‘Why?’ Ballard asked the question simply, searching for an answer. ‘Why do all this?’
Sarah Draper curled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and stared into the distance, as if seeing nothing.
‘Because I was bored.’ She spoke suddenly, her words cutting though the silence. She fixed Ballard with an intense stare. ‘You have no idea what life is like for someone like me. I can do nothing. I’m paraded around the place like some damn trinket, an accessory, like the bloody swords you are all so proud of.’
Ballard eased himself forward. ‘You don’t become a spy because you are bored.’ He spoke gently, but he refused to be thwarted by her attempt to keep up the pretence of being a lady.
‘No.’ She hung her head. ‘You do that for money.’
‘That is all?’ Ballard seemed genuinely shocked.
‘Ha!’ Sarah was cruel. ‘You are a man, how could you understand?’
‘But what of James?’
Sarah’s mouth puckered in distaste. ‘What of him?’
‘Was life with him so very bad?’
‘You have no idea.’ Sarah laughed. It was a bitter, cold sound. ‘He married me because I was pretty. Because he wanted the adornment. I was born poor and I would have died poor if I had said no.’
Jack stood in silence. Sarah’s words had struck him with more force than her bullet. She was echoing what he had once said of his own life. He had embarked on his long charade to make something of himself, to achieve more than he was allowed. Sarah Draper was claiming to have done the same.
She cackled unpleasantly. ‘You look so shocked.’ She crooked a finger in Ballard’s direction.
Ballard shook his head, his hard eyes never leaving hers. ‘You married a man for money. No, that does not shock me. It is your betrayal, of him, and of your country, that disgusts me.’
Sarah’s eyes blazed in genuine anger as she heard the repulsion in Ballard’s voice. ‘What would you know?’ She displayed her scorn openly. ‘I had nothing. If I had not married him, I would have gone back to the life I had lived before he came along.’ For a moment there was a trace of pain in her eyes. ‘I would not return there.’
Jack struggled with Sarah’s confession. Was she any different from him? What would he have done had he not been able to start on his long charade?
‘So you married an officer for money and for station. But that was not enough for you. So you became a spy. You betrayed the country of your birth for money.’ Ballard was bitter. He could not imagine the circumstances that would drive anyone, least of all a woman, to sell their soul for so base an ambition.
But Jack could. He lived in the shadows, where nothing was certain. He knew desperation. Yet he had never turned his back on the country of his birth. No matter what temptation he had faced, he had stayed true to that at least. It was one of the few certainties in his life.
Sarah stared into space, lost in the past. It was only when she turned her gaze on Jack that she seemed to come back to herself.
‘You were a whore.’ Jack spoke evenly. He came from her world, and he knew.
Sarah bit her lip. Her eyes were pitiful.
Jack stared at her. He was starting to understand. Ballard was truly the Devil, but he did not know everything.
Sarah met his gaze. She searched his eyes, her suffering revealed yet still half hidden behind a mixture of anger and shame. Finally she nodded.
Ballard snorted, but Jack held up his hand, silencing his commander with the gesture. ‘Where?’
‘On my back.’ Her scorn was biting.
‘London?’
‘Does it matter?’
Jack sighed. The woman in front of him bore little relation to the fascinating creature who had taken him into her carriage and into her bed. She had infatuated him, tormenting and tantalising his every thought. Now the veneer of beauty was gone. The ugliness of her life was revealed. Yet it did not repulse him as he sensed it did Ballard. For he understood it.
‘How old were you? When they forced you.’
‘Old enough.’
Jack felt his exhaustion pressing down on him. He wanted to lie down but he forced himself to remain standing, knowing that if he stopped, he would be unable to rise again.
‘This explains nothing.’ Ballard hissed the words, the pain of his wound leaving him short of breath.
‘Be quiet!’ Jack snapped back. ‘It explains everything. You don’t understand because you have not seen what life is like for people like us.’
‘I do not need to see hell to understand the fire.’
Jack snorted his derision. ‘You don’t have a fucking clue what you are talking about.’ He still held the revolver in his hand, and the weapon suddenly felt heavy. He tossed it on to Sarah’s writing desk. He did not fear Sarah. He pitied her.
‘I was eleven.’ Sarah spoke quietly. ‘My ma died.’
Jack had seen it. His mother’s gin palace had had its fair share of whores. Many were young girls. He clasped his left hand around the wound to his arm, pressing his fingers into the torn flesh, trying to stem the flow of blood. The pain seared through him, but it helped to scour away the exhaustion and clear his mind.
‘The colonel, Draper. He fell for you.’
Sarah nodded. ‘He was a captain then.’
Ballard could not stay silent. ‘Now that is a lie. Gentlemen do not take whores for their wives.’
Jack shook his head. ‘It happens. I’ve seen it.’
Sarah was watching Jack closely. ‘He loved me.’
‘And he married you.’
Again she nodded.
‘But someone else knew.’ Jack felt his knees begin to buckle and he closed his eyes as he tried to summon some last remnant of strength. ‘Someone knew you were a whore. They used it against you.’ He spoke quickly, trying to understand it all before he collapsed.
‘That man.’ Sarah’s words were like daggers. ‘He had been with me before. Many times. He saw me in Bombay and he worked it out straight away.’ She looked at Jack, her eyes pleading. ‘I didn’t have a choice. He would have ruined James. I couldn’t do that to him.’
‘You were saving yourself.’ Ballard interrupted, his venom naked. ‘Do not attempt to pretend to have higher motives. You became a spy to save yourself.’
Sarah laughed. She fixed Ballard with a piercing stare. There was scorn on her face. Loathing. ‘You think I’m the spy? You have no damn idea at all.’
Ballard did not take kindly to her reaction. He was hurting. ‘You are a spy, and you will hang.’
The threat silenced her.
Ballard stood. He walked to the tent’s entrance, stepping around Montfort’s lifeless corpse.
‘Watch her, Jack. I’ll summon the guard. I will not hear any more. This is over.’
He walked out and into the darkness. It would not take him long to reach Shepheard’s headquarters, where he would rouse the guard to secure the spy and keep her safe until she made her final journey to a cold and lonely scaffold.
Jack looked at Sarah. He could not find it within himself to hate her. They shared the silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
‘Who is he?’ Jack broke the spell. He poked the corpse with the toe of his boot, rocking the body that stared at the tent’s ceiling with lifeless eyes.
Sarah smiled. It was thin, weary. She looked drained and exhausted, but life still sparkled in her eyes.
‘Captain Sergei Dimitriovitch Sazonov.’
Jack threw back his head and barked a short laugh. ‘A damn Russian?’
‘You fools never once suspected anything.’ Sarah shook her head. She could not share Jack’s amusement, but she could tell him the truth. ‘He came with me and not one of you questioned him, just because he spoke with the right accent a
nd looked the damn part. It was so bloody easy.’
Jack shook with a potent mix of laughter and pain. He was not the only impostor in the army. The idea fascinated him as much as it amused him.
‘He was your link to the Persians?’ he asked.
Sarah shook her head in denial. ‘He was here to watch me.’ She fixed Jack’s eyes with her own. ‘He was my jailer.’
Jack finally understood. Montfort was no guardian. He’d been here to make sure Sarah played the role she had been forced to take. If she had not done as she had been ordered, Jack had no doubt that Montfort would have killed her.
He thought about what she had said. Despite the agony of his wound, his mind was sharp enough.
‘You’re not the spy.’ He spoke with certainty. It was all starting to make sense. She had been forced to act as she had, the presence of a Russian guardian proof that she was nothing more than a pawn. There had to be someone else. ‘You were just playing a part.’
Sarah smiled. ‘I always knew you were no ordinary soldier, Arthur.’
Jack looked at her. ‘So who is the spy? Who is the man who knew you from before?’
Sarah held his stare. He recognised the fear in her eyes. He watched her gaze flicker over Montfort’s corpse, then She looked back at him and he saw an unexpected sadness. Her jaw tightened as she made her decision.
‘Fetherstone.’
‘You let her go?’ Ballard sat down as he contemplated Jack’s astonishing confession. He had returned to the tent to find that Sarah Draper had disappeared. He hissed as he shook his head, whether at the pain of his wound or his subordinate’s rash action Jack could not tell.
‘She’s not the one we are after.’
Jack picked up his revolver and thrust it back into its holster. His actions were clumsy, his useless right arm hanging at his side. He felt the exhaustion swamp him. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.
‘What?’ Ballard’s eyes flashed in anger. ‘What the devil do you mean? Have you lost your senses? Has the fighting addled what little brains you possess?’ He was incredulous.
‘She was not important.’ Jack’s voice was cold.
‘What the bloody hell would you know about it?’ Ballard was raging now, his anger given full vent. ‘You were here to do what I told you. You were my hired gun. My untraceable killer! I never told you to think.’
Jack stayed calm in the face of the storm. ‘You once told me it was a job very few people could do. I believed you.’
‘Then you were a damn fool. She would have hanged for her crimes. Perhaps you will take her place.’
Jack was too exhausted to care, even in the face of such a threat. ‘You still need me.’
‘What!’ Ballard rose to his feet, his face twisted with pain and anger. ‘I don’t need you. Hired guns are ten-a-penny round here. You presume too damn much, Jack Lark.’
Jack smiled. ‘Sit down. I’ll have the guard summon the nearest surgeon. We both need him.’
‘You damned viper.’ Ballard snapped the angry retort before hissing in pain again. But he did as Jack suggested and sat back down heavily.
‘That’s better.’ Jack nodded in approval. ‘Now shut your muzzle and listen to what I have to say before we both bleed to death.’
He strode across the tent and picked up the pile of letters Sarah had been working on, turning to throw them clumsily on to Ballard’s lap.
‘Some light reading for when the surgeon is stitching you up. There will be nothing much of interest in them. Sarah was a spy. She passed on information, but she is not the one we were after.’
Ballard sank back on the travel cot. His anger was being driven out by the torment of his wound. ‘Then who is?’
Jack faced his commanding officer. ‘Fetherstone. Fetherstone is the spy.’
He let Ballard absorb the news. He was certain it would make sense. Ballard would understand, would be able to see how the naval officer’s betrayal of his country fitted with everything that had happened. Fetherstone had fed them the information about the munshi. He had played them along the way and now he would be laughing at them as they rushed back to denounce a spy who was nothing more than a whore forced to do as she was told.
He had planned it all with meticulous care. Yet he had not calculated on the impact of an impostor.
Jack sat down and waited for the surgeon. He knew he would have one last task to perform. One job to do before he could move on to a new future.
For he was still the Devil’s assassin, and he would have to kill a spy.
The alleyway stank. Without proper drainage, the townsfolk simply emptied their waste into the streets, which were left littered with the foul and the noxious, the noisome slicks just one of the pitfalls the unwary traveller faced in its barren streets.
Jack crouched in the shadows. He flexed his right hand, hissing at the painful spasm the motion sent searing up his arm. The surgeon had fixed him up, stitching together the tears in his flesh, but they had not had time to heal properly, the wounds still raw. His arm felt stiff and was prone to a dreadful cramp that rivalled the ache in his back, keeping him awake the previous night.
Not that he minded the lack of sleep. For he knew that if he closed his eyes, he would have to face the brutality of his nightmares. In his sleep, his carefully constructed mental barriers would break down and his mind would replay the battles he had fought. In the depths of the night he would see again the faces of the men he had killed, alongside the images of those he had lost.
He waited patiently in the dank alley. He could feel the stitches that held his wound together pulling as he flexed his hand. He had been lucky. Sarah’s pistol had lacked the power to kill him, even at such close range. If she had been armed with a modern revolver, Jack knew he would now be dead. He grimaced at the thought.
The British expeditionary force had made its way back to the main encampment outside Bushire. It had taken them two days, the exhausted redcoats struggling through the torrential rain that had barely stopped falling since the last gunshots of the battle had died away. It was a battered and bedraggled column that arrived back at the camp, but the redcoats marched with pride, their victory going a long way to dull the weariness. They had achieved much, and now they could recuperate and gather their strength ready for the next phase of the campaign.
But not all the men who had fought on the battlefield at Khoosh-Ab would be left to enjoy the short peace. For Jack had to complete his bitter task quickly and without delay now that the army had returned. The canker had to be rooted out and destroyed before it could do any more harm.
He picked at the wall of the house that backed on to the grim alley. The mud was soft and friable and he used a fingernail to prise away a tiny white shell that had been buried deep within it. He rolled the shell between his fingers, using it to unlock the muscles in his hand, releasing a little of the tension that he could not shake.
He heard footsteps and straightened up, dropping the shell to the ground and easing back into the gloom, hiding his profile in the darkness.
He watched as the figure carefully picked its way into the alley. The man he had summoned advanced cautiously, as if not trusting the shadows. It was exactly as Jack had planned.
‘Sarah?’
Jack smiled. The man he had wanted to meet had taken the lure.
‘Sarah, are you there?’
Jack heard the tetchy note in the hissed challenge. He closed his eyes and inhaled as deeply as his wounds would allow, summoning the strength he would need. Ballard had not forgiven him for letting Sarah Draper go free. He had allowed Jack to put his wild scheme into practice, giving his subordinate a final opportunity to seek redemption.
Jack stepped out of the shadows to stand in the meagre light that penetrated the gloom of the alleyway.
‘Good evening, Commodo
re.’
The figure stopped abruptly. It was too dark for Jack to see the reaction on the creased and weather-beaten face, so he walked forward, revealing himself fully to the man who had been tricked into the meeting in the middle of the night.
‘Expecting someone else?’
Fetherstone straightened up. ‘Captain Fenris.’
The revolver was heavy in Jack’s left hand. ‘Sarah is not here. Your accomplice has fled the scene.’
The naval officer smiled. ‘You tricked me into coming. And you come alone.’ He sighed. ‘That tells me you are here to kill me.’
Jack shook off the chill of the words. He had killed so many men, but never in cold blood. ‘You are a spy. You knew the risks.’ His voice was cold, emotionless. ‘You know the penalty.’
Fetherstone laughed. ‘Quite true, Jack.’
Jack started. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘It was in Ballard’s papers. I rather suspect he left your identity in his documents as some kind of safeguard. Just in case you decided to do him in.’ Fetherstone’s eyes never once left Jack’s face. He stared at him, watchful and calm. ‘So now he unleashes his killer.’ The naval officer shook his head, clearly affronted. ‘Perhaps I underestimated him.’
‘Perhaps you underestimated all of us.’ Jack lifted the revolver.
Fetherstone saw the movement and straightened up; a final display of defiant courage. ‘I think not.’
‘A pity.’ Jack felt the stirrings of anger. ‘I think we could surprise you.’
Fetherstone laughed, his scorn revealed. ‘You think the fact that you are a charlatan should surprise me. What a pathetic creature you are.’
‘Better a fraud than a traitor.’ Jack reacted to the scorn.
‘You are a simple soul, Jack Lark. You cannot understand. You look at my actions and you see betrayal. Yet you know nothing. Nothing!’ For the first time, Fetherstone’s urbane charm cracked. ‘Do not presume that a man like you can understand a man like me.’
‘I understand a spy. I understand that men died as a result of your actions.’
Fetherstone shook his head. ‘You understand nothing. What are the lives of a few soldiers? If they didn’t die today, they would die tomorrow. They mean nothing.’
The Devil's Assassin (Jack Lark) Page 32
