The Spymaster's Lady

Nineteen

“I WILL SLIT HER THROAT.” HENRI’S FACE WAS marbled into an ugly map of bruises. His hand, on the tabletop, was swathed in white cloth.

“Ass! Do you think the English have no ears?” Leblanc glanced around. Fishermen stuffed themselves with onions and fried fish. At a table in the corner, a woman drank gin. No one was listening. “You will get your chance soon enough.”

“First, I will deal with him. I will gut him like a mackerel and leave him flopping in his blood.”

“As you did before?”

“No one reported this English spy was in Dover. How was I to expect—”

“Cease! You whine like a dog.” Leblanc hunched over his watered rum. His arm ached unbearably. He was in England, wallowing in this dockside filth, in danger. He might be stopped and questioned at any moment by stupid, clumsy British authorities. Annique had escaped him. This was Henri’s fault, every bit. “She goes to Soulier, in London, to tell him lies about me. He has been her objective all along. I am sure of it.”

“But she does not carry the papers. We could have stayed in France, if it is papers you want.” Henri doubtless thought he was clever.

“Forget the papers. What is important is that she dies. She must not reach Soulier.”

“We are in his territory. When he hears what we have done…”

“She is my agent, assigned to me. I can do what I like with an outlaw who crosses the Channel without my orders.” Leblanc finished the glass in one swallow. What he would not give for an hour in privacy with that bitch. One hour. “I have sent word to Fouché what she does. When the Directeur of the Secret Police supports me, I do not give a fart for Soulier. Faugh. Who can drink this?”

“There is brandy.” Henri looked for the serving maid.

“It is all pig wash. Rum, gin, beer, brandy—they are horse piss in this stink of a country. You will take six of the men and go east, along the coast. Send the others west. She is squatting by the fire in some fisherman’s hut, thinking she has outsmarted me.”

“Why would she hide in some small village where everyone peers and spies and chatters? She will go to London. To Soulier. When he learns we are in England—”

“Enough.” Leblanc slammed the empty glass on the table.

One fisherman, and then another and another, shot looks in their direction. The whore at the corner table hastily dropped a coin by her mug and left. Even the innkeeper eyed them with suspicion.

Leblanc held rage behind clenched teeth. He could not order these scum hauled into the street and beaten. He, Jacques Leblanc, friend of Fouché, had no power here. Everything…everything…was in ruins. He had lost any chance of the Albion plans. That bitch whore, Annique, would run to Soulier and complain. He should have killed her, her and Vauban, too, there in the inn at Bruges.

Henri would not cease. “I only say that we must watch the road to London—”

“I am not a fool, Bréval. I, myself, will watch the coaching inn to see if she takes the stage to London. You will search the coast. And you will not concern yourself with papers.”

The Albion plans were lost. The payment that should have been his—lost. His very life was threatened. Annique had many sins to pay for.

Any minute, she would learn of the death of Vauban. She must not reach Soulier and babble in his ear. “She is to be killed on sight. They need not be gentle.” Let her suffer a lifetime of pain in every second it took her to die.

“Soulier is fond of her. He will be furious.”

“When she is a corpse, it does not matter what Soulier is fond of.”