by Glenn Meade
As Boyle approached Sutton Crossroads, the Model T slowed. He heard sharp cracks of gunfire, followed by the distinct rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. “What the blazes … ?”
Instinctively he reached for his Colt in its shoulder holster but next to him Jackson already had his Webley out and he stuck it in his ribs. “There’s been a change of plan, Boyle.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jackson grinned. “We had an ambush waiting for Ryan and her friends. They’re outnumbered, so it shouldn’t last long. I’m making it my business that Ryan’s going to hang.”
“You stupid idiot,” Boyle said through clenched teeth.
Jackson struck Boyle across the mouth with the Webley, drawing blood. “You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head when you’re talking to an officer of the crown, Boyle. Relieve him of his pistol, Smith.”
“With pleasure.” Smith grinned, leaned over, and snatched Boyle’s Colt.
A dangerous look sparked in Boyle’s eyes, something dark and deep that was infinitely threatening. “You’ll pay for your stupidity, Jackson. You’ve no idea what you’ve just done.”
Jackson scoffed. “We’ll see about that. My superiors are going to be bloody pleased when they learn I’ve captured a bunch of republicans.” He checked his pocket watch. “We don’t want to walk into a crossfire, so we’ll bide our time until the firing dies.”
The barrage rose in intensity, the rattle of machine-gun fire mixed with the crackle of small arms. Boyle sat with his fists clenched, barely able to control his fury.
Jackson grinned. “Relax, Boyle. This shoot-out’s going to be over soon. With luck we won’t have to bother about hanging Ryan.”
Five minutes later there was a lull in the shooting, then it started up again with ferocious intensity. Johnson impatiently consulted his watch. “What’s the bloody delay? It ought to be over by now.”
The sound of a motorcycle engine ruptured the air and a rider appeared, driving at speed through the crossroads. He skidded to a halt in front of Jackson.
The rider pushed up his goggles. “They broke through our ambush, sir. They had a machine gun and kept our men pinned down with fire and made their escape.”
“What?”
“But they didn’t get far. We’d set up another blockade round the next bend and caught them again. Two of the Fenians are dead and the other two are wounded. We’re taking them to Dublin in one of our trucks.”
The motorcycle rider roared off and as Jackson and Smith turned back to the car, Boyle stepped out. He glared at them, his hands resting on his hips, fury in his eyes.
Jackson said, “You’re under arrest, Boyle. You’re not going anywhere.”
Without warning, Boyle’s left hand came up and tore the revolver out of Jackson’s hands, breaking two fingers in the process.
He screamed and Boyle’s right fist smashed into his jaw, a cracking sound like bone shattering as the force sent Jackson flying across the car’s hood.
Smith watched, grinding his teeth, as if relishing the fight to come. He crouched into a fighting stance, tucked his head, and balled his big fists. “Plucky, aren’t you? Let’s see you fight someone your own size.”
He came in swinging with his fists but Boyle sidestepped, kicked Smith hard below the kneecap, and then slammed his fist into the back of Smith’s neck.
Smith staggered, grunting in pain, but quickly regained his balance and went to grab his gun.
Boyle brought up the Webley, cocked it, and aimed at Smith’s forehead. “Stay out of it, son, unless you want a hole drilled in that thick skull of yours. Toss your gun on the ground. Hand me back my Colt, the butt first, nice and slow, then step away.”
Smith did as he was told, then raised his hands and stepped back.
Boyle crossed to Jackson and said, “I thought I told you not to harm the woman.”
Jackson was still on the ground, clutching his jaw, but a raging defiance blazed in his eyes as he glared at Boyle. His speech was slurred, as if his jaw was dislocated. “With any luck Ryan’s dead. Just who do you think you are, you bloody Irish pig?”
“That’s easy. I’m the man who’s going to teach you a lesson.”
And with that Boyle raised the Colt and shot Jackson twice, once below each kneecap.
20
Three hours later Boyle was pacing outside a secure room in Dublin’s Mater Hospital on the north side of the city.
Two armed Royal Irish Constabulary detectives guarded the corridor, a part of the hospital often reserved for recovering republican prisoners from nearby Mountjoy Jail.
Boyle turned as the door opened and a nun wearing a crisply starched white gown and wimple came out. She carried a stainless steel surgical dish and some bloodied gauze. “You can go in now, sir. But the doctor said for no more than a few minutes.”
“Thanks.” Boyle stepped quietly into the room. It was softly lit and smelled of disinfectant. Rain drummed against the window, which had thick metal bars. An armed constable with a bushy mustache sat nearby, reading a newspaper. He folded it away when Boyle entered and gave a silent nod.
Boyle moved over to where an elderly nun with a wrinkled face and bony hands stood over Lydia Ryan’s bed, taking her pulse. One of Ryan’s wrists was handcuffed to the metal frame despite her bandaged wounds, and she was sleeping, her long hair fanned out on the pillow, looking as if she were floating on water. “How is she, Sister?”
The elderly nun scowled at him, her skin the color of old parchment. “Resting after surgery. You can’t question her, if that’s why you’re here.”
“I didn’t intend to, Sister. I wanted to see how she’s doing.”
“It’s Matron to you. Are you the scoundrel who shot her?”
“No, I shot the British officer in the ward down the hall, the one with the shattered kneecaps.”
The matron looked confused, taking in Boyle’s accent, uncertain as to where his loyalties might lie. He tossed his hat on a metal locker by the bed. “It’s a long and complicated story, Sister, don’t ask me to explain. But take my word for it, this woman was never meant to be harmed.”
The nun’s face lightened. “May God forgive me for saying so, but maybe you did right shooting that army thug. His kind has ruined this country.”
Boyle stared down at Lydia Ryan’s sleeping face, her long eyelashes dark against her pale skin. “What’s the prognosis?”
“A gunshot wound to her left shoulder. There’s no serious damage, so she’ll recover. Her brother’s a different matter. Bullets shattered his left leg. He’ll be lucky to walk again.”
Boyle studied Lydia. Her face looked incredibly peaceful in repose, a familiarity about her dark looks that was almost uncanny, and without thinking he gently placed a hand against her cheek. In the silence that followed he became suddenly conscious of two things: the rain drumming hard against the glass and the nun’s stare. He drew his hand away.
“Do you know her, my son?”
Boyle’s gaze returned to the patient. “We’ve never met, but she reminds me of my dead daughter.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The nun blessed herself, took a set of rosary beads from her habit, and shuffled them in her bony hands. “Prayer always helps, you know.”
Boyle’s face tightened with a flash of remembered grief, an infinite sadness there. “You know what they say about God. Once you lose a child, then all the angels you can dance on the head of a pin mean nothing. It makes it hard to believe in him.”
The nun put a hand on his arm and he felt its bony grip. “But he still believes in you, my son, always remember that.”
Struck by the pious strength in the nun’s words, Boyle picked up his hat. “Any idea where I can find a cabbie to take me to Sackville Street? I’ve got an appointment to keep.”
“There’s a rank outside the hospital’s main entrance, but on a wet night like this you may have a while to wait.” The nun searched Boyle’s face, as if he confused her. “Who are you, sir?”
Boyle tugged on his hat. “Funny, that’s a question I’ve been asking myself for years. But keep those rosary beads moving, Sister, they may help me yet.”
21
Twenty minutes later a cabbie dropped Boyle outside the Gresham Hotel on Dublin’s Sackville Street. The rain was coming down in sheets as he went to his suite on the top floor.
When he let himself in, Hanna Volkov was already there, seated on a red chaise longue, the fire lit and blazing, the room decorated with heavy velvet curtains.
She looked younger than her thirty years and with her splendid figure and finely chiseled Slavic cheekbones, she had a presence made for the stage. She exuded calm and elegance, her sapphire blue eyes wide and expressive.
He shook his wet hat. “Rain’s the one thing you can always be sure of in this country. I’m beginning to think that every child born on this island ought to be given an umbrella at birth.”
Hanna smiled and stood. “You Irish seem to have a fixation about the weather, Joe.” Her voice was soft but husky, her English perfect but with a noticeable Russian accent.
Boyle removed his overcoat and hung it on a stand by the door, along with his hat, before he crossed to a liquor cabinet. “Only because it’s so lousy. Having said that, there’s many a day when you can witness all the seasons in a single hour. Drink? I could certainly do with one.”
“Wine would be good.”
Boyle poured her a red wine and a Bushmills whiskey for himself, then joined her by the fire. She seemed tired and anxious that evening. Her black pencil dress complemented her figure and she wore little jewelry, just a plain gold ring and a simple necklace from which hung the Russian eight-point cross.
Boyle handed across her glass, sipped his whiskey, and sighed. “I’d propose a toast except the news isn’t good. She’s going to need time to recover.”
“How much time?”
Boyle sighed. “I’m not sure. I’ve arranged to talk to her doctor tomorrow. It’s an accursed nuisance. Lydia Ryan was perfect, had every qualification for the job. It’s going to be impossible to find a replacement so late in the game.”
Hanna put down her wine. “There’s no one else?”
Boyle swallowed his whiskey. “Not unless you count a female clerk who worked in the tsar’s private office, and the elderly wife of a royalist officer. I don’t think either would be up to the job. Only someone like Ryan has the kind of nerve to pull off what we intend.”
Hanna Volkov crossed to the window that overlooked Sackville Street, as two trucks manned with Lewis guns and British troops trundled past in the rain. “How long do we have?”
“No more than seven days to send our couple in, if they’re to have any hope of reaching Ekaterinburg in time.”
A hint of despair crept into Hanna’s voice. “Tell me it will work, Joe.”
Boyle ran a hand over his face. “I promised you I’d do my utmost, and I’ll keep to that. But we’re running into trouble. Even if Ryan agrees to help and is in the full of her health, she’ll face a perilous journey.”
Outside in the streets came the distant crackle of gunfire. Boyle moved back to the liquor cabinet and splashed more Bushmills into his glass. “After six hundred years of failed rebellions, this time the Irish are really going at it with a vengeance.”
“By the way, you upset our friends in London. They phoned to suggest you keep that gun of yours firmly in its holster. They said this country’s already like the Wild West without your adding to it by maiming one of their own.”
Boyle yanked shut the curtains. “Jackson deserved it. His stupidity’s messed up our plans.”
“What about Uri Andrev?”
Boyle turned to a metal travel chest with a padlock in the corner of the room. He opened the lock with a key from his waistcoat and removed a paper file. “He’s still our best choice for lots of reasons. He once served in the tsar’s bodyguard and knows the royal family by sight. He knows that part of Siberia—the camp he escaped from wasn’t far from Ekaterinburg. He’s also used to getting himself out of tricky situations.”
Hanna said, “If there’s one thing I learned working on the stage it’s that every character has a flaw. What’s his?”
Boyle consulted the file. “Only one, and not so much a flaw as a gap in our knowledge. When he arrived in London he was interviewed by a White liaison officer working with His Majesty’s immigration. Andrev told him he escaped from a Red prison camp and eventually made it back to St. Petersburg and briefly reunited with his family. But what happened soon after that, we’re not really sure, except that he went on the run.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something happened to him in St. Petersburg, some kind of confrontation with the Reds. It seems he barely escaped with his life and had to abandon his wife and son. The officer who interviewed him said Andrev appeared to have been deeply traumatized but refused to talk about it. The question is, will he be prepared to risk his life and go back?”
Boyle tossed the file on the coffee table. “Tomorrow ought to provide us with the answer. Speaking of which, you better get some sleep. You’ve got a seven a.m. start if you want to catch the mail boat to Holyhead.”
Hanna picked up her purse. “Good night, Joe.”
Boyle led her to the door, her own suite just across the hall, and he took her hand and kissed it. “Have a safe crossing, and good luck convincing Andrev in London.”
She hesitated at the door, concern in her eyes, uncertainty in her voice. “Do you honestly believe we can save them, Joe?”
“We have to. The last thing we want on our conscience is the deaths of five innocent children.”
22
LONDON
The bedsit in Whitechapel was in a terrace of butter-brick Georgian houses. Uri Andrev heard the knocking on his door and came awake with a headache, raised himself from the bed and groaned.
The window in the bedroom was closed but beyond the curtains streaked sunshine, the din of voices, and the hooting of traffic. He heard Madame Bizenko’s footsteps retreat down the stairs, then he climbed out of bed, stretched his arms, and examined himself in the mirror. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot and with good reason. He’d been drinking vodka in one of London’s rowdy Russian émigré clubs and the night had lasted until one a.m.
Andrev shaved, washed with cold water and a flannel cloth, and toweled himself dry. There were thick welts in his skin where his wounds had healed. Then he dressed in an open-collar shirt, a dark suit of coarse cloth, and a peaked cap. When he went downstairs Madame Bizenko was in the kitchen making tea. She was a cheerful, gray-haired Jewish woman from Minsk with a high-pitched, girlish laugh. She had a fondness for playing both the violin and poker. Thick cuts of bread were stacked on a plate, next to a dish of butter and a bowl of hardboiled eggs.
“Good morning, Mr. Andrev. You look a bit under the weather this morning. Like you were dragged backward through a hedge, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Andrev smiled. “Too much vodka last night, I’m afraid.”
“The curse of the Russians, but there’s always the antidote—strong black tea.”
There was a small garden out the back with a table and chairs and as it was a pleasant spring day, he said he’d have his breakfast out there. He went out to the patio, taking his tea, a cut of bread, and two hard-boiled eggs.
The boardinghouse in Whitechapel in London’s East End was run by Madame Bizenko and her husband, a small nervous Londoner who chain-smoked and always deferred to his wife. The neighborhood was a teeming mass of immigrants: Russians, Balts, Slavs, and Irish, tough men who worked as laborers in the factories and warehouses or on road construction. Andrev shared the digs with four other men.
The two he shared a room with, an Irishman and a Scot, worked shifts in an armaments factory so he hardly saw them. The other two were Russians and he was convinced that at least one of them was an anarchist.
Despite Madame Bizenko’s cheerful nature the house had
a soulless air, with faded wallpaper and peeling paint, but he was glad to call it home. For the first month in England he was penniless and had to sleep rough on park benches and in alleyways, with only a filthy gray blanket for warmth. For food, he scavenged among the bins of hotels and restaurants, or stood in line at the charity soup kitchens run by the émigré clubs.
But he was lucky to find work in a printing works and now Andrev had a steady job, the relative comfort of Madame Bizenko’s digs, and the luxury of two meals a day.
Last night, his boss, Ivan Shaskov, told him to take the morning off, telling him he’d been working far too hard lately—until ten most nights—and afterward Andrev visited one of the émigré clubs. He didn’t make a habit of frequenting the clubs in the evenings but he was starved for news from home and the boisterous clubs were hives of gossip.
Andrev sat in the sunshine and found a day-old newspaper someone had left on the table. As he sipped his tea and ate his bread, he read the pages.
The news confirmed the rumors he had heard last night. Lenin was desperately trying to cling to power. He may have signed a treaty with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk, but German troops were already within firing distance of St. Petersburg. The treaty had cost Russia a third of her population, 61 million, and one-quarter of her territory. Japan had invaded in the Far East, and the Russian defenses everywhere had all but collapsed.
Andrev tossed aside the paper in dismay. The futility of it all sickened him.
“Good news, Mr. Andrev?” The landlady came out to clean away the plates.
“They’re still killing each other. This stupid, endless war goes on.”
Madame Bizenko shook her head. “Idiots, all of them. Maybe when they’re tired of shooting at each other they’ll eventually get sense and stop.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath.” Andrev drained his tea and stood. He didn’t want to be too late for work.