She laughed even as she drew her camera out of its home in her pocket. “I think here will do quite nicely. To start.”
Always to start. Walking with her was an exploration of angles and light, things he’d never before paused to appreciate. He stayed close to her side as she took her shots, bending down when she did to see the world from the same angle, at least momentarily. But even so, he knew she’d surprise him when she showed him the prints. She always did.
She fiddled now with the light and focus mechanisms. Then her fingers found the cord that led to the push-pin, trailed down it in that way they always did. A moment later, the shutter snapped closed, opened again. She shifted just a bit, fiddled for a single second with something, and then pushed it again. Another shift. Another push.
She could be at it for several minutes if she stayed true to pattern.
Zivon glanced over his shoulder, verifying that Clarke and Miss Ivy were meandering past them on the path, their pace so slow that anyone could see it wasn’t the exercise they were after, just the company. They smiled at him but didn’t interrupt their conversation otherwise.
He smiled back, let his hands fall into that comfortable position behind his back, and closed his eyes against the mist. Listened.
Birdsong. Children playing. Nurses scolding.
Russian syllables, muttering about war and support and desperation.
Zivon’s eyes flew open. He knew those voices. Both of them, which made dread slink down his spine. One was Nabokov—not surprisingly, Zivon supposed, given how close Hyde Park was to the embassy.
But the other—to whom did that belong? He’d heard it before, he knew he had. But not from the embassy.
They were coming from beyond that line of bushes, no doubt from the bench positioned there. Zivon cast a glance at Lily—she was focused now upon the ducks enjoying a puddle—and then slid one step closer to the voices.
“Perhaps we could appeal the decision.” Nabokov, he was sure of it. He spoke quietly, though not exactly in a whisper. “Ask for more.”
“And risk having what was granted taken away? Be reasonable, Konstantin. The king was quite generous in allotting us enough to keep ourselves running. It was too much to hope that he would agree to support the other embassies as well. That will have to fall to their host nations or to generous patrons. You know as well as I that some of the other ambassadors can fund themselves.”
“Assuming they can access their funds, yes.” A sigh blustered out.
Zivon closed his eyes again to better focus on the unknown voice’s cadence, rhythm, accent. Upper class, that much he could identify without thought. Educated. Which did little to narrow down the list of his acquaintances from recent years.
“I pray this aid we secured will be sufficient to support our people who are here in England, anyway. Surely the Bolsheviks will be brought under control soon. Have we heard any more from Maklakov? About whether the United States will intervene?”
“No. Though I know he continues to speak the logic of it to them. If Germany takes advantage of the chaos and moves into our territory, it will spell disaster for all the Allies.”
“I want to trust they’ll see this wisdom, Fyodor, but . . .”
Fyodor. Zivon’s eyes flew open again. Not—but yes. It had to be. Fyodor Suvorov. Of course it was Fyodor Suvorov. He and Nabokov were cousins or some such, a fact that had completely escaped Zivon’s memory until now. Oh, Lord, why?
He stepped back to Lily’s side, his fingers curled into his palm.
She stood. Glanced at him at first, then frowned. “Are you all right?”
He could have kissed her for not saying his name. He didn’t look over his shoulder, but still, he heard the hitch in the conversation behind the bushes. They wouldn’t be alarmed at hearing an English miss, but they could well react if they heard his voice, with its Russian accent.
In that moment, he envisioned no fewer than five different scenarios. He let them play out and deemed all but one of them unacceptable.
So he touched a soft hand to Lily’s elbow and leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “I am not. Can we walk a bit away from here? I will explain.”
For five long seconds, she simply held his gaze, thoughts ricocheting through her winter blue eyes. But then she smiled, tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, and said, at a normal volume, “I’d like to get a few photographs of the ducks from another angle now if that’s all right, dearest. Over by that tree, perhaps?”
Far enough away to be out of earshot, and the tree would provide him cover if Suvorov and Nabokov emerged onto the path. That should have been all that concerned him.
So why did his heart stutter over that dearest? She’d said it only to preserve the anonymity he was clearly striving for. He knew that. Even so. No one had ever called him by such an endearment, other than his own mother. Alyona certainly hadn’t.
It made a bit of the tundra thaw.
They ambled toward the tree as if they were just two carefree Londoners out for a stroll. But Zivon was careful to keep his back to the other Russians.
Once at the tree, Lily raised her camera again, but she didn’t look through the viewfinder. She looked at him. “Talk.”
First, he took in a long breath. “Apologies. It is probably nothing. It is only . . . there were men speaking Russian over there. And one of them is an old acquaintance. We served together in the Foreign Ministry before the war.”
Which meant that had the two spotted him, Fyodor would have called out an enthusiastic Marin! while his cousin was calling Filiminov!
Disaster.
Lily blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
He exhaled. “Of course. Apologies again. I have not announced to anyone in Russia that I am here. Given the target I painted on my back, it seemed wisest to remain incognito for a while.”
She glanced past him, though only for a second, then she looked at her camera. That, as much as the soft padding of feet over grass and the voices, now speaking in French, talking of the theater and children and Kira, told him that the men had emerged. “Do you fear they’re Bolsheviks?”
“No. But that does not mean I can trust them. They could say something careless in the hearing of someone with soviet ties. They could mention me in a report that makes its way back to Russia. They could . . .” They could ruin his every plan. His whole purpose.
“Zivon.” She breathed his name so softly he barely heard it. Yet it zapped him like a live wire, pulling his gaze to hers from where it had drifted to the pattern in the tree bark.
No one had said his first name in weeks, other than when it was attached to his surname in an introduction. No one had called him by it. The closest anyone had gotten was Camden using “Ziv.” But that had never been his nickname. That wasn’t him.
She offered no apology for the liberty either. No, eyes steady in that way she usually reserved for whatever she saw through her camera’s lens, she reached up and touched her fingertips lightly to his coat. Over his heart.
Over the encrypted message, ready to send, and the photograph of two German officers, where the papers were hidden away in his pocket.
She shook her head. “You cannot trust your enemies. And if you do not trust your friends, then who do you trust?”
Perhaps she meant it to be a rhetorical question. But the answer resounded like a gong. “No one.”