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“This might have been your office once, Standish, but it’s not now. You bloody well knock now, and you come in only if I say so!”
“Don’t be an ass, Bradley,” Lucas said quite softly. He was a man who spoke quietly when he was very, very angry. Bradley had betrayed an office that Lucas had held with honor, even reverence. And he had betrayed Elena, too, making her the goat when he knew that she was guilty of falling in love with Aiden Strother, but was innocent of treason. Everything Bradley had done was calculated to hurt Lucas, taint his reputation and his legacy.
Bradley saw a difference in Lucas’s face. He recognized something that, under the bravado, he had feared for years.
Lucas saw the man’s face turn pale. He knew. “This is the end of the road, Bradley. Stoney left your name quite clearly for us…before you killed him.”
Bradley chose to bluff. “Stoney Canning? That old fool…”
“Has outwitted you,” Lucas finished for him. “You can give up with grace, or struggle and be half carried out like some dangerous lunatic.”
“Ha! You think you’re man enough to do that?” Bradley laughed, but utterly without humor. “You’re an old man, Standish. Past your time! Long past it. You’re finished. Hitler is rising. You’re a relic of the past, and too damn stupid to see it.”
Lucas took a step backward and opened the door. The two policemen came in. The secretary was just visible, handcuffed to the desk. Her face was ashen.
Bradley looked at her, then at the unsmiling police, and lastly at Lucas. “You may have won this round, Standish, but this is far from the end. There will be no war, no battles, just a slow change, from the top, to join our natural allies, the Germans. Then you’ll know what defeat really is.” Suddenly he dived forward and lashed out at the nearest policeman, who staggered backward, and stumbled.
Lucas picked up the hard-backed chair, swung it high, and brought it down hard on Bradley’s shoulders.
The man let out a cry and collapsed to the floor.
Two policemen picked him up, carrying him out of his office like a sack of rubbish.
Lucas stared around him. This was a sad and bitter victory. But it was a victory nevertheless, and the beginning of a new battle.
CHAPTER
20
They walked in silence toward the waterfront. Elena’s mind was teeming with questions, but she did not know how to frame them. What had happened so quickly that they needed to escape immediately? And now that Ferdie was dead, how long could it be before the police found his body and raised the alarm? Some of them, at the very least, would assume that the people who killed Ferdie, whoever they were, would make for the port and the first ship out. Ferdie had tried to kill them befor
e they could escape—and do what? Tell everyone that part of the Front had splintered off and struck early, preemptively? They would know that by now. Know the chain of command upward, to whoever was the leader. Was Aiden aware of that? Did it even matter anymore?
She was short of breath and her feet hurt, but she matched Aiden stride for stride. It was getting dark quickly; buildings were becoming black shapes without features, heavy blocks against the luminous embers of sunset in the sky. Did Aiden know where they were going? Had he thought of this route ahead of time, or could he be as lost as she was, just better at hiding it?
He had taken it for granted that she would come. Why? Now that she was on the run the police would suspect her of killing Max, or at least being the cause of his death. She had found his body with Aiden, and they had run away from the area together. And yet it had never occurred to her not to go with him. It was her duty to get him out. It was what she had come for: to save him, and to save the list, and then get it to Peter Howard. But she could not afford a confrontation with the police now, and the risk of being caught out in a lie.
She was holding the money for their passage back to England, for both of them. Aiden was relying on her. He had not questioned her. Could trust bind you to loyalty? Yes. He knew that it mattered to her. Trust must never be broken. The thought chilled her.
They reached a major intersection illuminated by streetlights and car headlamps, busy with bright sweeping movement and noise.
Aiden came to a stop, holding his arm out to keep Elena from moving past him. He glanced at her, and the light of the nearest lamp was faint but clear on his face. He seemed exhilarated, and more alive than she had ever seen him.
“Wait,” he ordered. “We’ve got to get across to the other side.”
“Do we wait till it’s quiet?” she asked.
“No, the opposite,” he told her. “We go when there’s a group, but you’ve got to look like one of them. Can you do that?”
“Of course I can,” she answered tartly.
He smiled, the lamplight gleaming on his teeth. It reminded her absurdly of Alice in Wonderland, in which the Cheshire Cat disappears until only his smile is visible.
They waited in silence, standing so close she could feel the warmth of his body and imagine his heart beating. Memories intruded: running ahead of the tide, across the fast-vanishing sandbar, feeling the water’s power. Running the risk of drowning, and then collapsing on the sand just out of the tide’s reach. Laughing for the joy of it. She had never felt more brilliantly alive herself. That was the first night they had made love. It had been years ago. She was so young then. She was older now…and the stakes were immeasurably higher.
Suddenly, Aiden moved forward, grasping her hand as he strode across the street, leaving the shadows on one side and making for the shadows of the other. They walked quickly, vulnerable out in the open. She turned toward him.
“Don’t speak,” he told her quietly. “Just keep walking. Don’t stop, don’t move suddenly. Don’t do anything to attract attention.”
