The Iscariot Sanction Read Free Page A

large and empty for her, wringing her hands with worry for her only daughter. She had urged Lillian not to go; not right away at least. But her pleas had fallen on deaf ears. Lillian was her father’s daughter, and duty always came before… before anything, really.
    Lillian finally emerged onto the landing. She wore a severe black uniform, which replaced the crimson party gown she had been so reluctant to wear. Dora hated the way her daughter dressed for her work—hated the fact that she had to do such work at all—but there was no point in arguing the point again. Instead she steeled herself for the goodbyes, and watched resignedly as her beautiful girl descended the stairs. Dora pretended not to notice that Lillian scarcely looked her in the eye. When she stepped into the hall, Dora instinctively fussed over her daughter’s hair, trying to push a loose, dark brown ringlet back beneath her hat. Lillian, just as instinctively, leaned away. Dora wondered, as she often did, when exactly Lillian had stopped being her carefree little girl. Looking at the agent before her, bedecked in a fitted black dress and stern coatee, Mrs. Hardwick wondered if her daughter had ever been the way she remembered at all.
    ‘Will you not at least say a proper goodbye to our guests?’ Dora asked, trying once more to delay her daughter’s departure, on this day of all days. ‘Savill has come all the way from Kedleston, after all.’
    ‘Mama,’ replied Lillian, firmly, ‘there is not one of our guests who would approve of my occupation, nor even of my attire. I will ask you to say my goodbyes for me, and to apologise for me if you desire. And as for Savill, if we were ever to be a match, do you think it would really work? Could he be husband to an agent of the Crown?’
    ‘Perhaps he would not have to be, dearest, if…’
    ‘If I settled down, had his children, and gave up this foolishness?’ Lillian’s hazel eyes flashed for an instant. Dora knew that Lillian found her match-making and fussing tiresome, but what else could she do when her only daughter seemed intent on following her father and brother into danger? ‘We’ve had this conversation before, Mother,’ Lillian said, somewhat more gently, ‘and we both know how it ends. Now, I have received a summons that I cannot ignore—won’t you wish me luck?’
    Dora Hardwick’s shoulders sagged, once more defeated by her daughter’s stubbornness. ‘Of course. Lillian, I do worry so… please be careful.’
    ‘I will, Mama,’ Lillian replied, stooping to kiss her mother’s cheek. As she did so, Dora whispered one last request into her daughter’s ear:
    ‘Do not follow Sir Arthur blindly. Please… he is a dangerous man.’
    Lillian straightened. A confident smile played upon her lips, accompanied by the almost haughty expression that she had used since childhood to shield herself from the judgement of others. Yet to her mother, the façade was betrayed by the sad look in her eyes.
    ‘I’m a dangerous woman, Mama,’ she replied.
    * * *
    Lieutenant John Hardwick skirted the edge of the gloomy factory floor with practised grace. The noise of smelting, grinding and hammering was infernal. Sparks rained down onto gigantic conveyor belts, providing intermittent illumination. Chains rattled overhead as they slackened from enormous pulleys; coal furnaces belched fumes as they powered huge, static steam engines, and burly workmen toiled relentlessly. John could barely hear himself think, though he was glad that the noise and grimy darkness covered his infiltration.
    The munitions factory was supposed to be inoperative. For over a month, no shipments had reached the War Office stores from this, their biggest supplier in Cheshire. Letters of bankruptcy had been filed from the factory’s owners, Messrs. Hopkirk and Myerscough. The closure of the plant should have been little more than an administrative footnote in the quartermasters’ ledgers. Until last week, when Corporal