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“Among the agents who left the SOE when it was disbanded were several with particular aptitude in finance. They took employment in the City.”
“The City?” she asked. “Which city?”
“The City is how we refer to the financial district in London, rather like your Wall Street. In fact, we have some Wall Street fellows as well. They were able, with the help of a few significant donations from sympathetic benefactors, to establish a fund which has grown to impressive proportions.”
“Who runs this organization? What do you even call it?”
“I cannot divulge the official name, but amongst ourselves, it is called the Museum. We have field agents and a research department and a Board of Directors to oversee the Museum’s activities around the world, dispatching those field agents to safeguard democracy, to thwart absolutism, and to enact justice.”
“Whose justice?” she asks.
“The justice demanded by democratic principles agreed upon by the founders of the Museum—the men and women who were among the original SOE and OSS recruits, although, as I have said, their numbers have begun to thin in recent years.”
He is silent a long moment, assessing her, weighing something. She wants to break the silence, but she lets the quiet fill the space between them and he eventually nods. He reaches into the briefcase at his elbow and opens a file. It is dark bluewith a small logo of falling stars surrounded by a gold motto: Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
Billie has just enough Latin to translate the motto and she smiles to herself.Let justice be done though the heavens fall.He extracts a sheet of paper, which he pushes across the table towards her. “If you decide to work with us, the charges pending against you currently will be dropped. Your arrest record will be expunged and your academic records destroyed. Neither the university nor law enforcement will have any proof you attended this college. If you sign this contract promising not to speak of what we have discussed here, it will be taken as a formal submission to be considered for appointment to the Museum as member of our Exhibitions department.” He takes out a fountain pen and unscrews the cap, placing it neatly next to the paper.
“Exhibitions? Are you sure it’s not porn?”
“Exhibitions is the name for the department that handles fieldwork. All of our operational terms are taken from museum vernacular. It was a deliberate choice to distance ourselves from our militaristic and bureaucratic roots.”
Billie studies the form. It looks like standard boilerplate stuff, the sort of thing covered in a Business Admin 101 course, with a modest stipend to be paid while she completes training. This is to be conducted in an unspecified location, and if she proves satisfactory she will be offered formal employment.
“Training to kill people,” she says slowly. She sits back, looking at the pale purple type on the page. It has beenmimeographed, like worksheets for a second-grade phonics class, and it smells like soup.
“Training to protect the same values for which every Allied soldier in the war gave his life,” he says quietly.
“I’m not a soldier,” she reminds him.
He taps the book. “Neither is Modesty Blaise. Neither is my sister. And still they fight.”
This time Billie is quiet for a long moment, and Halliday is smart enough to stay quiet too. She looks down at her lacerated knuckles. “Can you teach me how to do damage to the other guy without hurting myself?”
“That,” he says with a smile, “is our speciality.”Speciality.When else in her life is she going to meet a man who says “speciality”?
She picks up the pen. “Alright, Major Halliday,” she says, sweeping the nib of the fountain pen across the page in a scrawling signature. “Make a killer out of me.”
He reaches for the form, smoothing it neatly before retrieving his pen. He screws the cap on slowly and gives her a knowing smile. “My dear Miss Webster, that is rather the point. We don’t make killers. We simply find them and point them in the right direction. We know what you are.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Mary Alice and I were bunking together while Helen and Natalie shared the cabin next to ours. Both were elaborate balcony staterooms, and our deck (“the elegant Nereid deck, designed for maximum privacy and serenity”) had a small pool and bar that serviced just ten cabins. We made a plan to meet there the next morning for breakfast before heading out on our first shore excursion. I hoped exploring St. Kitts would rouse Helen’s interest. Mourning a spouse was one thing, but Helen seemed broken, as if her spirit had died right along with Kenneth.
I said as much to Mary Alice when we disembarked the next morning in Basseterre, but she flapped a hand at me as she rubbed sunscreen into her face.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said, leaving a big white stripe down her nose.
I pointed ahead to where Helen was walking with Natalie.“Mary Alice, she is not fine. Even her hair seems sad. How would you feel if it were Akiko?”
“Well, that’s not going to be a problem. Akiko and I have a pact. Whichever one goes first is going to haunt the shit out of whoever is left. And remarriage is not an option. I’ve already told her if she finds a new wife, I’ll go full poltergeist.”
She handed me the tube of sunscreen. “Here. Your nose is already going pink. And stop worrying about Helen. She’ll get there in time.”
Mary Alice pushed me down the gangplank and we spent the day shopping and exploring, eating grilled lobsters and sharing war stories late into the night. Helen perked up a little, which might have been the work of her second mai tai. Between the sea air and the white wine, I slept like the dead, waking to the sound of the gentle chime that indicated the announcements were imminent. The captain came on to greet the passengers and give a rundown on the weather and water conditions, complete with longitude and latitude. There was a detailed map in each room, and I could see that we’d sailed from Basseterre, around the bottom of St. Kitts, shooting the gap between that island and Nevis, a body of water called The Narrows. We had passed the swanky new Park Hyatt resort nestled in Christophe Harbour and were heading southeast now for Montserrat, the captain told us, with a leisurely day at sea ahead of us.
I dragged on a new black swimsuit that promised to hold everything in and smooth everything out. I tied a cotton pareo over it and headed to the pool. Mary Alice was already there, staking out an overstuffed lounger sofa. She was knittingsomething complicated, her expression intent as she counted stitches. The pattern was next to her, anchored by a stack of magazines and a novel whose cover featured two adorable men in Regency clothing making out enthusiastically.
“I didn’t know Mr. Darcy was gay,” I said, dropping my pareo and bag next to her.
