“A calculated risk.” She’d been so certain they could use him to their advantage. Not sway him—she wasn’t that optimistic. The man was clearly a czarist, through and through. But they could use him. Feed him a bit of false information and let him send it to the Whites he was clearly in league with.

Grinding out his cigarette, Volkov blew out a last stream of smoke and stood. “Go to France. Rendezvous with the younger Marin. We will supply you with what funds we can. Find this Prussian again, first and foremost. And then make sure the elder Marin is not a risk. We haven’t the resources to hunt down every enemy who escapes our borders, but we must know how he got our messages. And make sure he doesn’t foil our plans with the Prussian.”

She snapped into a salute. “Yes, Comrade.” And then she spun for the door. She would see the purser, get whatever cash they gave her. But her feet itched to run from the building, into the still-snowy street. Straight to the telegraph office.

Her words to Evgeni would be few. Find your brother if you can. I am coming. But he would read affection in the lines, just as he read it in her every kiss.

She’d soon have the Marins in hand.

Lily tucked herself into a corner of the back garden, where she would hopefully go unnoticed while she fiddled with her camera. She didn’t often bring one out at dinner parties, but when Mama had suggested they adjourn to the garden for their pudding, given the unexpected beauty of the evening, Lily had seized the chance to run up to her room and grab her newest camera—the Kodak No. 1 Autographic Special that her parents had given her for Christmas.

Because as she’d watched Zivon Marin over dinner, her fingers had itched for the device as familiar to them as a paintbrush was to her mother’s. Not because he was particularly handsome, but because he was so . . . studied. Something about him struck her as photographic, as if he were already a still life captured on film. What would he look like when actually put to paper? Would the camera see the same thing her eyes did, or would it not translate into a photograph, where everything was caught in a moment devoid of motion?

No. She’d learned to capture motion—or its story, anyway—with her camera. She would just have to see if she could capture its opposite too. A challenge she’d never taken up before, but one she was determined to meet.

“What are you doing?”

Ivy’s whisper slipped easily into Lily’s concentration as her sister slid up beside her amid the green vines trailing over the garden wall. Ivy for Ivy. Lily had taken plenty of photos of that.