His City overcoat wasn’t doing much for him in the North Atlantic cold, and he’d long ago thrown up anything that remained in his stomach. How long could this nightmare go on? Minutes moved like hours. If he were dashed over the side, he thought miserably, it would be an improvement.
Captain Flynn was equally unhappy, though for different reasons. “The destroyers are slowing us down,” he complained on the third night.
“We need them,” said the first officer. “They’ve got the asdic sonar, they can locate the U-boats.”
“There won’t be any need to locate them soon, we’ll all know where they are, they’ll be clustered around us,” said the captain. “There’s a gale blowing out there, and we’re sitting ducks.”
“What’s the alternative, then?” asked Alex, who had no idea what they were talking about. He wondered if he looked as green as he felt.
The two other men conferred some more and then the captain turned to Alex. “We’re going to send the convoy back,” he said. “We’ll move faster without the escort.”
Oh, excellent, the man from the Bank of England thought. Moving even faster than this.
He wanted to die.
CHAPTER FOUR
We took the Métro’s yellow line to the Jean-Drapeau station, named for one of Montréal’s more beloved mayors (hence my own boss’s craving to be memorialized in a similar manner; he harbors delusions that we all love him, too) and located out on the Sainte-Hélène Island. The station connects people to the La Ronde amusement park—now part of the Six Flags franchise—and to Montréal’s casino, located in what was originally constructed as the French pavilion of the 1967 Expo, a sort of world’s fair that did a lot for the city’s economy back in the day.
Drapeau is credited with the establishment of the Métro itself, along with securing the city as the site for both Expo ’67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics. Not a bad legacy, altogether. Jean-Luc, on the other hand, so far is credited with $500 lunches and $450,000 petty cash accounts.
Yeah, okay, they’re about even.
Patricia was quiet for most of the ride, and my efforts at small talk got little response. She wasn’t interested in the weather. She agreed unenthusiastically that the Métro was faster and quieter than other subway systems she’d been on. She didn’t have a lot to say about McGill as an institution. I thought she might be miffed for my having cut her triumphant presentation short, but I wasn’t about to bring the subject up in the crowded Métro car, even speaking English, so I kept babbling inanely about superficial topics. If my PR gig didn’t work out someday, I could always try out for a tour guide position.
“Do you gamble?” Patricia asked, finally, having apparently decided that I wasn’t going to talk about her research and getting tired of comments about the temperature.
“Gamble?” I repeated and laughed. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that we can get some privacy out here.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Privacy? In a casino?”
I smiled. “Wait and see.”
The Montréal casino looks a lot like a spaceship—even now, over a half century after it was built, it looks futuristic; I can only imagine what visitors to Expo ’67 thought of it. Inside, it’s—well, it’s a casino, where round-the-clock bright lights, a lack of windows, and the absence of timepieces encourage gamblers to stay for just one more hand, one more roll, one more drink. Some people call it preying on the weaknesses of others. Some people call it providing a service.
My husband, Ivan, calls it his workplace. He’s the director of the casino, and its bright colored lights and smiling staff are the backdrop to his everyday professional life.
I didn’t come out to the island often enough for the croupiers to know me by sight, but there’s always someone watching through closed-circuit television in any gambling establishment, and we hadn’t gotten very far before a smooth voice at my elbow stopped our progress. “Martine! How pleasant to see you.”
I turned, a smile ready, and dutifully kissed one of Ivan’s managers on the cheeks in greeting. “Salut, Jean-Yves. Ça va?”
“Bien, bien,” he responded, looking past me to my companion. A stellar friend, Jean-Yves, and a terrific manager, but one with the curiosity of a cat that hasn’t yet embarked on any of its nine lives. “This is my friend, Patricia,” I said in English before turning to her. “Patricia, this is Jean-Yves, who runs many parts of the casino.”
They shook hands. Patricia was looking around her like a child visiting Disney World for the first time. “You are here for Mr. Petrinko?” Jean-Yves asked me in English.
“If he’s not busy, I’d love to see him,” I said. “But actually, Jean-Yves, I just wanted to use his office for a little while.” My husband’s office is the only place I know of that’s absolutely, positively, no-questions-asked secure. Ivan makes sure of that on a daily basis.
“Of course. He is in the poker rooms, I believe. I will let him know that you are here, if you wish. There is no one in the office right now, you will be undisturbed.” He inclined his head and looked at my companion. “Mademoiselle, pleased to have made your encounter.”
“Thank you,” said Patricia. She looked a little dazed.
I swiped my magnetic identification card at the door that didn’t look like a door, and let us into the back corridors that shot through the building like rabbit runs, linking the prosaic undercurrent that enables the fairy-tale aspects of the casino to operate smoothly. Waiters passed us with carts of food, dishes protected by gleaming silver domes. Security officers gave us automatic sharp looks as we went by. A cleaner was rattling her trolley on the way to some spillage.
In Ivan’s office, I closed the door behind us. Patricia was staring at the bank of screens on one wall, monitoring the myriad security cameras placed throughout the building. “This is fascinating,” she said.
“This is big business,” I told her. The bright colored lights, the mesmerizing tables, the seductive whispers, none of it did anything for me. There’s no mystique to gambling as far as I’m concerned. I know that for some people it’s an addiction akin to that of alcohol or drugs; but it’s always seemed to me that the greater addiction is to money, the money to be made from all the world’s addictions. It was an uneasy thought. “Come on, sit down. That sofa’s more comfortable than it looks. Can I get you something? A coffee? A glass of wine?”
“Wine would be nice.”
I pressed a button on the intercom and spoke to Ivan’s new administrator. “Marie-Claire? C’est Martine.”
“Bonjour,” the box said.
“Will you ask Raoul to bring two glasses of Ivan’s Côtes du Rhône to the office?”
“But of course.”
I settled back into a chair and smiled at Patricia. “I’m sorry for all this,” I said. “The secrecy, everything. You must be wondering what kind of crazy woman I am. And, forgive me—but you may not have thought of this—but there are a number of important political ramifications to your work. Consequences. Things that call for specialized treatment. And I’d rather take it slowly, think about the information you have and what we will release, when we will release it, that sort of thing. You saw that already there are many parties interested.”
“The whole world should be interested,” said Patricia vigorously, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Already, as it is, not many Canadians know about Operation Fish. I think that’s terrible. It was one of the major coups of the war.”
I thought that not many of us knew much about history, period, but that was beside the point.
Patricia was pursuing her thought. “Still, it’s good for me, I guess. I mean, it’s a guaranteed career, isn’t it?” That would be the way she’d look at it, of course. “The thing is, I’m doing something significant, isn’t that what everybody wants for their life? And after this, everyone will know about what happened, because this was part of it.”
“What was part of it?”
She looked at me. “The jewels! The British-god
damned-crown-jewels. I mean, it’s a lot more glamorous, isn’t it? It’s sexier to talk about jewels than about gold or plain old securities.”
So she did know something about public relations. I checked myself: I’d been treating her like an enfant terrible, a prodigy who didn’t know anything outside of her own limited field. She was smarter than that.
“It is sexier,” I agreed. “It’s a natural human impulse, to be fascinated by anything that expensive.” Or that shiny, as the case may be.
“It’s not just the expense,” Patricia said. The glasses had slid down again and she pushed them back, her finger on the nosepiece. “It’s—well, everything. Jewels are gorgeous all by themselves. Glittering, brilliant, glamorous, Audrey Hepburn and Queen Elizabeth all rolled into one, you know? And then there’s the symbolism—you know, centuries of history.”
There was a knock at the door, and Raoul came in with a tray. “Thank you,” I said distractedly; Patricia kept talking. “Imagine if London had been invaded and occupied—like Paris. It’s what everyone thought was going to happen, after all. Imagine Hitler posing with the British crown jewels, maybe even sitting on the throne, can you see it?” She pushed the glasses back up again. She stopped to think for a moment. “And that would have killed the English faster than any bomb.”
I sipped my wine and thought about it, the little man and the glittering jewels that had inspired and defined an empire. “But hang on,” I objected. “Letting them leave England—wasn’t that taking a big risk? What if the convoy had been lost at sea? How could they trust people in another country to keep them safe?”
“But that’s the genius of it,” she said persuasively, the glasses sliding down again. “No one knew. The jewels were the last thing on anyone’s mind. Think about it! London’s getting bombed to bits and all you’re going to be doing is wondering where the king decided to put the fucking crown jewels? I don’t think so.”
She finally sipped her wine. “Later on, during the war, there was this rumor circulating that the jewels were hidden in a cave somewhere in Wales. But no way: if England fell, Wales was going to fall, too. That wouldn’t have made any difference. So they were here. They were here all the time.”
“And still, in a sense, on British soil, with Canada being Commonwealth,” I said slowly. “Still part of Great Britain, with whatever meanings people wanted to ascribe to that.” She nodded. “Still in Great Britain,” she said. “Just a lot safer.”
“Okay. I’m convinced of the logic of it,” I said. “But you said something about proof. And you also said something about some of them being stolen.”
She nodded, her eyes steady over the rim of her glass.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t any problems with what you’re saying, but let’s say for a moment that it’s true. If it’s true, why has it taken so long to find out? No offense to you, I’m sure that you’re really good at what you do, but there’ve been a lot of researchers in Montréal since 1945. Historians, archaeologists, people like that. If there was something to find, surely they’d have found it by now.”
“Only,” said Patricia, “if they were looking in the right place.”
* * *
“I can’t feel my hands.”
“Count yerself lucky, then. Haven’t felt me toes since we left Scotland.”
“Didn’t feel mine even when we was in Scotland.”
It had to be the North Atlantic, the lookout thought sourly. And on a bleeding light cruiser. Not built for these waters, innit? Should be doing the Mediterranean route, picking up them New Zealand and Australian and Indian troops from Cairo. But no: it had to be the bleeding North Atlantic.
The bleeding frigid North Atlantic.
There’d been storm warnings when they’d left port, but that wasn’t enough to deter the Royal Navy and His Majesty Captain Flynn, no sir, guv’nor. Not a bit of it. And now here they was, in gray seas against a gray sky, the seas running higher since morning, and watching for U-boats that could blow them out of the water at any moment.
And not just them. A bleeding convoy, it was. H.M.S. Emerald, Uncle Tom Cobley, and all.
He could just about make out the shape of one of the escort ships to the west. Rain sluicing down since midmorning, hard, when the seas had started to kick up. Spotter plane left yesterday, more’s the pity: there was no help now. With them submarines out there, making the ocean their playground, lurking under the water and the first you knew of it was when the torpedo hit.
And now a storm coming on. Didn’t need no bleeding meteorological officer to tell him that: bin goin’ to sea nine years, innit? Can tell the weather out yere sure as anybody else.
Couldn’t hardly see the destroyer now anyway, and the speed well down, making them sitting ducks, if you asked him: sitting ducks for any prowling wolf packs. The animal imagery was pleasing in a depressing sort of way. Quick as you like, that was the way to cross the Atlantic safely. Not like this, jest waitin’ fer a break in the weather and halfway across with nowhere to hide. Trust the captain with his life, he’d done it before an’ he would again, guv’nor knew what he was doing. But still, feelin’ like a sitting duck.
An’ weather worsening all the time.
The lookout braced himself to light a cigarette, shielding the lighter from both weather and possible periscopes. Still, all in a day’s work, innit? Convoy’s got to get through, God and King, I vow to thee my country, all that.
Halfway to Halifax. God help them.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming out to the casino? We could’ve had dinner together.” Ivan came up behind me as I stood at the kitchen sink, wrapping his arms around me and pushing back some of my dark hair to kiss my neck. Beside us, Bisou the cat cried plaintively for his dinner.
I finished rinsing the plate and stuck it into the dishwasher. “Didn’t know I was going,” I said. “It just worked out that way. Actually, I’d meant to spend the day with someone called François.”
“François?” asked my husband, lifting one eyebrow.
I grinned. “He’s a tour guide.”
“Oh, right, you were doing the tourist thing today.” He reached past me to grab an apple out of the wire three-tiered basket suspended next to the sink. Ivan is always hungry. Even when he’s just eaten, he’s hungry.
He says it has to do with the privation and pogroms suffered by his Jewish ancestors in Russia. The truth is that he’s only ever visited Moscow on a college package tour that involved more vodka than history; his worst privations as a young adult had to do with not being able to find “pahking” in his native Boston.
Still, he can play the fiddler on the roof to perfection.
“Got sidetracked.” I put the detergent into its little door, shut the dishwasher, pushed the requisite buttons. I turned to lean against the sink and face him. “Ivan, what do you know about the Second World War?”
“My people—”
“Don’t even go there!” I poked at his chest. “I’m serious. I’ve been reading, this afternoon. And, um, talking to some people. Did you know that Canadian participation in the war has been seriously underplayed? One of the beaches at D-Day, Juno Beach, was exclusively Canadian. Plus, between 1939 and 1945, more than one million Canadian men and women served full-time in the armed services. Come on, I’ll tell you about it.”
I went into the living area and sat on the sofa; Ivan followed me, still polishing his apple on his suit jacket. “You’ve become a font of historical information today,” he observed.
“Pretty, too,” I said.
“That as well.” He sat next to me. “Why this sudden interest in twentieth-century wars?”
I half turned to face him, drawing one of my legs up under me. “There’s this woman, a doctoral candidate from McGill,” I said. “She’s stirring things up a little. The thing is, Ivan, she’s found proof—well, she says she’s found proof—that the British crown jewels w
ere here. In Montréal. They were held in a vault under the édifice Sun-Life during the war.”
He took a bite out of the apple and chewed reflectively. “Think I already heard that somewhere. Maybe in a magazine?”
“It’s probably been a whole lot of places. It’s no secret, it’s actually part of the Gray Line tour narrative,” I said. “Except that it’s said so casually that you really don’t have the time to reflect on it. You know, statistic this, statistic that, so forth. And anyway, you’re right: for most people, it feels like ancient history.”
Nothing but the sound of him biting into the apple, chewing, swallowing. “But?”
“But what?”
“I can feel it coming. There’s another shoe due to fall at any moment. And don’t give me that blank look, you’re not that French, you know the idiom. Your English is better than my grandmother’s.”
“Everyone’s English is better than your grandmother’s.”
“Alors?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a long story, but essentially the Brits sent a lot of stuff here at the beginning of the war. They sent the country’s gold reserve, and everyone’s securities, too, private securities they’d confiscated. It wasn’t just to keep them safe: they were payments, agreed between the governments to pay for convoys sent from Canada and the States to supply the British.” I hesitated. “Believe it or not, it was something they called Operation Fish.”
“Appropriate,” my husband commented. “What about the crown jewels? Were they part of this fish thing?”
“They came with the second shipment,” I said, picking my notes off the coffee table. “Complete secrecy, of course, they even had the crew put on tropical white uniforms to confuse any lurking German spies into thinking they were heading south—well, there were U-boats all over the North Atlantic. The Emerald survived a bad storm and docked in Halifax; the gold and jewels went on from there by train to Montréal.”
“It would make a good movie,” Ivan said. He runs the casino; he always has an instinct and eye out for entertainment.
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