Crispin got up and opened the window a crack.
A pounding below them in the street and a voice bellowed, “OPEN IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!”
Crispin shut the window again, muffling the shouts.He was tremendously relieved, but it wouldn’t do to show it.
The Home Secretary’s eyes travelled over Crispin.Now that he no longer felt in danger, he felt increasingly shabby.Crispin suppressed a cough.
“Do you mind if I smoke, sir?”Crispin asked.
“Go ahead.”
The secretary was watching him intently now.Crispin needed to distract him, and quickly.
“If you don’t mind my asking, sir…”
“Not at all.”
“The bicycle.Why ride a bicycle through Johannesburg when it was held by Boer forces?”Crispin asked, lighting his pipe.
The man snorted.“The Australians took the horses.You couldn’t get one for love or money, not with those blighters about.The upside was that the Boer didn’t expect anyone of note to come through on a bicycle—so it probably saved my neck.Any other questions?”
“Well,” Crispin said.“To begin with, I didn’t realise kidnapping was part of the scope of the Home Office.”
This almost raised a laugh.“Have you heard of the Secret Service Bureau?”
Crispin tried to breathe as steadily as possible as he drew on his pipe.“Only slightly.”
“Good.That’s the general idea.It’s new, just last year, and we’re looking to grow the ranks.As it happens, we usually recruit from the diplomatic corps, or military intelligence.But I want someone with a more civilian touch, and, thanks to your father, I had a hunch about you.”
Crispin’s breath hitched, but he covered it with a long exhale of smoke.His father?Had his father nominated him for this?As far as he knew, his father had never put Crispin’s name forward for anything.
“You and your father share an unusual trait,” he went on.
“Really, sir?”
“I find you both nearly impossible to read.”He leaned forward.“And I’mverygood at reading people.”
“So you think I’d make a good spy.”
“Call it a hunch.”
“I make a pretty decent cartographer, as it is,” Crispin pointed out.
The Secretary sat back in his chair.
“When I arrived in Africa, Fairweather, I was your age.I soon realised that nothing was going to just happen for me there.If I didn’t take matters into my own hands, I’d have come home no better off than when I arrived, a war correspondent cutting his teeth.You’re a clever young Englishman at the start of a brand-new century.The world is before you, and it’s changing faster than ever before.”He leaned forward.“I wonder—do you want to keep sitting at a desk and mapping it?Or do you want to have a hand in deciding where the lines are drawn?”
Crispin’s heart was thrumming in his chest now, and he could feel his breath tightening, narrowing to a point.He wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.
“I hear cartographers live a lot longer than spies,” Crispin said lightly, trying to cover the shortness of his breath.
“Well, if it’s long life you want…” His eyes fell on Crispin’s pipe.“That’s not tobacco, is it?”
Crispin swallowed.“No.”
“What do they give asthmatics these days?”
Crispin couldn’t speak for a moment.
