The bag slipped, so I kept going

I hate that the first thing I felt was relief when I hit the trench floor. Not because I was hurt, although my knee made that clear soon enough, but because Rale thought I was out of the count. Let him think it. Let him enjoy carrying his tidy little prize away for another hour.

The trouble is, he named the bunker and the contents of the lead box too precisely. That was not boasting from someone who merely suspected. He had been inside, or he had bought the truth from someone who had. I keep turning that over, trying to decide which possibility annoys me more. If he visited the place, then the map I worked from was bait from the start. If he paid for information, then somebody close enough to the dig sold me out.

Either way, I lost the bullion and claim plate. I keep counting that as one defeat, though the loss is mostly my pride wearing a paper bag.

I followed the courier because my knee would give me sensible advice and I ignored it. Every step down Clerkenwell High Street felt like a warning from a body I have stopped taking seriously. The crowd swallowed him, and for one stupid second I wondered whether continuing was only pride dressed as strategy. Then I saw him again. Of course I did. I was never going to let that be the end of it.