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"Why won’t you just send them?"

"If Charlotte had written you every day for months, Jamie, can you honestly tell me you’d forward theht?"

"Of course I would" Of course I wouldn’t But there wasn’t ti in the distance "Look, I have to go"

"You need to promise me that you won’t look for Leander yourself He’s created a co it up Proer He just didn’t wantLeander’s cover It was nice to know that, as usual, he had his priorities straight

"I pro a word "How about that?"

"We’re at the airport, miss," the driver called, and beside hter at her phone

I found you a guide, the screen read But I’m afraid neither of you will approve

"No" Because I was now re exactly orked for Milo Hols that I’d heard on a dark Brixton street fro curb-sto on?"

I hung up I couldn’t stop staring at Holoddae, will you? He’s blistering my poor wiretapper’s ears

DESPITE BEING SHUTTLED BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN ENGLAND and America for most of my remembered life--or maybe because of it--I’d never traveled all that much otherwise Our fa up in Connecticut meant that I’d made the one mandatory trip down to New York City with my family, but in our case, we ate in chain restaurants and saw a Broadway show about rollerblading tigers (For that, as for s, I blame my father) After I moved to London, I went on vacation exactly once: my mother rented a camper van and took me and my sister to Abbey Wood It was in the south of the city, barely a mile from our house It rained all four days ere there My sister and I had to share a fold-out bed, and I woke up on that lastwith her elbow physically inside ofto Berlin with Charlotte Holhborhood in the northeast of the city Milo had begun it as a tech co in surveillance; he expanded his operations when it becas humans couldn’t do All I kneas that his employees--his soldiers and spies--were the round in Iraq, and that once, Milo had ordered his personal bodyguards to frisk everyone at Holh this, and h I knew the bulk of it already I wasn’t sure if she’d assu on because she was nervous She had good reason to be In the next ten minutes, we’d be face-to-face with so fun and creative ways to have us killed, someone who’d faked his own death to escape that family (and prison), someone Charlotte Holmes had loved so much, she’d tried to have iust Moriarty had a PhD in puresht hi stolen paintings Who else would Milo possibly tap to guide us through the city?

I wanted my ax back Or Milo’s head on a pike

The city was bare of snow and warmer than London, and I realized I didn’t really know a lot about where ere Anything I did know about Berlin was rooted in world history textbooks and movies about the Second World War I knew about the Nazis, and I knew that Gere had compound words for emotions I didn’t know had names My mother liked to refer to schadenfreude, joy at the hed at the traffic report on the radio Who would be silly enough to own a car in London, she’d say We took the tube like proper Londoners, or like what she thought proper Londoners should be

The Berlin I sa resall seerocery store we passed had the façade of an old allery, the old Deutsche Bundespost sign faded above athat displayed sculptures ofears I spotted a painted la on the brick wall behind a real one Everywhere there was art, on the buildings, on the billboards, creeping down the brick walls onto the streets in murals that read KILL CAPITALISM and BELIEVE EVERYTHING and KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN The words were all in English--lingua franca, I guessed, though I reré artists, drawn by the cheap rent and the coraffiti had been covered up It was like the city was made of it, this twinned transformation and discontent, and the storefronts that stood new and clean began to look unfinished, soh it wasn’t all like that, especially as we approached Mitte The car took us by park after park, postage-stahborhoods, and as we approached Greystone, we passed grand old beautiful ardens hid behind

I pulled out my notebook to write it all down Beside ine she was taking any of it in She’d been there before And anyway, if I were her, I’d be deciding what I could possibly say to August Moriarty