“I . . .” She drew back, and not because it was the first time they’d ever referenced that night when she’d run out into the darkness with her lips still warm from his, with her ears still ringing with his claim that he loved her. She hadn’t been paying any attention at the time. Her eyes had been blurred with tears, and she hadn’t looked up. But she must have had impressions. “I didn’t look at his face. It could have been, I think. The height seems right. Why?”

Drake muttered something in Spanish and looked away.

Margot scooted an inch and an eighth closer. “Drake—why?”

“Because that sounds like the man who’s been watching the flat.”

“This flat? But why?” He was just a former emissary to Japan. A sailor. Not right in the head, but harmless, she’d thought.

She’d obviously been wrong. Had he been following her? And watching Drake and Dot here? Planning this attack? It didn’t make sense. What could he want?

“I can’t be certain. But I suspect he’s working with the German agent who shot me on the train, the one in charge of getting the anthrax-laced sugar where it was meant to go.”

No, that made even less sense. “That can’t be. He was here before you were shot. And why would you think the man who shot you has anything to do with this?”

“He’s called me on the telephone. It was Jaeger’s voice. We haven’t been able to locate him, but the man you call Williams—he knew who I was that night, and he knew I’d been watching him, that I knew who he was. Minus the name. He must be an agent on the ground, here, one Hall’s men have missed. We thought we’d identified him as a bloke who’s called Niall Walsh, but he could well have another alias.”

Margot stood, her tea sloshing in its cup. “Why didn’t you chase him down that night? Apprehend him? Get answers?”

“You were more important.” But he winced and looked away. “Though maybe I should have. I’d feared reopening my wound, but I probably could have stopped him, or at least taken his knife. Then he couldn’t have attacked you two today. I’m sorry. At the time, the choice had seemed obvious.”

He’d chosen her, soothing her fears, over the best chance he’d probably ever had to apprehend a German agent hunting him down? “How is that obvious? I was acting like a . . . like a silly girl. You shouldn’t have let that stop you from finding him! Don’t you think I can weigh the situation and see that apprehending a German agent is a bit more important than wiping away my ridiculous tears?”