by Gregg Loomis
“Our names were at the front desk.”
“No matter. I’m sure he didn’t involve us in what happened.”
As the tiny car pulled away from the curb, Lang was not so sure.
Inside the Wedgewood, he surrendered his passport for copying and American Express black card for imprint. The desk clerk returned both along with a room key. His efforts not to stare at the new bandage Lang had applied with the help of the Morris’s mirror were not entirely successful.
The room was clean and modern with minimal decoration. Two iron single beds were against the wall facing the single window. A four drawer bureau, a pair of uncomfortable looking contemporary chairs and a desk completed the furnishings.
From habit as much as curiosity, Lang went to the window. He was on the second, or as the British would have it, first floor. Only Americans counted ground floors. Either way, it was about twenty feet down.
Lang went into the small bathroom and turned the shower on, hot handle all the way over. He stripped and stood in the burning stream, imagining a river of blood washing away from him. Like Lady Macbeth, he understood blood could become a permanent stain on the psyche.
Although the Agency had trained him to kill, he had never done so in its service. Only later and then to save his own life. Would it-the events at Cavanaugh House- have bothered him less years ago? He had no way to know. Could it be his assignment to Intel instead of Ops may have been because someone in the Agency’s selection process had detected a reluctance to kill, an aversion to violence even Lang did not know he possessed?
He was surprised the idea was a total stranger.
Without warning, the hot water ran out.
With a howl, he bolted from the stream of frigid water, wrapping himself in a towel.
A few minutes later he was dressed. The damn shirt, the one he had worn yesterday, definitely had that stale odor of a dirty clothes bin.
His jaw was beginning to throb. Once in his room, he had employed the bathroom mirror to remove the bandage hastily applied in the car. He winced at the jagged cut, winced even more as he applied antiseptic. At least it had stopped bleeding. He carefully taped a new bandage into place, smaller than the first but still as obvious as a third eye. It was going to leave a scar, something he would have to have removed later. He was not particularly vain but a scar made a face stand out in crowd, something long ago training viewed as anathema.
He swallowed two Tylenols and hoped the pain would subside.
He looked out of the window again, this time at the people, a few of whom wore the universal badge of tourists: a camera hanging from a shoulder strap. Most were hoisting cell phones aloft, shooting selfies or posing companions in front of the ubiquitous devices. At the same time, he realized he was hungry.
Downstairs, the desk clerk regretted the dining room was closed until the dinner hours but gave him directions where he might satisfy both needs: Food and a clean shirt.
A few blocks away was the ultramodern Forum, a mostly glass structure that seemed to float beneath a spread of steel wings. The effect was of a three story atrium lighted by a blue sky seem through a glass dome. The contrast with Eleventh Century Norwich Cathedral, clearly visible along one side, could not have been coincidental. A library, an auditorium, exhibitions, shops and restaurants drew a sizable crowd of tourist and locals alike.
Stopping in a small shop, Lang and a clerk discussed the differences between American and English sizes before he decided on a knit of the type she insisted on calling a ‘polo’, although the style was common to tennis players.
The shirt in a bag, Lang followed the unmistakable aroma of pizza up to the mezzanine and to Pizza Express. Pizza is the one truly international food. Though toppings may differ along with the depth of the crust and exactly how it is sliced, even the British are unable to make it inedible. It was with this thought in mind Lang put down his purchase, ordered a extra cheese and pepperoni and, taking no chances, decided to wash it down with an imported Peroni.
No matter where, pizza just goes better with Italian beer.
The tables with views through the glass walls were taken. Lang slid into a seat with a view of the mall below. Families, teen agers, a pair of private security uniforms. Not unlike any mall back home. He had not swallowed the first bite when two men drew his attention.
The could have been twins of Broken Nose and Timmy: Big men with hard faces wearing jackets despite the warm spring day and who were scanning the crowded floor downstairs.
Lang’s appetite vanished.
Possibly, these men were simply here to shop or enjoy the library or exhibitions. Or to have a late lunch. Maybe, just maybe, they were looking for someone else.
Fat chance.
This morning the motorcyclist, this afternoon the slaughter at Cavanaugh House. Now this. Not a trifecta he wanted to bet on.
He shot a glance at the elevator. No, too confining, a steel tomb if one of those men spotted him getting on.
The escalator offered more promise.
Lang entered a shop, more of an open stall, actually, selling soaps and toiletries. The view of the escalator was near perfect while Lang remained near invisible behind a tall stack of towels.
He didn’t have long to wait before one he saw one of the men get on the ascending stairway. But, where was the other? An opening elevator across the mezzanine answered the question. No doubt he was looking at professionals: The one on the escalator could keep both it, the atrium floor and the escalator under observation while his partner eliminated the elevator as a means of escape.
Now at the top, the escalator rider showed no inclination to move from his vantage point nor did his partner.
How the hell had they known he was here at the Forum?
Only one way: The hotel’s desk clerk had recommended the Forum as a place to find both shirt and a meal.
OK, Lang reasoned, how did they find the Wedgewood so quickly?
The answer: Easily. One electronic swipe of the credit card and passport and any moderately talented teen age hacker could have come up with the information in seconds.
But he’d never seen these guys before nor, as far as he knew, they him.
The Electronic Age again: MI6, SAS, either or both surely had the capability to transmit a picture, perhaps one taken clandestinely in the Bahamas, at home, anywhere. The bandaged face didn’t help. The Electronic Age may have been the source of his problem at the moment but it was providing few solutions.
Or was it?
38.
24o 42’ 00”N
77o 46’ 00” W
(Tongue of the Ocean)
O1:32 Local Time
June 1, 1942
The V-8 Crusader engine burbled at near neutral, just enough power to keep the twenty-two foot Chris-Craft Sportsman Sedan’s bow pointed into the outgoing tide. A near flat sea sloshed gently against the mahogany sides as the boat wallowed in the lazy swell. Half a mile west, the last flickering candle light in Andros Town had gone out over an hour ago.
Sir Harry Oakes stood at the craft’s stern, holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes. He was searching the eastern horizon where New Providence Island, thirty miles away, was a blur against the star studded sky. The occasional streak of underwater phosphorus punctuated the velvet blackness of the sea.
At the controls, inside the canvas-topped cabin, Emanuel, Sir Harry’s butler, occasional chauffeur and major domo, was grumbling. He didn’t like being this far out in the ocean at night, subject to the whims of sea, tide and possible Lusca, the Bahamian demon, half octopus, half shark that not only drowned careless seamen but could swallow a whole boat.
Sir Harry had despaired of Emanuel’s acceptance of a world without Lusca’s, Obeah spells and chickcharnies, the elf-like three toed bird who could bestow life-long good or bad luck. He supposed superstition was part of the African heritage. With less than a sixth-grade education available to most Bahamians, there was little to replace the old beliefs.
Thos
e beliefs were why Emanuel was here tonight: Sir Harry would have preferred to have the anonymity of a professional boat captain; but, other than a few hardy fishermen unfamiliar with motorized craft, he could find none in Nassau willing to sail that far from land at night. He needed someone to run the Chris-Craft; he could not do so and observe at the same time.
He futilely slapped at a buzzing insect, the sound like a rifle shot in the quiet of the night. This was the time of year the trade winds died. As a result, mosquitos, gnats and no-seeums feasted on anything breathing.
Sir Harry sighed. Maybe he had been mistaken; maybe he had guessed wrong. One thing he knew: Between February and last month, May, twenty-four ships had been sunk in the Straights of Florida, that strip of deep water between the east coast of Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas. Those ships were carrying crude oil from Venezuela and Brazil, crude oil desperately needed for the war effort. Half had gone down right off Palm Beach County less than two hundred nautical miles from where the Chris-Craft was now.
Curious, Sir Harry had written naval friends in the States, Canada and Britain. Military secrecy, most said, prevented a direct answer to his question. One or two guessed the range of the U-Boats to be somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen hundred miles. He could do the math: Brittany, where the French based boats were, was roughly 4,600 miles from Palm Beach County. Unless . . .
He thought he saw something. . . something like a light.
He turned, focusing the glasses on the Andros shore.
There it was again, emerald green, blinking from the near impenetrable mangrove swamps just south of Andros Town. Blink. . . Blink.
Not Morse Code, at least not in English.
But they wouldn’t use English, would they? For that matter the light itself would be sufficient signal, particularly if . . .
He whirled around just in time to catch a replying blink, this one pink with distance, from somewhere on New Providence, followed by darkness.
One minute, then two.
Sir Harry was not one to let his imagination run wild, but had he really seen those lights?
Wait, what was that?
A streak of phosphorus split the ink black water a hundred yards astern.
The lights on Andros and New Providence came alive again, two blinks each, red and green.
Seconds later, the sea erupted.
A massive shape, appeared as though by magic, accompanied by the hiss of escaping air. The chug of a diesel engines carried clearly in the still night. Sir Harry was quite sure that was a conning tower defined only by its silhouette against the starry night sky.
Behind him, Emanuel was wailing, or rather, praying loudly.
“Hush man!” Sir Harry hissed. “If they hear you, we are good as dead!”
“De Lusca,” he moaned, “Lord, we be dead ennyways!”
Sir Harry grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, shaking him savagely. “Listen to me! What you see is a bloody German submarine, not some sea monster! If they hear us, you’re right: we will be dead!”
Shocked at his boss’s uncharacteristic violence, Emanuel had at least stopped his blubbering.
Sir Harry had a greater problem: Could the Chris-Craft’s motor be heard over the sound of the U-boat’s diesels? Were the Crusaders switched off, he would be risking the outgoing tide carrying the boat right into the German.
The sound of second submarine breaching the surface made his decision. “Emanuel, run for that creek right beside Andros Town.”
“Missa Harry,” Emanuel protested, “We do thot ‘n we meybbe gets stuck.”
“If the bloody creek is too shallow for us, it is far too shallow for those u-boats. Now go!”
39.
The Forum
Norwich
As best he could, Lang kept as many of the mall’s patrons between him both of the men as he worked his way across the mezzanine. Their appearance here was frightening not only because it presented an immediate threat but because the efficiency and speed with which they had tracked him down implied not a few random renegades in MI6 or Special Air Services but a conspiracy much larger than he had suspected.
The latter was not the issue at hand, however. Escape was.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to slip by them.
So. . .
Stepping from behind two women inspecting a stack of scented soap, he waved to the man at the top of the escalator.
From the man’s expression, it was clearly an unexpected maneuver.
If you liked that, watch this.
As calmly as though marching up a church’s aisle, Lang walked over to the down escalator only a few feet from the up where the man stood.
“I do love this place. Reminds me of the malls back home,” he said in a conversational tone as he stepped onto the moving staircase.
Lang was pretty certain neither of these guys would try anything in public. More likely they would keep him in view until an opportunity arose.
Pretty certain but he was betting his life on it.
But then, what were the other options?
At the bottom of the escalator, Lang broke for the hallway where he had seen the man/woman silhouettes indicating the WC, a facility not available on the mezzanine.
As anticipated, neither the man from the escalator nor his partner, just arrived on the scene, had expected the fast move. For an instant, as he rounded the corner, Lang was out of their sight.
He threw his weight against the door to the women’s and shoved it shut once inside.
There was a row of five stalls, another of two sinks beneath a mirror. A grandmotherly type’s reflection glared at him as he dashed for one of the stalls. The word ‘pervert’ was unspoken but perfectly clear.
Lang slammed the stall’s door shut. “Men’s is full up, mum.”
She might alert the two rent-a-cops he’d seen but Lang couldn’t count on it. Instead, he took out his iPhone and keyed in 999, praying he remembered the proper English prefixes. The phone, after all, thought it was still in Atlanta.
Maybe not such a smart phone after all.
“Nine nine nine,” a woman’s voice answered on the second ring.
Lang was not sure how you pronounced a number with a British accent but she did it.
“The mall, er, the Forum in Norwich. There are two guys here with guns.”
“Guns?”
“Pistols. I saw one under the man’s jacket.”
With typical British calm, she could have been taking down a weather report. “Could you describe them, please?”
Lang did.
Now he could only hope the police responded before his two pursuers figured out where he had gone.
No time to wait in hopes of a speedy arrival by the law. Lang slithered under the divider between his stall and the next, latched that door and moved on to the next. Fortunately, none were occupied. Within a minute, all were locked.
He had had no extra time. He had no sooner slipped the latch on the last stall when he heard the WC’s door open and two sets of foot steps. The water was running while a person circulated the room, presumably looking for male feet under the closed doors.
Lang was standing on the commode seat when he heard the pulsing wail of sirens. The people outside the stalls must have heard it also. They left in a hurry.
Lang waited a good ten minutes, during which two women entered, expressed their displeasure at finding latched doors, attributed them to some “bloody fucking delinquent’s idea of a prank” and left, presumably for more hospitable facilities on the upper floor.
Once back of the Forum’s ground floor, Lang instantly spotted the men from whom he had escaped. Hands against the wall, feet spread, they were being patted down by a pair of uniformed constables while two more cradled automatic weapons in their arms and a curious crowd watched.
As Lang watched, one of the uniforms removed a pistol from one of the men. Lang didn’t have to look closely to recognize it as Sig Sauer Cerakote.
&nbs
p; 40.
Klyne Aviation Centre
Norwich International Airport
Thirty-two minutes later
Only five miles from the center of town by the A-140, Norwich International Airport hosts flights within Britain and the Chanel Islands, largely by discount carriers. KLM has a daily flight to Amsterdam and Air Malta to vacation spots in the Mediterranean during vacation season.
Other than that, the airport is largely devoted to general aviation, which explained to Lang why the three story Klyne facility was newer, better maintained and almost the size of the commercial terminal.
The pilot and passenger lounges displayed cheerful, light colors including red leather furniture, multiple TV screens and views of the single runway through tinted glass. The snack bar, however, offered the same bitter coffee, stale crisps (potato chips) and vending machines of tasteless food Lang had found in FBO’s the world over.
He was not here for food and drink although he already thought of the pizza abandoned at the Forum with nostalgia. He was using a paper napkin to wipe the remains of a sandwich from his fingers as he approached he approached a bank of phones. The taste of the ham and butter, a combination of which the English seemed unduly fond, lingered despite the can of tooth-itching sweet Barr Lemonade with which he had used to ease it down.
He checked his watch. Jacob should still be en route back to London. There was little chance anyone could intercept conversations from the public phones here but Jacob’s cell was vulnerable. He would simply have to risk it or leave his friend unaware Timmy and broken Nose had been reincarnated.
Jacob answered on the second ring.
“Hi. The two gentlemen we met earlier today have friends,” Lang said without introduction, hoping Jacob understood the necessarily obtuse message.
“Oh, do they now?”
“Just met them here.”
“That was speedy.”
Good. Jacob understood the two men who had died at Cavanaugh House had almost immediately been replaced. He could take such measures as he saw fit.
“I’m not sure of their employer,” Jacob continued.