Hawker, in a shabby jacket and cap, held the cheekpiece of the right-hand carriage horse, stroking the long nose and verbally abusing the pair in broad Cockney. They were right nodcocks, weren’t they, letting somebody talk ’em into dragging a coach around? Then he switched to his beautiful, educated Parisian French, misquoting Rousseau. “Le cheval est né libre, et partout il est dans les rênes.”
Hawker made a convincing groom till you heard him speak French.
The horse is born free, and everywhere he is in reins. Rousseau wrote some of the books he’d used to teach Hawk French. It had seemed a good idea at the time.
How many meetings like this, in how many open fields and dirty alleys? How many welcomes by old friends, a circle joined together by a hundred shared dangers in the past?
This would be the last time. Even now, he wasn’t one of them. They just acted as if he were. They all knew better.
He said, “Where’s Doyle?”
Hawker switched from his fluent French to his fluent Cockney. “If I kept the estimable Mr. Doyle in me pocket, I’d inform you of his whereabouts. As it is—”
Hawk hadn’t finished before Doyle appeared out of the dark. Large, ugly, imperturbable Doyle, wearing a scar on his cheek and the clothes of a shopkeeper.
“We been asking each other if you’d show up in London,” Doyle said mildly. He ambled over to lean against the big wheel of the coach, letting the drizzle fall on him and around him without any sign he noticed it. “And here you are, right on time. Seems you’ve brought a bit of excitement with you.”
“To brighten our otherwise dull lives.” Hawker came up to make the third corner of the triangle. “Stillwater is watching Paternoster Row. McAllister is down Ludgate. We are alert on all points of the compass, as usual. You lost that damn woman, didn’t you?”
“He don’t have her tucked under his arm, so we will assume she slipped away,” Doyle said.
“Solely because he wouldn’t let me sneak up on her and lay a knife at her jugular, which, if I had done, would have discouraged her from wandering off and made it less likely she’d take a shot at me.”
Doyle, Hawker, and him. It felt like the three of them, on the job, running an operation together. When he was fresh come to Meeks Street, it had been Doyle who trained him. Doyle who took him out on his first field work. Who brought him home between assignments to be fussed over by Maggie and play knucklebones with their offspring. He couldn’t number the lies he’d told Doyle.
He didn’t want to meet Doyle’s eyes, so he talked to Hawker. “She didn’t shoot at you. She shot a man before he could brain you with a bottle of wine. You should be thanking her.”
“Oh, I will. I will,” Hawker said. “The minute I meet her, I’ll do just that.”
“Then let’s arrange it.” He turned away from St. Paul’s, putting the faint push of damp air in his face. The great dome of the church loomed above, invisible, blocking the wind. He’d been in the high mountains of Italy long enough that he could sense the shape of the countryside from the way the wind blew.
Vérité was out there in the soft night, hidden as only a Caché learned to hide. If he didn’t find her in the next hour or so, he might not find her at all. “I followed her out of Soho, going back and forth, but generally in this direction. She knows the streets—didn’t hesitate—and this is where she was going.” He sliced a line to the west with his hand. “I lost her there, in Fisher’s Alley.”
Doyle followed that line with his eyes. “How did she lose a fine old tracker like you?”
“She had a cutout in place. A classic. She ducked in a shop and out the back, slick as wet ice.”
“I do appreciate a woman who understands the fine art of the chase,” Hawker murmured.
The shopgirl had blocked his way long enough for Vérité to wriggle away like an eel, out a window, into the maze of alleys. “She paid them to delay me. It was arranged yesterday.”
Tell them the last of it. She deserves appreciation for the joke. For the sheer audacity of it. “She went through a corset shop.” The memory of his search of a corset shop would stay with him awhile. “There were customers in the back.”
Hawker grinned.
Straight-faced, Doyle said, “There would be.” He searched in his pockets and found his silver toothpick case.
“She’s toying with you,” Hawk said. “That is sarcasm. Pure sarcasm.”
Doyle said, “You’d recognize that.”
Hawk paced to the front of the hackney, then turned and came back again. The horses kept a watchful, interested eye on him. “She set up her cutout yesterday, so whatever she’s up to is recent. Or else . . .” He raised his hand. “No. Don’t tell me. If she lived in London, she’d have a dozen cutouts in place. She only just arrived in town.”
“Within a day. Maybe two. She hasn’t had time to do anything elaborate. Her escape plan will be basic, simple, stripped down. Classic procedures.”
“Classic is she’ll run straight from that shop to her hiding place. Spend as little time as possible in the open.” Hawk said what they all were thinking. “That means she’s not far from Fisher’s Alley.”
“Gone to ground.” Doyle flicked open the toothpick case with his thumbnail. “She’s got some bolt-hole. Someplace safe.”
“Not far from here,” Hawker said. “Where she will spend the night warm and dry. Unlike some of us.”
“Ain’t you a delicate flower all of a sudden.” Doyle’s scarred smile was pure, amused villainy. “You stand there and grow moss for a bit while Pax and me figure out where she is.”
“I’m not complaining,” Hawk said. “Just pointing it out.”
They stood in an island of light, floating in a dark sea, facing west, toward Fisher’s Alley.
“She won’t break cover till morning, when the streets get busy,” Doyle said.
“At which point we’ll lose her, even if this fog lifts,” Hawk said.
The Merchant was alive, loose in London, running like a rabid dog. Vérité was the key to finding him. There was no chance in hell he’d let her escape. He squared his thumb and fingers and held them up to frame the west, spreading north and south from Ludgate. A space seven or eight streets wide. “She’s in there.”
“Well, that’s useful.” Hawk removed his cap and shook some of the rain off. “I cannot tell you how excited I am at the prospect of searching the neighborhood of St. Paul’s, house by house. We’ll go up one side of the street and down the other, picking locks.” He peered up to where the dome of St. Paul’s couldn’t be seen. “Maybe I can break into the church. That’s a sin I haven’t committed recently. There is not a boring minute in this life.”
“She’s not in the church.” Hawker was capable of invading St. Paul’s if he wasn’t stopped. “That’s too public, too open, too few doors, no defenses. She was trained . . .” Say it. No more lies. Not to Hawker. Not to Doyle. “We were trained in the Coach House to avoid places like that.”
“Some of the best spies in the world came out of that school in Paris.” Doyle took out a toothpick and considered it. “You Cachés.”
That answered a question. Doyle knew he was a traitor and he knew the details. But he’d come to help. No questions asked.
A considering silence fell. To all appearances, Doyle was in deep meditation upon the black mist in the direction of Paternoster Row. Hawker had gone back to pacing.
After a minute, Hawker said, “I’m getting tired of chasing this fox all over London.”
“Vixen,” Doyle corrected mildly.
“Right. I know that,” Hawker said. “This vixen. Tell me her name. I’m annoyed at her.”
“Vérité.” It felt odd, telling them her name, as if two parts of his life were colliding, breaking to pieces, falling into each other. “You’ve been annoyed at her all day. You keep offering to kill her.”