Rogue Spy

Twenty-six

Some activities are unsuited to Gunter’s. Negotiating with criminals was one. Any reference to the Baldoni, root and branch, was another.

Cami said, “Let’s leave,” to the criminal who sat across from her. “I don’t want to talk about this here.”

“Now, why is that?” the man said softly.

She stood. “We can be overheard, and I’m cautious.”

“Happens I’m cautious myself. Why don’t we continue our discussion elsewhere?”

Pax dropped coins on the table and picked her cloak off the back of the chair and pulled it around her shoulders. He said, “She’s protected.”

“You’re not doing a notably good job of it, Mr. Paxton, if she’s face-to-face with me.”

“That’s her choice,” Pax said calmly. “It’s all her choice.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

She led two very dangerous men out of Gunter’s, greatly reducing the level of lethality within. Pax followed last, keeping an eye on things.

Sunlight struck bright after she’d been inside. There were more thugs on the street than she was comfortable with. She walked a dozen feet down the pavement to put some space between herself and the door of Gunter’s, observing which people noted the movement and which ignored it. Separating the sheep from the goats.

She selected a spot twelve feet down because it seemed more promising than the rest. A staid, self-important stone house on her right, every window closed. No one stirring. On her left, a black coach she’d seen drive up, curtains drawn, horses and driver profoundly uninterested in the passing scene.

A nice, tight, defensible space where no one could sneak up on her. “We’ll talk here.”

“As you wish.” Her criminal beckoned one of his attendant thugs, but it was just to send him to take charge of the ice cream when it was packed and ready. That chore completed, he gave his attention back to her. He was as frightening in the open air as he’d been sitting across a table.

She was something of a judge of brutality. The Baldoni had never entirely renounced the practical, everyday side of criminality. She could appreciate graded and careful intimidation.

Pax stood a pace behind her, at her left shoulder, probably thinking along similar lines. She didn’t have to turn around to look at him. She could feel him there, the way she’d feel a fire burning in a cold room.

There were a number of large, roughly dressed men on the street.

She said, “You’ve brought an audience. I don’t like that,” to the man she must parley with, seeing whether he’d make a concession.

He did. He made some signal, negligently, with his right hand and the three ratlike children who’d followed her since Covent Garden disappeared into the greenery of Berkeley Square. They would doubtless run about, playing children’s games unconvincingly. Dangerous-looking men up and down the street revealed their allegiance by strolling off to loiter in a more distant place. The visible menace faded away, except for a large black man who’d exchanged the wall beside Gunter’s door for the closest lamppost. That one leaned against the iron pole, arms crossed, face blank.

Behind her, Pax spoke softly. “The Service will be deeply annoyed if anything happens to her.”

“I have no quarrel with the Service,” the man said. “She came to me. I didn’t go hunting her.”

Pax, having made his point, went back to being enigmatic. He didn’t mention that the Service interest involved interrogating her and locking her up indefinitely. Or hanging her if that seemed most useful.

She’d come to London prepared to negotiate with villains from the rookeries of London. This held a certain danger, but, as the Baldoni so wisely say, the safest place is in the grave.

She folded her hands. “I’ve come to buy a service. I’m told anyone who does this is given safe passage.”

“None of them use a century-old signal to get my attention.”

His attention. Fear wrapped like a cold cloak, prickled her skin, seeped inward. This was no lieutenant of anybody. This was the King of Thieves. The ruler of London’s underworld. This was Lazarus himself.

Pax was a waiting silence behind her. He knew.

Endings grow from the seed of their beginning. Six days ago, trying to sleep in tall brush in a field in Cambridgeshire, she’d made her plans. It was too late for qualms.

She said, “Does it matter what sign I use? I could walk into the middle of a street and shout. You have eyes everywhere.”

She was immeasurably glad of Pax’s presence behind her, ally and friend, solid as rock, subtle as water, edged sharper than a knife.

Lazarus looked amused. “You’ve made me curious.” His gaze slid past her. “You don’t have any intention of explaining this, do you, Mr. Paxton?”

A shift of dark and light at the corner of her eye. Pax had made some motion. Maybe a head shake. No words from him, though.

Lazarus said, “Your lot was on the street last night, up and down the town, keeping an eye on her. But she hasn’t been to Meeks Street. I’d say you don’t know what she’s up to, either.”

No response from Pax this time.

She was the descendant of many generations of powerful, dishonest men. The problem in dealing with master criminals—one of several problems, actually—is that they don’t need the money. They like it, but that’s not the principal reason you are face-to-face with them. You are an antidote to boredom. A curiosity. A puzzle. It is not good to negotiate with someone who wants to be entertained. “I’m delighted everyone is so interested in me. If you have questions—”

“I like to know who’s buying my services. A foible of mine.” Lazarus half turned, looking expectant.

The black coach they stood beside was not empty, as she’d assumed. The door opened. A man emerged and set an elegant, well-shod foot on the step of the carriage. He was perhaps sixty years old. His long dark hair, combed back from his forehead, had gone white at the temples. He was nattily and expensively dressed in black and carried an ebony cane. In a hundred subtle ways, he did not look English.

She’d have said this sort of man would have nothing to do with business transacted by the London underworld. But Lazarus was waiting.

The old man’s face . . . Out of her childhood memories, across a dozen years, past deaths and revelation and the torment of the Coach House, she remembered him. She’d made a grave mistake using any password of the Baldoni.

The old man said, “Cosa abbiamo qui?” What have we here?

The voice reached back to a time beyond memory, to her cradle, to tumbling on the floor in a melee of dogs and cousins. To being pulled from her perch on the roof of the chapel and spanked soundly and hugged just as soundly. To warm milk at bedtime and warm laps in front of the fire.

Pax said quietly, “Who are you?”

The man said, “A man with a certain interest in anyone who claims the privilege of a Baldoni.”

When was the last time she’d let herself speak Tuscan, the language of home? She could name the day and the hour. It had been in Paris, when they’d arrested Papà, and she’d gone to her cousin to beg for help and been refused so utterly.

“Run away or the vendetta will take you, too. Go away. You are not one of us.”

Tendrils of a sort of madness twined through her brain. She knew him. Uncle Bernardo—her great-uncle Bernardo. She refused to lower her eyes. She said, “Ho il diritto, prozio.” I have that right, Great-Uncle. And with that she claimed the family that had turned their backs on her. Claimed the vendetta that had killed her parents.

He whispered, “Sara? Piccola Sara?”

She inclined her head fractionally. Barely at all. Barely admitting it. Those who said women and children weren’t part of vendetta lied. Her mother had died in la place de la Révolution with her father, both of them denounced to the Committee . . . by a Baldoni. The doors of Baldoni protection had remained closed to a child who cried there and beat on the gate with her fists and pleaded. No one came to rescue her from the Coach House.

Uncle Bernardo came closer and stretched out his hand to touch fingers to her hair. She didn’t flinch. He whispered, “Sara? It is Sara.”

Too fast to predict or avoid—he’d been a great swordsman in his day, with reflexes like lightning—he pulled her to his chest, against the black wool and the starched ruffles of his old-fashioned neckcloth, into the memory of lavender and starch and eau de cologne. “Sara. Sei tu? Sei viva? You live?”

Old anger cracked inside her heart and loosened and disappeared, as spring breaks the ice on a stream and carries it off. “I thought—”

She was held at arm’s length and inspected minutely. Clasped again. “We thought you were lost forever. We thought you were dead in that French madness. Grazie a Dio. How does this happen?”

In Tuscan, with catches in her breath, words tumbling together, she told him about Paris and the riots. About Mamma and Papà, executed. “I went to Cousin Francesco and they sent me away at the gate. I sent message after message. No one answered. No one came.” She took a deep breath. “It’s been so long, I didn’t know you.”

The elegant long face twisted. Then he shook his head, as if dislodging a memory. “I have become old.”

“Never.”

That got her a hearty kiss on her forehead. “But you . . . how you have changed.” His laugh was a Baldoni, Tuscan laugh, unbounded, full of feeling. “You have grown up. I would have passed you on the street and not named you.” He took her left hand and raised it. “You are not married. You have no husband?” A dark look ran over Pax. “I cannot imagine why not. Wherever you have been, someone should have seen you married.”

Lazarus watched with interest but without comprehension. Perhaps he didn’t understand Italian. Perhaps.

“I’ve been busy,” she said.

“We will fix that.” The door of the black coach hung open. Uncle Bernardo put his hand under her elbow. “Come with me now, Sara. Whatever business you have with these English cutthroats, you may forget it. Your family will serve you. I have many years of neglect to make up for.” He switched to English. “You have no need of such men.”

Lazarus said, “She’s yours, then? A Baldoni?”

“Not merely one of us, but my own niece. You have restored the lost sheep to our fold. The Baldoni owe you a debt.”

Lazarus said, “The service she wanted?”

“Will be negotiated. Or she may not deal with you at all. She has the resources of the Baldoni at her back. And our protection.”

“I will keep that in mind.” Lazarus nodded.

Uncle Bernardo switched to Italian. “Come, Sara. Come home. That which was lost has been found. The one who was dead is restored to us. Your cousins will get very drunk tonight, celebrating.”

Pax—no one was better than Pax at going swiftly and silently—held the door of the black coach with the air of a first-rate footman. She let herself be ensconced within, on the velvet cushion, three hundred thoughts whirling over the brim of her mind like froth in a stirred pot.

Pax swung into the carriage last and took the backward-facing seat. In a coach one noticed the length of him. He had to fold his legs up to fit.

This is the first time I have ever been in a carriage with him.

“You. I give you no permission to accompany me,” Uncle Bernardo snapped. “Stay with Lazarus, who owns you.”

Lazarus was leaning in at the window of the coach. “Paxton isn’t my man.”

“Then what is he doing here?” Uncle Bernardo was disapproving.

“Paxton belongs to the British Service.” Lazarus smiled, as a great mastiff dog might smile, showing teeth that looked like they would bite very hard. “You have a senior agent of the British Service in your coach, about to go home with you. If the Service makes a claim on your niece, Mr. Paxton would be the one enforcing it.” He tipped his hat. “Good day to you.”