Rogue Spy (22 page)

Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Plan for both.

A BALDONI SAYING

“We've found the hat shop,” Cami said. “Miles of walking the streets and the clue is here. One of the women recognized that . . . masterpiece. She saw it in a window and thought it looked good enough to eat. She did not, understandably, buy it to put on her head, but she also didn't forget it.”

Cami propped her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table, and watched Pax create a map. He swiped flour together into a pile on the tabletop, took it between the palms of his hands, and let it sift down from left to right. He did it the way a man sows fine seed mixed with sand, evenly, scattering a thin film.

They were at the big dining table in the front room of the whorehouse, sitting on Chinese Chippendale chairs, surrounded by paintings of women in various stages of undress. She recognized some as Pax's work.

She said, “It's Lilith who knew the hat.”

“Trustworthy source.” Hawker paced the room, side to side, aiming annoyance at Cami every once in a while.
Perhaps he was irritated at being called from the bed of the brothel owner, Daisy.

It was late afternoon with the sun at a long slant into the room, but breakfast had just been cleared away and the table polished. Supper would be laid out at nine or ten tonight, when the men began arriving. The women of the house lounged about the parlor and front room in pretty négligée. They wore quite respectable dresses in the evening, apparently.

“Men who visit early gets a bit of a thrill, see,” Lilith had explained. “Makes 'em feel all naughty, seeing us dressed like this.” She was the oldest of the whores in this house and not particularly beautiful, except that she radiated warmth like a stove. “One gentleman comes here regular to watch Luna—that's Molly over there—put her clothes on.”

Cami knew more about expensive whorehouses than she had this morning. Any day one learned something new was a day well spent. That was a saying of the Fluffy Aunts, not the Baldoni.

“They leave the kegs of gunpowder . . . somewhere. Then the empty cart goes north.” Pax drew a line in the flour on the table with his finger. “Up this street, headed back to where it was rented. That's here.” He touched a spot. “Livery stable.” More strokes to show more streets as he named them. He held his breath when he leaned over to study the lines, not disturbing the lines in the flour. Straightened. “Crown Street, Sutton, Denmark, Rose. Those are all possible lines of approach to the livery stable. But he doesn't take them.”

She let her open hand hover over the rough map. “He comes this way.” That was the streets south and east of Soho Square. “Through here. By way of Moor Street.” She took her hand away and went back to staring at the table. “They left the gunpowder somewhere south and east of Moor Street.”

“Well, that doesn't leave much to blow up, does it?” Hawker, tightly, sarcastically polite, stopped striding up and down the room and came over to frown at the impromptu map. “Maybe three-quarters of London. I'd start with the mint, myself. Then maybe the royal family. Or London
Bridge. I've always had a fancy to blow up London Bridge, myself.”

“London Bridge is falling down,
”
she said softly, to annoy him.

Pax ignored this little byplay. It was not the least of his many fine qualities that he felt no need to protect her from his deadly young friend. He made a square in the center of his map, empty of flour. Soho Square. “The man we followed yesterday when you left the Moravian church.”

“Now dead,” Hawker muttered.

“The man I followed on a long tour of Soho,” she agreed. “Drink to drink, tavern to tavern. One of those boring afternoons.”

“Not boring for somebody with his eyes full of poison,” Hawker snapped.

Hawker was one of the several men in London who'd be happy to lock her up indefinitely. His eyes were full of iron doors shutting behind her and the keys sent to problematic and distant storage. No bonhomie in that direction.

“I lied,” she said. “I wasn't bored. I had curs yapping at my heels. Now look at this . . .” She held her hand out flat, palm up, knowing Pax would understand what she wanted.

He did. He slapped the hilt of his knife on her palm. She said, “If you will pay attention . . .” to Mr. Hawker and began marking alleys and side streets, gently, precisely, with the tip of the knife. “The man we followed went like this. And this. And this.” She looked up and smiled at Hawker as one might smile at a large, mean dog who was safely on the other side of a fence. “Look at where he crosses his own path.”

“Staying in territory he knows,” Pax murmured.

“That's good. I see it. Yes.” Hawker, the trail in front of him, forgot to be angry. “We have more. Wait.” He swung away from the table and came back with two of the china comfit boxes. One with small violet pastilles. One with lemon drops. “We have early reports from the men out walking sketches around.”

Pax said, “Anything solid?”

Hawker shuffled a dozen pastilles into his hand. “It is a wonder and an amazement how many shifty-eyed Frenchmen
were lurking around this city last week. Doyle sieved out a few reports from the dross. And these are . . .” Rapidly, Hawker set seven pastilles in place. After a pause he added another two, further south.

“The henchman died here.” She took a lemon drop and set it in place. “The livery stable where someone rented the wagon . . . here.” More lemon drops. “The taverns he visited.”

“The alleys he stopped to piss in.” Hawker started placing more lemon drops down.

She said, “I doubt—”

“Men don't just use any old alley.”

Pax sprinkled flour and drew in streets and alleys ahead of them. They were wandering off the map a bit, outside Soho proper.

“It's not simple.” But there were patterns. Men always made patterns.

Pax drew back and watched them place the last markers. There was a concentration about him now, a driving, intent focus. She imagined him in some Piedmontese farm kitchen, surrounded by rough, hardened men, all of them tired and dirty, armed with a mix of old muskets and new rifles stolen from the French. She could see him listening to reports. Pax was a man who'd listen more than he talked. He'd be totally absorbed, seeing every detail, the way he did now.

Maybe he'd make a map like this on the farmhouse table, using corn meal that could be scattered and erased in an instant. Maybe he'd stand and stare down at it and his men would get quiet.

“This”—she set down her last marker—“is the hat shop where Lilith remembers seeing that hat.”

Pax stood frowning.

Patterns. She let herself stop thinking. When her mind wasn't yelling at her, she could see them. “Look here. The man we were following didn't go here. He went around it.” She circled a space on the map.

“Inns? That's what he's not going near.” Hawker was talking to himself. He leaned close, absorbed. “The Angel? But you have to go through the central court to get to the rooms. Everybody can see you. The Boar's Head?”

“Fielding's Inn,” Pax said suddenly. “Large, rambling, disorganized. That's what he'd choose.”

Hawker said, “They may already be gone.”

Pax was already running for the door and didn't slow down for them to catch up.

We know what we value by what we spend to purchase it.

A BALDONI SAYING

When Pax climbed the stairs at Meeks Street, Grey was waiting for him. Grey held the door open, not saying anything.

The Head of Section for England didn't answer the door at Meeks Street. Pax followed him through the ugly front parlor, where none of the reds matched, into the white, calm hallway.

They went six paces in silence. “The Merchant got away,” Pax said. “We found the rooms he'd been using, but he was gone. We missed him by an hour.”

Grey said, “Hawker told us.”

“The Merchant has a woman and three or four men with him. Stillwater and Tenn are asking questions, house to house, up and down the street. We haven't found where he stored the gunpowder. Probably a good ways from where he was living.”

Grey turned and blocked the hall. “You lied to me. From the beginning. Every day.”

There was no part of returning to Meeks Street that was easy. This meeting was harder than most. “For years.”

“You lied to men who trusted you. Any hour of the day or
night you could have walked into my office and told the truth.”

“I have no excuse.”

Grey had been a major of infantry before he came to the Service. He didn't smile much. He wasn't smiling now. He looked like a man about to convene a court-martial.

Grey said, “I didn't think you were a coward.”

“I did it to stay in the Service.”
The Service was all I had.

The fist came out of nowhere. Pain hit like lightning—big, bright, white, and sudden. Black spilled down over everything.

When the world came back, he was on his arse, his back against the wall. His jaw stabbed agony. His head was solid pain from one side to the other. He leaned his head on the plaster and waited for the hall to stop tilting sideways.

Grey said, “Is there anything else you're lying about?”

“Yes. At least, there's things I'm not saying.”

“Damn you for that. But at least it's honest.” Grey reached a hand down.

He took the hand and got pulled to his feet. The trick was keeping his head level. His brains would stay in the braincase if he kept his head level.

“If you ever lie to me again,” Grey said, “I will kick you into Northumberland. You're holding on to a place in the Service by the skin of your teeth, Mr. Paxton. Don't repeat your mistakes. And now we have kegs of gunpowder to deal with. Galba's office. Now.”

Grey walked away and left him holding on to the wall.

That clears the air, doesn't it?
He'd been dreading the meeting with Grey. Turned out he didn't have to say much of anything at all.

He'd take a brief rest against the wall here.
Yes. That's the ticket.

He didn't open his eyes when boots came down the stairs. That was Doyle's walk.

Doyle said, “Galba's waiting for you.”

“Grey told me.” It hurt to talk. He fingered along his jawbone, but nothing seemed to be broken. Grey was an expert
when it came to unarmed fighting. “I may be just a minute getting into motion.”

“Grey's annoyed.”

“I have figured that out.”

“He's kicking himself he didn't notice one of his agents was in trouble.”

“We're spies. We're secretive.” The edges of his sight were no longer fading into black. Now he'd walk down the hall to Galba's office. That was next on his list of challenges for this afternoon.

“A senior officer's responsible for his junior officers.” They started walking the hall. Doyle was in no hurry. Just as well. “It's the army way.”

“Another reason to stay out of the army.” He tasted blood, but when he swiped across his mouth none came off on his hand. No split lip. Grey had delivered a clean, precise blow, making his point with skill and economy. “I lost the Merchant.”

“You found him in the first place, with all of London to sieve through.”

“We won't find him again. He's in his final retreat, safe and secret. And the gunpowder's somewhere safe. He may already have planted it. We have one more chance at him. Hawk gave you the details?”

“Semple Street, Number Fifty-six, eleven in the morning on Monday,” Doyle said. “I tortured it out of him.”

“I hope you used thumbscrews.” They passed the framed map of medieval Florence. He liked Florence. For a while he'd kept rooms over a bakery there. “I need five or six men, preferably men the Merchant won't recognize.”

They'd come to Galba's office. Doyle set his hand on the doorknob. “Pax, the planning for Monday is no longer your job.”

A lifetime of control kept his voice calm. “Whose job, then?”

“Mine. You won't be there. You won't be in England. Giles is packing a trunk for you.”

“You're taking this operation away from me?”

“Galba's decision.”

“Why?”

Doyle paused fractionally. He didn't open the door. He seemed to come to a decision. “How accurate are your sketches of the Merchant?”

It came to this. Again. The unbreakable, unendurable connection with the monster. “Very.”

“Pax, is the man your father?”

“No.” And then, “Maybe.” It was as close as he could come to admitting it. “He claimed to be sometimes. He lied about so many things, he could have lied about that, too.”

“You look like him,” Doyle said.

And the mirror here at the end of the hall said the same thing. He'd watched his face become the monster's face, year by year. “If it's the truth, it's a random accident. A dark joke of the gods. A technicality.”

“A significant technicality,” Doyle said, very quietly. “Galba's not going to send one of his agents to perform heinous actions.”

“He's not sending me. If I kill the Merchant, it's because I've been planning it since I was ten years old. It's taken me this long to get close to him with a gun in my hand.”

“Makes no difference. A man doesn't kill his father.”

“He's not my father.” He said it too loud. Galba and Grey would hear it inside the office. “I purged his blood from my veins. I repudiate him.”

“It's not that easy,” Doyle said. “God knows, a lot of us wish it were.”

“Then I accept the blood guilt.” He forced himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror. Then Doyle's eyes. “I'll kill him and let the Furies do their worst.”

“Then you and Galba are going to disagree on some major decisions over the next couple of days.”

Doyle opened the door. Galba and Grey were inside. Galba, at his desk. Grey, standing by the window, studying one of the sketches of the Merchant.

Doyle said, “Did you know the Merchant's real name is Peter Styles? He comes from Northumbria and he has a title.”

“He attended Cambridge,” Galba said calmly. “Come join
us, Mr. Paxton. You will not be permitted to kill the man, whatever good cause you have to do so.”

“Lots of people want the Merchant dead,” Doyle said.

Not as much as I do.
He followed Doyle into Galba's office.