India Black (21 page)

 

 

 

My image of spies, confidential agents and such took a grievous blow that evening, for I expected French to fly into action against our three guards once Ivanov had disappeared from sight, delivering a flurry of quick blows that stunned our thick-headed captors, and then charging headlong after Ivanov and the case. Instead, French stood brooding under the lamp, hardly glancing at the three wrong-uns that surrounded us. The minutes crawled by, the snow pile higher, and I lost all feeling in my hands and feet.

After what seemed an age but was probably only a matter of minutes, the fellow with the cudgel tucked it under his arm, extracted a hunter from his pocket and held it close to his nose, nodded to the other two, and then the three of them melted away into the night, leaving French and me alone in the middle of the blizzard.

“Why didn’t you do something?” I demanded. “You just let Ivanov have the case without a fight.”

“One against four aren’t odds worth taking, India. Would you rather I’d have tried something heroic, getting my skull bashed in and leaving you to Ivanov’s mercy?”

Put that way, I supposed I preferred the scenario that had occurred.

“What now? Should we go back to the embassy?” I asked.

French shook his head. “This is out of your hands, India. Go back to Lotus House.”

“And what will you do? Have the British army mount a full-scale assault on the Russian embassy?”

“Nothing quite so dramatic, India,” snapped French. “You heard what Ivanov said about playing a game? Well, he’s upped the ante, but the contest is still on. We’ll run him to ground.” Then his voice softened, and I had to strain to hear what he said. “You’ve played your part, and you’ve played it well. Now go home.”

His declaration took me by surprise, and I hesitated in replying, torn as I was between the suspicion that French was patronizing me and the thought (outrageous as it might seem) that he’d actually paid me a compliment. Consequently, and uncharacteristically, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Presumably, French took my silence for acquiescence to his instructions to return to Lotus House, for before I could get a word out, he’d disappeared, leaving behind only a set of blurred footprints in the snow.

It was damned hard work catching a cab back to Lotus House. There were very few of the wretched contrivances about, most of the drivers apparently having decided that there’d be no fares worth having tonight, and retreating to hearth and home. To make matters worse, the few drivers that were out seemed reluctant to pick up a maidservant who looked as though she’d taken a tumble in the Thames. I was finally able to flag down an intrepid soul who was so swathed in coats and scarves and addled by brandy that I doubted he could even see his potential customers. In any case, he didn’t seem the least bit startled at my appearance, only received my instructions to relay me home as quickly as possible on such a night with a deferential nod and whipped his nag to the task. When we arrived at Lotus House, I ushered him into the sitting room with the promise of whisky and double the fare if he’d wait until I’d changed my clothes and then deliver me on to my destination.

Per usual, Mrs. Drinkwater had fallen asleep with her head on the kitchen table, less the effect of a hard day spent cleaning up after the whores than the result of the empty bottle of gin and the sticky tumbler on the floor beside her. I roused her up, and to her credit she didn’t even blink at my countenance, but staggered around the kitchen, putting on the kettle for tea, cutting bread and making toast, and filling a flask with brandy. I rushed upstairs to the privacy of my room, where I discarded the form-fitting maid’s costume without regret, toweled myself dry and selected an ensemble more fitting for roving about in the middle of a snowstorm. In a twinkling, I was back downstairs, bolting toast and scalding my mouth on a cup of tea, gulping a medicinal draught of brandy and rousing up the driver, who was dozing on the sofa in the sitting room.

No doubt you have deduced and are likely thinking that the intelligent thing for me to do would be to don my dressing gown and dry my hair in front of the fire, a snifter of brandy in hand, while the forces of good (it was difficult to see French in this role, but at least in this pantomime, he seemed to fit the part) and evil (Ivanov: no question about his suitability as stage villain) battled it out without the assistance of India Black. This was, in effect, what French had ordered me to do, and no doubt most women would have followed his instructions to the letter, swooning all the while. I was made of sterner stuff, however. I did not take orders from anyone, let alone a dashing aristocrat prancing around London, playing at spies. Indeed, the surest way to ensure that I did something was to order me to do the opposite. I can’t help it; a lifetime of fending for myself in the streets of London, scraping for crusts and customers, dodging blows from the peelers and attempts to reform me by assorted God wallahs, has left me with a rather jaundiced view of authority in all its guises. India Black answers to no man, no matter how attractive he might be. Of course, that was only part of the reason I’d laced on a pair of sturdy boots and commandeered a cab for a drive through one of the worst snowstorms I could remember. I’m a sporting woman by nature; even my line of work requires a calculating heart and a bold spirit. I’m not ashamed to confess that I’d become caught up in the game, thrilling at the chase, and I wanted to be in on the kill. And if in the case of Ivanov, that was a literal and not figurative event, so much the better.

T
he entrance to the prime minister’s office was shrouded in darkness and appeared deserted, but as I ascended the steps, a stout fellow appeared from behind a pillar and held out a restraining hand.

“Hold on there, miss,” he warned. I recognized him as one of the men who’d accosted me and delivered me to Dizzy (was it really just two nights ago?). He must have recognized me at the same time, for I heard his quick inhalation of breath and his hand moved inadvertently to cover his groin.

“How are your tallywags?” I inquired cheerfully. “I do hope I haven’t caused any permanent damage,” and swept past him into the building.

I had thought I would find a council of war underway, and indeed Dizzy, French and Endicott were all gathered in Dizzy’s office. Endicott was ensconced in a leather chair by the fire, brooding over a balloon glass of cognac and darting contemptuous glances in Dizzy’s direction. French was standing at the window, watching the snow pelt down and smoking meditatively. Dizzy was fuming and sputtering like a wet Catherine wheel, his brow twitching and his fingers beating a tattoo on his knees. My entrance was received as expected. Dizzy put on a brave smile and advanced toward me with an outstretched hand. French nodded briefly at me, then turned back to his contemplation of the inky darkness outside the window, but not before I saw a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Endicott flicked a disdainful glance in my direction and remained anchored in his chair. “What the devil are you doing here?” he asked, in that pompous drawl I found so annoying.

“I thought you might need my assistance again.”

“You haven’t been a great deal of help, Miss Black,” Endicott said. “The case is in Russian hands, and Britain is about to be exposed.”

“I got the bloody case for you, Endicott. It’s not my fault that Ivanov and his crew seem to have outwitted you at every turn.”

That spiked his gun, as I knew it would. He erupted out of his chair, cognac sloshing wildly, his cheeks burning brightly in his pale face. “Now see here,” he began, in a voice that could have cut glass, but he didn’t get any further.

“Mr. Endicott, you may wish to exchange insults with Miss Black for the duration of the evening, though I’d advise against it,” said French. “Perhaps we should concentrate our efforts on determining a course of action and leave the trading of accusations for another time.” He fixed me with a level gaze. “That goes for you as well, Miss Black.”

I returned his gaze, without acknowledging the directive. As I said, I don’t take kindly to authority.

“Quite right,” Dizzy chimed in. They were the first words he’d spoken, except for a brief hello when I’d arrived, and so I knew the strain must be an awful one, to have rendered him mute for nearly five minutes. “We were just discussing the advisability of delivering a formal protest to Count Yusopov at the embassy.”

Endicott had slumped back into his chair. That man had a future as an instructor in the art of sulking. Now he spoke sullenly. “What bloody good will that do? By now Ivanov and Yusopov know our troop strength and are toasting Russia’s forthcoming conquest of Constantinople.”

French selected a burning ember from the fire and held it to his cheroot. “They’ll have to send the documents out of England by diplomatic courier or take it themselves. They don’t dare telegraph the news from London as they’ll be implicated in the theft of the case and create a diplomatic furor. Even Gladstone can’t countenance a Russian theft of state secrets, no matter how chummy he is with the tsar’s ambassador. As long as Ivanov and Yusopov are the only ones who know, the issue can still be resolved in our favor.”

Dizzy looked sideways at him, brow furrowed.

Endicott sat up in his chair with a start. “Good Lord, French. Surely you aren’t advocating the assassination of those two? Yusopov is the tsar’s cousin. There’d be absolute hell to pay.”

“I wasn’t planning to advertise the fact that the British government was involved, Endicott. Nor was I necessarily contemplating their deaths. Merely removing them from the field of play for a period of time might achieve our objectives. Killing them would only be a last resort.”

My admiration for French rose. I had pegged him as a typical British aristocrat: clean living, rugby playing and foolishly addicted to that bizarre code of honour they instilled at places like Eton and Harrow. I was pleased to see his scruples were more elastic than Endicott’s, who sneered at being in a whore’s company but wasn’t prepared to consider violence even though the Empire was teetering on the edge.

Dizzy was looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable, no doubt considering that one ramification of eliminating Ivanov and Yusopov was the possible tit-for-tat assassination of key personnel in the British government, including, just conceivably, the British prime minister.

“That’s a drastic course of action, Mr. French,” he said. “Do you think it necessary?”

French shrugged. “Perhaps. We should not eliminate it from the list of options available to us.”

“And what are those options?” I asked.

“We must locate Ivanov and the case. If he has delivered it to Yusopov and the contents are now known, then we may have no choice but to prevent those two from communicating the information to the tsar or his generals. If the contents are still unread, then we must recover the case. We shall find a way,” said French decisively. “We’ve recovered it twice already; we can do so again.”

“I hate to quibble, but Calthorp actually carried it away from the embassy.”

“That sniveling little toady,” Dizzy spat. “How on earth did he manage to pull off a feat like that?”

“There’s more to Calthorp than meets the eye. I think it very likely that he was doing much the same as the Russian agents in the days leading up to Latham’s death,” I said. “He’d been making frequent visits to Lotus House, ostensibly inquiring after the girls, but perhaps he was keeping an eye on Latham from the beginning. On the day Latham died, Calthorp appeared almost immediately, and I found him hovering in the hall outside Oksana’s room where Latham’s body was hidden. He also knew that Oksana had disappeared from Lotus House, though he could only have learned that from one of the girls, and no one knew she’d done a runner except me. And in retrospect, Calthorp’s explanation of why he was at the embassy just doesn’t ring true. I think he followed us there. For a meek little clergyman, he struck me as quite skilled at sneaking into guarded embassies. To cap it all, I believe he’s the one who raised the alarm outside the embassy. I heard him shout, and I think he did that when he was in the clear with the case, just to set the guards on us and give himself time to escape.”

Endicott harrumphed, but French nodded sagely, as if he’d already worked this all out for himself and I was a prize pupil for having followed his logic. Insufferable man.

Dizzy was pacing the floor. “That Bible-thumping, hymn-singing hypocrite Gladstone,” he sputtered. “Setting Calthorp onto Latham to try and steal that memo. He has no sense of honour, nor of shame.”

I yawned. It had been a long couple of days, I hadn’t had much rest (sleeping nearly naked in a freezing garret not counting as real repose), and I was not looking forward to one of Dizzy’s lengthy screeds against Gladstone.

Apparently French wasn’t either. “I agree that Mr. Gladstone has acted disgracefully in this affair, but we must turn our efforts to finding Ivanov and the case. We must know where we stand, and then we will know what we have to do. We cannot let Ivanov and Yusopov defeat us.”

I thought that French might plump for knifing Ivanov on some dark street regardless of what happened to the case, such was the intensity of dislike for the man his voice betrayed. Or maybe it was patriotism; not being personally acquainted with that particular virtue, I might have mistaken the tone of voice.

“Dandy idea,” I said. “How do we find Ivanov?”

The three men gazed vaguely around the room, as if the Russian might suddenly materialize in a puff of smoke.

“You’ve no idea where he is?” I asked. “Haven’t you been keeping an eye on him, knowing that he’d be after the documents?”

“Of course we have,” said French. “We’ve had operatives following him since Calthorp disappeared with the case, on the chance that Ivanov would get to Calthorp before we did.”

“So, theoretically, British agents were somewhere in the vicinity of Claridge’s when Ivanov relieved you of the case,” I said to French. “Where were these stalwart fellows when Ivanov left us alone with his thugs and made off with the goods?”