Page 10 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

Vera crushed the flower in her fist.

The scent of sandalwood clung to her fingers.

“Well, Watson,” she said, her voice dropping an octave, losing all traces of the grandmotherly warble. “It seems we’ve attracted some attention.”

She went to the wardrobe and pushed aside the floral dresses. At the back, behind a false panel, was a small metal box. She keyed in a six-digit code.

Inside lay a burner phone, a stack of cash in three currencies, a forged passport, and a Walther PPK that hadn’t been fired since nineteen-eighty-nine.

Vera looked at the gun. She hesitated.

Not yet. A gun changed the nature of a confrontation. It escalated. And she wasn’t ready to escalate—not until she understood what she was dealing with.

She took the burner phone instead.

She dialed a number from memory. It rang four times before a voice answered—female, crisp, professionally neutral.

“Archive Services. How may I direct your call?”

“This is Wren,” Vera said. “I need to speak to Mr. Finch. Tell him it’s regarding the Prague matter.”

A pause. Then: “Please hold.”

Vera waited. Watson jumped onto the bed and curled against her hip, his trembling finally subsiding.

The line clicked.

“Wren.” The voice was male, older, with the gravelly texture of too many cigarettes and too many secrets. “It’s been what—fifteen years? I assumed you were dead.”

“Not yet, Finch. Though someone seems to be working on it.”

“Intriguing. What do you need?”

“I need you to identify a corporation. The logo is a stylised ‘O’ surrounded by radiating lines—like a sun, or an eye. They’re involved in property acquisition, possibly mineral rights. Operating somewhere in the Cotswolds.”

Silence. Then: “That’s... not much to go on, Wren.”

“They’re willing to kill for whatever they’re after. And they have at least one professional on their payroll. Someone with military training and very expensive taste in cologne.”

A longer pause. “I’ll see what I can dig up, but it sounds like they may have friends in high places.”

“I have friends in low places. And I still have that photograph from Vienna.”

A dry chuckle. “You always did play dirty. I’ll see what I can do. Secure line?”

“Always.”

“Give me forty-eight hours.”

The line went dead.

Vera set down the phone. She looked at the crushed petunia in her fist, then at the window, where the lights of Lark’s End twinkled peacefully in the darkness.

Somewhere out there, the grey-eyed doctor was watching. Waiting. He had made his move—a warning shot across the bow.

Now it was her turn.

“Well, Watson,” she said, smoothing the duvet. “I suppose we’d better get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.”