Page 33 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

"Sometimes a woman knows, Mom. Talk to you soon. See about the soup. Don't do any more late-night windows without talking to Aunt Gardiner."

"I'll do as I like with my shop, Elizabeth."

"Okay, Mom. Bye. The soup?stir it."

She ended the call hoping that the church did not burn along with the unstirred soup. She put her phone away and sipped the last of her latte, shaking her head.

She looked at “Fanny'” in black marker on the side of the cup. The name seemed not hers and yet hers, somewhat the way “Elizabeth” seemed hers and yet not hers.All the lies that are my life.She'd had so many names that her own name no longer seemed quite hers in the same way that her own life seemed not quite hers. Professional alienation.

Too long under cover.If you pretend to do something for long enough, when do you simply start to do it for real? But what is it to be fake for real?

About to get to her feet, she looked up from the name on her cup and was surprised to see that Charlie stood next to her table. He glanced around and then put his finger to his lips. A White Sox cap on his head was pulled low, the collar of his jacket standing high. He looked like an ESPN version of Dick Tracy.

Momentarily, Lizzy was annoyed with herself for losing focus. She should have seen him come in.This is why personal business in the middle of a mission is trouble.

He slid into the booth, glancing around again. "I'm waiting for coffee."

The look he gave her made her worry?thatbig favorlook people wore just before they asked for one. "Have you talked to Jane?"

Lizzy sat back. "Jane?You know Jane?"

He gave her another look, a different one. She understood it immediately, too. "Oh. Oh!"

He smiled briefly, the smile watery, worried. "I can't get her on the phone today. We talk each morning. If you talk to her, please ask her to call me. I'm worried I did something stupid that I don't realize I did."

"Jane tried to call me late last night…early this morning. But she didn't text or leave a message."

His face paled. "That's not good. Should I be worried?”

A barista called out, "Two venti black coffees to go!"

"That's me. Tell her to call me. I'll tell her to call you. I can't imagine she won't call one of us soon. Please?"

Lizzy scanned the Starbucks. No one was watching them. She reached out and touched Charlie’s hand, briefly resting hers on his. "I'm happy for you both. I'm sure it's nothing." She wasn't, but it seemed like a moment for comfort.

He smiled, relieved. "Don't mention this meeting to Darcy. He'd be pissed."

Pretty much his constant state.

Charlie grabbed the to-go coffees and left. Lizzy waited and then left a few minutes later.

Once back at her building, she waved again at the security guard and went upstairs to Fanny's apartment. Her apartment. For now.

When she was inside, she got out the laptop, retrieved the MI-6 file on Wickham Darcy had told her to expect, and started reading. After a few minutes, she looked up at the ceiling, frustrated.

The file was exactly as Darcy had described. It reconstructed Wickham's travels starting three years ago. Since then, a number of terrorist attacks had been either claimed by or attributed to the Wicker Man. In almost every case, he had been in the relevant city or close enough to have traveled to it, but in no case was there actual proof that Wickham had been involved. It was all, as Darcy said,circumstantial.

However, assuming the coordination of the terrorist actions and Wickham's travels were more than coincidences?and there were enough of them to make that unlikely?Wickham had been busy. And brutal. A number of the attacks had been bloody,carefully planned explosions in public places with random victims. The photographs were horrible, stomach-turning, even for someone who had seen as much death and as much variety of cruel death as Lizzy had. Still, there was no proof that Wickham was involved in any of the attacks. They did not occur on any discernible schedule.

Lizzy stopped on the final entry, the most recent attack. It predated the Wickham file that Darcy had shown her on the plane by several months?predating Berlin, the city where Darcy's file began. This attack had happened in Spain, near the coast. Wickham had been in Barcelona.

He had traveled with a woman who had never been identified. There was one photograph, but it was from the rear, a head shot. Otherwise, there were only a couple of brief descriptions of her. The woman was described as tall, blonde, statuesque (of course!), and much younger than Wickham. Beautiful. The photograph only confirmed the hair?long, blonde, and straight. She wore a red jacket, only the collar visible. In the photograph, her head obscured half of Wickham's face as he gazed at her. Seeing only his one eye was enough for Lizzy to recognize the fire banked there; that coming-conflagration look had been directed at her last night.

She was about to start at the beginning of the file again when she received an alert on the computer from Charlie. She moved the cursor, clicked on the alert, and he appeared on the screen. "The priest is back. He's sitting on the bench outside the lobby but hasn’t made a move to enter. He has a book and a coffee. Looks like he's planning a siege."

Darcy appeared next to Charlie, Starbucks cup in hand. "You can leave him there and see if he leaves before Wickham arrives. That will be a while. Hours. Wait him out. Or you could pretend to leave the building, let him see you, and find out why he’s invested so much time and effort to talk to you in person whenhe could simply call. One visit might be anin the area, just stopped byhappenstance. Two visits testify to action by the Holy Ghost."

Lizzy wasn't sure, but she thought Darcy had made a joke. She boggled for a second. His joking felt strange after her morning and after his hectoring about her sense of humor the previous evening.

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