His blood felt as cold in his veins as the November air. Jaeger now knew all of this . . . but what did he mean to do with the knowledge? What, exactly, would he deem the proper payment for a foiled shipment of anthrax?

Try as he might to cling to the admiral’s insistence that a professional win would not be met with a personal vendetta, Drake had begun doubting that logic the moment Hall told him about the call’s origin. Because he was here.

That felt blighted personal.

He had to know if the man in the overcoat was linked to him somehow. So here he was, on the street, with a grey overcoat of his own. Some of his sister’s facial powder in his hair to make it seem grey, too, a stoop to his spine that didn’t require much thought to maintain just now, and an old hat on his head—his father’s. Dot must have kept it. Drake’s favorite was no doubt still tumbling about the countryside in Spain, unless a local had rescued it after the wind stole it from his head on top of the train.

He’d brought a cane with him too—the one the doctor had given him but which he’d refused to use in the flat. He didn’t need it, not in general. There was nothing wrong with his legs. But it would help with the image he was trying to project now. With a bit of luck, no one would look past the overall image to his unlined face.

Usually he made it a point not to stoop in pain when he was walking. Now he let himself and exaggerated it until his spine curved over the cane. Head tucked down so that passersby would see Father’s old hat more than Drake’s young face, he hobbled toward the abandoned shop whose door the mystery man liked to lean against.

He’d been there twenty minutes ago, whoever the bloke was. And, yes, he was there still. Drake’s pulse kicked up a few beautiful beats per minute, but he did no more than glance at that doorway. He’d chosen the back entrance of his building so that whoever-he-was wouldn’t be alerted. Now he shuffled across the street, aiming for a bench positioned at a bus stop at which buses never stopped anymore. Most of London’s buses had been sent to the front to move soldiers and supplies.

He settled onto the bench, his back to the bloke. Drew out a newspaper to unfold in front of his own face. And a mirror too. Careful to keep it shaded enough that the sun wouldn’t send out a homing beacon, Drake angled it until he could see the man behind him.