The Enemy's Weakness

He is a British asset working a room full of people who would have him arrested, and the man he is supposed to compromise is the newly appointed naval attaché to the embassy hosting the party. A silver lighter skitters across the marble when the diplomat beside him knocks it reaching for his champagne. Julian catches it before it falls, thumbs the engraved eagle, sets it back. The man does not notice. He is too busy mopping his forehead and watching the door as though it might bite. The embassy smells of beeswax, expensive cologne, and something burnt underneath. Cigarettes or nerves, hard to tell. Crystal chandeliers throw light across a hundred faces, all of them smiling far too hard. July 1938, and half of London has turned out to pretend the world is not tilting. He came for the French attaché, who has good cheekbones and a way of letting his hand linger when he passes you a drink, and who is laughing at something a woman in sapphires said. Julian can work with that laugh. Then he notices the weight shifted onto a right leg, a left foot barely touching the carpet, a walking stick hooked over an arm, polished walnut with a silver handle. Klaus Richter. Forty-one. Decorated in the last war. Julian memorised the file that morning and none of it prepared him for the way the man watches a room. What follows: a limp and a laugh, a trap baited with cake and a ledger, hopscotch and hemlines, a cough and a corsage, the debt of a dinner, a night of sabotage, a club of broken men, and a piano with a promise attached. *You still passed documents. You still lied. I can't clear you tonight, or tomorrow, or next week.* Julian has the confession, the corroboration and the name of the man who actually did it. Now he has to convince a service that has already written its report, and a man who has stopped expecting to be believed by anybody.