Diana keeps doing more and more for you, and I did what I could at King’s.” He gestured to the scar above his open collar. “So far things have been alright. We saw that man with a gun. We followed a few people. There’s definitely something ominous happening, but from what you’ve told me, Diana, you have fulfilled your promise to Simon. So why don’t we take tonight as an end to all of . . . whatever this is?”

  Diana swallowed. Simon’s blue eyes settled on hers.

  “I can’t tell you everything. But you’re important.” Simon smiled at Brent. “And so are you, Somerville.” He moved to rise.

  “You can’t be leaving,” Brent said. “Then what was this meeting for?”

  “I trust you, Diana.” Simon sat back down. “I truly do. I have to go to Vienna. On orders. They like my setup there. They like Gabriel Langer.” He shifted in his chair. “Langer might turn out to be more helpful than I could’ve imagined. I have an agent that, well, is not officially under my guidance but I’ve sort of unofficially taken that role anyway.”

  “Unofficial,” Brent scoffed. “You seem to be quite good at that.”

  Simon ignored him. “I don’t have the manpower to determine every man coming in and out of the city on your theory, Diana. No matter how likely it is you’re correct.”

  “You only had an outline,” Diana said.

  “I only had a hunch,” Simon corrected.

  “I don’t believe that.” Brent shook his head. “What’s truly in it for you? Why do you need Diana?”

  “Her knowledge of the Wren churches—”

  “No.” Brent held his hand out to stall Diana, who wanted to intervene. “No. You could find anyone.”

  Simon stiffened and straightened his shoulders. “Luckily I didn’t have to find anyone. I had her.” He raised his glass to his lips and tipped more liquid down his throat. “Fisher likes you.” Simon looked at Diana.

  “He said he would destroy you, and I don’t think he’ll remember he likes me if I get in the way of that.”

  Brent slammed his glass onto the table. “Find someone else for your hunches, Simon.”

  “I wish I could. But Diana’s not anyone, is she?”

  And with a sad smile and a final drain of his glass, he left.

  Chapter 24

  December 1945

  Diana knew end-of-term exams and the Christmas break had cleared out many of the students and faculty. The snow offered a fresh white blanket to the tumbled stones on the street, even as the first Christmas of the recent peace felt so different from others before it.

  The merchants’ shelves were still bare, clothing rations still in place, sugar and bread hard to come by. Tinsel and holly clashed against recently painted shop windows and women exchanged recipes with rather creative alternatives to the ingredients hard to come by.

  Diana even found herself missing the small traditions she had shared at Bletchley: saving their sugar coupons, trying not to burn biscuits on the stove, having Fisher and Simon around for a small party and gift exchange.

  And of course she thought back to the few times she had been able to meet Brent on his leave. They hadn’t gone to London but had met in Brighton and even in Calais. Snow had fallen and carols sifted from candlelit churches in the few moments Brent and Diana wandered from their rooms. In those fleeting moments it was no longer his soft voice and their conversations that had been ripped from her but his physical presence. He taught her how to have several forms of wordless conversation, and while she cherished the obliterated lines between them, it made it harder and harder for him to be ripped from her when the train took them in opposite directions. Yet she had made the most of every second.

  She supposed she was still making the most of every second. Since the evening Brent had pressed her so close to him upon her return from meeting Fisher, she had noticed a difference. The line on his neck had faded and the bruises on her wrists were a ghost of a memory. While he still was adamant that he occupy the sofa, she occupied it with him for longer and longer even as the nights fell shorter.

  Diana hadn’t had another message from Fisher or a clear directive from Simon. Brent was intentionally pursuing her. She could sense him as strongly as she had that first night. She had pulled Brent to St. Bride’s and Mary-le-Bow. They held a long afternoon at Magnus the Martyr, where carols echoed to the rafters and she wondered if each minor chord meant something. When it became clear that all that was on offer was music light in tone and hope burdened by the recent past, she allowed herself to enjoy it.

  Snow sparkled in the sky as they walked into the early dark, adding a clean sheen to the city whose scars and bruises she saw all too clearly despite the busy traffic, people managing trees and holly boughs through the dark streets, and the festive lights on the corners.

  Brent had been around more often lately, but she could tell a restlessness stirred within him. Was it because he missed his routine at school or because of his routine at school? When she had first met him, passion radiated from his voice and a light shone in his eyes when he talked about his lectures and his students. She certainly had his passion, but she wondered if his vocation still did.

  The holiday season ushered in nostalgia, not for the recent lean and horrible years but for the last time the world seemed as calm and bright as the stanza wistfully caught by a violin bow from a street musician on the corner.

  It wasn’t until they slowed and she looked around that she noticed Brent watching her with intent. “What is it?”

  “You.”

  Diana smiled. “What about me?”

  “You don’t see what I see, do you? When I step into those churches, when we’re out here on the street.” He interlaced their fingers. “You’re seeing what it could be. What it’s going to be. You’re seeing the potential.”

  Diana merely nodded. She’d snatch all of the tender moments she could, knowing that eventually good things would be thrown in their path again.

  They took their time on the way to the flat, allowing night to settle around them and the snowflakes to dissolve on the ground. The moment the key turned in their front door, the telephone rang. Simon Barre’s former SOE contact had intercepted an encrypted message through his agent that he believed belonged to Eternity, which was addressed to London. They were just random letters in the Playfair cipher style and part of the message had been ripped away.

  Brent took the opportunity to steal into the bedroom to make up for another sleepless night.

  “So I’ve the date and time but no location,” Simon said. “Tomorrow night. Eight o’clock. My understanding is that there will be a pass-off. I won’t get back in time. I need you to find out where it’ll be and go and get the file.”

  “How do you know it’s going to be the file that will be exchanged?”

  “I don’t. Not exactly. It says exchange. Not of what.”

  “How did you decode it?”

  “I didn’t. My associate did. Train ticket stub.”

  “So this is not official.”

  “That man who died at Magnus the Martyr, Petrov? He was one of ours, officially looking into possible espionage activity in London. And my team believes they have enough to go on in terms of closing in on Soviet agents here. Agents who have nothing to do with Eternity.”

  He stopped talking, but Diana was too stunned to fill the silence.

  “I’m not
getting authorization because Petrov tried and failed and because MI6 is more willing to fund my work in Vienna. They like the small team I’ve assembled there. They won’t risk me and they won’t risk embarrassment. Langer and my SOE agent have a lead they’re willing to pursue in Vienna. I can’t be in both places at once. They feel that what they’ve found in Vienna deserves more manpower and takes precedence.”

  “What have they found in Vienna?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Ha! That’s rich.”

  “It could be a wild-goose chase.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Diana, if this file exists and if Eternity—agent—spy ring—exists, then we’ve won. Not just my hunch but my belief in you.”

  “And what if it’s nothing?”

  “Then it’s nothing. This is my last shot at this. We’ve set up at the Sacher Hotel. I’m moving to Vienna for the foreseeable future.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s the last time I’ll ask you for something other than a friendly tea.”

  “But you’ve been so sure of your pursuit of this.”

  Simon took a beat. “Apparently what’s in the file affects four different countries. Gabriel Langer is trying his best. He and the agent I mentioned to you have established an operation here, but—” Simon groaned. “Anyway, we need the information that’s in this file. You have to get it for me. But I can’t decrypt the location of this bloody message.”

  Diana worked her bottom lip. Sunday night at eight. “Maybe I can figure it out. It’s likely a church. Fisher clearly likes playing with us. Let me get a pen and paper.”

  He read the random sequence of letters to her and she drew out the usual grid that was the next step in making sense of the message while listening to him.

  “Be careful, Diana. I’ll get back as fast as I can.”

  “To pack.”

  “Yes.” Simon was silent a moment. “I sometimes wonder if I made this all up because I wanted it to be true.”

  “You didn’t make up Fisher garroting people with piano wire,” Diana said. “Or nearly killing Brent.”

  “True. Maybe I just didn’t want it to end. You. Theories. Problem solving.”

  “You’re a Secret Intelligence Service agent. That’s your whole life.”

  “It was nice to have someone else involved. Beyond briefs and meetings and orders.”

  “That’s called friendship, Simon. I’d meet you for tea even if you don’t send me to look in the shadows or consult on churches. Brent too.”

  “You mean that?”

  “I’ll find the location. Then you and I will pick up where we left off . . . as friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re allowed to be human, you know. Friendship is not a weakness. You don’t need to barter or exchange for it. Did you ever think that if you had asked me this favor I might have done it anyway?”

  When Simon didn’t immediately answer, Diana thought of how she had said something quite similar to Villiers.

  “Would you have?” he finally asked.

  “We’ll never know, will we? But I am your friend.”

  After she rang off, her mind was filled with long nights at the pub and the camaraderie she found when she least expected it with Villiers, Fisher, and Simon. A life she didn’t share with Brent much as he couldn’t share Tibbs, Holt, and Ross with her.

  “What’s all this, then?” Brent said over her shoulder a few moments later.

  “Every scrambled message like this one needs a key. And we don’t have it. Simon and Langer—his associate in Vienna—have determined something will happen tomorrow evening. The exchange of this file we have been in pursuit of, but they don’t know where.”

  “Like a crossword puzzle?”

  “It’s not a crossword puzzle. It’s a standard arrangement of letters attributed to Lord Playfair that is a common way of sharing an encrypted message. It’s usually a word from a book or a message. But for now it will be guesswork.”

  “How did you learn all of this?”

  “We had a lot of time on our hands. Fisher likes puzzles,” Diana said.

  Diana told Brent to go ahead and sleep in the bedroom while she played some more. She rapped her pencil on the table. Simon had entrusted her with a great deal. His job, it sounded like.

  She spent a sleepless night at the dining room table, robe tied tightly over her pajamas in the middling dark, brewing several cups of watery tea. She was close. She rearranged the letters and scratched out a few possibilities, but the location evaded her. “Blast!” She crumpled up another piece of paper and tossed it across the table.

  After peeling off a fresh sheet from the notepad, she pressed her pencil nub to the top and started a list of prospective places. This was Fisher. He would work within a certain radius and almost certainly within churches.

  She hadn’t realized she was drifting until she looked up from the pillow of her folded arms to find Brent at her shoulder. She blinked up at the clock, which was just chiming three.

  “You have to go to bed, Diana. You have to sleep. You’ll be ill if you don’t.” He gently gathered the hair at the nape of her neck and parted it like a curtain to press a gentle kiss on her neck. She slid around to turn into him and press her forehead into his shoulder. He rested his chin on her head. “I’m worried about you.”

  “You’re one to talk,” she murmured.

  He smelled wonderful and he was so near their breath mingled. She gazed up at him, and her wide, tired eyes must have had their desired effect. She yawned. “I can’t move.”

  “Can’t you?” The smile in his voice was warm. “That won’t do. You need someone to carry you.”

  “Who could that be?” Her voice sounded thick and sleepy.

  “Arms up, sweetheart.”

  Diana extended them and a moment and swoop later her legs were over the curve of his elbow and her head in the slope of his neck. “You’re very strong.”

  “A blessing and a curse,” he said dryly.

  He laid her gently on the bed and adjusted the pillow beneath her head. Her eyelids were anvils. She couldn’t tell if she was totally asleep or still hovering in a slight second of consciousness when she spoke to the shadow she sensed behind her closed eyes. “I fell in love with you the moment I heard your voice.”

  “Did you?”

  Diana nodded against the pillow. “The very moment I heard it. I never wanted . . . I never wanted . . .” She drifted, the rest of her sentence tucked inside the smile she was sure still parted her face.

  * * *

  When she woke, she sat up too quickly, squinting in the light spilling through the blinds. Diana creaked the bedroom door open and tiptoed past Brent, who was sprawled on the sofa. She retrieved the milk bottle and the newspaper from outside the front door. She set both on the table with the intention of making tea and checking the social listings to see if anything of note was happening at one of the churches where a pass-off of the file might take place between Fisher and one of his group.

  She turned to Brent and smoothed back his hair until the scar at his forehead was exposed. Sleep had shifted his pajama top, too, and Diana had full vantage of his parted collar, fallen open like a book at a favorite spot. Her eyes lingered a moment on the beginning of scars she had yet to see.

  Had he woken in the night? She could often hear him through the open door and would jump up and check to make sure he settled. It would be worse if she approached him and risked him hurting her. Not that she was afraid of a few bruises on her wrists, but she knew the potential it had to rip the seams patching their relationship.

  She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead.

  He stirred but not enough to wake. She left him where he was and put the kettle on. She gingerly turned the pages of the newspaper, passed headlines of reconstruction and the housing crisis, campaigns for political parties, and the rising price of bread and potatoes.

  Then a performance of Mozart’s Requiem that even
ing at Great St. Bart’s. It would be dark and atmospheric and rather like the concert she had attended with Gabriel Langer those many weeks ago in Vienna. Music would distract from any meeting, and Fisher loved the Requiem. Köchel Catalogue #626. Requiem Mass in D Minor. Unfinished by the composer before his death.

  “Oleum medicina,” she said aloud. The legend that Rahere might have brought a relic back from his pilgrimage to Rome. Yes, another thing Diana had told Fisher during their long afternoons working. She never anticipated conversations on relics would be made manifest upon her return to London. Couldn’t have dreamt she would return to All Hallows and find holy medicine in the first moments of her reunited love story. The relic Rick had that Fisher wanted the night Brent was hurt.

  “What’s that, darling?” Brent said sleepily.

  She closed his mouth with her own in answer. He threaded his fingers through her unbound hair as their lips met again and again.

  “Fisher needed me to know,” she said a few happy moments later, her head light, her heartbeat quickening.

  “What’s this about?”

  “He needed someone to know how clever he was.” She set two pieces of slightly burnt toast on his plate and placed the butter dish and marmalade beside it.

  “So you know the location? You cracked your grid?”

  “Yes.” Diana’s voice was tinged with pride. “St. Bart’s, Brent. I told him about Prior Rahere. I told him about meeting you. That didn’t necessarily mean the Roman churches I imagined: All Hallows or Walbrook or any of that lot. Not even Magnus the Martyr. Fisher chose the church I told him about. St. Bart’s.” She stared at her tea mug absently a moment. Then to a corner of the ceiling. “It’s the perfect location. It makes me think that all along . . .” She stopped, apparently long enough for him to notice.

  “Keep going.”

  “It’s close to a hospital. St. Bart’s isn’t even a stone’s throw away. It is tucked away from the main thoroughfare but still within the gates. Still central enough that you could direct someone unfamiliar to the city there by landmarks.” It would be the perfect place for the exchange of information.