As she worked, she prayed. That the memories would be good ones. That he would find a way to hold tight to that which he couldn’t afford to lose of his past and easily relinquish that which would catch him in a snare.

And that somehow, somewhere, he’d find his brother.

7

EASTER SUNDAY, 31 MARCH 1918

Outside, the voices of a million raindrops sang upon cobbles and pavement and brick. Zivon had the window cracked open enough to hear them, to let the symphony of splashes and patters serenade him. Once upon a time, such music would have soothed.

He wasn’t sure soothing was even possible these days.

On the table before him, he’d spread a newspaper that contained a thorough article about the Paris church shelling on Friday. Ninety-one dead. Sixty-eight injured. Was Evgeni one of those? If he had even survived the train derailment, could he have been in the neighborhood? Zivon didn’t know, but that urgency that hovered always at the cloudy edges of his memory felt suspiciously like guilt when he considered the possibility. If Evgeni had been there, it was because of him. Because he had chosen that neighborhood as their rendezvous. Why hadn’t he simply chosen something like the Eiffel Tower?

He pinched the bridge of his nose where his eyeglasses rested, then repositioned them with a sigh and sent his gaze to the other paper on his table. A sheet with his own handwriting upon it—his best recollection of what that telegram about the Prussian had said. But even as he reviewed the words, trying to remember if each phrase was right, he knew it didn’t matter.

Hall wouldn’t be able to do anything with this. Zivon certainly wouldn’t have put any stock in a page created solely from the memory of a man he wasn’t even certain he could trust. Only a fool would take this as anything but a rumor.

His new superior was no fool.

But logic aside, the telegram was real. Or the original had been. It was the last thing he’d decrypted before they got word that Lenin and his troops were coming and they’d better clear everything out of their offices that gave away what they were doing.

Was that the only reason he thought it so important?

No. No, he’d known the moment he decrypted it, before he knew it would be his last, that this was vital. That the war could hinge on what happened with the common German soldiers.

How, though, to make Hall take note? To make him believe without seeing it himself? Or, better still, intercepting it himself?

Zivon let the thought settle. That could be the answer, couldn’t it? If Room 40 intercepted a message, decrypted it . . . that would be half the battle, anyway. Hall would at least believe the message itself. Then Zivon would only have to convince him of how the Allies ought to react to it.