Nicholas said, “No. Until Adam Pearce found her, she didn’t exist.”

But her eyes were closed again, and she was under.

He got up and pulled the throw up over her shoulders, then sat back in his chair and watched her. She looked very young asleep, open, vulnerable, that sharp brain shut down.

He was very glad she was okay.

He read some more, then set the laptop on the floor and swung his legs over the side of the chair. He glanced at his watch—1:00 in the morning. Talk about a long day. He took a last look at Mike’s still face, saw the small smile on her mouth and wondered what she was dreaming, certainly not about today. He saw Nigel’s face again, confused, disoriented after the assault, but all right, and then, finally, he saw the faces of the two men who’d died at his hands today.

“Five minutes,” he said to himself, and shut his eyes.

44

Lower Slaughter, Cotswolds

September 1917

William Pearce, 7th Viscount Chambers, was late, very late. A damnable tire of his brand-new Lagonda had given out near Burford and it had taken him nearly an hour to change it. He would have much rather traveled with his man Coombe, allowed him to handle the tire, but this was a top-secret mission, and Coombe wasn’t cleared for this level of service.

Pearce was dirty by the time he finished, but no matter. He prayed the wheels would get him to the cottage, at least.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into the lane, and drove up the track to the small cottage. According to protocol, he parked in the trees and walked to the cottage. And was greeted with a horrific scene.

He drew his Webley. The cottage was pockmarked with bullet holes, chips of sharp stone littering the ground. The windows were gone, shards of glass daggered from the corners. The door was wide open, hanging loose on its hinges.

His heart pounded fast and hard, and he pointed his Webley in front of him as he slowly pushed the door farther back and stepped into the cottage. He knew the smell of death from the battlefield, and it was rich and hot in his nostrils, as was the smell of rot, human rot.

He sent up a silent prayer that his enemies were dead, not his friends, but his prayers were not answered.

He counted quickly. Five men. All shot, all gone. But where was the sixth? He counted again. It was not his imagination. There were only five bodies. Josef Rothschild was not among the dead. Where was Josef?

He moved through the cottage, stepping over broken glass and the ruined bodies of his comrades. These brave men. Fighting for the freedom of their country, their families, themselves. Sorrow overwhelmed him, but there was a single spark of hope.

A terrible thought came to him. Clearly they’d been double-crossed, despite their many precautions. But by who? Not Josef, that was an impossibility. Josef Rothschild was the catalyst, the one who’d taken on the hardest role. Josef wouldn’t ever betray them, not the man who’d saved him from the battlefield at Verdun. He saw him clearly, the German soldier approaching him with his bayonet fixed. Instead of running him through, he’d taken one look at the crown and star on Pearce’s shoulders, knew he was facing a man of rank, and thrown down his weapon.

Without speaking, the German pulled him from the field and behind a screen of trees. Pearce couldn’t fight; he was wounded too grievously. He assumed the Kraut wanted to take his time, do the job properly and thoroughly, but instead of slitting his throat, the big German had motioned for Pearce to stay quiet while he’d expertly stanched the flow of blood from the wound in Pearce’s leg. He’d put a cigarette between his chapped lips and lit it for him, seemingly unconcerned that his hands and uniform were thickly covered with English blood. He sat back, lit his own cigarette, drew hard, blew out the smoke, and said in accented English, “We must stop this war, Colonel. Will you help me?”

It was an offer he could not refuse. And Rothschild was a man he’d trusted with his life, now many times over.

Pearce heard a noise toward the rear of the cottage, and rushed into the back bedroom. There was a small closet off the bedroom, and a trail of blood leading to the wooden door, not from.

There was a wounded man in the closet. Was it Josef? Pearce was a soldier. He knew what death looked like, in all its forms.

Still, Pearce was careful. He raised his Webley, stood to the side, and slowly opened the closet door. A shot came from the darkness. Thank all that was holy, he’d moved to the side.

Then he heard the cries of a child, soft, broken sobs.

He called quietly, “Who’s there? Don’t shoot. I mean you no harm.”

The crying abruptly stopped.

Pearce edged forward, speaking softly, gently, telling the child he would not hurt him. He finally risked a look inside, and the scene broke his heart.

Josef Rothschild’s broken body was inside the closet, in the arms of a very young boy. Josef’s gun lay on the floor by the boy’s hand.

—

PEARCE DID THE ONLY THING he could. He buried the men in the field behind the cottage, and took the boy home with him.

He knew the child’s name was Leopold. Josef had told him that night on the hill at Verdun, while they smoked and plotted the downfall of the kaiser.

It was good Josef had told him the boy’s name, for the child was deep in shock, the only witness to the murder of his father and five others, did not speak. He didn’t identify the assailants. He only stared mutely for several weeks after the incident.

News of Victoria never came. The gold, Marie’s key, and her book, were lost.

The war ended. Pearce and his wife, Cornelia, took Leo in as one of their own. He legally adopted the boy before the year was out. In a house populated by women, it was a comfort for Pearce to have a boy at last.

Leo was a quiet, studious child. He did well with his tutors, and though he still didn’t speak, he learned to read and understand English quickly, so that Pearce thought perhaps his mother, the kaiser’s private interpreter, had already started him on the language.

Pearce caught the boy watching Cornelia at times, when she was reading to the girls. His heart ached because the boy watched her with sad longing, but he never complained. A boy needed a father, yes, but he needed a mother even more.

Every so often, Pearce would sit down with Leo to speak to him of the night his father died. To find out who had come to the small cottage in the Cotswolds, who had dealt the deadly blow to the Order.

Leo began to speak, but never about that night.

A small time of peace was upon them. The gold, the key, and the notebook were lost, yes, but the threat had been silenced, and the Order began to rebuild.

Leo Pearce went from a shy boy to a handsome lad to a smart, educated, but very quiet man. In 1936, he met a young woman named Grace, who didn’t mind his silence. Within months, they were engaged to be married. In 1938, their first child came along, a boy they named Robert.

And in 1939, war came to them again. A war that clearly would outstrip the last one.

Soon after, Leopold Rothschild Pearce took tea with his adopted father. He carried a newspaper with him into the Carlton Club, sat down with his adopted father, pointed at a picture of a small dark-haired man, and said, “This is the man who killed my father.”

Astounded, Pearce took the newspaper, and saw a photograph of a man standing on a dock, the forty-point headline screaming—U-Boat Sinks America Freighter Ship. The caption named the U-boat commander as Ludwig Reimand.

Leo’s voice was soft and deep, his accent crisply British. “He was there. He was one of the three men.”