“Of course, I did. On you, actually. I wasn’t sure if Ms. Middleton would go along for the ride—whatever the ride was going to be.”

“But you tried to kill us!”

“Think back, luv.”

“I warned you about ‘luv.’”

“Sorry. But obviously I wasn’t going to kill you. I was looking out for you. It would have been awkward if you’d been captured or killed.”

“Awkward,” she muttered.

“And I did need to get in touch with Harold here. We tried everything but he’d gone missing.”

“You could have said something about who you were.”

“How could I do that? If you were captured, I didn’t know how much you’d tell. I know the Volunteers don’t go in for intense interrogation, but a lot of people do, you know.”

At this, for some reason, Nora Tesla fell silent, avoiding Middleton’s eyes.

Middleton then said wryly to the British agent, “And you also needed to use us for information.”

A knowing smile. “Obviously, Colonel. That is the way the game’s played, right? There’s a lot at stake here. I’ve been after the Scorpion for several years now, undercover. Posing as someone with an interest in Sikari, a businessman, a mover and shaker. But the leads dried up . . . Funny that, considering all this ado about water. We heard some chatter about that bizarre reporter, Crane, that he had some leads. We put him in play and got him to the suburbs of Paris. We tried to make him think one of us was the Scorpion—the fellow driving was our station chief in Paris. He even wore a copper bracelet I bought at Selfridge’s. Crane didn’t fall for it, I think. But he did follow up on our suggestion to go to your flat, Middleton.”

“You used him as bait,” Tesla snapped.

The British agent looked at her as if she’d exclaimed, Why, the earth is round! “It worked, didn’t it? We got onto Jana that way. But she slipped us—thanks to Crane himself. He flew off someplace with her. To Dubai, it seems. A night in paradise, he must’ve been thinking. It turned out to be literally true, of course, since she killed him.”

Tesla snapped, “That’s how Jana got on to us in Paris. That wouldn’t have happened, if you hadn’t meddled.”

“I do recall apologizing,” the smarmy man said with irritation. “I was there looking after you, remember.”

“But not very goddamn well, since I got shot and Charley was nearly killed.”

“What’s going to happen now?” Wiki Chang asked.

“We’ll spirit both of them back to London—Chernayev and Zang. See what we can arrange for a trial. Zang’ll ultimately go back home—and end up shot, most likely. As for your Russian friend, if the Criminal Court wants him, ’fraid you’ll have to stand in line.”