That was unexpected. “Thank you.”
“You’re going to be with Pax, looks like. He’ll need somebody who can watch his back. Today, we’ll watch yours. Now I will blend into the passing scene by repairing a window.” He inspected a small, dirty window that led to some cellar room. “This one, I think.”
“It’s not broken,” she said.
Hawker’s sideways kick was too fast to see. There was little noise and most of the glass fell inward.
Hawker said, “Now it is.”
“I don’t suppose you actually know how to fix a window,” Pax said.
“No idea.” Hawker was already taking a sheet of glass and a half dozen miscellaneous tools out of the basket. He squatted to inspect the window. “That is why I am just going to pretend to fix it.”
Her watch fitted into one of the little pockets sewed into the sleeve of the dress. She took it out again, as much to hold it as to open it and read the time.
“How long?” Pax said.
“Fifteen minutes.” Now that the time was so short, she wished it would hurry by. “This’ll be over, one way or the other, in an hour.”
“We’ll go back and eat afterward, I imagine. What are they cooking?”
“Cooking?” Her mind seemed perfectly blank. She knew someone had talked about this. “I don’t—Fish. We’re having fish. Whatever they found at the market. And soup with sausages. I’d forgotten how much I missed soup with sausages.”
“Then we’ll eat soup, and revel in it.” Pax held her in his complete attention. He also watched Semple Street with that same complete attention. As did Hawker.
As did she. Semple Street looked almost unreal. Like a stage setting waiting for the actors. “There’ll be something with apples for dessert. There was a big bowl of them beside the sink.”
A portly citizen—he was completely a civilian and bystander in this matter—emerged from his house and turned left, walking briskly, leaving the scene and the interesting events to come. He lifted his hat politely to a pair of women who stood at their door, chatting and wearing particularly ugly bonnets.
Carriages passed, but none of them contained the Merchant. Not yet.
Pax said, “I like apples. I remember the time we went over the wall, hunting them.”
At the Coach House.
They must have been mad. Thinking back, that was the only explanation. But the two of them used to slip over the wall and go stealing in town. They stole food. The Cachés were kept hungry.
The apple expedition had been especially satisfying. They’d stolen a few dozen from vendors in the market on the quai de la Tournelle and sneaked a basket back over the wall. Then all of them had gorged on apples—two apiece, an amazing feast—in the back of the practice field behind the targets and bales of hay and old benches. Not a scratch on anyone. No one beaten for it. A wholly successful operation.
A good thought to carry with her today.
Reluctantly, she opened the watch and turned the face to Pax, silently. She felt cold inside and strange.
“It’s time,” Pax said.
She’d planned to walk away from him, calmly and bravely, as a soldier parts from a comrade to go to battle. But he took her wrist and pulled her to him and kissed her, strongly and thoroughly.
He said, “I love you. Be careful. We’ll move in when you give the signal.”
She’d been cold, so cold, inside. Now she carried that fire away with her, in her belly.
Pax returned to his selected piece of shadow where his choice of clothes made him invisible.
Hawker went on repairing the window, looking knowledgeable, using the tools pretty much at random. “It’s not the code,” Hawker said, just loud enough for him to hear. “It’s her.”
“I know.” It had been obvious from the start the Merchant was after Cami. “She knows.”
“There’s about no documents to decipher from Mandarin yet. It’s too new.” Hawk tap-tapped at jagged glass. “And we’d stop using it the day she disappeared from Goosefat-on-Tweed anyway. She could hand the real code over this morning, down to the last orange pip, wrapped up in a red bow and stamped by the post office. Everybody’s warned. It’s worthless.”
“If he wanted codes, he would have kidnapped one of the Leylands and beaten it out of an old woman. This is too elaborate for that. He’s wanted Cami, and only her, from the beginning.”
“Now he’s got her.” Hawk went on calmly scraping putty. “He’s brought Cami to this street, this morning, at this hour. We can assume that’s exactly what he wants. I’m glad somebody’s pleased with this morning’s work.”
“We’ve handed her over to him.” But that wasn’t quite true. Cami had handed herself over to the Merchant. She walked toward him now, without hurry or any sign of nervousness. The wind was strong enough to pull at the curls of her hair. Grey would have to compensate for that wind when he shot. She wore no cloak, no bonnet to get in the way if she had to fight or run.
Carts, horses, and the occasional carriage passed. Men and women went about their business on Semple Street. A child rolled a hoop down the street. The background hum of London filled the air. It was a bright day, an hour short of noon.
Hawker said, “There are a number of us keeping her alive. And she’s deadly competent all on her own.” He picked up a small trowel. “Good choice, by the way.”
“I think so.”
“Probably kill you on your honeymoon, but you’ll die happy.”
“I agree. Hand me that pistol, will you? Is it loaded?”
“Why do you ask questions when you know the answer? Of course it’s loaded.”
He didn’t care how careful and wise and deadly Cami was. A piece of lead the size of his fingernail could take her from the world forever. One bullet. Break the goblet, and life pours out.
Forty-nine
It is not necessary to be brave. The pretense is enough.
Cami left the alley and walked out into the open, feeling Pax’s eye on her. In these last hours he had become a vessel, filled with purpose, solid and dense in his concentration. All for her. That knowledge burned like a flame in the back of her mind, giving off warmth. She was not alone.
She picked up her skirts as she stepped into the street, glancing left and right. The sniper was set up behind that window. Baldoni—her blood, her family—waited at both ends of the street, armed and ready, none of them in sight. Service agents practiced their form of well-armed subtlety behind some of the closed doors up and down the street. There were seven of them, six men and a woman.
Pax was one of them still. He didn’t believe that, but it showed in every word they spoke to him. In their faces. The fraternity of the Service had closed ranks around him.
This motley, disjointed, powerful, and clever crew was going to take the Merchant alive. It would be done. Had to be done. It was too late to wonder if there’d been better choices along the way. It was far too late to back out now.
She narrowed the world to here and now. Semple Street took on vivid clarity and color. The shadows had contracted to nothing, this close to noon. Birds chittered on windowsills. Voices leaked from open windows. Somewhere to her left she heard the sound of a broom sweeping. A fragment of newspaper rolled end over end in a gust of wind. A cat sat, artistically arranged on its doorstep. Women in black, heads together, talking, had settled in for the duration. A window opened and a small rug took an airing, shaken out.
She came to Number Fifty-six, to her own particular square of pavement, the exact cobbles, and set her feet firm and a little apart, ready to run or fight or be shot by one of the many men who might do that. It was taking her post as a soldier on the battlefield does, resigned and scared.
She could sense eyes on her, like the faintest itch on her skin. She felt Pax’s steady regard. She could have Pax’s attention out of the whole mixed brigade of watchers.