She spent her remaining time wiping down every surface in the room to make sure she hadn’t left any fingerprints behind her. She didn’t need to do either of these things herself—by morning her luggage would have been removed, her room meticulously cleaned before the chambermaid arrived, and her name in the hotel register smudged beyond recognition. But it was a ritual that she enjoyed, and it helped her mind prepare for returning to work.

As her taxi drove her out of the town and up into the mountains, Anna saw that at last the sun had completely set. The white roofs now glowed in moonlight, and the lake looked ominous, dark, and inky.

She also briefly wondered what would happen to the old man.

Her employers didn’t like loose ends, and he not only knew her assumed name and what she looked like but also, thanks to the telegram, where she was going. Perhaps they’d be lenient and let him forget that she’d ever visited Les Deux Salons, or perhaps he’d shortly find himself knocked unconscious, dragged through the old streets of his town, and dropped overboard in the middle of the lake with several cobblestones attached to his ankles.

As usual when it came to anyone’s life other than her own, she found that she didn’t really care either way.

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Williams woke up three times in the night.

The first time he knew who he was, and where he was. He remembered talking with Knox in the Hollands’ kitchen and being told that everything was going to be alright but that they needed to leave the city for a few days. He also remembered agreeing to spend the night in the fallout shelter under Wytchen House, and hearing the heavy metallic clunk of the lock as he settled down on the large, old sofa Sarah had had moved into the narrow space in place of the military-issue camp bed that MI5 had installed.

He spent twenty minutes staring at the domed ceiling, repeating over and over what he could still recall—the three conversations with Knox in Regent’s Park, the cold store under Smithfield, and in the house above him—trying to cement them in his shifting mind before he slipped back into unconsciousness.

The second time, he was plunged into a waking nightmare. His body pulled him up to stand to attention in front of the sofa. He could see the walls of the bunker dissolve, and an endless line of people stretch out on either side of him. They all wore the same dark grey smocks and trousers—a uniform Williams saw on himself when he looked down at his body—and all stared, dead-eyed, straight ahead.