The Sterling Directive

by Tim Standish

  ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ an assistant asked brightly from behind the counter to our right, standing in front of a collection of cheerfully coloured hats.

  ‘We’re with our friend,’ replied Church, gesturing to Collier.

  Collier put the opera gloves back on a counter and walked over to where we were standing. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. Then, to the assistant: ‘The fitting room is on the third floor I believe you said?’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ she said cheerily, Collier having evidently put her mind at rest as to why three men might be popping in to see one of her customers in mid-fitting. ‘You will need to go to the third floor and someone will show you the way from there.’ She pointed over to the stairs as she spoke.

  Collier thanked her and led the way towards the stairs with a quiet ‘I trust you are both well? Sterling, no lasting effects from the night’s exertions?’ From his casual tone he might have been talking about a session in the gymnasium or a heavy bout of gardening rather than a gunfight.

  ‘All perfectly well, thank you,’ I replied in kind.

  ‘Good, good,’ Collier replied. ‘Terrible news in this morning’s paper,’ he continued, ‘about that fellow in Blackpool. Did you read it?’

  ‘Just seen it,’ I replied.

  ‘Quite shocking. Apparently, the police are convinced that he might have been the Ripper,’ said Collier.

  ‘I wonder why?’ asked Church.

  ‘Due to their admirable diligence and investigative skills I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Collier as we passed the first floor and carried up on our way. ‘What a lovely day it is this morning, wouldn’t you agree?

  Church giving the appearance of a marked aversion to small talk, I answered Collier in the affirmative and joined in with him in a stilted sequence of inconsequential conversation until we reached the third floor. Directed by another young woman we found ourselves outside a door labelled ‘Fitting Room’ and, in larger letters below, ‘Private’. Collier knocked.

  The door opened to reveal Milady’s driver, wearing the same dark grey uniform and unimpressed manner that I recognised from our first meeting. She held the door open and watched us as we filed into a large, light room with a high ceiling and tall windows running down the length of one wall. A few chairs and divans were arrayed nearby, low tables set near them. Large, blue silk dress covers were hanging from hooks next to the door, while on a nearby dressing table were piled a selection of material swatches and opened boxes of beads and thread. Against the opposite wall from the door a series of tall mirrored panels hinged out from the wall to form a pair of elongated semicircles. In the centre of this arrangement was Milady, standing on a small wooden block while a small, stocky man moved slowly about her, examining the dress she was wearing. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to reveal heavy forearms, thick with hair, their coarseness in contradiction to the nimble movements of his fingers as he carefully smoothed and adjusted the dress here and there. It was a long, sweeping ball gown in a sumptuous jade silk and embroidered exquisitely in coloured thread. On even a moderately attractive woman it would have been stunning; on Milady the effect was conversation-halting.

  ‘Morning all,’ called Milady from where she was standing. ‘With you in the merest jiffy. Would you mind, Paul, giving us a few minutes?’

  The tailor stood up from his task, smoothing down his waistcoat. ‘Of course, my lady.’ He held out his hand to her. She took hold of it as she jumped lightly down off the block. He followed her as she walked out from the mirrored screens and sat in an armchair by the windows and then, once she had settled, moved around her arranging the dress. Once it was satisfactorily positioned to whichever set of aesthetic principles he was working to, he straightened and gave Milady a half-bow. ‘My lady. I will be waiting just along the corridor.’ He turned to us and gave us a small nod. ‘Gentlemen.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Paul, you are so kind,’ Milady said as she opened the door, ‘And Kitty, would you be a dear and slip outside as well and make sure we aren’t disturbed?’

  A brief nod at Milady, a stern glance at Collier and Church with, unless I imagined it, a fractionally longer and sterner one for me, and Kitty strode outside, closing the door behind her.

  Milady indicated the chairs near to her. ‘Do sit down.’ Collier sat in one of the two chairs, I took the other and Church dragged over a small, upholstered footstool that he found behind one of the mirrors. Close up, the embroidery on Milady’s dress was delicately done; the branches of a stylised tree that swept up from the hem of the dress to curl up and around her waist, causing the tree’s topmost tips to creep up to just below the neckline where, a few inches below, hung a piece of fruit picked out in what I now saw were rubies.

  ‘Prussian ambassador’s ball next month,’ said Milady, noticing the direction of my gaze. ‘The theme is “Paradise”.’ She gave a thin smile and raised her eyebrows at the tiresomeness of such a social duty. ‘What do you think?’ She indicated her dress with a sweep of artfully extended fingers. ‘Not striking enough? Too much?’

  I thought about the one or two Prussians I had met over the years and imagined their reaction. ‘It seems perfectly judged to me, ma’am,’ I replied.

  ‘Why thank you, Sterling, I’ll pretend I can’t hear what you are really thinking,’ said Milady, ‘and, in any case, I find that a moderate level of shock is a wonderfully invigorating way to start an evening. Now, though I am curious to probe your knowledge of ballroom fashion further, I fear we shall have to leave that for another occasion as I sense Mr Church’s attention waning.’ And in an instant the bonhomie vanished like sunlight suddenly covered by a cloud. ‘So, tell me, what do we know about the attack?’

  ‘It was organised by the group behind the Ripper murders,’ Collier replied, ‘which we believe to be either part of, or all of, a unit called K17 within the Bureau of Engine Security. I spoke to our man over there first thing this morning. He had never heard of K17 but made a few enquiries and called me back to say that it is listed as a small pool of secretarial staff.’

  ‘They seem rather actively engaged for a roomful of typists,’ I said.

  ‘Well, quite,’ said Collier. ‘But so far the only named personnel we can identify are,’ here he slipped his notebook from out of his jacket, ‘Leonora Mills, the woman you and Sterling saw in Preston and who we think is their tapper. Then there is Waller, the airship pilot, and a senior Bureau official called Sebastian Fuller.’

  ‘Fuller?’ I spoke without thinking.

  Collier stared at me for a moment. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No, I think I saw the name last night when we were looking at files,’ I said. Fuller, the man who had come to Cooper’s so quickly that night, who had been so convinced at Edgar’s innocence and my guilt, who had taken a personal interest in my return and arrest, who had gone up in the world a great deal since. I thought it had been about extorting as high a price as possible, but he was there to protect his tame murderer who needed a scapegoat to take the blame for his unsanctioned activity.

  ‘Very likely,’ said Collier. ‘As well most likely the head of this particular unit he is also Deputy Director of the Bureau itself. A very powerful man.’

  ‘What about the men they sent last night?’ asked Milady.

  ‘We Bertie’d all three of them early this morning,’ I said, grimacing inwardly slightly at the memory of holding the corpses’ heads still while Patience dealt with each in turn. ‘The Whitechapel tour guide was a fellow called Evan Hughes; he served in the Army for a few years before he was discharged for drunkenness and misconduct towards a superior officer. The other two were cousins. Both served time in prison for assault and aggravated burglary and were jointly arrested for the murder of a shopkeeper but released due to lack of evidence. Unofficial notes on their file linked them to a protection racket run by a gang in Hoxton.’

  ‘Nasty,’ said Church. ‘We were lucky.’

  Milady’s voice was suddenly raised. ‘Three men broke into our
supposedly secret headquarters, killed a potentially valuable source of information and a member of our staff and you think we were lucky?’

  Church seemed unfazed by the tone of her voice. ‘I just meant, ma’am, we were lucky Sterling was there. Patience wouldn’t be alive if she’d been on her own.’

  ‘Nor would Carlton Gardens be intact,’ added Collier. ‘One of the men had an incendiary device with him. Their original intention in going down to the basement was undoubtedly to start a fire which would cover their tracks and destroy any evidence we had collected. Such a shame you couldn’t have taken your friend Hughes alive, Sterling.’

  ‘It is,’ I agreed.

  ‘Still,’ Collier said, ‘when I spoke to her, Patience was clear enough that you had no option but to kill him.’

  ‘I did manage to speak to Hughes briefly and confirmed that, like Harris, Hughes had no idea who was hiring him. Similarly, he received his orders by telegram. I mentioned Leonora Mills and Harris’s names, but it was clear he didn’t know them.’ I looked at Collier. ‘I am sorry there wasn’t more before he died but, given how the three of them were armed, I just couldn’t take any chance.’

  ‘Ah yes. Very modern, fully automatic, all three silenced,’ said Collier. Not readily available to your average burglar, ex-army or not.’

  ‘Is it possible that they were provided by K17?’ I asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Collier. ‘We shall have to see.’

  ‘How is Patience?’ asked Milady, the ire smoothed from her voice.

  ‘She seems alright, considering what happened,’ I said. ‘She’s young, pretty tough. I think she’ll be fine for now. We should keep an eye on her, though.’

  ‘Mr Church?’ Milady again.

  ‘I’d agree. As Sterling says, she seems alright. But it takes people in different ways, killing a man,’ said Church. ‘Assuming that’s her first of course,’ he added wryly. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure with her.’

  ‘Church, really,’ said Milady, frowning slightly at him. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Back at Carlton Gardens,’ said Church, ‘working on a location for K17. There was some sort of automated security on her engine that means when they traced us, she traced them. Apparently. When we left, she was confident she could get an exact address. There’s a couple of Jays keeping an eye on her.’

  Milady nodded slowly. ‘What about our operations? Mr Collier?’

  ‘Mac is supervising the clear-up. Once that has been completed to my satisfaction, we’ll bring in the other staff and begin packing.’ Collier’s tone was calm and matter of fact, as if he were talking about a morning of tidying up after a party rather than the removal of bodies. ‘The new office will be up and running the day after tomorrow. Things won’t be as complete as I would like them, our signals capability will be limited, ma’am, but it should be good enough for now.’

  ‘Excellent, Mr Collier, let me know as soon as my office is ready. Now what about Wallis?’

  The Jays had arrived the night before, just as Patience predicted, and while one of them stayed with her, I had gone around with the rest of them as they cleared the house. We had found Wallis lying in the briefing room, blood soaked into the carpet around him. It would have been quick.

  ‘Yes. Poor fellow,’ said Collier, still in the easy tone of a man with a short list of errands to complete before lunchtime. ‘We’ll arrange for his death to have taken place elsewhere and elsewise. When the details are tied up, I’ll contact his parents.’

  Milady nodded. ‘Good.’ She was still for a moment or two, eyes narrowed in soundless calculation. ‘How did they find us?’

  ‘Our best guess is that it started with the calls that Harris made,’ said Church. ‘We think that he used a speech code when he called his handler to let them know he was speaking under duress.’

  ‘Nigh impossible to catch, unfortunately,’ cut in Collier. ‘It could be as simple as leaving out a word or using a prearranged greeting to start off the call.’ He smiled apologetically.

  ‘It shouldn’t have mattered in any case,’ said Church. ‘We had a set-up that ran our lines out through a public telephone in Piccadilly which Patience swore would have been enough to keep out your average tapper. Turns out they were smarter than we thought. Patience thinks they traced the call to the telephone box, worked out the trick Patience was using and then set up a trace in the local exchange so that next time we dialled out they could find us. We found an anonymous telegram like the ones that Harris mentioned on one of the killers telling them to go to a pub near Piccadilly and wait for a call. It was timed yesterday afternoon, not long after Harris made his calls.’

  ‘Patience was working on the photos from Richardson’s camera yesterday afternoon,’ I said, ‘so there was nothing for them to go on for a while, but she would have shown up when she was searching on-wire last night. And it wouldn’t have mattered how much she covered her tracks at the other end because all they were interested in was the line that came into the phone box. As soon as it was used again, they got a fix on the address and called in their hired killers.’

  Milady didn’t reply immediately. When she spoke it was with a thoughtful tone. ‘So after your little fracas on the train they knew you were more than a pair of countryside lawyers, and Patience’s telephonic arrangement and our address would have given them a sense of our resources.’ She paused again. ‘Yet, in spite of that, or perhaps because of that, they acted without hesitation to eradicate our investigation, without any care of who we were.’

  ‘Because it didn’t matter,’ I said. ‘The only thing that counted was what we knew or what we suspected; that eight years ago they organised the murder of five prostitutes so that they could harvest their organs. If that got out, they would be finished, the Bureau would suddenly be put under the spotlight, severely reined in, perhaps even closed down and with elections next year it would certainly bring down the government.’

  ‘But why not simply arrest us?’ asked Milady. ‘Trump up some charge of engine crime? The Bureau, especially their counter-espionage division, have carte blanche when it comes to protecting technology. They could have played the national security card and had us off to Millbank before you could say habeas corpus.’

  ‘Because of who the patient is,’ I said, my voice a little louder than I had intended. Seeing that card on the board in my mind’s eye, I added, ‘I was thinking someone rich, well resourced but seriously ill and willing to try anything. A wealthy industrialist perhaps.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But a private individual wouldn’t bother setting up a government team, in the middle of the Bureau no less. He might bribe someone on the inside, but he’d hire his own private team to run it.’ I took another breath. The fire was fading to be replaced by a sort of light-headed nausea. The other three looked at me, Milady cold, Collier mildly puzzled, Church grim.

  ‘I think only a government conspiracy would be housed wholly in the government, would be cleaning up their tracks from the inside.’ Another breath because it was getting harder now as the face that should be on that card swam into focus.

  ‘And what stakes are big enough to set up a conspiracy like this inside the most paranoid part of the most suspiciously watchful organisation in the country?’ I asked. ‘I mean, who would you bribe, threaten and serially murder for without question?’ I left the question hanging in the air. I looked at the others. Collier’s face was pale, a look of shock creeping onto the placid visage. Church’s jaw was tight as he stared at the floor between his feet. Only Milady seemed unfazed by what I had said, her face blank, eyes sharp.

  ‘Say it.’ Milady, voice level.

  A last breath before the world changed, before I made the four of us the most dangerous people in England. ‘Victoria,’ I said, voice wavering. I swallowed. ‘It’s the Queen.’

  No one said anything for a moment. Then Milady muttered something loudly in a language that I didn’t understand, though Church’s snapped his head to look at her, a slight blush creeping up his
neck.

  Collier face by comparison was bloodless. ‘I. That is. Ah.’ He stopped, speechless, and hung his head slowly down till his chin rested on his chest.

  ‘She was ill about ten years ago,’ said Church. His voice was flat, steady. He looked around at us. ‘Do you remember they almost had to call off the banquet for her jubilee?’ Collier nodded and Church continued. ‘Said it was the strain of too many public appointments. A year later she’s no better, some of the papers start talking about abdication when, what do you know, while the Ripper’s playing merry havoc in Whitechapel, she pops off for an extended break in Balmoral. Suddenly she’s right as rain and the papers are full of the good news. Never mind the bread riots or the Ripper because the Queen is well again and all’s right with the world. A testament to her hardy constitution.’

  ‘It probably was in part,’ I said, ‘I imagine you would have to be hardy to survive an organ transplant.

  ‘My God,’ said Collier. ‘If this got out it would mean abdication.’

  ‘Abdication?’ exclaimed Milady. ‘The government would collapse and with Gordon as Prime Minister anything would be possible. Riots. Revolution. It could be the end of the monarchy altogether.’

  ‘It would be all the Confederate States would need to finally make a play for Canada,’ I said. ‘With the Boers and the Zulus both flaring up again, the army would be stretched beyond the point of capability. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that we would only need one or two other colonies to see an opportunity to rebel and the Empire would be in serious, possibly irreversible danger.’