“Yes.”
Galba looked up. “Expand on that.”
He fixed his eyes on a point in the bookcase behind Galba, on a red book next to a blue book next to another red book. “I was trained as a French spy in the Coach House in Paris. I came to Meeks Street pretending to be Thomas Paxton, son of James Paxton, British Service agent. You took me in. I used that position of trust to steal confidential information.”
He’d written that in every copy of the confession. Now the words clenched in his throat when he said them out loud. He had to tear every syllable loose from his gullet and guts. Strange that it came out emotionless and dry as dust.
“You stole the documents listed here.” Galba slid a dozen pages to the center of his desk.
“I may have missed some. It’s been a long time.”
Doyle leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Twenty-year-old naval deployments. Gossip from the Russian court. Receipts for hiring horses.” Doyle snorted. “Vital secrets, that lot.”
“I took old files from the basement. It’s still treason. I’ve admitted everything.” He swung back to face Galba. “This is more important. Today, I followed the woman who sent the coded note, to the church in Fetter Lane. I saw—”
Galba raised his hand and cut him off. “Is further action required between now and daylight?”
Nothing could be done, no questions asked, no searches made, in the middle of the night. “No.”
“I have given you four agents and twelve hours to deal with that.” He touched Cami’s coded note where it waited on the side of the desk, still undecoded. “Do you need to return to the streets at this time?”
“Tomorrow. In daylight. I’ll make sketches.” Sketches of the Merchant. Not Cami. He didn’t want them to find Cami in whatever refuge she’d run to this time. And he had to sleep. He was swaying on his feet . . . and dripping blood. He tightened his hold on his upper arm.
“Then we will set that aside for the moment,” Galba leveled his hands on either side of the pile of papers that held his history, “and return to your deeds ten years ago. You admit that you met a Frenchman—your surveillant—over a period of five months and gave him various, largely worthless documents. You killed him,” Galba consulted a page, “with a single stab wound under the sternum, on the morning of May fifth. You were fourteen.”
He nodded. He’d written everything down. There was nothing else to say.
Doyle opened one eye. “That was the man they found in Swan Alley, a decade or so back. I wondered about it at the time. Nice, professional work if I remember correctly.”
It hadn’t been his first kill. “We were well trained.”
“I’ll give the French that,” Doyle said. “They produce deadly fourteen-year-olds.”
Galba turned a half dozen pages facedown and went onward. “After that, did you provide information to the French?”
“Never.” He was expressionless. Anything on his face, any nuance of his voice, was there because he allowed it. It could be just another lie. When you lied as well as he did, even the truth was a calculation. “That was the end of it.”
After he’d killed his surveillant he’d waited, month after month, for the Police Secrète to reach out from France and kill him. No one came. In the end, the Tuteurs had been the ones to die. When Robespierre fell, they fell with him. Their lines of command were broken. Their records burned. They took their secrets and the location of their Cachés to the guillotine.
Galba said, “Did you lie to me or to your other superiors in the British Intelligence Service?”
“I lied about who I was.”
“Other than that.” Galba was impassive.
“I spotted Cachés twice and didn’t tell you.” He swallowed again. “They’d gone English. I judged they were no threat.”
“Other than that.”
They’d come to tonight’s lies and disloyalties, still ongoing. “An hour ago I had a Caché trapped, and I set her free. She’s Camille Leyland, niece of the Leylands. But I need her loose in London.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. Trying to say enough and not too much. “Don’t bring her in.”
“You will doubtless explain why, eventually.” Galba continued, “Is there anything else you have done in the last ten years to harm British interests or the British Service? Any more lies I should know about?”
This room, this office of the head of the British Service with its untidy shelves and hundreds of files and reports, the violin case, the matched knife and sword that Galba had carried on assignment thirty years ago—this room held the center of his whole adult life. He’d made himself someone with a right to be here.
He closed his eyes. Galba and Doyle were both looking at him when he opened them again. “When I reported, I reported as if I were working for you. As if I were an agent. I didn’t edit the truth.”
“I never caught him at it, if he did.” Doyle slid ink bottle and penholder to the side, clearing a space on the desk. “When Hawker’s reporting, on the other hand, any resemblance to the facts is pure coincidence.”
The dumbwaiter rumbled in the dining room, coming up from the kitchen. Giles would be here in a minute with tea.
He turned to the sound and felt the almost weightless burden he wore around his neck. Sometimes the small lies are the hardest to let go of.
The twine caught in his hair as he pulled it over his head. He’d put the ring under his clothes before he left Paris. He hadn’t felt right, wearing it after he’d been found out.
He set the ring on the desk. It was solid, heavy gold, bearing a shield with two chevrons and three stars. He’d used it for sealing letters. Everybody in the Service knew it. He’d worn it on his little finger because it couldn’t get past those bony knuckles of his.
Galba studied it soberly. “James Paxton’s ring.”
Say it. Just say it. “I took it off his hand. In Russia. When he was dead.” He tasted smoke and death in his mouth again, remembering. The Merchant and his men had brought him to the dacha they’d burned down and the family they’d murdered. They made him bury the bodies and heap rocks on top, so he’d be convincing when he described the scene. They’d held him down and burned his arm. Then they pointed west and told him to walk to England. It had taken him six months. “I didn’t kill him and I couldn’t have stopped it. I’d send it to his family, but there isn’t any.”
Doyle said, “The Service is his family.”
That was what Galba had said, ten years ago, to the boy who walked into Meeks Street claiming to be James Paxton’s son. Galba had said, “Now the Service is your family.”
Doyle leaned across the desk to pick up the twine. He let the ring hang a moment, turning. “We’ll take charge of this.” At the bookcase beside the hearth he took down a plain wood box, put the ring in, and closed the lid quietly. “He was a good man. A good agent. We’ll find a use for that signet someday and remember him.”
“He wouldn’t begrudge it.” Galba gathered the pages of the confession together and squared the edges. “We must now deal with this deplorable situation. You should have come to me, voluntarily, years ago. Did you really fear retribution for crimes committed when you were fourteen?”
“Hawker’s still alive.” Doyle settled back into his chair. “I’d call that better-than-average evidence the Service has vast tolerance.”
“You have made serious errors in judgment, Mr. Paxton,” Galba said.
A rattle of cups—that had to be deliberate—sounded outside the door. Hawker carried in a tray with bread and ham, teapot and cups.
His arm ached. His eyes burned. But he couldn’t let that pass. “I’m not Paxton.”
Doyle snorted. “Like to know who you are, then.”
“Do you consider yourself Dalgaard? After your mother?” Galba drew in the corners of his mouth. “According to these extensive self-revelations you’ve never lived as Niels Dalgaard and your mother deserted you when you were nine. I doubt you want to answer to the ridiculous name ‘Devoir.’”