Things must be pretty dire if MI-5 and Scotland Yard were letting girls play in their sandbox. Another woman, stealing a job away from a man. It wasn’t fair, he thought, muscles bunching under his jaw. It just wasn’t fair.
As she passed him, she looked at him directly. As if she could look right through him, despite the glasses. Disconcerted, he looked away, then tossed more crumbs to the birds, pitiful creatures with molting feathers who fought over the meager morsels. But in his peripheral vision, he followed her movements. He waited, feeding the pigeons and biding his time. And when the whore left with Durgin and the other man, he rose, the collar of his coat hiding the ghost of a smile. She could be my redheaded Mary Kelly, my last victim in tribute to Jack, he decided, bringing his gloved finger back to his lips and worrying once again at the dried blood on the tip. But later.
Now it’s time to hunt.
—
Hugh and Sarah left the Baker Street office to take the Tube to Waterloo, where they caught the train back to Brockenhurst. As the train pulled out from the station, heading south with a shrieking whistle and clouds of steam, Sarah sank back in her seat with a sigh of relief. The air inside was stuffy, but at least they had the carriage to themselves.
“Not a big fan of London?” Hugh asked, putting their suitcases in the overhead rack.
“Love London.” Sarah smoothed her gloves and settled her handbag in her lap. “Adore London. But I just want to get on with it—whatever ‘it’ is.” She was excited, a little scared, but altogether eager to begin whatever it was they’d been training for.
“Agreed. Remember how they’d say it in Scotland? Jess get oan wea it!”
“And I suppose we should now say, Juste passer à autre chose!”
It was an overcast afternoon, the grass green laced with snow, the sky heavy and leaden. Sarah and Hugh sat opposite each other on the worn seats and looked out silently as the train sped past fences and haystacks and horses munching away at rough patches of grass. Sarah struggled to open the dirty window to let in some fresh air. As Hugh reached over to help her, their hands touched and they both burst out laughing.
“There will always be an England….” Hugh sang in a decent tenor.
Sarah poked his arm. “I was thinking that, too!”
The two smiled, then became solemn as they remembered what they had pledged to do for their country, what they might be called on to sacrifice. Even though they didn’t know the particulars yet, there was no question their mission would be dangerous.
On and on the train sped, past glossy black crows on telephone lines and small villages where little boys ran alongside the carriages for as long as their legs could hold out, waving their caps gleefully at the passengers. Sarah and Hugh bought tea from a plump young girl with a heart-shaped locket around her neck, wheeling a cart. They drank it and shared a cheese and apple sandwich, then did the Times crossword puzzle together.
“So really,” Sarah said, “how do you know Maggie?”
“We worked together.” A shadow passed over Hugh’s face. “A long time ago.”
“Just work?”
“You’re observant,” he noted. “You’ll make a good spy.”
“Oh, ha ha—hilarious. But I notice you didn’t answer my question.”
“We were…involved…for a time, you might say.” Hugh tugged at his Tattersall collar, as if it were suddenly too tight.
“And you ended it with her?”
“She ended it with me.”
“And broke your heart. Are you over her?”
“Are we ever over the people we’ve loved?”
“End of the line!” the conductor bellowed as the train slowed and lurched into the Brockenhurst station, its whistle piercing the air. Hugh reached for Sarah’s suitcase.
“I can get my bag,” she said.
“No, really,” he insisted, smiling, swinging it down easily. “I’ve got it.”
Stepping off the train into the fresh country air, they were met on the platform by a man in a gray suit with a dark red tie and pocket square. “Ah! Mr. Philby!” Hugh called, recognizing the man who had recruited him.
“Hello, Hugh, good to see you again!” The man in the red tie raised a hand in greeting. “And it’s Kim, remember? We don’t stand on ceremony here.” Walking closer, Kim Philby smiled. “And you must be Miss Sanderson.”
She held out her hand. “Sarah.”
He shook it, smiling warmly. “Welcome back to Beaulieu. The car’s this way, please. And let me help you with those bags.”
—
Philby drove them in his russet Lagonda through winding hills, passing cow pastures, braking frequently for wild ponies and donkeys meandering across the road. At one juncture, while a shaggy brown horse seemed to deliberate which way to go, he made a full stop in the middle of the road. “They rule the roads here, and they know it,” Philby told Sarah and Hugh. “The land is theirs—we’re all merely passing through.”
“When I was here last, I learned to give them a wide berth,” Sarah agreed, staring out the car’s passenger window as a line of silvery gray donkeys with dark, limpid eyes and large ears passed by the car without so much as a sideways glance.
“Of course, they’ve been here for over a thousand years or thereabouts, so I suppose seniority does confer certain rights.”
“They’re quite handsome,” Sarah remarked as Philby shifted the car into third gear, and they continued on their way in the slanting afternoon sunlight.
“They are, but they’re wild creatures.”
“I know—I tried to pet one of the donkeys once, and he nearly bit my hand off. So, you two know each other?” Sarah asked. “From London?”
Philby and Hugh exchanged a look. “Right, right—” said Sarah. “?‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.’?”
“Indeed,” Philby agreed, “as we all learn how ‘to stoop to conquer.’?” He pulled the car into the gravel drive of a thatched-roof cottage and stopped, turning off the engine. “Here we are! A regular chocolate box, isn’t it?”
The house did look like something out of a storybook, with diamond-paned windows, thorny vines of climbing roses, whitewashed cob walls, and a red-brick chimney. A shaggy tan and cream pony nibbled on the grass of the front garden. The only indication of a military training camp nearby was the sound of Range Rovers backfiring and gunshots in the distance.
“I thought we’d be back at the dormitories?” Sarah asked.
“We’ve requisitioned lots of the houses around here. Most of the trainees stay in the big houses on the Beaulieu estate, as you did—but since you two will be working closely together, we thought we’d give you some privacy.”
“Privacy? Why on earth would we need privacy?” Sarah’s pumps crunched on the gravel driveway as she sidestepped a mound of horse excrement.
“Miss Lynd didn’t tell you?” Philby grinned. “You’re being sent over as a married couple.”
Sarah and Hugh exchanged an astonished look.
“You didn’t know? Well, you do now. Think of this as your honeymoon cottage.” Philby winked at Hugh. “Of course, what goes on behind closed doors is up to you.”
Chapter Five
The rest of the day and a night passed before Elise Hess woke.
When she did, she thought she might be in heaven.
She was warm.
No one was screaming at her, no dogs snarling at her.
She could think of—nothing.
In fact, words seemed to have left her completely. She looked around at what she would have, in another lifetime, called a bed, a pitcher, a glass. She knew the objects—the thing people sleep on, that which holds water, the thing we drink from—but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe I’ve died and I’m in eternity? she thought. Limbo?
Or maybe I’ve lost my mind.
She considered her hands. They were mottled with bruises, the nails filthy and torn. Pain radiated from her shoulders.