The UnTied Kingdom (27 page)

She was soft and warm and fitted against him very nicely, her head tucked into the hollow of his unhurt shoulder, resting against the bandage she’d wrapped around his upper chest. In the gap between her trousers and t-shirt was an inch or so of exposed skin, wonderfully silky, which Harker was surprised to realise he could feel because he had his arms around her.

Apparently some men didn’t like women who clung to them. Harker had never minded, so long as the reason she was clinging was that they’d just had really hot sweaty sex and she needed to hold on to something to stop the room from spinning.

Unfortunately, he’d done no such thing with Eve, but for some reason he didn’t mind her cuddling up to him.

Besides, the day was still young.

She shifted and sighed in her sleep, all that softness pressing against him, and for a few minutes Harker allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy that she’d curled up there because they had spent the night having hot sweaty sex. All that fire and anger, those fast fingers and faster mouth, all that warmth and softness – damn, she could drive a man insane.

She could certainly drive a man to hold on to her to stop his world from spinning.

Eve made a soft noise in the back of her throat and shifted again, her arm stretching over his stomach, her fingers idly caressing him. This was entirely too much for Harker, who swiftly changed from fantasising about Eve to hoping she wouldn’t move her leg any more and see just how much she was affecting him.

Then she went still, as if she’d just realised what she was doing, where she was and who she was stroking – who did she think he was? – and she very, very slowly raised her head.

Harker waited.

Her blue-green eyes were sleepy, her hair tousled, and there was an imprint on her cheek of the bandage she’d been resting on. Her lips were parted and dry and she licked them, her eyes meeting his.

Her fingers curled in his hair. Her heart thudded against his ribs. And Harker forgot all about the stitches in his shoulder and the potentiality of Eve being a spy, and leaned forward to kiss the most desirable woman he’d ever seen.

But he never got there, because someone banged on the suite door and it swung open, and the idiot who’d designed the house had made it so that the person standing in the hallway could see through the bedroom doorway, to the bed.

Where Harker lay with Eve cradled in his arms, his lips inches from hers.

‘Sir, we can’t find Eve and–’

Banks trailed off, his fist still raised to knock, his eyes growing wider. In a split second he took in Harker’s bare chest and Eve’s arm stretched across it, and he started to grin nervously.

‘–but, uh, there she is. Um, never mind,’ he said quickly, and backed out, yanking the door shut, and Harker was left with a petrified motionless replica of the soft warm woman he’d been about to kiss.

‘–’ she said, and swallowed, and managed, ‘I should go,’ in a frozen whisper.

He started to tell her no, but she was already pulling away from him, and in a tiny split second her gaze darted down to his bare chest, then skittered away, and his stomach turned to lead.

The way she’d looked at him last night.

He released her instantly, appalled, and Eve scrambled away, off the bed, grabbing at her shirt and tripping over her boots.

Horror on her face, revulsion in her eyes.

She shoved her arms into her shirt and stumbled away from the bed.

‘How are you still alive?’ Because he looked like he ought to be dead, punctured and ripped open and smashed with glass and knives and shrapnel and shot.

‘I–’ Eve began, pausing in the doorway, then her nerve deserted her and she ran, out of the bedroom and the sitting room and Harker’s reach, leaving the suite silent and cold.

Harker sat motionless in the empty, suddenly huge bed, staring after her for a second, then he swung to his feet and strode into the bathroom.

His reflection glowered back at him, six foot-odd of glowering scars and bruises. No wonder she’d run.

He kicked off his clothes, washed and dressed and glared at the computer, the source of all this damn trouble, before slamming out of his room and stomping downstairs for breakfast.

So what if she really found him that hideous? Did he want a woman who looked at him like that? No, he didn’t. She knew who and what he was: a soldier, a serving soldier; did she think he was going to be pristine? What kind of numpty survived sixteen years in the infantry without gaining a few scars? Granted, he had a few more than most people, certainly than most officers, but then most officers treated shaving cuts as war wounds.

Harker was
proud
of those scars, dammit – or if not proud then at least not ashamed. They were part of him, his life, his career – he was a
survivor
, and –

The kitchen was very quiet. Tallulah looked up at him from the table, her face drip-white.

‘What?’ he said, his anger evaporating, and then the answer hit him like a sandbag. ‘Martindale.’

She nodded, swallowed, and said in a half-whisper, ‘Banks has gone with one of the maids to fetch the priest. It won’t be long now.’ Her breath hitched. ‘Sir, we tried–’

He stared at her for a second, then shoved past the cook and into the scullery, where Charlie stood and Daz sat and Martindale lay, all of them unmoving. But Daz and Charlie looked up when he came in.

‘She told me,’ Harker said. He looked down at Martindale, who was still and waxen, looking dead already.

‘We were up all night,’ Daz said, ‘I tried, sir, I tried–’

‘I know,’ Harker said, his voice hollow.

Daz took a ragged breath and let it out. He nodded. ‘I’ll stay with her,’ he said. ‘Until the priest comes, until …’

Harker exchanged a look with Charlie. She gave a slight nod, and said, ‘I’ll stay too.’

Harker left, passing the cook again on his way out and daring her to make any comment about needing her scullery back. To her credit, she didn’t say a word.

Eve was sitting with Tallulah at the table, her arm over the younger girl’s shoulders. Tallulah was praying.

So, Harker, good morning. Snubbed by the only girl you’ve been interested in since Saskia, and one of your men is dying. And it’s not even nine o’clock.

Again.

Chapter Twenty

Sir Dennis, to Harker’s mild surprise, offered the family plot for Martindale’s body. Frederick complained, and his father slapped him, which made Harker grudgingly respect the old man.

Martindale lingered, while the local priest and Daz sat with her. Harker ordered Charlie to get some sleep, Banks and Tallulah to fetch Sir Dennis’s car, and Eve to fix the computer keyboard.

She sat on the floor of his suite, not looking at him, using his tweezers to pick out bits of dirt from the keyboard’s innards, and by midday she’d fixed it. But she didn’t cheer, didn’t smile, just asked him for a few words in French and typed them in.

‘There,’ she said, as the French flag came up on the screen. ‘All yours.’

He dealt her a heavy look. ‘You’re the one who knows how to use it.’

‘Sure,’ Eve said. ‘But what do you want it to do?’

‘Well, use it to connect to that Internet thing you talked about.’

Eve gave a sigh, and he knew what she said next wasn’t going to be good news.

‘You need a modem to connect to the Internet. I told you that. And you need an ISP, and who knows what you people use for that around here–’

And Harker lost his patience.

‘You know, I just knew you were going to come up with something else we needed for this,’ he snapped. ‘If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Martindale is dying because of some part you said you needed and now it turns out you didn’t–’

‘Hey, I didn’t know this was going to work,’ Eve said.

‘And now you tell me you need this piece–’

‘I told you it would need a modem, but look, it might–’

‘If any more of my men die because of this stupid computer, you can bloody well go with them,’ Harker roared, and Eve drew back just a fraction of an inch, her face going tight.

‘It might have an internal modem,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll check.’ She turned back to the keyboard, paused and said, ‘A French dictionary would be useful.’

‘Ask me. I can–’

‘You don’t have to stay. Daz would be more helpful.’

His fists clenched. ‘Daz is busy.’

‘Or Tallulah.’

‘Basket-case,’ Harker said, because his youngest soldier wasn’t taking Martindale’s condition well.

Eve took a deep breath and let it out, still not looking at him.

‘Look, if you really can’t bear to be in the same room as me–’

‘I can, if you’d just stop yelling at me,’ Eve said. ‘This is not my fault. I’m doing the best I can. And if you have to go in after a modem, then I’ll come with you and you can put me at risk instead of one of your precious men. I know what the damn thing might look like, anyway.’

‘You–’ Harker began, but right then someone tapped on the open door and he turned to snarl at them. But it was Daz, his face drawn, and he said quietly, ‘I called it. Five minutes ago. The gardeners are helping Tallulah and Banks dig the grave.’

Harker wiped his hands over his face and nodded.
And then there were six.
Well, five, because Eve wasn’t precisely a member of the squad.

‘Will the priest stay and read a service for her?’

Daz nodded. ‘And Tallulah asked if you,’ he directed his attention to Eve, ‘would sing, a hymn or something.’

Eve looked surprised, but she nodded, and Daz left. Harker remained staring at the door for a while, then he glanced at Eve and said, ‘Do you know many hymns?’

‘Probably not any you’re familiar with. I sang
Abide With Me
when my dad died. Will that be acceptable?’

He hesitated. He’d never heard of it.

Eve sighed, scrubbed her hands over her face, and he saw the rawness in her eyes.

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘it’s fine. Come on.’

And then life went on again.

When they got back to the house, Harker allowed Eve to pick a fight with him over the computer, just to keep from thinking about how many times he’d spoken the same words over the graves of different men.

Eventually there came a point when there just wasn’t anything different to say.

He even allowed Eve to bully Daz into checking over his shoulder, just for another kind of distraction. From the bed, he could see Charlie arguing with Eve over the thing she called a mouse.

‘If you have that, then what did you need the keyboard for?’ Charlie said.

‘Inputting words,’ Eve said without looking up.

‘You’re not doing that now.’

Eve sighed. ‘Lieutenant, why do you carry a gun and a sword?’

Charlie looked taken aback. ‘I’m an officer,’ she said. ‘We’re allowed swords.’

‘Yes, but do you need it if you have a gun, too?’

‘Yes,’ Charlie said impatiently.

‘Well, I haven’t seen you use it.’

‘Would you like to?’ Charlie said with a hint of threat in her voice. Harker almost smiled.

‘Not especially. My point is you carry both because you need them for different things.’

Charlie made a noise of annoyance, but didn’t say any more.

‘This all looks fine,’ Daz said to Harker. ‘Good work, Eve.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, again not looking up.

‘Do you need a hand with the computer?’

‘No, it’s all right. I think you should get some rest.’

‘Excuse me, who is the doctor around here?’ Daz complained.

‘You are, and do you really think it’s a good idea to stay awake any longer?’ Charlie said.

Daz grumbled, but left the room, and they heard his door closing.

Harker pulled his shirt back on and went back out into the sitting room. Eve was frowning at something on the screen. He didn’t understand what any of it meant – lots of little pictures and tiny, tiny text – but Eve was nodding and mumbling to herself.

‘I just wish it wasn’t all in bloody French,’ she grumbled.

‘We need Tallulah. I can’t speak French,’ said Charlie.

‘And there’s no funky music,’ Eve muttered. ‘But don’t wake Tallulah.’

Charlie opened her mouth, but Harker waved her into silence. For once, he and Eve were in agreement.

He fetched the bloodstained jacket he’d been wearing the night before. ‘There was a box of these,’ he said, taking out the small metal and plastic sticks he’d picked up. ‘Are they any good?’

She took them from him, rather carefully not touching him, which didn’t do much to help Harker’s general mood, and examined them.

‘They look like USB sticks,’ she said. ‘You use them for storing files.’

‘Files?’ said Harker, thinking of the huge filing cabinets lining the walls of the offices at the Tower. ‘But they’re tiny.’

‘Electronic files,’ she said impatiently, and stuck one into a slot at the front of the computer. While Harker was trying to work out what an electronic file might be – a file about electronics? – she clicked a few things and a new square popped up on the screen.

‘Oh my God,’ Eve said.

‘What?’ The square was filled with more of the little pictures.

‘This is … well, it’s in English, see, it’s been written locally and not in France somewhere … Look, Manchester Barracks One, Two and Three, Kirkstall One – hah, Two has gone out, that’s because it’s here – it’s a list of computers, the computers they have networked. Look, Leeds Grammar One. Does Leeds have a grammar school?’

‘Yes,’ said Harker.

‘There’s a computer there. And … look, there are two in Lincoln, and …’

‘Peterborough,’ read Charlie. ‘Oxford.’

‘Southend’s not connected,’ Eve said. ‘I guess that means they’re having trouble there.’

‘Good,’ said Harker.

‘Oh hell,’ said Charlie, and pointed.

They all read it.

‘That could be any Tower,’ Eve said.

‘Can you find out more?’

She frowned, clicked something and a square came up on screen. Harker could read about half of the words, which were in French, but one thing lashed out at him.
Destination
: Tower of London.

‘That’s not possible,’ he said.

‘Destination?’ Charlie said. ‘It’s going there?’

‘No. That means location,’ Harker said. ‘It’s already there.’

When the shock had cleared, a new horror occurred to Harker. The telephone here was connected, which meant he’d be able to call Wheeler and tell her about the computer at the Tower.

But what was he going to say? ‘I think there’s a computer right under your nose, but I can’t tell you any more because I don’t understand what the spy is saying.’

Yeah. Wait for more information, Harker.

‘Find out more,’ he said to Eve, who clicked a few more times but kept shaking her head.

‘I can’t. Look, I need to connect up, and unless there’s an internal modem I can’t do that.’ She clicked a few more times, asked him to translate a word or two, but Harker’s knowledge of French was extremely basic.

‘Do you see the word “modem” anywhere?’ Eve said. ‘Or… I don’t know what it’d be called if the French invented it. I need something like … access point, or device – basically anything that is a device for connecting to a network. See anything like that, shout–’

‘Device?’ Harker said, and her eyes lifted hopefully to his. ‘There:
pas de device trouvé
.’

‘
Pas
,’ Eve said. ‘That means none, right?’ He nodded, and her gaze fell. She flopped back in her chair. ‘Well, there’s your answer. No internal modem. If there is one, then it doesn’t work, so we’ll need a new one anyway.’

‘Like you needed a new keyboard?’ Charlie said.

‘Hey, I didn’t think this one could be–’

‘Because of you
not thinking
, Lance-Corporal Martindale is dead,’ Charlie said, and Eve flinched.

‘All right,’ Harker said. ‘Stop it, you two.’

They scowled at each other like kids in a playground, and Harker had a sudden urge to laugh. Instead he said, ‘Eve. Do you really need this modem thing?’ She nodded. ‘You said there was a computer at the grammar school. Do you honestly think it will have one of these modem things that you can use?’ She nodded again, and Harker, not quite believing himself, said, ‘Okay then. You can come with me to get it.’

Charlie rounded on him, disbelief bright on her face. ‘Sir, you’re not seriously suggesting–’

‘No, I am not seriously suggesting,’ Harker said. ‘I am ordering.’

‘You can’t order me,’ Eve said. ‘I’m not one of your men.’

‘No, but I have a very big gun and very little patience, and I’ve been having a really, really bad day, and you told me you’d do it, so just … do it, would you?’

Eve looked like she was going to say something, but she flexed her jaw, shrugged her shoulders, and stayed silent.

‘Sir,’ Charlie said, her jaw tight, ‘you can’t just walk into the grammar school and walk out again with a computer.’

But Harker was already rummaging in the pocket of the civilian jacket he’d worn while reconnoitring the city. He produced his forged papers and waved them at Charlie, unable to help a grin.

‘Of course I can,’ he said, and pointed to the section of the papers where his fictional profession was written. ‘I’m a teacher.’

As she followed Harker to the drawing room, Eve could hear Banks gossiping from the other side of the door.

‘… curled up in bed together. I swear! Charlie’d kill him if she knew.’

Eve’s face went very hot, and her gaze immediately skittered away from Harker.

‘She must be blind if she can’t see what’s going on between them–’

Tallulah broke off as the door opened and Harker strode in, giving them a suspicious look.

‘My my,’ he said sourly as Tallulah spun around on the piano stool, her cheeks bright pink, ‘the romantic assignations that take place in this room. There must be something in the air.’

Eve followed him, rolling her eyes.

‘Play us something cheerful, Lu,’ Harker said, throwing himself at an exquisite imported sofa. ‘Me and Eve are going out to get shot at as soon as it gets dark.’

‘Oh, cheers, thank you so much for making me feel better,’ Eve said, hurling herself at the chair opposite him. She felt slightly sick, and not just at Harker’s plan to walk her into enemy territory.

She wanted him, everyone knew she wanted him, including the man himself, and all he wanted from her was a computer technician.

‘I don’t really know anything cheerful,’ Tallulah ventured. ‘All the pieces I know are classical.’

‘Eve, then. Make yourself useful.’

‘You’re a real piece of work, you know that?’ Eve said, but she stood up to fetch her guitar.

Harker wiped his hands over his face in an expression of exasperation. Eve stuck her tongue out at him. Tallulah pointed at Harker and pulled a face.

Harker said, from behind his hands, ‘Stop whatever you’re doing.’

‘What are you, psychic?’ Eve snapped, her nerves shredded.