Rogue Spy

by Joanna Bourne

  She watched the hackney till it turned at the corner and was lost from sight. Then she walked briskly toward Holborn, Mr. Smith’s minion sneaking along behind, surreptitious and easy to spot. With luck, he’d never notice when she circled around and started following him.

  Ten

  Allies are found in unexpected places.

  A BALDONI SAYING

  Pax kept his eye on what he could see of Vérité, which was a six-inch swath of her cloak, a gin bottle, and the line of her shadow on the cobblestones. She’d curled herself on the steps leading down to a cellar, holding the bottle balanced on her knee. She was perfectly unobtrusive. Perfectly patient. Sixty paces beyond that, the furtive man who’d followed her out of Fetter Lane was behind the door of a tavern.

  “We could take her,” Hawk said.

  “Not yet.”

  “I could scoop her up all by myself.” Hawk’s eyes unfocused for a minute. That was Hawk, thinking. “I’ll walk around back and come up the street behind her. You count two hundred, then make some noise. I set a knife at her throat and talk to her persuasively till she decides to be sensible. We truss her up and tuck her in an alley, quiet and neat. Then we pick up the Frenchman.”

  “You’d hurt her or she’d hurt you.”

  “I don’t mind hurting her some.”

  “I realize that. You don’t get to do it. And none of that would be quiet. She’s Caché.”

  “Not the first Caché I’ve met.” Hawker scratched his forearm through his coat. “Not the first one I’ve fought with, if it comes to that.”

  Thirty yards away, Vérité lifted her gin bottle out of his sight, pretending to take a drink, then set it back on her knee. On a grimy little street like this, anyone—man, woman, or child—could find a corner and settle down with a bottle and be ignored. Folks didn’t strike up conversations with the drunken, who tended to be belligerent and less than clean. The bottle itself was a handy weapon.

  “She acts like you do,” Hawker said. “Holding a bottle of gin is one of the tricks you taught me. She stalks her target with the same . . . I guess you’d call it the same flavor.”

  “We were trained by the same men.”

  “At the Coach House. Almost makes me wish I’d gone to school sometime or other.”

  “You didn’t miss anything.”

  “Latin.”

  “There’s that.” He had a sudden memory of Vérité and Guerrier out on the training field, waving the stubs of broken bottles at each other, leaping around, dancing, making faces, acting like the children they were. They’d have been ten or eleven years old. Guerrier making jokes. Vérité laughing. Everybody in a circle around them, shouting encouragement, clapping.

  Deadly, deadly children.

  He said, “Be careful when you face her. She’s dangerous, even for a Caché.”

  “I’m dangerous myself,” Hawk said mildly. “I’ll accuse you of the same.”

  “‘But yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.’”

  “Not the Bible.” Hawker frowned. “Shakespeare?”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Jolly fellow, Hamlet. I’m surprised it took five acts for somebody to kill him. I could have done it in three.”

  He and Hawker leaned, side by side, against a damp, slightly gritty brick wall that was crumbling, flake by red ochre flake, to the dirt of the alley at their feet, powdering into dissolution. Give London five or six hundred years and it would reduce this wall to dust and wash it into the Thames.

  He was eroding, himself. His eyes hurt. His mouth was dry as bone dust. Each breath was a long, stinging ache right down to his chest. The undercurrent of pain scraped away at his concentration. Every breath and blink was a distraction.

  Ignore it. Set it aside.

  He kept his eyes on Vérité. Hawker ran his attention up and down the street, into all the blind corners, across the windows that looked down on this road, and up to the rooftops. They’d worked together so long, in so many places, they didn’t have to settle how to divide up the duty.

  Hawk said, “I am officially disgusted with this slinking along the byways of London, hoping your erstwhile female colleague leads us someplace interesting. Let’s drag somebody back to Meeks Street and be rudely inquisitive. I vote we start with the woman.”

  “We’re not voting. And I don’t crack eggs by slamming them with a hammer.”

  “That’s profound, that is.” Hawker began picking coin from his pockets and spreading it across the palm of his hand. “I like that word ‘erstwhile.’ I’ve been trying to work it into conversations. Right. Not the woman. We’ll go to the tavern.” He studied his hand. “Where I will carelessly set ten shillings, thr’pence, ha’penny spinning across the floor. While the assembly scrambles for coinage, we drag your Frenchman off to Meeks Street.”

  “And warn off the man I really want.”

  “The one yonder maiden went to meet in the church. The fellow you want dead.”

  “That one.”

  The man in the tavern belonged to the Merchant. They were always the same type—men who wore the dull skin and heavy, subtly stunted body of workers from the starved, laboring quartiers of Paris. Men who obeyed without question. Men with the angry, shrewd eyes and stolid, obstinate faces of fanatics.

  He’s one of the Merchant’s men. He knows where the monster is.

  Hawker sighed and put his money away. “They know we’re following, even though you’re reasonably skilled in the art and I am extraordinary. Hundred percent likelihood on the woman. Fifty-fifty for the man.”

  “They know.”

  Hawk pulled out his watch, heavy, embossed silver, worn dull, and opened it. “Two hours till dark. We can continue our tour of the public houses of Soho, pausing at intervals to let the Frenchman piss in alleys on the way between. After that, we won’t be able to see him clearly. No loss, in my opinion.” He put the watch away. “Are we learning anything at all from this peregrination around the capital?”

  “We’ve seen a face. One of the men in one of these taverns came to carry a message.”

  “We’ve seen one hundred and seventy-two faces. Half of Soho.”

  “We’ll know him when we see him again.” He took a deep breath and didn’t think about the pain. Wouldn’t think about the pain. “When it starts to get dark, we’ll collect the woman.”

  Hawker said, “That gives me something to look forward to.”

  Grab Vérité. Get her to Meeks Street. Help question her.

  He wiped his mouth and leaned on the wall, unobtrusive enough that nobody glanced at him as they went by. Ahead of him, Vérité crouched on her cellar stairs and watched the tavern like a cat at a mouse hole. Like him, like Hawker, she’d be memorizing every man who went in and out. They were looking for the end of a string that might lead to that bastard.

  Whatever she knew about the Merchant—and she knew something—she didn’t know his lair.

  Hawk looked up suddenly. “What have we here?”

  At the far end of the street, three men left the tavern. They fell in, side by side, walking in step. The door of the tavern swung open and another two followed them.

  Men with a single purpose. A gang.

  Vérité. He straightened and tensed, about to run in that direction. Instinct shouted—She’s alone.

  But this wasn’t years ago in the Coach House. This wasn’t Piedmont. Not Tuscany. She wasn’t one of his men, left in a forward position, vulnerable, unprotected, about to be surrounded.

  And she didn’t need his warning. Vérité’s shadow vanished. Her cloak whipped away and was gone. None of those five men glanced in her direction. They headed for Hawker and for him.

  “Soho Square.” He rapped it out fast. A place to meet if he and Hawker got separated. “Follow the man, if you have a chance. I’ll follow the woman.”

  A grunt from Hawker. Then there was no time for talking. More men came from the alley behind them and suddenly they were fighting
six, seven, eight men.

  Now seven. Hawk had kicked one in the groin and stooped to scoop up a knife, saving his own blades for future use.

  Damn. They were young. Younger than Hawker. Not one of them as old as twenty, armed with walking sticks and knives and—God help us—fists.

  Hawker muttered, “Amateurs,” being contemptuous and also warning him, in case he was about to kill one.

  He’d seen the same thing. So he didn’t draw a blade. He ducked under a cudgel aimed at his head, plowed his fist into a belly, and cracked the man’s jaw against his knee as he went down. Satisfying.

  Hawker was shaking pain out of his hand, snarling. “He had a book under his coat. What kind of man walks around with a book under his coat?”

  “Then don’t use your fists. Kick him in—” He grabbed another boy by his lapels and swung him around to crash into the brick wall. Hard to say what part of the lad hit first, but it made a satisfying thump. “Kick him in the bollocks.”

  A dark shape ran in from the left, behind Hawk, fist raised, holding a brown bottle. It blurred downward.

  Gunshot cracked and everybody froze.

  I’m not hit. It took a second to decide this.

  Hawker wasn’t hit, either. It was another man who’d started bleeding from his forearm down his sleeve and dropped his wine bottle and dropped the idea of fighting as well. He fell back against the wall, looking amazed.

  He knew what he’d see when he turned around. Cami hovered in a slant of shadow ten feet away. She slid her gun back to its accustomed secrecy.

  Damned if she didn’t smile. A conspirator’s smile. Rueful. Guilty. She swirled her cloak and slipped around the corner, gone. He heard her running away.

  Then a fellow he thought he’d already discouraged got to his knees and picked up a brick. That was somebody who needed to be kicked in the belly to discourage him some more. Hawker obliged.

  “She missed,” Hawk said, “if she was aiming at you.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “Well, she missed if she was aiming at me.”

  The man—the boy—who’d been hit was yelping about having a bullet in him. “She shot me,” he said. “Shot me.” All amazement.

  The last three, the ones who hadn’t engaged in combat and hadn’t sustained any damage, edged shoulder to shoulder and slowly backed away. Scared boys. Damn it, who sent scared boys out to attack somebody like him? Like Hawker?

  This was a distraction, a misdirection, a delaying tactic. The man they’d been following had paid these boys to attack or lied to them.

  Maybe he could salvage something. He said, “Soho Square. I’ll meet you or send a message. Get some men.” Then he took off after Vérité.

  Eleven

  Every man contains a multitude of men.

  A BALDONI SAYING

  Mr. Smith had long ago abandoned any particular name for himself. A warrior of the Revolution needed no name. “Smith” would do as well as any for the few days he remained in London. He arrived at the inn through various and secret ways, circling in as a spider spirals in upon his web.

  The inn made the right noises. The innkeeper scolded one of the maids in the front hall. The men in the taproom murmured and coughed. The clank from the kitchen was just right. Not too loud. Not a dangerous silence.

  Upstairs he checked the hall from end to end, drew his pistol, then pushed open the door of the private parlor. He stood in the doorway and flicked his gaze side to side across the room. Two of his men sat at the table. So did the tiresome woman he’d brought from France.

  Everything was as expected. He uncocked his pistol and set it on the mantelpiece, ready and loaded. The woman began complaining loudly even before he dropped his hat on the back of a chair and pulled his coat off to lay over the seat.

  “Where have you been?” She had a peculiarly piercing voice and a provincial accent. “What is the use of sending me for a drive when I am not allowed to go into any stores or talk to anyone? Why didn’t you come with me? Why didn’t you tell me you’d be gone this long?” There was more in that vein.

  She had not seen him on Fleet Street when she passed in the carriage. Good. It saved explanations.

  He nodded at the end of each sentence she said and caught the eye of Jacques, his second-in-command.

  “Everything proceeds.” Jacques tilted his bowl and wiped it round and round with a piece of bread. “No one has shown interest in us.”

  “Good.” An approving nod to Jacques. At the same time, he expended a reassuring smile upon the woman Camille. He was patient with women. They required that homage to their weakness. To Jacques he said, “The work on the carriage?”

  Jacques chose his words. “They have almost finished . . . preparing it. The shipment from Thompson will arrive . . . in the proper place, tomorrow.”

  “Hugues is on guard?” He went to the window and pulled the curtain back an inch and looked down into the ugly, cluttered courtyard below. There was no reason to expect trouble, but he was alive today, when many men wanted him dead, because he took precautions.

  Gaspard dunked bread in his soup and took a sopping bite. “I will relieve him when I have eaten.” They were good republicans, his men. No complaints from them about the inn’s swill. They ate to give the body sufficient fuel to serve the cause. “I’ve hired the wagon we—”

  “I am mad with boredom.” The tiresome, inevitable woman rose from her chair and flounced across to confront him. “Since we returned from the carriage ride, Jacques has stopped me from going outside. Not even for one little walk.”

  You break into a conversation where men speak of serious matters. “They obey my orders. I regret if they have been impolite.”

  “You said there would be theater in London. Opera. Music. You said there were shops more beautiful than anything in Lyon and I would see them all. Instead, I cannot go to the pastry shop twenty paces down the street.”

  He’d promised any number of things. “It is not possible today. Perhaps tomorrow.”

  “I am sick of this tomorrow and that tomorrow and I am sick of this place. You bring me racing along your foul English roads until I am bruised. Now you ignore me. I stay here and stay here, day after day, and you do not take me to my family.” She stamped her foot like a child. “You promised to take me to my aunts.”

  His men ate in silence. Gaspard, who lacked Jacques’ intelligence, smiled derisively around his bread.

  “My poor Marie-Claire. You have been very brave for so long. So strong through all these difficulties.” He flattered her back to her place at the table. “I have explained the danger. Your enemies are everywhere. You must be wise as the serpent.”

  She was wise as a pig’s intestine.

  Once this fool of a woman had been Camille Besançon. Now she was Marie-Claire Gresset, pampered foster daughter of the watchmaker Gresset, a man of some importance in Lyon. She had escaped the fate of her family, rescued by one of the smugglers and given to the Gressets to take the place of a daughter who’d died.

  He’d known of her survival. Of course he’d known. In those days he gave the execution order for every man, woman, and child who died to allow the placement of Cachés. He chose each death as carefully as a jeweler selects the next pearl in a necklace.

  It had seemed profitable to let a member of the Council of Lyon cheat the Revolution and effect his petty rescue. Who knew when he might want to destroy Gresset?

  “You leave me all day with servants,” the woman whined, as all women whine. “Ill-bred, impolite, poorly trained servants who ignore my orders. I don’t even have a maid.”

  Useless herself, she wanted another parasite to wait upon her. “I will see to it,” he murmured. “A day or two and all will be arranged.”

  “Not a day or two. Now! And tell these dolts to obey my orders.”

  As if men would leap to do the bidding of a woman. It wasn’t even the blind arrogance of the aristocracy. Marie-Claire Gresset had almost forgotten she’d ever been a Besan�
�on. She was petite bourgeoisie now, with all the pushing, busy vulgarity of the class. The aristocrat lived inside her only as a residue of resentment, a certainty that she should be better treated than she was.

  Even now, she believed no one would dare to hurt her.

  He patted her shoulder. Like all women, she was gentled with a few strokes. “I wish only to keep you safe. Be patient.”

  “I am done being patient. This is intolerable. You keep me prisoner in this hovel where the coffee is pigswill.”

  “I share your annoyance. These pigs of Englishmen should not be allowed in the kitchen. They know nothing of the art of cooking. Let me send for tea.”

  “The tea is worse. You complete all your tiresome business. You hire wagons. You buy horses. You receive shipments. But you never take me to my aunts!”

  “Soon.” He gave no sign of impatience. He did not resent the expenditure of time necessary to soothe this idiot to complacency. “I promise you, by this time next week you will be in the beautiful chateau of your ancestors. I swear it. You will take your place as Lady Camille de Leylands. You will attend the opera wearing the Leyland jewels. There is a parure of rubies red as blood and every stone bigger than your thumbnail.”

  Ridiculous fairy tales for a gullible, greedy child. He spun the pretty story for her because it was easier to deal with a docile woman than to keep her trussed in a closet. Either way, she would serve her purpose.

  She said, “Now. Today. Take me to my aunts now!”

  “Soon. They are ready to alter their will in your favor, but the impostor who has stolen your place is very clever. Very dangerous. We must meet with them in secret. We must proceed carefully.” He constructed a gentle smile. “In a very few days we will celebrate your return to your proper place.”

  Under the blade. That is your proper place. We guillotined your kind.

  He made more murmurs and vague promises. Then he motioned Gaspard to engage her in conversation and retreated across the room to the peace to be found on the rough benches that flanked the hearth.