Free Sleeping Dogs by Thomas Perry

I do know somebody hid from Cromwell there three generations after that. We were exactly the sort of people he was born to rid the world of—still are, to the degree we can manage it. It’s a huge, rambling place with lots of rooms, but the village is small enough so nobody could come after you without being spotted.”
    It entered Schaeffer’s mind that her ancestors really weren’t from the same planet he was. Time meant nothing to her, or to any of them, really. If he chose to stay at the family estate, she would feed him and bring him the daily newspapers until one of them died, and then he would be part of the story too. He opened his suitcase and pulled out his two passports. He looked at one of them and handed it to Meg. “I’ve got to go to the United States. When I’m ready to come back, I may call you and ask you to mail this to me.”
    She looked at it, then plucked the other one from his hand and read the name aloud. “Charles Frederick Ackerman. It hadn’t occurred to me that you might have another name,” she said, her voice a little hollow.
    “Michael Schaeffer is the real one.” He put his arm around her waist. The name already sounded strange to him, like the name of someone long dead.
    “What I’ve been trying to say is, are you going because you have to, or because you think being with me puts me in danger? Because I really don’t mind.” It struck her as an odd thing to have said, so she added, “Really.”
    “I have to find the mole.” He studied her face. There was no possibility of an argument; of course he had to find the mole. Whose job was it if not his? She had read all the spy novels, then given them to him to read. He wished he had paid more attention to them, but he hadn’t. Her questions might grow more astute and penetrating, so he needed to think more carefully about what he said. But he also needed to think about reality, and time was passing.
    The Satterthwaites would stay on at his house indefinitely, keeping it open and clean and inhabited, and they would feed his cat. Mrs. Satterthwaite had understood that he sometimes traveled, and she would continue to pay the bills out of the household account. He had always been like a ghost in his own house, coming and going quietly without having any discernible effect on the daily business of the place. The Satterthwaites were the real occupants, living high among the rafters upstairs and showing little curiosity about anything he did. If he never came back, the will he had filed in the solicitor’s office a few blocks away would be revealed to them. Mr. Satterthwaite would paint a neat, hand-lettered sign that said B ED AND B REAKFAST , and they would continue to care for the place and serve the food; the only difference would be that he would be replaced by other ghosts who came and went quietly.
    He closed his suitcase. “I have to get back to London tonight for the plane.”
    “I’ll get the keys to the Jag.” She moved to pull open the library door.
    He watched her go. He knew that someday, if he lived to be old and alone, he would look back on this moment and grind his teeth with anguish and remorse, straining his memory for the exact color of The Honourable Meg’s hair and the way her yellow dress swayed as she tugged open the big oak door.

 
    C harles Frederick Ackerman walked down the long accordion tunnel past the smiling flight attendants, all poised to dart out and block the narrow aisles and offer assistance. The travelers were barely able to negotiate the cramped space with their burdens of carry-on luggage, let alone balance dwarf pillows or chemical-smelling blankets. They paid no more attention to him than to any of the others. If they’d had to describe him to a policeman, one of them might have been perceptive enough to have judged that his coat was a good piece of English tailoring but not new, and that he was no longer in his twenties but wasn’t yet wearing the strangely driven look that men