Drake sighed. “Understood. And I will, of course, caution her to keep it to herself. Although—what of her new friend? Can Miss De Wilde know?”

“I see no harm in that.” Hall’s lips twitched.

Drake nodded. “Then good day, Admiral.” He saluted as best as he could manage and, after the admiral strode away, opened his satchel. There wasn’t much inside it. A change of clothes. The newspaper he’d been hiding behind more than reading. The volume of poetry he’d brought with him.

This he pulled out and opened to the slip of paper he’d been using to mark his spot, his mind still spinning through those last moments. His fingers stilled. “Admiral?”

Hall had made it halfway to the door, but he turned with lifted brows and hurried back to Drake’s bedside, his face clear of anything but question. “Yes? What is it, lad?”

Drake stared at the page, but it wasn’t the French clouding his mind. It was the Spanish shout from German lips. Garbled by the wind, but still clear. “Jaeger.”

Hall sat again, probably so that their words could be quieter. “Yes? His name was in Thoroton’s report. He was the agent accompanying the shipment.”

The one who shot him—that would have been in the report, too, at least as a supposition. “Was he apprehended?” They could surely have had someone waiting when the train arrived.

But Hall shook his head. “Thoroton reported that he’d disembarked the train at some point before the next station.”

Drake’s fingers tightened around the book. “He’ll be seeking retribution. Either on the team in Spain or on me here. He ought to be watched.”

“He will be.” Hall pitched his voice lower still, leaning to within a few inches of him. “Don’t let that worry you—I keep accounts of every German agent still in England, and they’re only free if I’ve deemed them to be of more use to me that way. If he enters the country, I’ll know it. And if necessary, we can make use of the identity of one of the German agents we have in prison to communicate with him, sending a message in a name he would recognize. We’ve done it before, with others, to great success.”

A nod, a smile to show how well he appreciated the admiral’s cleverness. But Drake couldn’t convince his grip on the book to loosen. Perhaps it was only fear—a visceral, purely instinctual reaction to the man who had shot at him twice and struck him once. A few inches either direction, and that bullet would have killed him. It was surely nothing but the finger of God that had directed it through his abdomen in a way that dodged all vital organs and arteries.