— I doubt Marya Morevna had freckles on her eyelids.
— She had courage. Like you.
She shook him off. —Take care of those boys.
The man in the peacoat bellowed again.
Kostya rolled his eyes. —Yes, Comrade Captain, yes, I’m coming! Fucked in the mouth, I hate sea travel. I won’t be able to eat for days.
Temerity almost laughed, then stepped away, calling back over her shoulder. —Don’t let them forget their Spanish names.
Kostya ducked into the wheelhouse, giving no sign he’d heard.
FEME SOLE 1
London
Monday 24 May
— A pity you’re missing Empire Day, Miss West.
Here in a windowless brown office that she compared to the dead end of a bowel, Temerity studied the man she and her father had privately called a fool. Freeman, Edward West liked to complain, bloody Neville Freeman. How he ended up in charge of field agents, I shall never understand. The man can’t think his way out of a compound sentence. The Service is full of incompetence. Once Temerity’s private language tutor and now her handler, Neville Freeman looked timid and plain. He cultivated this impression. In his mid-forties, he combed his thinning brown hair over to one side and oiled it in place. His deep-set blue eyes seemed to hide behind his round spectacles, those lenses glinting in the light. Each word he spoke either sank or puffed his cheeks, and air whistled through the gap between his two front teeth.
Temerity’s mouth felt puckered and dry from too much gin the night before. —One hardly expects holidays in the Service.
— Quite. Please, sit down.
She did so, glancing at the isochronic map on the wall. Holidays? A nice little sea voyage, Bilbao to Southampton on the Habana, a ship built for eight hundred and carrying four thousand, rough seas and resultant mess, and the decorations at the Southampton docks, pennants and ribbons and flags left over from the coronation of George VI, pennants and ribbons and flags gone limp with rain and now leaking dye, thought to signal a sufficient welcome for child refugees. After all, the decorations had been good enough for a king. Oh yes, a holiday to remember.
Neville pulled out his desk chair, scraping it on the floor. —Please, let me offer my condolences on the death of your father.
She busied herself with her cigarette case; the cloisonné felt so cool and smooth beneath her fingertips. —Thank you.
— Our Russian cryptanalysis won’t be the same without him. He had an astonishing gift for languages. I rather admired him for refusing to use the title. ‘Just call me West,’ he always said. And you, too. I should call you Lady Temerity, yet it’s Miss West who sits before me. I always said of your father, even when we disagreed, and we disagreed rather a lot, that he was a man who understood his debt to the empire. Your grandfather made his fortune on Darjeeling and Simla tea, wasn’t it?
Temerity’s eyes glittered. —Tea, prostitution, and opium. And for that, he was made a peer.
— Yes, well, that was a long time ago. Was your father ill before you left for Spain?
Temerity told herself not to think of her last conversation with her father. —Run down, I thought. We had Spanish flu in ’18, not long after my father came back from overseas. My mother and my brother died. It damaged my father’s lungs. He was prone to pneumonia, came down with it every few winters.
— You look rather run down yourself, Miss West. When did you last eat a decent meal?
— Lamb chops and asparagus were hard to come by, I admit, Spain being a war zone and all.
Neville raised his eyebrows. —Quite.
Eyes on her handbag, Temerity lit a cigarette. She knew Neville expected her to lean in so he could light it for her. She’d not got the patience for such games, not today. —Do you know who had the gall to send me flowers?
— Half the men in London, I would imagine.
Temerity decided to ignore that. —A sympathy bouquet, I mean. William Brownbury-Rees.
Neville gave a reassuring smile. —Yes, that was a bother, but surely it’s all sorted out now.
— Freeman, did you hear me? He sent flowers to my flat. He knows my real name, and he knows where I live. How did he find me?
— Burke’s Peerage?
— Very funny.
— Perhaps he’s just smart.
— Certainly not.
— Then he had help. The British Union of Fascists has members in distressingly high places. All the more reason MI5 needs to keep an eye on them.
Temerity recalled the thud of her head bouncing on the floor as Brownbury-Rees pinned her and called her a treacherous whore, the taste of his blood when she bit through his lip, the high scream as she managed to grasp and twist his scrotum. She exhaled a long stream of smoke. —I want to bring charges.
— Not wise.
— I beg your pardon?
— First, it will draw too much attention to Five’s activities, and Five won’t be in a mood to help, not after you transferred out to join us in SIS. Second, you were in a compromising position. How did you describe it in your report? ‘He’s eating out of my hand.’ Perhaps that’s why it didn’t sound quite like what you said. And spare me the hard-as-nails act. I knew you when you had spots.
Temerity shut her eyes. Neville’s gaze, that steady gaze of evaluation — a butcher deciding where best to cut meat — could still unsettle her. Polyglot Neville Freeman had, during a self-imposed exile from the Service, worked for Edward West as a modern languages tutor, instructing adolescent Temerity. Delighted with her own gifts for languages, Temerity had sacrificed Roedean and returned home to Kurseong House for intensive study of German, French, Italian, and Spanish, with some headway into Danish. Neville admitted defeat when Temerity announced she wished to learn Russian. Edward, with some help from Five, found an impoverished White Russian émigré, one Count Ilya Ostrovsky, happy to offer lessons in exchange for a room of his own and something decent to eat. He got both at Kurseong House. As Temerity progressed in Russian, nearing sixteen, she felt like the main character in a play about to start, the audience murmuring just beyond drawn curtains. Her father, her Aunt Min, Neville Freeman, and Count Ostrovsky all seemed to expect her to follow a clear path — clear to everyone except Temerity. Then Neville muddied the view one spring afternoon by reaching across the table to grasp his student’s hand and stare at her in blatant desire. Frightened and repelled, Temerity snatched her hand back, upsetting the loose pages of her latest German composition. Edward and Ilya walked in on this situation, their quiet but intense conversation in Russian falling silent. Neville Freeman left Kurseong House the next day. The Secret Service had welcomed him back, polyglots always in high demand, and Temerity, like her father, felt only irritation and not surprise when, years later, she found herself reporting to Neville Freeman. The man’s a damned fool, Edward often said, and he’s a symptom of everything that’s wrong with the Service: not enough training, not enough cash, and not enough brains. No, we’ve got the likes of Neville Freeman wasting our best resources on risky operations. He seems to think capable polyglots grow like rhubarb. How he got to a position of command, I’ll never know.
Glass clinked as Neville poured whisky into two glasses and passed one to Temerity. Then he pronounced his judgment on the matter of Brownbury-Rees. —We shall do nothing. Chin-chin.
Temerity just stopped herself from telling Neville to go to hell. The words had reached her tongue with frightening speed. Raw. She felt raw, as if all courtesy, all restraint, had burned away.