“Well, our loss is their gain, I suppose,” he said, rising to his feet to shake her hand. “Need some Hope in their offices, too, what?” He chuckled, then turned back to his papers. “It’s all right to take some time off, but don’t keep Frain waiting. He’s a brilliant man, but not what you’d call patient.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, standing before him. “Thank you, sir. For everything.” She turned and walked to the door.
As she reached it, he spoke again. “Just remember, Miss Hope,” he said, stabbing the air with his cigar for emphasis, “kicking! Kicking, I say!”
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears as she turned to respond one last time. “Yes, sir. Kicking, sir.”
Maggie got into David’s car and closed the door with a resounding thud. They looked at each other and smiled, then he put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic to drive Maggie to his—and now hers and the girls’—new home in Kensington.
“Would you mind driving by Saint Paul’s first?” Maggie asked.
Above the city, the great dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral soared. The church, in its different incarnations, had been ransacked by Vikings, struck by lightning, defaced during the British Civil War, and nearly destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It had been rebuilt by Christopher Wren only to be bombed by Nazis from the air and nearly brought down by a bomb planted inside. And yet here it still stood.
The warm autumn evening had drawn a crowd beneath the stern gaze of the statue of Queen Anne. She looked down from her pedestal, adorned with her golden crown, scepter, and orb, a fat gray pigeon perched on top of her head.
Below her, the crowd milled, men and women in khaki, dark blue, and gray uniforms, and women in jewel-toned colored dresses, looking like exotic birds amid foliage. A group of laughing RAF pilots on leave posed arm in arm for a photograph, which a young woman in a red-flowered hat looked delighted to take. The lemony sunlight slanted across the square, and an older woman sitting on the steps, wrapped in a long fringed shawl, fed pigeons crumbs from a bag of bread.
A man in an old mackintosh pulled the brim of his hat down as the car passed. Maggie knew that while Murphy was dead, there could be any number of secret agents mixed in among the crowd. She’d almost gotten used to the fact that she still saw Murphy everywhere, including in her nightmares. She gave a barely perceptible shudder.
“Are you all right?” David asked.
It was strange to imagine a world where men like Malcolm Pierce and Michael Murphy still plotted in the darkness. For that matter, a world where she had a father. One where someone like Paige could have led a double life. Where Sarah almost died. And where bombs still rained down from the sky on any given night …
“You all right?” David repeated.
Maggie rolled down the window and felt the warm air on her face.
She wasn’t happy, exactly; she was still too raw for that. But she was satisfied. Satisfied and relieved, too, with maybe just a bit of joy thrown in for good measure. Yes, that was it. She’d made it through so much already. She knew now that she was strong. She’d survive. And she had friends and family to support her.
“Fine, David.” She smiled at him. “Better than fine.”
The sun was setting with a brilliant flare of scarlet, gold, and azure. Maggie lifted her face to catch the warmth of the last rays shining from behind the dome, glad to be alive, glad to be just where she was, with the wind on her face.