Zurie blinked and followed an invisible something or other with her eyes, tilting her head back to watch it. A midge, perhaps, or a dust mote. Or something no one but she could imagine. What did babies think about all day? Try as she might to recall, Margot hadn’t many memories from before she was two. On the one hand, it seemed babies’ worlds must be very boring—nothing but food and nappies and the same rooms day in and day out. But, on the other hand, everything was new and yet to be discovered, which may indeed be the most interesting experiences of their lives.
If so, then it was rather a shame she could remember only fleeting glimpses of it.
Movement beyond Zurie caught Margot’s eye—Mrs. Neville, a busybody forever trying to arrange a meeting between Margot and one of her many grandsons. Given the current ratio of men to women in England, she hadn’t any idea why the woman insisted on bothering her with nearsighted Thomas or London-stationed Richard when there were any number of young ladies happy to vie for their attention, but Margot didn’t much fancy ruining yet another Sunday with the argument.
She gripped Dot’s elbow and steered her away from the door. “Mrs. Neville at two o’clock. Hurry and perhaps someone will waylay her before she can catch up to us.”
Dot laughed and made no objection to the increase of pace. “Aunt Millie was always complaining of her. Might we begin walking to your brother’s?”
“I daresay no one will object.” Even Maman understood the desire to flee Mrs. Neville’s clutches. She never made any attempt to hinder Margot’s escape.
They hurried around a group of chatting parishioners and caught Maman’s eye. Margot gave her the prearranged signal for the gossip’s approach by checking the watch on her pendant, and Maman gave her a twinkling-eyed smile and nodded toward the street.
It was all the approval she needed. She and Dot hurried away. Clouds obscured the sun, and the wind whipped down the street, but it was a warm wind, and Margot felt no need to complain. With Dot still chuckling at her side, they turned left and increased their pace still more.
“Shall we walk or take the tube?” Dot darted a glance over her shoulder. Apparently there was no Mrs. Neville hunting them down, given that she faced forward again without comment.
“Walk. It won’t take us long.” And she had a key to the townhouse Lukas and Willa let, so even if their housekeeper wasn’t back from her own church yet, Margot could let herself and Dot in.
Once they turned the corner at the first intersection, they slowed their pace and Dot let out a happy little sigh. “We’ll walk by the park going this direction, won’t we?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t much of a park—neither large nor grand nor a draw from other parts of the city. But it was the nearest one to both her flat and Lukas’s house, not to mention the church, so Margot had spent a fair amount of time on its walking paths and benches over the last three years.
“My father used to take us to a park near our home when I was a girl. There was a little pond at the time, and a family of ducks lived there. I used to love to feed them and tease my brother about how he must be a duck too, being named Drake as he is. Though of course he insisted it was for dragon, not for a male duck.” Dot anchored her hat to her head when a particularly strong gust of wind tore down the street, her eyes alight with memory.
Margot smiled. “I didn’t realize that was the word for a male duck in English.” No matter how fluent she thought herself, it seemed she always found out something new each day. There was always more to learn. New discoveries to be made.
Dot’s gaze remained fixed on the little sliver of green that would eventually unfold into the park. “In Spain, my grandfather and his servants actually call my brother Dragón. They refuse to use Drake—they still bear a grudge against Sir Frances Drake there, you know.”
Margot nearly choked on a laugh. “Are you quite serious?”
“Mm. The Spanish aren’t very fond of foreigners in general, and many are anti-British in particular. I daresay our mother agreed to name him that solely because she thought it would be a great joke—though it was a family name on my father’s maternal side. She was always laughing and playing jokes on us.” Dot’s sigh combined wistfulness with contentment. “I’ll never forget that about her.”
“She sounds wonderful.” Margot said no more after that. Dot went silent, her mind probably sifting through memories, and Margot saw no reason to interrupt it.
Another three minutes and they were at the park, both of them turning onto the walking path without any need for discussion about it. That was something she’d come to greatly appreciate about her new friend in their month-long acquaintance—they had the same inclinations and didn’t often have to discuss such simple things.
Eighteen. The number flashed into her mind again, for the eighth time since she first decoded that update from Thoroton for DID. She sent her eyes heavenward, along with a mental smile that didn’t touch her lips. Lord, if you call this fellow to mind every time he’s in danger, then he courts it far too often. Perhaps you ought to nudge him into a different career. But she said a prayer for the agent, as she did each time his number came to mind.
“Is everything all right?”
“Hm?” Margot blinked and realized only then that her feet had come to a halt and that her knuckles had fisted in her dress. Another blink made the itch at the back of her neck come into focus. Something wasn’t right in the scene before her. “I don’t know.”
She felt her body settle into the stance that Maman always called too still. Each muscle was at rest but ready to move if the situation called for it. She stared straight ahead, but in such a way that she could better attune her attention to the periphery. Her fingertips pressed into the fabric over her legs.
After a minute—or perhaps several minutes, she didn’t bother marking time as it passed in these moments—she turned her head to the side. There. The man seated at the little wrought-iron table was wrong. As was the game set up before him.
Her legs feeling heavy, she left the path and moved toward him.
It could be nothing. A newcomer to the neighborhood. It shouldn’t bother her, Maman would say. Gregory didn’t own the table, Lukas would have put in. The new bloke wasn’t hurting anyone, she could imagine Willa insisting.
But he wasn’t right. He was shaggy instead of bald, bearded instead of clean-shaven, wore a blue jacket instead of a buff, and he wasn’t Gregory.
Her feet halted beside the table, where a chessboard was not set up. Her throat felt tight. “Where’s Gregory?”
Wrong, wrong. Maman would be glaring at her if she were here, her eyes shooting daggers that said, You’re being rude, Margot. But she couldn’t even manage a smile to soften her question.
The man glanced up at her but then back down to his board, his lips moving silently. His eyes didn’t seem to focus on her. His fingers twitched, and he coughed.
Dot moved up behind her. “Margot?”
She drew in a deep breath. The English had a saying about flies and honey—though she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to catch this particular fly or shoo him away. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. But Gregory Westrom is usually here this time of day. Are you meeting him? Playing a new game together?”
The man didn’t bother looking up again. His twitchy fingers lifted from the table and moved to the game board. For a moment they hovered over one of the black stones. Then, with a spasm, he moved it to another intersection of the lines.
Margot winced. A stupid move, even though he seemed to be playing no one but himself. Though rarely did anyone appreciate her pointing out such things.
Dot edged forward another step. “What game is that? I don’t recognize it.”
Margot swallowed. That was part of the wrong. She didn’t know anyone in England who played this game. Didn’t know anyone who did at all, aside from the German officer who had occupied their home when they were in Brussels after the invasion. In her head, it was his voice that sounded, though it emerged from h
er lips in her own tones. “It is called Go. From the Han Chinese empire, but it has become quite popular in Germany.”
“Germany?” Dot jerked away a degree.
Margot sucked more oxygen into her lungs. “Apparently its popularity is spreading.” She could still feel the smooth round stones against her fingers if she tried hard enough. Still remember sitting for hours at that game board in Brussels, trying not to be too clever in her play, lest the Generalleutnant realize she was more than what she could safely admit to being.
He’d seen anyway, despite her playing like a dunce. They’d had one honest game together before Lukas had found her and Maman and secretted them out of Belgium, into England. Playing Go had been nearly as much fun as cryptography.
She’d been unable to find a game board here in London, and her mother wouldn’t have let her spend the cash on it even if she had. Not to mention that she had no one to play with.
All of which rather begged the question of where this usurper had found a board, and with whom he meant to play. And such a beautiful board, at that, engraved and gleaming. It was a striking contrast to the player, who looked pale and half sick.
“Good morning, Margot. Or afternoon, I suppose.”
Margot spun away from the game board and the scruffy man who was reaching now with his spasmodic fingers for a white stone. An ancient woman, Mrs. Rourke, was settling onto her usual bench, drawing a ball of yarn and a crochet hook from her bag.
Sometimes Maman would bring her knitting to the park on a fine day, and she and Mrs. Rourke would ply their crafts together, chatting about the weather and the news and everything in between. Margot usually had a game of chess with Gregory on such occasions.
She summoned a smile for Mrs. Rourke. “Afternoon.” And then motioned toward the interloper. “Do you know where Gregory is?”
“Oh. Oh dear.” Mrs. Rourke’s face collapsed into folds of wrinkles. “Had you not heard? Gregory died. Tuesday last. You know he’d not been well for some time.”
True, he hadn’t. His trips to the park with the chessboard were about all he could manage. But she hadn’t thought he was dying. She’d thought . . . well, she’d thought he was part of the park, she supposed. As ever-present as that tree yonder, or the gravel of the path.
Stupid. She curled her fingers into her palm. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Had we known, we would have paid our respects at his funeral.”
“Oh, it was a quiet affair, and you and your mother would have been at the office. Just his son and a few of us neighbors came.” Mrs. Rourke blinked a few times. “We shall surely miss him.”
“As will I.” And why, if the friendly old man had only been gone for a few days, was his place already filled at that table? Had the scruffy man no respect? She stepped closer to Mrs. Rourke and pitched her voice low. “So who is this newcomer?”
But the lady just shrugged. “Don’t rightly know, dear. First I’ve seen him. But if he sticks about for any length of time, I’ll sure we’ll learn.”
Margot nodded because it was expected. Smiled because it wasn’t Mrs. Rourke’s fault. And then turned back to Dot because her friend looked uneasy. It took a bit of effort to keep the smile on her face. “Sorry for the detour, Dot.”
“Think nothing of it. But hadn’t we better get to your brother’s house?”
Margot nodded and said a quick farewell to the old woman. Of course, turning back to the path meant again walking by the game that wasn’t chess and the man who wasn’t Gregory. Seeing his fingers push another black stone into another stupid move.
Once they were out of earshot, Dot leaned close. “I’m sorry about your friend. Gregory.”
“Thank you.” It wasn’t, of course, just the absence of Gregory and his chessboard that had thrown her. It was the presence of a stranger with Go. No numbers buzzed a warning in her head, but still she couldn’t quite settle her nerves. Couldn’t quite settle her stomach.
“How well do you know the game? The one he was playing?”
Margot squared her shoulders and forced herself to focus on Dot, and then on the path before them. “Fairly well. The officer who occupied our house in Brussels—Gottlieb—liked to play, and I was the only one around to play with him. I enjoyed it.” And had come to realize, through their daily games, that he wasn’t quite the monster she’d thought him at first. That a uniform didn’t make a man by nature a friend or an enemy.
But choice did. And for every ally, one could be mathematically certain that an enemy existed too. Gottlieb had turned out to be a friend, but a fellow Belgian had proven himself an enemy and had nearly gotten Willa killed when she came with Lukas to help Margot and Maman escape.
Gregory Westrom had been a friend. What of this newcomer, with his German game? What were the odds that he, too, was a friend?
Back on the street, Margot led the way to the redbrick house that looked very much like every other redbrick house in this section of the city. It was far nicer than the flat she and Maman shared, and Lukas and Willa had of course offered them rooms here. But they’d already been settled in the flat, and Lukas and Willa had been so newly married when they found this place. Still, she and Maman spent enough time here that Margot felt perfectly comfortable mounting the doorsteps, ringing the bell, and smiling at the housekeeper who opened the door for her. She stepped inside knowing exactly where to put her coat and how many steps it would take to find her favorite chair in the drawing room. She knew which boards squeaked and how the pipes rattled in the winter.
It wasn’t quite home, but it was close enough. And as she motioned Dot to follow her into the drawing room, she said a prayer that it would feel as comforting to her friend as it did to her.
Das Gespenst hunched over the game board and jerked his handkerchief out of his pocket with shaking fingers. He did his best to keep his cough muted, shallow. It had improved with his last brief venture to the Continent, after he’d been released from hospital. It would improve more, he hoped, with his next trip he’d been ordered to take.
But in the meantime, this dratted British damp. He detested England’s weather. Why couldn’t he have been stationed in Spain or North Africa or South America? His lungs wouldn’t be itching like this in those climates.
His gaze flicked again to the old woman with her yarn, then to the park exit through which the two young women had gone. He recognized them both. He’d seen them coming from the Old Admiralty Building on Friday, when he’d stationed himself on a bench near its doors, his back curved against the damp.
His superiors had assured him that it had been an oversight that his ship was torpedoed. They’d assured him that he was trusted, that he was an appreciated asset.
He wasn’t entirely certain he believed them. He’d utterly failed to make contact with the agent they’d sent him here to find, so they could have deemed it a failing worthy of termination. He’d have to prove himself anew. So he’d taken his new orders—to try to get his hands on British codebooks—as a challenge in which he could not fail.
Codebooks. They would be on every naval vessel, of course, with other officers and agents in the field. But they’d also be there, in the Old Admiralty Building, and those would be guaranteed to be up to date. That must be his target.
But how to penetrate the place? The more he studied it, the more impossible it seemed. He’d watched it for hours, looking for weaknesses, learning the routines of those who came and went. Memorizing each face.
From what he’d been able to glean, every woman who worked there had some connection to the Admiralty. They knew someone within, or someone important. Perhaps . . . perhaps that could prove useful. He could find a secretary to give him access to the place—perhaps one of those two who had just left the park, or perhaps someone else. He’d do a bit of research, watch the building some more. Find the most likely mark. Someone capable of giving him the access he needed. It would be a shame to manipulate or threaten the wrong person and find it got him nowhere.
He tucked his hand
kerchief back into his pocket and let his fingers brush the handle of the blade he kept close whenever he was on solid ground. He’d not had it with him aboard the Boynton, for which he was grateful. He’d have hated to lose Der Vampir. When Father had given it to him—not to Heinrich, but to him—he’d made him promise to take the best possible care of it. It had been in their family for generations, and the styling reminded him of his Bavarian home every time he looked at it.
He rubbed his thumb over the pommel and then covered it again with his coat.
“Sorry.” Yūrei came up behind him, still coughing, though not as badly as he’d been ten minutes ago, when it had sent him inside for a drink to soothe it. He sat opposite him at the Go board.
Das Gespenst summoned a smile for his fellow specter. “Why don’t we go inside for our game? Out of this blasted damp?”
“You’ve read my mind.”
Grinning, he lifted the game from its table. With the help of a secretary from the Old Admiralty Building, he’d soon be reading more than Yūrei’s mind—he’d be reading the Admiralty’s.
6
There were moments when Drake felt guilty for sitting at a bistro on a warm afternoon and ordering a meal. He knew all too well that he was eating far better here than he would be at home in London. Knew that he was eating far better, too, than the poor in Spain. He knew it, but he also knew that if he didn’t move about and act like the grandson of Francisco Mendoza de Haro, then he could well compromise all the work he was doing.
And today, he wasn’t dining alone. He certainly wouldn’t begrudge his superior a meal on Abuelo’s bill either.
The Number of Love Page 6