The stairs ended in an alley between two hotels that bordered the Greenwich station. The night felt cool against Livy’s legs as she turned left on the High Road.
A couple of the men looked back at her, their expressions suggesting they wondered where a single woman could possibly be going this time of night. Livy wondered that herself.
The card had only the name, an address, and the added direction: Behind St. Alfege’s. Livy had once interrogated an informer on a bench in Greenwich’s massive park, so she was familiar with the location of the church.
After a few blocks she saw the grand tower and high walls of the parish chapel. A construction rope still blocked the front steps of the building. The charred roof served as another reminder of the beating the city had taken during the Blitz. The structure appeared sturdy enough, but the interior looked burned out, gutted.
The address on the card said Turnpin Lane, which was a narrow street tucked in behind the church. Number 110 stood off the road slightly. The house looked a typical English-style cottage. Asymmetrical with narrow windows—curtains drawn, of course—and a gabled entranceway. It was small but beautifully maintained, fronted by a well-kept garden with the right amount of green, a concrete bench, and a statue of Cupid with honest-to-God water draining from the cherub’s stone mouth into an ornate basin on a pedestal.
So posh.
Livy stepped up to the door. She reached for the knocker. It was one of those brass jobs with a low ring and some bloke’s face in the center. It reminded her of the ghost of Jacob Marley. She hesitated.
The door opened.
A tall, very thin, blonde woman stood on the other side. She wore an off the shoulder summer frock that seemed a bit youthful for someone who looked to be on the downside of forty. A gold watch hung loose on her right wrist, just above a bracelet with some sort of inscription. The whole thing smelled like the vault of the Bank of England.
The woman saw Livy and plastered the most insincere smile across her pinched face.
“May I help you?” Her accent sounded vaguely Austrian with a thick coating of the BBC. She also didn’t sound in the mood to help anyone.
“Mr. Fleming sent me.”
“Of course, of course. Well, don’t just stand there.”
Livy stepped into the foyer, which, although dimly lit, looked like the outside. Old money and lots of it.
The blonde woman closed the door behind her. Somehow she’d managed to produce a Walther P38 from inside her cute little summer dress. Livy’d seen enough of those in the war, usually on the belts of Wehrmacht soldiers.
The woman smiled at the gun, as if surprised it had somehow ended up in her hand. “You must excuse me. I live alone and tend to be a very cautious woman. You have identification of some sort?”
Livy opened her unfashionably large handbag and fumbled for her Kemsley News card. The woman kept the gun on her the whole time. Finally Livy found it, handed it to her, and waited. The woman seemed satisfied and lowered the Walther.
“Please, come into the parlor, Miss Nash.”
Said the spider to the bloody fly. But Livy flew on regardless.
The parlor looked every bit as elegant and tasteful as the foyer. Livy didn’t know much about furniture, but the loveseat in the corner seemed older than her grandmother, as did the two armchairs facing it. The servants must have recently beaten the rug. Pictures of rolling hills and landscapes dotted the walls, so the overall effect led Livy to believe that anyone in England with money would feel right at home here.
“Please, sit down,” the woman said, making the pleasantry sound like a command. Placing the Walther on the sofa cushion, she made herself at home in the center of the loveseat.
“You brought something, yes?” the woman asked.
“Right,” Livy said, digging into her purse. She leaned forward with the package stamped “Morland’s.”
The woman took the box and unwrapped it hungrily. Once the brown paper had been torn off and tossed to the floor Livy recognized one of the special-blend cigarette boxes Fleming always had on his desk. The woman opened it and removed one of the cigarettes with three gold bands, sniffing it luxuriously. She then produced a gold Ronson lighter from the side table and flicked the flame to the tip. She drew the first smoke deep into her lungs and exhaled with a rapturous smile on her face.
Engulfed by a haze of smoke, the woman opened a decanter of something very dark and poured a shot’s worth into a cut-glass tumbler. Straight. No mixer. She swirled it in the glass and took two dainty sips.
“It’s piss,” she said, swallowing, “but what can you expect.” She took another long draw on the cigarette, and her eyes wandered over Livy from head to toe. Not in a sexual way. More like a boxer sizing up a sparring partner.
“How long have you known dear Ian?”
Livy felt the beginnings of a headache. The tension of the day had caught up with her, and she lacked patience for an interrogation.
“You’re Anka, then?”
The blonde woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Of course I am. Don’t be silly. Now, answer my question.”
“He hired me last year.”
Anka scoffed. “I met him during the war. So, five years for me. He is a very charming man, of course. And also a cad. I must say you don’t exactly look his type.”
Under normal circumstances Livy would’ve walked out. She hated this pretentious little nook of a house, and its mistress even more. She decided to give it two more minutes. Then, gun or no gun, she’d leave.
“I work for Mr. Fleming. That’s all.”
“He has never asked you for a drink or flirted with you?” Anka’s blue eyes fairly twinkled.
“As I said, it’s just about work, he and I.”
“Of course it is.”
It had been a while since Livy had taken an aversion to anyone this quickly.
“So, why did he send me here? You have something to tell me?”
Anka shrugged and lit another one of Fleming’s cigarettes.
Livy’s eyes shifted to the gun. She had the impulse to reach for it. Anka didn’t look particularly agile, but with the Walther beside her, she held the upper hand.
“I’m not here to be evaluated,” Livy said. “You have your cigarettes, and frankly, I’m a little tired of being given the once-over.”
The woman just stared and smoked.
Livy stood. If Anka cared, she didn’t show it. So, throwing a bit of caution to the wind, Livy turned and headed to the door. She wondered if the gun might now be aimed at her back.
“He wants you to be a double.”
Livy looked over her shoulder. No gun.
“A double?”
Anka laughed, deep and sneering. “A double?” she repeated, mocking Livy’s voice. “Where exactly is it you’re from?”
Livy ignored the insult. A double agent, she meant. Her mind raced back to Barnard. She remembered the fear and anxiety that he wore like his baggy overcoat the last time she saw him. A servant of two masters. Caught between them both.
A double.
Livy answered. “I’m from England. The side that won the war.”
No laugh this time. Anka crushed her cigarette in the ashtray and grabbed another.
“I worked for Ian. For England. During the war.” The flame sparked the tobacco, and Anka’s hand shook ever so slightly.