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But he hadn't been able to get through on the holotube. Transatlantic connections were notoriously temperamental, and he knew it was likely the terminal would be working again in the morning. He didn't trust anyone else with such potentially explosive information, and he knew that any calls home through an unsecure line risked being overheard. So he had returned to his apartment where he had waited, barely able to sleep, and had returned to the embassy early that morning to make the call.
    But something had happened during the night. Somehow, someone had found him out. He'd been turned away at the embassy door, and the pleading look in the eye of the concierge told him everything he needed to know.
    Rutherford wondered if perhaps he'd been followed to the embassy the previous day. He'd taken every precaution—heading home first, then changing and going out into town, taking in a show, visiting a speakeasy, then drifting past the embassy first before using the rear entrance when he knew the coast was clear. He wondered if perhaps he'd missed something crucial. Or perhaps someone had found his room in Greenwich Village, the little bolt-hole in a run-down apartment block where he stashed any evidence as to his real identity. That was where he kept all of his equipment, the tools of his trade.
    He knew they'd searched his apartment on numerous occasions, but the place was clean—they could have found nothing incriminating there, nothing to even suggest he was an Englishman from Crawley rather than a young and wealthy Bostonian with an interest in local politics.
    Regardless, it was too risky to visit either location now. So he was left wearing the clothes he stood up in, carrying only the items he had in his pockets. Luckily, experience meant he was rarely unprepared, and he had stitched a handful of useful items into the lining of his coat—a stash of dollar bills, a penknife, an American passport, a lock pick, and the address of a safe house in Brooklyn.
    Brooklyn was no good to him, though. Yes, he'd probably be safe there, perhaps even long enough for the whole thing to blow over and for him to make good his escape. But by then it would be too late. By then war would have been declared, and half of Great Britain would already be lost.
    Air travel was the only way. A steam liner would simply take too long. He needed a berth on a transatlantic airship. And he needed to call ahead. That was his priority. Get his warning to the people who could make a difference. Get help.
    If he couldn't get into the embassy—and he knew, now, that his enemies would be watching the embassy like hawks—his only other option was to head back to his room in Greenwich Village. He had a secure line there, for use in the direst emergencies. He knew it was a terrible risk and that it went against everything he'd ever been taught, all the experience he had from his years in the service. The safest thing for him to do was run.
    Yet running wasn't an option. There were bigger things at stake than Rutherford's own safety. He only hoped that he was wrong, that his cover hadn't been entirely blown. All he needed was ten minutes alone in the room, and then he could focus on getting out of the country alive.
    Bracing himself against the chill, Rutherford got to his feet. The walk downtown would do him good, stir some blood in his veins. He turned his collar up against the light drizzle and set off for the Village, alert for anyone who might be following behind him.
    The dingy, run-down apartment block was not at all the sort of place where anyone would expect a foreign spy to set up his bolt-hole. Rutherford knew that, back home, most people's idea of the secret service was swanky dinners in posh restaurants, Monte Carlo and fast living. They thought the danger was romantic, exciting, sophisticated. He knew better. There was nothing glamorous about poking around in other people's filth, in murdering people in alleyways and trying to scrub away the