by Tessa Lunney
22
“mister gallagher and mister shean”
I checked my post on the way to breakfast and there it was: a handwritten note with lines from Shelley. I took them to Petit’s to work them out.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Of course, Fox would use “Ozymandias” as the code. I had teased him with it last night, so now he would tease me by making me repeat this poem until I hated it. I read the note again and again, but this was the poem in its entirety; there was no code, no game, no little jibe. It was his handwriting and there was no stamp. This note must have been hand-delivered, presumably by an agent, and presumably not by Fry as he would have said hello. What did the note mean? Was it just a nasty little “peek-a-boo” from Fox? Was an agent actually following me, would he turn up here at Petit’s and I would never have a moment’s privacy for the rest of my life? I looked around. The other patrons were the usual old men, most of whom I recognized and who nodded “Bonjour” at me when they caught my glance. There was no one new, no one strange.
This was Fox’s handwriting. He could not be in Paris, as I had called him in London last night. He was sending an agent to meet me who, even if he had left immediately after the call, could not yet be in Paris. Unless he flew… were there commercial flights across the Channel? Was that now possible? Did they fly late enough, or early enough, to get this note here? The clock on the wall said it was almost noon. The only possible way for this note to have reached me from London, since last night, was by air. If the note flew, then Fox could have flown with it. I wrapped my scarf tighter against the chill.
I looked at the note again. There was no meeting place or time. Therefore, the meeting place and time must be in the poem itself. Ozymandias… was he a Persian king? No, Egyptian, that was it. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair…” I could look on the works of the mighty Egyptians at the Egyptian room at the Louvre. And the time? There were no clues. In Fox terms, that meant as soon as the letter reached me. It meant now.
* * *
“So, Delphine, do you understand what you need to do?”
We stood in a corner of Gare Montparnasse.
“Yes, mademoiselle. I sell my matches, I ask the other street sellers what they have seen, then I report back to you and you will pay me.”
“That’s right. Where are your proper shoes, your boots?”
“I have no other shoes, mademoiselle.”
“Hm, we’ll have to change that later today.”
Her eyes lit up. “Real boots, mademoiselle?”
“Good sturdy ones. Now, here’s the money for the metro, keep me in sight but don’t let anyone see us together. This is a secret task, understand?”
She nodded and squirrelled away the metro fare, looking around and pretending she had never seen me before. I smiled; I was right to take a little detour to pick up Delphine. I wanted a second pair of eyes, someone invisible who could take the temperature of a place. Delphine was perfect for the task. She was bright, but pale and plain, and could slip into places where I would be noticed. There were always plenty of tourists at the Louvre, and so plenty of street sellers on the forecourt. From them, Delphine should be able to find out something.
* * *
The palaces stretched out magnificently, regally, as acres of windows and curls and creamy decoration rose into view from the metro. The foyer was marble and, as soon as I stepped inside, I was greeted with centuries of collected artworks. As I made my way through the galleries to the Egyptian room, I couldn’t help but think this was the most ridiculous place for a meeting. How like Fox to lead me here.
I smiled when I saw the hulking bulk of Agent Bacon peering intently at a mummy as though trying to see under the wrapping. He was the agent Fox had sent at the end of my last mission to hand over my pay check and pick up my quarry—literally, over his shoulder, after he’d knocked the quarry unconscious.
“I didn’t know you had silver teeth, Bacon—or is it Fry?”
“I invited you to call me Fry last year and the invitation still stands. I lost the teeth at Passchendaele.”
“What a muddy bloodbath that was.”
“A bloody mud bath. You were there?”
“You know I was. Where stood Fox, there stood I. I remember having to crack the mud off the men when they came into the triage tent. Is that mummy interesting?”
“Like any corpse. I prefer the future.”
“It is our job, after all. Changing the future.”
“I prefer noisy drinking holes to quiet museums too. Bloody strange rendezvous point, but Fox said you’d understand.”
“Yes. Well. It is a bit whispery in here, wouldn’t you say?”
“And I’m hungry. I’ve been up since yesterday.”
“Now, kiss me on both cheeks like we’re old lovers, and we’ll leave here arm in arm.”
He grinned as he crooked his elbow for me.
“You certainly smell like you’ve been up since yesterday,” I said. “Cigarettes and sweat. Now that you’re in Paris, Fry, you’ll have to stop smoking Sobranies. Gauloises are the only inconspicuous smokes.”
“They’re what you smoke?”
“And Gitanes.” I frowned at him. “Fox didn’t tell you?”
“Fox didn’t even tell me your name.”
23
“bugle call rag”
We went to a cozy café on the left bank, full of brightly colored tourists and housewives concerned with their shopping bags. I fit right in, with Fry looking like my uncomfortable foreign cousin or some such. I ordered their final croissant and Fry ordered the closest the French would do to a fry-up.
“If Fox didn’t tell you my name, how did you know I was the contact?”
“He just said you’d be a true blonde. If you notice, there aren’t that many in Paris. In any case, as soon as you walked in, I recognized you.” He looked me over. “How do you do your work in that costume?”
I wore yellow today—a lemon silk dress, my mustard wool coat and matching cloche, and yellow suede heels—all very much as usual.
“It’s so… eye-catching.” He frowned.
“I work as a society girl gossip columnist. I’m hiding center-stage.”
“To each their own.”
“Well, I don’t think the salons of Paris would accept a silver-toothed pirate as a society girl. Society entertainment, maybe…”
He grinned in a way that seemed nasty. “Shall we get down to business?”
“Before we eat? How very British of you.” But this was just banter; I was keen to know what Fox had told him. “Nonetheless, patriotic service and all that. My quarry… I don’t have exact names.”
“Neither do we.”
“I thought so! This is a first.”
“No, this is usual.” He looked me over again, as though wondering whether to tell me something. Instead he just forked a pile of fried egg and bread into his mouth. He continued to look at me while he chewed. Was he expecting me to explain my relationship with Fox? There wasn’t much I wanted to tell him. I lit another cigarette and returned his stare until, finally, he swallowed.
“Your verdict?” I said but he raised an eyebrow. “To your extended assessment of me.”
“I c
an see why the boss is obsessed with you.”
I snorted. Smoke came out my nose like I was on fire.
“Really, Miss Button. I read the note he sent you. Poetry? He recites the Romantics, of course, but using them as mission code? That’d take far too long. But I can see why he likes to bait you.”
“If you don’t have the names of my quarry, why are you here?”
“Ah yes.” He shoveled in more food, wiping his meaty fingers daintily before reaching into his coat pocket.
“Firstly, your expenses check. Apparently, I am to insist that you take it as no other payment will be forthcoming before the mission is complete.”
I put the check away without looking at it and Fry raised an eyebrow.
“Secondly, to give you the information and general background that we have about your mission.” He wiped some egg up with his bread and washed it down the mouthful with beer. He made me wait for every sentence, a technique that subtly and not-so-subtly indicated his assumed authority. It was an effort not to snap at him to hurry up. I ordered more coffee to hide my impatience.
“Miss Button, we know the end point but not how to get there. The end point is that you distract, persuade, ensnare the prince or princes. I think the boss means for you to seduce them somehow, a ploy at which I would surely fail…”
“This is Paris; you’d be surprised.”
He laughed in an embarrassed way. “You will work at an arranged meeting place. Then I will collect the quarry and return him or them to England. I have another contact who I’m working with to provide the transportation. As we do not know who the quarry is, we cannot work out the end point yet.”
“You must have some idea.” I wanted him to show his hand, but he clearly needed some prompting. “They’re heirs to the British throne, yes?”
“Who else is a prince in England?”
“There are some Russian princes hiding with their cousins in England… you’re right, Fox wouldn’t care about them. So, Albert, Edward, George, and Henry it is then.”
“Either one or two of them, I think. Not Henry, he’s too…”
“Ridiculous. That voice! But perhaps that’s what the Fascists like.”
“He’s too much a soldier.” Fry failed to contain his smile. “Far too patriotic.”
“So, a combination of Edward, Albert, and George. As Fox is using me, my money is on Edward, at least.” I waited for a response from Fry, but his attention was on his food. “In fact, I mentioned the Prince of Wales to Fox and he didn’t disagree.”
“Neither do I.”
“Wales it is, then.”
Fry mopped up the last of his egg with his bread, chasing down every last morsel, thorough and precise.
“The Prince of Wales was in the army in the war. Are Albert and George in the navy?”
“Yes, both. Albert joined the air force though, at the end of the war. George is still in the navy. Why?”
I was thinking of the “Tinker Tailor” rhyme, but this information didn’t properly narrow it down.
“Just thinking. How did Fox find out about this?” Fox was a generation older than the princes, more the same age as their father, the king.
“He really does like to keep you in the dark.”
“I like to think that because I’m in Paris, I don’t get the office gossip.”
“It’s mostly about the poor luncheon in the cafeteria.”
“But that’s not where he heard about the princes.”
“I think it is gossip though. From his club, or his country house, or one of his ministerial parties. Some blabbermouth minister who doesn’t know what Fox does.”
“And what does Fox do? As in, what’s his job? I thought he was a doctor.”
“He was a doctor. I believe he still is to his neighbors in Kent. He works as senior advisor to the Home Secretary, though I don’t think he does any advising. For you and me and anyone who knows, he’s a secret strategist in British post-war intelligence.”
“Houses built of shadows. Very well. Do I work with you to discover the wayward Wales and crew?”
“You contact me about the end point and I contact the transportation. Otherwise you’re on your own.” He finished his beer to the last drop.
“And you’re content with that?”
“Fox must have faith in you.”
“Faith? To him, Faith is just a woman’s name and, like Grace, Hope, and Charity, the virtue is a stranger.”
“You know all his secrets, then.”
“If I knew all of them, he couldn’t tease me with poetry.”
“But you know how he got that scar on his cheek. What is it, a duelling scar?”
“He wants you to think so. It was an accidental war wound. He wouldn’t let me patch him up.”
Fry nodded. The café smelt sharply of fried onion and soap.
“So… he doesn’t write code like this to anyone else?”
“Not to me.” Fry shrugged. “Not to anyone I’ve worked with. It’s your special privilege.”
“Or punishment.”
“It could be worse. He could be a Modernist.”
I smiled to cover my disappointment; despite his profession, Fry was still old-fashioned.
“How long are you in Paris, Fry?”
“I have some work to do here, so a week or two.”
“What work?” He ignored me, as he searched his packet for a last cigarette and, not finding one, helped himself to mine. “Oh, come on. I might be able to help.”
“You’re working with the nationalist threats—fascists, royalists, and so on. It took a bit of convincing but Fox has allowed me to work on the communist threat.”
“A more general threat to British democracy than a specific embarrassment to the crown.”
“It’s proper intelligence work.” If you can sniff smugly, then Fry did just that. “Our government needs this information. Fox’s patriotism has always been more about ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ than the grubby business of parliamentary democracy.”
“How did you end up working for him? You’re the only agent of his I’ve seen who… well, that I’ve seen this side of the war.”
“Yes, he kept you secret.”
“Did he recruit you on the operating table?”
“Pretty much. And I was glad of it. I’d given up my scholarship at Cambridge and was disgusted that I was going to be rat food before I could be a historian.”
“What happened to Cambridge?”
“Duty got in the way.”
The café patrons flowed around us, speaking several languages and in various states of excitement. I felt like an island of serious state business, cold and quiet. I didn’t need to wonder why I smoked so much.
“So, if you’re here, does that mean there are British Communists in Paris?”
“Communists are internationalists. They are everywhere.”
“There was certainly one in the noodle house I visited the other day. A man from Indochina—no sorry, Việt Nam—introduced himself as Nguyễn. He might like a bit of company at one of his party meetings.”
He helped himself to more of my cigarettes. “Maybe Fox was right to have faith in you.”
“I can let you come with me, if you promise to behave. I need to look at these Communists anyway. It’s to do with my princes.”
“Russian princes? Surely not English princes, I’d have heard.”
“They all know each other. They’re all related.”
“Of course. Contact me here.” He scribbled a number on a coaster as I paid for our meal.
“I’ll attend the meeting.”
“Bring your flatcap.”
“It’s my father’s.”
Outside, the streets were shiny with rain. Leaves glowed on the trees and on the footpath, workers hurried, tourists dawdled, faces red-cheeked and bright-eyed with the coming winter. I was no longer isolated but part of the flowing life of Paris, and it gave me strength.
“You read the note Fox sent,
Fry. Why didn’t you say hello when you delivered it?”
“They weren’t my instructions.”
“But your instructions told you to read the note, did they?”
He grinned. “I read it on the flight over here.”
“Flight! Is that usual?”
“I fly here often.”
“With Fox?”
“Always.”
“He’s in Paris?” The noise of the street rose to a clatter. Was I cold or were my hands just shaking?
“Almost always, I should say. He sent me alone this time. But I think he comes over at least once a month and always by aeroplane.”
24
“looking all over for you”
“Browne speaking.”
“Best of all Berties.” I looked around at the station, cavernous and gray, people hurrying or lugging luggage but no one watching, waiting, loitering. “When are you coming to see me?”
“As soon as I can. When will you send me your column?”
“After I attend Chanel’s black and white ball.” Bertie squealed on cue. “Though I have a filler column in the post already. It’s about all the chic places to go in Paris.”
“You know these?”
“Viper. It’s everywhere I didn’t take Tom.”
“How is our intrepid reporter?”
“Too intrepid for unbroken broadcast. He’s full of static and gunfire.”
“The handsome ones always are.”
“Are you alone? I have a question about a certain doctor.”