Spies in St. Petersburg. Katherine Woodfine

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СКАЧАТЬ – and then all at once, she remembered. Of course – they’d made plans to go and see the matinee at the Alhambra, and have tea. She’d thought it was just a casual arrangement – two pals out for an afternoon – but now here Joe was, looking rather handsome in what she knew was his best suit, with his curly hair carefully smoothed.

      ‘Oh gosh,’ she said. ‘I think you’d better come in.’

      It didn’t take long to pour out the story. Joe was a good listener: he didn’t interrupt, sitting beside her as she talked, his eyes fixed seriously on her face. When she told him what the Chief had said about Sophie, he looked astonished – and then very worried indeed. She knew Joe was very fond of Sophie: in a funny way, the two of them were rather alike, both alone in the world without any family of their own. But now Sophie was really alone – far away from all her friends, missing on the other side of Europe.

      ‘I’m so furious I don’t know what to do,’ she finished up. ‘How can the Chief think of just leaving her there? She could be in any kind of trouble!’

      ‘I’ll admit, it doesn’t look good,’ said Joe, thinking hard. ‘But don’t despair. We don’t know something bad has happened. Perhaps her messages just haven’t been getting through?’

      ‘But what if something awful has happened to her?’ They had no way of knowing, Lil realised – and that was the very worst thing of all.

      Rather as though he wasn’t sure what else to do, Joe put an arm around her shoulders. For a moment, she felt taken aback. Joe had never really hugged her before – she hadn’t thought of him as the hugging kind. She knew he’d always been a bit sweet on her, but he’d never done anything about it – and besides, she’d never wanted anything more than just to be good chums. But now that Joe’s arm was around her, and her head was against his shoulder; now that his hand had closed over hers – warm and rather rough – her heart began to beat a little faster.

      ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said gently.

      ‘We don’t know that. We can’t possibly be sure.’

      ‘She’s Sophie. She’s tough.’

      ‘But she’s all alone. We have to do something to help – or at least try and find out what’s happened!’

      ‘Well, maybe you need to go back and talk to the Chief. Admit what you heard and tell him he’s got to help you get in touch with her. There must be someone in St Petersburg who could help track her down – or you never know, perhaps he’d even let you go out there and look for her?’

      But Lil just shook her head. After what he’d said, she was certain there was no way the Chief would agree to send her all the way to Russia to look for Sophie. Besides, she didn’t feel she could ever trust him again, after he’d lied to her face like that. ‘He won’t. Not when he needs me to go to Germany to pick up his stupid report,’ she muttered angrily.

      ‘Well then, while you’re in Hamburg, the rest of us will start investigating from here. There’s got to be something we can do, some way we can find her . . .’ Joe began.

      Hamburg! Lil jumped suddenly upright. ‘Joe – that’s it! You’re a genius!’

      Joe looked astonished – and a little disappointed that Lil was no longer snuggled against his shoulder. ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked warily.

      But Lil was already on her feet, rummaging through books until she unearthed her copy of Cook’s Continental Guide. ‘Look!’ she exclaimed, thrusting it under his nose, her finger jabbing at a map showing Hamburg, in the north of the German Empire. ‘I’m supposed to go to Hamburg. Well, Hamburg is halfway to St Petersburg – don’t you see?’ She stared at him in excitement. ‘What if I agree to the Chief’s mission, then use it as a cover for a secret mission of my own? I can say I’m going to Hamburg, but actually I’ll travel on to St Petersburg – and I’ll find Sophie myself.’

      Joe frowned. ‘But if you did that, then you’d be disobeying your orders from the Chief, wouldn’t you? And he’s not just an ordinary client. These are orders from the government.’

      Lil shrugged that off at once. ‘I don’t care about the Chief and his silly old orders. If I did what he wanted, I’d be leaving Sophie in the lurch – and I jolly well won’t do that.’

      ‘You could get yourself into an awful lot of trouble,’ Joe protested. ‘Not only yourself – but Taylor & Rose too.’

      Lil paused for a moment, and then grabbed her hat decisively from the table. ‘Without Sophie there is no Taylor & Rose,’ she said crisply. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find the others. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to need everyone’s help.’

      Secret Service Bureau HQ, London

      Lil didn’t feel quite so confident as she made her way back to the Bureau the following morning. She’d spent all of the previous afternoon at Taylor & Rose talking with the others, but to her surprise and disappointment they’d shared Joe’s uncertainty about her plan.

      ‘Of course we’re all worried about Sophie,’ said Tilly, Taylor & Rose’s resident technical expert, in pragmatic tones. ‘Terribly worried. But you can’t just rush off. We have to think it through.’

      ‘We don’t know anything about what she’s doing in St Petersburg, or where you could look for her,’ added Mei, who worked as their receptionist. ‘And it’s a very big city, isn’t it? How would you even begin to find her?’

      ‘I’m a detective, aren’t I?’ Lil protested. ‘I’d investigate.’

      She’d been sure that Billy at least would be on her side: she knew how devoted he was to Sophie. But to her annoyance, he agreed with Tilly and Mei. ‘It’s awful to think of Sophie being missing – and I agree we’ve got to do whatever we can to find her. But Lil, just think: if you abandon the mission the Chief has planned for you, then you’ll be going against the Bureau and putting us at odds with the government. Directly disobeying the Chief’s orders like that – well, it just doesn’t sound like a terribly good idea.’

      ‘I don’t have to abandon the mission,’ argued Lil. ‘I can still do what the Chief wants. I could collect the report on my way to St Petersburg – or on my way home, perhaps. I’ll simply be extending the assignment, that’s all. Anyway, does anyone have any better ideas? Because I’m not going to leave Sophie all by herself in Russia and this is the only way of trying to rescue her that I can come up with.’

      In the end it had been Joe who had said: ‘Well, I reckon we should at least look into it. Work out how Lil would get to St Petersburg from Hamburg and what’s possible.’

      They’d all agreed on that and had spent the rest of the afternoon poring over maps and the Bradshaw’s Railway Guide. Then the telephone had rung, summoning Lil to see the Chief the next morning to receive her new assignment. And now she was here once more – hurrying past Carruthers at his desk, and through into C’s office, her heart thumping in her chest. Inside, everything was exactly the same as usual – the gramophone playing, the rain pattering СКАЧАТЬ