Peggy had told Daniel where she'd be, so it wasn't a surprise when a policeman came into the diner and approached the table where she and Agent Russel were sitting. "Agents?" he said. "We've traced the phone number."
"Yes?" Peggy perked up. She wouldn't be surprised to find out it led to a pay phone, but that could at least be dusted for prints.
The man handed Agent Russel a piece of note paper. "It belongs to a room above the Botticelli Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. Some of the waitresses live up there. The woman in charge of them, Mrs. Lowe, said Room Four was rented to a woman called Katherine Lake."
Agent Russel chewed faster, trying to empty his mouth so he could reply. Peggy had no such obstacles. "Did you show Mrs. Lowe the sketches?" she asked.
"That's what I was going to say," said Russel, washing down his mouthful with coffee.
"Not yet," the officer said.
"Then I'll head over there at once," Peggy decided. She stood up.
Russel nodded and held up a hand. "Waitress!" He snapped his fingers as if calling a dog. "Can I get the rest of this to go?"
"I thought you were being taken off the case," Peggy said.
"I've got a personal interest now."
"Is that a personal interest in apprehending this Miss Lake? Or a personal interest in avoiding your wife?"
"Bit of both," Russel admitted.
He probably thought Peggy would need his help with her investigation, she thought. Hopefully, he wouldn't get too much in the way.
The Botticelli Gardens was a three-storey building designed to resemble an Italian Villa. It had red roofs, decorative columns, and a pair of under-watered cypress trees flanking the ornate front doors. It was not yet noon, and these would not open until evening, so Peggy and Russel went around the side to the staff entrance. This was not meant to be seen by the public, and was accordingly built of modern brick and plaster. Peggy knocked the door.
It opened to reveal a plump, middle-aged woman of mixed racial ancestry, her frizzy dark hair only just contained in a bun at the back of her neck and a pair of cat-eye glasses perched precariously on her short nose. Peggy and Russel held up their badges.
"Ned Russel, FBI," he said.
"Peggy Carter, SSR," Peggy added. "Are you Mrs. Lowe."
The woman heaved a sigh that suggested she was quite used to dealing with law enforcement multiple times per day. "Yes, I'm Gladys Lowe," she said. "Now what?"
Peggy showed her the sketches of Miss Lake. "Do you know this woman?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Lowe, not even surprised. "That's Kay. Art hired her about a week ago but she didn't turn up for work yesterday evening. What'd she do?"
"Besides drugging me, robbing me, and leaving me locked in the trunk of my car?" asked Russel.
"Impersonating law enforcement and theft of classified information," said Peggy. "Possibly more, we're not sure yet. May we have a look at her room, please?"
Mrs. Lowe's eyebrows rose and she gave a low whistle. "She's ambitious. Most of the girls settle for picking pockets. Come in, she was room four. Are you going to impound her belongings?" she asked warily. She was probably hoping to sell them.
"That depends on what we find, Mrs. Lowe," said Peggy.
Mrs. Lowe took them upstairs. The second floor of the Botticelli Gardens was taken up by offices and private party rooms for VIP clientele, but the third was set aside as living quarters for the staff. The rooms were tiny, barely big enough for the furniture inside them, with only one bathroom and one laundry for all occupants. Mrs. Lowe unlocked number four, and Peggy followed Agent Russel inside.
It was empty.
There was a tiny bed, a small wardrobe, a smaller vanity, and a little nightstand under the one grubby little window. All the drawers and cupboards had been left open, to show that there was nothing in any of them. The bedclothes were folded at the end of the mattress, so it was easy to see that there also nothing hidden under the bed. The only thing in the room that would not have been there when Miss Lake moved in was a large brown paper bag on top of the folded sheets.
Peggy and Russel exchanged a glance, and she was glad he was at least smart enough not to immediately open it. "Mrs. Lowe," she said, "do you have any idea what might be in that bag?"
"No," the woman said.
Russel edged forward and pushed it over. It fell, and lay quietly on the mattress, showing no signs of being dangerous. Peggy realized there was something written on it. It block capitals, somebody had printed the word SORRY.
"Let me do it. I have gloves," said Peggy. She pulled them out of her purse and put them on, then very carefully unfolded the top of the paper bag. The first thing she saw inside was a leather folio – was that the one Lake had with her in Daniel's office the other day? Peggy opened it, and found it contained typed pages summarizing what was known about Dorothy Underwood. She only took a close look at the first in the pile, but the name Olga Barynova was not on it.
"That's mine," said Russel.
"I expected as much." Peggy put it on the bed and looked into the bag again. "I believe your wallet and badge are in here, too, and a gun I suspect is your service revolver. We'll have to try to get fingerprints off these."
"Agreed," Russel said. "I'll take them back to…"
"Ah-ah," Peggy interrupted. "I'll take them back to the SSR and have it done there. You've been taken off the case, remember?"
"Not officially. Not yet," he pointed out.
"But you're sure it's coming, and if so, you'll be as guilty of accessing privileged information as our mutual friend Miss Lake."
Russel looked her over. "Are you always this… intense, Ms. Carter?"
"Always," Peggy assured him, with a practiced deadpan.
Peggy called Daniel, and within half an hour the SSR had arrived in force to take a proper, more thorough look at the room. Mrs. Lowe chased them around, protesting that they would need this room when they hired Lake's replacement, and they ignored her as they covered everything in fingerprint powder and rapped on the floor, walls, and even the ceiling looking for hiding places. They found nothing, but were able to obtain a reasonably good set of latent prints from the drawers and bedposts. The size of these suggested they were a woman's, or at least belonged to somebody with small hands. There were also a couple of blonde hairs on the bedclothes.
Unfortunately, they had no suspect to compare these to. Miss Lake probably knew that perfectly well. They would have to actually capture her before they could prove anything.
While they were busy bagging the evidence, another policeman arrived, looking for Agent Russel.
"We've had a call from your office," he explained. "They want to talk to you."
"I'm surprised it took them this long," Russel sighed. "All right, I'll head over." He retrieved his hat from the hook on the back of room four's door and put it on. "Good luck with the case, Agent Carter, and with Miss Underwood."
"Thank you, Agent Russel," said Peggy, and realized she actually felt a bit sorry for him. He'd been a terrible fool, yes, but he'd never tried to deny that or pass the blame along to anybody else. He wanted to put off the consequences of his actions as long as possible, but he understood that they were inevitable. That was more than Peggy could say for a great many people she knew of either sex. It was certainly more than she could say for herself in her situation with Dottie.
"Good luck with your wife," she told him.
"Thanks. I'll need it," he replied ruefully, and left the room.
Once he was gone, Peggy checked on one more thing. She leaned over the back of a man who was checking the floor under the bed, and looked at the posts that held up the metal frame. These had been painted black to resemble wrought iron, but they were old and the colour was peeling. It was doing so evenly, though. She couldn't see any sign that any particular area had been scraped, as it might be for example by a pair of handcuffs.
Interesting.
Back in the SSR offices that evening, Peggy found an opportunity when nobody seemed to be paying attention to her, and brushed powder over the mysterious envelope. Several prints developed, and Peggy pulled out her employee file so she could eliminate her own. Quite a few of them were – but others were not, and when she examined the actual page with the numbers, she found a print of the side of a hand where it had rested while drawing the star and circles, and the heel of a thumb in the upper left corner where the other hand had steadied the page.
The prints were partial, and Peggy was not an expert – but the left thumb bore a set of four interrupted lines that looked very much like one taken from a drawer pull in Room Four.
That seemed like good evidence: the envelope had indeed been left by Miss Lake. Unfortunately, it still didn't tell Peggy why. Was this a trick? An attempt to send the SSR off on a wild goose chase so that Miss Lake could track down Dottie without their interference? Or did the Soviets actually know where Captain America was? If they did… what were they planning to do about it?
Peggy found it very difficult to sleep properly the next few nights. She would toss and turn, with the bedclothes pulling free of the mattress and her curlers coming loose in her hair, as she puzzled over the situation. What did it all mean?
Based on Lakes techniques it seemed clear enough that she had come from the same place as Dottie – a facility that trained women from childhood to be perfect, undetectable spies. Evidently it worked , since Peggy had now fallen for it twice. That being the case, Lake's mission must be to locate Dottie and… and do what? The Soviet government had already denied all knowledge of her and made it clear they didn't want her back. Dottie didn't seem to want to go back, either, most likely because she knew she'd be executed at once and nobody would shed a tear for her.
Either way, at least Dottie would no longer be the SSR's problem. That might be a good thing, were it not for the part were Soviet agents were operating on US soil, apparently at will. People like Masters, and now Governor Strieber in Nevada with the mob breathing down his neck, already thought the SSR was unnecessary in peacetime, or even actively doing more harm than good. Capturing Dottie would be a way to demonstrate that they weren't useless and could correct their mistakes. But to capture Dottie they might first have to capture Lake.
At least if she were another of the Russian girls, then Peggy had some idea of what kinds of tricks she might employ – but could Peggy even really be sure of that ? She hadn't doubted it until she'd seen the bed with no signs of handcuffs. If Lake hadn't come from the USSR, though, that meant somebody else was up to similar shenanigans. Or could it be as simple as the Soviets realizing Peggy was on to this peculiarity, and had ordered the women to stop?
It was enough to make her want to bury her face in the pillow and scream – and then, apparently just because all that wasn't enough of a bloody headache, there were the damnable numbers.
What else could they be, if not the location of the Valkyrie ? There wasn't much else up in that part of Canada besides the occasional polar bear. The most obvious explanation was that it was some kind of trick or trap, a distraction, a piece of psychological torture – which it definitely was – but what if? If the Russians did know where Steve's body was, had they already retrieved it? During the war other countries had certainly been working on their own super-soldiers. The Geneva Convention had condemned such experiments as inhuman, but that wasn't enough to stop some people.
Peggy was going to need a strong cup of tea in the morning if she were going to be good for anything.
How had she been so stupid? The FBI didn't employ female agents – Lake posing as one had merely played to Peggy's sympathies, and she'd known the woman was an actress from the moment she'd walked in. She'd been doing MacBeth right there in the front foyer! When Daniel had told her Striber had called in the FBI, Peggy should have asked for the agent's full name there and then, but she'd been too annoyed. If she'd only known to expect Nedrick instead of Nadine, she could have arrested the woman at once!
Why had Lake given Peggy the telephone number for a place she actually lived at? Had she really expected Peggy to get in touch with her? Was Peggy supposed to have found the envelope and rung her hours earlier?
Not that it mattered now . By now Lake was surely long-gone. If she knew they'd found the real Agent Russel, she'd probably fled the country at once. The only way they would ever find her now was an incredible stroke of luck, and Peggy knew better than to hope for that.
But two days after searching Lake's apartment, Peggy got exactly that.
She walked into the office and put her purse on her desk, and Agent Sato immediately stood up. "Carter!" he said to her. "The Chief wants to see you in his office."
"Brilliant," Peggy muttered under her breath. "Absolutely tremendous." What more could be added to this palaver? But out loud she only said, "thank you, Agent Sato, I'll be right there."
She put her briefcase down beside her purse, and went and knocked on Daniel's door.
At this point Peggy would have thought nothing could surprise her anymore, but it was genuine shock when Daniel answered with a smile on his face. "Good news, Peg!" he said.
"What? Really?" she asked.
"We have a sighting!" He let her in. "I got a call from the New York office. A man saw the poster of Miss Lake and recognized it. He says she was a stewardess on his flight from Chicago yesterday."
It sounded far too good to be true, but Peggy was damned if she wouldn't take it. "From Chicago to where?"
"New York City," Daniel said.
Peggy paused. "Does that mean Dottie's in New York?"
"That's what Thompson thinks. He's asked for you."
That was another surprise. "Thompson asked for me ?" Peggy said, not sure she'd heard right. Jack Thompson considered Peggy a humiliation waiting to happen. Whenever he thought he was onto something big, his first reaction was to push her out of the way so she couldn't get involved. That was how she'd ended up in Los Angeles in the first place, and she doubted anybody had ever been happier to sign transfer papers than he. Now he wanted her help?
"He said to tell you that you're the expert on these Russian girls. Also that he's still sore, and his wife doesn't think he should be back to work at all yet," said Daniel. "What he told me is that we know Miss Underwood considers you a personal rival, and…"
"And he wants to use me as bait," Peggy finished for him. Now that sounded more like Thompson. "Be sure to tell him he can call upon my expertise anytime. Do you have my ticket?"
"It's waiting for you at the airport," Daniel told her.
"I'll pack a bag and be on my way," she promised.
Daniel nodded, but as she turned to leave, he reached out and caught her arm. "When I came in today, I was thinking it had been a while since we had a date, and with all that's going on it, it might help us both relax."
"I'll take a rain check," Peggy promised, and kissed him quickly before hurrying out. In the door, however, she stopped again. "Has anybody heard from Agent Russel?"
"No," said Daniel. "We assumed he'd been taken off the case."
"So did he," Peggy replied.
It had only been a couple of weeks since Peggy's formal transfer to the West Coast had gone through. She certainly hadn't expected to be heading back to New York so soon after finally clearing her things out of Howard's house. Angie would be happy to see her, and perhaps they'd be able to have lunch together…
But mostly what consumed her thoughts as the propellers roared into takeoff mode was the question of why Lake would have gone to New York.
Of course, the fact that she'd been on that particular flight didn't necessarily mean that was her destination. She could have been on her way to Canada, or Europe, or just about anywhere else except Australia, really. Thompson clearly believed she'd gone to New York to find Dottie, but if he were wrong, they might find themselves at another dead end.
Was there another reason for Lake to go to New York? What was there that the Soviets might be interested in, besides the SSR itself?
The answer came to her, and she sat up straight. "Fenhoff!"
The man in the seat next to her, who'd been snoozing with a newspaper over his head, twitched. "Gesundheit," he muttered, before settling down again.
Of course , Peggy thought. Fenhoff was the one who'd hired Dottie under false pretenses. He was a major part of the reason the SSR even knew these Russian women were operatives. He'd done irreparable harm to their national security for the sake of a personal grudge. It was supposed to be a secret where he was in prison, but that didn't mean it actually was: he was in Sing Sing, just up the Hudson River from New York City. If anything, the Soviets had even more reason to want him dead than they did Dottie. They would never have lost control of her if it weren't for him.
She checked her watch. Still over an hour until their next landing.
The layover in Albuquerque was brief, but she did just barely have time to find a pay phone and pass her theory on to Daniel. He promised to tell Thompson, and Peggy got back on the plane feeling much less antsy. Not that she felt any great love for Fenhoff himself, but the government wanted to keep him alive and pick his brain, and if it helped her catch Lake and Dottie well… maybe Thompson had the right idea. Bait.
When the plane finally landed in New York, there was an SSR car waiting on the tarmac for her. Peggy tossed her suitcase in the boot and climbed in – Thompson was in the back seat. Peggy took the place next to him and said, "Fenhoff."
"Sousa already called me," Thompson said. "We're arranging to beef up security around him but we're not gonna make a show of it. We don't want to tip this woman off."
Peggy nodded – it was nice to be taken seriously, although it made her wonder whether Daniel had mentioned it was her idea. As the car pulled away, she couldn't resist a dig. "Well, Miss Underwood may not be in town, but it's lucky I'm still the expert."
"You can think like they do," said Thompson, as if agreeing with her. "That's what we need right now."
Thompson had never been shy about his belief that women were basically illogical creatures. He would never even try to get into one's head. "You mean I'm… underhanded and duplicitous?" Peggy asked innocently.
"You've fooled all of us more than once," Thompson pointed out.
He did have a point there. Peggy decided to consider it a compliment. "How's your war wound?" she asked, referring to the incident a month ago when he'd been shot in a hotel room and robbed of unspecified documents.
Thompson grimaced. "Sally's still treating me like an invalid. She thinks they would be a great time for me to get a regular office job."
"I hope you told her the SSR would be lost without you," said Peggy.
He gave her a sideways look. "Was that sarcasm, Carter?"
"Of course not!" Peggy changed the subject. "I assume somebody has already called and checked on Fenhoff?"
"According to the officials at Sing Sing he's still in his cell and very much alive," Thompson confirmed. "We also interviewed some of the other passengers and crew from the flight."
"And?"
"They all agree that the sketch from Russel's description looks like the stewardess. The pilot told me one of the girls who was supposed to be working the flight got a call from the police in her hometown to say her husband had been arrested, so this other lady took her shift. None of them had ever seen her before but they didn't care as long as she did the job."
"None of them will ever see her again, either, I'm sure," Peggy said. "Any sightings of Dottie?"
"None that we know of?"
"I see." So unless she really were on her way somewhere else, Fenhoff was the only reason Peggy knew of for Lake to be in New York. The next few nights were going to be a series of long, tired, boring stake-outs, but it wasn't as if Peggy had been sleeping anyway.
Once she was settled into her hotel room, Peggy made a couple more telephone calls. One was to Angie, to let her know she was in town and the two of them could get together and catch up once she knew her schedule better. Then she did her best to catch a few hours of sleep, knowing full well she'd be up the entire night.
This went better than she'd expected. Rather than rolling around squirming as she thought of missed opportunities, Peggy nodded off quickly. She woke groggy, but at least she'd had some rest. It must be because she felt as if they were getting somewhere, she decided as she brushed her teeth. The idea that Lake would be after Fenhoff was only a theory at this point, but it was a good theory, one that allowed her to do something. She combed her hair and got dressed, in practical trousers with her holster under her jacket, and met the car that would be taking her up to Sing Sing.
"You owe me one, Marge," said Thompson, as Peggy climbed in with him. "The prison's only got a few girls working there, mostly nurses and laundry, but they've sent them all home until further notice so this Lake can't slip in among them. They didn't even want you there but I convinced them we needed you."
"I'll remember that," Peggy promised.
"We'll have men at all the exits," Thompson went on, "but I'm gonna put you right next to Fenhoff's cell. Should be no way she can get that far."
"Indeed." But if she did, Peggy thought, Miss Lake was going to find herself with quite a bit of explaining to do. Hopefully before Peggy turned her over to the men, she could get an opportunity to ask about those bloody numbers.
As the sun went down, Peggy found herself with two men, standing outside the cell containing Johann Fenhoff.
He looked very different from the harmless and put-upon little man they'd pulled out of Russia a year and a half ago. Part of it was that he'd been eating better and had put on weight, but the way he carried himself had also changed. Peggy had taught how to read people, and 'Victor Ivchenko' had the body language of somebody resigned to whatever life decided to throw at him next.
Events since then had shaken Peggy's confidence in her ability to judge character, but it was still a very different man who now sat before her in the cell. Even with a muzzle on so he couldn't try to sweet-talk his keepers, he sat rigidly upright with his chin held eye, glaring at her through eyelids half-closed, like a cat biding its time.
"I don't suppose anybody's told you why we're here," said Peggy.
Fenhoff could have nodded, shrugged, or shaken his head. His hands were free to gesture. But he chose to give no sign he'd heard her at all.
"We are here, Dr. Fenhoff, to save your life," she told him. "Apparently the Soviets have decided you're enough of a liability to eliminate." She held up the drawing of Miss Lake. "Do you know this woman?"
He continued to sit there, just watching her.
Peggy put the picture away. "Your lack of cooperation will not earn kind treatment from your jailers," she pointed out.
Fenhoff evidently did not care.
Peggy turned away from him. If she could read body language, she could also write it – and she wanted to let him know that if he weren't willing to help, she was not at all interested in him.
"You really thought he was going to tell you something?" one of the men asked.
"One never knows," said Peggy. "He might have thought he could get something out of it. I see he agrees with me, though – he deserves no better than this."
With that, the watch began.
There was one small window in Fenhoff's cell, through which Peggy could see the sky slowly darken to indigo. Shortly after, the floodlights outside came on, pouring in to fill the edges of the room with coal-black shadows. The prisoners were supposed to be asleep now, but Fenhoff stayed sitting up in bed, turned towards his guardians. With his face in shadow, Peggy couldn't tell if his eyes were open. They needn't be. She knew from experience that anyone who'd lived through a war could sleep sitting up.
One of the men watching with Peggy dealt a hand of Spades, and they sat down to play by the shaft of light through Fenhoff's little window. Time crawled by.
Sing Sing prison was a surprisingly loud place at night. There were the sounds of the guards patrolling, with their heavy boots and their dogs, and boats chugging by on the river outside. Prisoners would make noise, and guards would bang on the bars of their cells to shush them. Somewhere a cat screamed in heat. By day, the sounds would not have bothered Peggy at all. In the darkness, expecting an assassination, they set her on edge. If her ears could have swiveled like a deer's to take in the direction each one came from, they would have. She felt as if they were trying.
Her attention was repeatedly drawn back to the window. It was too high off the ground to see when the guards and dogs walked by, but with the light shining directly in from outside, anyone who tried to use it as an access point would cast a shadow directly across their game of Spates. It was thick glass on the outside and bars on the inside, too close together for any human being to slip through… but it was still an access point directly from outside. If not for the glass, the muzzle of a gun could fit through easily.
A dog barked not far away. Peggy heard footsteps, but they they stopped, so after a moment more of careful listening, she returned her attention to the game. Fenhoff was still sitting up on his bed, and Peggy suddenly wondered if she'd missed something. Was he already dead?
"Dr. Fenhoff!" she called out.
He started and raised his head.
"Sorry," she said. "I just wanted to be sure you were still alive."
He sullenly resumed his former position.
That was when Peggy heard a small noise – a sort of pop, like a piston firing – followed by a soft groan and the heavy sound of something soft falling to the concrete floor. Electricity seemed to run up her spine. She jumped to her feet, scattering the cards. "Dr. Fenhoff!" she repeated.
Fenhoff stood up and looked around, very much alive. Peggy could see that his eyes were wide, frightened. He pointed at the cell on the right.
Peggy dashed over to look. In the neighbouring cell there was a shape on the floor, a mass of limbs and bedclothes that had rolled off the cot. In the light from the window, a dark stain was seeping into the blanket. For a moment Peggy almost laughed out loud. Had Fenhoff really been saved because their Soviet assassin got the wrong room?
A man was still injured, though. "Get a doctor in there at once," Peggy told the men, "and sound the alarm!" She didn't wait around to let them argue with for, but ran at once for the nearest exit. They were on the river side. The assassin must have come in by boat, and was probably planning to leave the same way. Maybe there was time to stop her.
Outside the lawns were awashe with the brilliant white of the metal halide lamps. Beyond Westerley Road was the gravel bank that ran down to the river. No boat was visible there, and as Peggy stepped onto the grass, she heard the alarms go off. Guards who'd been idly having a smoke suddenly leaped to attention. Dogs began to bark right and left, and the buildings lit up one by one. Whoever had been here now knew they were caught. How were they planning to get away if not by the river? Or was Miss Lake intending to swim?
You think like them , Thompson had said. What would Peggy do in this situation, with people alerted to her presence so she couldn't make the getaway she'd originally planned?
She would steal a car.
Peggy made a mental note to be annoyed with Thompson later for being right, and ran towards the car park. There were an unusual number of vehicles there for this time of night, since there were the SSR agents as well as the normal guards and employees. Sure enough, a set of headlights flickered to life, and engine roared.
With no better ideas for the moment, Peggy threw herself onto the bonnet as the burgundy Ford sedan backed out of its parking space.
The driver immediately stamped on the brake, but had not been going fast enough for this to dislodge Peggy. She held on and turned herself to see who was in the driver's seat. The figure was small enough to be a woman, with her hair tucked under a black knitted cap and her face smeared with charcoal so her fair skin wouldn't stand out against the darkness. She looked astonished to find Peggy on her hood.
Peggy was not astonished at all. Her emotions were, frankly, triumphant.
"Katherine Lake," she declared, "you are under arrest!"