In those Gernika fires, perhaps.
She took a good swallow of whisky.
— Miss West, I could put you on bereavement leave. There’s no disgrace in that.
— Disgrace?
— We’ll come back to that. For now, you must have arrangements to look after.
She shook her head. The new inheritance laws meant that she, and not some absurdly distant male relative, now owned Kurseong House and the small estate in the Kent village of Prideaux-on-Fen. —I’ve already sent word to keep the house in dust sheets. I need to work.
— Are you quite sure you’re up to it?
— Of course.
Neville topped up their drinks. —Good, because we really must discuss the manner of your return to England. It’s caused some confusion here in the department, as your last orders said to stay in Spain until recalled. It looks rather like when you hopped on the Habana, you abandoned your post.
— Children, Freeman, we evacuated children from Bilbao, and they needed chaperones.
— Children change nothing.
— Really? Perhaps the ancient Romans are more to your taste. They said war changes everything. God knows, the Luftwaffe rather upset my plans. Should I have stayed at the clinic and reported on developments by power of mental telepathy? Or should I have stayed in Gernika and hidden in the ashes? Did you care nothing of me when you learned Gernika was bombed?
— You’re an agent, Miss West. I care about your results. But about Bilbao—
— Where else could I go? I finally got to speak with our consul. He was frantically busy organizing prisoner exchanges, for God’s sake, with the Francoists. He asked me to help Leah Manning and then that silly vicar we’ve got posted there with the evacuation donkey-work, so I could do something useful whilst I waited for orders from London, and it was so hard to get any food, and I was surrounded by frightened people, and after all that fire in Gernika, the Francoists are marching closer, and then all those parents in Bilbao begging me to get their daughters to safety, and we finally get some children out, almost four thousand of them, and it’s nothing…
She closed eyes and rubbed her temples.
— Miss West? Oh, please don’t cry. I can’t bear sadness in women.
— I’m not sad. I’m bloody angry!
Neville stood up and turned his back while Temerity blew her nose. —Tell me again what happened in the clinic. It’s an extraordinary story.
— Story? POUM defies Moscow. Should we not be better friends with POUM? By standing aside and just watching, we betrayed Cristobal Zapatero and every other POUM communist. There’s your story. God’s sake, are we to sacrifice our allies?
Neville watched Temerity light and almost drop her second cigarette. —Britain is not officially involved in the Spanish war, so we can hardly speak of allies. As for Zapatero, however unfortunate his end with the NKVD, he knew what he’d signed up for, and if he didn’t know, he quickly learned. Strange bedfellows and all that. But I’m not worried about Zapatero. I’m worried about you. Now, we’ve got a chance to calm any concerns about you deserting your post in Spain.
— I deserted nothing! That NKVD agent—
— Missed, yes, so you said. From such a short distance. And him a professional.
Temerity’s fingers twitched as she rubbed her cigarette case. —I’ve told you the truth.
— All of it?
— Of course.
Not sure why, she’d omitted the business with the name tags. Now she asked herself if helping that same NKVD agent with refugee children mightn’t be some sort of treason.
Treason to whom?
Sweat dampened her underarms.
— Please understand me, Miss West. Another handler might worry about your emotional state, but I know to cut a woman some slack. What matters here is not so much the truth as what we believe to be the truth. I suffer no doubts when it comes to your loyalty. I believe it to be true. And that makes me your greatest protection.
She said nothing.
— Your father always wanted you behind a desk in decrypt. He thought you’d be safe and still using your gifts for king and country, still doing your duty. But you wanted to be in the field. Is that still true?
— Yes.
Neville stood up from his chair and gestured to the isochronic map on the wall above a case of leather-bound books. Blobs of colour, fading and darkening in zones, spread from one country to another, indicating travel times by steamer and rail. Stroking the pads of his fingers from Leningrad to Moscow, Moscow to Odessa, Odessa to Vladivostok, Neville looked over his shoulder at Temerity. —One thing we’ve noticed in the Russian decrypt is bullets. The Bolshies use rather a lot of bullets. At the same time, Stalin has hauled this immense union of states from a medieval existence to what he calls a radiant future. Electrification, paved roads, metros, and radio: how have they done it so fast? Is it like St. Petersburg — sorry, Leningrad — built on the bones of slaves? We need more agents on the ground, Miss West. We need to know what the hell is going on.
On the ground. Temerity thought of the giant fowls’ feet of Baba Yaga’s cottage tramping up dust.
Neville jabbed his finger at Moscow. —Redemption, Miss West. You’ve got the language.
— Will I have any contacts?
— Ah, well, it seems we’ve run into some difficulty there.
— What?
— People disappear in Russia.
Temerity took a deep breath. —Passive listening, observe and report?
Neville pursed his lips, licked them, clicked his tongue. —A little deeper. Short romance abroad, that sort of thing. An NKVD man would be ideal.
She gave a start. —Freeman.
— You’re not going to tell me you’re worried about your virtue? I am well aware you’ve obtained precautions. After all, you didn’t want the pitter-patter of little Brownbury-Rees feet.
The doctor’s disdain as he’d fitted Temerity for a cervical cap, his cynical comments on the loose wedding band she wore and on his own burden of conflicted conscience: Department-issued ring? It keeps me awake at night, you know, granting contraception in the name of king and country to unmarried women who then defile themselves.
Cheeks burning, Temerity forced herself to look Neville in the eye. —You think some battered old Chekist will risk a bullet to the head for thirty seconds between my legs?
— Men have risked far more for such a pleasure.
She stared at her glass.
Then she nodded.
Neville clapped his hands together. —Excellent. Steamer to Leningrad, rail to Moscow. Write nothing down, not even in cipher, because you’d not want to be found with ciphered notes in Russia, now, would you? Our cryptanalysis shows regular interference with the post, so letters, even to the embassy, are out, except as a very last resort. You’ll have two passports but only one set of matching travel papers. They’ll be in the name of Margaret Bush. Oh, I did have fun inventing her. Margaret Bush is not on speaking terms with her family except for her dear Auntie Agatha. So write to auntie once you’ve arrived to let her know you’re settled in, and, if things do seem to be going a bit wrong, get word to the embassy about coming down with flu.
— Flu? But you just said—
— Oh, don’t goggle at me like that. Get in, charm some poor bastard until he tells everything he knows, get out. We’ll have your return tickets booked. By the time you come back, any concerns here about you leaving your post in Spain will have blown over. Yes, yes, I know, you did your best. Just keep your Margaret Bush travel papers and passport separate from your Temerity West passport. If worse comes to worst, you might need your real self. The Bolshies don’t know one end of a British passport from the other, but our own embassy wallahs might spot the fake, and if you need their help, then you’ll need that real passport. Of course, it won’t come to that. I don’t mind saying, I jolly well wish I could go, too, if only to snap a few photos of St. Basil’s in Red Square. Do you know how Ivan the Terrible kept the architect’s secrets? He ordered the man’s tongue hacked out and his hands cut off.