“I will point out what you have already figured out. He set only one man to follow me through London, so he doesn’t travel with multitudes.”
The Merchant was a weaver of grand schemes, but schemes he could accomplish with a few like-minded fanatics. He’d have a small band with him, loyal to the death.
She was stalling for time, and he didn’t have a lot of it. Doyle would get impatient after a while. He said, “Tell me more.”
She reached up and rubbed her nose, buying another second or two. “I wish I could be sure you aren’t working for the French.”
“There are no guarantees. Tell me about Smith.”
She didn’t answer directly. “The problem is, we’re both lying about some things. We’re lies within lies within lies, you and me, like Chinese puzzle boxes. Boxes within boxes.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re loyal to somebody. That’s your nature. Loyalty. I just wish I could figure out which side you’re on.”
She didn’t know him as well as she thought, if she believed he was loyal. The last person on earth he’d been honest with was facing him right now, across this chilly storeroom.
In her bare feet. He said, “The floor’s cold. Go stand on the straw over there.”
“Excellent idea. Thank you.” As she walked across the room, she ignored the pile of guns and knives and lethal instrumentation tucked away under the table. Of course that entirely convinced him she’d forgotten their existence. “My toes thank you as well.”
They were pretty toes. He wouldn’t think about kissing from one toe to the other. Sensitive toes and pink as seashells.
She sank to her knees in the straw, wriggled to sit cross-legged, and pulled the cloak around her, doing a good imitation of a hen settling its feathers on the nest. She picked an angle where the light fell on her face, demonstrating that she didn’t have a thing to hide.
He hoped he hadn’t missed a weapon or two, hidden in the straw. Not that Vérité needed weapons.
She was still talking to herself. “I will entertain the hypothesis that you turned English. If you were Police Secrète, I’d already be dead, killed in my sleep a minute ago. All this breathing I’m doing is the argument you’re not French anymore.”
He crossed the room till his boots touched straw. “I never was French. Let’s go back to that meeting in the Moravian church.”
“It has not wandered far from my thoughts. As I say, I came to be blackmailed. Aside from the surprise of meeting you, all went as expected. I met Smith, who threatened to uncover me to the Service. Treason was mentioned. And the slitting of throats. Also torture and imprisonment and the futility of panicked flight.”
“Many and varied threats.”
“One could almost believe you were there, eavesdropping. Yes. Many and varied. After the threats and dire predictions,” she set her hands free of the cloak and gestured out a dire prediction, “we discussed blackmail like civilized people.”
He said, “Smith wants the Leyland codes.”
He caught the split-second hitch in her breathing. “You’ve deduced a great deal.” She said it calmly enough. “Yes. I was placed with the great codebreakers of the age, the Leylands, my impractical, dithering old ladies. It’s been an education living with them in Brodemere, though not a terribly useful one. Did you know I can now speak four dead languages?”
He caught something in her voice. A sadness around the edges of the words. “You can’t go back to them again.”
“Do you think I don’t know? The note I sent to Meeks Street contains my goodbye.” She held her hands out like cups and turned them over with a dreadful finality. “That part of my life is finished.”
The Tuteurs at the Coach House used to rap her knuckles with a cane when she talked with her hands. Un-English, they called it. Pas suffisamment anglais. They never broke her of the habit.
He said, “I’m sorry.”
“There are inevitabilities.” She turned her head away. “I was always packed and ready to run. I had longer than I expected.”
“Smith promised you could go back, I suppose.”
“For a mere soupçon of a treason I can remain Camille Leyland, he says. The British Service will remain in blissful ignorance, he says. A single code and I’m free of him forever.”
The cynicism in her voice was reassuring. “He lies.”
“I wouldn’t believe him if he recited the alphabet. He wants the Mandarin Code.”
He searched his memory. “Not one I know.”
“At some point you may turn your attention to how Mr. Smith knows about it. I suspect Military Intelligence, myself.” She patted the straw next to her. “I wish you’d sit down.”
“So you can attack me more conveniently?”
“There’s no convenient way to attack you, Devoir.” She shook her head sharply. “No. I’m calling you Pax now. Pax, you have friends outside. You have the British Service at your disposal. I can’t fight all of you. I’m trying to negotiate a truce. For God’s sake, sit down and talk to me.”
“A truce?”
“Some semblance thereof. I’d give you promises of good behavior if it would do any good.”
“I wouldn’t believe them.” But he folded himself down next to her, his shoulder beside her shoulder. Nothing could be more platonic and uninvolved than the two of them, side by side, not touching.
She said, “This is better. You aren’t Devoir, but in a poor light I can almost fool myself into thinking you are.”
It was just as well she couldn’t see into his head. Right now he was imagining how easy it would be to slip that cloak away from her shoulders. In this light, her skin would glow white as the moon.
His mind took off like a runaway cart. Vividly, he saw himself pulling her down beside him in the straw. In his imagination, she was more than willing. He saw himself stroking her shift up and up her thigh, revealing the soft, dark tangle between her legs. Hidden at the center, carmine and rose madder.
Enough. He wasn’t going to touch her.
He slowed his breathing. Wrenched his mind back from the brink of some madness. Curled his hands on his knees, relaxed and harmless.
He was in control. Always. That didn’t change no matter how many damned, beautiful, half-naked old friends he sat next to. “Tell me about Mandarin.”
Starkly, simply, she said, “Mandarin replaces Peacock.”
That was a drench of cold water in the night.
It replaced Peacock. That made Mandarin the new code for private communication between Galba, Head of Service, and the twenty-four Heads of Section across Europe. Code for the most secret of secrets.
He swung around in the straw and knelt, confronting her. “You aren’t carrying that around, are you?”
“Not being mad, no. Even Smith—who thinks I’m stupid as an owl—didn’t expect me to arrive with Mandarin in my pocket. I’m to bring it to our next meeting.” She gave one of her almost shrugs. “Where he intends to kill me. Or possibly kidnap and torture me. We will see.”
She knew the importance of what she’d just said. She watched him, hiding the ferocity of her attention under half-closed lids.
The next meeting. This was why he’d followed her across London. This was why he’d come into Braid’s Bookshop alone. She could tell him a time and place where the Merchant would be. “You have your own plans for that meeting,” he said. “He won’t realize that. He underestimates women. You, he wouldn’t understand at all.”
“I am opaque and mysterious. Tonight, however, you will see my forthright side. Ask your questions.”
They were inches apart, with shadows and silence around them. Her pupils were huge. The chaos of her curls fell across her forehead and around her cheeks, making her look ridiculously young. Under her cloak, she pulled her knees to her chest, becoming small, emphasizing how slight she was. How unlikely it was she’d attack anybody. Nobody could be more harmless.
He said, “Why did you meet Smith in the church?”
“The blackmail letter—”