by H. B. Lyle
Back in Dvinsk, the idea of being an informer would never have occurred to her. But she was not in Dvinsk any more. She did it for the money at first, of course, but she never thought she was doing anything wrong, not really. They were stupid little boys playing stupid little games – one side wore suits, the other stubble. One side did it for their ‘King and country’ the other for the ‘workers’. Or so they told themselves.
No one did it for the women.
Van Bork treated her with respect. He would ask her where she wanted to meet. He would pull out a chair for her. He was always polite. This was new. At his suggestion, she inveigled herself into the political meetings around Whitechapel. She was so successful, melted into the scene so seamlessly, that Van Bork began asking more.
Names, places, numbers.
And then one day he said, ‘Lead them. Everybody wants to be led. Especially the anarchists. I will pay you more. You needn’t betray anyone.’
A different, younger Bela would have laughed behind her hand and turned her face away. But she didn’t have to be that Bela any more. She didn’t have to be anyone’s Bela but her own.
She began to visit him periodically at the German Embassy, always at night and always through the servants’ entrance. Ask for Van Bork, he told her, though she didn’t know if that were his real name. He wanted her to cause trouble, to provoke action. He wanted fights, demonstrations, unrest.
‘Why?’ she asked, the first time he met her at the embassy.
‘For money, of course.’
‘No, why do you want this?’
He unfolded his insect-long limbs and stood up. ‘That is a bigger question. You’ve heard of the Triple Entente? It doesn’t matter if you haven’t. What I want, what Germany wants, is chaos and disharmony between Great Britain and Russia. We want disaster on the streets of London, and we want Russia to get the blame. You can help us. But you needn’t betray anyone.’ He’d been walking up and down as he talked, but at this last line he turned and smiled.
‘You think I can do this? I am only a woman, they will not listen to me.’
Van Bork slowly rubbed his hands together. He examined the palms before he answered. ‘They will listen to you. I see it in your eyes. You are a leader. I know you.’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘Must we go through this? Really? You have been working for the imperialists, you have been spying for the imperialists. Your new friends …’ he tailed off, the implication clear. ‘Let’s not be childish.’
She was never going to refuse, even though she asked. It was the only way she was ever going to earn real money on her own. And maybe Van Bork was right. She could lead.
Peter was the key. She’d seen him out and about a number of times, at the drinking dens north of the ’Chapel, at the clubs. People spoke in hushed tones when he passed. There’s the Painter, they’d say, as if he’d decorated the Sistine Chapel. When Bela looked at him, she thought of a different art. His thick hair, his languid smile, the symmetrical features – he could have been on the stage. She watched as he strutted about with his gang of toughs. But Bela saw the sadness around his mouth when he smiled, recognised the dissatisfaction in the machismo performance.
‘Petty crime is very glamorous,’ she said to him as he exited the Anarchist Club one night.
‘What?’ He turned.
‘It must make you feel good. To contribute to the cause.’
‘I am against the law, as all anarchists should be.’
Bela shrugged. ‘Of course, it is as I say. It makes you feel good.’
He waved a hand at her in dismissal and strode off into the night. She knew he would return. The way to charm a peacock is to give him what he knows he does not have – the one, most beautiful feather in the plume. In Peter’s case: a sense of mission.
‘Why should I listen to you? Who are you anyway?’ he said, the next time they met.
And that’s how she reeled him in, under Van Bork’s instruction. She suggested targets for robbery first, but targets that struck at the state and not simply for the crime itself. These targets changed to include demonstrations, focused acts of violence and mayhem. Peter christened her Arlekin, Harlequin in English, the multicoloured fool – her two-tone face like the clown’s mask. He came to follow her, like a child behind a piper.
He used her, too, of course. Each of his various schemes he dignified to his followers with the same old ‘It’s from Arlekin,’ although half the time she only found out later. But Peter began to trust her. She was so much better at planning than he was. The Tottenham job would never have been so botched had it been up to her – what kind of idiot holds up a payroll outside a police station?
The bomb was her last job. Van Bork put down enough cash to take her to New York and a new life, away from anarchists and Peter and Yakov and men playing their silly little games. All she’d needed was access to the materials to make an effective bomb – and then Wiggins fell into her lap. A new convert, a worker at Woolwich, eager and ready. At least, that’s what he’d said to Peter – ready to go into battle for the cause. Yet that wasn’t the man she knew, her Wiggins. But then, did she know him at all?
Wiggins. A good man. She used to wonder whether they existed, where. And there he was, a magnificent drunken white knight, fighting for her on the street, buying her perfume, holding her hand. Gentle and true. Why did he have to be so true? Didn’t he know the poor can’t afford love?
And now here he was, her good and beautiful man – on a horse, like a real knight. Not what she needed at all.
Wiggins slipped from the horse, steadied himself against its flank and headed towards her. She stopped when she saw him but didn’t try to run, didn’t show much surprise beyond a delicately arched eyebrow. He moved quickly, despite the pain in his shoulder. She had a faraway smile on her lips, sad, knowing, maybe even amused, but as he neared, Wiggins saw her expression drop.
She gestured with her eyes. ‘You’re hurt?’ Wiggins realised she wasn’t smiling at all. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face pale.
‘Not here,’ he said.
With his good arm, he gripped Bela but not too tight to rattle the box. ‘This way.’ He guided her from the crowd. Wiggins pulled her down first one street, then the next and a third, his teeth clenched, his brow sweat-streaked and his shoulder throbbing. Neither of them spoke. He could barely keep his eyes from the hatbox, Yakov’s bomb. Phosphorus he had stolen inside, the nuts and bolts and springs and murderous cunning of Yakov.
‘Is it live?’ He had to check.
‘I knew you’d steal something,’ she whispered. ‘Yakov got another spring.’
‘Is it live?’
‘Yes.’
Their shoes beat on the flagstones as they headed north, down terraced streets. Windows glowed golden as the evening closed in. Wiggins dug his fingers into Bela’s arm. His eyes flicked again at the box, heart pumping. The pain stung his shoulder, chiming with every heartbeat. Bela’s breathing grew quicker beside him, wheezy, short. Her hands shook with tension. The box. The bomb. Wiggins pushed on.
A rocket screeched above their heads and multicoloured flowers lit the sky.
‘Christ,’ Wiggins ducked. ‘That’s the display.’
‘We don’t have time,’ Bela gasped, eyes on the box in front of her. ‘We must leave this.’
Wiggins glared at her but carried on. ‘It’ll kill people here.’
He half dragged her over a barge-choked canal and then a set of train tracks until they reached a wide main road. A horse reared up and a motor car swerved. Someone shouted, but Wiggins kept on. Up ahead, an ornate gate with a huge stone architrave. They hurried under the arch and into a grand cemetery. The night closed, blacker there amid the gravestones, the mausoleums and the high, hanging trees. It was deserted as they went deeper in, away from the roads and the surrounding houses.
‘Give it here,’ Wiggins muttered at last. He took the box in his hands, his left arm shaking with the pain, and trod carefully
into the stairwell of a large crypt.
Bela waited for him, though he could barely make out her form in the gloom. She waved an arm above her head in one slow movement and he headed towards her. ‘Here is safe,’ she said.
They sat side by side on a public bench and eyed the far-off crypt. Wiggins glanced up and down the path.
He hadn’t trusted himself to talk – his anger too difficult to control. Not anger at her so much as at himself, for missing the signs. Now, as they waited for the bomb to explode – the device he’d helped create – Wiggins thought of the shadowy Arlekin, responsible for Bill Tyler’s death, who now sat beside him with her hands in her lap.
‘You’re hurt,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘Arlekin. That means harlequin in Russian, right? Your face – they call you Arlekin.’
She said nothing.
‘You’ve been running me all along. As soon as you found out where I worked, you knew you could use me. “Don’t leave your job, Wiggins. It’s a good job. An important job,” you said. Woolwich factory, military hardware. You and Peter playing me like a fucking joanna. Christ, what a mug I’ve been.’ He shook his head. ‘This is your big job, ain’t it, the big score. You couldn’t trust the others to do this one. No one would suspect a woman, would they, not a peach like you. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ He barked out a laugh and then fell quiet. ‘You know, I loved going to the exhibition with you – normal, like. We went on the ride. I thought you was interested in me, in days like that. But you was just casing the bloody joint, fucking recce. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I knew. I clicked at last.’ He exhaled long and slow. ‘Did you ever feel anything for me?’
Bela sighed. ‘You know this.’
‘Do I?’
He felt her hand gently rest on his bad shoulder and despite himself, her touch calmed him. He breathed in her scent.
‘What happened?’ she said again.
‘Peter,’ he replied. ‘I’m all right. At least, my shoulder is.’
‘I told him not to hurt you,’ she whispered. ‘Why did you come?’
‘You can’t kill innocent people, it ain’t right, Bel.’
‘It’s not about killing. I am to destroy the Vibbly-Vobbly that is all …’ Her voice tailed off.
Wiggins spat. ‘Have you ever seen a phosphorus bomb? Seen a body ripped apart? It’s not the bang you remember, it’s the waiting after the bang and before the screaming. Funny, it seems like hours when it happens, that silence between the cause and the effect. That’s what stays with you.’ As his muscles relaxed, he suddenly felt very tired.
The bomb waited in the far-off darkness, unexploded.
‘I only went along with the bloody plot so as I could kill you,’ he said at last. ‘Kill Arlekin. I should do it too – you sent my best mate to the grave. Bill was the best man I ever knew and you and your fucking games – you! – sending those stupid bastards out robbing, you killed him.’
‘I had nothing to do with your friend’s death. This is true.’
‘Ain’t this your bloody gang?’ He pulled from his pocket the red enamel eight-pointed star and thrust it awkwardly into her hand. ‘You ran the Tottenham job, sent those fuckers up there with a shooter and collected the cash. Christ, what a mug,’ he repeated.
‘This is not my gang. The star means without state. I have no gang.’ She placed the small star back in Wiggins’s lap. ‘Peter and Yakov are common criminals. Peter has a good face, he is handsome yes, but they are no good. They shoot for fun, for anything. I never sent them to Tottenham. It is foolish thing, this robbery. It means nothing.’ She took a breath. ‘This is the sign of an old gang – they change the name all the time, to give reason for their stupidity. You must talk to Peter about your friend. He was at Tottenham.’
‘You say it Tot-num, two syllables,’ he muttered. ‘You swear you had nothing to do with it?’
‘Nothing.’ She stroked his back.
‘Then what are you doing trying to blow up half of Hammersmith? I knew you was into the politics, but, Bel, this? Running with the likes of Peter, bombing folk? What good would it do?’ He grunted in pain. ‘But it ain’t even political for you, is it? That ain’t the half of it.’
Wiggins shook his head sadly as he thought through each of the steps leading to this point. Bela as Arlekin, the exhibition as the bomb target, Bela pulling all the strings. He thought he knew why, though not quite the reason behind that why.
‘They don’t know about the Germans, do they?’ he said.
Bela’s hand stiffened and withdrew. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I saw you, Bel, at the embassy.’
The night exploded. A great flash of light and a shuddering, hollow boom, rubble, then smoke and green-white light in a great bloom. Wiggins saw Bela’s face, lit up, startled.
She turned to him. ‘We must go. The police will come.’ She stood up.
He grabbed her wrist tightly. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Tell me who you speak to at the embassy? Have they been paying for all this?’
She swept her eyes around as the light from the bomb died. In the distance, they could hear faint cries, the peeping of a whistle.
‘His name is Van Bork. He pays me to set up these things – the demonstration, a fight, a bomb. That’s all I know. He found me, a long time ago. And he pays me.’
‘But why?’
‘We must go, the police.’
‘Tell me.’ Wiggins squeezed her wrist hard and wouldn’t let go. ‘Is there a child?’ he said in a softer tone. ‘Is that why?’
Bela said something he didn’t understand and then switched to English in a violent burst, harsher and quicker than he’d ever heard – barked and hard-edged.
‘No, there is no child. Is this only reason for woman to act? Is woman’s life about child and nothing else? Woman cannot have the same life as man? All men I have met think this. My father, my husband, the Plovs. Peter, Yakov and now you. Women are not allowed their own thoughts and feelings. You would never ask this question of a man. For man it is all right to be greedy, evil, it is his decision. But woman, it must be child. This is what all men think and you think it too. I tell you. I did it for the money, Wiggins, for new life. My life. For this bomb, Van Bork will pay me a hundred pounds. I go to America. Do you know what a woman’s life is in Russia? Misery and work. And here? For me, not better. With this money, I go. I find my sister. A new life.’ She drew breath, and brought her other hand around to Wiggins’s wrist. At the cemetery entrance, a lantern jogged and winked in the darkness. Shouts and voices punched the air. Phosphorus smoke bit their eyes. ‘You can come with me, to America. Please …?’
He held on to her wrist. ‘You once told me I was a good man. What would a good man do?’
She stopped struggling against his grip. The far-off shouts were getting closer. ‘You don’t need to be so good. Not this time. Come with me.’
He released her. ‘I can’t do it, Bel,’ he said. ‘But if you go, go fast, get out of London. You’ve got the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen, but it ain’t hard to recognise. They’ll be after you. In no time,’ he added, placing fifty pounds in her palm. ‘Don’t go back to the embassy. Don’t go back to Peter neither – they’ll know you was a German snout. Working for the imperialists. I can’t have you going back there.’
‘Come, please,’ she pleaded.
‘Did you ever love me? No, don’t answer that – it’s pathetic. How can you fall in love with a mug?’ He breathed out. ‘Do you swear you had nothing to do with the Tottenham job? You weren’t in the cottage?’
‘It is not me. It’s Peter.’
‘That’s a fifty.’ He stabbed a finger at her. ‘Not a bloody love letter, so don’t ditch it. That’ll get you anywhere in the world.’
‘Who are you?’ she said. And then a thought struck her. ‘What did you do to Nikolai?’
‘Nikolai?’ Wiggins said, thrown. ‘He worked for you?’
She cursed. ‘No. He follow me, he like
d me. Once there was something but he is mad. Now he has gone.’
‘Yes, Bel. He’s gone.’
Outraged cries. The bomb was drawing a crowd. Bela collected her skirts, ready to run, raised onto the tips of her small, square-toed boots. The lanterns glowed close. She hesitated a moment.
‘Who are you, my handsome man?’ she asked again, her voice soft.
‘Wiggins,’ he said as his chin dropped to his chest. ‘That’s who I am.’
24
Vernon Kell whistled as he high-stepped towards Victoria Station. He looked up at the faddish new Westminster Cathedral and decided that, on reflection, he approved. The red and white stripes added vim to the area, even if the overall impression were rather cake-like. Why not celebrate every now and then? Less than a month after the death of LeQuin, and Kell had the top job, a whole newfangled bureau, Ewart was on his way out (they’d have him doing something at the palace) and the threats from abroad were being taken seriously at last. The Woolwich case had been wrapped up to everyone’s satisfaction. René LeQuin’s demise had shattered his spy network – without the head, the rest fell. Rijkard would hang. The other thug, Miller, would do fifteen years for conspiracy. Woolwich was leak-free. The only problem that remained was the connection to Germany, or lack of it. They were no nearer to discovering the identity of the embassy man who ran LeQuin, though they now had the means to set about finding out.
‘No cab?’ Wiggins appeared behind him, as if out of nowhere.
‘I thought I told you to wait outside the station?’
Wiggins sighed. ‘I saw you coming. The blind man selling matches saw you coming.’
‘Let’s go.’ Kell clicked his heels. ‘I need to introduce you to someone. How’s the shoulder?’
‘Mending,’ Wiggins said in a manner that struck Kell as unutterably sad. A contrast to his own fine mood.
‘Excellent. Our work is about to grow considerably. With no small thanks to you,’ he added. ‘I can keep you on the same pay scale, and maybe there’ll be additional expenses. We will be recruiting, training, and I’ll need your help. There’s a spy school to think about, new agents, protocols. You know the sort of thing, you’re good at it.’