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“With your friend, I think. You laid a charge at my feet earlier, did you not?”

I nod, feeling a little lost. “Over the years I’ve gleaned tidbits that there was more to Peggy than I knew. I also learned she met with you that afternoon I sent her to follow you. So, yes, I thought you had something to do with her disappearance. But I surprised you earlier, and that surprised me. I doubt you have the answers I want.”

“Shocked me, rather. I never imagined you to think I did something nefarious to her. She never told you, did she?”

Prickles race up my spine. “What, exactly, did she hide from me?”

“I saw Peggy in Kidlington, yes, and as a courtesy I told her to manage her escape. She didn’t take my warning right away, however. She didn’t understand and almost left it too long. She wasn’t nearly as clever as you. So I decided to do a good deed and protect someone you cared about.”

She shifts a chair aside and drops into it. I do the same, lowering into one across from her. Our knees are inches apart, and I feel a strange push and pull. I want to slide farther away, distance myself from her—I want to tuck closer as, for better or worse, we’ve been tied together for over forty years.

“I went to talk to her that final day before I came to you. I gave her a plan and a little money. You see, I’d known about her, but she hadn’t known about me. Goodness, the child didn’t know about herself.”

“What do you mean?”

Ursula eases back, settles in. I recognize the motion from years ago when, while baking, she’d shift her weight back into one of the small wood chairs in her kitchen and start to tell a story. Part of me wants to rush her and say, “We don’t have time for stories.” But the better part holds my tongue.

“After her fiancé was killed in the war, Peggy was lost. One day on a long walk, she met a young man, and they continued to meet and walk in the crags far from her village for several months. He was a good listener, and she was hurt and angry, and very talkative.”

My eyes drift closed. I can see the scene in my imagination, hear Peggy, even feel her heartbreak.

“Yes, she shared far too much to Nicoli Felisov. She knew him as Timothy Rossings and never made the connection. But I did, as soon as I moved to Great Rollright. Her name was all over Felisov’s papers, and it was only a matter of time before MI5 knew it too. You may have even taken a page or two with her name on it.”

“I did, but I didn’t see it. MI5 told me after you left, in the interview you said would happen. Everything happened just as you said it would.”

Her lips twitch upwards, but she doesn’t comment. I don’t need her to, so I sit quietly while she continues.

“I told her what she’d done and that, even if done inadvertently, a charge of treason could be laid upon her. Then I told her precisely how to get away, from both the British and the Soviets.” She shrugs. “I don’t regret it, Gemma.”

My breath catches at my real name. No, my original name. For Nora feels like my real name now. Neither Charlie nor I have ever used Gemma after we parted the day Ursula fled. He found me in this very shop as Nora, I finally met his family as Nora, and I married him a few months after that as Nora. I’ll be buried beside him as Nora too.

“The girl really had no idea what she’d done.” Ursula’s words draw me back to the present. “She didn’t need to give her life for being young, hurt, and indiscreet.”

“Was it that bad? I mean, I’ve heard what St. Eths was, but . . . Was it?”

Ursula merely nods. And I believe her.

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“I had some people track her here and there, just out of curiosity, but I gave that up years ago. In 1979 she was living in Spain with a husband and two grown children nearby. I’d say that wasn’t a bad end for her.”

“No.” I sigh. “I’d say that sounds pretty good.”

Ursula grins the big toothy grin of long ago. “I’d also say it’s come out well, wouldn’t you? We’ve done some good work together, don’t you think?”

“Have we?” After all these years, I’m still not entirely sure. Though I always trusted it wasn’t my job to suss out the merit of the intelligence Ursula coded within her novels—my job was simply to pass it along to MI6—I have wondered about the veracity and value of her intelligence.

“Come now, Gemma. We aren’t so different, you and I. I never betray what I believe in, and I honor loyalty. I honor right. We just draw our lines a little differently now and then.” She laughs. “We’ve been a good team these many years. In some ways, I’m surprised at how well we’ve done.”

“I am too.”

My first letter arrived from Ruth Werner’s publisher in early 1961. It asked me to carry a new author’s spy novel for young readers in my shop and to take a moment to read a personal note from the author herself. I almost threw it away. Then I noticed the East German post stamp, and an echo of a long-ago promise returned.

That note led to another. And that led to a code. A code within her book. And that code began our “career” together. And from the little I’ve picked up from Mr. Wainright’s successors over the years, Ursula is right—we have done good work.

Her encoded messages warned Britain about the Berlin Wall during our first year working together. She went on to inform the West, through her novels and through me, of events that have now earned such names as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Khrushchev’s ousting in 1964, the Prague Spring of 1968, and vital wins for the West during the SALT I in 1972. Not to mention her insights into the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and how the Soviet Union was fortifying its military at the end of the détente in 1980. Yes, perhaps we have done good work—even great work.

Or perhaps we’ve all been deceived and the outcomes aren’t as favorable as we have, over the last thirty years, perceived them to be. There’s always, I’ve come to believe, another side to Ursula Kuczynski.