THOUGH IT WAS NOT YET midnight, Sophie could not fall asleep again. And in the morning Jeannie was standing in the bedroom doorway, white-faced, with a piece of paper in her hand.
“Sophie, I don’t want to alarm you, but we’ve had a telegraph message from Siliguri. Last night a bomb exploded under the Calcutta train.”
Sophie’s stomach plunged. “Darius’s train?”
“I fear it was. At least, it was the one he meant to take. But Sophie, that’s all we know so far. Three carriages destroyed, a number of deaths and injuries. But whether Darius was in one of those carriages, we have no way of knowing. He may well have escaped.”
Sophie felt as through her feet were set forever on a bridge of rotting cane, and each time she came to a place where the footing seemed secure, something threatened to topple her into the abyss. Her parents’ death, Alex’s kidnapping, now Darius — this time the warning of danger had been clear, but it had come too late.
The waiting for news was worst of all for Alex. They could not keep the accident from her, and she refused to eat or leave her room until she knew that Darius was safe. Sophie found her huddled in a chair, face streaked with tears, clutching a book on Tibetan wildlife that Darius had loaned her.
Finally, towards evening, a second telegram came. There was a grim set to Tom’s mouth as he opened it, but then with a sigh of relief he looked up and smiled. “Darius was in another carriage. He’s shaken up, he says, but quite unscathed.”
With a small joyful cry Alex threw herself into her father’s arms. Sophie felt her own eyes sting with tears of relief.
“Jeannie, I saw the crash — I saw the explosion, and the aftermath. I saw the bodies by the tracks.”
Jeannie gave her a startled look. “You were dreaming of the accident? Last night, when you cried out?”
“It wasn’t a dream. I was there. I saw it happen. Just as I saw the place where Alex was hidden.” She realized, as she spoke, how intently Jeannie was listening.
“Sophie, I want you to tell me exactly what you saw,” Jeannie said.
Much like a kindly but persistent policeman questioning a witness, she led Sophie detail by grim detail through her vision of the train disaster: the column of black smoke, the flames, the stench of sulphur and charred flesh, the bodies flung from the toppled carriages like broken dolls. Sophie wondered why Jeannie, why anyone, would ask her to relive those horrors. When she had finished, when the last question had been answered, she was utterly drained and close to weeping.
Jeannie drew a long, slow breath. “Sophie, this is important. Was that what woke you, when we heard you call out?”
Sophie nodded.
“And that was at eleven o’clock, “said Jeannie. “I was still up, and I remember glancing at the clock.”
“But the crash?” Though she had already guessed the answer.
Jeannie said, “We’ve been told, at about three a.m.”
“Sophie, I’ve thought hard about what I’m going to tell you. I’ve debated whether I should tell you at all.”
Her expression was sombre, and Sophie felt a shiver of anxiety. What have I done?
“I’ve asked myself,” continued Jeannie, “if I have any right to involve you in things that should never have concerned you. But Sophie, what is happening in India is everyone’s concern. No one is safe, we are all of us, English and Indian alike, caught up in terrible events. And in the work we must do, in the work that lies ahead, we need your help.”
From that bewildering statement, one phrase leaped out at Sophie. “The work you must do?”
“Oh, Sophie, lass, surely by now you’ve guessed?”
And of course she had guessed. What had begun as a faint suspicion, a hint of unspoken secrets, conversations not meant to be overheard, covert meetings unexplained, had grown over the past months into what should have been certain knowledge. And yet she had been unwilling to accept that Jeannie Grenville-Smith — quiet-spoken, sensible, self-effacing Jeannie — could have a secret life as full of danger and intrigue as the heroines of novels. Still, this was a woman who had wrenched a boulder from its bed and hurled it down a mountainside, who once, by her own admission, had almost killed a man who meant to harm her.
Sophie said, “I guessed that what I glimpsed in your notebooks was not research for a novel. I wondered about the note that was passed to you that day in College Street. There were many things that made me wonder. But still I imagined . . . ” She hesitated. “I thought it was Alexandra who was the spy.”
With a look of amusement, Jeannie said, “If she were, I think she would prefer to be called an intelligence agent. But no — as far as I know — Alexandra is not a spy.”
“But you?”
“Yes. A special agent of the British government. A spy, if you like. A cryptographer, to be precise.”
“And Tom?”
Jeannie nodded. “As spying goes, it’s mostly Tom. England, and India, need eyes and ears, even in places as remote as Sikkim. A zoologist engaged in a survey has reason to travel wherever he likes without arousing suspicion. And a zoologist’s wife has every reason to follow her husband wherever he goes.”
“And when Tom and Thekong were surveying on the Nepalese border?”
“They were looking for other German agents like Herr Ludwig who hoped to turn the King of Nepal against his British allies. Sophie, I’m going to tell you a number of things that you mustn’t know.”
“Mustn’t know?”
“That is, no one must know that you know them. You do understand that?”
Sophie nodded.
“And you promise never to speak of them to anyone, no matter what?”
“Of course.”
“You must remember that promise, Sophie. By showing you this, I’m breaking my oath under the Official Secrets Act. So then — “Jeannie handed her a sheet of paper. Sophie recognized Jeannie’s small tidy handwriting.
A German officer, working undercover, has been arrested by the military authorities in Singapore. Among his papers was a map of Bengal. The coastline was marked with possible landing spots for ships carrying arms. Also hidden on his person, along with various compromising documents, was a secret code which allowed him to communicate directly with Berlin. He has since made a full confession, stating that he had been assigned to organize an insurrection against the British in Bengal, with Germany supplying both arms and money. He is to be referred to in intelligence reports as Agent X.
“Agent X,” said Jeannie, “it sounds like something from a penny dreadful, doesn’t it?
The security services are a bit short on imagination. But Agent X is very real, and very dangerous.”
Sophie looked up from the paper. “Jeannie, what are you showing me?”
“A message from a British agent in India, sent to me for decoding. And now I’m going to tell you a lot of other things, and you must listen closely.”
“But I’m not to know any of it.”
Jeannie smiled. “Exactly. But all the same you must be aware of it.”
Sophie had read her Kipling. She thought she understood.
Jeannie began: “For some time now we’ve known that secret cells in the hills and swamps east of Calcutta have been recruiting revolutionaries. Among them are expert bomb-makers who learned their knowledge of explosives in Europe. With the help of German agents they’ve been purchasing large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into India from neutral countries — from Thailand, the Dutch East Indies, the United States. Their plan was to spread unrest among the Indian troops at the Calcutta garrison, and induce them to murder their British officers.”
“As they did in the Mutiny.”
“Yes. And meanwhile the conspirators intended to isolate Calcutta by dynamiting railway bridges and cutting telegraph lines. They would seize control of Calcutta, and butcher the English inhabitants. Once that news spread across India, other Indian Army units would follow their lead, and the tribal areas on the northwest frontier, already a powder keg, would explode. The conflagration would spread across the country, until every trace of British rule was destroyed.”
Old grievances inflamed, old wounds revenged; innocent women and children slaughtered, the whole country in flames. Sophie shivered in the warm room, her stomach tightening around a knot of fear. She said, “Alexandra believes that the end of British rule is inevitable.”
“Alexandra the révolutionnaire!” said Jeannie. “But yes, Tom and I believe the same. India deserves her independence, and it has to come. But not, pray God, like this — in another bloodbath like the Indian Mutiny, with both Indians and British paying a horrible price. Conspiracies and uprisings are hardly new to India, but this one is masterminded from Berlin as part of the German war strategy. Don’t imagine that the Kaiser is interested in Indian independence. More likely he plans to rule India himself. When the carnage is over, and the soil of India soaked in innocent blood, the Kaiser and the Sultan of Turkey will argue over what is left.”
“Jeannie, I don’t understand. You say you need my help. What part could I play in all this?”
“Do you remember that day in the hermitage, when you told Alexandra that you just wanted to be an ordinary girl?”
Sophie nodded. She was not likely to forget Alexandra’s reply. “She said that I could never be commonplace — that I hadn’t had a commonplace life.”
“And she was right. Because she recognized this strange and wonderful talent you possess. I might have doubted her at first. Sometimes,” she added with a rueful smile, “Alexandra’s enthusiasms run away with her. But in this she was right. She saw your visions for what they were — neither dreams, nor hallucinations, but an actual witnessing of the past. Not only the past, it seems, but the hidden present. And now, beyond that,” her green eyes gazed steadily into Sophie’s, “events that have yet to take place.”
Because I saw the aftermath of the bombing, Sophie thought. I saw it last night in every awful detail — and I saw it hours before the crash was to happen.
Jeannie said, “What government would not want such information? India needs my small talent for cryptography — but Sophie, how much more you have to offer!”
Power comes with foreknowledge, Alexandra had said. Some outcomes are not random. There are some that will inevitably take place if nothing interferes with the logical progression of events.
“But the letter said that Agent X has been captured. The conspiracy has been exposed.”
“Exposed, yes. According to the Indian security services Agent X is cooperating and will be released, in return for leading us to his co-conspirators. Gun-running ships have been intercepted and their cargo seized. But Sophie, it’s far from over. We have information that there are weapons and bombs still in the hands of the revolutionaries; there’s still unrest among the Indian troops. We believe the revolutionaries are still determined on a major attack to distract the police and kill as many English as possible.”
As many English as possible. When had Jeannie learned to state the unspeakable in that quiet, matter-of-fact voice?
Jeannie said, “I dearly wish that we could stay here, where it’s still relatively safe, but we have duties and obligations in Calcutta. In a few days, we’ll have no choice but to return. Something terrible is planned, Sophie. It will happen soon, and according to the best information we have, it will happen somewhere in Bengal. But when, and exactly where, we have no way of knowing.”
Sophie thought of Will and all the young men like Will who had unquestioningly gone off to battle, eager to fight for their country and little imagining the cost. She understood well enough what the cost could be, in her own life, to do what Jeannie was asking. Still, how much less a sacrifice it seemed than the one that Will was making.