Michael turned back to the room and the three other men pulled back their grins.
‘You were trifle harsh on the signorina, Michael,’ Antonelli expostulated.
‘She can take it,’ Michael replied.
‘Sure and she can.’ O’Brien chuckled. ‘There must be some Irish blood in the lass. She gives as good as she gets, that one.’
‘You must be more forgiving with her, Michael. It takes time to adjust to this place,’ Antonelli said.
‘I make no demands on her above what any one of us would make for any other recruit,’ Michael retorted curtly, pulling another foil from the rack. ‘Antonelli?’
The old master shrugged and took his place on the strip opposite him.
‘As I understand it, the purpose of the Institute is to train our agents to be as effective as possible. I do not personally believe the best way of achieving that is browbeating a young woman into obedience.’
Michael flicked his foil through the air angrily. She had them all wrapped around her little finger. And in a mere couple of weeks. Why the hell was he the only one who realised this was a problem?
‘She is miles away from obedience, Antonelli. And without a more serious measure of it she will be of no use to us at all. En garde.’
Fencing with Antonelli always required all his attention and the session helped to clear Michael’s mind and focus it back on the most important matter facing the Institute at the moment. Their contacts at the ports had reported that both Frey and Junger had been sighted arriving in London, but discussions with the Foreign Office had yielded no more intelligence about the reason for the presence of the two Austrian mercenaries on English soil. There was some conjecture that they had been hired to protect the personal interests of an Austrian banker based in London, but Michael was unconvinced. He knew they had to intensify their efforts to find out what the two were doing in the city.
* * *
After the fencing match he went in search of Anderson and tracked him down outside Deakins’s office.
‘I want to update you on our two Austrians. Is Deakins in there?’
‘I... Uh, no... I just saw him upstairs with Morton. Why?’
‘Inside.’
Anderson followed him inside Deakins’s office and closed the door, his brows raised.
‘I met with Castlereagh and Wellington last night to discuss the business we just concluded up in Birmingham and we touched on Junger and Frey. They aren’t convinced the two are here for political purposes, but they agreed we should investigate them in case Metternich is using that Austrian bank business as a cover. I asked O’Brien to investigate and he tracked Frey to lodgings above the Black Dog in Southwark last night, but he couldn’t find Junger. I have put Morton on to tail Frey tonight while O’Brien goes down to the docks to dig for Junger. We need to know where he is and what he’s doing.’
Anderson nodded. ‘Fine. Let’s hope they’re right and this isn’t political. From what you told me about Paris, I’d rather their business isn’t ours.’
* * *
Sari stood silently by the closed door of Deakins’s laboratory. After her encounter with the earl she had retreated to her other safe haven at the Institute, well ahead of her lesson with Deakins. She had not meant to eavesdrop on their conversation, but once she had recognised their voices on the other side of the laboratory door, she hadn’t had the nerve to call attention to herself.
In fact, within minutes of her defiant retreat from the salle she had been swamped by a familiar rise of panic. The Institute was becoming more than a means to an end, a source of the salary that kept Charlie in school and might even allow George and Mina to start the family she knew they wanted. This was something she wanted for herself. She had never felt such a sense of...rightness in her life. She knew the earl had his doubts about her and her behaviour back in Antonelli’s salle had probably only added to his reservations. She had to prove herself, and quickly, or they might decide she was more trouble than she was worth.
Perhaps if she could help find this Junger, they might keep her, she thought. Whatever the case, she had best do something soon. She moved to inspect Deakins’s closets of disguises. She would need to be inconspicuous and she would need to protect herself. She pulled out the street-boy’s coat Deakins had shown her, with its cleverly concealed pockets hiding lock picks and a thin, deadly dagger. It was so much easier being a boy...
That evening Sari did not head back to Pimlico. She gave a coin to a link boy to take a note to George and Mina telling them that she must stay late at the Institute and they were not to worry. They would, of course, but she knew George trusted her enough to calm Mina’s worst fears. Then she headed out to Westminster Bridge, calculating that Morton would most likely cross there on his way to Southwark. Dressed as a street boy, with a wool cap pulled low over her face, she was as invisible as the moon on this overcast night. It was a tedious wait, but at around eight o’clock she saw the slight, unremarkable figure of the agent heading south over the other side of the bridge.
She followed at a distance as Morton headed into the alleyways off Lambeth Road. He finally stopped and settled onto a bench next to a couple of sailors playing backgammon outside the Black Dog. Sari crept by and slipped into the recessed basement entrance of a cobbler’s store and waited. It was cold and damp and she pulled her coat more tightly around her, comforted by the firm line of the dagger in her pocket.
Eventually a man in a grey cap and dark coat stepped out of an unlit doorway by the tavern, heading swiftly southwards. After a moment Morton followed and Sari eased her way out as well. In Tooley Street, Frey and Morton were swallowed in a large crowd of men weaving down the road in a cacophony of drunken song. Sari hesitated, afraid to be caught up in the knot of drunken men, pushing and shoving. By the time they had moved on, neither Frey nor Morton were anywhere to be seen. Cursing her luck, she turned and headed back towards the bridge. But just as she reached New Cut Road she saw a familiar grey cap moving northwards towards the river. She glanced around the rough crowd which filled the street, but could not see Morton. After a moment she took a deep breath and hurried after the Austrian.
The heavy, rotten smell signalled they were close to the river. The narrow, depressing lanes gave way to dark warehouses and beyond them she saw the first of the unlit piers jutting into the Thames, like black fingers on the dark water. Across the river, the lights of the city glinted murkily and she wished she were there. But she had come too far to stop now.
Eventually even the gas lamps spaced out and then finally disappeared. Occasionally a light spilled out from a warehouse, but then the night closed in again, a palpable presence. Here sight was replaced with the vividness of smells—tar and rotting fish and the cool musty scent of the wooden piers above the brackish odour of the Thames. Rats scraped past her, their slick, naked tails twitching.
She almost faltered, but the man suddenly turned down an empty pier stretching out onto water so dark it might as well have been hanging from a cliff. Through the gloom Sari could just make out the shape of another man seated on a crate at the end of the structure, almost shimmering in the faint damp mist rising off the sluggishly moving water. She sucked in her breath, swallowing a frustrated oath; they were too far away for her to hear anything.
She moved behind a stack of barrels smelling strongly of wood tar and inspected the pier ahead of her. It had recently been widened and raised to accommodate the larger ships coming up the Thames, but the older pier beneath had not been demolished—it lay a few feet beneath the newer structure, narrow, neglected and invisible from the pier above. She inched closer carefully and climbed down beneath the new pylons, onto the older structure. The wood felt firm under her hands and she crawled cautiously towards the men. Below her the dark water swirled and eddied around the wooden