“Don’t!” Mama sliced a hand through the air. “Don’t make excuses. I don’t care what you do or rarely do at the OB. What I care about is the fact that you and your father have willfully deceived me!”
Lily dropped her gaze. What answer could she really give to that?
She looked up again, though, when Mama made a sound she wasn’t sure how to classify. Gasp? Sob? Hard to say, given that she’d turned her back on her. “I thought we were close. That you and I were . . . Clearly I was wrong.”
“Mama—”
It wasn’t the hand held up that stopped her words. It was the slump to her shoulders. “Go to bed, Lilian.”
She cast a glance toward her camera bag, the film she’d hoped to develop. But she wasn’t about to argue. She nudged the bag a little more out of the way and then stepped from the room, pulling the door shut behind her. Drawing even with her mother, she reached to touch a hand to her arm.
Mama pulled back. Folded her arms over her chest. Stared straight ahead, though there was nothing for her gaze to rest on save a bare wall.
Lily sagged and slunk by her.
She intercepted a grim-faced Daddy at the base of the central staircase. He looked past her, but apparently Mama hadn’t followed her out, because his glance returned quickly to her face. “I will take care of this with your mother. You go on up to your room.”
She nodded but didn’t move away. “Why were you behaving as you were with Mr. Marin?”
Thunder rolled through his eyes anew. “I’ll not go into details. Suffice it to say Hall received information today that sheds a suspicious light. You’ll discontinue your association with him until further notice.”
“What? But, Daddy—”
“I’ll not tolerate you questioning me on this, Lilian. You will obey. Now go.”
Given that he stalked off, she didn’t have much choice. She mounted the steps slowly, eyes stinging. How could a night that began so very well go so very wrong?
15
MONDAY, 20 MAY 1918
Someone was following him.
Zivon kept walking at his normal pace, his gaze on the Old Admiralty Building, just visible when he rounded the corner. Correction. Two someones were following him. The newer addition was so obvious it was nearly laughable—scurrying behind other pedestrians or darting into a doorway if Zivon happened to turn a bit. Obviously never considering that he could sense him, hear him, and see him in reflections.
Irritating. Alarming, in a way. But also surely not much of a threat if he was so unskilled.
It was the other man that had Zivon’s every nerve buzzing. That one he’d nearly missed. Nearly. But once he’d picked up on him, he had the unsettling suspicion that the fellow had been shadowing him ever since he stepped foot out of his flat.
Had he not been so exhausted, perhaps he would have noticed the accomplished one sooner. But he’d only slept about an hour. He kept reliving the raid. The confrontation with Fyodor and Nabokov—who had ordered him to report to the embassy at eight this morning. The kiss. The look on Lily’s face when he told her about Alyona.
The look on her father’s when he told him in no uncertain terms that his attentions were no longer welcome and he was to desist calling on her.
That, combined with these sudden tails, painted a rather dreadful picture. He had fallen out of favor with the Admiralty. The question was why. What had happened in the last day or two to change everything?
He’d reported as ordered to the embassy, ready to lay all of his cards, metaphorical and physical, on the table. He’d brought both of the fake passports, his own and Evgeni’s, now without his brother’s photo; the English identification papers Admiral Hall had supplied to him; and an abbreviated but truthful version of the events that had led him here.
Nabokov hadn’t looked particularly impressed. If anything, he looked more dubious when Zivon finished than when he took his seat.
“You are clearly overreacting,” he had said only ten minutes ago. “The soviets, they will be dealt with soon enough, I am certain. I am sorry, of course, for their violence against your betrothed, but to flee here, to work for the British?” A doleful shake of the head. “I fear you will regret that hasty decision when order is restored in Russia and you are no longer welcome home. You know well everyone will view you as a turncoat.”
Zivon had bristled at the word hasty. He had stayed in Russia as long as he could. So long that Alyona had paid the price. He had weighed every possible decision and each path before he decided on this one, and he’d made the decision not for himself but for his people. His country. His czar.
Who was Nabokov, who hadn’t even stepped foot on Russian soil in a decade, to judge him? To tell him whether he had overreacted? He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen the fighting, the mobs, the chaos. Hadn’t had to wonder whether the Bolsheviks would be better or worse than the Trudoviks who had first seized power from the czar.
Worse. So much worse.
But Zivon oughtn’t to have let his frustration with the ambassador cloud his perception. He should have noted both of the men following him immediately, not just the obvious one.
His hand tightened around the handle of his briefcase. He didn’t like carrying all this with him to the OB, but he hadn’t the time to go home first. But what if his new shadows meant to mug him? The thought of being without all his identification, without the few remaining scraps of his former life, didn’t bear thinking about.
Perhaps he should have spent less time running as a lad and more time learning how to fight, like Evgeni. Though in this particular situation, the one could serve him as well as the other, he supposed.
Something bubbled up in his veins, spilled over.
No. He wasn’t going to run. Not from anyone. He’d had enough of that. And so, rather than continuing toward the OB, he seized the cover that a passing band of secretaries offered and ducked into an alley. It had been a tight knot of women, and their distance between him and his pursuers was such that they would have completely blocked their view of him for three and a half seconds. All he needed to vanish.
Though there’d be no question where he vanished to, so he sprinted to the end of the alley, zigged this way and zagged that until, five minutes later, he smirked upon emerging back onto the main street and spotting the less skilled of the followers striding down a cross street, shaking his head. And the more skilled standing with hands on his hips, staring at the OB.
It wouldn’t look odd to anyone, given the Naval Reserves uniform he wore. Zivon switched his briefcase to his left hand—just in case the fellow got wily and he did need to put to use his years of scrapping with Evgeni—and moved up behind him. Not slowly, not stealthily. At the pace of every other pedestrian out here, so that his footfalls wouldn’t sound abnormal.
When he’d drawn even with him, he said, “I do not believe we have been properly introduced. Though I saw you at the wedding yesterday.”
The fellow jumped, spun. And grinned. “Well, this is a first.” At Zivon’s lifted brow, he added, “No one’s ever outfoxed me when I’m tailing them. If you ever tire of the codebreaking nonsense, tell Hall to refer you to V. We could use you.”
Zivon had no idea who V was and what use they could have for him. But he had to admit that the fellow’s demeanor eased a bit of his uncertainty. “Hall told you to follow me, I presume?”