Elizabeth Thornton (24 page)

This wasn’t the time or place to examine the book in detail. But without a shadow of doubt, she was convinced that this was the book everyone wanted, the book that would save George’s life. With one comprehensive glance around, to make sure that she was unobserved, she slipped the book into her reticule, then she made a show of going through the rest of the books in the box. That
done, she shut the box, fastened the straps, and told the postboy she was ready to go.

Outside, it was raining, and Abbie, head down, hurried across the cobblestones to the waiting chaise. She had only a yard or two to go when her steps faltered. The man who was standing beside her chaise was not the postboy. It was Hugh’s coachman, Harper.

He shook his head and said sorrowfully, “Oh, Miss Vayle, why did you do it?”

Like an animal at bay, she whirled to face the danger she sensed was behind her. Hugh was there, and a man she did not recognize. She stared at Hugh in mute astonishment.

He held out his hand. His voice was oddly unlike his own, without inflection. “Give me the book, Abbie. I know it’s in your reticule. I saw you put it there.”

In a purely reflexive action, she brought the reticule up and hugged it to her body. Her eyes never wavered from Hugh’s face, but whatever she was searching for was not there. She took a step back, then another. She found her voice. “You’re not in Chiswick.”

He replied dryly, “Apparently not.”

“But how did you know, how
could
you—? You followed me.”

“No, I didn’t follow you. You should have remembered that I always pay attention to details. Now give me the book.”

Harper said, “Give him the book, Miss Vayle.”

She jerked when Harper’s hands cupped her shoulders, but she was too numb, too shocked to fight him off.

Hugh’s fingers closed around her reticule. For a moment, he hesitated, taken off guard by a rush of doubt. This was Abbie. She could never betray anyone.

But she’d lied through her teeth to him.

Hugh wrenched the reticule from her hands and found the book inside. “Is this the book you want, Maitland?” he asked.

Abbie flinched when Hugh tossed the book to his companion. But it was the name that made her brain begin to thaw. Richard Maitland. This was the man Hugh said was his enemy, the man who was hunting them down.

“This is the book,” said Maitland, and pocketed it.

Abbie reached for Hugh, but her hand fell away when he stepped back. His coldness frightened her. She cried out, “Hugh, if only you would let me explain!”

“You can explain everything to Mr. Maitland,” he replied in the same frighteningly flat voice. “He’ll listen to you. I’m afraid I’ve had my fill of lies.” He began to pull on his gloves. “A word of advice, Abbie. Lies won’t save you now. Your only chance is to tell everything you know.”

His frosty glance swept over her, plunging her into a boiling sea of emotions—guilt, despair, anguish, fear. “Please,” she said, her voice breaking, “please, Hugh. Help me.”

He ignored her eloquent appeal. Looking over her shoulder to Harper, he said, “We’re finished here. Let’s go.”

When Harper released her, she sagged against the side of the chaise. It was raining harder now, but she wasn’t aware that she was becoming soaked to the skin any more than she was aware of the curious glances of pedestrians who were scurrying for cover, or that red-coated soldiers had converged on the scene, or that Maitland was speaking to her, or that a carriage with barred windows had emerged from a side street. Her eyes were fixed on the two figures who were striking out along the side of the
customs house. Harper looked back once, but Hugh did not waver from his purposeful stride.

When they turned the corner and were lost to view, she looked stupidly at her wrists. The man called Maitland had manacled them.

T
hey’ve decoded the message.”

Maitland wordlessly accepted the sheet of paper Langley passed across his desk. He scanned the first few sentences and quickly looked up. “Nemo is now operating in England? But that’s impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?”

“Because he’s dead. I saw his corpse with my own eyes. I was there when Napoleon’s personal staff identified the body.”

“Where and when was this?”

“It was in my report.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“In a cellar of the Château Fontainbleau, right after Napoleon was exiled. Nemo killed himself rather than fall into the hands of his enemies. Well, you know he was hated as much by his own people as he was by us.”

“Oh yes, I remember him well.”

He was more legend than man, thought Langley, this agent who, British intelligence suspected, had indiscriminately murdered his way to the top of his profession in
France. He was Napoleon’s master spy. An assassin. Everyone feared him, but no one knew anything about him. No one knew his real name. No one knew his nationality. What was known was that he was fluent in many languages and was a master of disguise.

“It could be,” said Langley, “that Napoleon’s household staff lied.”

Maitland thought about this, shook his head, and read the rest of the decoded message. It didn’t tell them nearly enough, but it did give them a list of names. Nemo had evidently infiltrated a group of dissidents in England to plan something big.

Langley said, “Miss Vayle’s name isn’t there, nor her brother’s. And …” He leaned across his desk to emphasize his point. “… neither is Alex Ballard’s. So your theory that Alex was working hand-in-glove with Miss Vayle doesn’t hold water.”

“They could have been recruited later, after the message was written.”

“I can’t believe Alex would betray his country. No. I’m betting that he was onto something.”

Maitland threw the paper onto Langley’s desk. “It doesn’t mention anything about Nemo’s mission. He’s an assassin—who is he after? I mean, he’s Napoleon’s man, and Napoleon is cut off on Elba. And there’s no one of any interest in England right now. All the bigwigs like Wellington are at the Congress in Vienna.”

“We’ll know more when we start tracking down the names in that book.”

Maitland sat quietly as he watched his chief pick up a pencil and begin to drum rhythmically on the flat of his desk. Langley was deep in thought, and this was not the time to interrupt him. They had a saying in the service
about the colonel, a parody on one of his own father’s favorite quotes: the brains of the chief grind slow but they grind exceedingly small.

The minutes passed. Finally Langley tossed his pencil aside and looked at Maitland. “This is a hell of a way to end my career: one crack agent murdered in a quiet English backwater—and we have no idea what Alex was doing there—and now Nemo turns up on my doorstep. He’s a vicious operator, and I was always thankful I never had to deal with him in Spain.”

Maitland said carefully, “He’s not invincible, sir.”

“No. You’re damn right he’s not! He’s ruthless and clever, but he has his weakness like anyone else. His weakness, Richard, is women.”

“He’s a womanizer?”

“Just the opposite. He hates women. He abuses them. And I had that from Bell-Smythe who ran our operation in Russia. He reported that Nemo likes to terrorize women; he likes to have them plead for their lives. Sometimes he tortures them and sometimes he spares them, depending on the mood he’s in. Charming character.”

“I bet Miss Vayle doesn’t know that or she would never have become involved in this business.”

“I want her followed at all times.”

“I haven’t finished questioning her yet, sir.”

“You’ve already had twenty-four hours,” Langley said. “I’ll give you until dawn tomorrow, and that’s all the time I’m giving you.”

Maitland knew when it was useless to argue with the colonel. “Yes, sir.” He rose slowly and hesitated.

“What is it now, Richard?”

“I was thinking about Hugh Templar.”

“What about Hugh?”

“I was wondering if it was wise to speak so freely
about our work in front of him. I mean, he did resign. He’s no longer one of us.”

Colonel Langley seemed puzzled. “You can count on Hugh’s discretion.”

“Yes, but can we count on Hugh?”

Langley frowned. “What are you talking about, Richard?”

Maitland cleared his throat. “Don’t you think it’s odd that he happened to show up in all the places where our agents were being eliminated? And he knows the Vayle woman and her brother. That’s quite a coincidence, sir.”

The silence was unnerving. When Langley spoke, though he did not raise his voice, Maitland winced. “Major Maitland,” he said, “let me remind you that I trained Templar myself. I know him; I watched him develop into one of the finest agents who ever served under my command. He’s the best there is. And if we can persuade him to help, we’ll have a much better chance of catching Nemo. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, you’re forgetting that if it weren’t for Major Templar, we would still be looking for that book.”

When the door closed, Langley let out a long sigh. The minister had suggested that Richard Maitland might be just the right man for his job once he retired, and he’d agreed with him. Now, he was beginning to wonder if he’d made a mistake.

She was sitting at the other end of the table, her head cushioned on her arms as she slept. Her hair was a mass of tangles; her breathing was soft and regular, except for the occasional start of breath that made her shoulders lift.

Richard Maitland drummed his fingers on the scarred
tabletop and wondered why this woman was proving so hard to wear down. He’d thought he could break her in a matter of hours. She was, he’d reasoned, a gently bred girl and used to a soft life. If she dropped a handkerchief, a maid or a footman would hasten to pick it up. God forbid that women of her class should lift a hand to help themselves.

So he’d deliberately arranged things to be as unpleasant for her as possible. She’d been conveyed to London like a felon in an armed coach and incarcerated in a cell for the condemned in Newgate Prison. She was wearing the same grubby clothes she’d worn in Dover. The straw mattress on the bed and the threadbare blanket she’d thrown around her shoulders smelled distressingly of the unwashed bodies of former inmates of this rank cell.

He’d threatened, he’d cajoled, he’d offered to set her free if she would only cooperate. He couldn’t shake her from her story. Her brother wasn’t involved. Hugh Templar wasn’t involved. She’d been acting alone, and she’d done nothing wrong.

He’d tried a different tack. He’d told her about Jerome and Colette, how they were in love and soon to be married. He’d told her how Colette had been shot to death in the vicinity of the Palais Royal when a member of the embassy staff waited for her, not far away, in a bookshop in the rue de Rivoli. Colette must have been desperate. She’d written Michael Lovatt’s name and address inside the book as well as her own name. She must have known she was going to die and had wanted to make sure the book reached the right people.

Miss Vayle insisted that no one had given her a book.

She moved in her sleep, and the blanket slipped from her shoulders. She was pathetic. Templar had handed her over to British intelligence, yet she refused to believe it, or
if she did believe it, it made no difference. She continued to protect him. In her position, he would have damned Templar to hell and back. Right or wrong, her loyalty to her friends was unshakable. Pathetic, he thought again. At the same time, she’d won his grudging respect.

He looked down at the leather folder in his hands. She might not believe him, but once she read the file, she wouldn’t be so loyal to Templar. She was in love with him. That had become patently clear as he’d questioned her. But the man she was in love with bore no resemblance to the man he knew. She seemed to think he was a bumbling academic who had been inadvertently caught up in a nightmarish misadventure. If he could get her to read this file, she would discover that Templar was no bumbling academic. He was an experienced operator with nerves of steel.

And whatever Langley said, he was convinced that Hugh Templar knew more than he was telling. Alex Ballard had visited him in Bath. What had Ballard told Templar?

He had to know what he was up against, and the only way to do that was to turn the girl against Templar. He knew he was breaking every rule in the book, but this was too important to let rules stand in his way.

He wakened her by deliberately jerking the table.

She gave a start and came to herself slowly as the dream began to fade. The Palais Royal, Dessene the bookseller, and a French girl who had tipped over her basket of books—it wasn’t a dream, it was real, and it was all coming back to her. This was the only bookshop she had visited on the day Colette was killed. It was too great a coincidence to dismiss. She remembered a pretty young girl with a tremulous smile and a plea in her eyes. Their hands had met on the handle of her basket. The
girl’s hand had trembled, as hers was trembling now. She was cold.

As awareness returned, she looked up and saw Maitland staring at her. “You’re back,” she said faintly.

“I told you I’d prove that Templar isn’t the man you think he is, and I keep my word.” He edged the folder to the center of the table.

Gradually, a change came over her. She straightened, rubbed her wrists where the manacles had pinched them, and stared at the folder with dull, wary eyes. “What is it?” she asked.

Maitland got up. “It’s Templar’s file. His record as a British agent.”

He gave her credit for the way she gathered her poise. She looked at the folder, looked up at him, and her brows rose. “You keep files on agents? That seems like a dangerous practice. What if they were to fall into the wrong hands?”

A slow smile curved his lips. “This file is inactive. And our files are better protected than the Bank of England. Only two people have access to them, myself and my chief.”

She glanced at the folder. “How can I be sure that what’s in that folder isn’t a pack of lies?”

“There’s nothing in there that discredits Major Templar. He was, at one time, one of the best agents in the service.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”