The space on the far side of the door looked like some kind of hold or storage area. There were a dozen or so barrels to the left and stacks of hundredweight sacks on the right, leaking some kind of roughly ground wheat or barley onto the decking. All of it was lit by a clear glass, low-wattage light bulb with a filament that glowed and faded to the rhythm of the engine in the rear.
Looking from side to side, Dundee gauged that the hull was no more than ten or twelve feet wide; carrying that kind of cargo it had to be a canal barge like the kind that used to run between Baltimore and Washington. Long out of use in the United States, there was still an active system of such canals in England that stretched the length and breadth of the country. He’d read somewhere that they’d become even more important with the coming of war, taking on a lot of the cargo that used to go by the much more vulnerable coastal steamers.
At first Dundee couldn’t figure out why Danby had chosen such an odd way to transport him to whatever their destination was but the more he thought about it the more sense it made. Just before entering York the train had rattled over a bridge and a few seconds before being knocked out he’d heard water moving and the sounds of boats at anchor. Probably the river he was now on. If by some wild stretch of the imagination Jane had discovered that he was missing and had alerted the police, they’d hardly be looking for him in the rope locker of a canal barge. Danby’s men could make their way across the countryside with nobody the wiser; if they’d already gone to this much trouble, they would have made sure they had the right travel permits and fuel coupons for the journey. Charlie might be a crook but he was no dope. He had, after all, successfully made off with some of the Crown Jewels of England.
Which was obviously what this whole thing was about and that, in turn, didn’t make a lot of sense to Lucas Dundee. Why steal something and then make it obvious you’d stolen it, especially when, by all the evidence, including the smelter they’d found, you’d gone to all the trouble of making copies? On top of that little conundrum, why steal something you couldn’t sell in the first place? No. When Charles Danby did something there was a reason for it, no matter how twisted the logic or nasty the motive. For the life of him, Dundee couldn’t figure it out this time. He put the problem out of his mind for the moment; right now he had to figure a way out of Charlie’s clutches and fast.
Dundee turned his face away from the crack in the door and pressed his ear to it instead. Nothing but the steady, lumbering stutter of the muffled engine and the gurgle and plash of water against the heavy old hull. He turned himself around and, after a few moments, managed to get his foot braced against the middle plank of the door. Of the three boards making up the door it would probably be the weakest, fastened only at the top and bottom without being nailed or screwed to whatever made up the door frame itself.
Dundee squirmed until his back was firmly pressed against several coils of heavy rope, then took a deep breath and held it. He straightened his leg and pushed with his foot as hard as he could, seeing if there was any give to the plank. As far as he could tell there wasn’t. He tried again, feeling the first real sense of panic since getting off the train. This time he was rewarded with a faint, damp squeak as the ancient iron staples clewed hard into the top of the plank began to give way.
He tried a third time, actually kicking at the plank this time, and suddenly the entire board gave way with an ear-splitting wrench. Easing his foot back Dundee waited, expecting the sound of booted feet running across the decking over his head.
Nothing.
Moving himself around in the cupboard-sized space, he pushed the plank farther out of position then squeezed his left hand through the space between the boards on either side. About halfway up the side of the bulkhead he felt a large bolt. Moving it slowly up and down, he managed to loosen it. Pressing his hand against the hatch he pushed it open, then crawled out into the open hold.
Ten feet or so past the gently swinging light bulb there was a second hatchway door and slightly to one side was a companionway ladder that had been hidden by the piled sacks of wheat. For the first time he got a strong whiff of the stuff and realised it was hops, probably destined for a brewery somewhere. Oddly, deeply buried beneath that rich scent was the smell of chocolate, so faint he thought for a moment he was imagining it.
He straightened and from the stiffness of his neck and back he realised that he’d been in the rope locker longer than he’d first thought; several hours at least. He also had a splitting headache from the ether he’d been given. Both legs were cramped from being shoved into the locker. Dundee blinked in the half-light, looking around the hold carefully; there wasn’t anything in sight that looking even vaguely like a weapon except for the plank he’d kicked out of the door. He picked it up off the deck and hefted it; three or four pounds of solid oak with a long, uneven piece torn away from the side, giving it a shape a little bit like a cricket bat. Dundee smiled briefly. Somebody had once tried to explain the game to him using baseball as a point of reference but Dundee gave up when they got to the part about stumps and sticky wickets.
He moved slowly down the narrow aisle between the barrels and the sacks of hops, pausing every second step to listen. Once again he heard nothing. He crept forward slowly, pausing at the foot of the short companionway leading up to the open deck. He stood there for a moment, taking in the fresh, earthy smell of the cold river air and the scent of new-mown hay from the fields beyond. He tried to imagine the farmland bordering the narrow waterway and wondered how far it would be to the nearest help. Too far probably but he didn’t have much choice.
Dundee put one foot on the ladder and adjusted his grip on the oak plank. He started up the ladder and a voice stopped him.
‘Major.’
Dundee froze. The voice came from behind him and was accompanied by the sound of a hammer being cocked. He held up both hands, figuring his chances on getting his licks in with his cricket bat before the faceless voice got off a round.
‘Not a hope, pally. Now be a good boy and drop the stick.’ He did as he was told, the slab of oak falling to the deck at his feet. A few seconds later a smiling face appeared at the top of the stairs. The man on deck was easily in his sixties, a greasy cloth cap pulled down over an unruly thatch of bristled iron-grey hair that seemed to shoot out from under the cap like fireworks.
‘Come on, laddie-buck, give it a try if you think you’ve got the brass.’
His face had the lined, leathery flush of a man who spends a great deal of time outside. His small dark eyes were like black beads set into the craggy old face. He had the stub of an ancient, twisted briar clenched between his teeth and he was holding a short, steel-tipped gaff in one fist and a gigantic Webley Navy pistol that looked old enough to use black powder and ball shot in the other. Dundee backed down the companionway. Just being hit on the head with the barrel of the monstrous gun in the old man’s hand would be enough to kill him. He turned around. Behind him, a young, blond-haired man in an Air Transport Command North Atlantic Wing flight officer’s uniform was standing to his left, holding a much more modern Smith and Wesson.
The ATC officer waved the barrel of the gun. ‘This way, Major.’ The flight officer stood aside, revealing a spill of light coming from the open bulkhead hatchway behind him. As Dundee edged past him, the flight officer moved back, careful to keep clear of any sudden moves. Dundee ducked his head and went through the doorway.
He found himself in a remarkably neat and luxurious cabin set midships in the old barge. The decking under his feet was clean and freshly varnished to a honey shine, several braided rope rugs giving it a pleasant, homey feel. The swinging lights overhead were all brass and the bulkheads were all panelled in a pale blond wood that might have been beech or ash. To the left there was a tidy, sensible-looking galley with a kettle sitting on an electric hob, and farther on were two bunks, beds neatly made, one on either side. Between the bunks and the galley was a waist-high divider with a built-in table, a bench and a chair. A litter of
charts was spread out across the table along with a compass, a slide rule of sorts and a pair of steel dividers. The cabin was high enough to stand in, the brass portholes on either side blacked out with wooden plugs and shutters. It looked more like the cabin on an expensive sailboat than the living quarters of a river barge.
The ATC officer saw Dundee’s look of surprise as he came into the cabin, shutting the door behind him. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ he said. He used the gun again, gesturing to the bench. Dundee sat down, careful to keep his hands in plain sight but away from the steel dividers; the last thing he wanted to do was give the man an excuse to fire the Smith and Wesson. Dundee had seen chumps like this before during his first days on the L.A. Police Force. On the surface they looked calm and at ease but scratch the surface and you found a scared kid who was into something deeper than he knew. This one was no exception; barely twenty and his trigger finger was white-knuckle scared.
‘Very nice.’ He paused. ‘You really with Air Transport Command?’
The young man sat down in the chair opposite. ‘Was.’
‘What happened?’
‘How’d you get out of the locker?’ The young man reached into the breast pocket of his tunic and pulled out one of the new white packs of Luckies instead of the green – something about copper dye being necessary for the war effort. He tapped one out on the table, all the while keeping the gun aimed steadily at Dundee’s chest. He reached into his other pocket, pulled out a slim, almost feminine Ronson that certainly wasn’t PX stock, and lit up. He drew hard on the cigarette, taking the smoke deep into his lungs then ejecting it from his nostrils in twin dragon plumes. ‘Russell was pretty sure he gave you enough ether to keep Dumbo down for a month.’ He put the cigarette pack and the lighter down on the table.
‘The MP, right?’
The young man smirked like a schoolboy. ‘Russell can be anything he wants to be.’
‘You never told me what happened between you and the ATC.’
‘Nothing happened,’ said the young man angrily. His finger tightened on the trigger.
‘Charlie would be pretty angry if you killed me before he got a chance to talk to me,’ Dundee warned. His mouth and throat were already dry and burning from the ether but now they’d turned to parched cotton. The kid was a firecracker.
‘Charlie?’
‘Your boss? Charlie Danby?’
‘You know The Colonel?’
‘We went to school together.’
‘Well, I’ll be,’ said the young man. His finger eased off on the trigger.
Dundee realised he’d been holding his breath. He let it out slowly. ‘You have any idea what this is all about?’
‘We just follow orders,’ said the young man. ‘Just like the Army.’ It was definitely the past tense, uniform or not.
‘You’re not in the Army any more?’
‘The Colonel’s army now, not Uncle Sam’s. In The Colonel’s army you get treated right.’ So, by definition then, Uncle Sam’s version had treated him badly. Things were starting to fall into place.
Dundee sat back against the padded backrest of the bench. He gestured at the cigarettes, trying to buy some time to think. ‘Mind if I have one of those?’
‘Sure. I got lots more and they don’t cost me nothing anyway.’
Dundee picked up the pack of Luckies and the Ronson. He lit the cigarette carefully and slowly, clicking the lighter on and off a few times. ‘Nice,’ he said. He jerked his thumb upward. ‘That old guy upstairs was never in Uncle Sam’s army. Where does he fit into the picture?’
‘Old Bob?’ The young man laughed. ‘He goes up and down the river just like he’s done for the last hundred years or so, except now instead of coal he’s carrying butter and beef in one direction and liquor in the other. All thanks to The Colonel.’
Dundee nodded. Black-market trade, run by deserters and young idiots like this one, AWOL from their units for petty crimes and some not so petty.
He stared at the boy, trying to figure out how someone so young could get into enough trouble to warrant running away from his unit and getting involved with Charlie Danby. Young and good-looking, blond hair, blue eyes and a build like a prize fighter. He decided to take a guess.
‘It was a girl, wasn’t it?’
‘What?’ The young man’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you say?’
‘It was a girl. You get her in trouble?’ Dundee kept his eye on the boy’s trigger finger. The gun shifted in the ATC man’s hand as though the weight was beginning to bother him or maybe an old memory.
‘She said she was going to go to my C.O. and tell him I’d raped her unless I paid to… you know.’ The kid’s neck flushed, the colour creeping onto his cheeks like cold weather on a winter day.
Dundee shook his head. The young man had thrown away his life because some country girl had decided how to make him pay for her virtue. Or maybe she really did have one in the oven. It didn’t really matter; rape was a capital offence over here and he could hang for it.
‘How did you find out about The Colonel?’
‘There was a guy…’ the boy mumbled. Dundee let out a plume of smoke. There was always a guy. It had even been that way back at Bain Academy; there’d always been three or four other boys circling Charlie like flies around shit, using the bigger, stronger boy as a shield against their own weaknesses, the same kind who’d be recruiting for him now.
That was Charlie, all right. Efficient, smart and, above all, organised. It all made perfect sense, especially if you knew how many deserters there really were wandering around England these days. It was top secret but Dundee had seen the reports being sent back Stateside and knew that more than seven thousand GIs and other ranks had disappeared over the past year, a figure the brass didn’t want made public. It was assumed that most of them had vanished into the larger cities, especially London, swallowed up by local British gangs of crooks, but no one ever figured them for being organised from the inside; Capone had tried something like that in Chicago twenty years ago. So had others but no one had ever pulled it off for sure. Certainly not in England and certainly not in the middle of a war.
‘Where are you from?’ Dundee asked.
‘You ask too many questions.’
‘Just making conversation, kid, calm down.’
‘I’m no kid,’ the young man growled, lifting the gun slightly as though making a point.
‘Sorry. I was just interested, that’s all.’
‘Green Bay.’
‘Where’s that?’ asked Dundee. He’d never heard of it.
‘Wisconsin. On Lake Michigan.’ The young man in the flier’s uniform made a little snorting sound under his breath. ‘Thought you big shot lawyers knew everything. Biggest meat-packing centre in the Midwest.’
‘I didn’t know.’ But the kid knew who he was, which was interesting. Dundee tucked the information away for future reference. ‘You ever think you’re going to get back there?’ It was a question he’d thought of the first time he’d heard of the enormous number of deserters in England. The place was, after all, an island. There were only two ways off, by air and by sea, both methods of transportation easy enough to monitor. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that deserting was no good if you couldn’t go home. On the other hand, anybody stupid enough to go AWOL in the first place wasn’t first in line when the brains were being handed out, were they? It was like that old limerick about robbing banks in Nantucket; you can rob the bank, but you can’t get away with it, so…
‘Sure. We can go home.’ The kid paused, a smile spreading across his young face. ‘Anytime we want. Colonel’s got that all figured out too.’
Dundee was just about to ask how Charlie intended to pull off that little bit of prestidigitation when there was a dull thump that ran through the boat. The sound of the engine coughed into silence. There was a low whistle from above.
‘That’s our signal,’ said the young man. He waved the barrel of the gun stiffly. ‘Up you get.’
; Dundee got up from the bench and the young man watched as he came around the table and headed out the door. There might have been a chance to make a break for it at the top of the ladder but Old Bob was right there, sitting on the curved roof of the cabin a few feet from the open hatch in the deck, the huge old Webley held unwaveringly in one old hand, the hooked gaff in the other. A gangplank had been laid from the hull of the barge to the shore a few feet away. Dundee shivered in the night air. The sky was deep purple, pricked with a shimmering field of bright stars but not lit by any moon at all. The riverbank was fairly steep and the gangplank jutted up at an angle. Whatever lay beyond the top of the bank was invisible, screened by a line of willows that hung down over the water like a green veil that whispered in the faint breeze, the trees so gnarled and old that their twisted roots had long ago torn free from the rich, dark earth of the bankside like ancient bones thrown up from a grave. Dundee found himself wondering if a grave wasn’t the next step or whether Charlie had something else in mind. If so, he was going to a hell of a lot of trouble to see him planted.
Russell the MP suddenly appeared from the rear of the barge. The MP’s uniform was gone and, like the young man, he was wearing an ATC uniform covered by a leather flying jacket. He smiled at Dundee but said nothing. Stepping forward he took a pair of handcuffs from the pocket of the leather jacket and snapped them over Dundee’s wrists, ratcheting them down painfully. It seemed that Russell was the kind of person who liked inflicting pain, not surprising considering who he worked for.
‘How ya doin’… Major,’ said Russell. He nodded at the handcuffs. ‘Can’t have you running away on us, now can we?’
Old Bob laughed at the comment, the laugh turning to a phlegmy gurgle. Somehow the barge pilot managed to spit over the side of the boat without taking the filthy old briar out of his mouth. Dundee noticed that the stained old life preserver hanging on a rusted iron hook next to Old Bob read MV Bagby Park. Another fact to be put away for later. Russell put a large hand on Dundee’s shoulder and turned him towards the gangplank. ‘Move out, soldier boy.’
An American Spy Page 15