“Oh?”
He looked back to Lukas and smiled. “It’s a simple matter of mathematics.”
Margot had never had any particular feelings toward the night. It came, it went, at calculable times. She didn’t fear the darkness, and she didn’t love it. It was, and so she moved through it the same way she did the sun or the rain or the fog. Deliberately.
Tonight she strode home along the familiar streets with her birthday gifts tucked in her handbag, rather grateful for the solitude. The dinner party had been nice, all in all. Bout of tears notwithstanding, the night had been pleasant—perhaps even thanks to the ridiculous storm of emotions. She felt strangely better for having vented her anger to somebody.
Why it had to have been to Drake Elton—but it had. And she was . . . all right with that. Her bag thumped against her side, heavy thanks to the book of poetry, and the corners of her lips tugged up. He at least had good taste in poets. And spoke French. Why that should count as a mark in his favor when there were certainly people aplenty in the world who spoke it whom Margot did not like, she didn’t know. Still. The tally marks under his virtues column had increased quite a bit tonight.
Eighteen. The number didn’t echo in that part of her mind where the Lord spoke. It just echoed. Would always echo, she suspected. The number she’d thought of the day she went inside to find her mother gone. The month plus the date of that terrible day. The birthday that came far too quickly on the heels of that loss. The number of the agent she’d prayed for, not knowing who it was. Eighteen. The number, even, of the year soon to dawn.
She reached a corner and hesitated. The air was cold, the night was dark, and the quickest route home was straight ahead. Maman never would have considered turning to the right instead, just to walk through the park. Not now.
Margot pressed her lips together, paused for one more second, and then turned to the right. There was no reason to walk through the park. But she wanted to, and there was nothing to stop her.
At the park’s edge, she turned onto the little brick path, following it by the bench where Mrs. Rourke was obviously not sitting with her crochet hook. To the wrought-iron table where neither Gregory sat with his chessboard nor Williams with his Go.
Only . . . that wasn’t quite true. There was no person seated at the table. But the Go board was there.
How very odd. She moved over to it, frowning into the shadows. Why would Williams have left his board set up? It was a stupid thing to do—anyone could come by and steal it. Even if few in London knew how to play the game, any thief could see that it was a valuable board.
But there it sat, safe and whole and set up for the beginning of a game. Or rather, she saw as she drew nearer, a game just begun. One black stone had been moved.
She edged closer and saw a slip of white fluttering in the breeze, secured partly under the board. A slip of white with black ink on both sides. She read the top first.
Margot De Wilde. I waited throughout the afternoon and found myself a terrible substitute for you as an opponent. Perhaps you’ll stop by soon—I had to flee the damp of evening for a while in favor of a cup of tea. But if you happen by before I return, do make a play.
Her brows scrunched together. He surely hadn’t been out here all evening, waiting—with the cough he obviously struggled against, that couldn’t be good for him. But no, the paper was damp, proving it had been there awhile. Had he left the board unattended for hours? Stupid. Stupid enough to make her itchy. But perhaps he had fallen asleep after his cup of tea. Heaven knew he wasn’t well. And this time, at least, no one had stolen the game.
The breeze shifted and she saw the bottom of the paper. Sente.
Her eyes narrowed, and she snatched the slip of paper out. A lot of nerve Williams had, claiming with that sente to be on the offensive, to have the initiative, when the play had only just begun. She dug around in her handbag until she came up with a pencil. Using the empty space in the middle of the board as her table, she drew a line through Sente and wrote Moyo. Prepare to be gote.
The plays were all potential now—moyo. But she didn’t ever play on the defensive. She would not be gote—she’d force him into it. After anchoring the paper again, she touched a finger to a white stone. Cold. Hard. And slid it to her opening position.
Then she left the park and went home without a backward glance.
Das Gespenst waited until her figure had vanished from sight. Until her footsteps had faded into the night. Until the cold, damp English breeze had snaked for another long minute through his jacket. Then, for the first time in ten minutes, he moved. Away from the tree against whose trunk he’d been leaning, in whose shadow he’d been hiding.
If other people were out tonight, they weren’t in the park. He hadn’t been sure, of course, that she would come this way either. More often than not she didn’t. But when he saw where she’d gone earlier, rather than stopping by for a game . . . well, he hadn’t wanted to wait for another day to get a read on her, and this had seemed like an easy enough way. And if she’d gone straight home after her dinner at the Eltons’, he simply would have packed up the board for now and set it up again tomorrow afternoon, waiting for her.
Eventually she would have come. But he wouldn’t complain that eventually was now.
Gliding over the meters without a sound, he remained, as always, on alert. But no one else watched or walked or waited here. It was just him and the board and the slip of fluttering white.
He plucked the paper out even as he took in her move. Then he glanced down at the sheet, and his lips twitched. She had kiai—fighting spirit. It would serve her well in Go, if she had the skill to match it. And their first game had indicated that she did.
But that wasn’t what he’d really needed to know. What he’d needed to know was if she had kiai in life. And her note proved she did far more adeptly than one move possibly could on the game board.
She would prove an interesting enemy.
After another glance around, he tucked the paper into his pocket, swept the black and white stones into their pouches, and packed up the game. He pursed his lips.
Enemy wasn’t the right word for Margot De Wilde. Adversary. That was it. Or opponent, perhaps. Enemy implied hatred, and he had no such feelings for the Belgian girl. No, hatred was too powerful a force to spread out to just anyone on the wrong side of this war. He would reserve his for those who truly deserved it.
Though night and distance shrouded it from his sight, Das Gespenst turned to face the Admiralty’s Old Building. He had an enemy. But it wasn’t Margot De Wilde. She would be a fine conduit, though, to the one who was. She kept odd hours, the same as some of the men. None of the other secretaries did. She must be trusted indeed, if her hours had to match her boss’s. Valuable to them.
Perfect for him.
Tucking the board under his arm and clearing a tickle from his throat, he put a foot on the path that would take him out of the park. A whistle came from his lips once he gained the street—just an average Englishman, making his way home. That’s all he was.
No one looked twice at him as he moved to his building. He drew the key from his pocket, paused for a moment to collect the post from the little box that said John Williams, and flipped through it as he jogged up the stairs. Just an average Englishman going home for the night.
19
Drake squeezed his eyes closed for a minute, leaning back his head and stretching a bit. He’d been reading for hours, and both eyes and side demanded a break from it. But he still had a mountain of files to read through.
How the devil did Hall compile so much data? They read every single letter that left England by post. Every telegram that was sent wirelessly was intercepted—which was pretty much every telegram that had to leave its own country, given that cutting the underwater wires had been the first move when war was declared back in 1914. Agents all over the world were reporting once a week.
An answer to every question seemed to be at Hall’s fingertips. The problem, of
course, was finding said answer among so much chaff. The sheer volume of information . . . well, Drake had no idea how many people were currently employed as he was, doing nothing but reading over it all. But even if it were hundreds, they weren’t likely to get through it in any kind of reasonable time.
He rubbed at his neck and then pushed himself to his feet. Time for a turn around the flat. Get the blood flowing again and convince his muscles to strengthen. It took him a long moment to straighten and stand, but it was faster than he could do it last week. He was improving. If he didn’t have any setbacks, he might even be able to join his sister at church on Sunday.
His steps were slow and measured, but his mind sped quickly enough to make up for his physical shuffle. He’d flagged a few items to send back to the admiral—the bits relevant to the questions for which he’d been tasked with finding answers. He’d made a list of any other details that seemed as though they could be important to someone else, though they weren’t relevant to his tasks. He’d put a considerable dent in the considerable pile of papers.
He passed by the window and looked out as he walked by. Frowned. The same man had been standing on the corner there, leaning into the doorway of a shop, since his last turn about the flat an hour ago. Or was back, perhaps. But still. It was odd. Drake paused a moment and looked down.
The chap wore a hat that obscured his face from this angle and a grey overcoat that looked like countless other grey overcoats out on the street. Perhaps it wasn’t the same man, just another in a similar jacket, in a similar position.
But no. The fellow was rather tall, taller than the other chaps who strode by. It made him stand out. And it wasn’t just a similar position. It was the same position. Drake had been well trained in noting such little anomalies that set one man apart from the rest. This fellow had chosen the doorway of a shop that was closed, and he had a newspaper raised in front of him to the exact level it had been an hour ago. And his head was at an angle Drake knew well—the one he himself had employed on the train, when he was the one hiding behind newsprint.
His pulse kicked up, even as his logic tamped it down. It could be anyone. There for any reason. Maybe it was just some bloke waiting for somebody. Innocent. Or even not-so-innocent, but of no relevance to him. He could be a detective, hired by a wife to track a straying husband. A police officer undercover, looking for a suspect. A man ducking out of work and not wanting to be spotted.
It could be Jaeger.
Drake’s nostrils flared, and he stepped closer to the window. He couldn’t tell from up here if that thought had any evidence to support it or not. He’d never gotten a good measure on Jaeger’s height to know if it matched this tall chap’s, and he couldn’t see this man’s face.
Look up, he willed the figure. Let me see you.
He waited for one minute. Two. The man shifted a few times, but his face remained concealed under the brim of his hat and behind the paper. Though at one point he turned it to the side, revealing his hair.
Dark—darker than Jaeger’s. And longer.
He breathed more easily. There were ways to change hair color, yes. But it wouldn’t have had time to grow that much.
Drake shook himself and turned from the window. He was just stir-crazy. He’d been laid up and kept inside for over two weeks, and his brain was simply fabricating some adventure for him. That was all. It made him jump at shadows—not out of fear but out of boredom. He meandered the room for another few minutes, deliberately not looking out the window.
The phone jangled. He was only a few steps from it, so he could actually reach it before it stopped. He picked it up after the second ring and didn’t even sound too breathless when he said, “Hello, Elton residence.”
Silence stretched. His shoulders went tense. Then, “Is this Drake Elton?”
The words didn’t ease the tension. The voice . . . Did he know it? Or was he still just starting at shadows, prey to his own thoughts? “Yes it is.”
“Good.” The chuckle that thrummed over the line made a chill crawl up Drake’s spine. “You will pay. Know that. Not quite yet, but you will pay. Know I am here.”
“Jaeger.” His hand went so tight around the telephone that he feared he’d crack it. It had to be. He’d never heard him speaking in English before, and his voice was distorted a bit over the phone lines, but he still recognized it from the train. He moved as far toward the window as the cord would allow, but he couldn’t see down to the street below.
No answer came, just silence. Drake waited for a moment, then put the receiver back in the cradle. He stared at it for a moment, filtering through the questions in his head.
Had it been Jaeger? Yes. He recognized his voice, and he’d said the same words he had on the train. That Drake would pay.
Where was here? England, obviously—he couldn’t have made a telephone call from outside the country. London? Possibly, though he couldn’t be sure at the moment. That was surely something Hall could help him discover. How did he learn Dot’s phone number, though? Did he also know where she lived? Was he watching them?
He strode back to the window now, too fast for his side. But he didn’t care about the pain.
The man in the grey overcoat was gone.
It didn’t mean anything. He knew it didn’t. He’d already convinced himself it wasn’t Jaeger out there. But it could have been someone he hired to watch the window, couldn’t it? To let Jaeger know that Drake was in.
Had he been the one to call before and hang up when someone else answered? Like Dot or Red?
Drake spun back to the telephone. A minute later he’d been patched through to Hall’s line and had explained the situation to his superior.
DID’s silence was sharp as a hammer’s rap. “Impossible. He cannot be in country.”
It didn’t sound like an accusation of lying. Just like denial. Drake eased down onto the hard wooden chair by the telephone table. “It was him on the line, Admiral. I recognized his voice. He couldn’t have called from anywhere else, could he?”
“No. Blast.” Something hit something else in the background. “Someone has missed something. Rest assured, I shall find out who and what. And we’ll determine from where that call was placed and through what switchboards it went. In the meantime, I’ll gather anything I can find on Jaeger. Perhaps there will be a clue somewhere in his history that could help us locate him now.”
“Perhaps.” He turned to face the window again, though from his seat, he could see nothing but the windows of the building across the street. “Do you think . . . What if he comes after my sister, Admiral?”
Another beat of silence, this one not quite so sharp. “For now, Lieutenant, comfort yourself in the likelihood that those other calls were him, and that it was only you with whom he wanted to engage. That suggests he will only target you, and perhaps your work—since it was his work, not his person, with which you interfered. I find it highly unlikely that he would react to your having foiled a sugar shipment by attacking your family. That would be too emotional a response for a man who is clearly a professional in matters of espionage.”
The band around Drake’s chest loosened. “Excellent point, sir. Thank you.”
“While I have you here and we are speaking of sugar—have you found anything yet to corroborate Margot’s suspicions about her mother?”
Drake glanced at the second stack of papers he’d been plodding through, which contained every mention they could find over the last year of anthrax or sugar or grain. “Nothing, sir. Only about the shipment in Spain, and more in South America. I trust you’ve already seen to those?”
“We are investigating, though the German agent in South Am is as slippery as they come. But nothing that mentions us here?”
“No. Not yet.” He’d been through most of the material already, somehow both hoping and dreading that he’d find something. “Though there’s a bit of a difference in tracking tons versus a few ounces of the stuff.”
“But if it were truly an attack on us
here, then an agent would have had to either enter our borders or contact someone already here. That would leave a trail.”
“It would. But thus far, nothing.” And the more he read, the more he didn’t think he would find anything. All intelligence they’d intercepted pointed only to infecting animals with the anthrax and glanders. Not people. Surely if an order had been sent out with such instructions, it would have garnered a response, a reply to that, and so on. “It would be outside their usual instructions, that much has become clear.”
“Mm. Well, I put nothing past the huns, in general. But my instinct says Margot’s suspicions are unfounded in this case.” A pause, and the sound of something tapping. “Finish going through what I’ve already sent, but after that, if we’ve nothing to warrant further attention, I’m going to call that investigation complete. Your attention ought to be focused on Jaeger.”
Drake didn’t dare contradict the admiral. And didn’t really want to . . . for his own sake. For logic’s sake. But for Margot’s? “Sir . . . Margot . . .” He didn’t even know what to say. How could he, when he knew her so little?
But Hall obviously knew her quite well, given his long sigh. “Leave her to me, Elton. You just focus on what I’ve given you—and on recuperating. We need you back in the field, and we need Jaeger out of it.”
“Yes, sir.” What else could he say?
But when he hung up, he just stared at the stack of work for a long moment. He didn’t think he’d find anything in there to tell him that someone had killed her mother with anthrax. But how could he stop until he had answers for her?
On the other hand, if there were no answers to be found, how long could he really keep searching for them?
He passed a hand through his hair and glanced at the clock. He had hours yet before Dot would be home. Time aplenty to finish his work for Hall for the day. For now, while he was alone, he’d put a bit of effort into his other mission.
The Number of Love Page 21