He squeezed his eyes shut against the spots. And all he could see was Heinrich, lying in his arms, no light in his eyes. “Doesn’t matter. He’s dead.” Gone. Das Gespenst. Elton had made the hero into a ghost. That never should have been Heinrich’s role. His own, but not his brother’s. Heinrich had something to live for. The war hadn’t killed him already, like it had Dieter’s spirit.
“I know he’s dead. And I’m sorry.”
He tried to look at her. To focus on the dark eyes that regarded him so intently even while a haze fell over his vision. Another cough convulsed him. “He has . . . to pay.”
“He has.” Her voice sounded distant now. Like an echo. “And he will. Forever. Some men may revel in killing in a war, but not Drake. He’ll wrestle with this, with knowing the name and face of someone he killed. Knowing he took a brother and son—perhaps a husband and father?—from this world. He’ll learn to live with it, but it will never go away.” She paused, her hand steady on his back. “You must learn to live with it too.”
No. There could be no life after this, knowing he hadn’t saved his brother. There could only be roaming the earth like a ghost. Another spasm struck, another cough wracked him.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered, but the words were different now. It took him a long, burning moment to realize why. To realize she was speaking in German. And that she sounded like his mother. “Put your hand on Dieter now. Please touch his lungs where the pneumonia has settled in and break them free. Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight . . .”
He tried to pull away, but the weight of her arm across his shoulders was too much. He tried to insist that he hadn’t really wanted her prayers, but he couldn’t force any more words from his throat. He tried to find one last move to steal the momentum.
But she was right. He’d had to cheat to make the last move he’d made—and still he’d lost. Another cough shook him. And the darkness won.
Drake rubbed a hand up the arm of Margot’s coat, needing the assurance that she was still standing here, alive and talking, after Dieter Regnitz had passed out on that arm. After she’d held him like a friend until the authorities arrived, apparently. He could hardly believe it. Might not have, if Abuelo hadn’t been shouting the same story in Spanish, incredulous, while Margot calmly recited it for the officers who had just hauled the man away. While they’d been driving madly back through London to make sure the villain hadn’t escaped and come back here, she’d been holding him. Praying for him.
The police had already asked questions aplenty. But they hadn’t asked his. He closed his eyes for a moment while he drew in a long breath. And then he rested his forehead against hers. “What would I have done if I’d lost you?”
Margot sighed. Her arms were folded across her middle. And her gaze was locked on the door that had closed behind the uninvited guest and his new escorts. The door that now had a bullet lodged in it. A bullet meant for her.
“He had no moves left to make. He’d already lost, the moment he fired that gun. He just couldn’t see it yet. Couldn’t see that he’d backed himself into a corner. Aji keshi.” Her eyes wandered back to his. And softened. “I felt sorry for him, Drake. If I were in his place, I may have done the same thing. Tried to fill the hole with vengeance, because it’s just so gaping.”
Always surprising him, this one. He smiled and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I’m not ashamed to say that all I feel about him right now is relief that he’s in custody.”
But still Margot frowned. “If they put him in prison, he’ll probably die of pneumonia.”
It was likely. “He has to go to prison, Margot. Those are the consequences for the actions he took. He killed people.” So had Drake though. Was it different, that he hadn’t meant to? That it had happened in action, in a time of war?
Dieter Regnitz obviously hadn’t thought that made it excusable. The English government certainly would say it did. There would be no imprisonment for Drake, no legal ramifications for Maxim Jaeger’s—no, Heinrich Regnitz’s—death. If anything, he’d get a commendation for a job well done.
But it didn’t feel well done. He’d robbed a man of his brother, a mother of her child. He’d made holes in their lives, and it put one in his too. The government telling him it was right didn’t make it feel so.
Margot touched a finger to his chin, making him look up and realize those dark eyes had been on him, a smile hovering on the corners of her mouth. “What are you most proud of, in how all this played out? What are you most grateful for?”
He knew what she was doing. The same thing he’d done with her, that first day in the corridor outside Hall’s office. Asking the question that would get at the heart rather than the circumstances. The question that would reveal who a person was far more than their name ever would.
And the answer here was easy. “You and Dot—to both.” He’d always thought, he supposed, that his role was to be the one in the action. Saving them when necessary. Rushing in, defending, dodging the bullets. But they’d done a rather fine job of seeing to things themselves.
At her name, his sister stood from the chair she’d taken in the landlord’s office—where their grandfather had apparently set up his base of operations. She moved to the doorway, where Abuelo stood.
He received her with a proud smile and an arm around her shoulders. “Ah, yes. Our girl is a brave one. I am proud of you, Dorothea.”
She offered him a tired smile, but she shook her head. “I still don’t understand what you’re doing here, Abuelo. In England. Why didn’t you just send word of what you’d found? You’ve never come before, even when Mama died.”
Abuelo lifted his dark brows, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Because my coming would have done nothing then. Changed nothing. She was gone already, God rest her soul, and you scarcely knew me then, for my presence to bring any comfort. You had your father, your friends. But now, this—my coming could change everything. Why would I not do it, when it meant life for my grandchildren?”
“Well then.” Looking exhausted and disheveled, but steady, Dot offered another weary smile. “Perhaps you’ll stay long enough to come to my wedding.” Then the smile wobbled and she straightened, shifting a bit until she could look at Margot. “I’m sorry. For what I said earlier. I wasn’t—”
“It’s forgiven, Dot. Forgotten.” Margot held out a hand, and his sister sidled past Abuelo so she could take it in her own. “I’m happy you’re getting married. I just didn’t want you to do it out of fear.”
“I know. But I’m not. Perhaps yesterday I was, but . . . but I’m not. Though it must be asked . . .” Dot looked from Margot to Drake and back again. “If you could argue that I should wait a bit because it wouldn’t change my love, isn’t the opposite true too? How long do you really have to wait when you know God put you together for a reason?”
A good question, to be sure. But Drake already knew the answer to that one. “As long as it takes.”
They smiled at him—Dot with indulgence, Margot with gratitude—and then turned together for the stairs. “You can have Aunt Millie’s bed tonight, Margot. Drake will have to go to Abuelo’s hotel with him. He won’t mind, will you, Drake? And Red can . . .”
Drake shook his head as the two women continued up the stairs without a backward look to make sure he’d agreed with the arrangements.
Red slapped a hand to his shoulder. “I’m off for home, then, I suppose. It was good serving with you today, Elton.”
“Agreed. I can think of no one I’d rather have beside me in this war.” Well, and Camden. But no need to bring him up just now, since he’d already left after seeing everyone had survived the night.
Red turned then to Abuelo. Shoulders straight, chin up, confidence in his eyes that certainly hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. “I look forward to getting to know you better while you’re here, sir.”
Abuelo shook his hand, not so much as a twitch in his countenance to show any unease at the thought of being awa
y from the home that had long been his fort. “Indeed, young man. The very words I was thinking.”
With a lopsided grin, Red nodded and turned toward the door.
Drake waited for it to shut behind him before he turned to his grandfather. He wasn’t sure where Eneko had vanished to—probably to the hotel on the next street, where they’d reserved rooms. Where apparently Drake would be sleeping tonight too. But he was grateful for a few minutes of solitude with Abuelo. He owed him an explanation.
Abuelo was already turning back into the office, knowing well Drake would follow. He sat down in the pathetic little chair behind the desk and looked as proud and regal as he always did in his own.
Drake sat across from him. “I didn’t leave the navy, as I told you I did.”
“So I gathered.” Was that a twitch in his lips? The beginnings of a smile perhaps? “And frankly, I could never fathom that you would. You were never a coward, Dragón. Many things, but never that. You are an intelligence agent now?”
He couldn’t admit it to just anyone. But no one knew how to juggle trade secrets quite like Francisco Mendoza de Haro. He nodded.
“That makes infinitely more sense than any other explanation. And I am, of course, happy to continue offering my humble abode as your base of operations. On one condition.” He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Tell me about this Margot De Wilde, whom you look at as though she is the only young lady in the world.”
Drake couldn’t have stopped his grin had he wanted to. “I believe you saw her at her finest today, Abuelo. She is without equal. Brave. Brilliant. She views the world as no one else.”
“Yes, this I saw for myself. But will she make a good wife to you? Give you strong children to carry on your name?”
The smile faltered a bit. “She . . . is a bit unconventional in that regard. She has dreams. Dreams she’s afraid she’ll have to forsake if she chooses to marry and have children.”
“Nonsense.” As if that single word was all the answer that was needed, Abuelo waved a hand. “Unconventional may be just what this world needs to recover from the tragedy that has beset it. And dreams . . . dreams are only worth pursuing when we have the right person by our side, sí? And the right person is the one who encourages. Who chases the dream along with you. As your mother and your father did for each other.” Abuelo lowered his hand to the desk with a decisive thud. “You will convince her of this. You will take life as it comes, as God wills. And you will be happy together.”
Drake’s smile grew again. He wasn’t sure if it was a prophecy or a command, but either way, he was happy to obey.
Epilogue
Margot held the umbrella aloft and ran more than she walked toward her flat. There was snow mixed in with the rain, proving that February had some teeth to it. And after another night shift, she was more than looking forward to a hot cup of tea, her clanking radiator, and maybe a not-warm-enough bath before she went to bed. Later, she’d write to Drake. And perhaps make another trip to the Tower of London to visit Dieter. He never said much—and his health didn’t seem to be improving.
But she would visit anyway. She had to think that somewhere in Germany, there was a mother who would be glad of it. Glad to know her son wasn’t altogether alone in enemy territory. And in her mind, Maman smiled down on her for it.
She darted into her building while the older gent from 4C held the door open for her on his way out, thanking him with a smile as she lowered her brolly.
“There’s a parcel at your door, Margot,” he said. “Too big for your box, I suppose. Delivered yesterday afternoon—I’ve kept an eye on it for you.”
“Good of you, Mr. Parsons. Thank you.” She gathered the post from her box and jogged up the stairs as she flipped through it. A bill. A postcard from the Cotswolds, where Dot and Holmes had gone for their honeymoon, courtesy of the Duchess of Stafford. And a letter in a script that made her heart race more than the stairs accounted for.
She ripped that one open as she reached her floor. Drake had been writing to her nearly every day since he’d been sent back to Spain, but rarely did the letters reach her one at a time. They tended to arrive in weekly batches, and she’d just had a batch two days ago.
But she wasn’t about to complain about an extra. She pulled out the sheet, grinning when she saw the paper wasn’t filled with words, but with numbers. Lowering the page, she caught sight of the decidedly book-shaped parcel waiting at her door.
A moment later, she’d juggled the brolly, the book, and her other post through the door and into their respective places. She unpinned her hat, shrugged out of her coat, and smoothed a hand over the cardigan Maman had given her.
Then she unwrapped the package and grinned. Don Quixote, as he’d promised.
He probably wouldn’t say anything in this coded letter that he didn’t say, now, in his normal ones. And she’d rather gotten the hang of writing sweet letters back too. She hoped, anyway. She tried. Perhaps her lines were filled more with mathematics than with poetry, but it was all the same thing in the end, wasn’t it?
Though she hadn’t yet mustered the courage to say what she knew she would when next she saw him face-to-face. That God had shown her, these last few months, that He could be trusted. Not just with her well-being, but with her dreams. She could trust that He had given her this love for Drake for His own purpose, but that it didn’t negate the other gifts He’d breathed into her. Loving him didn’t mean losing herself. Marrying him someday, creating a family with him, didn’t have to mean forsaking her dreams. Somehow, He could make possible what the world said wasn’t. Somehow, he would fill her with the love a family would demand—as He always had, for her parents and Lukas and Willa, for Willa’s family and little Zurie.
Deciding that tea and a bath could wait, she grabbed paper and a pencil and then sat down with the book. It didn’t take long for the message to take shape. It started out as they usually did, lovely and sure to haunt her. But it was the ending that made her pause and read it again, and then a third time.
I want forever with you. I will wait a year, a decade, a century to make you my wife. But tell me you’ll take me someday, my love. Tell me that the promise of forever can begin now.
She let the pencil clatter to the table and leaned back in her chair, holding the page before her.
“Well? I can wait for an answer, too, but I do have this ring my grandfather gave me. . . .”
“Drake!” She shrieked his name, nearly falling out of her chair in her rush to turn and stand all at once.
He’d been standing, apparently, in the doorway to Maman’s room, which Lukas had just helped her turn into an office. And he was smiling at her. Looking at her in that way he did. Loving her in that way he did, that never demanded anything.
The way that deserved so much. The too-still took hold of her, held for five seconds, ten. But then she forced it away. Forced motion into her limbs, because he was here. He was here, and she owed him an epiphany. She flew across the space between them until she could wrap him in her arms. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Spain.”
“Charles the Bold sent me home with a few sensitive items he didn’t trust to regular transport. And perhaps because he knew I’d been missing you.” His hand found its place on her cheek. “And Dot had a key to your flat. Mr. Parsons kept an eye on me, though, since I arrived.”
She laughed and held him close. All the closer because she knew she’d have to let him go again soon. At least for a while. Until the war was over. “How long are you here?”
“Just two days.” He grinned and pressed a quick, teasing kiss to her lips. “So if you mean to answer me before I go . . .”
“I can answer you now.” And how perfect, that he had shown up again after she’d wrestled her faith back into line on this question too. “Yes. I’ll marry you. Whenever you want me to.”
His smile hitched. “Whenever? But you have your dreams.”
“I do.” She strained up on her toes to steal another
kiss. “But as a wise man once said, what’s so ridiculous about having someone to support and encourage you through the ups and downs of life? I don’t want any dreams that don’t include you. And I trust—I trust that God will give us His best.”
“Mi alma.” His eyes slid shut, and he rested his forehead against hers.
She let hers slide shut, too, and held him tight. “Eighteen.”
A Note from the Author
Ever since I began doing research on England during the Great War, I knew I wanted to tell the story of the amazing men and women who made up Room 40, the intelligence hub of the Admiralty. This secretive department revolutionized the intelligence game and laid the groundwork for the better-known agencies of World War II and beyond—Bletchley Park, MI6, and so on. And yet, in many ways, the organization of Room 40 would have been completely unfathomable to people in intelligence today. Built more on complete trust and instinct than compartmentalization, Room 40 was in many ways a family, which is what intrigued me every bit as much as the work they did.
As always, I’d like to take a few minutes to differentiate between fact and fiction in my stories. Many of the plot elements are drawn straight from history, though, of course, I fictionalized the players and attributed them to Drake and Margot rather than the actual historical figures who did them, some of whose names cannot be found now, thanks to documentation being destroyed after the war. For instance, the wolfram really was discovered in the warehouse in Bilbao when an agent claimed he was chasing a guide dog inside. By 1917, Gotha and zeppelin air raids over London had become quite common, and though destruction was minimal by World War II standards, it was nevertheless terrifying for the city’s occupants, who were still adjusting to the idea of danger coming from the skies. The raid at the end of my book is fictionalized, but it draws on the documented history of other similar raids. Other incidents like Hall sending a false “all mines have been cleared” message to the German minelayers did happen, though the dates have been tweaked slightly, as were a few others in regards to the Erri Barro and the U-boats caught skimming over their anti-sub nets, so as to fit neatly in my narrative. A codebook really was recovered from a zeppelin that crashed when its pilots suffered altitude sickness, though it happened a few months earlier than I said. And Hall truly did have his codebreakers create a fake “Emergency Code” that he deliberately put into enemy hands—sold it to the enemy, in fact, for five hundred pounds, though he never sent a message in it for them to “intercept.” I thought it would be fun to include the code briefly in my story though.
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