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“Prince Axilon,” he says. “But please. Call me Axel.”
Iris placed the final sheet of notepaper on the desk next to Charles and took a sip of his coffee, grimacing upon realizing it was cold and putting it down again.
“Iris.” Charles’s voice was low and careful. His wife rarely spoke of her family, had very few charitable words to spare for many of them. The sole person she had ever mentioned fondly, and even then only once or twice, was a younger brother who had died in the war. A brother named Axel.
“I know,” she said. “The prince is too earnest. I think a sidekick should have more of a sense of humor, don’t you agree?”
“I think he’s perfect,” said Charles, reaching out to place his hand on hers.
Iris did not meet his eye, but did not pull away immediately either.
“This coffee tastes dreadful,” she said eventually. “I’ll make some more, shall I?”
* * *
•••••••••
Later that evening, Charles crossed the river by train and took the subway to Washington Square. He slowly circled the park twice, making sure he hadn’t been followed, before proceeding to his destination. Old habits died hard, and tradecraft was the habit of a lifetime. He didn’t think he was under any kind of suspicion, and his record of service to his country afforded him a certain amount of favor, but this McCarthy was starting to get a little overzealous and Charles wore his caution like an undershirt.
He walked into Mona’s like it was any other gin joint in the world, and he was just here for a casual drink after a long day at the office. And as a matter of fact, he was, but none of the patrons of this establishment frequented it because of the quality of the liquor. They were all looking for something else, something far harder to find than a stiff Rob Roy—now there was a thought—and this was one of the safer places in the city you might stand a chance of finding it. Sure, cruising the pier had its thrills, an adult game of hide-and-seek, but it also wasn’t without its dangers. Not to mention it was nearly November, and it was hard to feel anything out there other than the chill coming in off the Hudson, like Lady Liberty herself could see what they were up to from her vantage point on the horizon and did not care for it one bit.
Charles ordered a whiskey and leaned with one elbow against the bar, surveying the rest of the room. He did so nonchalantly, although around the place he saw much more brazen stares, men young and old shooting lustful come-hithers through the air like Cupid’s arrows. One especially brave or stupid boy was en femme; Charles could tell with a single look that those were a woman’s silk blouse and slacks. If there was a raid tonight, the poor fairy was toast. And yet Charles couldn’t help but feel a pang of…what? Not envy. He’d never felt the slightest inclination toward women’s clothing, outside of trying on his mother’s shoes as a boy and nearly breaking an ankle. Admiration then, perhaps, for the sheer pigheaded gall. Charles knew a little about what it cost to be truly fearless. Plenty of young men he’d known had claimed to be just that. Then half of them got blown up, and the other half learned the value of fear. Fear kept you sharp. Fear kept you alive. Even now, four years and change since he’d come back, Charles kept his fear as close as an old friend. The war was over, but for men like him that just meant the danger was far closer to home.
“I say,” came a voice from right behind him. “That’s never Charles Ambrose.”
He recognized the voice instantly. It was rich and deep, as English as croquet and colonialism.
“Dickie,” he said, turning to shake the other man’s hand. I must have conjured you, he thought. “Dickie Oswin, as I live and breathe.”
“You could have fooled me,” said Dickie, a twitch of a smile on his lips. He looked exactly the same, right down to that impeccably kept mustache. Charles could still remember how it felt. “You don’t call, you don’t write…” Dickie laughed. “Only having you on. Join me for a drink, won’t you?”
Charles nodded and slid onto the barstool next to Dickie.
“It’s good to see you,” he said. “How long do you suppose it’s been?” He knew precisely how long it had been since their last encounter. Their one and only. It was a memory he returned to often, taking it out and turning it over and over in his hands, a miser with his most prized possession.
“Five years,” said Dickie. “Istanbul.”
Istanbul. A city that bridged continents and, crucially, transcended alliances. Officially, Charles had been an American working legally as a bank clerk in a neutral city. Truthfully, he had been stationed under MacFarland at the OSS. When the veracity of the intelligence they were mining from the Dogwood chain had come under question, he was partnered with a British liaison: Captain Dickie Oswin, dispatched to Istanbul by the SOE (and, rumor had it, Churchill himself).
They had worked together well, efficiently, if not particularly closely. Oswin, as Charles had called him then, was cordial but professional, focused entirely on the task at hand and forgoing any of the idle chatter that permeated some of the other desks at the OSS. If at times that came across as cold, well, Charles put it down to the man’s Englishness. And there was a war on.
Charles, too, liked to keep his head down and get on with the work, and it was only ever against his own will that he would occasionally find himself thinking that Oswin was a good-looking fellow, dashing like a young Errol Flynn. He had known, by then, that he was never going to desire women the way he did other men: The hands and mouth of a young GI on a boat from New York to Belfast had put paid to any lingering doubts Charles might have had. But strangely enough it was easier to maintain the lie here, where the other men were all separated from their sweethearts and far more eager to talk about their own girls back home than ask Charles about his. To carry on like he was not keenly aware of how Oswin smelled when he leaned over his shoulder (shaving foam, peppermint, something with spice) or how it felt to have those gray eyes on him (nervous as a schoolboy) wasn’t as easy.
He respected Oswin. Maybe even liked him, inasmuch as it was possible to befriend anyone with whom you spent hours deciphering and translating in silence. And the work they were doing mattered, so much more than any childish infatuation.
That was much how it continued, for weeks. Until one night when they had both stayed late poring over some scrap of information that was found later to be of absolutely no import, and Oswin did two things he had never done before. He loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt, although that evening was no warmer than any other, and he reached into his desk for a bottle of scotch and invited Charles to join him in a drink.
“You’ve been holding out on us,” said Charles. Oswin procured two glasses from the recesses of his desk and said, as if he hadn’t heard him, “We’ve earned it.”
They didn’t speak much more than that, just sipped their scotch, but Charles felt an easing between them, another loosening of the proverbial tie. When he stood and announced that he was going to retire for the night, Oswin surprised him by standing, too, and saying he would walk with him awhile.
“My lodgings are not that far from yours,” he said. Nothing in his choice of words or enunciation gave him away, or would have aroused suspicion in a bystander, but Charles instantly understood. Half the tongues of Europe were spoken under this roof, but this was a language precious few could interpret. Meaning conveyed not through speech but a look, a gesture, the slow intention with which a man unfastened his top button. An invitation, to those who knew enough to accept.
“All right,” said Charles, holding Oswin’s eye for just an instant longer than he would usually allow himself. “I don’t see why not.”
They walked in silence through the streets, unease dwarfed by the sounds and smells of a city that brimmed with life at any hour. A city that had stood for millennia and gone by more names than any spy, which had no interest in the idle fancies of two foreigners.
Oswin did not even pause at the door when Charles unlocked the entrance to his rooms. He walked right in with the air of a man who had been there a hundred times before. Charles locked the door behind them and then turned to Oswin, who had approached him from behind and now stood dangerously near.
