Agent of Fortune

by Kurt Magenta

‘Bitterness doesn’t suit you Lucien. But yes, keep a low profile. Throw yourself into your work. If there’s revenge to be taken, I’ll make sure you get it.’

  Solomon Cantello was not in the least bit surprised when the police showed up. He answered their questions with equanimity. After all, he knew they couldn’t pin anything on him. Not only that, but his special relationship with the local constabulary stretched back many years. If he made sure they could afford to buy their kids something nice at Christmas, and if he stayed within certain boundaries, they left him alone.

  But the next visitor, who arrived late in the afternoon, was less easy to manage. He was a journalist named Sam Goucher.

  Goucher had been pursuing his research into the French in Paris with a zeal that was beginning to impact his drinking time. And when he got a tip-off from his contact at the Yard about the murder just outside Mrs Lau’s, he went immediately to see his old pal Solomon Cantello.

  The door was open at this time of the day as the staff trickled in to work. The lobby was deserted and smelled unpleasantly of carbolic. Goucher found the club’s owner buried in that tawdry Aladdin’s cave of his, while the cleaners tried – no doubt in vain – to make the rest of the place look respectable.

  Cantello sighed. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘True. I’m the proverbial bad penny.’ Goucher seated himself in front of the desk and took out his notebook. ‘Tell me about the French lad who died, Solomon.’

  ‘If you’ve been talking to the coppers, you know as much as I do. The boy was taking loans from some Maltese mob up West.’ He meant Soho. ‘They asked for some of it back. First nicely. Then not so nicely.’ He spread his hands, the unspoken, ‘And we all know how that ends.’

  ‘Which Maltese mob? Don’t tell me you don’t know.’

  ‘As if I’m going to get on the wrong side of that lot.’

  ‘They’re competition. Wouldn’t you like to see some of them inside?’

  ‘Fruitcakes is what they are.’ Cantello tapped his temple. ‘A bit cracked up here.’

  Goucher said nothing. Cantello looked uncharacteristically nervous. He fiddled with the ashtray on his desk.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Goucher. ‘You’ll be wringing your hands next.’

  Cantello gestured at the notebook. ‘Put that thing a way for a minute, will you?’

  Goucher shrugged and obliged. Cantello crossed to the door, peered out, closed it again. He snapped the bolt across. For a brief second Goucher was afraid.

  Cantello returned and adopted his favourite standing position, leaning on the edge of the desk with his hands in his pockets. He looked Goucher in the eye and said: ‘You really don’t want to write about this one, Sam.’

  ‘Why not? I’ve written about villains before. If anything they thrive on the glory.’

  Cantello shook his head. ‘Not this time. There are other factors involved. Elements.’

  ‘Elements?’ Goucher smiled. ‘Sure you’re not the one who’s cracked?’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know who did this, but it was never about the money. That kid liked his cards but he played safe. Somebody pinned a target on him.’

  ‘You mean they were paid to kill him?’

  ‘Maybe just to beat on him, but it got out of hand. Fruitcakes, like I said. Either way, it was a commission.’

  Goucher frowned. His stomach lurched, as if he was standing before a steep drop. ‘But that’s crazy. Who’d pay to bump off some harmless French lad?’

  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? Political, I heard. Which is why you should drop this.’

  ‘They already warned you, didn’t they? To keep your trap shut.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘So you go and tell the first reporter who comes through the door?’

  ‘Off the record,’ Cantello stressed, wagging a finger. ‘And not just any reporter. We go back. I’ve got a lot of respect for you, Sam, in my own way. Became a dad recently, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He usually tried to avoid thinking about Caroline and the baby. They were in Somerset, safe. ‘But what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ Cantello’s gesture encapsulated the office, the nightclub and the whole East End beyond. ‘Not sure I’ll be here for long. If Jerry has his way, this place will be flattened before the year’s out.’

  Lucien returned to headquarters to find that he was grounded. Passy, he knew, had some sympathy for the freelance aspects of intelligence gathering. But Chenard’s death had rattled him.

  ‘No more the free agent,’ Passy said, in his quiet yet authoritative voice. ‘No more wandering around London. We have desk work to do.’

  It turned out that good intelligence had started coming through from the Breton fishermen in Cornwall, thanks to the new liaison they’d installed down there. Lucien’s job would be to sift through the raw notes and draw useful conclusions. He took the file and smothered a sigh.

  The following evening, as soon as he was off duty, he telephoned Anna. No answer. Either the phone was ringing into an empty flat, or she didn’t want to pick it up. Later he checked in at the Gargoyle Club, but she was not there either. As much as he wished otherwise, he suspected that what had happened between them was a one-off, a way of distracting and shielding him. His memory of that night was a confused mesh of pain, anxiety and pleasure. He felt an ache in his stomach, a steady tick of need.

  Against the advice of Maddox, he paid a visit to The Fitzroy Tavern, meaning to confront Vauthier. But the Lieutenant was nowhere to be seen. Gone to ground, thought Lucien.

  At the York Minster, Sam Goucher questioned him subtly about Chenard’s death. ‘A dreadful, dreadful thing,’ said the reporter. ‘I tried to convince the paper to let me write a follow up, but they only gave me a few paragraphs. Nothing to go on, you see.’

  Lucien reiterated that he knew no more than Goucher. ‘Did the police tell you anything they wouldn’t tell me?’ he asked.

  ‘Not likely.’ Goucher drained his glass, before glancing across the room in a way that was suddenly evasive. Lucien was glad the subject was closed. It was hard to think of Chenard in a hospital morgue, the funeral indefinitely postponed by the chaos of war.

  The atmosphere lightened when Valerie Dancourt arrived, as dashing as ever in her uniform. She kissed Goucher on the cheek and Lucien saw the gleam of pleasure in his eyes.

  A little later, when Lucien had said his goodnights and Goucher had returned to the bar, Valerie followed him to the door. ‘Lucien, I just wanted to say – I was sorry to hear about your friend.’

  He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Thank you. It was…’ But the sentence petered out on him, leaving him adrift. His eyes stung.

  She touched his shoulder. ‘I know. Take care.’

  He gave her a brief smile. ‘You too.’

  And then he left before he made a fool of himself.

  This might have been the start of a long period of boredom and dejection. But in the end it didn’t matter, because on the 7th of September the Germans started bombing London.

  Chapter 15

  Fire Watch

  They had been planning for the bombs, waiting for them – and then in the space of a few hours the long uneasy summer went up in flames.

  On the day the Blitz began, the Germans didn’t wait until dark: the first wave came over at five in the afternoon. The weather was, once again, inappropriately glorious. The sun flashed on the undersides of the bombers. Hundreds of them, flying in formation, with a tooth-setting sound like a bow being dragged across cello strings. The smaller shapes of escorting fighters zithered around them.

  Most of Passy’s team were at headquarters that Saturday, simply because it had become home to them, a combination of office, mess and club room. They worked, they joked, they smoked, they listened to the wireless and occasionally they retired to the pub nearby.
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  And so they were all standing in the square to watch the raiders fly over, as open-mouthed and shivery as the rest of London.

  ‘Well,’ said Roché, craning his neck, ‘would you look at that.’

  Sounds and sensations were stacked one upon the other. The lingering wail of the siren, the harsh bark of the anti-aircraft guns – ‘ack-ack’, they were called – so close that it vibrated in the hollow of your chest; followed by the rolling boom of exploding shells, which stitched the blue sky with white puffs. And then the shriek and thump as the first bombs were dropped. The sky began to redden. Lucien could smell burning.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said.

  ‘There’s never been anything like it,’ responded Duquesnoy, beside him. ‘This doesn’t happen.’

  At just after six the all clear sounded and they returned to the pub, which seemed the only sane response. The place was as packed as Christmas Eve. At eight the warning sounded again. The raiders were back for a another round.

  In the morning Londoners felt sick and dazed, as if waking in the ruins of a party trampled by drunks. As they emerged from homes and shelters, they discovered a city humbled but by no means vanquished. In some streets entire buildings had disappeared, leaving ragged gaps like the bite-marks of passing dragons. Then turn a corner and everything was pristine.

  Still, there was movement. Families whose homes had been vaporised carted any belongings they could find, in wheelbarrows and prams, to the houses of relatives, or to safe havens in church halls and empty schools. The clean-up began, and those involved in it did not speak of what they found, from time to time, in the rubble.

  Some had become inured overnight. The screeching of the bombs had terrified them at first, but after a while the constant explosions had left them numb, even contemptuous. They wrote in their diaries that if they could survive that first terrible night, they could survive anything.

  For every raid, two men would be stationed on the roof, watching for incendiaries. These stick-shaped combustible bombs had the double effect of setting the city ablaze while lighting the way for the next wave of bombers. So during the Blitz the rooftops were full of uniformed men and women bearing stirrup pumps and buckets of sand. ‘Observation and security,’ Passy called it.

  On the second night it was Lucien and Roché’s shift. When the warning sounded, Lucien felt a not unpleasant tingle of anticipation. His only regret was that he was not up there with Chenard. These conflicted feelings must have shown on his face as they emerged onto the flat section of roof. ‘Tiens Cortel,’ said Roché, ‘you look like you’ve won expensive tickets to a bad play.’

  The hostiles were already approaching, invisible but ominous, with their quavering vibrato. The misty columns of searchlights swayed and crossed, daubing the low clouds with patches of silver. The ‘ack-ack’ guns were off again, barking like irritable hounds. Though the air was cool, Lucien sweated in his uniform.

  Now he glimpsed the bombers through torn rags of cloud, black crucifixes against the indigo night. As shells bloomed beneath and around them, the raiders ground implacably on. Lucien couldn’t see the bomb bay doors opening, but fire was spilling from the sky.

  A truncheon-shaped capsule smashed onto the roof nose-first and dissolved into flame. ‘We’re on!’ Roché shouted. Lucien moved, hefting the red metal bucket of sand. The blaze was already the size of a small bonfire. Heat blistered his hands as he swung the bucket back and forth, dumping its contents over the flames. The air shimmered yellow. Roché attacked the base of the fire, pumping furiously as he aimed the nozzle of the hose, sweat glistening on his forehead. With nothing to feed on, the flames were smothered.

  They gathered themselves, stretching to unwind their aching backs. As they did so, they looked out over the city. It was lit by the orange glare of a thousand fires, the colour reflected downwards by roiling clouds of black smoke. Buildings and trees stood in stark silhouette against this lurid backdrop. The bombers were invisible, but you could still hear their eerie rising and falling drone, cut by the crump of bursting shells. The ringing bells of fire engines and ambulances added to the din. The searchlights wavered and probed, their beams now a sickly purple in the smoke-choked haze. The acid stench of burning was an assault on the nostrils.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ said Roché, ‘c’est magnifique.’

  It was true. The apocalypse was gorgeous.

  People can get used to anything. The Blitz proved it definitively. The Tube ran, buses changed their routes to avoid craters, pubs did a brisk trade, shops and banks were open for business.

  And Lucien Cortel received a telegram from Jasper Maddox. They were to meet in front of One Birdcage Walk, just before lunch on Saturday September 21. He spent the morning at headquarters and then, when the time came, slipped away.

  Birdcage Walk was in fact a road running alongside St. James’s Park. The park itself was closed, forlorn with its gapped fences and sandbagged entrances. The sun struggled to shine through bloated grey clouds. The leaves on the plane trees had not yet begun to turn, but they looked dull and fatigued.

  Maddox was waiting for him outside One Birdcage Walk: a broad, fussy building of red brick and grey stone, steps leading up to an impressive portico. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he later learned, but to Maddox simply a useful landmark. The Major was in uniform again, and as usual he wore it with a nonchalance that bordered on insolence. His tie was loosened and he carried a furled black civilian umbrella.

  ‘We are going to a certain hotel,’ he said. ‘But first, a little stroll and a confidential chat.’

  As they began their walk, Maddox got straight to the point. ‘How would you like to go back to France?’

  Lucien froze. ‘What?’

  ‘Keep walking. We need somebody to do a special recce for us. Joint Franco-British operation. I managed to convince the powers that be that you were the only man for the job. I’ll explain how later. But before I throw you to the wolves, I need to know you’re up to it.’

  ‘How can you even ask that? Of course I am!’

  Maddox looked at him. ‘This is serious, Lucien. You have zero combat experience. Once you’re over there, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to get you back. We’re setting up channels – we’re going to use them to rescue downed airmen – but at this stage they’re hardly reliable.’

  ‘I’m willing to take that chance.’

  ‘Naturally. We’ll give you some training, of course. A couple of weeks at best, but it will have to suffice.’

  They strolled on. Lucien asked: ‘What about Chenard? Any news there?’

  ‘Enquiries ongoing. I’m still trying to find out if he was sticking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Cantello’s nightclub is a notorious haunt of former Blackshirts and collaborators.’

  ‘I know – I believe I’ve met some of them.’ He could almost feel the savage grip of the men who’d ‘escorted’ him to Cantello’s office. ‘What about Vauthier?’

  ‘As far as I can tell, Vauthier is clean. Even de Gaulle vouches for him. It may turn out that Chenard was simply roughed up outside a nightclub. Tragic, of course, but…’

  He didn’t need to finish his sentence. People were dying in London every night now. Hundreds of them.

  Maddox said sternly, ‘Lucien, I need you to move on. It may well be that the best way of honouring your fallen colleague is to help me. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes. Yes I can.’

  ‘Good. To St Ermin’s Hotel, then. We use rooms there for some of this hush hush stuff. Don’t say anything unless you’re asked. And try not to look surprised.’

  The tall elegant hotel lay at the end of a long walkway and a broad courtyard. Inside, the lobby was an ice-cream swirl of white plaster cornices and plush burgundy carpeting, with a heavy chandelier reigning over a double imperial staircase that curled up to a mezzanine.

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sp; Maddox headed for another staircase, discreetly tucked away through a door to the left and clearly meant for staff. They were puffing slightly when they reached the third floor. Maddox led the way along the hallway and knocked on the door of room 303. Tap tap, pause, tap. A voice said, ‘Enter.’

  A large but otherwise unremarkable hotel suite. Chintz wallpaper and pale pink velvet curtains. Two men sitting on replica Louis XVI chairs before a low coffee table and a heavy ashtray, a couple of butts smeared into it like crushed insects. Lucien knew one of the men as Freddie, from Maddox’s cocktail party. The other was Vauthier, who gave him a thin smile. Lucien tried not to look surprised.

  Maddox said, ‘Cortel, you remember Freddie Hayes.’

  ‘I do.’

  Hayes stood, his suit jacket open and the buttons of his shirt straining against an ample belly. Lucien shook his hand.

  ‘And of course Vauthier you know.’

  ‘Good to see you, mon vieux,’ smirked the Frenchman.

  Maddox and Lucien took the two remaining chairs. ‘I’ve partially briefed young Cortel,’ said Maddox, once everyone was seated. ‘Freddie, perhaps you’d like to take it from here?’

  ‘Certainly. In short, you are to consider this the inaugural meeting of the Inter-Allied Intelligence Group. Major Maddox and I represent the British contingent, of course, while you are Passy’s envoy, Cortel, with the full blessing of the Colonel.’

  ‘And him?’ asked Lucien, with a sideways look at Vauthier.

  ‘Lieutenant Vauthier represents General de Gaulle, as his personal intelligence liaison.’ Was it Lucien’s imagination, or were the words tinted with sarcasm? He was burning to ask Vauthier what he’d been doing with Chenard in the pub the other night, but this was clearly not the moment. What irked him the most that the pair had almost certainly become friends, pure and simple. Chenard had probably been asking for help. Once more, Lucien’s visceral suspicion of Vauthier had revealed itself to be nothing more than jealousy.

  Maddox interjected: ‘I took the liberty of telling Cortel that we plan to send him to France.’