City of Jasmine (28 page)

Gabriel lay on his back, breathing hard. After a long moment, he staggered to his feet and pulled me up. There were still clots of desert earth in my hands as I walked, and I forced my fingers to open, leaving the dirt and sand behind. He retrieved the Cross and shoved me towards the plane. “It hasn’t hit you yet. Get out of here before the adrenalin wears off and you start to shake.” He pushed me up onto the wing and into the cockpit. He put my leather helmet onto my head and tightened the buckle. “Evie, can you hear me?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Now forget what you just saw. Don’t think about it. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. For the first time, my pilot’s training seemed to have deserted me and all I could do was stare at my hands. Seeing a few deserters killed from the air had been nothing compared to the bloody awfulness of watching pieces of Daoud strewn across the sand.

He hesitated. “Christ,” he muttered. Then he reached into the cockpit and hauled me out bodily, dropping me neatly into the rear cockpit. He buckled my safety belt and took my goggles, strapping them onto his own head.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m flying the goddamn plane,” he yelled. He strapped himself in and before I could object, we were airborne, leaving all the carnage behind us. He had never told me he could fly, but if that night had taught me anything, it was never to underestimate Gabriel Starke again. I sat in the rear cockpit, letting the cold wind rush past me as he flew us back to the village. He pointed us in the right direction, pulling us high to avoid the hills he could not see. By the time we were past them, a living line of light beckoned us down to the desert below. It was the women of the village, organised by Aunt Dove to stand with torches to guide the
Jolly Roger
home.

He brought her down with a bump that would have sent me flying out of the cockpit if he hadn’t buckled me in, but we were down. Within moments he’d unstrapped me and set me on my feet. I fell to my knees, washing my hands in the sand as the Bedouin did before prayers. Without a word, Gabriel scooped me up and carried me to the tent.

Aunt Dove peered over his shoulder. “What’s happened to her? Is she all right?”

“Perfectly fine,” he answered. “Just a bit of shock. She needs warming up and some whisky. Take care of her, will you?”

He dumped me down like a sack of meal and left. He must have told the women their men were coming home safely, for the cheering began. They carried on outside while Aunt Dove tended to me. She helped me wash and change into a soft robe of green silk. She poured me a stiff drink and tucked me in then, telling me to rest, but when she left, lowering the flap of the tent behind her, I could not close my eyes. I saw Daoud, or the bloodied bits of what was left of him, lying on the dark desert floor.

“You’re thinking about it too much,” said the voice from the tent flap. I opened my eyes to see Gabriel, washed and changed, his hair still damp and his robes fresh and clean. His bruises were spectacular, but the blood had been washed from his face and hands, and he was carrying a tray of food and a familiar goatskin bundle.

“Are the others back?”

“Just now. They’ll probably be up the better part of the night making merry and they’re planning a feast for tomorrow. Ought to be quite the party,” he added, coming near. He brought the tray of food down next to me. “I wasn’t certain if you were hungry.”

“Are you?” I asked, sitting up.

“Ravenous,” he admitted.

“So am I. I’m a little ashamed,” I confessed. “That’s why I came over so funny, you know. It wasn’t because of what you did to him. It was because I wanted you to. I knew what you intended as soon as you yelled ‘Contact.’ I understood what was going to happen and I didn’t even hesitate. I never thought I had it in me,” I said soberly. “And if I suspected, I would have thought there would be some regret or some guilt with it. But there isn’t. I’ve been lying here, waiting for it to come, expecting the shame or horror to set in. But I haven’t felt a damn thing except plain, quiet satisfaction. Can you explain that?”

He gave me a knowing look and poured out a whisky for each of us, raising his in a toast.

“It means you’re one of us, pet. You’re a Lost Boy, too.”

We ate then, the usual Bedouin fare, cold meat and fruits and flatbread with nuts and some little pastry with honey. We said little until we had washed our fingers in the bowl of rosewater and poured out more whisky.

“This is very good whisky,” I told him at one point.

“A little single malt courage for the ordeal to come.”

“What ordeal?”

His expression was grave. “The one where I answer all the questions you’ve had. The one where I make a clean breast of it and confess all. The one where I try to begin to apologise for everything I’ve put you through.”

I took another sip. Oh, it was lovely stuff, burning right through all my resentments and doubts and leaving nothing but clean and pure instinct behind it.

“No,” I said slowly.

“No?” His dark brows arched skyward.

“No. I mean, yes, I want you to tell me all about it. But not now. After.”

“After what?” he asked, his brows still raised.

I rose onto my knees and leaned forward, putting my arms about his neck. He opened his mouth, but if he meant to speak, I had other plans.

I had never undressed him before. I had never taken him before. But that night I did as I pleased with him. He was very still at first, holding himself in check as if he did not dare to move. Did he wonder if I was a mirage? Did he wonder if speaking or touching me would somehow break the spell? I did not ask him. But when I pulled his clothes away and covered his body with my own, his perfect control suddenly snapped. He gave a great shudder and rolled me roughly onto my back, moving within me and twisting his hands in my hair until I cried out his name into his own mouth.

Afterwards, we lay together, damp and still in the warmth of the tent and the silence between us was like a perfect living thing, holy and complete. It was enough to be together. The questions and the imperfect answers could wait, and wait they did until we had slept and roused again. It was leisurely then, as if we had all the time in the world and no one to care. Old pleasures were resurrected and new ones discovered. We made no promises and expected none. It was flesh and bone, striving together and stoking new fires. He murmured poetry, snatches of Marvell and Donne and even some Traherne, as he traced his lips over each part of me as he spoke. “‘These little limbs, these eyes and hands which here I find, these rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins, where have ye been?’”

When it was finished, we picked over the remains of the food, nibbling bits of fruit and bread as we lounged on leather cushions.

“You have spoilt me for another life, Evie,” he said lightly. “I think I shall take up the job of pasha in an eastern
harim.
All this lying about suits me.”

“You’ll need at least three more wives. I can’t be responsible for keeping you occupied all the time,” I returned.

He gave me a serious look. “I know you want answers. Ask.”

“Anything?”

“Anything and everything. I owe you at least that much.”

I sat up and put the pieces together as best I could. “All the time I thought you were dead, you were here, in the Badiyat ash-Sham. Have I got that much right?”

He shrugged. “For the most part, yes. There were the odd trips abroad, but I’ve spent the better part of five years right here.”

“And during the war, you were acting the part of the Saqr, this mythic sort of hero who organised the Bedouin into active resistance against the Turks?”

He winced a little. “I wouldn’t put it like that. The Saqr is no myth. He’s a very real fellow, you know—just a bit of theatre, something for the Bedouin to rally around.”

“As Colonel Lawrence was doing in the south?”

“Only with rather fewer movie cameras about,” he said with a smile. “I warned you not to romanticise it too much, Evie. I was simply an agent provocateur, albeit one with a rather dashing wardrobe. My job was to keep them focused on the task at hand, which was keeping the Turks too occupied to help the Germans. And, in time, to help chuck them out altogether so the Arabs could have their own lands back.”

His mouth tightened a little on the last sentence, and I began to understand where the trouble lay.

“Who did you work for? The same Arab Bureau in Cairo that directed Colonel Lawrence?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. My orders came directly from London.”

“London? But there are field offices in Cairo and Baghdad—” I broke off. “You weren’t part of a regular mission, were you?”

He sighed and helped himself to a date. “My orders came from a place in London known only to a handful of rather important people.”

“What place is that?”

“It has no official name, and even if it did, no one who knew of it would dare say it aloud. Those of us who work there refer to it as the Vespiary.”

“The wasp nest?”

His smile was tortured. “An apt description. It’s a hive of activity with no one in this part knowing much about that part. Only a very few people know all that happens there.”

“Prime Minister being one of them?”

A brief smile flickered over his mouth. “He might know my name.”

“And this Vespiary oversaw your activities here?”

“And other places,” he said carefully.

I stared at him, openmouthed. “China. You were working in China, weren’t you? The whole of that trip you were so odd, always dodging off at strange times to meet with people I didn’t know. The peculiar messages, the disappearances. You were working even then.”

“That was when I realised what a bloody great mistake I’d made,” he said brutally.

“In marrying me?”

“In marrying anyone. I was a fool to think I could combine the work with a wife. They warned us when we signed on it was a wretched idea, but I wasn’t really thinking of that when I met you,” he finished, his smile rueful. “I danced with you once and all thoughts of little grey men in little grey buildings went right out of my head. I swear to you, it didn’t even occur to me what I’d done until we were already back in London after the elopement and I was supposed to report.”

“I suppose they weren’t pleased,” I managed to say.

“With the possibility of war looming, they thought it best to send me out on a sort of fact-finding mission. I was ostensibly going to China to do some climbing in the Tian Shan, but really I was there to assess the likelihood of the Chinese coming in on our side if the Germans pushed us into a war. I thought I could prove to the power-that-be that I could still do my job perfectly well with a wife in tow. Instead, I mucked it up with rare talent.”

I held him even closer, horrified at all he had endured without my ever knowing. “And I picked a fight with you about the fact that you wouldn’t enlist with Kitchener,” I remembered. “I said terrible things to you, awful things. I called you a coward.”

“Yes, I remember,” he said dryly. “Of course, I knew I wasn’t, but it did sting a little that you should think so. I wanted to tell you so badly.”

“I don’t imagine your superiors would have approved of that.”

“No, in fact, it was the one thing they insisted I must never do. They pointed out, quite rightly, that I had endangered you terribly by marrying you at all. And I had compounded the risk by bringing you along on the mission. I thought I’d been so bloody clever, that no one would ever think a spy would haul his wife around the world on a mission, but apparently it did occur to the Germans in Shanghai. As it was, I barely got you out of there with your skin intact. An informant told me the Germans there were getting suspicious and were forming a plan to take both of us. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“What would they have done to us?”

“I was junior enough in the Vespiary they wouldn’t get much information out of me, but they’d have a bloody good time asking. And I had no idea what they might do to you. It was a chance I couldn’t take. My superior at the Vespiary ordered me to put you on the first steamer out of Shanghai and get myself out the best I could.”

“Tell me how you managed the
Lusitania.
Surely your superior didn’t sink a passenger liner just to fake your death.”

He managed a smile. “No. Even Tarquin wouldn’t go quite that far.”

“Tarquin? Tarquin March?
He
is your superior?”

“Was,” he corrected. “I severed ties with the Vespiary at the end of the war.”

I shook my head. “But Tarquin March! He’s a friend of yours—and the dullest man I know. How on earth did the pair of you end up working for this place?”

The smiled turned nostalgic. “Poor old Tarquin. I don’t think he’d appreciate being described in those terms. Actually, it’s an image he’s worked hard to cultivate. He might just thank you.”

“I can’t make sense of this,” I told him.

“You can if you realise that Tarquin is merely carrying on the family business. The Vespiary was actually begun by his uncle by marriage nearly thirty years ago. It was right when Germany started building up their navy and Lord Salisbury felt it was his responsibility as prime minister to keep a closer eye upon things. He was worried about espionage at home and abroad, and he permitted one of his aides to create the Vespiary with the help of a private enquiry agent. The pair of them built the place into a small but select and highly specialised group. They had a habit of recruiting from within their own families and friends, but always with the tightest secrecy. I had no idea Tarquin was involved until he recruited me.”

“When was that?”

“The autumn of 1914 I had just completed field training when we met at Delilah’s New Year’s Eve party.”

“Field training? What sorts of things did they teach you? How to break a man’s neck with your bare hands?” I asked softly.

A lesser man would have flinched. “Yes. Or a fountain pen or a shoehorn or a bit of sealing wax.” He picked up the thread of his story. “The Vespiary were recruiting a fresh batch of operatives just then with the start of the war, most of us only right out of university. I was chosen because I fit precisely the profile of the person Tarquin needed. You see, it was he who devised the idea of bringing in an English agent provocateur and using him to rally the various Bedouin tribes together. He knew the Arab Bureau meant to do something similar in the south, but he felt the Turkish border was the place to focus attentions. He drafted a list of qualifications he would require and gave them to his recruitment agent—Quentin Harkness.”