Pax walked in and stopped, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t turn around. Maybe he was counting towels. Maybe he was waiting to get executed, abrupt-like. Pax could be a damned dramatic son of a bitch. Should have been on stage.
What do I say? What can I possibly say? “I never understood the business about not stabbing a man in the back. It’s safer, for one thing. And if I have to kill somebody, I’d just as soon not watch his face.”
“You’re a sensitive soul,” Pax said.
He came up to stand beside Pax and stare at the inventory of the Café de la Régence. “I’m not sure what comes next. I think I ask questions and you lie. At some point, one of us hurts the other. Matters deteriorate from there.”
“Let’s skip that part.”
“That’s my preference. But damned if I know what I’m supposed to do.”
“You’ve caught French agents before.”
It was a stab of shock, hearing Pax call himself a Frenchman. Ten minutes ago, they’d been on the same side. Two minutes ago, they hadn’t said the words. Now they had. “You admit it?”
“That’s a cat that won’t stuff back in the bag.” Pax pulled his mind back from wherever he’d sent it and faced him, making the turn slowly, with his hands out from his sides to show a lack of weapons. Not that it mattered. Pax didn’t need weapons. “I was careless, eight years ago, letting you see the hand signal. I thought I’d kept it hidden.”
“That’d be one of your Caché secrets.”
“We had a few. I needed to use that one. Those kids were about to tear us to pieces.” Pax looked past him, keeping half an eye on the main room of the café, making sure they weren’t overheard. “They would have, you know, in another minute.”
“Bloodthirsty lot.”
“We weren’t nice children. That attic they were in . . . It was cold as a Norse hell in February. They gave us one blanket, summer and winter. We were soldiers of France, they said. Soldiers sleep on the ground in any weather.”
“I bet soldiers don’t like it, either.”
“We had to say we liked it. Had to say we wanted to give the day’s food to the army. They’d do that to us unexpectedly when we were hungriest. We never knew when.”
“That was a mistake on their part.”
“It made us good liars, if nothing else.”
“I’m trying to work this out. The timing. You would have been—”
“I was one of the first. When they brought me, the strongest kids were bullying the others, taking their food and their blanket. We made rules.” His lips twisted. It was almost amusement. “I made rules. It turned out, I was the strongest kid.”
“I know all about your rules. ‘Don’t wear green. Strike low and strike often. Never budge from a good lie.’”
“With them it was more like, ‘Elect a leader. Never betray another Caché. Protect each other. Take care of the little kids.’ ”
In the café, the noise was dying down. The woman who poured drinks and took money at the counter headed their way, got to the storeroom door, ready to stick her head in and say something. She met his eye and had second thoughts. Walked off without whatever she was looking for. Good decision on her part.
Pax went on talking, not making sudden moves, holding his hands still and open. “We named ourselves the Cachés. They started using it later, but it was us, first. They didn’t know what we were hiding from, was them.” He thought a while. “The ones who came after me kept the rules. In all the Cachés you uncovered, not one of them led you to another.”
“Not one.”
“When we walked into that attic that night, the kids had a leader, speaking for all of them. They kept the small ones in the back. They knew the hand signal. That was mine. I made that up.”
“It gave you away. They have some word . . . that Greek God of bad luck.”
“Nemesis.”
“That sounds like it. Who were you, before you went to the Coach House and took up being a Caché?”
Pax shook his head.
“Fair enough. It doesn’t matter.”
“Not anymore.”
“You’re not English. You’ve been a spy from the first day you limped into Meeks Street.”
“Yes.” He jerked his head to the side, abruptly. “No. I was—” He went silent.
Forty feet away, the door of the café banged closed behind some irritated customer. Glass rattled in the front windows. The noise scraped the lines of his nerves. Hell. This was hard. “You’re not the son of a British Service agent.”
“I’m not James Paxton’s son. I took that dead boy’s place. I took his name. Let me sit down.” He didn’t wait for a nod. He collapsed on the bench, putting his hands out in front of him, holding one inside the other. “I didn’t expect to get away with it for this long.”
“I have to tell Carruthers.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“She’ll send men after you.”
Pax raised stillness to a fine art. Paint on the wall fidgeted, compared to him. “She’ll need to know how much I gave the French.”
“She’ll send them in twos and threes. You won’t be easy to take. Not alive. And you have to be alive to interrogate.”
It felt eerily familiar, laying the facts out. Predicting, discussing, getting the choices lined up.
“It’ll be an interesting little talk.” A muscle in Pax’s cheek tightened. A sign of cracks in the ice. “I count on Carruthers to finish up neatly. Don’t let her turn the work over to you. You deserve better than that.”
“I’m not her butcher.”
Pax waved for silence. “Both of you can leave it to the French. Justine DuMotier’s going to report this. The French execute turncoats.”
“You were about twelve, last time you were French.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have a day, after the French find out. Maybe less.”
In the main room, the lamps were getting blown, one by one, leaving the café darker every time. Murmurs, cautious and annoyed, said the owner and his wife were talking quietly between themselves and locking the windows up and down the front.
“They brought me to Russia, fast, by ship.” Pax took up a conversation they weren’t actually having. “When I was there, they did the rest. I didn’t see the fire.” He lost momentum, wiped his mouth, and started up again. “They made me go through the ashes and bury what was left. So I’d be convincing.” He ran his hand down his arm. “They burned me. For proof.”
He’d seen the scar Pax had snaking up his arm. Ugly and deep. “Authentic.”
“They were great ones for detail.” Pax sounded exhausted. Hoarse. “They told me to get myself to Meeks Street. ‘That way,’ they said, and pointed west.” He closed his hand on his arm, as if it still hurt. “It took me four months to walk across Europe. It’d started snowing by the time I got to England. Maybe the Coach House did make us tough.”
“Nobody trains agents like the French.”
“Nobody.” Pax took a couple of deep breaths. “Let me finish this. I was four months at Meeks Street when my directeur showed up. I’d done better than he hoped.”
“Your hand right in the candy box. He must have been pleased.”
“It’s not . . . Damn. It’s not a joke.” The table held a coffee grinder and a tray with a dozen cups waiting to be washed. Pax picked up dirty cups and began to lay them out in a row. “I gave him papers, Hawk. I followed orders. You have to know that. Three times, I gave him files I filched out of the cupboards in the basement. I picked old work. Dead operations. Agents who’d retired to some sheep farm in the Outer Hebrides.”
“You gave him garbage.”
“I was green as grass. I didn’t know what was important.” Pax began to stack dirty cups. “I’ll never know how much damage I did.”
Now that was vintage Pax, looking on the dark side, even if he had to run round the side and paint it black himself.
“I know what was stored down there. I bur
ned it wholesale when they put me in charge of filing. How’d you kill him?”
Pax shrugged, all austere and disapproving. Did he think the whole damn story wasn’t obvious? “A dagger under the sternum, up to the heart. But I didn’t do it till the fourth meeting. None of this is going to make any difference to Carruthers.”
“No.” The seniors in the British Service were a scary lot. Carruthers more than most.
“Nobody showed up to replace him. A couple months went by and I was still waiting for the ax to fall. Robespierre died on the guillotine. The Coach House closed and the French wanted to pretend it never existed. You and Doyle went hunting Cachés up and down the length of England. But you didn’t look at me.”
“You were one of us.”
“By then, I was.” He kept stacking cups, one by one. “Somewhere along the line I turned into Thomas Paxton.”
“Who is in one hell of a mess.”
There wasn’t much more to say, so they sat there, not saying it.
Pax set the last cup in place. “It doesn’t get easier with waiting. If you’re going to kill me, you might as well do it here.”
“If I were going to kill you, I’d have done it ten minutes ago instead of listening to that whole maudlin story. ”
“I betrayed the Service from the first day I walked in the door.”
“You were a kid and it was a long time ago.”
“I’ve lied to everybody for years. I could have been a traitor all along. You’d never know.”
“Fine then. You’re so bloody traitorous, I’ll sharpen up a knife and you can do the deed yourself. That’s a private corner over there. Get on with it.”
There was enough light to see Pax’s lips twitch. “All right, then. How do I live through this?”
“That’s a topic of fruitful speculation. My advice is, run like a rabbit. Go to Germany. Maybe Norway. Settle down to a blameless life as a Latin tutor. Collect bugs. You’d enjoy that. I doubt we’ll bother to track you down in the frozen north.”
“And the French?”
“They don’t have to know, if your Caché mate keeps his mouth shut. I’ll convince Justine to stay quiet.”
That got a short laugh out of him. “Maybe you could at that. Let’s say I don’t want to teach Latin in the frozen north.”
“You can go to Carruthers and throw yourself on the thin and sticky gruel of her mercy. Or you can go to London, to Galba. At least he’ll listen to you before he slits your throat.” Nothing else to say. “I have money. And a couple watches. I spent the day picking pockets.”
“You’re a man of parts, Hawk.”
“My morality is complicated. Get out of Paris. The Americans tell me New York and Boston are cities of culture and opportunity. They’re probably lying through their teeth, but you could go take a look.”
“I might do that. I have to think about this.”
Too much damn thinking, that was Pax’s problem. “I can give you till dawn. Then I have to go to Carruthers.”
Thirty-two
HAWKER STOOD AT THE WINDOW OF THE CAFÉ DE la Régence, waiting for Owl.
The café was silent around him. The owners had grumbled their way off into the night. It was just him and Owl. She was off in the storeroom, doing something or other.
It was dark outside. This late, they snuffed the big lamps in the arches of the arcade. The shops of the Palais Royale closed up tight. The shopkeepers went home. He could just barely hear the rumble of voices and music from the gaming rooms upstairs. A café down at the far end of the colonnade was offering Gypsy music.
A few fools were still coming and going. Englishmen and Germans, mostly, determined to lick up the last dregs of foreign sin. Easy work for pickpockets, that lot. A couple whores hadn’t given up yet. They’d be the ones too old or too shabby to get into the gaming rooms, out looking for men dimwitted enough to touch them. Every once in a while, a gendarme walked by, keeping the peace.
Four hours till dawn.
Carruthers was going to ask him where Pax was headed. He could say he didn’t know. Lots of routes out of Paris when you knew the city as well as Pax did.
Owl came up behind him, making the right amount of noise. Enough to say she was there, not enough to break his concentration.
She said, “You did not know he was a Caché?”
“No.” The French had done a thorough, convincing job. “Your friend told you?”
“Not so exactly. My colleague pretends to know Pax not at all. He has made a poor choice.” Owl was reflected a little in the glass of the window, like a serious, disapproving ghost. “He lies to me, ’Awker, despite the years we have worked together.”
“Does he?”
“He twists like a worm on the hook to avoid betraying a fellow Caché. I am supposed to be blind to the drama enacted under my nose and stupid as well. I have sent my friend away and told him to keep his mouth shut. I will deal with him later. For many reasons, he will keep silent.”
“That’s good.”
She was watching him, first in the surface of the window, then she turned to study him frankly. “You will give Paxton up to your superiors?”
“In the morning.”
“You have no choice, I suppose.”
“None.” When Carruthers set him to tracking down Pax, he didn’t know what he’d do.
He was mirrored in the glass, next to Owl. It looked like he was standing out there in the night, staring in.
“Listen to me.” Owl unpinned the top of her apron, first one side, and then the other, and untied the band at the waist, businesslike and calm. “Listen, ’Awker.”
“I am.”
“You are not, but I will let that pass.” She discarded the apron impatiently onto a table and pushed in front of him, between him and the window. She put her hand flat on his chest, and he had to look at her. “I will say nothing of this to my superiors.”
He wanted to shake his head to clear it. He wasn’t thinking well. “Why?”
“It is no honor to France to pursue one of the Cachés, after so many years.” She shrugged angrily. “We did not behave well toward them.”
If Pax didn’t have the French after him, that was better odds. Doyle would say—
Doyle had trained both of them. Him and Pax. He’d have to tell Doyle . . .
“We French speak always of love, but friendship is harder. Incomparably harder. Take your coat off and come help me.”
She wanted help with chairs. The tables, each with a chessboard built into the top, stood in an orderly line. Long padded benches went down one side. Chairs on the other.
“Over there.” She pointed.
Fine. He moved chairs. They were rush seats and slat, light to handle. Chess players didn’t need a lot of creature comforts. He took them two at a time to the front.
“Now the tables.” She’d already picked one up.
They fitted tables against the wall. When that was done, she put her hand on his arm and stopped him. “I did not know about Paxton.”
“I believe you.”
“It was . . .” Her eyes were intense on him, searching his face. “You know it was inevitable that we should plant one or two Cachés in your midst. Le bon Dieu alone knows how many agents you have inserted into the Police Secrète.”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I will not. I will say this also, mon ami.” She looked upon the crowded furniture. “I do not know every agent we French keep in England, but I do not think Pax is ours. I think he is loyal to you English.”
“Probably.”
“Will you have to kill him anyway?”
“Most likely.”
She said quietly, “You, yourself?”
“Not with these.” He lifted his hands. “I’m just going to give him to the men who will kill him. I’ll do it about five hours from now.”
Light and fast, she touched his left hand and his right where he held them out. “I see. I see most clearly. It is damnable. Let us finish this.”
/>
Finish. Why were they moving tables? Seemed like they were going to shift one of the benches now.
She said, “He has money? Paxton.”
“A good bit. All of mine, plus everything I took this morning. And a couple of watches and the ring.”
“That will make good bribes. I try always to bribe with jewelry. It makes men secretive. Take the other end of this. It is heavy, is it not? This is very sturdy furniture in this café.”
Owl pointed to where she wanted it relocated. Fine. Just fine.
She said, “The hour before dawn is a good time to steal horses. One might be twenty miles away from Paris by noon. Now. You back up. Yes. That is right.”
They walked the bench a ways. Set it down next to the other one.
“He will be disguised by now. He is a very good agent if he has your respect, as I think he does. Push this closer.” She straightened and wiped the palms of her hands on her skirt. “That is good.” The benches, side by side, close together, pleased her. “I will get my cloak. It is in the storage room.”
When she came back, she brought the lantern and her cloak. She began removing bits and pieces from her cloak and setting them out on the table. A pouch of coins. A knife. Her little pistol. A box for bullets and powder.
“He is a good agent, your Paxton?”
He cleared his throat. “Very good. The best. Good as I am.”
She shook the cloak, testing to see whether anything fell out, and tossed it across the two benches.
“He has money and knowledge of the countryside and five hours’ head start. ’Awker, you and I have run from armies of Austrians with far less than that.”
The light stood on the table between the two of them. The dark was all around. Quiet. Intimate.
She said, “Tomorrow, you will go to your headquarters and betray an old friendship. Then you will argue for his life. You will bargain and find allies and you will keep him alive. I have faith in you.”
She stood before him and picked at the knot in his cravat. He was wearing just a turn around the neck and a square knot in front. Simple. The kind of neckcloth a chess fanatic might wear.
The Black Hawk Page 21