“And that is where you mean to take us?”
“Yes, Mr. Lenox.”
“Very well.”
As they drove Lenox kept a hand on the dagger, but his thoughts kept wandering to Billings, to Billings’s manic face looming over his own in the half darkness. How close death had come again! If not for Sournois, for McEwan, for Butterworth—his mind was anxious and racing, still convinced of some imminent danger. He felt himself still trembling, every so often.
They came to the water soon, and found it busy and bright, a thousand lanterns from a hundred ships casting a flickering yellow warmth over the water.
There were small messenger boats, and for a few coppers Lenox asked one to take a note to the Lucy, which he scrawled out in great haste with pencil and paper bought from the boatman. In fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty, Carrow would receive the message that Billings was alive and in Port Said.
When this business was done Sournois hailed a pleasure bark floating nearby.
“No,” murmured Lenox. “Not this one.”
“You fear a trap?” asked the Frenchman in an urgent whisper. “Very well. We shall wait for the next one, then. But we wait separately.” He walked fifteen paces away from Lenox and lit a small cigar, his hat low and his cloak gathered up around his neck. It was chill out near the water.
The next pleasure bark passed by ten minutes later, and Sournois hailed this one with a flick of his hand in the air.
It pulled up alongside the dock and a gangway was flung out to meet them. A silent Egyptian waited on the deck.
First Sournois and then Lenox crossed onto the ship. Was he being foolish, he wondered? Or daring? He hoped it was daring.
The Egyptian held up a hand to halt them, then held up four fingers and pantomimed payment.
“I am surprised he does not speak English or French,” said Lenox, handing over the coin.
“The more expensive boats all call at this dock,” said Sournois, “and are all run by illiterate mutes. They cannot ask or answer questions. Many of the wali’s family come here, though it is forbidden them.”
The Egyptian led them into a small cabin, hung with lanterns and draped with red tapestries that cast a hedonistic crimson glow over the plain chairs and tables. Lenox, distinctly uneasy, took a seat.
After the Egyptian had gone for a few moments, he returned and beckoned them onward, through a small corridor; the ship was rocking unpleasantly, but they followed him. At the end of the hallway he pointed to two doors, then flashed ten fingers three times.
“Half an hour,” said Lenox.
Sournois removed a purse and counted out several pieces of silver. Then he pointed out to the sea, and flashed ten fingers ten times. Finally he pointed at the room they had come from, and beyond it the dock, and shook his head firmly.
The Egyptian grinned and nodded, and then left them, apparently, to their own devices.
“The women will be in that room, waiting for us to choose among them,” said Sournois. “I will speak to them. Wait in the smoking room, just there. Then we may converse.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
When Sournois came back into the room, Lenox asked him a question before he had even closed the door, hoping to catch the Frenchman off guard. “The British spies who died on French soil—does your government have more than a list of eight names?”
Sournois smiled and came to the small table, where he sat down. From an inner pocket of his jacket he produced a gold flask inlaid with three rubies. “My father was a modest man—a petit fonctionnaire, yes?—but when I received my offer to join the government, a very prestigious office, you understand, he took several months’ salary and commissioned this flask for me, as a present. Before I betray his pride I must have a drink, must I not?”
The dagger was in Lenox’s pocket, and he kept a hand around the hilt. He nodded. “Very well.”
There were glasses on a stand near the bed, and Sournois poured two glasses of dark liquid. Lenox hesitated until the other man drank his off, and then followed suit. It was a liqueur that tasted of apples, very strong.
“Thank you for drinking with me,” said Sournois. “Now, your question.”
“The eight names.”
Again Sournois reached into his pocket. “Here is the letter I received on the subject. Your officials may inspect the stamps and signatures for authenticity. You see, of course, that I have removed my name and offices from the document.”
Lenox took the pages and put them in his own breast pocket. “And?”
“My government killed your men, yes. What’s more, we have a list of sixty-five other gentlemen we know to be in the secret employ of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Should any of them set foot in France, their lives would be forfeit.”
Lenox’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Sixty-five,” he repeated. Remarkable news that: It meant that if this trip achieved nothing else, it had protected these men.
“The money you have paid me, perhaps it will buy their safety back. That is some comfort—to spare unnecessary suffering, all the pink-cheeked English girls who would have lost their fathers.” Sournois laughed, and took a sip straight from his flask.
“Does this mean war?”
“At the moment my government is fiercely protective of its rights. You fear war, I know, but so do we. What would you do if you discovered French spies in London and Manchester?”
“I cannot say.”
“You would not hear, whether or not you are in Parliament, I venture to say.”
“Perhaps not. But are your fleets readying themselves? Your armies?”
“Of course. They can scarcely do otherwise, can they? And yet, we may buy peace yet, you and I.”
“What do you mean?”
Sournois drank again. “Are you curious about my finger?”
“No.”
“Most men are. This same father, who gave me the flask, took my finger away.”
“How?”
“When I was nineteen I was a handsome boy, and the daughter of a great merchant in my hometown, Lille, wanted to marry me. But I had a different idea. She was plump and had … like this, you see,” he said, pulling his mustache. “Hair. So I ran off with my true love, a postman’s daughter. Penniless.”
“Your father took your finger for it?”
“When we returned to Lille he took me out for a glass of wine. He was already drunk, you understand. Our conversation began amiably enough, but when we began to discuss my marriage he grew angry, very angry. Violent. I stood, and he pushed me back into a bookshelf. There was a sword on the shelf, his father’s sword, a man who fought with Napoleon, and the sword took my finger off—fftt—just below the knuckle. Cleanly. Do you know why I tell you this story?”
The ship bobbed in the water gently, and from the next room there was a burst of women’s laughter. Lenox’s grip on the hilt of the dagger tightened again, his unease back. “Why?”
“It is more intelligent to marry for money than love, Mr. Lenox. Our countries must share a financial interest.”
Lenox understood. “You mean Egypt. The Suez.”
Sournois nodded. “Precisely. Egypt. The Suez.”
Neither man spoke for a moment, and then Lenox said. “Very well. There are more questions.”
“Of course.”
For the next two hours Lenox asked all the questions that his brother had told him to, mixing in some of his own, and Sournois dutifully answered, once even producing another piece of documentary evidence. Troop numbers, strength, movement. France’s own spies within England. Information about the men who formed the French government, their martial or pacific inclinations, and private inclinations too, that might be used against them. Sournois told Lenox all of it, in between sips from his gold flask. The price paid to him must have been very steep indeed.