Twelve
CALAIS, COAST OF FRANCE
Brodie read the telegram again, then cursed. It was two bloody days old!
Held for him by the owner at the inn. Two days since that message had been sent, when he knew from experience that hours were often the difference between life and … He refused to think of the possibility as he read it again:
‘ Urgent. M’s inquiry case, now a murder.
She’s disappeared. Munro.’
And the worst of it, there was nothing from Mikaela. No telegram. Nothing.
“What is it, my friend?” Herr Schmidt inquired, his blunt features heavily lined from the past several days that had taken them across two countries, into places Brodie had never been, traveling by cart, afoot, then by train, forced to rely on others.
The owner of the gymnasium in London had been a much-appreciated companion in those places and cities, along with Schmidt’s companion, a man by the name of Vogel, who had already gone up to their room.
Schmidt had made a life for himself and his family in England, and while he’d been born in Germany and lived there half his life, he had no use for those who were bent on war.
He had seen too much of that sort of thing as a young man, with endless conflict and finally oppression after the Franco-Prussian war.
“I have seen what such things do to the people,” he told Brodie. “Always it is the common people who pay the price. I will help you find this person whose scheme will only kill innocent men, women, and children, to stop this if we can.”
An unlikely partnership and the search had been long and bloody. The sort of thing that made friends of those who survived it.
“I need to make the crossing tonight,” Brodie told the owner of the inn after receiving that telegram.
“The last ferry left hours ago,” he was informed.
“What of a boat owner eager to make good money?”
The innkeeper nodded. “There is a man, if he is not out. Belvoir is his name. I can have the boy take you to him. It is not far.”
“I’ll go with you,” Schmidt told him, “in case we have been followed.”
They set off with the boy who worked at the inn, roused from sleep by the owner.
‘Not far’ always depended on the person who said it and what he considered ‘far.’
They followed the boy to the quay south of the channel crossing, then to a fisherman’s hut, the windows darkened.
The boy knocked on the door, and a woman eventually appeared.
Belvoir had been gone since before daybreak and had not returned.
On this sort of trip in that boat with a steam motor, they were told, he usually remained at Boulogne-Sur-Mer on the south coast, that allowed him to go out at first light for the fish.
“I am sorry, my friend,” Schmidt told him as they returned to the inn. “But the lady is formidable with a weapon. I should know.”
Formidable. That she was, Brodie thought.
She had gone to Munro, told him about a murder. And had then continued on her own because he wasna there.
He knew better than to leave her on her own with an inquiry case. The past two years had shown him that, and before that when he had gone to that Greek Island, sent by her ladyship.
Independent, stubborn by nature, he had never known her to give up, to walk away and abandon another. And that included himself.
Bloody hell!
There was nothing to do but wait for the first ferry that left Calais in the morning, followed by hours aboard a train from Dover.
He had taken a room, with Schmidt and Vogel in another room, but didn’t go there. There was no sleep, his nerves raw, pain throbbing behind his eyes, as he sat in that darkened tavern next to the inn.
She had taught him about that—about nerves that caused pain when injured. It never had a name before, only an awareness from other encounters.
“It has been scientifically proven,” she had told him when they returned to the office at the end of one of their inquiry cases and he had been struck across the back of the head.
“When a nerve is injured it sends pain to muscle. Mr. Brimley explained to me.”
‘Scientifically proven . ’
He would have laughed at that, an explanation for something he’d discovered a long time ago on the streets.
How many other times had she spoken about something that left him shaking his head? Far different from himself and the places he had been, the things he had done.
She was educated, well-read, spoke three languages that she had shrugged off when he asked, as if it was unimportant. And she had travelled to many of those same places. A woman of the world, someone had once described her.
His experience was far different—Edinburgh and London did not count as world travel, the backstreets and alleys, the docks and the things found there.
Still, there was that way about her, when she looked at him with complete honesty that had stripped away the wall he had built around himself.
‘Protection’ he called it, that came from the streets, against the pain and loss, until he didna feel anything at all. Except for her.
She had torn down that wall, brick by brick, with her courage and sass, with a boldness and courage he’d never known in anyone, not even other survivors on the street. And trust that was worth its weight in gold to him.
She had spoken of it, something Lady Montgomery had told her about trust. And she had trusted him then. And now?
She was out there, somewhere, alone. And he was miles away, in another country. All because Sir Stanton had come to him with a serious proposal, information learned by the Agency about a plot against the Crown.
It was a serious threat—the people who had provided the information had paid for it with their lives.
There was someone inside the British government who had been providing highly secret information, as Avery described it.
Information that included the travel schedule of diplomats, including the Foreign Secretary.
It was serious enough that he had agreed to try to find who had provided that information. And ironic, that it was Mikaela who had passed on information about a person who had recently returned from extended travel in Europe.
Sir Lionel Blandford, known to Lady Montgomery, and a passing comment that turned out to be highly important.
Stolen documents had been recovered from Sir Lionel Blandford’s estate. Blandford’s wife, who was German by birth, had hidden them in a false compartment in her luggage as they prepared to permanently leave the country. Both were now in cells somewhere inside the Tower.
Six bloody days ago!
Following the information Blandford had provided that included a name that he eventually revealed as he screamed with pain in that chair in the library at his estate—Novack.
Brodie left immediately for Dover, then Paris, and on to Frankfurt, Germany. To cut off the head of the snake, as Sir Avery Stanton called it.
Surely there were others better suited, Brodie had argued. But Sir Stanton had assured him that he was the perfect choice. He was unknown to any of those they were after, a stranger in those countries who could move about easily without suspicion.
He was not part of the British government or the military, with deniability if anything should go wrong. And perhaps most important, he was expendable.
He couldn’t tell Mikaela any of it, couldn’t tell her where he was going or when he would return.
He had accepted it. He would go, he told Stanton, but only if he could choose the people who went with him. That included Schmidt, owner of the German Gymnasium in London.
Schmidt had departed Germany twenty years earlier, but still knew people there. He also knew of Novack, the terrorist, along with the circle of persons who followed him.
There had been rumblings through the German community in London about plans to assassinate the Kaiser, overthrow the German government, and then move on to other capitols across Europe. Novack’s people were loyal and the information Blandford gave them indicated they were well armed.
Schmidt accompanied Brodie to Frankfurt along with a man he trusted, from within the German community, a man called Steiger.
The underground network Novack’s people had built was difficult to penetrate. Eventually there was a rumor, someone who knew someone, payment passed from hand to hand. Information learned piece by piece. It had all taken time.
Brodie understood the man's reasons for what he had planned that came from his own early experiences—the poverty and starvation, the hopelessness.
Yet innocent lives had been caught up in attacks on government buildings, a high-ranking official murdered in his bed, innocent men, women, and children killed when explosions tore through the center of cities and spared no one.
And proof in those documents found in Blandford’s possession that had sent Brodie there—Novack was determined to bring down the British monarchy. A piece of information that eventually led to a man who was a foot soldier of Novack’s, put in charge of procuring weapons.
They found Novack, along with several of his trusted inner circle—a great deal of money could purchase loyalty. Enough of it for the person who provided the information to disappear.
Discovered, with many of his followers choosing to flee, Novack chose not to surrender. Another man they’d met up with, who went by the name of Anatole, left Novack’s body somewhere in the forest outside Frankfurt.
“Let the wolves and crows have him,” Schmidt said at the time.
Afterward, on information persuaded from others, railcars full of weapons and munitions were discovered in a railyard, bound for cities across Europe.
Any one thing could easily have gone wrong. But it hadn’t. The man he’d been sent to find, and a good many others, had been stopped.
“There will be a quick trial for the others,” Schmidt assured him as they made their way back through the countryside in the disguise of shepherds.
“And an even quicker execution.”
Brodie pinched back the pain at the bridge of his nose. His eyes burned, his body craved sleep. But there was none.
There were only the shadows in the tavern, dimly lit by a single electric light over the counter, the smell of ale and wine that mixed with that of old wood, smoke, and those who had left hours before.
And he thought of Mikaela, and the growing fear that he should have stayed in London. He should have been there to help with the case she'd taken.
Many times he had forced himself past the things she stirred in him, things he was certain were as dead as the past that he’d somehow survived.
And each time, she was there with her stubbornness, a boldness that had terrified him more than once, her intelligence, and a keen understanding of things he’d never known a woman to possess.
And her refusal to quit, to remain where it was safe, when everything including himself told her that she should.
When he had learned more, along with what Lady Montgomery had shared with him that first time, he recognized it.
Beneath the title, the privilege, the private education, and wealth was someone very like himself. With old wounds, the people she had loved who were gone, the strength she had pulled up from somewhere deep inside her. And that red hair that said a great deal more.
He was convinced there must be a Scot somewhere in that very long family history.
“Well,” Lady Montgomery had once said. “I suppose anything is possible, Mr. Brodie. What with a few known scoundrels, along with others.” she told him when he had commented on it. “I confess that I once had red hair, although you might not believe that now. I assure you that it is true.”
It explained a great deal about both of them.
And now?
His fist came down on the bench where he sat against the wall of the tavern. That question that slipped through the exhaustion, and the pain that burned behind his eyes.
What if something happened to her …?
Could he live without the stubbornness that often got her into trouble, the way she challenged and argued with him?
Could he?
The answer was there when the man who worked the tavern appeared just before first light and slammed the hinged bar top into place with a loud crack.
Then there was coffee, a great deal of it spiced with cinnamon, that she had persuaded him to add to his own preferred strong coffee. As she explained it, she had it on good authority that the spice was good for the heart.
The schedule for departures for Dover was posted inside the entrance to the tavern. There was a three-hour wait for the next boat returning to the English coast.
He downed more coffee and then finally pushed back the plate with remnants of a meal, where Schmidt and Steiger, who sat across from him, had both cleaned theirs, including most of a loaf of bread with honey and jam.
“You will do her no good if you do not eat,” Schmidt told him, cutting more pieces of ham.
It wasn’t food Brodie needed.
The return crossing was with the tide and far quicker than the one they’d made before. Then, the return to London by rail.
Time.
It healed all wounds, someone told him. He knew only too well that it was also an enemy.
Sir Avery Stanton would be waiting in London, anxious for word of what they'd found that he had not put in the telegram he had sent from Paris. He had sent only a brief message—Mission accomplished!
Not content to wait at the agency office at the Tower, Sir Stanton was waiting for them at the rail platform.
Brodie barely nodded in greeting and pushed past with Schmidt and Steiger.
Stanton called out over the noise on the platform of the station—conversations, excited laughter, the congestion where people boarded their train, the hiss of the steam engines.
“Brodie! I need your report!”
His report? It had been three days since anyone had seen or heard from Mikaela and that same amount of time since Munro had sent that telegram to Dover.
He stopped and shot a look back at Sir Avery Stanton.
Not that he wasn’t familiar with reports from his time with the MET, and in the private inquiry business.
“The matter was taken care of, with four dead, including the one I went after, and others in custody with the authorities,” he shouted across the crowd of startled passengers and others he passed as he left.
“Now,” he snapped. “Ye have my report!”