“Really?” She gave him a dubious look. “I don’t have anything like that. I wear pants mostly. Comfortable for flying.”
“There’s a bank draft in there for expenses. Use some of it to get fixed up.”
“In Sacred? Hardly.”
“New York, then. They have stores there, you know.”
“Don’t I know it.” She grinned. “Okay, fantastic. I’ll meet you where?”
“The details are in there. First thing you learn, Aubrey: when working for me, when we’re out in public, you keep your mouth shut.”
The seriousness of his tone shocked her. She nodded. “Uh-huh. Got it.”
“Fine. Now, take this horse home and say goodbye to him. Tell your dad another goodbye from me. Tell him I’ll take care of you. You won’t be able to write or make any phone calls for a while, but I’ll keep in touch.”
“Okay, Uncle Arthur.”
“And it’s Walton, John Walton, from here on out. It’s called a work name. You’ll understand after the twenty-ninth.”
“Right, Mr. Walton.” She watched him drive away from the hotel and then remounted Ferguson.
“Come along, Fergie. We’ll take it nice and slow on the way home. Good boy.”
Aubrey did indeed take her time getting home. She went by way of the Western Union office, where she paid seventy-nine cents to send a three-word reply to the Lux Corporation: Offer politely declined. She rode slowly the rest of the way home, though her mind and heart were racing ahead of her by a mile.
“You catch him?” her father asked when she came into his study. He was sipping a coffee and watching one of the Millerson boys plow the back forty. He had a brass telescope set up for that purpose.
“I did indeed.”
“When do you leave?”
“In two days. Mr. Wal—” She had been about to use his workname but caught herself in time. Her father gave her a sharp look.
“It’s a shifty business he’s in. My advice to you is to get in, make some money, polish your typing skills and then get out. The whole world is opening up for you, Aubrey, and you’ll make some good contacts. Just don’t get sucked too deeply into Arthur’s world.”
“What did Uncle Arthur do for you in the army? You never told me. I mean, I know he was in G2, whatever that was.”
“He was in Army Intelligence, assigned to the Air Service. He ran spies in France and Belgium that provided intelligence on the targets we hit. And since we’re sharing here, what did he have you do over there?”
Aubrey breathed in deeply. She was about to break her promise to Arthur Colins.
“I had to fly over Germany and land in a field. Pick someone up.”
“I see. Dangerous?”
She remembered the stuttering sound of the machine gun fire from the fighters. The evil glow of the green tracers, fingers of death reaching out for her. And she remembered vividly the man whose hand she’d held in that field in Belgium.
“No. Piece of cake. Arthur said it was going to be routine, and he was true to his word.” She had at least kept part of the promise.
“Germany? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“It was a one-off thing. Like you said, this time I’m probably going to be polishing my typing skills.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Aubrey daydreamed while she set out clothes to take on her trip to New York. She went to the nightstand to retrieve her diary and saw the Colt .45 sitting on top of it. The magazine with its copper-tipped bullets lay next to it. She picked the weapon up. Its weight gave it a certain confidence and character all its own. She knew she could put a round into a target a hundred feet away with a fair degree of accuracy, and with a rifle she was even better. She hefted the weapon in her hand, thought about it here in the house alone with her father. He might find it and reload it: ‘Not much good if it isn’t loaded,’ he always said. And then one night when he was in the dark place, back there on the airfield in France or flying behind enemy lines, and the ghosts of the dead he’d left behind came out to haunt him, what would he do with it? Would he merely put another bullet into the bedroom wall, or do something worse?
She shuddered. The weapon should be disposed of, given away, perhaps handed over to the Millersons for safekeeping. But that would not be much better; what if one of their grandkids picked it up and played with it? Okay, well, maybe she could bury it in a field. Again, she hesitated; for some reason the gleaming black weapon didn’t deserve a fate as ignominious as that. It had served her father well during the war. In the end, she carried it and the magazine down to the kitchen and put them in a large counter jar her mother had used for flour.
For a brief moment, she dreamt of riding in train carriages and love affairs with dark-haired, exotic agents. Were such things possible? Childish, schoolgirl fantasies, she finally concluded and chided herself. She had no idea what her uncle Arthur, now Mr. John Walton, had in store for her. But she was eager to find out.
5
John Walton was there on the platform in Penn Station when Aubrey arrived. He took her single suitcase and led her to a waiting taxi.
“No car, no driver this time?”
Walton smiled. “Too conspicuous here in New York. Too impractical. I find the subway a lot easier to get around.”
The taxi took them over to the Piedmont Hotel, where Aubrey had a room booked for her. She was checked in and left on her own for an hour. Walton had to attend to something, he said, but would be back to collect her.
He was punctual; there was rap on her door at the sixty-minute mark. She let her uncle in. He had someone with him, a smaller man, glasses, rather
