passed him without a glance.
The room behind the counter was the usual cubbyhole—storeroom and kitchen, a little hearth, a table, some rough benches. The walls were lined with shelves holding cups, plates, glasses turned upside down, wine bottles lying sideways, and piles of napkins, ironed and stacked neat. A broom kept company with a bucket. The copper water cistern was behind the door.
Pax walked in and stopped, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t turn around. Maybe he was counting towels. Maybe he was waiting to get executed, abrupt-like. Pax could be a damned dramatic son of a bitch. Should have been on stage.
“You’re a sensitive soul,” Pax said.
He came up to stand beside Pax and stare at the inventory of the Café de la Régence. “I’m not sure what comes next. I think I ask questions and you lie. At some point, one of us hurts the other. Matters deteriorate from there.”
“Let’s skip that part.”
“That’s my preference. But damned if I know what I’m supposed to do.”
“You’ve caught French agents before.”
It was a stab of shock, hearing Pax call himself a Frenchman. Ten minutes ago, they’d been on the same side. Two minutes ago, they hadn’t said the words. Now they had. “You admit it?”
“That’s a cat that won’t stuff back in the bag.” Pax pulled his mind back from wherever he’d sent it and faced him, making the turn slowly, with his hands out from his sides to show a lack of weapons. Not that it mattered. Pax didn’t need weapons. “I was careless, eight years ago, letting you see the hand signal. I thought I’d kept it hidden.”
“That’d be one of your Caché secrets.”
“We had a few. I needed to use that one. Those kids were about to tear us to pieces.” Pax looked past him, keeping half an eye on the main room of the café, making sure they weren’t overheard. “They would have, you know, in another minute.”
“Bloodthirsty lot.”
“We weren’t nice children. That attic they were in . . . It was cold as a Norse hell in February. They gave us one blanket, summer and winter. We were soldiers of France, they said. Soldiers sleep on the ground in any weather.”
“I bet soldiers don’t like it, either.”
“We had to say we liked it. Had to say we wanted to give the day’s food to the army. They’d do that to us unexpectedly when we were hungriest. We never knew when.”
“That was a mistake on their part.”
“It made us good liars, if nothing else.”
“I’m trying to work this out. The timing. You would have been—”
“I was one of the first. When they brought me, the strongest kids were bullying the others, taking their food and their blanket. We made rules.” His lips twisted. It was almost amusement. “I made rules. It turned out, I was the strongest kid.”
“I know all about your rules. ‘Don’t wear green. Strike low and strike often. Never budge from a good lie.’”
“With them it was more like, ‘Elect a leader. Never betray another Caché. Protect each other. Take care of the little kids.’ ”
In the café, the noise was dying down. The woman who poured drinks and took money at the counter headed their way, got to the storeroom door, ready to stick her head in and say something. She met his eye and had second thoughts. Walked off without whatever she was looking for. Good decision on her part.
Pax went on talking, not making sudden moves, holding his hands still and open. “We named ourselves the Cachés. They started using it later, but it was us, first. They didn’t know what we were hiding from, was them.” He thought a while. “The ones who came after me kept the rules. In all the Cachés you uncovered, not one of them led you to another.”
“Not one.”
“When we walked into that attic that night, the kids had a leader, speaking for all of them. They kept the small ones in the back. They knew the hand signal. That was mine. I made that up.”
“It gave you away. They have some word . . . that Greek God of bad luck.”
“Nemesis.”
“That sounds like it. Who were you, before you went to the Coach House and took up being a Caché?”
Pax shook his head.
“Fair enough. It doesn’t matter.”
“Not anymore.”
“You’re not English. You’ve been a spy from the first day you limped into Meeks Street.”
“Yes.” He jerked his head to the side, abruptly. “No. I was—” He went silent.
Forty feet away, the door of the café banged closed behind some irritated customer. Glass rattled in the front windows. The noise scraped the lines of his nerves. Hell. This was hard. “You’re not the son of a British Service agent.”
“I’m not James Paxton’s son. I took that dead boy’s place. I took his name. Let me sit down.” He didn’t wait for a nod. He collapsed on the bench, putting his hands out in front of him, holding one inside the other. “I didn’t expect to get away with it for this long.”
“I have to tell Carruthers.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“She’ll send men after you.”
Pax raised stillness to a fine art. Paint on the wall fidgeted, compared to him. “She’ll need to know how much I gave the French.”
“She’ll send them in twos and threes. You won’t be easy to take. Not alive. And you have to be alive to interrogate.”
It felt eerily familiar, laying the facts out. Predicting, discussing, getting the choices lined up.
“It’ll be an interesting little talk.” A muscle in Pax’s cheek tightened. A sign of cracks in the ice. “I count on Carruthers to finish up neatly. Don’t let her turn the work over to you. You deserve better than that.”
“I’m not her butcher.”
Pax waved for silence. “Both of you can leave it to the French. Justine DuMotier’s going to report this. The French execute turncoats.”
“You were about twelve, last time you were French.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have a day, after the French find out. Maybe less.”
In the main room, the lamps were getting blown, one by one, leaving the café darker every time. Murmurs, cautious and annoyed, said the owner and his wife were talking quietly between themselves and locking the windows up and down the front.
“They brought me to Russia, fast, by ship.” Pax took up a conversation they weren’t actually having. “When I was there, they did the rest. I didn’t see the fire.” He lost momentum, wiped his mouth, and started up again. “They made me go through the ashes and bury what was left. So I’d be convincing.” He ran his hand down his arm. “They burned me. For proof.”
He’d seen the scar Pax had snaking up his arm. Ugly and deep. “Authentic.”
“They were great ones for detail.” Pax sounded exhausted. Hoarse. “They told me to get myself to Meeks Street. ‘That way,’ they said, and pointed west.” He closed his hand on his arm, as if it still hurt. “It took me four months to walk across Europe. It’d started snowing by the time I got to England. Maybe the Coach House did make us tough.”
“Nobody trains agents like the French.”
“Nobody.” Pax took a couple of deep breaths. “Let me finish this. I was four months at Meeks Street when my
