by Claire North
The door opened with agonising slowness, layers of ancient timber dragging, warped, on old stone. At the last moment, it sprang back, propelled by the weight of two men trying to shove through it from outside. I nearly lost my footing, was pushed back up by Ljubica, and in that moment the truth of her heart was that if I had to shoot someone so we both escaped, then I should damn well do it and she couldn’t quite believe she’d given me the gun, since I was proving to be so wet! For a moment we balanced in a precarious tug of war, not quite sure who was coming and who was going, until I staggered backwards before their combined weight and the door slammed wide into the wall. Behind me, the man who had called for help contemplated getting involved, then decided to leave it to more qualified individuals.
One of these – whose name was Istvan and who really needed to piss, distractingly – caught me by the scruff of the neck. He had dealt with plenty of prisoners, prided himself on how quickly they learnt to obey him, couldn’t quite believe that he hadn’t been unleashed on me before and was going to enjoy pointing out to his superiors that this escape attempt would never have happened if he’d been given full authority over the situation. He wasn’t planning on punching me too much, just a bit of bruising so I might learn my lesson, maybe suspending me by my ankles so I got the message without being damaged beyond use; but the woman he’d certainly make an example of, staff, fucking staff, told them not to trust her, kept on giving him dirty looks, kept on giving him the eye, he’d have to…
He hadn’t noticed the gun, of course. It was such a small thing and he was so preoccupied with his bladder and with being so much better at his job than anyone else that the question of whether the cowering English spy might have a weapon hadn’t even crossed his mind. It was so absurd, and anyway, Istvan came from the streets, from knives and iron bars, from a world where a display of power was how you avoided the fight altogether.
I thought about pointing out his error, got halfway through a spluttered, “Um, I do have a…”
But he wasn’t interested, and his English was non-existent and his German was weak at best, and before I could engage him further in conversation he had lifted me up by my shirt, which tore against my armpits and made my arms flail like a chicken, and slammed me spine-first back against the wall. The panelling was not a single smooth surface; a small lintel protruded and cracked into my coccyx hard enough to make me nearly vomit; my skull smacked back, filling my eyes with blood.
By now, Istvan’s companion, a man whose far less emotional relationship with the situation made him harder to pick from the slew of truth beating against my senses, had grabbed Ljubica by the hair, and the only person who seemed to be aware that things were perhaps not quite what they seemed was the man at the bottom of the stairs who, much as I had done, was trying to point out through the woman’s scream and my gasping that yes, no but yes, I really did have a gun.
There was no conscious decision to pull the trigger, and if I had been able to breathe I think I might have still tried to explain the situation to him, point out that, honestly, I had a weapon and this wasn’t what you were supposed to do with people who had guns…
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
The noise of other people’s rushing hearts, of blood in the skull, my blood, her blood, their blood, drowned out all senses. I pulled the trigger.
The gun was small enough, and the retort muffled through the weight of Istvan’s body against mine, that for a moment no one quite understood what had happened, least of all him. His mind was so alive with the excitement of the fight, with the roar of victory, that the actual pain as the bullet ruptured his belly registered only as a bite, perhaps a pinch of finger against folding flesh. He managed to smack my head back against the wall one more time, and hauling me bodily onto my tiptoes readied himself for another smash, and it was that effort that proved to be a step too far, and he dropped me, dizzy, confused. Now he looked down. Now he saw the blood spreading through his grubby shirt. Now he saw the gun in my hand, and the logical connection between these things permitted the pain to come in a sudden roar, a crippling, curling, nauseating rupture through his whole body that sent him to the ground with a howl.
I bent over double as the shock of his pain rocked through my own body, but Ljubica was already writhing her way free of the man who held her, and the guard by the staircase was also reconsidering his position. I had shot a man; I could shoot a man. This was new and unwelcome information in the sudden icy silence. Ljubica grabbed my arm and hissed something in a language I didn’t speak, and as I kept the gun pointed at the two men still standing, she pulled me through the half-open door, and out into the dazzling winter day.
Truths I know: that there are three men who patrol the grounds, armed. They find their work incredibly boring, and I don’t blame them, and they are all quite cold, except for one, who was raised in the Urals and thinks these idiots have no idea what real winter is like, and who fled abroad when he was thirteen years old and Tsar Alexander was killed and his father was caught whispering about rebellion and the legacy of Pugachev and the valiant Cossacks.
One of these men guards the front gate. He is an old man, a veteran of the Crimea, and the truth of his heart is that he killed only one man in that conflict, and the rest of the time he was just shot at by people he couldn’t see, rifle fire and cannon coming from… somewhere… and people killed by… someone… and there was no order to it, no sense, it was just death from a place onto a place and none of it made any goddam sense, none of it at all.
I had no idea how we were going to get past him, of course, but this turned out to be a redundant problem, because as we approached, a woman dressed in green and black walked up to him from the dirt track on the other side of the high gate, asked him a question he couldn’t hear, and as he leant in to hear her enquiry more closely, shot him in the chest.
Her gun was much bigger than mine, and echoed loud against stone. Then three more men were with her, and they had horses, and they were shouting, gesturing, come, come, come, so I came, and was thrown onto a beast far bigger and far stronger than me. I clung on with knees and arms and terror and hoped that he wouldn’t work out that I was, when it came to battles of will, a gnat of this world, waiting to be crushed beneath his hooves. Commands were issued and I heard the truth of them, and looked down to my rescuer in green and saw
– not a spy from the Nineteen, a saviour sent by the British, but rather –
Margot, slipping the gun back into her great spinning skirt pockets.
Margot, come to save the day.
She waved with a little smile, a single cream glove in a ripple of fingers, then turned away, swung into the saddle of a grey mare, kicked her heels and was riding in the opposite direction before I could say a thing.
Chapter 47
Margot, a killer.
Margot, rescuer, come from nowhere to make things right.
A murderer.
My hero.
Butcher of men.
She hadn’t flinched when she pulled the trigger, and it occurred to me that she had perhaps killed before, and the only reason I had not seen this truth in her heart was because it was largely inconsequential to her.
Or maybe I was wrong.
Maybe everything I knew was wrong.
Riding hard for the city, I had no idea, and no way to look and know the truth of her heart. Nor was she ever to permit me to see into her soul again, until the end.
There were consequences.
Ljubica fled Hungary, with her children.
Ritte caught her three weeks later, and she was shot, but the children were spared, for what little that meant. Peadar Coman, who had threatened and bribed her into action, knew that this was the most likely outcome. It was the truth of his heart, and he despised himself and me for making him do it. Women like Ljubica, he concluded, were worth fifty William Abbeys, and I was inclined to agree. But Margot had insisted, had been hysterical, and reluctantly the People’s So
ciety had agreed. A British traitor was worth keeping, in the balance of things. Good lives could be saved, though good people might die in saving them.
Coman and his men were all armed, rifles and revolvers paid for by blackmail, purchased from a Turkish gentleman who had been only too happy to arm Protestants, socialists and nationalists who resented the Habsburg rule.
Margot rode the other way. She killed a man, and she was gone. She had no desire for me to delve into the truth of her heart, and in that moment, blood splattered on my shirt and sleeves, neither did I. I couldn’t imagine that either of us would be anything but disappointed by what we found.
Four miles’ hard ride from the house where I’d been held, I was ordered to dismount and bundled into the back of a cart laden with preserved meats turned to stone by the cold. Coman didn’t meet my eye as he barked, “Now you owe us.”
I stared at my feet, and nodded, and didn’t complain about the cold.
Some six hours later, sun down and horse shivering, crystals of ice forming in its lashes, I was dropped off outside the British consulate in Budapest. The driver didn’t speak English; he waited until I was standing, bow-legged and frozen, before the front door, then whipped his cart into motion again without looking back.
For a moment I stood bewildered in a gently snowing street. Passers-by in fur hats and heavy boots glanced at me, found me a disturbing sight and looked away. A policeman in cape and flat hat found me suspicious, reached for whistle and baton. I turned away, the truth of his heart a buzzing, irritating ripple on the edge of my awareness, and hammered on the consulate door until it was answered by a man in woollen slippers and a fez.
“Good evening,” I growled through gritted, rattling teeth. “I am a spy and it’s all gone terribly wrong.”
It took the British the best part of a day to work out how to get me out of Budapest. By then, Ritte had already set up watchers across the street, not knowing for sure if I was in the consulate but unwilling to risk that I wasn’t. Langa was coming, the truth preying on the edge of my lips. I stood and watched the watchers from behind the netted curtains of the consulate and on the tip of my tongue was:
It’s the ones who write well they’re the ones who get the attention oh yes he writes a nice report but he doesn’t know what he’s doing, no craft, no craft at all, I’ve got craft it’s just that I can’t write like that not fair, not right, craft should be its own reward…
The consul was a man called Curran. He knew nothing. He was quite proud of knowing nothing; it made it easier for him to spread very affable, friendly lies while playing cards with his probable enemies. Ignorance took away the frisson of maliciousness, made him just a decent chap doing a decent job, and while the big guns might not respect him, he always felt it was more effective to be liked rather than feared.
“Rum old business, yes!” he chuckled as the telegrams flew. “Funny old affair!”
For a moment I missed Mrs Parr, and wondered where the baron had been buried, and if Albert thought I was dead.
Then three men arrived by riverboat, and gave their names as Smith, Jones and Williams, and two of them were in fact called Griffiths and he sang baritone and he sang tenor and had a lovely set of lungs on him, when they weren’t conducting certain affairs abroad. “We are here to escort you to London, Dr Abbey,” intoned the one who introduced himself as Smith.
“You like the Austrians, you like the way they do things properly,” I blurted.
He raised one thin white eyebrow above a sky-blue eye glistening with the beginning of cataract. “Ah yes,” he muttered. “They said you were a character.”
“Characters are always trouble,” I replied in a bright half-sing-song, trying to tame the truth about to burst from my lips. “It’s a rich man’s word for ‘incompetent’.”
“Couldn’t agree more, sir. Shall we be going?”
“I’ll be much better once we’ve got on a train,” I whimpered gratefully, as they bundled me in scarf, hat and coat. “Much less eccentric.”
We left the consulate in two groups of two. Griffiths and Griffiths went first, slipping out into the icy night. I watched from behind a darkened window with the man whose name absolutely was not Smith as a shadow detached itself from a doorway opposite and followed, and a moment after that, a bouncing cab pulled by a steaming grey horse trotted after too.
“Still one watcher, house to the left, top window,” I chanted, swaying a little with the effort of keeping the words vaguely controlled, vaguely sane. “His name is Andras, he pretends he likes American cigars because he thinks it makes him seem cultivated, but no one believes it for a second and the habit is so costly that sometimes he won’t even light the cigar, just roll it around between his fingers and lips as if he was going to but then decided against it. He has a runner he can send for help if we leave, the runner is fourteen years old and managed nearly four hours of incredibly intense watching of this consulate, proud, very proud, proud to be watching, until he got bored and is now asleep, but he doesn’t snore otherwise Andras would have kicked him by now.”
The eyebrow rose again, the lips drew in between pale, sprouting lips. Smith has seen some strange things in his time. This current assignment will definitely be on his list of unusual stories that he will tell his grandson, and which his grandson will not believe, smug little snot, beloved though he is.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Andras hits his woman. They’re not married but she’s pregnant and he knows he has to marry her but he also doesn’t like her and he doesn’t know what to do about it so sometimes he hits her because he doesn’t know what to do. It’s a very stupid reason to hit a woman and he knows that, but he just gets angry and then he can’t think, he knows he’s a bad man but he can’t stop it, so perhaps he should just be a bad man, perhaps that’s just who he is.”
“That is less helpful.”
“I’m sorry, I know the truth of men’s hearts, not their heads. Also you shouldn’t know that – don’t tell them that you know this otherwise they might hurt you, but you know that good, I’m so glad, I’m so pleased you understand.”
I was clinging to his sleeve, on the verge of babbling, on the verge of tears. To my surprise, he patted me, three times, mechanical, palm flat on my shoulder.
“Don’t you worry, Dr Abbey. We’re all professionals here.”
He was, and I was so grateful I nearly started sobbing into his great woolly coat right then and there. I realised that I trusted this man implicitly, and had complete confidence in him when, calm as a summer picnic, he murmured, “House to the left?”
I nodded, gnawing at the edge of my hand to stop any more words babbling out.
He patted me one more time on the shoulder, then went downstairs. A few moments later I heard the door open; saw him walk across the street as if he were strolling to visit a friend. He stopped beneath the door of the house where our watchers resided, and there was the flare of a match. He lit a cigarette, a horrid Egyptian stick he’d picked up a fondness for on the bank bond job, then pulled a flask of whisky from his jacket pocket, poured the contents over the front door of the house, and flicked the still-burning match into the pool.
Whisky burns blue when it ignites. The glow was unearthly, Smith a ghost shadow moving against it. For a moment I thought I saw Langa cross through his form, and turned away with a shudder, acid in my mouth. But it was no more than the play of light as he sauntered back towards the consulate, gesturing at my window for me to come down. I descended, bundled up tight, only eyes showing beneath hat and scarf, and as we walked away, trudging over slippery stone towards the river, Smith asked:
“They following?”
“They’re trying to put out the fire at their front door.”
“Think they’ll use the windows?”
“They’re too busy panicking.”
“Good man.”
“I need to get on a train.”
“Boat first, then train.”
“Is it
a fast boat?”
“We’ll travel with the current.”
“Thank you.”
“Just what we do, sir. Just what we do.”
The boat was waiting for us beneath a bridge of scowling demons. It shone no lights, carried no flag. The captain had fought against the Prussians; he had known the bitter taste of losing for nothing, of pointless war, and now cared nothing for nation or creed; only coin.
As we pulled away from the wharf into the tugging currents of the river, I felt the beating heart of pursuers following us, pelting down the hill to the edge of the water. Ritte was with them. He was going to lose everything, and knew it, and for a moment I felt almost sorry for him.
For a moment.
Somewhere behind, Langa slunk through the shadows, following, following, and I turned my back to it all as we were pulled south, chugging and clunking our way towards the sea.
Chapter 48
It is hard to hate anyone when you know the truth of their hearts. I have, in my time, only hated one other man. He was made rich by coal, and used that wealth to purchase in order: a large house in Kensington, a larger estate in Hampshire, a wife, two mistresses, three music halls, five racehorses, an election, a steamer and, as they started to come into the fashionable realms of the rich, a car. He was, in fact, the first man I ever met who owned one, and, since there was no requirement other than wealth to have it, he was also the first man I met to crash one, which he did immediately, straight into the newly installed horse trough outside the village inn.
I was sent to investigate him by the Nineteen, on suspicion that he was selling British naval secrets to the Americans.
He was.
He was also selling them to the Japanese, Russians, Germans, French – anyone, really, with money to spend.