Lukas was by her side again, his hand on her shoulder again. “I need to meet with Father Foster. Did you want to come?”
When she blinked, she saw Louvain out the window instead of London. Felt her childhood home around her instead of this flat with 3E on the door. Heard Maman posing the question, only not. Because it had been Father Pudois she’d been going to see, arrangements for Papa’s wake that needed to be made.
She blinked again to clear it. She’d gone with her mother then. She needed to go with her brother now. She nodded.
Lukas stepped closer and reached to brush the hair out of her eyes. Then he jerked his hand away, muttering a French curse under his breath. “You are burning up! For heaven’s sake. You are not going anywhere but to bed.”
“No!” She had to go with him. If she could convince her muscles to move.
He pushed her down into the chair, a stern look on his face. “No argument. I can meet with Father Foster. You must get well. Do you understand?”
Well? As if there were such a thing today. “Lukas.” She blinked, but her head was still as hazy as the fog off the Thames. Sought the words, any words. “Hospital. . . .” That wasn’t right. It had been too late for a hospital. Her pulse was gone. Gone. Not sixty-two. Not even thirty. Zero. Too long at zero.
Margot squeezed her eyes shut. “No. DID.”
Lukas crouched down. She heard him, felt him, smelled the scent of his soap and cologne. “I already spoke to the admiral, ma bichette. He will stop by when he can. He said to take as much time as you need.”
Of course he would. That wasn’t what she’d wanted either—and on a different day, she may have objected to Lukas calling her a doe. But she wouldn’t argue it now. She had something else to say. What was it? What were the words? Lukas. Hospital. DID. Eighteen. “Eighteen.”
Lukas shifted again. When she forced her eyes back open, she was aware of him looking at Dot. “Do you know what she means?”
Dot shook her head.
“No.” Margot clenched her teeth. She didn’t know what she meant either. Her insides itched. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Margot.” Lukas sounded, now, like Maman always had when Margot had spent too many hours up at her desk when she should have been sleeping or eating or stitching or knitting or running about with other girls her age. He pressed his lips to her forehead. “You are not going out with such a fever. Drink something. Rest. This is no time to have you fainting from exhaustion or dehydration. I am going to need you, ma bichette. I can make the decisions about the wake and the burial, but I will need you to sort through the rest with me.”
Wake. Burial. Those words weren’t right either, not for Maman. The words for Maman ought to have been ones like smile and laugh and chide and worry. Always worry—worry for Margot, for Lukas, for Willa, for little Zurie. Worry for money and savings and the future. Worry for Gregory from the park and the other secretaries in the office and Mrs. Parsons from the flat two down from theirs. Worry for everyone but herself.
She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be.
Lukas brushed a lock of hair away from the side of Margot’s face. “Do you hear me, Margot? I know it is louder within your head than outside of it right now, but I need you to hear me.”
Her eyes hurt. Burned. For all their different ways, he did know her. Always had. She forced her head to dip down, to rise again.
“All right.” He pressed another kiss to her forehead and levered himself back up. “Dot will stay with you. I will come back when I can.”
He slid out of her central vision, out of her peripheral, out of her hearing with a click of the 3E door. Three of six. Eighteen.
Eighteen.
Her eyes slid shut again, blocking out the window and the raindrops clinging to it and the clouds on the horizon and the sun chasing them away. Blocking out the faded wallpaper on the walls and the chipping paint on the sill and the radiator to the left of her chair. She could feel the heat coming off it, but still it was cold.
What was eighteen? The door, but no. That wasn’t it. That was just today. Eighteen was more than just today. Eighteen was . . . Spain. Bilbao. Erri Barro. Wolfram. Anthrax.
She went even colder. Eighteen.
“Here.”
Margo raised her eyelids again, though it took three seconds when it should have taken a third of one. A cup steamed in front of her, held in a familiar hand wearing a familiar sleeve of a shirt with 10,360 stitches. Give or take twenty.
“Tea. With honey. It’ll soothe your throat.”
Eighteen.
Margot reached for the cup, though her hands weren’t exactly steady. She would drink it because Dot had made it for her. Because Lukas needed her to. Because dehydration could land her on the floor, unconscious, and she wouldn’t do that to them now. Because she needed to get well, back on her feet, and able to do what needed to be done.
But it wouldn’t soothe her. Nothing could soothe her.
Eighteen.
She cupped the mug in her hands and anchored it against her chest to keep from spilling it. Raised it for a slow sip. Cradled it against her again.
Eighteen.
She clenched her teeth, set her gaze on the windowpane once more. And sent heavenward the only word she could find. No.
8
Sugar cubes. Innocuous squares—or they should have been. Drake turned a page in his newspaper and leaned back against his seat so he could see past it without it looking like he was looking past it.
He’d found a seat in the back of the train so that he could see each passenger who got on. All from behind the cover of his newspaper, so that no one could see him. There’d been the usual moments of tension while the seats beside him filled, but none of the faces that took the adjacent seats belonged to Jaeger, or any of the other German agents whose photographs Thoroton had shown him. He hadn’t exactly relaxed, but he’d ticked those concerns off his list, anyway.
That left only the waiting, the anxiousness of that biggest of questions: Was Drake’s intelligence correct? Would Jaeger be on this train to Madrid, a sample of the sugar cubes laced with anthrax and glanders in his satchel, along with information on which of the freight carriages at the back of the train had the rest of the shipment? Or was this just a pointless use of a ticket?
Something about the movements of the next passenger to get on caught his attention and inspired him to raise his newsprint higher. Compared to the fluid, nearly languid gesturing of the Spaniards around him, this man’s posture was stiff, perfect. He made what seemed to Drake’s eye to be a concerted effort to move like his neighbors, but he didn’t relax enough.
It was something Drake had studied for hours when he first came to Spain to attend university. He quickly grew tired of everyone pegging him as a foreigner the very moment he walked into a room and treating him accordingly. So he had studied his fellow students, his professors, even his grandfather—whose posture was also always perfect, but without that rigidity.
Drake risked half a glance at the stiff man, peeking around the edge of his paper and then hiding again behind it before the man could spot him.
Jaeger.
He was certain of it, though Drake only got a two-second glimpse of his face before he settled into a seat halfway up the train carriage. One didn’t forget a face one had first seen from behind a weapon pointed at one’s chest.
Perfect. With a bit of luck, he’d be able to search the bloke’s bag for the sample and information on the rest of the shipment. He hadn’t been sure they’d end up in the same carriage to start out, of course, but he’d been prepared to move through the others if necessary, once the train was moving, and search the freight carriages one by one. This would save him that trouble. He offered up a prayer that the false beard he’d affixed to his face would help conceal his identity.
Usually he could go about his missions without fear of being seen, but this was a different case. Jaeger could easily recognize him through his light disguise, and there was no tel
ling what he might do then. Anonymity was required here.
His neck went hot at the thought of the bacilli sitting just feet away. From the research he’d done, he knew it was stable enough in its current form—it wouldn’t infect anyone here, not unless they ingested it or, even less likely, somehow inhaled the dust. But if by chance anyone did, if the sugar fell into human food stores instead of animal . . . The glanders wasn’t likely to infect people, but anthrax was a different story. Typical flu symptoms—fever, chills, shortness of breath, fatigue—could lead to high fever, shock, and rapid death if it were inhaled. If it were ingested, lesions in the mouth, throat, and digestive tract would cause debilitating pain, vomiting blood, and ultimately death as well.
A cruel thing to wish even on animals, who would similarly suffer from it. The bacteria originated in livestock, but Pasteur and his assistants had instituted vaccination of sheep and cattle against anthrax decades ago. Science had been doing what it ought to have been—trying to knock it out. Not make a weapon of it. Not until now.
Drake’s fingers wanted to tighten around the paper, but he kept them loose. He wouldn’t feel sorry for the donkeys and horses the Germans were trying to kill—he’d simply save them the horror, that was all. He’d get the bacilli, he’d turn the sample over to Thoroton to ship to Hall for analysis, he and the rest of the team would reroute the larger quantities to wherever his superiors had decided they should go, and he’d move on to the next assignment.
Jaeger slid his satchel under his seat and cast a glance up and down the aisle as he did. Drake tipped his head down a bit so that the brim of his hat would hide any bits of his face that the paper didn’t cover. So far as he could tell, Jaeger hadn’t noticed him. No hitches in either his gaze or his posture, no change in his rate of movement as he straightened again.
Good. One complication avoided for now.
A few minutes later, the train pulled away from the station. The seat beside him, next to the window, remained empty—a stroke of luck for which he silently thanked the Lord. In fact, half the train carriage wasn’t filled, which could work either to his advantage or disadvantage, depending. Fewer potential distractions to cover him, but fewer eyes to see him. He settled in, keeping his senses alert to the goings-on down the aisle. An opportunity would either arise on its own, or he would make one.
Across the aisle from Jaeger, a woman had settled with her children. There were six of them squeezed into the facing seats, including a baby who began fussing within ten minutes of their departure. Drake buried a smile behind his false whiskers when Jaeger shot the woman a look. Given the strict instruction the woman was giving her eldest daughter, he had a feeling she was the sort who wouldn’t hesitate to give Jaeger a piece of her mind if he dared insinuate that her difficulties were an annoyance to him. That could prove entertaining.
His opposite number glanced about, obviously searching for an alternate seat—though moving would require sitting beside someone else, as there were no altogether empty rows. Would he risk moving to a different carriage? Drake prayed he wouldn’t.
And he didn’t. With a sigh, Jaeger settled in and held his peace. For ten minutes, for twenty. By that point, the harried mother was pacing the aisle with her fussy baby, trying to get the little one to quiet. She’d just reached her own seat again—and hence Jaeger’s—when the train went round a bend, she swayed with it, and the baby lost its dinner . . . all over the German.
Jaeger sprang up with an expletive—in Spanish, which testified to how deeply in his cover he must be immersed. Drawing the attention of most of the train carriage, he shouted, “Look what you’ve done!”
“I’m so sorry, señor!” The woman’s face flushed scarlet. She handed the baby to its sister and reached Jaeger’s way with her shawl. “Let me—”
“Don’t touch me.” He sidestepped her, moving down the aisle toward the front of the carriage. The nearest lavatory was in the next carriage in front of them and was no doubt his aim. “Just . . . clean off my seat if you want to be useful.”
Drake’s eyes fell to said seat. And to the satchel still underneath it. Thank you, Father in heaven.
He waited until the agent had vanished and then stood. While the other passengers looked sympathetic, most of them seemed to be in no hurry to help clean up the mess.
Drake opened his own bag, pushed aside the copy of Les Heures Claires he’d packed, and grabbed a few other items that would prove useful now. Then he moved up the aisle.
The woman looked up at him with wary brown eyes. “Do you need to pass by?”
“No. I just thought I could help.” He offered her a smile and held up the towel he’d packed. “I think this is better to sacrifice than your lovely shawl, señora. Here.” He handed her the water he’d brought up with him too. “If you can wield this when necessary, I can use the towel.”
The wariness melted into gratitude. “Gracias.”
It only took a few minutes to get the worst of the mess from the floor. The seat was a bit more difficult, but between towel and water, it too was soon clean.
“Mama!” This cry came from one of her other children, a boy who couldn’t be more than three. “My belly hurts too!”
The mother looked caught between exasperation and sympathy, with a dose of plea thrown in.
“Probably the smell.” Drake nodded toward the water she still held. “See if he’ll drink—perhaps that will settle his stomach. I don’t need it.” He needed her to turn away for a minute now. Just a minute. With a grin, he pulled out his secret weapon—the cologne he’d grabbed out of his bag too. “I’ll just see to the smell, shall I?”
“You are an angel.” The woman turned to her children, leaving Drake to spritz the cologne onto the seat.
And to reach underneath it. He didn’t have much time now, he knew—Jaeger would be returning from the little lavatory at any moment, unless he decided to go to the dining carriage to give the clean-up time to be finished. Drake couldn’t imagine him leaving his satchel unattended for that long though. He was no doubt cursing himself even now for doing so, unless there was nothing important in it.
Doubtful, given the intelligence Drake had found.
Relying on his back to block the view of his hands, he slid the satchel out, silently opened it, and let his eyes scour the contents. There—a small partitioned tray, rubber sealing its glass lid in place. He slid it out, along with the paper shoved in with it. A packing slip. He closed the satchel again and tucked the two items under his jacket as he slid the bag back under the seat.
Standing, he tossed a smile over his shoulder for the mother and her children. “There we go, clean and fragrant. Can I do anything else for you, señora?”
The little boy had settled against her side with a whimper. The other children were reading or looking out the window. Their mother smiled. “No, gracias. You have helped so much already, señor. I am in your debt.”
“Nonsense.” He folded the noisome towel up into a ball and held it up by way of explanation. “I’ll just go and dispose of this. That way.” He nodded toward the rear of the train, knowing she would understand his desire to avoid Jaeger.
She chuckled. “Sí.”
No one got in his way or questioned him as he exited the back of the train carriage. Once on the little platform connecting it to the next, however, he tossed the towel away into the countryside and went empty-handed into the next carriage. Through it, to the next, and the next, until he’d run out of passenger carriages and there were no more platforms connecting them to the following one.
Perfect. Closing the door behind him, he drew the paper from his inner pocket and, shielding it from the wind, checked the number. Second carriage from the last. The last would have been better, but this would do. Pocketing the slip again, he stretched to the metal ladder going up the side of the freight carriage and gripped it. Swung over. Climbed up.
The wind whipped at him and tore his hat off his head—he made a snatch for it, missed, and indulged in a mu
tter. That had been his favorite hat, commissioned in Madrid. Blasted wind. It threatened to dislodge his makeshift mustache, too, and in that effort he helped it along, his skin thanking him. That thing had been getting itchy. He strode along the top of the freight carriage, debated jumping versus climbing down and back up between carriages, and decided to jump—it wasn’t far, and the tops were flat. He made the leap without incident, and the next, and the next.
Then he landed on the carriage. Second to last. He drew in a breath of the warm air swirling around him and then moved to the trapdoor in its roof—easier to access from here than the doors on the side.
A minute’s maneuvering and he was in the dark of the swaying box, fishing around in his pocket for his electric torch. Once it was on, he began the search. Crate after crate took up the space in here, along with barrels and bags as big as he was. But after a few minutes of shining his light along each one, he found the stamp that made him pause. Azúcar. Sugar.
He sidled over to it like it was alive and ready to bite him. The possibility existed that it was just sugar—normal, precious sugar, in demand and in short supply all over Europe.
Possible. But it would have been the most remarkable of coincidences.
He checked the number on the crates against the one scrawled on the packing slip to seal it in his mind. “Of course it’s a match,” he muttered to himself.
So then. He checked his watch. Twenty minutes before the train would approach the switch he needed. His pulse kicked up at the thought of this part of the mission. It wasn’t risky so much as tricky. But he could do it. He had to do it.
He passed the next fifteen minutes in the dark of the carriage, praying more than thinking. Then he thought of his mother, who had said each and every day, “Do not neglect your prayers, Drake. Neglect your chores, neglect your ablutions, neglect your mother”—here she would tweak his nose—“but never neglect your prayers. They are what root you to the Lord.”
The Number of Love Page 9