by J. R. Rain
I was lacing my boots when Hannah stepped into the room. Dressed in a plain woolen skirt and a blouse, her auburn hair tied up in a loose bun, she looked dazzling. I suspected she would look dazzling in an old army jacket.
“Will you join me for breakfast in the hall, Allan?” Hannah picked up a folder from a bureau and stuffed it into a brown leather briefcase.
“I’d be delighted, Dr. Byrd, but—”
“It’s Hannah, and I insist.”
“You are a very insistent person, Hannah.”
“I am.” She nodded. “I’m also a very hungry person.”
“Perhaps I’d be better off finding a pub.”
“Nonsense.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me along. I grabbed my forage cap from the stand as she pulled me out into the hallway.
The dining hall was full of tables and benches, filling rapidly with students and fellows. I was again pulled back to my years of sitting on those very same benches. Hannah had a word with the rector of the college, and soon, a place for me was set at the high table. She disappeared into a corridor and returned wearing the black robe that was customary to wear as a fellow. She sat down at an end of the table, indicating for me to sit on her right. As a junior fellow, she did not sit in the middle, but I had noticed how well-respected and intimate she seemed with the rector.
She seemed to read my mind while I struggled to tactfully ask her some questions, especially this one: “Do you have someone or does your work keep you too busy?”
She smiled softly. “I did. We were engaged before the war. He had just completed his studies in engineering at Jesus College and was asked to attach himself to the 202nd Squadron when they went to build the airstrip at Gibraltar. He stayed there for the whole war and by the time he came back, he had met a woman from the Rock who had been attached to the RAF Mediterranean Headquarters.”
“So, you never...” I began.
She shushed me.
“We were engaged for four years. On the night he left, we decided to say goodbye properly. It was all very amicable. I did not mind; he had found someone else by the time he came back. By that time, I had loved and lost several times as well. That’s what the war did.”
I nodded, admiring her perspective.
“And you, Allan? Have you loved and lost?”
I took in some air, not fully prepared for such a rundown at a table of fellows. Still, I had asked her and it seemed only fair. I said, “I had a sweetheart who worked at Biggin Hill, and then there was a girl from Shorncliffe. She came over to Normandy after the landings to help in the field hospitals but… she went missing in the Ardennes.”
Hannah frowned. “She was with Montgomery?”
“She was attached to Eisenhower’s group.”
Before Hannah could respond, the rector bade us to stand. He began reciting the prayer. I removed my hat and bowed my head, mouthing the words from memory. Though not a religious man, the prayer was still with me after hearing the words nearly every day while I had been a fellow. That, and they gave me some semblance of peace.
The prayer done, we sat down again. Immediately, Hannah asked about Eisenhower.
“I only met the man once. Impressive chap, but a Yank.”
“You don’t like Americans?” she asked.
The food was brought to the table. It seemed a true feast, compared to what would have been served a few years before. Without waiting, she heaped eggs, sausage and bacon onto my plate before serving herself.
“Oh, I quite like Americans. They’re brash, forthright, and often easy to get along with. Even if some are a little too full of themselves.” I added a fork full of egg to my toast. “They fight like that, too. Eisenhower lost huge numbers of men because he was overly confident, and Omaha Beach was a slaughter yard. I foresee a time when that attitude will bring a severe punishment.”
“It certainly almost did in Korea,” she added.
“Indeed.”
We finished our breakfast in silence. Admittedly, I was impressed by the amount of food she consumed. Hannah ate like a dockworker at high noon.
“Do you always eat this much?” I asked, admittedly quite candidly. To say I felt comfortable around her would be an understatement.
“Oh, this is nothing, Mr. Allan. I sometimes get so caught up with work that I forget to eat, so when I do eat, I take as much on board as I can.” She winked and swallowed another bite and leaned in toward me. “I forgot to tell you something last night.”
“Oh?” I was sipping my tea and more focused on that exercise.
“Father showed me something. A picture that he claimed held the clue to what became of the lance. It seemed... ordinary, but he was very excited about it.”
“Then I should probably look for it. Thank you for telling me.”
“Maybe I should help you look for it.”
A thrill went through me, but I said, “I should really not expose you to anything dangerous.”
“Do I have to insist again?” Hannah batted her eyelids.
Her persistence brought forth a chuckle from me. “I shall accept your help, saving you the trouble of insisting. And enough with those blinking eyes already!”
When breakfast was finished, we returned to Dr. Byrd’s quarters to collect our coats. Back out into the rain, we walked past Christ Church Cathedral on our way to Pembroke Square. Once we entered the college, she led me to her father’s office. Hannah was in the process of placing her key in the lock when she noticed the door was open. There were noticeable scratches around the lock.
I immediately regretted not carrying my service revolver, being loathe to carry it in the middle of Oxford. Even so, I thrust Hannah aside and shouldered the door open, leading the charge into the elder Dr. Byrd’s office.
Chapter Five
Dr. Julius Byrd’s office had been ransacked.
In fact, there had been nothing left untouched. Papers and books and pieces of furniture were scattered over the floor. Hannah gasped in horror as she slipped past me.
“What’s happened here?” she asked, her voice close to shrieking.
My attention was drawn to the desk, covered now with scattered papers, mostly essays, by the look of things. It was highly unlikely that a student had broken in to change a grade. There were a fair number of relics around, but most were replicas, cheap fakes. And by the looks of things, most had been left behind.
Meanwhile, Hannah looked through the cupboards. I began rummaging through the desk. There was a box in the top drawer. Inside was a Smith & Wesson revolver… a service weapon that had somehow escaped the notice of the burglars.
“Did your father do National Service?”
She didn’t look up. “No. He worked for the Ministry of Propaganda.”
“Then why is there a service revolver in his desk?”
She turned to face me, surprised. “He doesn’t have a revolver.”
I removed the box from the drawer and checked to see whether the gun was loaded. The chambers were empty.
“I’m sorry, Hannah… but it certainly seems that he does.”
She shook her head in disbelief, turning her attention back to the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“It’s not here.”
“What’s not here?”
Hannah slammed the final door shut. “My father’s journal. He kept it here. It’s not in its place!”
“They took it?”
She shook her head, then nodded slowly as dawning came over. “The people who did this? I doubt it. See? It was under a false bottom in the drawer.” She lifted it for me to see. It was most certainly empty. She continued, “I doubt very much that the person who did this would have bothered to put the false bottom back in the drawer after taking the journal.”
“So, your father has taken it.”
“Presumably so. Then again, whoever has my father might also have his journal.”
“Which, I assume, contains his latest research about the Holy Lance?�
� I asked.
“You assume correctly.”
“We’ll need to look through his rooms.”
She turned to leave the office, but I rushed after her, catching her wrist to stop her.
“Before we go any further, I’ll need to retrieve my own revolver. It’s too dangerous to proceed unarmed.” I paused. “You’d better come with me.”
“No. I’ll wait here.”
I raced back to Hannah’s rooms, retrieved my belt and the Enfield No. 2 from my duffel bag and ran back. When I returned to the office, Hannah was waiting impatiently, despite my absence of only five minutes. I strapped on the belt and fumbled with the cross-strap, since it had been a while since I last worn it. Once ready, I motioned to Hannah to lead the way to her father’s rooms.
The door lock to Dr. Byrd’s personal rooms had also been picked. Alarmed, I gently pushed Hannah aside and drew my weapon. I quickly checked the rounds and took a breath. Then I pushed the door open.
In the parlor stood a tall, swarthy man. He was in the process of clearing the professor’s books from a large bookcase, pulling them down, from all appearances, by the handful. The man carried a pistol in his right hand, and after lightly regarding Hannah and me, he smiled and took another book from the shelf, that one a plain volume bound in brown leather. He opened the book and chuckled.
“What in the blazes are you doing in here?” demanded Hannah.
The man dropped the book and brought the pistol up and aimed it at me, which I found rather rude. Hannah screamed, surely seeing the death of Major Evelyn Allan Quatermain.
Luckily, I am quite proficient with a weapon in hand, and my own was already drawn and at the ready. My gun’s report was deafening in such close confines, its bang rebounding from the walls of the parlor. My shot tore the pistol from the man’s hand, kicking it into the man’s nose, which shattered nicely.
The dark-haired man let out a yelp, and with his nose bleeding, he launched himself out through an open window near where he stood. I caught the tail-end of a shouted word as he did so. Surely, the drop injured the man, but by the time I reached the window, he was already up and limping away. For a moment, I considered shooting him, but there were people everywhere, though none gave chase to the man as he weaved in and out of the crowd.
I turned in time to see Hannah pick up the book he had dropped when I’d shot him.
“Allan, that was magnificent. I could kiss you.”
She immediately followed through on her threat, stepping up to me and wrapping her arms around me, she kissed me full on the lips. Obviously, I was taken aback, completely, but I drew her closer, being mindful to keep the revolver pointing away from her and toward the floor.
I left it to her to break away from me, and she did, distracted by people investigating the source of the gunshot. She cleared her throat and stepped away from me, seemingly embarrassed as her father’s neighbor had come into the room to see us kissing.
“Good shooting, Major.”
“Thank you, Dr. Byrd,” I responded in a small voice.
The fellow who lived next door to Dr. Byrd opened his mouth to ask for an explanation, but I beat him to it.
“Please be so kind as to fetch the rector, sir,” I said, taking on my usual authoritarian air. “I am here on official business and just found an armed intruder in this room. He escaped, but I hope a constable can be fetched to track down the man.”
It was a friendly statement, but clear enough in voice that it was an order, and the man obeyed. He pushed other curious onlookers out of the way and went to locate the rector. Another man went to call the constabulary.
“What do we have here, Hannah?” I asked, as she squatted down to look at the pistol.
She smiled and brandished the book. “Impeccable timing, Allan. But I don’t recognize the weapon.”
I picked up the pistol and examined it, recognizing it instantly. “Walther P38,” I muttered softly. “Made in the latter stages of the war for the Wehrmacht.”
“German?”
“Most definitely. Some of our guys might have looted some, but there wouldn’t be many.” I looked at the gun again. “And I doubt many Tommies would say scheisse,” I added as an afterthought, instantly sure of what the man had shouted as he’d launched himself out the window.
I took the journal from Hannah to look through it. Starting from the back, and two pages from the final entry, I found a picture pasted into the book. The picture was one of a mosaic depicting a nobleman in fine dress holding a spear surrounded with a halo. Behind the figure stood a mass of skeletons.
I showed the picture to Hannah.
“Is this what your father showed you?”
Hannah nodded.
I looked closer and tried to read the lettering at the bottom of the mosaic. “Does your father have a magnifying glass?”
She walked to the cupboard, opened a drawer and retrieved a large magnifying glass. She handed it to me. After getting a closer look at the writing, I determined it was Greek. Although my Greek was rusty, I could decipher the simple inscription.
“Saint Constantine and the Lance of Longinus.” I paused and Hannah suddenly looked pale and, quite frankly, a little sick to her stomach. “I believe I must make a phone call.”
Chapter Six
In line at the Europa Building of Heathrow Airport, Hannah and I had just been weighed, along with our luggage. My duffel had been no problem, but the large suitcase Hannah had brought had just barely made the weight requirement.
Once outside the terminal, the BEAC’s Airspeed Ambassador was waiting to take us to Orly, just outside of Paris. Hannah was clearly nervous, often wringing her hands and twisting her hair, along with a fair amount of rocking in her seat.
“I’ve never flown before,” she explained, when I lightly teased her about it.
“It’s completely safe, my dear.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Only time I’ve ever gone down was when the Lancaster I was in got shot by a Messerschmitt. But this is a new plane, state of the art. Besides, if something does go wrong, I’ll help you parachute down. I performed several missions as a paratrooper, you know.”
“You did?”
I nodded, pleased that she found that aspect intriguing, but also mildly vexed that I was bragging like a schoolboy trying to impress the pretty girl in class. The really pretty girl in class. I made an effort to tone down my embarrassing bravado: “It was part of my training, and we parachuted a few times in covert missions. I liked it most of the time, but during the night, it’s not as much fun.”
Her smile faded, as perhaps she pictured being part of one of those nightly missions.
We were finally allowed to board the plane, while our bags were loaded into the cargo bay in the plane’s rear. Hannah preferred the seats at the front of the plane, close to the door and the cockpit. Once the purser advised us on the safety aspects, and how our meal would be served while in flight, we fastened our seatbelts and prepared for takeoff. The propellers began turning and slowly, the Airspeed Ambassador prepared to set into motion. When the engines began to rev up and the plane slowly accelerated, Hannah let out a slight squeal of surprise. I relished the feeling of weightlessness and could not stop smiling, trying my best to be sensitive to Hannah’s sudden sense of nausea. Fortunately, it soon passed and she marveled at the view of England shrinking far below. She giggled at the fact that the cars looked like ants. But the biggest thrill was seeing the city clearly, as well as Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey, and London Bridge. Meanwhile, I focused on the huge number of bombed craters and desolate spots. New houses on the outskirts of the city stretched past Greenwich, but in the center and the East End remained sights that reminded me of the Blitz.
When we finally reached the French coastline, we began to descend and Hannah grabbed my hand, squeezing it tight. Fortunately, Hannah seemed distracted from her anxiety by the sight of Paris below. Even more so than London, Paris was also still pockmarked from the war’s de
struction.
The plane touched down at Orly without a hitch, and Hannah walked down the stairs to the tarmac with wide eyes. I came after her and breathed deeply… the air was fresh, with a hint of the rain we had left behind in England that was sure to catch up to us in a few hours.
We gathered our luggage and hopped onto a bus destined for the center of Paris. As we approached the Cathedral of Notre Dame, I tapped Dr. Byrd on the shoulder. She had been looking at the approaching cathedral, admiring the place she said she knew only from a Victor Hugo novel.
“Let’s get out of here, we’ve got a few hours for sightseeing,” I suggested.
She looked pleased and agreed.
Together, we walked to the cathedral, where I insisted we go inside. We spent half an hour enthralled by the intricate architecture that had miraculously escaped the ravages of the Nazis. I carried her suitcase, my duffel hanging from a shoulder strap, and we explored the streets behind the cathedral. The Île de la Cité and the narrow streets between the old government buildings, along with the cathedral and courts, were a traditional home for students and intellectuals. It was the reason I had wanted to go there. Along one street, books were laid out on tables outside various shops, and she joined me in perusing them. It took a moment to find a volume I had hoped to discover, but eventually, I did find it. I paid for the purchase with some of the francs that Major Painter had given me in London.
I recalled my recent meeting with Painter, explaining what had happened. Quietly, as though he had already known, he pushed a purse with foreign currency toward me over the pub table. He had advised me to take the plane to Paris and then the Orient Express to Istanbul. He promised to take care of the arrangements. And, sure enough, an envelope had awaited Hannah and me at Heathrow, with tickets for the plane and two first-class tickets for the Orient Express.