We’re on our own for now, just a little longer, okay?”

Cook slid down the wall and sat in the snow. King crossed the alley and knelt next to him, laying the Thompson down.

“I’m shot, Frank. It hurts.”

“I know; you’ve told me. Lean forward and let me look again.”

Cook rolled forward slightly. King reached around and ran his hand across the younger man’s back. Cook stiffened when King found the wound, then lifted his hand to check for blood.

“Is it bad?”

“It can’t be that bad; you’ve run half a mile. Just keep going a little farther and then I can fix you up. It might be just a graze.”

“It stings like crazy, really bad, and I’m cold.” Cook’s voice sounded weak, and for a moment King thought he was going to cry.

“Of course you’re cold, it’s below freezing out here.”

Cook shook his head. “I’m scared.”

“You really aren’t cut out for this sort of thing, are you?” King rested his hand on Cook’s shoulder and looked back out to the street. “Wait here. I’ll get us transport and come back for you.” King stood up and walked back to the head of the alleyway. He looked left and right and then back at Cook. “I won’t be long. Stay here. Keep hold of the Thompson just in case.”

“I’ll come . . .” Cook stopped. King was already gone, head down, into the night.

Cook shifted in the snow. His coat was damp and he was regretting sitting down. He tried to push himself to one side, so that he could get up to his knees, but the pain in his back caused him to give up and sink back down the wall.

He closed his eyes.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Frank had told him it would be easy: “A simple job for Dulles. We do this and we’ll be made for life, part of the new security ser­vice they’ve set up to keep an eye on the Nazis back in Washington.”

Eric Cook didn’t feel made for life right now. He just felt scared.

Scared of dying, scared of being alone, scared of the bullet wound in his back, and scared of being caught.

King was right; he wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. He was a clerk, an intellectual, working his way up the diplomatic ser­vice and happy with his life.

Sort of.

Sure, he didn’t like Ambassador Kennedy and President Lindbergh’s policy of working with the Germans, but he could have lived with it. He had his career to think of. He’d read the interviews with Churchill in the papers, demanding weapons, money, and action against the Nazis. He read them all, and while he quite liked Churchill as a guy, he also quite liked Hitler.

At least Hitler had seen off Stalin—­communism was as good as dead thanks to him. Cook doubted whether Churchill would have done that. He guessed Churchill would have run to Uncle Joe for help just the same as he had run to Uncle Sam.

Plus Churchill was happy for his own ­people to die. He was always being asked in the press to condemn the bombs that went off all over Britain, especially straight after the invasion, and not once had he done so.

No, Churchill was the kind of guy you’d go for a beer with; Hitler was the kind of guy who owned the bar.

Hitler was the winner, and the USA liked winners, so the USA liked Hitler.

Eric had been excited to get Great Britain as his first posting overseas. It had seemed glamorous until he got here and saw the fog, the queues, the checkpoints, and the squads of soldiers lining ­people up against walls with their hands on their heads.

One night in a restaurant, four of the English fascist Home Defense Troops had dragged a guy out, just like that. One minute the guy was drinking soup, the next minute he was on the floor being pulled by his hair to the door.

The strangest part of it was the way the band just started playing again when he was gone, as if it had never happened, as if he’d never been there, as if the whole thing were a dream.

That was when Eric decided that he wanted to go home.

He’d found himself staying in the embassy more and more of a night, instead of getting the tube back to his flat.