“Took his nightstick and clubbed him with it until he was able to subdue you and take you into custody with only minor injuries—an outcome, Miss Webster, that I suspect has more to do with luck than skill,” Halliday finishes. But Billie can see the slight twist to his lips and realizes he is smiling.
“You think it’s funny,” she accuses.
“I think it is familiar,” he corrects. “It is precisely the sort of thing my sister would have done in her youth. Justice over the law,” he says.
He settles back with an air of expectation. “Now, do you think that you would be interested in taking the next step towards employment with us?”
She is quiet for a long minute.
“Miss Webster?”
“Who pays you? You don’t get taxpayer money because you don’t work for any government.”
“Does it matter?” His voice is pleasant, but there is no mistaking the fact that he is humoring her.
“It matters,” she says patiently, “because whoever cuts the checks calls the shots. Who calls your shots?”
“Among the agents who left the SOE when it was disbanded were several with particular aptitude in finance. They took employment in the City.”
“The City?” she asked. “Which city?”
“The City is how we refer to the financial district in London, rather like your Wall Street. In fact, we have some Wall Street fellows as well. They were able, with the help of a few significant donations from sympathetic benefactors, to establish a fund which has grown to impressive proportions.”
“Who runs this organization? What do you even call it?”
“I cannot divulge the official name, but amongst ourselves, it is called the Museum. We have field agents and a research department and a Board of Directors to oversee the Museum’s activities around the world, dispatching those field agents to safeguard democracy, to thwart absolutism, and to enact justice.”
“Whose justice?” she asks.
“The justice demanded by democratic principles agreed upon by the founders of the Museum—the men and women who were among the original SOE and OSS recruits, although, as I have said, their numbers have begun to thin in recent years.”
He is silent a long moment, assessing her, weighing something. She wants to break the silence, but she lets the quiet fill the space between them and he eventually nods. He reaches into the briefcase at his elbow and opens a file. It is dark blue with a small logo of falling stars surrounded by a gold motto: Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
Billie has just enough Latin to translate the motto and she smiles to herself. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. He extracts a sheet of paper, which he pushes across the table towards her. “If you decide to work with us, the charges pending against you currently will be dropped. Your arrest record will be expunged and your academic records destroyed. Neither the university nor law enforcement will have any proof you attended this college. If you sign this contract promising not to speak of what we have discussed here, it will be taken as a formal submission to be considered for appointment to the Museum as member of our Exhibitions department.” He takes out a fountain pen and unscrews the cap, placing it neatly next to the paper.
“Exhibitions? Are you sure it’s not porn?”
“Exhibitions is the name for the department that handles fieldwork. All of our operational terms are taken from museum vernacular. It was a deliberate choice to distance ourselves from our militaristic and bureaucratic roots.”
Billie studies the form. It looks like standard boilerplate stuff, the sort of thing covered in a Business Admin 101 course, with a modest stipend to be paid while she completes training. This is to be conducted in an unspecified location, and if she proves satisfactory she will be offered formal employment.
“Training to kill people,” she says slowly. She sits back, looking at the pale purple type on the page. It has been mimeographed, like worksheets for a second-grade phonics class, and it smells like soup.
“Training to protect the same values for which every Allied soldier in the war gave his life,” he says quietly.
“I’m not a soldier,” she reminds him.
He taps the book. “Neither is Modesty Blaise. Neither is my sister. And still they fight.”
This time Billie is quiet for a long moment, and Halliday is smart enough to stay quiet too. She looks down at her lacerated knuckles. “Can you teach me how to do damage to the other guy without hurting myself?”
“That,” he says with a smile, “is our speciality.” Speciality. When else in her life is she going to meet a man who says “speciality”？