Page 25 of The Number of Love
She clenched her teeth, set her gaze on the windowpane once more. And sent heavenward the only word she could find.No.
8
Sugar cubes. Innocuous squares—or they should have been. Drake turned a page in his newspaper and leaned back against his seat so he could see past it without itlookinglike he was looking past it.
He’d found a seat in the back of the train so that he could see each passenger who got on. All from behind the cover of his newspaper, so that no one could seehim. There’d been the usual moments of tension while the seats beside him filled, but none of the faces that took the adjacent seats belonged to Jaeger, or any of the other German agents whose photographs Thoroton had shown him. He hadn’t exactly relaxed, but he’d ticked those concerns off his list, anyway.
That left only the waiting, the anxiousness of that biggest of questions: Was Drake’s intelligence correct? Would Jaeger be on this train to Madrid, a sample of the sugar cubes laced with anthrax and glanders in his satchel, along with information on which of the freight carriages at the back of the train had the rest of the shipment? Or was this just a pointless use of a ticket?
Something about the movements of the next passenger to get on caught his attention and inspired him to raise his newsprint higher. Compared to the fluid, nearly languid gesturing of the Spaniards around him, this man’s posture was stiff, perfect. He made whatseemed to Drake’s eye to be a concerted effort to move like his neighbors, but he didn’t relax enough.
It was something Drake had studied for hours when he first came to Spain to attend university. He quickly grew tired of everyone pegging him as a foreigner the very moment he walked into a room and treating him accordingly. So he had studied his fellow students, his professors, even his grandfather—whose posture was also always perfect, but without that rigidity.
Drake risked half a glance at the stiff man, peeking around the edge of his paper and then hiding again behind it before the man could spothim.
Jaeger.
He was certain of it, though Drake only got a two-second glimpse of his face before he settled into a seat halfway up the train carriage. One didn’t forget a face one had first seen from behind a weapon pointed at one’s chest.
Perfect. With a bit of luck, he’d be able to search the bloke’s bag for the sample and information on the rest of the shipment. He hadn’t been sure they’d end up in the same carriage to start out, of course, but he’d been prepared to move through the others if necessary, once the train was moving, and search the freight carriages one by one. This would save him that trouble. He offered up a prayer that the false beard he’d affixed to his face would help conceal his identity.
Usually he could go about his missions without fear of being seen, but this was a different case. Jaeger could easily recognize him through his light disguise, and there was no telling what he might do then. Anonymity was required here.
His neck went hot at the thought of the bacilli sitting just feet away. From the research he’d done, he knew it was stable enough in its current form—it wouldn’t infect anyone here, not unless they ingested it or, even less likely, somehow inhaled the dust. But if by chance anyone did, if the sugar fell into human food stores instead of animal ... The glanders wasn’t likely to infect people, but anthrax was a different story. Typical flu symptoms—fever, chills, shortness of breath, fatigue—could lead to high fever, shock, and rapid deathif it were inhaled. If it were ingested, lesions in the mouth, throat, and digestive tract would cause debilitating pain, vomiting blood, and ultimately death as well.
A cruel thing to wish even on animals, who would similarly suffer from it. The bacteria originated in livestock, but Pasteur and his assistants had instituted vaccination of sheep and cattle against anthrax decades ago. Science had been doing what it ought to have been—trying to knock it out. Not make a weapon of it. Not until now.
Drake’s fingers wanted to tighten around the paper, but he kept them loose. He wouldn’t feel sorry for the donkeys and horses the Germans were trying to kill—he’d simply save them the horror, that was all. He’d get the bacilli, he’d turn the sample over to Thoroton to ship to Hall for analysis, he and the rest of the team would reroute the larger quantities to wherever his superiors had decided they should go, and he’d move on to the next assignment.
Jaeger slid his satchel under his seat and cast a glance up and down the aisle as he did. Drake tipped his head down a bit so that the brim of his hat would hide any bits of his face that the paper didn’t cover. So far as he could tell, Jaeger hadn’t noticed him. No hitches in either his gaze or his posture, no change in his rate of movement as he straightened again.
Good. One complication avoided for now.
A few minutes later, the train pulled away from the station. The seat beside him, next to the window, remained empty—a stroke of luck for which he silently thanked the Lord. In fact, half the train carriage wasn’t filled, which could work either to his advantage or disadvantage, depending. Fewer potential distractions to cover him, but fewer eyes to see him. He settled in, keeping his senses alert to the goings-on down the aisle. An opportunity would either arise on its own, or he would make one.
Across the aisle from Jaeger, a woman had settled with her children. There were six of them squeezed into the facing seats, including a baby who began fussing within ten minutes of their departure. Drake buried a smile behind his false whiskers when Jaeger shot the woman a look. Given the strict instruction the woman was givingher eldest daughter, he had a feeling she was the sort who wouldn’t hesitate to give Jaeger a piece of her mind if he dared insinuate that her difficulties were an annoyance to him. That could prove entertaining.
His opposite number glanced about, obviously searching for an alternate seat—though moving would require sitting beside someone else, as there were no altogether empty rows. Would he risk moving to a different carriage? Drake prayed he wouldn’t.
And he didn’t. With a sigh, Jaeger settled in and held his peace. For ten minutes, for twenty. By that point, the harried mother was pacing the aisle with her fussy baby, trying to get the little one to quiet. She’d just reached her own seat again—and hence Jaeger’s—when the train went round a bend, she swayed with it, and the baby lost its dinner ... all over the German.
Jaeger sprang up with an expletive—in Spanish, which testified to how deeply in his cover he must be immersed. Drawing the attention of most of the train carriage, he shouted, “Look what you’ve done!”
“I’m so sorry, señor!” The woman’s face flushed scarlet. She handed the baby to its sister and reached Jaeger’s way with her shawl. “Let me—”
“Don’t touch me.” He sidestepped her, moving down the aisle toward the front of the carriage. The nearest lavatory was in the next carriage in front of them and was no doubt his aim. “Just ... clean off my seat if you want to be useful.”
Drake’s eyes fell to said seat. And to the satchel still underneath it.Thank you, Father in heaven.
He waited until the agent had vanished and then stood. While the other passengers looked sympathetic, most of them seemed to be in no hurry to help clean up the mess.
Drake opened his own bag, pushed aside the copy ofLes Heures Claireshe’d packed, and grabbed a few other items that would prove useful now. Then he moved up the aisle.
The woman looked up at him with wary brown eyes. “Do you need to pass by?”
“No. I just thought I could help.” He offered her a smile and heldup the towel he’d packed. “I think this is better to sacrifice than your lovely shawl,señora.Here.” He handed her the water he’d brought up with him too. “If you can wield this when necessary, I can use the towel.”
The wariness melted into gratitude. “Gracias.”
