“Jerking sodas, cleaning up. Whatever I could. Drove a coal truck one winter.”
“Really? That was not in your file. Duly noted. You had the audacity to pick the Pulitzer cross-country air race as your first race. You came in third. You amazed the crowd when you pulled off your flying helmet and revealed that a woman had placed so well. Cheeky,” Hewitt said. “I don’t understand, though. Weren’t there races exclusively for women?”
“There were. I wanted to fly with the boys.”
“And a good showing you made, too. Your picture was in papers around the world, including here and in London.”
“Those go into your files?”
“That is the mark of a good intelligence agency, the backbone. A good and comprehensive set of files. Your country is just learning that. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do. What was all that silly nonsense about gentlemen not reading other gentlemen’s mail? Time your country grew up. We would have thought your involvement in the war, however brief, would have done that. Looks like it’s going to take another dust-up with the Germans to prove the point.”
“And files are important to that?”
“We take in everything. Our security service collects information for domestic matters, counter-intelligence and my section.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
They were fairly isolated in the restaurant, talking in English and keep their voices low. Not that it mattered what language they were speaking in. The opposition, as Hewitt Purnsley called them, could sprechen sie Englisch.
“I’m with His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Also known as MI6. We’re responsible for foreign intelligence gathering. I’m a case officer.”
“Which means?”
“I run agents.”
“Like me.”
He chuckled. “No, you’re not an agent. A courier, more like. One of ours being sent in. Mostly what I do is identify people on the other side of the fence who want to work for us. Sometimes for money, sometimes for other reasons. I help them out. Those are the spies, really.” He pushed his chair back. “Enough of this. I’m going to the facilities. We’ll start your next lesson when I get back.”
Aubrey finished her Bordeaux; it was the most incredible wine she’d ever had. The waiter came over to clear their plates. She spoke to him in French, but he seemed uninterested in engaging her. Aubrey checked her watch. Hewitt Purnsley had been gone five minutes. Then it became ten. She stared down the short hallway that led to the Ladies and Gents, trying to will him to come out.
She had used the facilities earlier, knew that the hallway led farther into the building, where she had seen stacks of wine cases. The waiter came over with the bill on a silver tray. She glanced at it: 180 Francs. She just might have enough on her. She opened her purse and felt her face flush. Her wallet was gone. She sat there another couple of minutes. The waiter came over again to see if the bill had been paid. It hadn’t, and he huffed and stuck his nose in the air.
Finally, she got up and said in French, “I’m going to the ladies. I will settle up when I get back.” She took her purse—all it had in it was lipstick and compact—and went down the hallway. She knocked gently on the men’s door.
“Hewitt, are you alright?”
No answer. She pushed it open. It was single occupancy and it was empty. She looked nervously down the hallway. There were sounds emanating from the other end, men stacking wooden cases and shouting at each other. That was not a viable exit, at least not for her. He must have gone out that way, but how would she manage it?
She went reluctantly back to her table. The waiter saw her and came over.
“Is there a problem, mademoiselle?”
“Yes. It seems my dinner companion has run off on me.”
The waiter remained motionless, unempathetic.
“And my wallet. I seem to have been robbed.”
Since they’d sat down, no one had come near their table except their waiter. When she had visited the ladies’ room, she had taken her purse with her and remembered seeing the wallet next to her makeup. That could only mean that Hewitt had some how boosted it. But why? Then it clicked: this was the next lesson he’d spoken about. He was forcing her into an uncomfortable position again. But why? To see if she could talk her way out of it? Hardly. No, he was seeing how far she would go, if she would do something she would never have dreamed of before: pull a runner and make a dash for the door. She wouldn’t make it out the front door, she knew. The waiter and his co-worker would grab her.
“I’m going to the ladies’; I will settle up when I get back. I don’t feel well. If I’m sick, that will determine the gratuity.” She didn’t run. The men in the back were still there, blocking her way.
“The gratuity is already included, mademoiselle,” she heard the man say as she went into the ladies’ room again. With the door locked, she started running the water. There was a window up high near the ceiling. She hopped up onto the radiator, grabbed hold of the bar holding the window open and pulled herself up. Her feet scrabbled at the tiled wall. The door handle jiggled.
“Mademoiselle. Are you okay?”
“Not feeling well. I think it was the sole. I knew it had gone off.”
The waiter spoke to someone else in French. She caught only part of it: ‘the window.’ He was sending someone around back to nab her. She had only seconds now. The window opened onto an alley. She pushed herself through head first and crashed down onto more wine crates. The noise she made sounded like gunfire on the Western Front, and she heard a shout from the street. The alley, thankfully, was not a dead end, and she ran off in the opposite direction, her purse flapping wildly against her back.
She dashed out onto a busy
