Alex’s tone carried a hint of warning. “Jo.”
“She did,” I persisted. I was starting to feel excited as the pieces came together. “I found it under the covers of my bed. I’ve been staring at it and staring at it. I thought she wanted to show it to me because of—because of the sketches that were inside. But that wasn’t it at all. She wanted to show it to me because of the pages that had been torn out. That was what I was supposed to see.”
“Jo, anyone could have put the book in your bed. A living human, I mean.”
“I was sleeping in the bed at the time.”
Alex’s gaze darkened. “That’s unsettling, and I don’t much like the sound of it. But it still could have been a living person.”
“Are you denying what you experienced last night?” I asked, stung that he still disbelieved me. “What you heard?”
“I don’t quite know what I heard last night,” he said, “and I’m not sure I have the courage to explore it.”
He put his hand on my elbow, prompting me to walk again, but I stood still, which forced him to stay where he was, holding the umbrella over me. “Tell me one thing,” I said.
He looked wary. “What is it?”
“The fact that you failed to find the sketch artist,” I said. “That you felt you failed your country. That’s why you gave in to Colonel Mabry’s idea that you become a spy—why you became Hans Faber. Isn’t it?”
The look he gave me, pained with deep exhaustion, was all the answer I needed.
“Come,” he said, and touched my arm again. This time I let him lead me as we approached High Street.
The rain had thinned, but still it came down in cold drops that dripped from the trees and pelted the umbrella. There were a few people about in Anningley, and Alex made a stir—shopkeepers idling on their front steps nodded to him, women doing their shopping craned their necks, curtains in upper windows twitched. Alex ignored all of it. Instead, he leaned close so no one could hear him and spoke to me.
“I told you Mabry plays a dirty game,” he said. “I couldn’t fight anymore, anyway—I’d pressed my luck as a pilot for too long. I applied to be sent back to England as an instructor, since the RAF was short on men who had lived long enough to gain the experience to teach. I was perfectly qualified to do it, but my request was stonewalled. I didn’t have to spend much time wondering why.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Alex could have come home, could have instructed other pilots from the safety of England? “Go on,” I managed.
“It was a death march,” Alex said softly as the rain pattered the umbrella. “Most pilots lived for two months—I had managed to live for two years. I could come home in a box and leave you a widow, or I could become Hans Faber. Those were my choices.”
“So you agreed.”
“In the original plan,” Alex said, “Hans Faber was to be a well-to-do traveling businessman with a heart condition that kept him from fighting. He would travel the country, ostensibly in the business of supplying cameras and film to the German army for use in reconnaissance and surveillance. He would carry a full set of identity papers, an authentic set of documentation for his heart condition, and a camera kit that was his sales sample. A German citizen, going about his business while quietly taking photographs for England.”
“The camera,” I said, “and its expensive case.”
“Yes. But by the time I agreed to the assignment, things were more difficult inside Germany, and the plan had to change. You were right, Jo. When I left you that last time, I went to Reims again, for more advanced training in undercover work. They gave me Hans Faber’s papers, though this time I didn’t have the heart condition. I went back into Germany in 1918 as an enlisted man.”
I felt like every set of eyes in Anningley was watching us, starting with the people we passed. I began to wonder how many of them could hear us. We were passing the lending library, and I pulled his arm. “Inside,” I said. “Let’s go.”
There was no one else here but the librarian at her desk. Alex folded the umbrella closed. “At least it’s out of the rain,” he whispered. “Do you actually want a book?”
“This way,” I said, whispering myself. I led him to the back, to my favorite set of shelves—containing mostly lowbrow novels and melodramas—and pretended to browse.
“Do you read these?” Alex asked curiously, looking over my shoulder.