Where Dead Men Meet

by Mark Mills

  “That’s too bad.” Oaks grinned, dropping his cigarette at his feet and grinding it into the pavement. “Borodin won. It cost him dear, but he won. Hang on to that. I know I’m going to.”

  “I will.”

  Oaks glanced past him. “You should go. Your friends are waiting.”

  Luke offered his hand. “Thank you.”

  “You ever need anything, you call the US embassy here and ask for the Department of Fiscal Relations.”

  “Not milk?”

  Oaks laughed. “Have my brother-in-law to thank for that. Mr. Cream Cheese, dullest man in the known world. You got off light: there’s a load more where that stuff came from.”

  As soon as the door of Reynaud’s office had closed behind them, Armstrong said to Higginbotham, “Am I dreaming, or did you really just do that?”

  “You heard the man: ‘Cooperation is founded on reciprocity.’”

  “Reciprocity? You traded a French mole in the Colonial Office for a minor official in the Air Intelligence Department of the Paris embassy!”

  “After everything Hamilton has been through? Have you no heart?”

  “I know for a fact you don’t, so I’m asking myself what you’re really up to.”

  “It’s called knocking the ball into the long grass,” said Higginbotham. “It’s called orders from on high.”

  That piqued Armstrong’s interest. “How high?”

  “Vansittart.”

  “Vansittart? What does he care about a man like Hamilton?”

  “Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die.”

  “To hell with Tennyson.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. I find his poetry so achingly portentous. But if I were to reason why, I would say this: Hamilton is a doer, and he didn’t die. Think about it for a moment. The fellow has been hunted from one end of Europe to the other, and he’s still alive. Not only that, he also found time to serve his country along the way.”

  “You mean Professor Weintraub?”

  “Weintraub would never have left Germany without his children. Thanks to Hamilton, we have him.”

  “It was brave, I grant you.”

  “More than brave. It required him to kill a man and keep his head afterwards. How many are made for that sort of thing? You? Me?”

  “I think I can see where you’re heading with this,” said Armstrong after a moment.

  “And I haven’t even started on the girl.”

  “The winsome Miss Keller …”

  “Quite a team, the two of them. Vansittart certainly thinks so—enough, at least, for the possibilities to be explored.”

  They were descending the main staircase when Armstrong said, “I’m actually quite a fan of Tennyson.”

  “That is because, like all misanthropes, you have a great sentimental streak in you.”

  England

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  On his mother’s orders, Luke had mowed the lawn and was now weeding the borders. Hearing the sound of a car approaching down the driveway, he was struck by the pleasant realization that a mere three weeks ago, the crunch of tires on gravel would have set his heart racing and had him hurrying to the corner of the house, hoe in hand, to see who it was.

  He was getting there more slowly than Pippi, but he wasn’t so far behind her. She had embraced her new life with enthusiasm, possibly because it was the only one available to her. She was an exile now. There was no prospect of her returning to Germany anytime soon, if ever. For Luke, though, home came with its complications. There were echoes, not all of them good.

  Hardest of all had been their first visit to St. Theresa’s, and the guilt he had carried with him to the foot of Sister Agnes’ grave. There was no avoiding the painful truth: she had been killed because of him. If he had never entered her world as an infant, she would still be alive today. The sense of blame was so overwhelming that he had thought for a moment he might lie to Mother Hilda, distancing himself from Agnes’ murder. He could have invented an excuse for his failure to attend her funeral, and the money that Simona had asked him to give to the orphanage could easily have found its way into the coffers by means of an anonymous bequest. But finding himself in Mother Hilda’s office, the very room where Agnes had forfeited her life, he had opted to come clean about his involvement in the tragedy. He had also requested Mother Hilda’s discretion.

  “My grandfather in Italy has done his best to bury the story for reasons of our safety, to avoid further repercussions. But I can promise you that the man responsible for what happened in this room has been brought to justice.”

  Mother Hilda had parsed the true meaning of his words. “Then that is enough. I see no reason to share what you have told me with the detective in charge of the investigation. He shall have to keep tearing his hair out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you, Luke. For your honesty and for this extraordinary gift. As you know, there are many wonders we can perform with this money.”

  “It’s from Simona.”

  “Yes, but also from Borodin. He sounds like a remarkable person.”

  “He was,” Pippi had concurred.

  It was then that Mother Hilda had offered a slightly curious interpretation of events. “I think maybe that the pure spirit of Agnes, on being released, found a new home for itself in this man Borodin.”

  It didn’t fit with any tenets of Christian theology that Luke had ever come across, but he still thought of those words and drew comfort from them.

  There had been better times since: trips to Ely and Cambridge, punting on the Cam, a picnic in Grantchester Meadows with his parents, a weekend by the sea in Southwold, and for Pippi, long jaunts through the fens on a frisky piebald mare that Solomon had found for her to ride.

  An agreeable limbo, but limbo nonetheless. For Luke, the days seemed to be growing longer, even as they grew shorter. His status was still unclear, his future within the Royal Air Force yet to be determined. He continued to receive his salary, but there had been no definite news from London.

  “Luke, Luke …!” Pippi hurried from the house, bounded across the terrace, and skipped down the stone steps. “This just arrived by messenger. Pippi Keller is dead.”

  She handed him a pristine passport. The photo inside was of Pippi, but the name read Emily Sutton.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think I want to kiss you, Emily Sutton.”

  When he reached for her lips, she recoiled in feigned modesty. “But we have only just met.”

  They laughed, then kissed.

  “You know who I have to show this to, don’t you?”

  “I can’t wait,” said Luke.

  Solomon was filleting a fish for his lunch when they showed up.

  “It’s true,” chimed Pippi. “Look. I am British like you.”

  Solomon rinsed his hands in a bowl, dried them on a stained towel, then took the passport from her.

  “All this proves is, the world’s so twisted, if it ate a nail it’d shit a corkscrew.”

  “Solomon!” she gasped. “There’s a lady present!” It was a phrase she had picked up from Luke. Solomon enjoyed trying to shock her; it was part of their game.

  Solomon glanced again at the passport. “You’re no more an Emily than I is.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Don’t got much choice, do I?”

  When Luke told him to save some space for dinner, Solomon grumbled, “More damned Continentals.”

  Solomon had never made any bones about his low opinion of foreigners, and although his words had a playful edge—especially since Luke now fell within their unsavory ranks—the prejudice was also bred in the bone. Solomon was descended from men who had gone out at night to slit the throats of the Dutch engineers brought in to drain the fens and destroy an ancient way o
f life.

  “Just my grandfather and my uncle,” said Luke. “Are you sure you can cope? You’re going to be outnumbered, four to three.”

  Solomon gave an amused snort. “What, you think four of you lot is worth three of us?”

  The train was due to arrive at Cambridge station shortly before six o’clock, and Luke and Pippi were on the point of leaving when the telephone rang.

  “Luke, it’s a Mr. Higginbotham for you,” his father called.

  Higginbotham sounded in a good mood. “I just wanted to check that the passport had arrived.”

  “This morning. I really don’t know how to thank you.”

  “No need. She more than earned it. The other documentation is being prepared. She should be fully naturalized within the week.”

  “You changed her name, I see.”

  “It made sense.”

  “Sense?”

  “For her. She shot and killed a man in Zurich, remember?” Luke heard Higginbotham light a cigarette. “Listen, there’s another matter that has come to my ears. I thought you should know. The RAF are talking about an honorable discharge for you.”

  Luke felt his heart sink.

  “They want to wash their hands of me?”

  “They’re struggling to see where you might … well, fit. In the light of everything that has happened, I mean.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t. I think they’re bloody fools, but there it is.”

  More than talk, then. A fait accompli.

  “Thank you for warning me.”

  “Maybe we can have lunch at my club when you’re next in London.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “There are a couple of people I want you to meet. Oh, and bring Miss Keller with you.” Higginbotham grunted. “My mistake—Miss Sutton. I can show her the seat of her new government, or maybe a tour of the House of Commons isn’t quite her thing.”

  “No, I’m sure she’d enjoy that.”

  “Next week is good for me, assuming you have nothing better to do.”

  So Higginbotham wasn’t entirely without humor.

  “Whitehall three five seven. Can you remember that?”

  “It’s a sequence of prime numbers,” said Luke.

  “Is it? So it is. Interesting. I wonder who has two three five.”

  “Call it and see.”

  Higginbotham chuckled. “I might just do that. One never knows. The world can turn on such things.”

  They took the slow road to Cambridge, through Burwell and Swaffham Prior, the sinking sun striking the black-soiled fens at an angle and throwing off a limpid purple light.

  “He’s up to something,” said Luke.

  “Higginbotham? Maybe he just likes us and wants to help.”

  “It’s good to trust others, but better not to.”

  “Who said that?” Pippi asked.

  “Borodin, to me, in Paris.” Luke drove on in reflective silence. “I never even asked him his name.”

  “He told me at the end, at the chalet. Ivan.”

  “Ivan Borodin. You asked him?”

  “He wanted me to know.”

  “Why?”

  “He had his reason.”

  “Am I allowed to hear it?”

  “Maybe one day.”

  Luke glanced over at her. “I’ll get it out of you.”

  “Then you don’t know me.”

  “I know you’re ticklish. You’ll cough it up.”

  Pippi laughed. “Okay, but he was the one who said it, not me.” She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  “He really said that?”

  “He really did.”

  Luke took a moment to consider his response.

  “But what if it’s a girl?” he asked.

  Pippi laid her hand gently on his thigh, although her eyes remained fixed on the straight road ahead.

  “Ivana, I suppose.”

  END