Page 97 of The Number of Love
At that, his friend snorted. “If you wanted someone who could tell you that in a glance, you should have brought De Wilde along.”
“Then who would have flown the stolen plane?” And this wasn’t Margot’s world. She’d made no indication that she wanted to tromp around the forest searching for the codebook herself—and he was glad of that. It was one thing to volunteer his old friend to take him into the battlefield. Quite another to volunteer the woman he loved for such a mission. She might be able to take down a mugger, for which he was eternally grateful. But the mugger had only a knife. Enemies they found out here would have guns, and Margot hadn’t been trained to dodge them.
Camden took the codebook from his hands and flipped through it. “It’s not like the ones I’ve used, anyway. I say we scour the rest of this debris field and then turn back. That could well be our book. And if it isn’t, the right one’s either here in this area or it’s not here at all.”
“Good plan.” Another hour of searching, an hour back to the plane, the flight home. They’d be back in London by nightfall.
30
Das Gespenst covered his cough with a handkerchief and stared out at the falling twilight. London’s streets were going rose and gold, soon to be overtaken by purple and grey. And then, finally, the brown-black night of the city.
One more night in this godforsaken place. And then he’d either be dead or on his way back to Germany.
“That cough doesn’t sound so good.”
He didn’t spare Elton’s sister a glance. Her wrists were firmly bound, as firmly as her ankles. His breathing might be troubled just now, but his knot-tying skills weren’t. And up here, in the attic of a building abandoned after one of the zeppelin raids left it flaming, there was no one to hear her if she screamed for help.
She’d already discovered that, hours ago.This, at least, had gone according to plan.
Das Gespenst tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket and looked out, across the river, toward where it would all end tonight. “Do not concern yourself for me, Dorothea.” He called her by name simply because it made her wince.
His argument wasn’t with her. He didn’t mean to make her last day one of terror—but she must be reminded of who was in control.
He turned from the window and checked his pocket watch. Another hour and he’d give her a drink laced with laudanum. Shewould probably try to refuse it, of course. But if so, a rag soaked in chloroform would render her more pliant. Then he’d slip out. One last play in Go. One last stop at the telegraph office. And if the High Command assured him the air raid was set, that would leave only a few last steps in the game. A boat. A cab. Woolwich.
This time tomorrow, it would be over.
She shifted against the beam he’d tied her to. “I don’t suppose I could stand for a while.”
Das Gespenst forced his lips to curve into a smile. “Of course. Allow me to assist you.” He moved to do so from behind, giving her feet a wide berth. So far as he could tell, she hadn’t been trained in how to take a man down even when bound ... but then, he hadn’t thought Margot De Wilde had been trained in how to disarm one. A mistake that had left him limping.
Safely out of kicking range, he gripped her arms and helped her stand. “There we are. Better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He had to give her credit. Though she’d been a wreck when she’d first come flying out of the Old Admiralty Building—crying, shaking, heaving—she’d actually been rather calm since she awoke from the first dousing of chloroform. It seemed she was stronger under duress than she was under theanxietyof duress.
He moved back around to her front and took a seat on the rickety chair he’d found. “You remind me of my brother’s wife.” Ilse, too, had always shown the greatest distress over thethoughtof something evil befalling her family.
And yet when her little one died of fever last year, she had stood strong. When news of Heinrich’s death had reached her, he had no doubt she had done the same. Lifted her chin. Straightened her spine.
His fingers dug into his leg. She shouldn’t have had to. She shouldn’t have been stripped of her husband, when their second child was still a few months from being born. She shouldn’t have had to walk to that grave marker with his mother and see Heinrich’s name etched upon it, even though Heinrich’s body wasn’t buried beneath the grass.
He was sorry for that too. But there had been no way to get his brother’s corpse home. He had wasted an entire day trying to determine how to do so, but the High Command had been unsympathetic.
Heinrich had died a spy’s death. He had received a spy’s burial, secret and alone. But he would be sung as a hero in every story they told of him at home. Das Gespenst had at least made certain of that. Made certain they knew how honorably he had served Germany. His eyes slid shut. They never should have accepted these positions in intelligence. It had seemed a boon at the time, a lark, a ... a game.“Thinkof the stories we will have to tell,”Heinrich had said.
But they’d never tell these stories. Even if his brother had lived, they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They’d lived these last few years like he’d died—secret and alone.
Dorothea Elton stretched against the beam, rolling her head from side to side. “Where are you from?”
Das Gespenst looked to the window again. The purple had come. Not long now. “A little town called Bamberg.”
“What’s it like?”
“Beautiful. It is in Bavaria, and its architecture is unparalleled.”
Dorothea studied him. Calm now. No shaking. Only her hair, tumbling about her shoulders half out of its pins, told the tale of her graceless arrival in this burned-out attic. “Are you going to kill me?”
