Zivon nodded. It would require destroying Evgeni’s false passport, but that was the only picture he had, now that his album was gone. “I will bring one tomorrow.”

And pray he’d just done the right thing.

10

FRIDAY, 19 APRIL 1918

Lily jumped at the knock on the door, looking up from her retouching desk at the OB for the first time in . . . she didn’t even know. The crick in her neck said it had been quite a while. Sometimes it took a ridiculous amount of time to get her changes to look natural. Real.

“Come in.” She had nothing light-sensitive out at the moment, just her scalpel and a slew of photographs she’d pulled as possibilities for her latest creation. The admiral had asked her to take an image of an officer on a horse, alone in a field, and put a crowd of Austrian soldiers around him. She had no idea why, but it had proven quite a challenge to integrate so many new figures without making it look clearly fake.

The door opened, and Barclay Pearce stepped in with his usual grin. “Have you got that U-boat picture ready?”

“Of course.” She motioned to a photograph sitting on another table. The only change the admiral had asked for on that one was to blot out the designation painted on the side and replace it with another.

Simple. Easy. It had taken only a few minutes. But ever since that conversation with her mother . . . “Do you know why he needed it?”

Barclay’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “I’m afraid the admiral doesn’t always explain himself to the mere errand boy. ‘Theirs not to reason why’ and all that, I suppose.”

Lily huffed and folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t much fancy ending up like the Light Brigade, thank you.”

He chuckled. “You won’t. If either of us does, it’ll be me. I’m the one he tasks with slipping into government offices and depositing these.”

“What?” She snapped up straighter, eyes wide.

Barclay apparently thought her reaction as funny as the assignment itself, given his laugh. Sometimes she wondered what was wrong with that man. He was already halfway out the door again. “Don’t fret, Lily. It’s all on the up-and-up. Mostly. Oh!” He poked his head back in. “Hall, Margot, and I were chatting this morning, and it came up that she’s still looking for a photographer for her wedding. We recommended you. Hope you don’t mind.”

And how could he shift so quickly from what sounded suspiciously like breaking and entering to wedding photography? “Margot?” Margot De Wilde, he must mean. She didn’t know the young lady well . . . and frankly, found her more than a little intimidating. “I’ve been meaning to ask how the two of you are related.”

“She’s my sister.”