The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,37

weren’t, and now you work for the War Office, or maybe you’re a free-lance spy. What are you, exactly? What does it mean for you? If I’m helping you, who else am I helping?”

“Is that the most important thing to you?”

Far from it, but it was a truth he thought he could get, which would be a start. “You keep lying to me about it, so it probably matters. I want you to trust me with this.”

“I do trust you.”

“You’ve a funny way of showing it.”

“Too true.” Kim turned the cup in his hands, round and back. “Ugh. In confidence, Will. Not to insult you, but it has to be said.”

“Understood.”

“All right, then. You may know that there’s a patchwork of what are flatteringly called intelligence agencies—Special Branch, SIS, the Private Bureau, and so on—which were set up by various people before the war on a more or less amateurish basis. Most of them are now being swallowed up into either Military Intelligence or the police force; some remain as independent operators of sorts. I work for the Private Bureau, which as the name suggests is a relic of the Edwardian era, and which has carved out a very specific niche dealing with problems that need brushing under the carpet. If the powers that be want a problem solved without such tiresome trivia as written records or court cases, if they don’t want official fingerprints on the scene of the crime or it’s important that a minister should be able to swear he never gave any such order, they come to the Private Bureau. Whereupon someone like me will slither around doing things that couldn’t possibly be countenanced by those paid to uphold the law—entrapping innocent bookshop owners, and so on. Making sure things don’t come to light.”

“Cover-ups?”

Kim shrugged. “The well-connected are protected, that goes without saying, but there are other issues. We deal with a fair few cases of extortion.” He waved a hand, indicating the bed they shared. “One might be disinclined to report a blackmailer to the police for fear of consequences, whereas the Private Bureau has no compulsion to punish the victims.”

“What about the perpetrators?”

“Consequences happen,” Kim said. “Sometimes officially, sometimes not. Jobs are lost. Bank accounts are emptied. Words are dropped in ears, and decisions are made to leave the country and start a new life in South America. The passive voice does a lot of work in my line.”

Will frowned. “It sounds a bit dodgy.”

“It is; that’s the point. The Bureau offers a certain amount of leeway. I don’t know if it’s a good or useful thing for society in general, but it’s certainly handy if—for example—one has made a miserable hash of one’s life. And if you don’t mind owing the chief a favour, up to and including your soul.”

Will examined his face, the little lines at the corner of his eyes. “That seems a bit of a leap from being a paid-up Bolshevik.”

Kim didn’t reply for so long that Will began to think he wouldn’t. At last he said, “I really did believe in it, you know.”

“You don’t seem the fanatic sort.”

“Fanatic, idealist.” Kim waved a hand. “I thought there was a better way for everyone. I believed—still do—that the war was nothing but empires squabbling for resources, with the blood of millions used to keep the engine running. I refused to be involved in mass murder, and tried my hardest to be gaoled as a conscientious objector, though my father put paid to that. I sincerely cheered the Revolution in 1917 and looked forward to the British equivalent. And then reports started coming in of the bloodbath.”

“You thought it would be a bloodless revolution? Because you don’t get many of them.”

“I know. But the fact of children lined up and shot—I told myself the aristocracy had brought it on themselves, that they had sowed the wind and were reaping the whirlwind, but by 1919 and the atrocities of the civil war, I couldn’t hide behind that any more. I couldn’t persuade myself mass slaughter was the beginning of a fairer society; I could only think of how the French had guillotined their king and created a vacancy for an emperor.”

Well, yes, Will thought. Obviously whoever came out on top of any society would be a power-hungry arsehole: that was how the world worked. “You really were an idealist,” he said aloud.

“Is that so surprising?”

It was, considering his grimy goings-on these days. Or maybe it wasn’t; maybe spoiled innocence tarnished faster than