The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(19)

The cat blinked a few times, as if to say, Cat? Woman, you denigrate me. Then he tucked into the stew, eating ravenously.

“Well, I don’t know your name.” She crouched down to address him. There was only the sound of the cat lapping at the food in his bowl. He was obviously going to leave this up to her. “Schrödinger, perhaps? Things were rather touch and go there for a bit with the vet.”

He raised his head to glare at her before returning to his breakfast.

“Not Schrödinger,” she decided, “as you are very much alive and not in a state of quantum flux anymore. And so, your name henceforth shall be—Kitty.”

The cat flicked his tail in annoyance. No, not Kitty either, apparently.

“Well then, what is your name, Jellicle cat? Macavity the Mystery Cat? The Hidden Paw, perhaps?”

The cat left his food bowl and stalked over to Maggie. He rose up onto his haunches, putting one paw on either side of her neck. He looked into her eyes and touched his pink nose to hers. “All right, all right,” she relented. “I’ll call you K. How’s that? K for Kitty. K will be your secret-agent name—after all, you’re at a spy training camp. And Mr. K for the veterinarian and on Sundays, when more formality is needed.”

Satisfied, K gave another “Meh,” then dropped down to the floor and began to groom himself.

“Well, glad that’s settled,” Maggie said, getting up to wash and dress. Then she had her tea and a bannock that she’d saved. K was prowling by the door, keen to be let out. “I thought you were an indoor cat?”

K took a running leap at the doorknob, grabbing it with his front paw, and with the skill of an Olympic gymnast managed to fling his small body round the knob. A moment later he had opened the door by himself. “Meh!” he cried in triumph.

“Well, I suppose if you’re smart enough to open the door, you’re smart enough to look after yourself outside, aren’t you?” Maggie reached for her coat and hat.

K paused at the doorway. He touched one paw to the stair landing, then drew it back, as if stung. “Meh,” he complained. The stone was cold and damp, like all of Scotland in November. “Meeeeeeeeeeh!”

“Sorry, I know I may seem all-powerful, but I can’t heat the outdoors for you. In or out, then?”

Hesitating only briefly, K chose out, picking his way over the chill lichen-spotted flagstones of the walk.


Maggie had a self-defense class to teach at nine on the main house’s grass badminton lawn, just past the walled formal garden. Even though it was November in Scotland, the warmer Gulf Stream currents kept the weather in Arisaig more temperate. So the grass was a vivid shade of green and relatively soft to land on, if cold and wet. The sky above turned from darkness to a heavy gray, and the wind whipped about them.

The class was taught by a young American man of Japanese descent, Satoshi Nagoka, who specialized in jujitsu. Maggie had taken his classes, twice, and was on her way to becoming an expert. She was now considered proficient enough to teach the France-bound group while the sensei was off for a special session with the Czech and Slovak trainees.

Arisaig was no-man’s-land during the war, international, without a class system, with women training alongside men. It wasn’t Scotland per se anymore, because it had been taken over by the military, and was “out of bounds” to all locals and civilian travelers. To obtain entrance, one had to show special identification. The instructors and staff of Arisaig and the various houses co-opted by the military for training weren’t necessarily Scottish; like Maggie and Satoshi, they came from the four corners of the earth.

The families who owned the houses had been found lodging elsewhere, and the “stately ’omes” had been taken over by the military—mostly English men of the upper class and a certain age, although there were certainly a number of men in the “thieving” class as well, who provided instruction in lock picking, jumping off moving trains, and other activities considered unsavory in peacetime.

It was a respite from England’s usual creaky and claustrophobic class- and gender-bound society—a bizarre democracy of the brave, resourceful, and perhaps slightly suicidal, where a Glaswegian arsonist might train next to a Duke’s daughter. But the truth was, at a certain point in the training, especially the intensely physical paramilitary training they did in Scotland, they all started to look alike: hollow-eyed, damp, shivering in their uniforms, and miserable. By this point in their journey, they had thin, athletic bodies with ropy muscles, yet their faces were often still round and quick to smile or laugh. While Maggie didn’t resent their easy camaraderie and banter, she felt a bit lonely to be left out of it; she’d been the same way with her group, a long, long time ago.