Page 7 of The Number of Love
It sounded like something Heinrich would say—but his brother had always wanted to be the hero ineverystory, his own and every other. “I never pretend to be the hero.”
The bloke lifted his water glass in salute. “Smart. Why bother? Sometimes...” His gaze went distant, cloudy. As troubled as the waters that sucked down theBoynton. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m even still alive. Maybe I drowned. Maybe I’m just a ghost.Yurei. Le fantôme. El fantasma. Das Gespenst.”
His lips turned up. Heinrich could keep his heroic tales. “I always liked the ghost stories best.”
His companion took a sip of the water. “They’re the only stories based in reality these days. More men are dead than alive, it seems. Everyone is gone.I’mgone.”
Hewasn’t. And yet he had been for years. He reached a shaky hand for his own water glass and lifted it. “The wisest way to be. Already dead. Just a ghost.” He took a sip and then eased the cup back down. “I’ll call you Yurei.”
Yurei chuckled. “Suits me well enough. And you? The French or Spanish or German?”
He spoke them all fluently. “Your choice.”
“Hmm.” Yurei shook the white stones from his own velvet bag into his hand and placed them on the intersections of the lines on his side of the game board. “Das Gespenst. In honor of the U-boats that landed us here.”
Das Gespenst. “That’ll do.” He slipped the last of his game pieces onto the board and made his first move. And tried not to curse the U-boat again. Or the High Command that had first ordered him on theBoyntonand then ordered it sunk. Why? Had he lost their trust? Or were they simply incompetent, one department not communicating with another?
His fingers tightened around his black stone. He would have to assume the worst. And then prove to them that he was still useful.
They’d made no more than four moves each when the nurse came in, a clipboard in hand and a smile on her face. “Good news for Mr. Walsh and Mr. Williams. You both get to go home today.”
So much for anonymity. But ... no. He preferred Das Gespenst, really. He’d do well to remember that a ghost was all he could afford to be. He coughed again into his handkerchief and let all the tasks awaiting him fill his mind.
First and foremost, get in touch with Berlin.
His lungs burned. His chest ached. And his spine had no interest in straightening. He’d served them well all these years, hadn’t he? Why would they have decided to take him out?
He nodded at Yurei. “After the game?”
3
Margot put down her pen and stretched out her lower back, knowing well it wouldn’t be so sore if she would listen to her mother and mind her posture. And shetried. But over the course of the day, she always ended up hunched over her desk.
The walk home would loosen all her tight muscles though. Not that it was time to go home yet. She checked the dainty little watch on a pendant that her brother had given her for Christmas last year and saw that it was only noon. She’d made good progress today.
Noon.Blast. She’d been planning on pausing to eat, but if she did so now, she’d find herself surrounded by all the secretaries ontheirlunch breaks.
“Ah, what good timing today,oui?” Maman slid Margot’s latest decrypt off her desk and gave her a far-too-knowing smile. “You can eat with us.”
She stifled a groan. Barely. “But I really ought to get through one more telegram—”
“Nonsense.” Obviously not trusting her to do anything other than pick up her next assignment and get to work, her mother tugged Margot away from her desk. “Come.”
“But Maman—”
“Do not make me say it again, Margot. No matter how brilliant,you are still a young lady. You need to associate with other young ladies now and then.”
Margot made no reply to that. There would be no point, and she wasn’t one to waste breath that could be better spent on other words.
“Here.” Maman bustled to her own desk, slid Margot’s decrypt into the In basket, and handed her the neatly typed stack of papers from the Out basket. “Hold these a moment, will you? I need to deliver them to the commander on our way out.” She reached for the bags that contained what little food they’d been able to find on their last trip to the shops. Grains were getting far too scarce. And sugar ... sugar was a luxury Margot missed like nothing else.
Margot jostled the stack of typed decrypts until their edges all aligned. “I can run them over now.” There’d be little hope of slipping away at this point, and no real purpose to it. And it wouldn’t be too bad, if she could just sit with her mother and perhaps Lady Hambro. It was only the younger women, the secretaries, she’d rather avoid.
Maman made no objections as Margot slipped out of Room 40 and into the room across the hall, where Commander Willie James was bent over his desk. Up until a few months ago, it had been Herbert Hope at this desk, and Margot hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the style of their new head of day-to-day operations. But then,hehadn’t quite grown accustomed tothemeither.
Now, for instance, he was staring rather blankly at Frank Adcock. “I haven’t the foggiest notion what you just said, old boy.”
Adcock huffed. “Well, I say, Bubbles, if you’d but pay attention, you’d have puzzled it out. It’s apoem, I tell you.” Adcock shook the telegram. “Not one of the standard codes at all, but a key of some sort.”
