Theater of Spies by S M Stirling

Author:S M Stirling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Siemensstadt (Northwest Berlin metropolitan area)

Königreich Preußen (Kingdom of Prussia)

Großdeutsches Kaiserreich (Empire of Greater Germany)

NOVEMBER 29TH, 1916(B)

No. 27 Rapsstrasse was one of the semi-detached cottages that packed both sides of the street, modest single-story structures topped with steep-pitched red pantile and each with one dormer window in the street-facing roof and another to the rear. That still made them quite fancy by the standards of a big German city, even this far from the center. Usually the working class lived in apartments, often of only one or two rooms. Middle-class people mostly lived in flats too, though nicer ones; usually you had to go well up the social scale to find families with houses of their own. Europe’s crowding showed in more ways than the size of farms.

Luz gave a quick look to either side. Nobody was on the street and the house across was darkened, so . . .

“Keep a lookout for me, querida,” she said.

Then she turned, leapt, got her fingers on the ledge above the door, and pulled herself up like a chin-up on the bar in a gymnasium. What she was looking for was near-as-no-matter invisible from the ground, and the sill was too high for even a tall man to reach without standing on something.

“¡Ajá!” she said.

She dropped lithely back to the brick pathway with a small tinned box painted a dull matte black in her hand, the type people used to keep oddments like buttons and needles. Inside was a set of brass keys, a piece of green glass, and a little slip of paper with 1-Steinbrech-2 written on it. All three were coded confirmations that the preparation teams had gotten in and out without trouble.

Steinbrech was a flower name in German: stone-breaker.

She suspected someone was having a bit of a joke at her expense in the Codes section, and thought it was a certain “Specs” McGuire, since he spoke good enough German to joke in it, and this had his leaden misogynistic touch. She made a mental note to inflict some stinging petty humiliation on him at the next opportunity.

“Did I ever tell you about McGuire in the New York station, querida?” Luz asked.

“Just that you didn’t like him and he’s a woman hater,” Ciara said. “And that you have to keep giving him set-downs.”

Luz smiled as she tore the piece of rice paper in four and lifted it to her lips. “My sympathy for him is underwhelming; he can’t grasp that he’s trying to fight out of his weight.”

She ate it as she opened the door with one of the keys and they both stepped inside. It was very dark, since the shutters and curtains were all shut, and it wasn’t significantly warmer than the outdoors. But as you’d expect from housing built by Siemens und Halske for its skilled workers, there was a switch for electrical light by the doorway and Luz threw it, blinking against the sudden sharp brilliance. The air had a damp, still, musty scent, that of a house

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.