Rogue Spy

Eleven

Mr. Smith had long ago abandoned any particular name for himself. A warrior of the Revolution needed no name. “Smith” would do as well as any for the few days he remained in London. He arrived at the inn through various and secret ways, circling in as a spider spirals in upon his web.

The inn made the right noises. The innkeeper scolded one of the maids in the front hall. The men in the taproom murmured and coughed. The clank from the kitchen was just right. Not too loud. Not a dangerous silence.

Upstairs he checked the hall from end to end, drew his pistol, then pushed open the door of the private parlor. He stood in the doorway and flicked his gaze side to side across the room. Two of his men sat at the table. So did the tiresome woman he’d brought from France.

Everything was as expected. He uncocked his pistol and set it on the mantelpiece, ready and loaded. The woman began complaining loudly even before he dropped his hat on the back of a chair and pulled his coat off to lay over the seat.

“Where have you been?” She had a peculiarly piercing voice and a provincial accent. “What is the use of sending me for a drive when I am not allowed to go into any stores or talk to anyone? Why didn’t you come with me? Why didn’t you tell me you’d be gone this long?” There was more in that vein.

She had not seen him on Fleet Street when she passed in the carriage. Good. It saved explanations.

He nodded at the end of each sentence she said and caught the eye of Jacques, his second-in-command.

“Everything proceeds.” Jacques tilted his bowl and wiped it round and round with a piece of bread. “No one has shown interest in us.”

“Good.” An approving nod to Jacques. At the same time, he expended a reassuring smile upon the woman Camille. He was patient with women. They required that homage to their weakness. To Jacques he said, “The work on the carriage?”

Jacques chose his words. “They have almost finished . . . preparing it. The shipment from Thompson will arrive . . . in the proper place, tomorrow.”

“Hugues is on guard?” He went to the window and pulled the curtain back an inch and looked down into the ugly, cluttered courtyard below. There was no reason to expect trouble, but he was alive today, when many men wanted him dead, because he took precautions.

Gaspard dunked bread in his soup and took a sopping bite. “I will relieve him when I have eaten.” They were good republicans, his men. No complaints from them about the inn’s swill. They ate to give the body sufficient fuel to serve the cause. “I’ve hired the wagon we—”

“I am mad with boredom.” The tiresome, inevitable woman rose from her chair and flounced across to confront him. “Since we returned from the carriage ride, Jacques has stopped me from going outside. Not even for one little walk.”

You break into a conversation where men speak of serious matters. “They obey my orders. I regret if they have been impolite.”

“You said there would be theater in London. Opera. Music. You said there were shops more beautiful than anything in Lyon and I would see them all. Instead, I cannot go to the pastry shop twenty paces down the street.”

He’d promised any number of things. “It is not possible today. Perhaps tomorrow.”

“I am sick of this tomorrow and that tomorrow and I am sick of this place. You bring me racing along your foul English roads until I am bruised. Now you ignore me. I stay here and stay here, day after day, and you do not take me to my family.” She stamped her foot like a child. “You promised to take me to my aunts.”

His men ate in silence. Gaspard, who lacked Jacques’ intelligence, smiled derisively around his bread.

“My poor Marie-Claire. You have been very brave for so long. So strong through all these difficulties.” He flattered her back to her place at the table. “I have explained the danger. Your enemies are everywhere. You must be wise as the serpent.”

She was wise as a pig’s intestine.

Once this fool of a woman had been Camille Besançon. Now she was Marie-Claire Gresset, pampered foster daughter of the watchmaker Gresset, a man of some importance in Lyon. She had escaped the fate of her family, rescued by one of the smugglers and given to the Gressets to take the place of a daughter who’d died.

He’d known of her survival. Of course he’d known. In those days he gave the execution order for every man, woman, and child who died to allow the placement of Cachés. He chose each death as carefully as a jeweler selects the next pearl in a necklace.

It had seemed profitable to let a member of the Council of Lyon cheat the Revolution and effect his petty rescue. Who knew when he might want to destroy Gresset?

“You leave me all day with servants,” the woman whined, as all women whine. “Ill-bred, impolite, poorly trained servants who ignore my orders. I don’t even have a maid.”

Useless herself, she wanted another parasite to wait upon her. “I will see to it,” he murmured. “A day or two and all will be arranged.”

“Not a day or two. Now! And tell these dolts to obey my orders.”

As if men would leap to do the bidding of a woman. It wasn’t even the blind arrogance of the aristocracy. Marie-Claire Gresset had almost forgotten she’d ever been a Besançon. She was petite bourgeoisie now, with all the pushing, busy vulgarity of the class. The aristocrat lived inside her only as a residue of resentment, a certainty that she should be better treated than she was.

Even now, she believed no one would dare to hurt her.

He patted her shoulder. Like all women, she was gentled with a few strokes. “I wish only to keep you safe. Be patient.”

“I am done being patient. This is intolerable. You keep me prisoner in this hovel where the coffee is pigswill.”

“I share your annoyance. These pigs of Englishmen should not be allowed in the kitchen. They know nothing of the art of cooking. Let me send for tea.”

“The tea is worse. You complete all your tiresome business. You hire wagons. You buy horses. You receive shipments. But you never take me to my aunts!”

“Soon.” He gave no sign of impatience. He did not resent the expenditure of time necessary to soothe this idiot to complacency. “I promise you, by this time next week you will be in the beautiful chateau of your ancestors. I swear it. You will take your place as Lady Camille de Leylands. You will attend the opera wearing the Leyland jewels. There is a parure of rubies red as blood and every stone bigger than your thumbnail.”

Ridiculous fairy tales for a gullible, greedy child. He spun the pretty story for her because it was easier to deal with a docile woman than to keep her trussed in a closet. Either way, she would serve her purpose.

She said, “Now. Today. Take me to my aunts now!”

“Soon. They are ready to alter their will in your favor, but the impostor who has stolen your place is very clever. Very dangerous. We must meet with them in secret. We must proceed carefully.” He constructed a gentle smile. “In a very few days we will celebrate your return to your proper place.”

Under the blade. That is your proper place. We guillotined your kind.

He made more murmurs and vague promises. Then he motioned Gaspard to engage her in conversation and retreated across the room to the peace to be found on the rough benches that flanked the hearth.

Her complaint continued like dripping water and was no more important. Sensible discussion with Jacques became possible. “Édouard has not returned?”

Jacques shook his head.

“I set him to following the Caché woman. He will be busy with that. And we have a small success. This.” The paper he’d taken from the Caché bitch was still faintly damp in his coat pocket. He didn’t hide his distaste as he dropped it on the bench. “English code, or something that is a good counterfeit of it, written in her own hand.”

Jacques unrolled the half sheet, flat on the bench, holding it from index finger to index finger. “Useful. I’ll drop pieces of this along Semple Street the night before.”

“Burn the edges, just a little. It will be more convincing.” The scraps would be found. More proofs for the British press, in an assemblage of many small proofs.

“It is a nice addition. You’ve eaten?”

“Not yet.”

A pot warmed on the hob. Jacques scraped to the bottom of the pot and filled a bowl he took from the mantel. “The meeting with the woman? It went well?”

“There was one complication that resolved itself. Nothing important.” He accepted the bowl and a pewter spoon and put them on the bench beside him. “You were right about her. She’s gone soft and stupid. She’s forgotten everything she learned in the Coach House.”

Jacques fetched the stub end of a loaf of bread under his arm and the wine bottle and two glasses. The bread he tore in half and set both pieces next to the bowl. The wineglasses took the last of the space on the bench. “She lived in a household of women. Books everywhere. Tea parties.”

“The vaporing of the female intellectual is universal. Their salons and their politeness and the endless, pointless arguments were the curse of the Revolution. They destroyed more good men than bullets. Come. Sit with me. We must talk.” And he took up his soup and began to eat.

A year ago, when he first planned this operation, he knew he’d need an expendable agent. Best would be an unquestionable French spy, known to the British Service, easily identifiable, eminently expendable. The Cachés came to mind. There were dozens left up and down England, hidden, weak, self-indulgent men and women who’d abandoned their loyalty to France. They were deserters as surely as if they’d run from the battlefield. They were traitors to the ideals of the Revolution.

He was, perhaps, the only man left who knew where they were. If he had not had other concerns, he would have arranged the assassination of each one.

He’d remembered the Gresset girl was still alive in Lyon. The genuine Besançon would be a threat or a lure or a bribe for the Caché who’d taken her place. The aristocrat and the traitor Caché would, at last, make themselves useful.

He’d sent Jacques and Charles to Brodemere to study the Caché planted in the Leyland household.

“She’ll do, then, this Caché?” Jacques poured sour wine for both of them, then pulled a rush-bottomed chair near the hearth and sat in it.

“Admirably. As you said, she’s soft as a new cheese. Promise her imprisonment and death, she’ll obey from fear. Threaten the old women, she’ll obey from a sickly, puerile sentimentality. Offer her a chance to dispose of the proof of her imposture, and she will shed the trappings of morality like a scratchy coat.” His eyes slipped to the Besançon. “They’re alike, those two, the spoiled aristocrat and the failed spy. One fool is lured to England by promises of rich old aunts. The other will do anything, including murder, to stay in her fat, safe, comfortable life in Cambridgeshire.”

“The Caché . . .” Jacques drank and wiped his lips on the sleeve of his coat. “If Édouard finds where she’s staying, can we just reach out and take her? We could hold her here with this other one. Or keep her in the cabinet shop, in the basement.” He topped off his glass. “Why not?”

Jacques could ask this. They had survived, mission after mission, because every one of his men felt free to sit with him like this and speak to him as an equal.

Sometimes it was good, in the quiet leading up to an operation, to explain plans and the reason for decisions. “We are six. One must stay here with the Besançon. One at the cabinet shop. One driver. That leaves only three men to subdue a Caché who is armed and must not be killed at that time and must not escape. That is too few.”

Jacques drank more wine. After a minute, he said, “You’re right. It is a chance we cannot take.”

“She has obeyed me so far. She came to London on my orders. She met me at the time and place designated.”

“True.”

“Those are good indications she will come to Semple Street. When we find her hiding place, we will keep watch. On the appointed day, if she disobeys orders, you may kill her then.”

Jacques nodded. “That’s good, then. Good. There is always the possibility that—”

The Besançon raised her voice. “No, I tell you. No and no and no! I will not be trapped in this room another day. If you try, I will—”

He rose and went to her. “But of course you are not trapped. Did you think that? Then I have been remiss in my care of you.” He made one of the graceful, meaningless half-bows men made in homage to women. “Tomorrow we will amuse ourselves. Do you know, I saw a delightful hat in a shop window today. Only a short walk. A delightful walk. We will go shopping tomorrow, you and I.”

She simpered. Now they would discuss hats. He settled himself beside her and pretended to listen.

Jacques retrieved the bowl of soup and dry, tasteless bread for him. English food. It did not make him homesick for Norfolk. A true revolutionary has no country but the Revolution.