by Mitch Silver
Clementine came in with tea and biscuits, clucking over Winston’s ill treatment of his guest. She took my coat, enquired into Ann’s health, and only then performed the disappearing act she’d perfected over a half century of marriage.
Winston was saying, “Keep to a schedule. That’s the thing. Up at Chartwell, I’d have been out on the grounds for the past half hour. The earthenworks don’t see to themselves.” Winston used the language of trench warfare to describe gardening. “We’re on the East Atlantic flyway up there, you know. All sorts of birds on our ponds.” He looked out the window towards the park. “Not as many birds in town, apart from the pigeons.” He made a ceremony out of flicking his ash into a biscuit tin that had been commandeered for the purpose. “But we few make up for it in being old and tough.” He still had that twinkle.
I used the mention of Winston’s writing to launch into the reason for my visit. “Sir, I’ve been doing a little writing lately…nonfiction.”
He took a pull on his cigar. “One of your travel pieces, eh? Where are the glossies sending you this time, the Seychelles? No, I remember, you’re a Caribbean man now. You sent me a picture postcard…Anguilla? Antigua?”
I leaned forward in my chair. “Not exactly. This one’s a history. The nineteen thirties and forties. You’re in it, as a matter of fact.”
“Am I now?” He took the cigar from his mouth, and I watched his mood go from merry to suspicious. “Am I speaking with a competitor?”
I saw where I’d put a foot wrong. “Not history history. More like a few personal profiles.”
“Nothing too unflattering, I hope?”
“Only a little.” I was thinking I should have just written him a letter. “There’s a bit about Rudolf Hess in there.”
“Ah.” Winston clamped down again on the stump of his cigar.
I thought I’d start with an icebreaker. “I’ve come across some information about another someone, and I’m not entirely sure how to proceed.”
“Does this someone have a name?”
“Anthony Blunt.”
“Ahh.” The drawn-out sound told me I was back on firmer ground. He rotated what was left of the Upmann a full 360 degrees with his stubby fingers. “I presume we’re not talking about his personal preferences?”
“No, his political ones.”
“Well then, I can save you a lot of trouble.” He accompanied his words with a full downward thrust of cigar into the biscuit box, followed by a grind of ash against tin. Raising himself from the chair, he called to his wife. “Clemmie, did I bring last year’s boxes down from the country?”
Her voice came from the other end of the hallway. I always thought I could detect a note of reproach. “You know you did. They’re under this year’s.”
Winston pointed to the floor beneath his writing desk. “Would you be so kind as to hand me the bottom two tins?”
Everything in the Churchill household seemed to be contained in, or overflowing from, cigar boxes and oversized biscuit tins. I shuddered to imagine his arteries. He handed me back a mass of papers marked 1963/Personal and went through 1963/Official at lightning speed.
“When you come to be my age, they put you on the committees no one else wants. Aha!” He handed me a sheaf of papers stamped Confidential, saying, “I am taking you into my confidence.”
To make a long story short, the Ministry of Defence were asking the Ministry of Pensions (and copying the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Pensions) to rubberstamp an action it had already taken “in the matter of Blunt re: Philby.” On the basis of information presented to it by MI5, the Crown had approved stopping payment of the wartime pension of one Anthony Blunt for reasons described only as “sensitive.” The tenor of the file suggested that further steps had been contemplated which might or might not be taken. There were boxes indicated next to the names of the three-member Subcommittee who received the report: a Scottish MP named Gordon; the Chairperson and Member for Finchley, a Mrs. Thatcher; and Winston. A blue pen had ticked the box next to Winston’s name.
My godfather took the file back from me and put it away in the biscuit tin. “If that’s what you’re on about, it’s already been seen to.”
I was still marvelling at his omnipresence in all things British when I found myself with my coat back on, heading for the door. “Wait a moment, Ian.” The foyer bookshelf held several copies of each of his books. He took down one of The Gathering Storm and made a thing of telling me he was signing it, “with my best pen in my best hand.”
I decided to chance it. “Before I go, sir. You remember that letter I gave you from Rudolf Hess? Or rather, half a letter? What did you do with it?”
He didn’t answer but kept on writing his inscription to me. Eventually he said, “Half a letter?”
“Written in German by the Duke of Windsor. You said you were going to give it to the King.”
Winston looked up at me over his glasses. “Then I must have done, mustn’t I?”
I couldn’t make him out. Was he dissembling, or had he really forgotten? I thought he had finished signing the title page, but he went back and added the word “inquisitive” to it before he handed his book to me. “Take care of yourself, Ian.”
I left him patting his jacket for another cigar. In the next room, Clemmie’s voice rang out. “Not till after lunch, Winston. You promised.”
I thought I was done. Jamaica beckoned. The bit you’ve just read about Winston and his biscuit tins was supposed to be the last, followed by a brief summing-up. And then the day before yesterday a call came through. It was my assistant at the paper (I still like to keep my hand in), telling me a woman had phoned. An old friend, she’d said, without giving her name. And would I meet her for lunch the next day? She’d named a place no one ever goes to and a time, 12:30. Cleverer still, she’d left no number, so I had no way to ring her back and beg off.
Have you seen Witness for the Prosecution? It was Wallis playing Marlene Dietrich playing…It was a dark, woody sort of place not far from the British Museum. She wore a very blue Chanel suit and a hat with a veil. It’s 1964. Who wears a veil anymore?
She greeted me with “The Duke isn’t well.” Not “How are you?” or “Ian, you haven’t changed,” or any of the standard openings. For her part, Wallis had changed. What had been stylish at forty had become severe at seventy. The veil’s delicate lace curtain showed her cheeks to be heavily rouged. She had the large ruby ear clips I remembered and a peacock or flamingo pin—I couldn’t tell which—that must have cost the old boy a packet.
“The Duke isn’t well, and a little birdie tells me you’re writing a memoir of”—she gave me one of those looks that were meant to be significant—“our time together?” Her sentence ended with a question mark, but it wasn’t a question.
The brittle woman in Chanel had been served her drink, a Chartreuse. I asked for my Harper’s bourbon, which they didn’t have. I made do with Johnnie Walker and told my digestive system to make do as well.
All I said was “Not ‘our time together.’ The war. And the years before the war.”
She took no notice of my having spoken. She was looking at the menu. “Edward didn’t feel up to flying, so he’s back at the ranch in Alberta. I’ve come to town for a little shopping and a little fence-mending. Please don’t make this difficult. I’ve had a rather trying morning with my niece.”
Not many people can describe the Queen of England as “my niece.” She looked past me. “I’ll have the sole.” It’s one of those throwback, down-at-the-heels establishments where the waiters affect well-worn formal attire and stand back from the table until summoned.
The man said, “And for the gentleman?”
Wallis unnecessarily interjected, “My treat.”
I said, “The chop. And bring me the bill.”
“Very good, sir.”
It wasn’t very good at all. “Wallis, how do you know about—”
She was not to be interrupted. “Ian, of course I trust in your discretion
. Explicitly. But as I say, the Duke is unwell. Any shock to the system—”
The eight-year-old Scotch was spreading its warmth, suffusing me in its glow. I was getting over the surprise of seeing Wallis. “Don’t you mean ‘implicitly’? You trust me implicitly. Otherwise, it isn’t trust at all.”
“I trust you not to write about us, darling.”
I don’t know how she got the word “darling” through her clenched teeth. She said the next thing in a quite different voice. “An American acquaintance had a thing he said about sex. That it’s a sport in New York, a profession in Hollywood, an art in Paris, and a heavy industry in London. What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s rather apt.”
“Apt? I think it’s vulgar. And I would remind you you’re speaking to a Duchess.”
I tried a flanking manoeuvre. “All right. My wife, Ann, and I are off to our place in Jamaica tomorrow. Ever been?”
“When you spend five years in the Bahamas without seeing anyone of quality, you’ve had quite enough of the islands.”
That’s about how the rest of the meal went. Edward’s incandescent Sun had sunk in on itself, leaving Wallis a burnt-out case. What had been wit was now bitter gall. Afterwards, I put her in a cab. She held on to my hand even as I tried to close the door. It was raining, and between holding my umbrella and Wallis holding on to me, it was all I could do to keep my balance.
“I hope I’ve done the right thing, speaking with Elizabeth about your memoir,” she said. “But we simply can’t have you printing anything lurid right now, not with Edward so unwell.” Wallis let go of my hand and pulled the door of the cab shut. The driver, not the most patient of men, gunned the motor. And she was gone.
That blabbermouth Winston. Had he really talked to Wallis?
Chapter 51
With the last half-dozen pages still unread, Amy felt the bus slow down and come to a stop just short of its usual berth on Park Avenue between Forty-first and Forty-second Streets. A limo was idling in the No Standing zone and didn’t move when the bus driver blew his horn. With the back of his vehicle still sticking out into traffic, the driver chose discretion over valor and opened the doors of his bus. “Grand Central, folks. Everybody out.”
Amy was the first one off, her handbag looped over her left shoulder and the computer case atop her rolling suitcase as she lugged it toward the four lanes of Forty-second Street. When she happened to look to her left, what she saw didn’t register immediately. Her mind’s eye was still on Fleming’s long letter to her and what it meant. Then the fact that she’d seen her name, misspelled, on the card that was still stuck in the limo’s passenger window came home to her and she started to run.
Or at least she tried to run, but the little wheels on the American Tourister weren’t up to the job, and she found herself dragging thirty pounds of luggage behind her.
The driver was out of the Town Car. “Dr. Greenberg! Wait!”
The light had just turned red against her, but Amy didn’t slow down. She reached behind her like one of those relay runners taking the baton and grabbed the strap on her bag and darted into the intersection. By the grace of God and/or amazing luck, all four drivers—two in each direction—who could have mashed their accelerators and wiped out the woman hauling the carry-on bag…didn’t. Amy made it across the street and looked back. Her pursuer was stuck on the other side of Forty-second Street. She had about a minute.
Amy kept running, through the bank of wooden doors and into the chaos of Grand Central Terminal. Her right arm was coming out of its socket, so she dropped the suitcase on its wheels again and, gripping the extended handle instead of the strap, made a beeline for the information kiosk in the center of the great hall. Well, a drunken bee’s beeline.
It was the beginning of the Tuesday homeward rush for New York’s commuters. To Amy it looked like one of those training films they show you in high school for driver’s ed, filmed through a windshield as cars slam on their brakes in front of you and children chase balls out into the street. Only, Amy was on foot. People kept darting out in front of her: a mother with a kid, absurdly bundled up to the point of immobility on a May day; a guy from Zaro’s Bakery trundling a delivery of bread to the shop over by track 36; a couple of Dutch or German tourists—the flat-top haircuts and brown shoes were a dead giveaway—pulling bags just like Amy’s side by side up the ramp she was running down. She split them like a running back and kept going.
She set her sights on the information booth with the four-sided brass clock directly under an enormous American flag. It wasn’t actually her goal, just the midpoint of her run to the escalators going up to the MetLife Building on the north side of the terminal. By now her path had turned into a slalom course around the clumps of people: a handful waiting on line for train or track information; people greeting each other or waiting to greet someone; and the trickiest part of the course—people talking on their cell phones and idly moving around, oblivious to the crowd around them and Amy’s desperate need to get by. It was a kind of Brownian motion of humanity, and Amy did her best to navigate it.
When she glanced over her shoulder, Amy saw the man with the mustache from the Town Car running down the ramp from Forty-second Street. He’d made up at least two-thirds of the distance on her. The luggage was slowing her down and making her stand out. She’d be a sitting duck on those escalators across the way. She had to ditch the suitcase.
There’s an ornate stairway on the west side of the station that leads up to a couple of restaurants on the mezzanine level and then to the street. Tucked behind the base of the stairway on the right is a water fountain, with just enough space under it to park a bag. Amy darted behind two of the burly army guys they have patrolling the place post-9/11, hoping Mustache hadn’t seen her. She grabbed her bulging computer case and left her suitcase behind (wondering if she’d be able to retrieve it later before it set off a bomb scare).
There was a sign next to the water fountain that read, “If you see something, say something.” For an instant, she thought of just going up to the soldiers with the guns and saying something. But then she remembered Detective Pinsky’s sarcasm. What would she tell them—that some fanatical driver wanted her to ride in a limo? They’d shrug and walk away, leaving her with Mustache.
She took off along the corridor of entrances to the Westchester-bound Metro-North tracks and made an angled left at Zaro’s and its aroma of fresh-baked bread. Across the passage there was an escalator down to the Lower Concourse and more trains. Amy had no way of knowing if the guy had spotted her, if he was behind her—even right behind her. All she knew was that she had to get down to the lower level.
Originally, Amy’s plan had been simply to get to Scott, who by now should be waiting in the second-floor bar of the Yale Club on Vanderbilt Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, next door to Grand Central. Now she had to improvise. Instead of going up the escalators, out the MetLife Forty-fourth Street lobby and across Vanderbilt Avenue, she’d have to go down to the station’s lowest level and up another way she knew about, a World War I–era elevator that went directly into the Yale Club.
When she was a teenager, Chief had shown her the unmarked vestibule and taken her up in the elevator. It was their “secret passage,” one that the Yale men on the old New York Central’s board had included during Grand Central’s construction. They had used it to board their private railroad cars for the overnight run up to their luxurious “camps” in the Adirondacks and then to return to the club weeks later without having to walk among the hoi polloi in the public part of the station.
The end of the private car epoch in the 1960s had made the Yale elevator’s original role obsolete. The westernmost tracks on the lower level, the ones that had serviced those cars, were closed off and the elevator turned into a freight carrier used by the concessionaires who provide food and drink for the Club. These days it stands twenty yards away from the nearest Metro-North platform, enclosed in a drywall vestibule painted the same drab g
reen as the maintenance rooms and electrical closets. Only the heavy five-button combination lock on the vestibule door—permanently set to 3-1-1-1-4, the Yale Club’s opening day of March 11, 1914—suggests anything worthwhile is on the other side.
But Amy’s plan had at least two possibly fatal flaws. Just to get into the closed-off area of tracks meant going through a metal door with a No Trespassing sign on the parapet above track 117. Sometimes it was locked, sometimes it wasn’t, and Amy didn’t have a key. Flaw number two: there was another way down here to the Lower Concourse—the stairs where she’d left her suitcase. If Mustache had seen which way she’d gone, he could cut her off by taking the staircase down and make up the ground on her. Of course, he didn’t know about the unused tracks and the elevator. Maybe he’d think she was coming down here to lose herself in the crowd milling around the food court. Maybe he’d turn the wrong way.
All the food shops were off to her right. Amy headed left. She almost made it to the ornate entrance of track 117. “Dr. Greenberg!” The voice came from off to her right, and it was close. Damn. She had to throw him off her tail.
Unlike most of the other tracks that have individual access ramps leading down from the Lower Concourse, tracks 115, 116, and 117 share a landing with separate stairs to each track. Now Amy kept on running, right past the locked door on the left side of the landing and down the metal steps. Just at that moment she wished she were Katie, the jock in their college group. Katie lived in her Reeboks; this stairway would have been a piece of cake for her. But in these low heels, Amy could barely manage to stay upright with her handbag pulling her left and the computer case pulling her right. She’d have to trick her pursuer and try to buy back the time she’d lost.