Hell Gate

by Jeff Dawson

  Moses ploughed on but knew, within moments, he’d have to stop.

  ‘Moses, I implore you. The only way for you to get out of this is to say that I forced you into this. Give them your real name this time. Tell them I jumped your vehicle – hijacked it. Everything you’ve done up till now is because I made you do it.’

  There was reluctance, but Moses nodded.

  ‘See, under the seat, my old clothes. It’s evidence. You’ve done more than enough. Don’t imperil yourself… your family.’

  There were several policemen strung across the road behind the vehicles with a plain-clothes officer in charge. Moses slowed.

  ‘How you jump me with no gun?’ he asked.

  There was a spanner on the floor, a wrench, Finch picked it up.

  ‘Trust me, Moses. Do exactly as I say. Stop the vehicle short, right on the brow of the bridge itself.’

  Moses thought for a second, nodded, then skidded his truck to a halt. Finch pulled Moses roughly from the cabin, pressing the spanner into his back, simulating a pistol. Moses complied with a struggle of resistance.

  Finch yelled out: ‘One false move and he gets it!’

  There were several weapons raised in his direction. Two of the police had rifles. They were resting elbows on the hoods of the vehicles to steady their aim.

  The plain-clothes officer called out: ‘Put the weapon down. Let the negro go!’

  Finch edged towards the bridge’s low side wall. The river was wooded, its banks steep, and it ran southwards towards, on the other side, some rocks and boulders. It was maybe 20 feet wide with a rush of water to suggest sufficient depth, though there was no way of telling. It was dark, you couldn’t see the bottom, which was at least a promise of it. It was a 10-foot drop from road level.

  ‘Please, don’t shoot!’ cried Moses.

  Whispered Finch: ‘Thank you. For all that you’ve done…’

  He’d already made sure to shove half the contents of his wallet into Moses’s glove box.

  Replied Moses, under his breath: ‘Good luck.’

  In a flash, Finch was over the wall and plummeting. There was a cold hard splash and he bobbed up, just thankful that he’d gauged it right.

  He had jumped in on the upstream side and was washed under the bridge for a few seconds, giving him momentary cover. He merged from the darkness into a volley of gunfire.

  He took a deep breath, dived, and let the current carry him, sensing the hiss of bullets all around him. He emerged again behind the first of the large, smooth boulders.

  ‘There he is! Over there!’ cried a voice. But it was Moses calling out, diverting the police to the bank on the opposite side.

  For some reason, Finch was still clinging to the wrench and he threw it towards where Moses was pointing, creating enough of a splash to elicit more gunfire in its direction.

  The current was moving at quite a lick and was tugging at his legs. There was a tree branch in the water, cruising by. He grabbed it and let it carry him. There was a bend ahead. The ominous crack of a rifle was followed by a ping off the rocks. But, within moments, Finch was out of sight, being swept along at the river’s mercy.

  There were more rocks up ahead, like small rapids, but he managed to cling on, kicking himself through the gaps. Through a swirl of foaming white, he was into more tranquil waters as the river widened out, sending him drifting sedately through the greenery.

  He held on to it for as long as he could, but ultimately it was cold, too cold. His medical knowledge told him that he could only survive in water like this for so long. He didn’t know how much daylight he’d put between himself and his pursuers, but when some shallows appeared, he kicked his feet and steered the branch to the shore.

  He lay there panting, face down amongst the mud and pebbles, and he thought of poor young Moses and his flight to freedom. For a brief moment the clouds moved clear and a burst of thin sunshine took the edge off the cold. He wriggled his fingers and toes, then hands and feet, then moved his arms and legs. He had emerged intact.

  And then he looked up. Just inches from his face was a pair of brown brogues.

  The shoes belonged to a man in a double-breasted suit, wearing a fedora. He was flanked by two men who shopped at the same tailor but were bigger, broader – his muscle. If they were police, then they weren’t – Finch guessed – part of the local crew back on the bridge.

  ‘Okay, fellas,’ the man instructed. ‘Get him in the car.’

  Chapter 20

  Finch sat in the back, wedged between the henchmen. The main man sat up front with the driver. All Finch knew was that they were off the Dayton road now, heading towards Cincinnati. It was the same flat countryside – endless fields, endless sky.

  They travelled in silence. Though Finch had asked a few questions at first, the repeated ‘Shut your mouth’ instruction on the part of the boss made it quite clear that answers would be unforthcoming.

  It took about two hours, but eventually they turned off the main track and wound through wooded countryside to a long drive that led to manicured lawns, trimmed hedges and a grand brown-brick mansion. It was built in the colonial neoclassical style with a cupola atop the roof and white Greek columns at the front. There was a paddock nearby, surrounded by whitewashed wooden rail fencing, in which a pair of palomino thoroughbreds sauntered.

  The car crunched to a stop on the gravel and Finch was escorted inside. The interior was just as impressive – the high ceilings and grand staircase, the looming chandelier… Folks round these parts, at least the ones with money, seemed to enjoy their sense of space inside as well as out.

  Finch was shown into a large drawing room. It boasted a grand piano and Queen Anne furniture, a thick Persian rug, velvet drapes, potted ferns, and portraits on the wall of stern-looking colonial forebears and bucolic country landscapes. Finch had a blanket thrown round his shoulders and was deposited in a chair, an upright Chesterfield, his clothes still damp underneath.

  ‘Wait there,’ the leader said, in what, by his standards, was a lengthy monologue.

  Finch hadn’t been cuffed or tied. Indeed, there hadn’t, for once, been a single weapon pulled, not that it was needed with the two gorillas either side. When the men departed, closing the door, Finch was left to his own devices. Tempted as he was to start snooping, sitting in comfort on his own, in silence, was the preferred option.

  The room had another set of double doors leading into it on the far wall. And, eventually, they swung forth. She was just about the last person he imagined he’d see, but there she was, bustling into the room dressed in a long, dark green dress with a black shawl around her shoulders.

  ‘Lady Brunswick?’

  Instinctively he stood.

  ‘Please, Captain Finch, sit,’ she motioned, her tone brisk, businesslike.

  She swished to the armchair opposite.

  ‘Quite a pickle you’ve got yourself into,’ she said.

  She donned her lorgnette glasses and read down a list that evidently summarized Finch’s adventures of the past 48 hours. She looked up again.

  ‘You’re lucky. I happen to be a friend of Mr Stanford White. He dropped into conversation something about meeting a “Mr Bradley Collins” at Madison Square Garden and you going off to the Bierkeller Club. MO3 were already monitoring police activity and tracked you via your arrest, then Muller’s house, through to the Missouri Express. Our man on the train lost you, but then all that excited local police telephone chatter…’

  She shook her head.

  ‘“Melville Whitehall”… A flag for us, but none too subtle… The sharks will be circling. I’d already given up tickets to Swan Lake at the Met to head on out here – 600 miles at the drop of a hat, not easy at my age. I hope it’s worth it. How’s your knee, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, you know…’

  She nodded at his bandaged hand.

  ‘It’s not all, I see.’

  He hadn’t had a chance to nurse his broken fingers. Though the police medic had done
a good job, he considered. Despite all that had happened, the dressings, the splints, they’d remained pretty much in place. As for pain, so much had happened that he hadn’t even had a chance to think about it.

  ‘It’s fortunate that I know the owner of this sumptuous spread,’ Lady Brunswick went on. ‘Seemed a suitable place to bring you in, given your location.’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Finch, casting an eye around. ‘Though not the sort of place one imagined existed in the Midwest. Feels more, I don’t know, antebellum. You know, like we’re on a plantation.’

  She gave a wry smile.

  ‘My dear Captain. Just because Northern landowners didn’t keep slaves, it didn’t mean that they didn’t use slave labour. The Ohio River is a stone’s throw from here. On the other bank lies Kentucky – the South. There’s always been a brisk trade across it. Things are never as they seem, Finch, especially in America.’

  She lowered her spectacles.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying… Stanford White. He gave us a lead… But it was only when we got word from our spotters on Miss Madeleine Foche that we really put two and two together.’

  ‘Madeleine Foche?’

  She took her time. She got up and went to the drinks cabinet, then came back with two large brandies.

  ‘You must be cold. We’ll get you dried off, but in the meantime…’

  She raised her glass to his good health.

  ‘Please…’ he pressed.

  ‘Oh yes… Miss Foche… Mademoiselle Foche. You’ll know her better as Katia.’

  There was an urgency to Finch now.

  ‘Have you caught her yet?’

  She smiled again, several steps ahead in a game in which, he felt, he was still left flipping through the rule book.

  ‘Why on earth would we catch her?’

  ‘Because she’s possibly German intelligence.’

  The upward inflection made it sound like a question. There came a wry smile and a patronizing scoff.

  ‘German? No, Captain Finch, she’s with the Deuxième Bureau, the French security agency.’

  He sipped his brandy. It was pungent stuff. You could get drunk on the fumes.

  ‘She does a very convincing impression of a German.’

  Lady Brunswick explained how Madeleine Foche was originally from the borderlands – the town of Colmar in Alsace, once French territory, but annexed by Germany after the War of 1870.

  ‘Her parents were murdered by the Prussians,’ she added. ‘Right in front of her. She was four years old.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that everything in this business seems to boil down to the personal?’

  ‘A facile interpretation, Captain. Would Mademoiselle Foche like the province of Alsace-Lorraine returned to France? Her loved ones avenged? Yes, of course. But her motive in this business, like ours, indeed like yours, though I’m not sure you fully comprehend it, is altruistic. It’s to prevent another war. Or, should I say, prevent another war happening on Germany’s terms. What you might call laying the groundwork in order to ensure a victory for the Entente. As I told you before, that means keeping America onside and away from the Kaiser’s clutches.’

  She explained to him that Foche/Katia had heard in advance of Finch’s mission and hoped he’d keep away.

  ‘The intelligence community is a small community, Captain Finch. Unfortunately, your intervention compromised her position – that is, of someone working undercover with Muller. It’s not your fault. I can only express my regret that France and Britain… we did not coordinate our intelligence. That’s something we need to correct.’

  She offered him a cigarette from a large silver case and fastened hers into her long holder. Finch leaned over and lit it for her. To his surprise, his trusty lighter still sparked after all it had been through. He pondered whether it was his only real friend.

  ‘Katia’ had spent considerable time working her way into Muller’s inner sanctum, she went on. She had provided a lot of information. Every morning she would go and buy flowers from her local florist, using a ‘dead drop’ en route to pass secrets to her French handlers.

  ‘If we’re all such bosom pals, then why did the Deuxième Bureau attempt to burgle my bank’s safety deposit box back in London? Steal the documents…?’

  Lady Brunswick grinned.

  ‘Let’s just say such documents can be a useful tool when it comes to focusing diplomatic attention; France’s way of ensuring that she and Britain are bound to each other. Don’t worry, MO3 has plenty on them too. And, in any case, we know your documents are currently safe and sound, even if they’re not where we all thought they’d be… Right, Captain Finch?’

  ‘And the codebook?’

  ‘Well, it’s always useful knowing each other’s encryptions and cyphers. The NBI are after the codebook for the very same reason. Let’s just call it speaking each other’s language. But yours was an old code we no longer use, a plant. Fortunately, when it comes to relaying misinformation, Delgado – the actual thief, by the way – was not a very good cryptographer. Gave himself away immediately when he tried to use it.’

  ‘So Delgado, is he with the Germans?’

  ‘Not exactly. He is NBI, or rather rogue NBI. Pretty much a freelance, a gun for hire—’

  It was exactly as Katia had told him.

  ‘—but a pretty nifty operator all the same – probably from his Pinkerton days – working all sides against each other. Or so we’ve now found out… On that score you’ve done sterling work, Finch. That was a secret objective of ours – for you to flush him out… which you did. We knew that third-party knowledge of a codebook would ultimately lead to it getting stolen. It’s a trick we’ve tried before. But to lose it on the first day, Finch? That really is a record.’

  He drew hard on the cigarette and felt a brief, light-headed wobble.

  ‘Delgado is driven by greed as much as anything else,’ she added. ‘Cutting side-deals here, there and everywhere. Which is why he’s of most use to us being left in play… for the time being. His knowledge of both NBI tactics and Muller’s affairs will make him much sought-after by rivals. He may lead us somewhere.’

  ‘Somewhere?’

  ‘Hopefully to the source of Muller’s new-found wealth. That heroin he’s been trading. We understand there are three tons of it being stored somewhere in New York, with the Mafia. You’ve heard of them now…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘…and other crime syndicates eager to get their hands on it.’

  Finch told her that Katia seemed unaware of the heroin.

  ‘Très amusant!’ spluttered Lady Brunswick. ‘It was through the French that we found out about it. It’s just a question now of locating it.’

  The sun was shining. Outside, the greenery looked paradisiacal. Finch wished he could just walk outdoors with his brandy and sprawl on the lawn.

  ‘And then there’s the murders of MacLeish and Kimmel,’ she was saying.

  Finch told her what he knew. It seemed merely to confirm information she already held.

  ‘MacLeish was protective of Kimmel, they were friends,’ she explained. ‘Now that had become personal, which always leads to trouble… something you already touched upon. Which is why MacLeish had gone beyond the bounds of duty in sniffing around this case. Unfortunately, curiosity killed the cat.’

  Finch sipped some more.

  ‘Kimmel was working undercover and had got himself in pretty deep by the sounds of it,’ he added. ‘I assume the savagery of his death can only be because Muller was pretty furious with him, which means he must have uncovered something.’

  ‘In my experience, such things usually occur after an act of betrayal.’

  ‘So, he was exposed?’ asked Finch. ‘Muller found out who he really was?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Quite probably on a tip-off – most likely from Delgado?’

  She sighed. ‘It’s what we suspect, anyway.’

  Finch downed his drink. He relished the burn at the back of h
is throat.

  ‘If Kimmel’s killing was ritualistic, there must be witnesses. I was in just such a room for just such a ceremony. There were maybe 70 people present at least – robes, chanting, the lot…’

  ‘That’s the intriguing thing. From what we know from Miss Foche, no one’s talking. Muller’s got a hold over the locals. They’re scared. Complicit. And, in the case of the new recruits, drugged.’

  Finch set his glass down and stood. He paced back and forth as the thoughts came to him.

  ‘Please, be careful… the rug,’ she said. ‘The owner had it shipped at great expense.’

  But he was in full flow.

  ‘So, what do we know about MacLeish? His death happened quickly. Delgado must have alerted Muller right away – maybe even delivered up MacLeish himself if he’s as duplicitous as you’re suggesting. We already know that Delgado planted the bomb to do away with me. But why was MacLeish killed so swiftly? Did someone panic? And why was I suddenly thrown to the Teutonic lions?’

  ‘Because you survived, Captain Finch. And when Delgado heard MacLeish was going to question Chang—’

  ‘Chang?’

  ‘—he knew he might tittle-tattle about that little crackerjack bomb. It was Delgado who had commissioned it. Revelation of that fact would have outed him as a rogue NBI operator. Addicts are easily persuaded, easily manipulated. They tend to talk.’

  ‘Chang’s a heroin addict?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Delgado was operating independently in trying to kill you, by the way, nothing to do with Muller – that much was true. Delgado had his own motives.’

  ‘You mean getting me out of the picture, not poking around in his affairs.’

  ‘Correct. His connection with Chang was established during that Idaho bombing you may have heard about…’

  Finch nodded.

  ‘He did some time out West. Was involved in the investigation.’

  She set her own glass down.

  ‘It was careless of Delgado, though,’ she continued. ‘He should have been leading lines of inquiry away from the likes of Chang, not towards him. MacLeish was the unlucky victim, his head quite literally delivered up to Muller, as if done for a favour.’