“Mm. When you should have been in Latin, you mean.” Drake backed up a few paces to get a better view. “Try to angle toward me when you can. I think I see it, though I can’t tell what it is.” Not a codebook, certainly. That wouldn’t be glinting in the sunlight. But if they could place it as being something from the zeppelin, then they’d know they were on the right track.
“Right. Working on it.” Grunting with the effort, Camden continued to scale the limbs, coming round the tree bit by bit as the branches allowed.
“Almost there. Two more, I should think.”
Camden reached for the next branch. “You know, I’ve changed my mind about that favor. I didn’t owe you. Which means you now owe me.”
“Uh-huh.” He lifted a hand to his eyes to shield them from the midmorning sun. “Well?”
Camden made a snatch for something, and apparently he hooked it, given his laugh. “Got it!”
“What is it?”
“A canteen.”
An odd thing to find fifty feet up a tree, to be sure. Obviously dropped from above, which boded well for them. “German?”
“Well, it sure isn’t English—we have more sense than to give ours a round bottom that you can’t actually sit on a table.”
Drake was still smiling when Camden’s feet hit the forest floor again. “Seems like zeppelin debris to me.”
Camden was grinning too. “Onward.”
They walked another ten minutes before spotting a German hat on the ground. Another five and they found a mess kit. And then the mother lode, which made Drake’s pulse really kick up. Papers.
They were strewn all throughout the forest, some still caught in branches, most littering the ground. He caught up a few at first and then gave that up—they’d be here for a week if they gathered them all.
“Navigation charts.” Camden held up a book and then tossed it down. “The codebook would have been stored in the same place, I’d think.”
“Then it’s here.” It was here. Somewhere. “What do these codebooks look like?”
Camden took off for something that caught his eye to Drake’s right. “Bound, but not like a normal book. Paper binding. Soft, flexible. The ones they have in the OB already are green. Pages are tabbed, marking different sections. And you’ll certainly know it when you see it—they’ll have pages filled with charts of numbers. Zero to nine across, zero to nine down. Then pages with words.”
Drake grinned as he turned to look for something flexible and green. Though just now he rather wished they’d chosen orange or red. “You’re a codebreaker. Ever stop and think how odd that is?”
“Every blighted day, mate.” Camden strode toward a bare-limbed oak tree.
Drake chuckled. “Ready to admit that it’s better than prison?”
“No. But I haven’t punched you again, have I?” He bent down, snatched up a book, and then tossed it away again after a quick glance.
“I just assumed you were afraid of Red Holmes.” Drake aimed himself toward a patch of green that didn’t quite match the pine needles.
“Careful, Elton. I’m your ride home, you know.”
It was paper he’d seen, that much was sure. A book, he decided as he drew closer. And it wasn’t sitting stiffly against the tree roots like a typical one would be. It bent a bit in the middle. He hurried over the last few steps and reached down for it.
The paper was damp from its days on the ground, the edges beginning to curl. But the binding had held and all the pages seemed to be intact. He flipped it open. And his heart positively sang when he saw the chart. Zero to nine across. Zero to nine down. “Cam, I found one!”
Camden jogged over to his side and looked over his shoulder. Then slapped a hand to his back. “That you did.”
“Is it the right one, though?”
At that, his friend snorted. “If you wanted someone who could tell you that in a glance, you should have brought De Wilde along.”
“Then who would have flown the stolen plane?” And this wasn’t Margot’s world. She’d made no indication that she wanted to tromp around the forest searching for the codebook herself—and he was glad of that. It was one thing to volunteer his old friend to take him into the battlefield. Quite another to volunteer the woman he loved for such a mission. She might be able to take down a mugger, for which he was eternally grateful. But the mugger had only a knife. Enemies they found out here would have guns, and Margot hadn’t been trained to dodge them.
Camden took the codebook from his hands and flipped through it. “It’s not like the ones I’ve used, anyway. I say we scour the rest of this debris field and then turn back. That could well be our book. And if it isn’t, the right one’s either here in this area or it’s not here at all.”
“Good plan.” Another hour of searching, an hour back to the plane, the flight home. They’d be back in London by nightfall.
30
Das Gespenst covered his cough with a handkerchief and stared out at the falling twilight. London’s streets were going rose and gold, soon to be overtaken by purple and grey. And then, finally, the brown-black night of the city.
One more night in this godforsaken place. And then he’d either be dead or on his way back to Germany.
“That cough doesn’t sound so good.”
He didn’t spare Elton’s sister a glance. Her wrists were firmly bound, as firmly as her ankles. His breathing might be troubled just now, but his knot-tying skills weren’t. And up here, in the attic of a building abandoned after one of the zeppelin raids left it flaming, there was no one to hear her if she screamed for help.
She’d already discovered that, hours ago. This, at least, had gone according to plan.
Das Gespenst tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket and looked out, across the river, toward where it would all end tonight. “Do not concern yourself for me, Dorothea.” He called her by name simply because it made her wince.
His argument wasn’t with her. He didn’t mean to make her last day one of terror—but she must be reminded of who was in control.
He turned from the window and checked his pocket watch. Another hour and he’d give her a drink laced with laudanum. She would probably try to refuse it, of course. But if so, a rag soaked in chloroform would render her more pliant. Then he’d slip out. One last play in Go. One last stop at the telegraph office. And if the High Command assured him the air raid was set, that would leave only a few last steps in the game. A boat. A cab. Woolwich.
This time tomorrow, it would be over.
She shifted against the beam he’d tied her to. “I don’t suppose I could stand for a while.”
Das Gespenst forced his lips to curve into a smile. “Of course. Allow me to assist you.” He moved to do so from behind, giving her feet a wide berth. So far as he could tell, she hadn’t been trained in how to take a man down even when bound . . . but then, he hadn’t thought Margot De Wilde had been trained in how to disarm one. A mistake that had left him limping.
Safely out of kicking range, he gripped her arms and helped her stand. “There we are. Better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He had to give her credit. Though she’d been a wreck when she’d first come flying out of the Old Admiralty Building—crying, shaking, heaving—she’d actually been rather calm since she awoke from the first dousing of chloroform. It seemed she was stronger under duress than she was under the anxiety of duress.
He moved back around to her front and took a seat on the rickety chair he’d found. “You remind me of my brother’s wife.” Ilse, too, had always shown the greatest distress over the thought of something evil befalling her family.
And yet when her little one died of fever last year, she had stood strong. When news of Heinrich’s death had reached her, he had no doubt she had done the same. Lifted her chin. Straightened her spine.
His fingers dug into his leg. She shouldn’t have had to. She shouldn’t have been stripped of her husband, when their second child was still a few months from bein
g born. She shouldn’t have had to walk to that grave marker with his mother and see Heinrich’s name etched upon it, even though Heinrich’s body wasn’t buried beneath the grass.
He was sorry for that too. But there had been no way to get his brother’s corpse home. He had wasted an entire day trying to determine how to do so, but the High Command had been unsympathetic.
Heinrich had died a spy’s death. He had received a spy’s burial, secret and alone. But he would be sung as a hero in every story they told of him at home. Das Gespenst had at least made certain of that. Made certain they knew how honorably he had served Germany. His eyes slid shut. They never should have accepted these positions in intelligence. It had seemed a boon at the time, a lark, a . . . a game. “Think of the stories we will have to tell,” Heinrich had said.
But they’d never tell these stories. Even if his brother had lived, they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They’d lived these last few years like he’d died—secret and alone.
Dorothea Elton stretched against the beam, rolling her head from side to side. “Where are you from?”
Das Gespenst looked to the window again. The purple had come. Not long now. “A little town called Bamberg.”
“What’s it like?”
“Beautiful. It is in Bavaria, and its architecture is unparalleled.”
Dorothea studied him. Calm now. No shaking. Only her hair, tumbling about her shoulders half out of its pins, told the tale of her graceless arrival in this burned-out attic. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Me? No.” He glanced up at the sky. It was clear. That could change in an instant here in England, he knew, but for now it boded well. The Luftstreitkräfte needed to be able to reach them. Zeppelins or Gothas. Either would do, and he didn’t know which they would send. Perhaps both.
“Why not? You tried last night.”
“I was not going to kill you.” He looked back, met her gaze. “I am sorry, Dorothea. I have no argument with you, but you have unfortunate alliances. It is because of them that you must die, and I do regret that. You are a pleasant young woman.”
Her nostrils flared, and there was the brief trembling of her jaw, but she fought for composure, and she found it. “You just said you wouldn’t kill me.”
“I will not. But you will not live to see your wedding to the impressively loyal Mr. Holmes. I apologize for that. Every girl should live to see her wedding, and you have been twice robbed.” Mother would cluck at him, if she knew.
Until she realized it was necessary, that is. For Heinrich.
“Then let me go. Just . . . let me go. I’ll not tell what you’ve done. I’ll not—”
“It is too late for that.” Poor girl. As if she really thought bargaining would save her now.
Her whimper sounded of a cry that was caught, muffled, swallowed. “My brother will find you.”
He smiled into the window. “I am counting on it, Fräulein.”
“He’ll kill you.”
“Ah. That is the thing.” He lifted a brow her direction. And smiled. “He cannot kill a ghost.” And that was all he’d been for far too long. Before Heinrich’s death. Before the Boynton. It’s what he’d become when he first gave up his own name and took another for the sake of his country. He was naught but a specter, like Yūrei had said. That was what war made them all. A generation of ghosts.
Yūrei. Le fantôme. El fantasma.
Das Gespenst.
Margot sat on the bottom step, staring at the doors through which Drake always entered. The admiral was pacing. Back and forth, back and forth across the tiled floor. Fifteen steps one direction, a one-eighty, fifteen the other, repeat. Perhaps because he had far more concerns than she did. The Erri Barro had met with more delays. The vice admiral, under orders by Jellicoe, would be setting up floodlights tonight to try to catch U-boats slipping by and force them down, away from the lights and into the anti-sub nets. New reports had come in from South America of cereal that they suspected was tainted with anthrax.
Anthrax. Margot didn’t pace. She sat. Too still, Maman would have said. Not a muscle moving that wasn’t required to keep her breathing, so that her mind could tick through it all. Line it up into neat columns and add the numbers.
She had thought too highly of herself. Of her work here. She had thought herself important enough to try to be stopped. She had thought it her fault that her mother had died. Because it had been her fault they’d been so hunted in Belgium.
But it hadn’t been about her. Not this time. If the man who’d stolen Williams’s name had targeted her, it wasn’t because of her actual abilities—he clearly didn’t know her or he wouldn’t have tried to mug her in an alleyway. She’d just been one of many possible targets for him—that was all that made sense. And even if he had known her real position here . . . Margot was just one of many cryptographers. Part of a machine that would keep on ticking just fine without her. Stopping her wasn’t a priority anymore. Maman had simply . . . died. Because everyone did. It hadn’t seemed right that she’d died now—but asking why now would be the wrong question.
The better one was, when would it have been better? There would never have been a right time for her to lose her mother. There would never have been a reason that wouldn’t have struck her as wrong. A heart attack—too much like her father. A stroke—too much like her grandmother. Involved in some accident—too much a coincidence when there were so many enemies in the world.
She’d heard it said so often that there were no coincidences, and she must have begun to believe it. But there were. Of course there were. The law of large numbers—the certainty that everything would happen, sooner or later, given enough instances. Probability insisted on it. Two spouses could and would die of the same ailment, years and miles apart. Random fact.
Not to say that God didn’t factor it all into His plan. He would use it. But He didn’t cause it. The world caused it, their lives caused it, that inevitable probability caused it. Because He’d set a world of order into motion. A world of cause and effect. Actions and reactions.
Maman had died. But the question of why was really two different questions. Why had it happened? That was what she had been focusing on—the question that led to theories and suspicions and starting at shadows. Or—or. She could ask the other question, What was its purpose in God’s plan?
A completely different perspective. A ninety-degree shift. A question that looked to the future rather than the past, that forced her to focus not on the “this is my infirmity” of Psalm 77:10 and instead on “but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High.”
Hall checked his pocket watch. “They ought to be here any moment. Let him see you home then, my dear. You needn’t spend another night on my couch.”
She didn’t move. Made no reply. Drake wouldn’t consent to her going to her flat alone, she knew. But Dot wouldn’t likely want her there either. He would have to take her to Lukas’s house, she supposed.
Not yet. After. After he handed her the codebook and she’d used it on the slips of yellow that now sat, still and neat, in her lap. After they knew.
At last, there was a hitch in DID’s stride and he moved to the door with purpose, obviously having spotted them through the window. He bypassed the ever-present guard and opened the door.
Margot stood, yellow slips of paper clutched in her hand. Her heart rate increased, more than the movement demanded. It was the thought of seeing him. Cause and effect. Increase in pulse, change in respiration, dilation of pupils. He would probably be able to tell just by looking at her how glad she was he was back. How much she feared letting him leave again.
Hall said something into the void left by the door, and voices answered. She couldn’t make out the words, but she knew the voice, and it ratcheted up her beats-per-minute a little more.
Then she saw him. Brown hair under his hat, silver-blue eyes, knotted nose. Drake.
She couldn’t make herself move. She wanted to, but her muscles were locked into too still, makin
g her wonder that she’d even managed to rise. She could only stand there, grasping the papers, and watch as he smiled at the admiral, sidled around him, and then finally, finally looked at her.
He grinned, and her respiration rate shifted again. A hitch that would drop it from its usual twelve breaths a minute to eleven. And then a few short heaves that would raise it to fifteen.
He strode toward her, obviously not suffering the same paralysis—but then, he wouldn’t be. He was a man of action. And she was glad of it, just now. He pulled her against him, and she went gladly into his arms, not caring that the admiral, the guard, and whoever had entered behind Drake were looking on. She wrapped her arms around him and held on. “You made it back,” she said into his coat.
“I did.” His voice was a rumble in his chest, beneath her ear.
“I say, do I get one of those?”
The too still dissolved into the here and now. She pulled away with a laugh and shot a glare at Camden. “Threat number thirty-two from my list, Camden.”
He made a show of wincing. “No thank you, I rather like my eyebrows.”
Drake shook his head, rolled his eyes, turned up his lips in amusement. And then he reached into his coat and pulled out one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. A soft, green-papered codebook.
She snatched it from his hands as if it were the last cupful of sugar. “You found it!”
“We found one, anyway. You’ll have to tell me if it’s the correct one. Cam wasn’t certain.”
She sat again, there on the stairs, and flipped it open. A two-second glance assured her it wasn’t one they already had. But there was only one way to be sure it was what they needed. She spread the telegrams and codebook out on the next step up, twisting around to use the stair as a desk, and got down to work.
“You know, my dear, you could take that upstairs.”
As if she had the patience for that trek. Margot ignored the admiral’s advice and pulled a pencil stub from her pocket. She hadn’t spare paper to use for her usual lists of numbers, but that was all right. Paper was more for form and habit than necessity. But her head would work just fine for now.
The Number of Love Page 32