by Ted Bell
“Sometimes I wonder whose side you’re on, J.T.,” Dixon said, pausing at the door to look at him. “Texas? Or Mexico?”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean.”
After that, nobody said a damn word.
20
QUARTERDECK
T he course of history, as Sir Winston Churchill so presciently remarked, is always being altered by something or other—if not by a horseshoe nail, then by an intercepted telegram. Churchill was referring, of course, to the Zimmermann Telegram intercepted and decoded by our Room 40 chaps back in the year 1917.”
“Ah, yes,” C said to Ambrose Congreve, “Room 40. Every schoolboy in England knows that stirring spy saga. Isn’t that right, Alex?”
“I seem to remember hearing something about it, yes,” Hawke said, prying his eyes away from the wintry scene beyond the window to regard his two companions with a faint smile. He was tired all the time since his escape and return to England. He slept a good deal, more than required, but felt unrestored by it. There were demons lurking and they’d have to be dealt with soon.
Ambrose, who had the floor, paused, took a sip of his whiskey and smiled at Alex. Hawke, who had seemed distracted if not downright somber since their arrival at Sir David Trulove’s home, was perched on a window seat overlooking a dense thicket of woodland. Something was troubling him and Ambrose had no idea what it might be.
C, his sharp eyes bright and alert as always, was in his favorite high-backed chair near the crackling fire. Sir David was suffering some form of bronchial infection and now sat with a black cashmere scarf swaddled round his neck and had his feet encased in woolen slippers. Despite his occasional coughing fits, he was now in the process of lighting one of his poisonous black cheroots.
A sleeting rain was chattering against the high windows in C’s library where the three men had earlier sought refuge from the gathering storm.
Half an hour or so earlier, under sunny skies, Hawke had swung the long bonnet of his Bentley off the A30. From there it had been a leisurely ten minutes or so on some twisting back roads through the pine woods. Then the Bentley slipped across the Windsor-Bagshot Road and shortly thereafter they arrived at the unimposing stone gateway that led to the house known as Quarterdeck.
A lone sentry, most likely a plainclothes detective sergeant from the Met working a rotation shift, waved them inside the gate. There was, of course, a good deal more security on these grounds, but this unobtrusively armed man was the only face the public was ever allowed to see. The neighbors, who were distant in every sense of the word, had no inkling about who lived at the end of the lane.
It was not by any stretch a large house, but it was very handsome. Sir David Trulove’s Regency manor house was quietly situated on the edge of Windsor Park, and the flinty bachelor had lived there in comfort and privacy for many years. As they left the beautifully maintained gravel drive and pulled into the car park, Hawke realized why he’d always admired the house. Simplicity. Quarterdeck was a plain rectangle of Bath stone that had weathered over the years to a lovely shade of greenish gray. An ancient wisteria climbed above the shallow portico and encircled a small first-floor balcony, on to which the windows of C’s bedroom opened.
An invitation to call upon C at home was most unusual. Originally, C had invited Hawke and Congreve to lunch with him outside on his sunny terrace. It was to be a working repast, he said, an informal chat covering a range of topics. But Hawke knew that C especially wanted to hear about the prior day’s visit to the Tunbridge Wells hospital. The chief of MI6 wanted to hear firsthand what had been revealed to Ambrose yesterday by the late Ambassador Zimmermann.
Hands clasped behind his back, the happy detective had been striding back and forth in front of a small fire laid against the afternoon chill. He was dressed in his favorite suit of tweeds and was wearing, like his fashion idol, the late lamented Andrew Devonshire, bright yellow cable-stitched socks. He had now relayed to C some, if not most, of what had spilled from the dying German’s lips.
Suddenly, Ambrose stopped in midstride. He stood in the middle of the faded Persian carpet, a perfect ring of blue smoke wafting above his head, waiting for some reaction from Alex Hawke.
There was none.
A semi-reclining Hawke stared wistfully down at the mist-shrouded forest, the thick trunks and bare limbs etched black against the stormy gray sky. A dense plantation of pine, beech, silver birch, and oak grew on three sides of the house. Forests had been magic for him as a child, and, he realized, they still were. Finally, he looked up and smiled at Congreve.
“Sorry. You were speaking of Room 40,” Hawke said from his window perch. “Tell me about those fellows again? Kept a low profile, did they not?”
“Yes, Ambrose,” C said, taking a long puff of his cheroot. “You might refresh both our memories. I think we’ve got a few more minutes until luncheon is served.”
“It was the most secret room in all of Whitehall,” Congreve said, resuming his brisk pacing before the fire. “Masked under the deliberately guileless name of Room 40, a pair of civilians had been diverted there to do cryptographic work. One morning, at a very low point of the war, they intercepted a German wireless transmission in a code no one had ever seen before. But the two chaps, Montgomery and de gray were their names, were determined. They ultimately broke the code and, in doing so, discovered the key to the whole thing.”
“What, pray, was the whole thing?” Hawke said, his mind elsewhere but his interest piqued. “I remember learning about this in school but I’m afraid it’s been a while.”
“Why, the stalemate, of course,” C said. “The dreadful deadlock that gripped both armies in the trenches along the Western Front.”
“And the key?”
C said, “The key to unlocking this stalemate was finding some way of convincing President Woodrow Wilson that the Krauts were coming after the Yanks’neck, too. It was vital to convince Wilson to get the Yanks into the bloody war. This Zimmermann Telegram, sent from Germany to their station in Mexico City, revealed the German duplicity. And, Mexico’s desire to get into the war on Germany’s side.”
“Yes,” Congreve added, “it did the trick. Once the contents of the telegram were published in the American newspapers, there was a huge shift in American public opinion against the Germans. There was now no way Wilson could keep the Yanks out of the war.
“The Americans suddenly had the duplicitous German and Mexican treachery laid out for them in black and white, right there at the breakfast table.”
“And over they came. Thus this Zimmermann Telegram saved England’s bacon at the last hour,” Hawke said, his eyes following a ragged squadron of geese skimming the distant treetops.
“Indeed,” C said, expelling a gray plume of smoke. “None of us likes to admit it, of course, but there you have it.”
“But what’s all this ancient history got to do with our present situation?”
“The present situation?” Sir David said, looking carefully at Alex. “I’ve got one word for you, Alex. Mexican treachery again rears its ugly head. To be more precise, the Mexican border. The Americans have ignored that problem for nearly a century. They can’t do it much longer.”
“Not all quiet on the Southern Front,” Alex said.
“The Southern Front,” C repeated, liking the sound of that. It was good shorthand for the direction his mind was taking. “The Mexicans were the key to the Great War,” he added, “and they bloody well may be the key to the next.”
“And we’ve got a German ambassador named Zimmermann involved in both.”
“Mere coincidence?” Hawke asked.
“Perhaps,” C said. “History has a way of repeating itself.”
C got to his feet and rubbed his hands together to warm them up. “Well. I’m famished. Feed a cold and starve a fever. I’m sure there is sustenance to be had in the dining room. Let’s continue this at the table, shall we? I’ll go make sure we’ve got a g
ood claret to accompany the delicious goose the kitchen has prepared.”
C left them, pushing through the double doors and into the adjoining hallway that led to the dining room.
“Are you quite all right?” Congreve asked Hawke.
“I suppose.”
21
C learly, Hawke wasn’t all right. Congreve knew Hawke’s many moods, including this one, the black fugue. His condition, at least this present distraction, Ambrose believed, was hardly a deficit or even a mild disorder. It was simply the restless curiosity of a hungry mind. If anything, it explained the man’s early success in both the military and in the financial markets. And his recent triumphs in the dicey world of international espionage. Hawke’s mind was constantly ranging over a wide spectrum of subjects, often touching down only briefly before moving on. Congreve believed it was what the brain so rapidly assimilated during those brief encounters that mattered. Retention, it was called.
It surely accounted for Hawke’s ability to take by surprise those who dismissed him as merely a wealthy aristocrat laboring in the family’s financial vineyards; or those who too quickly took the measure of his strength or courage and found him wanting. Congreve hadn’t enough fingers on both hands to count the number of villains who had made the deadly mistake of underestimating Alex Hawke in these last years.
“Let’s go in, shall we?” Congreve said softly, putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “He’s waiting.”
“Of course. I’m sorry to be so distracted. I’ve been sick with the bloody fever again. Does something to my brain. I’ve promised C I’d call Consuelo about getting invited to this damn meeting in Key West. Well, I damn well haven’t done it, and I’m sure he’s going to bring it up.”
“Why haven’t you called her?”
“The woman hates me, Ambrose. She feels utterly betrayed and not without some justification. I’ve been rather a shit. I’ve no idea how I’m going to accommodate C’s request. He’s right, of course, to want me there in Florida. Conch’s gathering is likely to prove vital.”
“The professional should override the personal, I should think, Alex. We’ll think of something. Just keep him going on about history during lunch. You can ring her as soon as you get home.”
“And say what?”
“Tell her you can’t live without her, for starters.”
“I won’t lie to the woman.”
“Are you quite sure it would be one?”
“A lie? How should I know?”
Hawke cut his eyes toward him and left without another word. For now, Conch would remain the enigma she had long been.
They found C at the oval dining table, filling their goblets with an ’89 Château Batailley. Hawke had long ago learned not to bring up the subject of C’s unwavering loyalty to the French vintners if not their wretched government. Any such discussion would prove fruitless and unpleasant.
“Tell us, Ambrose,” Hawke said as soon as they were all seated, “exactly how it was that this purloined telegram changed everything.”
“With pleasure, assuming this is not too familiar ground, Sir David.”
Sir David looked up from his first course. “Well-trod ground, yes, Ambrose. But my appetite for military history far outweighs my desire for this damnable aspic. Please, Ambrose, tell the story.”
“Well, you see, Alex, by early 1917, the Germans had us dead to rights. We were fresh out of young men and fresh ideas along the Western Front. We’d gain a foot of muddy ground only to lose it in the next day’s slaughter. Half a million had died at Verdun alone. Our allies the French were drained and the Russians dying.”
“But it was the bloody U-boats had us in a corner,” Sir David said.
“Indeed. The U-boats had effectively cut our small island off from food and all other supplies. We could have held out for another two months. We were desperate for fresh troops in large numbers, men whose reserves of fighting spirit were still untapped.”
“The Yanks.”
“Correct. President Wilson was determined to keep the Yanks out of the war. But, Whitehall knew that only the entry of the United States into the fray would chase the German wolfpacks from Britain’s door. We were stalemated in that bloody abattoir of trenches, and the German U-boats were circling in for the kill. But then we got very, very lucky and intercepted Herr Zimmermann’s telegram.”
Hawke said, “The Mexican government was tempted by the notion that they might reconquer their lost territories in the southwest. Correct?”
Congreve piped up, “Precisely, Alex. This is what I was able to gather from the now deceased yesterday. These Latino-Arab terrorists are developing highly creative strategies for attacks based in Mexico. The border is still the soft underbelly of America. America’s greatest vulnerability.”
“So this modern day Zimmermann was following in the footsteps of his famous namesake? Stirring up trouble in Mexico?”
C said, “Until, for whatever reason; he apparently had a change of heart and contacted us. I assume you’ve brought along this deathbed letter I’ve heard about, Alex?”
“Yes, sir,” Hawke said, pulling it out of his inside pocket. “It’s in some code neither Ambrose nor I have ever encountered before, sir. Numeric. Apparently random, but obviously not.”
Hawke handed Zimmermann’s folded letter across the table.
“I’ll get this to our signal section immediately.”
C must have pressed a hidden button on the floor with his foot because two people suddenly appeared at the doorway. A man and a very pretty young woman.
“Yes, sir?” the man in the dark gray suit said.
C held out the envelope. “Geoff, get this to Signals right away. With a note from me. Saying Alex Hawke got it from the dying German ambassador.”
“Done, sir,” the man said, taking it.
“Oh, Pippa,” C said to the woman who’d escorted Hawke up to C’s office at MI6. “You remember Alex Hawke. He’s the fellow attending that conference in Key West next week. You’ll be accompanying him as aide. Make sure he has everything he needs will you?”
“Of course, sir,” Gwendolyn Guinness said, glancing over at Alex Hawke before she turned and left the room.
C said with a brief smile, “Brilliant girl. I’m quite sure you two shall get along famously, Alex.”
Hawke shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He knew C was deliberately putting him in an awkward position.
“Sir, with apologies, I haven’t spoken to the American secretary about my attendance yet. Terribly sorry. I’m planning to call her this very evening.”
“That won’t be at all necessary, Alex. I’ve already spoken to her. Just this morning, in fact. She’s expecting you on the fifteenth of December. Now, then. Who’d like some more of this perfectly cooked goose? Alex?”
C rose and moved to the sideboard to carve more meat. Hawke seized the opportunity to lean across the table and whisper to Congreve, “His bloody idea of humor. It’s my goose that’s cooked. And he’s signed up Miss Guinness to make sure I’m well done.”
“Don’t mind him, Alex. You forget, he’s not feeling well.”
“Yes, of course,” Hawke murmured, his eyes flashing. “The spy who came down with a cold.”
22
DRY TORTUGAS
S toke surfaced in the shadow of El Bandito’s hull. He looked around for a dark fin slicing through the water and was suddenly aware of a black shape looming above him. Sun was so bright, you couldn’t even make out the face, but it was Sharkey all right. So, Luis had already gotten himself aboard. Stoke’s ascent up the line must have taken longer than he thought. He rapped on his mask with his knuckles. How come everything seemed so blurry up here? Must have gotten saltwater inside his mask.
Either that or the whole damn world was on the fritz.
Luis was leaning out over the gunwale, offering Stoke a hand up the ladder. Stokely was mighty glad to see that brown hand. A minute or so ago, when he was coming up the anchor rode, he was thinking
he wouldn’t have the strength left to get back on the boat without some help. He was wondering if he could even haul himself all the way to the surface. And wondering where that mako was hiding.
Luis shouted to him again. He had a battered bucket of fish guts in his hand and was in the process of flinging its contents over his shoulder, long loopy entrails and assorted other things. Most of the chum was going in the boat but some of it made it over the gunwales and into the water.
“C’mon, man! Get your ass out the water!”
Stoke looked up at him and smiled. “Where’s that damn shark?”
“I’m telling you, you’re just not hearing me. Why you think I got out of the water so fast? That mako is nosing around up here on the surface now. He just cruised over to the other side of the boat. I threw some chum over there. C’mon, bossman, grab my hand.”
“Chum? You threw chum?”
“Grab the hand, man. I’m telling you!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming as fast as I can,” Stokely said, reaching up to take the man’s hand.
Luis was wiry, but he didn’t look like the kind of man who could pull a midsize Buick out of the water single-handedly. Thank God he was stronger than he looked, because Stoke realized he was fading fast. With his last little ounce of reserve he got up the steps and over the toe-rail and staggered forward toward the pilothouse. He needed to get out of the sun and lay down for a while. He almost made it to the door, too. The faded green deck rushed up out of nowhere to greet him. As he went down, Luis grabbed his tank and kept him from hitting the deck.
“Take it easy, boss. Lay down a minute.”
“Chum?” Stoke said, sinking to his knees. “You got a hurt diver coming up and you throw chum in the water? Jesus, Luis!”
“I told you I threw it on the other side. Keep him occupied.”
“Yeah, but still—”
“Shit, Stokely, man, we got to get you to the hospital. You bleeding bad, man. It’s worse now.”