CHAPTER ONE – 1961
Despite the bombastic images the term “secret agent” conjures, in Evelyn Liddell Percy’s professional opinion, ninety-nine percent of being an intelligence agent was actually quite boring—there just happened to be the notable caveat that the last one percent was likely to kill you. She had known many friends and colleagues dead before their time; some whose names were honored as heroes and others who were forgotten or even despised. Yet, somehow, she wasn’t among them. There she remained, retired, on a cold London evening in December of 1961, reading a bedtime story to her grandchildren.
“Once upon a time …” Evelyn said to the two boys. She began every story she read to them that way, even if the story didn’t actually start with the line. She was starting a new story that evening, one she was quite fond of.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” she read. “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
“Nan …” groaned Patrick. “Is this another fairy tale?”
Evelyn set the book down and shot a grandmotherly glare at the two children over the large and circular pair of spectacles she favored.
“Of a sort, yes,” she answered.
Patrick slumped back in his pillows.
“I’m tired of fairy tales,” he said.
The boy had just turned ten-years-old and believed himself far too grown-up for something as childish as fairy tales.
“Let her read!” Donald said from his bed on the other side of the room. At six, he still enjoyed whatever she picked out to read to them at bedtime.
Patrick rolled his eyes.
“Well, does it at least have a dragon in it?”
“As it happens, it does,” she wryly smiled. “And we’ll be able to get to it if you’ll stop interrupting.”
Both of the boys settled down after that and she kept on reading. Telling the boys stories as they fell asleep was a rare moment of contentment for Evelyn. She enjoyed helping them picture the far-off and fantastical places and acting out the voices for each of the characters. The Adventures of King Arthur, The Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz … She read them every tale of fantasy and whimsy she could get her hands on. Every one except for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She hadn’t picked up any Lewis Carroll in years, despite them having been her favorite stories since she was a little girl. Those books … reading them only resulted in an empty feeling in her chest now. The names brought back too many memories.
Reading bedtime stories was one of the few activities appropriate for a grandmother that Evelyn enjoyed doing. Most women her age settled down to knitting or gardening. She certainly held nothing against such activities, she just preferred far off places and adventuring for long lost relics—even if it was only in a book. She felt like such a relic these days; a woman living in a world that seemed determined to pass her by. In her experience, those in dangerous professions weren’t meant for retirement. And secrets were a most dangerous profession.
She turned off the light and headed toward the sitting room once she had finished for the night. She went down the steps on her cane smoothly and cleanly. She had been using it for so long, she barely noticed the old piece of varnished oak anymore, despite her right leg roaring in pain if she ever tried walking without it.
She passed through the hallway and its multitude of photographs hung on the walls. She stopped and glanced at her favorite: a thin-framed photo from last Christmas of herself, her son George, his wife Lucy, and their two boys. The photo had been taken a year earlier, just prior to the last Christmas in their old home. Two months later, George had bought this three-floor townhouse in London, one with more room to accommodate her after she had moved in with them four years prior. “The place would be perfect for a family,” he’d told her. He had been right, of course. Their new home was ideal, if a bit bland and predictable. George was nothing if not predictable. He liked things that way; reliable, safe, and uncomplicated.
We all have our tools for making it day-to-day, she thought. I can’t blame Georgie for putting up a stone wall between his family and the uglier parts.
She settled down in front of the fire and winced remembering Patrick’s complaints.
Children always seem in such a rush to grow up. Meanwhile, most adults wish they could be children again.
Patrick and Donald had drifted off to sleep before she completed the first chapter. She knew Patrick only objected because he thought he was supposed to. She saw it in his eyes. It wasn’t proper for grown-ups to like fairy tales. It was childish having your grandmother read to you before bed. Evelyn had spent her life not caring what was proper and what she was supposed to do. At least that was how it used to be.
She took out her box of yarn to continue a scarf she had been knitting. She had taken the hobby up in the last year. Over the course of an hour, she nearly tossed the whole mess of tangled fabric away a dozen times. She kept at it regardless.
This is what grandmothers are supposed to do, isn’t it? she mused while she fumbled to fix yet another mistake. Grandmothers don’t have adventures. They don’t have secrets. They read bedtime stories, knit scarves, and compliment their daughter-in-law’s cooking.
She supposed that her mother would have been pleased that she was trying, at least. It was a fine, feminine pursuit appropriate for a woman of her age. Reaching into the basket of supplies, she glanced down at a long, skinny scar on her wrist that poked out from under the sleeve of her lavender blouse. Just by looking at it, she still remembered the bite of the dull blade that made it. It brought back a rush of memories: the face of the snarling Greek man who gave it to her, the smell of the polluted Bosphorus Strait running next to them, the rush of relief as she watched his body fall into the dark water instead of her own …
She had heard people speaking of putting the past behind you as though it were an easy thing, yet she saw the past in nearly everything around her. She had tried simply forgetting it all or occupying her time with more mundane pursuits. She told herself that she was no longer wanted in that old life anyway. Yet, that chapter of her life had never felt finished to her. It had always felt as if there needed to be more to the story. It seemed in need of a conclusion, even if the ending wasn’t going to be happy. She had always half-expected and half-hoped that the telephone would ring one day to draw her back in.
She should have known that if it ever did, it would be about Charles.
She ignored George’s ringing telephone at first. Instinctively, her curiosity needled her—after all, why would someone be calling so late in the evening?—but she assumed it would have been for George. He occasionally got calls from the bank in which he worked.
Perhaps there’s been a robbery, she grinned slyly. Wouldn’t that be terribly exciting?
To her surprise, George entered the room a few moments later, eyebrows furled and rubbing the back of his neck.
“Mum?” he said from the doorway. “There’s a telephone call for you.”
She froze in her seat. No one should be calling her. Not at that time of night. Not anymore.
“Who is it?” she said, not allowing her worry to show on her face.
George shook his head.
“He didn’t say. He just said it was an emergency.”
She forced herself to calmly stand up and limp across the house to the office where the telephone was. She asked George if he would give her a few moments of privacy and then crossed to the desk. She stared at the receiver a moment before picking it up.
“Hello?”
A timid, quiet voice belonging to an older man came through the line.
“Cheshire?”
Evelyn froze. She felt as though she had just touched a faulty wire and received a shock.
“Dormouse?” she whispered into the phone.
“This is Dormouse. Tiger. Green. Secure?”
Her shock continued for several moments until old habits kicked in and she answered.
“This is Cheshire. Elephant. Green. Go secure.”
“Evie,” the quiet man said. “I’m- I’m sorry to call you like this.”
“Reggie, what are you doing?” she asked him. “You know how things stand. I’m not supposed to talk to any of you and none of you are supposed to be talking to me.”
“There’s few enough of the old bunch here who care anyway,” Reggie said with what Evelyn could tell was a frown. “King specifically told me not to call you, but … but you have a right to know; more than anyone.”
He trailed off. Whatever he had to say, he clearly didn’t want to say it.
“What is it?” She choked the words out, afraid of the answer.
“It’s- it’s Hatter. He’s gone, Evie.”
Her lungs emptied. She was never the sort of woman to go weak in the knees, but they certainly came close to buckling at that moment.
Charles …
“Was it … on the job?” she finally said, each syllable a struggle.
“We’re not sure. It was at a flat in the West End. He’d been staying there, but it wasn’t permanent. He was probably using it to meet contacts.”
“What’s the address?”
“It’s still a damned mess down there. You should stay away. Half the flat burned up. The fire department is probably still putting it out. We only found out this quickly because of King’s sources in the police.”
“Dormouse, what is the address?” she said in a tone the other man would recognize as her not accepting “no” for an answer.
He gave it to her, and they hung up. She went to the front hall where her son met her.
“Who was on the telephone?”
“An old friend,” she said, blindly grabbing the first coat of hers that she could find. “There’s something I need to check on. I’ll take a taxi.”
She pulled on a hat—the same simple black slouch hat she wore nine days out of ten—and stepped out the front door and hailed down a car.
“Is everything alright?” her son called out after her.
She stopped, took a breath, and turned around to face him.
“It should be, darling,” she said, pasting a smile to her lips. “I just need to look in on someone.”
George looked her up and down, skepticism in his eyes, but nodded regardless. He wished her goodnight and closed the door. She climbed into a cab and promised herself to have a proper conversation with him later once she knew what was going on. George had always taken the lies and half-truths she’d had to tell in stride. He seemed to prefer it, even if he would never admit it. Besides, Evelyn wasn’t ready to tell him that his father was dead.
***
Evelyn had long ago determined that it took a certain type of person to do the sort of work she did. It wasn’t the sort of life one could just walk away from, and the people attracted to it weren’t usually the sort to want to. The old habits developed over decades of that work died hard—listening, watching, analyzing, and then coalescing it all into a course of action in a matter of moments. Even riding over in the taxi, Evelyn kept an eye on the driver; checking where his eyeline was, looking where his hands were, and confirming what route he was taking. She didn’t even realize she was doing it. It was all part of the tradecraft that she had helped create; habits so basic that these days it was trained into anyone hoping to join the department, known as MI-6 to outsiders and the young, and SIS—the Special Intelligence Service—to the old hats like her.
She had been there at the beginning. So had Charles, so had Reggie, so had Miles. They were among the youngest of that first batch. Most of the others who had been there since the days before Broadway were long gone. She remembered the fresh-faced, enthusiastic girl she had been then. The one who had marched into that old dingy office with dreams of helping fight the Huns and do her part for King and Country—and damn anyone who tried to tell her differently. She wondered what that young woman would think if she saw herself now. She wondered what she would think of her own life—and that of her estranged husband.
Charles … she thought while she glanced out the window. Could he really be gone?
Old love and old wounds clashed whenever she thought of him. They were better apart, that much she was confident in, but even at his worst, even after all of the ways he had broken her heart, she could never bring herself to hate him. Love was like that. She never felt he had stopped loving her either—at least in his own broken way.
In the months before her retirement, she had been transferred to a satellite office outside of London. Pushed away from the center of things at Broadway. The message had been clear: they were putting her out to pasture. It had been Miles’ decision; she was sure of it. It came only months after his promotion to the Head of Production. Yet, when she retired, she had been invited back to Broadway to be recognized for her years of service. It was a small gesture, but it was one Miles would have fought against. She had always suspected the going away party had been Charles’ doing. He wasn’t in attendance, but there were few others with his stature who would have cared. Reggie might have, but he had been away speaking with his counterparts in the United States at the time. And regardless of their feelings for one another, Charles never stopped respecting her as an agent. The only times they truly spoke in the years after their separation were when he would deliver her intel, eager to get her opinion on it.
Human beings can be so inscrutable … Charles doubly so.
She smelled the smoke before the cab had even pulled onto the street. The police had blocked off the road and the cab dropped her off as far up as the driver could manage. She paid him and walked past the sizable crowd that had gathered around despite the fire having been brought under control. Even at that time of night, there was no shortage of people who would come out to gawk and stare in the middle of London. They mulled around, inching closer and closer until a police officer would come and order them to back up. Evelyn stared up at the building. The damage appeared to be contained to a single flat and hadn’t jumped to the adjacent buildings. Still, the smoke, the crowd of tired onlookers, the fire brigade marching to and fro … it reminded her all too closely of the Blitz. She half-expected to hear the air raid sirens going off in the distance. No one who lived in the city during the war would ever forget that sound—Evelyn least of all.
She looked around the scene, searching for who didn’t belong. The police and firefighters, of course, were all going about their business. The onlookers were mostly dressed in robes and pajamas. Those who had managed to throw on some proper clothes still had the mussed hair and baggy eyes of those woken from sleep. One younger man stood off to the side, though. He wore a suit and kept his head on a swivel, scanning the scene around him. He could have been a high-ranking member of the police or someone from the electric or gas company, she supposed. But any such member of the Metropolitan Police would be older and likely wearing a badge and any employee of the electric or gas companies would be trying to get done whatever work they had been summoned to do so they could go back home to bed. This man stood up straight and alert with the posture of a soldier—nor did he appear nervous or anxious, meaning he had no concern about being discovered there. Most importantly, he wasn’t watching the building which had burned, he was watching the people gathered around it. The young man didn’t belong at the scene of a late-night fire. That made him the person she wanted to speak to.
Someone left him in charge out here and he is ever so proud of that fact, she thought with an amused snort. The little dear.
She walked toward him from the front so as not to make him nervous; although it was difficult to sneak up on anyone when leaning on a cane. He eyed her up and down.
“Good evening,” she said, shoulders back and voice clear.
“Good evening,” he responded, his probing gaze a contrast to Evelyn’s calm demeanor.
“Please tell Dormouse that ‘Cheshire’ is here,” she said. “He’s expecting me.”
The lad was young; too young to recognize the name Cheshire, let alone the woman behind the name, she saw. However, something in her tone must have convinced him she was in the know. Evelyn had been worried she would have to go through the song and dance of him pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about. Instead, he just tried to rebuff her, flexing his presumed authority.
“This is a dangerous scene ma’am,” he said. “The building is closed off.”
“And does SIS usually close off the sites of fires in the middle of London?” she said with a jaunty tilt of her head.
The young man stared at her, a blank expression on his face as he probably tried to think of what his superiors would have told him to do.
“Just tell Dormouse I’m here,” she repeated.
The young man left without another word, walking right past the police officers keeping others away from the building. Evelyn waited in the street for a few minutes. She watched the crowd, the police, and the firefighters all continue mulling about and rapidly chatting about the tragedy before them. She stood still amidst the madness. There was a strange sort of peace for her during such times, like watching a raging storm from safe behind a window.
She’d always had an affinity for such chaos. Where others saw confusion, she found clarity. During a crisis, even in dire times, the path became direct and narrow. There was no room for debate or second-guessing yourself. You acted. You tried to survive. You tried to save others. It was simple. It was peace that confounded her with its subtleties, nuances, and politics. Back during the war, she had watched a platoon of soldiers meet and agree on what strategy to take when assaulting an enemy position in under five minutes. Years later, she watched a local village council of five people debate what new wallpaper to purchase for nearly four hours.
The young man returned minutes later and escorted her into the building, getting waved through by firefighters who were packing up their equipment. Most of the building was untouched, its thick walls a Godsend for the other tenants. Water from the fire brigade’s hoses still dripped from the third-floor ceiling and her nose itched from the scent of acrid smoke permeating everything.
They entered a small, cheap looking flat. The foyer, kitchen, and bath showed little damage beyond black stains from the smoke, although the whole place had been soaked by the firehoses. The soot mixed with the water around them to coat the floor and walls with a thick, grimy paste that stuck to her shoes as she marched through it. The bedroom and the hallway outside bore the brunt of the damage. Everything in it was blackened, charred, and ruined. There, speaking to some of the fire brigade, was Reggie. His hair was thinning and grey, and he was a little stout around the waist, but with his short stature and easy grin he still exuded the same atmosphere of a beloved younger brother he’d had when she had first met him so many years earlier. She limped over the debris that littered the hallway on her cane and he looked up, greeting her with a sad smile.
“‘Evening, Evie,” he said.
“Good evening, Reggie,” she said with a sad smile of her own.
Regardless of the circumstances, she couldn’t help but think how it was good to see him again. He turned to the man who had escorted her up.
“Thank you, Timms.”
The other man turned and left wordlessly. Reggie turned back to her, biting his lip the way Evelyn had seen him do hundreds of times when he was uncomfortable.
“I’m- I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “I really am. I know things between you and Charles were complicated, but—”
“No, you were right to call me,” she said. “Thank you.”
One of the firefighters approached Reggie while they spoke and whispered a question to him. While Reggie answered, Evelyn peered inside the incinerated bedroom beyond.
“Is it safe to go in?” she said after the firefighter moved away.
“Evie,” Reggie said, rubbing one of his arms. “You may not want to see this.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Not when it’s your husband.”
She took a deep breath.
“I have to see.”
Reggie sighed deeply and relented. He walked her past the firefighters into the charred room, one of them—presumably the man in charge—gave Reggie a nod as they passed. She took in the scene. The paint inside the bedroom that hadn’t been burned away peeled from the walls. The curtains at the window were gone. Two lumps that had once been a wardrobe and a set of drawers had been reduced to crumbling mounds of ash. She noticed something on the floor. It took her a moment to place it: a scotch bottle, broken down the middle and turned black by the flames. She could barely make out the logo embossed on the glass.
Glenfiddich, she saw through squinted eyes. Costly Glenfiddich. Eighteen-years-old. Charles’ favorite.
She stood up and examined the bed. A sheet covered it now, but beneath it the fabric and stuffing still smoked. Reggie approached and slowly lifted away the sheet. Beneath was a corpse as charred and burned as the rest of the room.
It doesn’t look like Charles, Evelyn couldn’t help but think. Of course, it doesn’t even look human.
She remembered walking through one of the camps at the end of the war. Bergen-Belsen. The name still made her skin crawl. The survivors were being transported away by the time she had arrived, but the bodies were still there. Many were burned like the one before her. They didn’t look human either until she looked closer and saw the details: the one whose glasses had melted to her face, the pair still gripping one another in their arms, the small ones who had clearly been children … What she saw there still woke her up some nights. Sometimes, she wished she hadn’t looked. She’d needed to, though; and she forced herself to look at the body in the bed. “Burned beyond recognition” was the proper term used, she knew. She still looked for signs of her husband in the black, skeletal form.
“Miles removed his wedding ring already,” Reggie said while she looked. “It’s damaged, but we thought you should have it.”
“Was anything else about the body altered?” she said. “Did the fire brigade move the body or take anything else?”
Reggie looked over at the firefighter who had let them in the room and was half-listening to the conversation. The man shook his head before turning and leaving them alone in the room.
“No,” said Reggie. “Other than the ring, it should be untouched.”
She looked around the room again. Something had bothered her the first time she had scanned the bedroom. It took her a moment to put her finger on it: it was the carpet. It was some cheap, modern material that didn’t burn easily. There were a few charred marks and burns where bits of the ceiling had fallen on it, but it was otherwise untouched by the fire save in two places: just underneath the curtains and around the bed. She knew that for that cheap, ugly carpet to burn, the flame would have had to scorch it over an extended period of time. Someone had intentionally lit the bed and curtains on fire. Her breath caught and her heart froze.
It’s a match-job …
“Hey!” barked a voice behind her.
She recognized the voice before turning around to confirm who it belonged to. Miles Thirlby—"The Red King” or just “King” to those in the business—stood in the doorway glaring at her. He still had the same piercing blue eyes and magnificent head of hair he’d had when they first met, even though the hair had long gone to grey from the anxiety that resulted from helping manage two wars and decades of intelligence work. She had never thought him particularly handsome, but he had a distinguished look about him. Everything about him exuded an aura of propriety: from his tailored suit to his family’s stately manor home in the country. His flared nostrils and constant sneer clashed with that otherwise refined appearance as he marched into the burned room.
“What is she doing here?” Miles snapped at Reggie.
“She had a right to know,” Reggie said, a bit sheepishly.
He never did like standing up to him, Evelyn thought.
“She is no longer part of this organization!” said Miles. “This is a complete breach of protocol!”
“You can speak directly to me, you know,” said Evelyn. “I’m not a department store mannequin.”
Miles turned toward her slowly, as though reluctant to acknowledge her existence.
“No, department store mannequins can’t be tried for espionage,” he said.
“Espionage?” she replied in a tone that made it sound as though she were humoring something ridiculous.
“Anyone not properly vetted by the organization—and particularly someone with a history in intelligence work—is a potential enemy asset,” he said, enunciating each syllable of the last three words.
“For God’s sake, Miles, we’re talking about her husband,” said Reggie.
Evelyn knew empathy wasn’t likely to win Miles over. She tried a different tactic.
“I’m curious why our organization is involved at all,” she said. “Even if there is an intelligence concern regarding the incident, as a domestic matter, wouldn’t this fall under MI-5’s purview?”
Miles jutted his chin out, as though daring her to question his authority.
“If it is one of our agents who died, we need to ensure that it had nothing to do with any ongoing operations and that no classified information was intentionally or unintentionally released.”
Fortunately, Reggie seemed to pick up on the direction Evelyn had been hoping to lead the conversation.
“If that’s the case,” he said a little more boldly than before, “then I believe it would fall under my department.”
Miles frowned.
“Any investigation into possible leaks would be handled by Counterintelligence,” Reggie continued. “As the Head of the Production Department, you would have as little to do with it as the Head of Codes and Cyphers or the Head of R&D.”
Miles turned a little red, perhaps from embarrassment, certainly from anger.
“I want her brought in,” he told Reggie, admitting defeat for the moment. “If you’re so intent on making this your job, I want all of her recent activities looked into.”
Miles spun on his heel and left the room. Reggie shrugged apologetically. She understood. He had to do what Miles had said. In addition to Miles technically being right and Evelyn not having any authorization to be there, as the Head of Production, Miles had long been the front-runner to take over as the next Chief of SIS. He might not be Reggie’s boss at the moment, but he could very well be in the near future. That put Reggie on a very short leash, and if he was going to defend his interference with proper procedure, he had no choice but to follow those procedures to the letter.
“Let’s get going,” said Reggie. “I’ll drive you over to Broadway. Hopefully, this will only take a couple of hours.”
The two moved toward the door.
“It’s fine. As it happens, there are a few matters I think we need to discuss.”
“Such as?” said Reggie.
She glanced back at the grisly scene on the bed and the burn marks on the carpeting.
“Such as the fact that isn’t my husband in that bed,” she said. “Charles is still alive.”