Page 64 of The Undercover Bookshop

I pull the papers back and fumble once again in my handbag. I find a pencil stub and tear off a blank corner of a page. “Here is my name and address. Please pass it along to whomever you can.” I say the words as I frantically write down the information, the paper pressed against the garage door. “Please. It’s about a Soviet spy.”

“A Soviet spy?” His voice carries a touch of both derision and incredulity. Nevertheless, he takes the paper from my outstretched hand.

“Atomic secrets. Maybe more.” I lift my handbag with the papers. “I have proof.”

He holds out his hand. When I don’t move, he flaps his fingers with impatience.

“I can’t.” I step back. “I didn’t copy them. If you’re not who I—” I press my lips shut to start over. “Pass along my name and address. I’ll give the papers to that officer.”

He withdraws his hand and puts the scrap of paper into his coat’s inside breast pocket with the other. “How did you find this garage?”

“A man told me about it. I took a chance he was right.”

Suit Man narrows his eyes. “Do not take a chance again, miss.”

“Ask someone to reach out to me and I won’t need to.” My tone shocks me, and by the minute widening of his eyes, I can tell it shocks him as well.

“Or you could simply hand them to me—”

“I can’t. But I am serious. This isn’t a joke.” I cut him off, and without even a single peek back, I hurry away.

The train ride home holds none of the excitement, nerves, or anticipation of the ride into London. I’m cold and exhausted, and I feel oddly hopeless and unsure of what I accomplished. The likelihood of that man being who I need him to be or of him reaching out to anyone is slim, slimmer than slim. The only bright spot is the comment I made to Charlie in the hospital—Ursula will soon be on her “vacation” and there may be an end to it.

I hop off the train in Oxford and set off to the bus stop. Traffic is busy, and the street noise ratchets up the thrum already aching my head.

“Miss Brown?”

A call from behind spins me around, and I see two men in dark overcoats striding towards me. One wears a black bowler hat, the younger man, a fedora. The older gestures off to the side of the queue forming for the bus.

“May we please have a word?”

I follow them into a building’s alcove, but make sure to stand on the sidewalk’s edge, within sight and earshot of passersby.

The older one, the man in the bowler, speaks. “Mr. Skardon and Mr. Serpell, Miss Brown.” He toggles his fingers to the other man. “We understand you are looking for us? You have some papers to give us?”

“You work for MI5?”

“We work for the Service, yes.”

“How do I know?”

The younger pulls out a card and hands it to me. “Would you know if that wasn’t genuine, Miss Brown?”

I twist the card this way and that, then hand it back to him. “No. I wouldn’t.”

The corner of his mouth tips up. “Then let’s just say we are who we say we are. How else would we know where to find you?”

“How did you find me?”

The older man answers this time, and by his tone I can tell he believes he’s been sent on a fool’s errand. “You went to an auto shop and gave your address, asking for an audience with us. It’s a natural assumption that afterwards you’d go home again. The train to Oxford and this bus are your most direct route to Great Rollright. Any more questions?”

“No.”

“The papers then, please, Miss Brown. The ones you claim prove the existence of a Soviet spy, but the ones you oddly refuse to give up.”

“I forgot to copy them. I got hit over the head and—”

The older one steps towards me. “If these papers are what you say they are, do you think we’d let you keep copies?”