“I’ll do all that. Do I just set the bundle outside of your door?”
He nodded. “I’ll do it though. I need to move a bit.”
Her body still quivered, but the ordinary conversation calmed her. “You must have a spare of everything then.”
“Yes. I’ll call right away.”
“I’ll fix you some breakfast.” She hurried after him as he moved into the kitchen.
“That would be wonderful. I’d murder for a cuppa.”
“What?”
He held up a finger. She noticed his hair was standing up directly on his scalp on the back of his head. She didn’t remember doing that. “The blower is downstairs. I have to go downstairs to make the call about the laundry. I’ll be back in a tick.”
“I’ll have a tray ready for you.” She shook her head, amused, as he walked out, and went to open the icebox. Was it exhaustion from his injury, or the effect of her kisses making him so confused? In his dressing gown, she couldn’t escape the scent of him: his soap, his hair, his body. She could still taste him on her lips. She’d never been overwhelmed by a man’s sheer physical presence before, and the sensation dizzied her.
Blinking, she realized she had a hunk of cheese in one hand and a sticky bottle of chutney in the other. She didn’t remember picking up either of them.
Forty minutes later, she had him fed and herself tidied and ready to leave for the Grand Russe. “Are you certain you can handle the laundry yourself?”
“I’ve still twenty minutes to gather the pile,” he said. “I’m moving more slowly than usual, but I’m better.”
“I know you are.” She pulled on her glove, then caressed his arm.
“We’ll stick together, you and I, right?” Les asked.
“Of course. I’m not going to leave you until you are one hundred percent well. What kind of a nurse would I be otherwise?”
“You have a plan to leave me?” He looked troubled, adorably so. Though he’d changed into day clothes, he had yet to tidy his hair. If it wasn’t for the fact that he also needed to shave, he’d look like a lad.
“I always thought I’d live with my sister if we both went up to London. But, you know, she has a beau, I think. She’s mentioned someone a couple of times in letters.”
“Maybe she’ll be married before you.”
Sadie cleared her throat. Not likely. “It would only be fair. She’s older, you know.”
She held her head high as she left the flat, Les’s spare set of flat keys jangling in her pocket.
* * *
Sadie was still out, hopefully acquiring that chambermaid position at the hotel, when Les heard his door knocker banging. He’d made his bed, but had been lounging on it, staring at the wall. Not a very effective way to spend a day. He’d meant to be reading a Russian-language newspaper to keep his skills up.
When he opened the door, he found a stocky man a couple of years older than himself, dressed in a nice but unmemorable dark suit but a rather exuberant striped tie. Les approved, because it kept attention off of the man’s face. All he had to do was change the tie and he’d be unnoticed.
“Mr. Drake,” the man said, and held out his hand. “Robert McCall, Special Branch.”
Les took his hand. “Come in.” He shut the door after the man entered. “Keep in mind that I have a lady staying here who thinks my name is Rake.”
Detective McCall’s thin lips widened into a smile. “Is this Miss Loudon?”
“Yes. I’m in quite a pickle there. Not sure how it’s going to resolve.”
McCall looked him over with seasoned police eyes. “You’re not one hundred percent.”
“What’s giving me away?” Les inquired.
“Your skin is the wrong color. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“I served in the Russian army,” Les said. “I can work three quarters dead. What are we going to do?”
“Stake out the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington. It’s a known hangout for this bomber Konstantin and we’ve been told he lives upstairs.”
“You are asking me to drink tea and sit? And for this you think I’m not ready?” Les gave the police detective a cold stare.
“I don’t like dead weight,” the detective said. “If we have to chase someone, you’d best be ready to do it.”
“You needn’t fuss. I’m ready for anything.” He considered. “I’ll be Valentin Dragunov. That’s my Russian name. You?”
“I don’t have undercover identities,” McCall said laconically. “I’ll simply be your mate. What is Dragunov’s story?”
“Mostly unemployed wheelwright. No usual haunts.”
“Was Dragunov the name you used in the Russian army?”
Les nodded. “Dragunov immigrated after his army service. He’s older than me too, and enlisted at sixteen at the end of Russia’s time in the war.”
McCall rolled his eyes. “Very well. Change your clothes. I don’t think a Russian would be caught dead in that sweater.”
Les looked down at his cozy white Irish wool. The Aran sweater had been hand knit for him by the widow of a fellow operative. It had taken two months to make. She’d made six of them for her late husband’s colleagues, a year’s worth of mourning and keeping her hands busy. “A Russian is desperate enough to wear anything he might find, these days, but I’ll put on a cheap suit. Have a seat if you like, won’t take but a minute.”
The door opened and Sadie came in. She squealed when she saw Les and ran into his arms. “Mr. Eyre gave me the position! I start tomorrow.”
He hugged her back. Sadie continued to surprise him in all the best ways. “Excellent, darling. Let’s go out to a café and celebrate.”
She bounced a little and looked at McCall, standing there silently.
Les gestured at him. “This is my friend.”
McCall stood. “Robbie O’Donnell,” he said with a hint of Irish brogue.
“There must be more cafes in Primrose Hill than we could count,” Sadie said. “Which one is your favorite?”
“I thought we’d go to South Kensington,” Les said. “I’ve been wanting to visit the Russian Tea Rooms.”
“Right near the Natural History Museum, if that suits you,” McCall said enthusiastically.
“More Russian heritage?” Sadie asked, having lost a little of her sparkle.
“I want you to try tea from a samovar,” Les said. “There’s nothing like it.”
McCall shuddered, then winked at Sadie.
“I’ll dress quickly,” Les said. He narrowed his eyes. “Be good, Robbie.”
Ten minutes later, they were in a cab heading south past Regent’s and Hyde Parks. “Let’s loop past the Grand Russe Hotel,” Les told the taxicab driver, curious to see how close it was to the restaurant. In terms of driving distance, the hotel turned out to be at the halfway point between his home and the tea rooms.
“I still don’t see why the mustache was necessary,” Sadie complained.
She hadn’t mentioned the working class attire, but his fake bride didn’t like his fake mustache?
“It is,” he said.
“I don’t like handlebar mustaches,” she said. “And it isn’t effective, because your eyes and nose make your face, not your lips.”
McCall glanced at her in surprise and lifted his eyebrows in Les’s direction. “It hides the shape of his mouth. His upper lip is distinctive, Mrs. Dragunov.”
“Dragunov has a mustache,” Les growled, wondering what the driver thought of the conversation. Given that costume parties were all the rage, hopefully he thought they were speaking about one.
Sadie harrumphed as the taxicab pulled up in front of a mottled gray building on a corner. Six stories were visible. The building was a mismatched jangle of form and none of the attached buildings on the block made sense together. Les counted three storefronts in his target building as they exited. The entrance to the apartments seemed to be through a door on the right side.
“Do we know which apartment Konstantin is m
eant to be in?” Les asked. “There are quite a few.”
“Who is Konstantin?” Sadie asked.
“An old friend,” Les muttered. “He’s about thirty-five, with a graying beard. A great beast of a man.”
“What are we up to, Les?” Sadie asked.
Les wrapped his hand around her arm. “Valentin Dragunov, darling.”
“Valentin again,” Sadie said, glancing down at the “V” ring she still wore. “Right. But the rest of it is new.”
“We’re just having tea at the tea room. Relax, darling,” Les told Sadie.
McCall squinted at the pair of them, then shrugged and opened the door. They were greeted by a curly dark-haired woman with small eyes and thin lips. Les already knew who she was: Anna Wolkova, the daughter of a Russian Imperial Navy man whose family had stayed in London when the Revolution occurred. She had opened the tea room in 1923 and it was a center for White Russians, but if McCall was correct, the Bolshies were moving in, too.
Wolkova took them to a table in the rear and gave them menus. They weren’t dressed for display in her front window.
“Now what?” Sadie whispered.
“We have tea and celebrate your new position,” Les said. “When do you start work?”
“On Monday.”
“Did you see your sister?”
“No. She lost her position. Her life is very complicated at the moment, it seems. I did see the manager, Peter Eyre, though. He’s a fright.”
“Why do you say that?” McCall asked, losing his accent.
Les raised his eyebrows and McCall shook his head in self-loathing.
Sadie didn’t seem to notice. “He’s a hard man. Exotic but English, very aristocratic manner but I felt like he was undressing me with his eyes.”
“You do have quite the figure, my lass,” McCall said, exaggerating his Irish accent this time.
“Ignore Robbie,” Les said, patting Sadie’s hand. “He’s the worst sort of ladies’ man.”
“What do you mean?” McCall asked.
“You’re the sort of ladies’ man the ladies don’t like,” Les growled.
McCall chuckled heartily as a waiter came to take their order. Les ordered blinis with caviar and a smoked fish and cheese plate, along with tea for all three of them.
“No cake? No buns?” Sadie asked.
“Sugar is bad for the teeth,” Les said.
She grimaced at him. “I’m going to make a trifle when we return home.”
McCall chuckled. They listened to Sadie make elaborate plans for her trifle, difficult to manage as she wouldn’t be able to purchase the berries she wanted in January. However, even Les’s mouth was watering by the time their smoky black tea arrived.
Sadie helped herself to a generous dollop of cream. McCall followed suit, but Les liked his tea black, the way he was used to drinking it. The flavor did not go with sweets.
He was biting into a blini and starting to enjoy himself, despite a slight buzzing in his ears, when a man walked into the tea room alone. The hostess took him to a table near them as Les catalogued the man’s features and matched them to the photographs he had stored in his brain. He’d seen this man’s distinctively hooked nose recently.
Leaning toward McCall, he said, “That’s one of Ovolensky’s trade delegation.”
McCall leaned back, holding his tea, looking more relaxed than before. “A Bolshie in a White establishment?”
“Who is Ovolensky?” Sadie asked.
“Georgy Ovolensky.” Les spoke so low that his lips barely moved. “Head of a Russian trade delegation staying at the Grand Russe Hotel.”
Sadie frowned as Les stared at the Russian again. Fedor was the man’s first name, but Glass hadn’t known his surname. “Looking for a taste of home, perhaps?”
Sadie glanced around. Les put his hand on her knee under the table, stilling her instantly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Did you see that man at the hotel?” Les asked. “Three o’clock.”
She picked up on what he meant right away. “No, I didn’t see him, but I was only at the reception desk and in Mr. Eyre’s office.”
“He’s staying there,” Les said. “Someone to keep an eye on.”
Sadie laughed. “I’m going to spy on the hotel guests?”
McCall’s eyes widened.
Les forced a laugh. He must be more exhausted than he realized. “No, darling, of course not. But we know him, you see.”
“He doesn’t seem to recognize you,” she observed.
“We’re much too lowly,” McCall explained. “He’s an important man. A Russian like your friend Dragunov needs to know who is who in his native community.”
“Are you teasing me?” she asked plaintively. “I thought we were celebrating my new position, and you’re both talking nonsense.”
Les patted her knee again. “Do you want to return home and make your trifle? I’ll put you in a taxicab and give you the money for any berries you can find.”
“I’ll use jam,” she sniffed. “And eat every bit myself.”
McCall thrust out his chest in mock despair. “But I want some, too.”
“Not until you learn to behave,” she said. “The pair of you are nothing but big teases. Caviar and smoked fish. Really? Even the cheese tastes moldy.”
“We Russians are deprived,” Les said. “Do you have any idea how miserable the Bolsheviks have made my homeland?”
“Shhh, laddie,” McCall said.
Les glanced casually at Fedor’s table, but the man’s attention was on a table with three women eating scones. One of them had jam on her cheek. Les took some coins from his pocket and placed them in Sadie’s hand. “For the taxi fare and your jam,” he said. “I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”
Sadie blinked, clearly confused, but now that they had actually spotted someone important, this was no place for her. He had his hands full with McCall’s buffoonery. “I should do a bit of shopping before it is too late. We do not have much in the icebox for tomorrow.”
He pulled some more coins out of his pocket and handed them to her. She mock curtsied at him and walked out, head held high.
“Very pretty, your wife,” McCall said in a smarmy tone.
Les ignored him because another man had just approached Fedor. He memorized the face. “Recognize him?”
McCall bit into a blini and shook his head in the negative, then pulled out a notebook and began to sketch the face. They waited for another half an hour, but no one else joined the two men. When their waiter glared at them, they paid their bill and left.
“Perfect timing, anyway,” Les said. “My section head should be at our meeting place this time of day.”
“Very good,” McCall said. “But we were hoping to spot Konstantin.”
“We aren’t going to catch him sitting in the Russian Tea Rooms. We need to set up across the street, so we can see the door to the flats above.”
“Fair enough. The only problem is that St. Augustine’s Church is across the street. How are we going to see that door from the church?”
Les stared at the church’s Victorian Gothic façade, set considerably back from the street. “I have fantastic French naval binoculars.”
“Stained glass windows,” McCall countered.
Les swore when he saw McCall was correct. He was truly off his game. “We need to survey the building and discover out where Konstantin’s hideout is.”
Chapter Seven
“You sell magazines,” Glass pointed out, leaning away from the tea table in the Marylebone flat some forty minutes later. “Go into the building and sell door-to-door. You have the stock.”
“As Lester Rake or Dragunov?” Les asked, scratching at his fake mustache.
Glass considered Les’s face. His brow furrowed. “Dragunov has the mustache.”
Les ignored the furry discomfort on his face. “Yes, but Sadie thinks my eyes and nose are my most prominent features and the mustache isn’t much of a disguise.�
�
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Glass said with a roll of his eyes. “Does Rake wear glasses? A hat?”
“Hat.”
“Make sure it shadows your eyes.” Glass shrugged and poured more tea for both of them. His own dark brown eyes had shadows underneath. He hadn’t had much sleep recently. “Lose the mustache, go as Rake.”
“But Rake doesn’t sell door-to-door.”
Glass sighed. “Rake has been in hospital, out of work, for two weeks. He needs some fast money, so he’s selling door-to-door. Good enough. We need to find Konstantin.”
“Any word on his next target, or if there is one?” Les had finished McCall’s sketch of the man with Fedor. It lay on the table between them.
“We received some intel from our in-Russia operatives that indicate the Bolsheviks are considering English cultural targets.”
“The Natural History Museum?” Les suggested. “It’s near the Russian Tea Rooms.”
“That would be a lot of bomb. Large building.” Glass rubbed his right eyebrow. It had a slight scar running through it, left over from his war service.
“So you have no idea of possible targets.”
“No. Could be hotels. They tried the Grand Russe.”
“Not the Bolsheviks. The Whites hired Konstantin.”
“Yes, yes. He’s a cipher. That group of Whites is all we have. Fedor may have nothing to do with Konstantin, but him being seen nearby is a bad sign.”
“Any Russian might reasonably go to a restaurant owned by and targeted toward Russians,” Les argued.
“I hear what you are saying. I hope this other man with Fedor, when we identify him, can lead us to a greater understanding of the situation. For now, I want you in that building, selling magazines. I’m pleased that Sadie has the position at the Grand Russe. We’ll see that bear fruit, I’m certain.”
“Are you going to bring her in, attempt to recruit her?”
“For now, keep her close. I don’t have the budget to pay her. She isn’t going anywhere, right? I haven’t located a ring for you yet. Hopefully by Tuesday.”
“I’ll continue to court her. I haven’t had to propose, just look wan.”
“That can’t be much of a stretch. You don’t look well, Leslie. Go home and make an early night of it.”
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