Double Cross Blind

by Joel N. Ross

  DUCKBLIND TINKLED HER bicycle bell at a group of soldiers manning an antiaircraft battery. One of them whistled, and she waved and wobbled on her bike. Not yet dusk, but the Luftwaffe would be calling tonight, and the thrill of anticipation tingled on the back of her neck: the crump-crump thoom of high explosive, the smoke and dust glowing in a green haze over the city, spotlights veering crazily, the panic and the fear and the courage.

  The air-raid sirens would rise and fall over the sound of aeroplanes straining against the sky. She cared little for the bland thrum of the engine—it was nothing to the abrupt shattering release of explosive, the short, sharp shriek of a young man, the groan of a broken building about to collapse.

  She found a lonely spot—a row of narrow brick buildings that had been leveled, behind which was a stone wall disinterred by the archaeology of explosion. She brushed the stones carefully and sat, watching the skies.

  There were hours and hours before she needed to be in place for her first action of any importance in England. It would be her third action, if one counted settling Mr. Pentham so that she might have his house, and meeting the silly little man in the shiny waistcoat at the bomb site. She didn’t count them. They hadn’t been prepared and— Oh! Or fourth, if one counted gathering intelligence on Tom Wall, as Bookbinder had requested in the shiny waistcoat man’s message.

  Tonight was different. Tonight was cat and mouse . . . and nobody knew which player had been given which role. She slipped off the wall and brushed her skirt clean. She wasn’t perfectly happy with her plan for the meeting tonight. Oh, it would do—it was utterly adequate. But how tiresome adequacy was.

  The sun finally set, and the raid began. She jingled her bell at a Messerschmitt burping overhead and circled the meeting point. She spiraled closer, and there was a thoom behind her ear. She was shoved aside by an invisible hand. She hit the curb and fell off the bicycle, sprawled on the road.

  Another thoom, and another! She stood and craned her neck skyward. The earth rumbled beneath her. She was still and silent and safe—she was the audience for whom the raid had been orchestrated. First the HE bombs, to rip the roofs from buildings, then the incendiaries, to burn what was exposed. . . .

  An idea flickered on Schmetterling wings, a far more dramatic plan. The ack-ack shells flew and burst. She smiled and righted her bicycle, then rode toward the wreckage. The fire was red-yellow; it breathed hot billows of hazy smoke and silhouetted the rooftops and chimney pots. It glowed over firemen, over ambulance drivers with stretchers and rescuers digging in the rubble.

  She rode and rode, and all the people were so solemn and frightened and driven and brave . . . and oh! Green folds of silk looped over a garden wall.

  The parachuted bombs were modified sea mines, weighted so the trip wire faced downward, to explode on the surface with maximum damage. But sometimes a parachute caught in a tree or on a chimney, and the trip wire didn’t quite touch the ground. It wasn’t at all what she needed, but curiosity grabbed her. The house beyond the garden wall appeared empty, the owners in the shelter, under the stairs, or gone to the country. She wheeled her bicycle into the garden. The mine was dangling six inches from a wooden bench. It swung in the breeze. Six inches and it would trigger. How perfectly exciting!

  Of course, it did her no good at all. Far too large to lift, and . . . She almost clapped when she spotted the familiar colors in the rosemary bushes: the field gray body with a stripe of yellow on the wings, crossed by a stripe of red.

  The Splitterbombe would do divinely well. The rotating vanes had failed on release, and the arming pin hadn’t been withdrawn. The little bomblet was perfectly inert, its pin in place.

  Back on her bicycle, Duckblind arranged her green leather coat over the lump in the basket, placing the fur collar just so. She led her bicycle toward a crowd of onlookers watching a fire with appalled fascination. They were asked to disperse, so she dispersed. She always did what she was asked.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  EVENING, DECEMBER 2, 1941

  THE DRAWING ROOM of Puveen’s club was plush and wood-paneled, and so Edwardian that Chilton half-expected to see the glow of oil lamps through the foggy London streets outside.

  “I trust,” Chilton said, sitting at the hearth, “that your news will be worth the inconvenience. I dislike coming to town even when a night raid is not anticipated.”

  Puveen swirled his brandy and studied the slow-falling logs. “Trust is fundamental.”

  “As is brevity.” Chilton rose from his chair. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Ought to hear me out, old chap.” Puveen’s florid face was alive with self-satisfaction. “Family business.”

  “Family business is yesterday’s business. I must attend today’s.”

  “Regarding your son-in-law. His name arose in peculiar circumstances.”

  Chilton had expected, when Peevy invited him for a drink, that he’d be wasting his time—but this was quite promising. “My son-in-law?”

  “Peculiar circumstances,” Peevy said. “Starts with a body, a man who died last night at a bomb site.”

  “I heard there were no casualties.”

  “Three raiders of the Luftwaffe, the greatest airborne force in the history of man.” Peevy’s eyes brightened. “I’ve half a mind to—”

  “This man,” said Chilton. “He was struck by a bomb?”

  “Not at all. Died at a bomb site—slipped on the wreckage, or a roof fell on him. Can’t tell you how often it happens. However, you suggested I take heed of any unusual investigations or activities that—”

  “I know what I suggested.”

  “Well, more notice was given this man than he warranted. I engaged my own investigation. You’ve never thought me clever, but I had my office compose a letter. . . .” It took him twenty minutes to explain that the dead man had a pocket diary in his waistcoat, which Peevy had diverted to his office. “Couldn’t read the gibberish, myself. Shorthand stenography, you know. Still, the names in proper spelling leapt out. Chap named ‘E. Wall’ was mentioned. Thought of you.”

  “That’s all you could decipher? Where’s the diary now?”

  “Returned it. Wouldn’t do, being caught sneaking the—”

  “This, then, is the sum of your knowledge?”

  “Should say not!” Peevy grubbed in his pocket for a piece of paper. “Other chaps were mentioned, ‘T. Wall’ and ‘Sonder.’ Doesn’t your son-in-law have a brother?”

  “What else?”

  “There was an acronym. At first glance, I thought it was RAF. Not an A, though; it was a D. R Defence Force? Rural? Romanian? Haven’t a notion. RDF.”

  The shadowy Rupert Davies-Frank.

  Chilton spent half an hour attempting to pry additional information from Peevy. He learned only two things: the dead man’s name, William Melville. And his home address.

  TOM SWUNG OPEN the gate at the Shepherd Market mews and weighed Harriet’s keys in his hand. Inch had said Earl took books home. Was there microfilm in the spine of Tristram Shandy, microfilm that would lead him to Earl? No idea. But the Hun knew everything else—why not this? So he’d find the book and prove to Harriet that Earl was a traitor. Show her what her choice had been.

  The house was dark. He fumbled at the door, and a woman’s voice said, “Back again? Oh, pardon me!” The elderly neighbor was holding a paintbrush, dripping white paint into a bucket. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Mr. Wall.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Mrs. Wall mentioned you were visiting.”

  “Why are you— Is there something you want?”

  “Oh, I’m struggling along nicely, thank you.” She raised a paint bucket. “Touching up the keyhole. I have terrible trouble finding the lock in the blackout.”

  The door in front of him swung open and Harriet stood before him in dark green trousers w
ith wet patches at the knees and muddy gardening shoes and a blue quilted jacket. He knew without looking that her fingernails were dirty, her hair tangled. He knew without looking what he’d see in her eyes.

  He looked anyway.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Turnbull.” Harriet took the key ring from Tom’s hand and disappeared back into the house without closing the door.

  “Oh!” the neighbor said. “Didn’t you know she was home?”

  “There’s a lot I don’t know.” He stepped inside. “Harriet?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  He followed her voice, leaned against the table, and watched her watch the kettle. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re worse than sorry.”

  “Earl not back yet?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I spoke to the man. As far as the Brits know, the COI lost him.”

  “Have you ever known Earl to be lost?”

  “Never heard him admit it.”

  She almost smiled. “How about you, Tom?”

  “I’ve been lost so long, it’s starting to feel like found.”

  “Stay for dinner.” She opened a cabinet. “I’ve fresh spinach, and steak and kidney in the fridge, if they haven’t gone off.”

  Just the two of them at the kitchen table, a candle burning, a bottle of red wine half-empty. “I can’t. I can’t stop.”

  “You will stop, Tom, and soon. I was very frightened today—in your state, behind the wheel of a car.”

  “The car is fine. A few grass stains.”

  She reached for something on the top shelf. The seat of her trousers stretched tight across her ass. He remembered her moving beneath him, the slap of skin against skin. He looked away. And he sat.

  She placed a yellow ceramic mug in front of him. Steam twined upward and the mug was hot on his hands. The tea was sweet and creamy and had an alcoholic bite.

  “Someone accidentally spilled milk in this,” he said. It was a joke they’d had, about milk in tea. Not accidentally, though. That was new. He sipped and listened to the silence. “I need sleep, Harry,” he said when he’d finished. “I haven’t slept in days.”

  She led him upstairs. She showed him the bathroom, the guest room. Gave him a towel and a bar of soap. The sheets were turned back on the guest bed. There were cut flowers in a vase. There were ruffled curtains.

  “Cozy.” He wanted to throw her on the bed, wanted to please and to punish her.

  “No,” she said. Her heels tapped down the hall, down the stairs.

  Swell. At least he could still chase a woman off in one word or less. He removed his shoes and searched the upstairs. Many books. No Tristram Shandy. No microfilm. In her bedroom, he sat on the bed. On their bed. He rummaged in the bureau. The bottom drawer held a lavender bag and dressing gowns, which Harriet called “undressing robes.” The memory stopped him for a moment; then he moved the gowns aside.

  Beneath them were two guns, four boxes of ammunition. They were illegal in London, but that was Earl. There was a Colt .25 ACP auto with a custom ivory grip and a Webley .455 revolver. Tom figured Earl had bought the .25 for Harriet, then overcompensated with the .455 for himself—heavier, more serious than Harriet’s toy, a pound and a half loaded, while the .25 would be lost in the palm of his hand.

  Tom closed the drawer and finished searching the upstairs. Nothing. Back in the guest bedroom, he grabbed his shoes and sat in darkness. It could’ve been ten minutes or two hours before Harriet’s heels sounded on the stairs. Her bedroom door opened and closed. Time passed.

  Tom crept downstairs. Found the flashlight and searched.

  No Tristram Shandy. No comedic masterpiece, no fucking repository for the information he needed. The window he’d smashed was covered with a tacked-up board behind the curtain. Nothing else was out of place. Frustration shaded into anger and faded. He couldn’t—

  “Tommy?” She was in the front hall, looking in.

  “Harriet. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You never could tell a proper lie.”

  “Not to you.”

  “Air raid purple has been called,” she said. “I looked in to wake you.”

  He stepped forward, and was inches from her. He was going to kiss her.

  “We’re to have an air raid,” she said. “At any moment.”

  He felt her breath on his face. He was going to kiss her.

  She pressed a finger to his lips. She said, “No, Tommy,” and the siren sounded.

  “Goddamn,” he said.

  “Come, I’ve a shelter beneath the stairs.”

  “No Anderson?”

  “And dig up what little garden I have?”

  He smiled, and a bomb exploded outside.

  There was a whump-whoom and a shriek of brick and timber, the gliders swooping silently from the sky—Hill 107 at Máleme, his boys firing staccato bursts through clouds of cordite, and there was blood on his face and in his mouth, the taste of blood in his mouth.

  “Tommy,” she said, and he slammed the front door behind him.

  DUCKBLIND TROTTED FAST, her eyes wide with manufactured fright—hunched over the bicycle’s handlebars, a timid girl rushing home to the safety of mother.

  She glanced at the lump under her bunched coat. The adjustments had been made. She was stupid, mechanically—she could barely use a hair grip!—but she’d learned what they’d taught her. She still needed a trigger, though, and couldn’t think how to arrange one. Perhaps the Splitterbombe wouldn’t work. Of course, she could follow Bookbinder’s instructions in any number of other ways, but it would be such a pity to waste the windfall!

  She lowered her head as a fire truck sped past. The sky was moonlit behind a shroud of smoke. She walked without swinging her hips, frumpy and overwrought. Her heels went clip-clip-clip. Nothing to see here.

  On Bookbinder’s instruction, she’d kept busy. Meeting the man with the shiny waistcoat, locating Tommy Wall, and arranging tonight. Plus, she and Bookbinder had been given three names to investigate—three trusted agents of the untrustworthy Abwehr. Well, Bookbinder had been given three names. She had only one: a man who went by “Digby” and had been told to infiltrate the BBC. She’d pinched a schoolgirl uniform and adopted a sullen sulk, and nobody at the BBC had raised the slightest eyebrow at her petulant questions. She’d located Digby without difficulty.

  She’d observe him properly beginning tomorrow. He seemed at liberty, so either he hadn’t turned or had rotated fully. Could he be a traitor to the Abwehr? She’d suck her bottom lip and inquire. It wouldn’t be hard. He was a man, and men were—

  “Give over!” A child’s voice sounded at her elbow—a darling boy, no older than twelve, got up as a proper ragamuffin. “It’s mine. Give over.”

  “I shan’t!” a girl said, slightly younger but equally darling. Missing two of her front teeth, fiercely clutching an orange. “You stop or I’ll—” She fell silent at the jingle of Duckblind’s bicycle bell.

  “Look here, you plaguey things!” Duckblind said. “You ought know better than being out in this weather. Where do you live, then?”

  They examined their shoes, scuffed and black, with colorless socks bunched around their ankles. The boy mumbled something inaudible; the girl peeked up from behind an uneven fringe. A breeze wafted past, carrying the fragrance of incendiary fire and airborne brick dust. Two planes grumbled overhead, solid specks of light glimpsed through the shifting veil of haze.

  “German aeroplanes,” Duckblind said. “This is no place to be playing.”

  “Square-headed Jerries,” the boy said. “Couldn’t hit a barn from inside.”

  “Come along.” She attempted a governess’s sternness. “There’s a shelter two blocks back.”

  “Don’t like the Underground,” the boy said.

  “Well, if the Tube isn’t good enough for the l
ikes of you!” Duckblind said. “Where’s your Mum, then?”

  The children muttered and shifted.

  Poor precious poppets. “Well, the Tube is rather stinky.” The Tube also had mosquitoes and lice and masses of sweaty Untermenchen. Duckblind shuddered. “We certainly can’t subject you to that! Come along. The wardens will sort you—”

  The girl shook her head. “Don’t want to.”

  “The wardens stinky, too?” Duckblind asked. “You make me worry that even I have gone off.”

  “Not you, miss,” the boy said. “You smell nice.”

  “Well, from the mouths of babes!” She held her hand out to the girl. “We’ll find a warm little cranny, safe and snug.”

  “Not a surfie,” the girl said, holding her hand tight. “George fancies the surfies.”

  “What’s a surfie, then?” Duckblind asked.

  “You know,” the girl said. “Made of brick.”

  “Oh! A surface shelter.” Brick constructions the size of a bus, with a door at each end shielded by a blast wall and a concrete slab for a ceiling, apparently designed to collapse at the slightest impact.

  “At his school,” the girl said. “For lunchtime, they line up boys on one side, girls the other. They pass through the surfie and snog their way down the line.”

  Duckblind gave the girl’s hand a squeeze. “Don’t worry, love. I know a shelter that smells like roses, and no snogging allowed.”

  “NO, THEY’RE SURE it’s Melville,” Davies-Frank said. “They’re calling it a raid casualty.”

  “Weren’t a dozen raiders last night.” Highcastle was in the driver’s seat of the parked car, chewing on an unlighted cigar. “Not half a dozen.”

  “He had a concussion injury to the head, compression to the throat. . . .”

  “Finger marks?”

  “No finger marks. No defensive wounds, no burns, his clothing undamaged. Fell on a bit of piping perhaps. He wasn’t bombed.” Explosions sounded faintly through the lowered window—tonight there were far more than a dozen raiders. “Unlike us.”