Under the Freeze

by George Bartram

  And who’ll tell Gillian?

  He walked to the Bloomsbury hotel, where he still kept a room. He changed his clothes and put antiseptic on several cuts. He looked bad — pale, perhaps sick. I am sick. This is sickening. What I’ve done is sickening. On the way out, a woman in the lobby looked at him and looked away with that intensity that comes of wanting not to have seen something.

  Chapter 24

  He reached the theater bar ahead of Mrs. Bentham and ordered a whiskey from a pretty woman before the act quite ended and the crowd poured in. His hand was shaking as he took it from her; he looked in a mirror and saw a man he hardly recognized.

  He recognized Mrs. Bentham, however. She seemed not to have changed in eleven years. She was a quintessential Englishwoman of her class, conservative, assured, often rude in her insistence on politeness; red-cheeked with broken veins, too tight in her hairstyle, years behind in her fashions because of both economy and taste. After they had identified each other and she had made it clear that he was forgiven for being a boor, he was allowed to get her a shandy while she commandeered a table no bigger than a hat and defended it against other determined Englishwomen.

  “How very nice!” she exclaimed when he put the drink in front of her. “How well you look!”

  He murmured something. She meant the suit, of course, which was one of those from Hire Attire and made him look like an ambassador or a very well educated Mafia lawyer.

  Mrs. Bentham was carrying a brand-new plastic briefcase that bulged with papers. “I loathe business!” she cried. She opened a piece of paper on the table in front of him. “My bill.”

  He was paying not only for Mrs. Bentham, but also for two typists, three hundred and seven pages of photocopying, typing paper, and the plastic briefcase. “All of that is mine?” he said doubtfully.

  “Once you pay the bill. I loathe business, don’t you? It is so cruel!” She bent forward. “I prefer a check.”

  “I don’t have a London account.” That was not true, although it was true that he did not have a London account in the name of Rider. “I have to give you cash.”

  “Ah, well.” She sniffed. “I hate business.” She looked around them. The bar was packed. “Handing money about looks so bad.”

  Tarp took a plain piece of paper from the briefcase and folded it like an envelope, wrote her name on it, and put the money into it. He then laid the thing on the table between them. “I’ve added in twenty-five pounds for your transportation home.”

  “Oh. How very thoughtful you are, when you put your mind to it.” When he looked down, the improvised envelope had vanished and she was snapping her purse shut. “They will blink the lights or ring the bell or whatever they do to end the interval at any moment!” she cried. “I must run.”

  “Wait.” His tone stopped her. It was not often that she was stopped. “You have plenty of time. What have you found for me?”

  “Everything. Within reason, I mean. The history of the Loyal, its mission in the South Atlantic; a complete crew roster for the year of the Homburg encounter. Several accounts of the Homburg’s sinking. Quite a nice biography of Admiral Pope-Ginna, the commanding officer. And so on. It runs to more than four hundred pages.”

  “You’re very quick.”

  “That’s what I’m paid to be.”

  She started to get up, and he detained her with a hand. “Not yet. They haven’t called yet. What did you find about the Homburg?”

  “Not as much, of course. Most of that would be in Germany, I daresay. But I did find a recently unclassified document that was circulated in 1944. It was sent to the Loyal, in fact. The first lord had reason to believe that the Homburg was carrying Nazi gold to South America, as well as some important Nazi officials.”

  “How much gold?”

  “It’s in my report. About a hundred and fifty million pounds sterling — by today’s debased value, I mean.”

  The bell rang. He felt her tense. “What Nazi officials?”

  “That I couldn’t find. ‘Certain civilians,’ is all it said. Some of that is still classified.”

  “Can you get at it?”

  Her professional expertise had been challenged. “Mr. Rider, I know the Official Secrets Act better than the people who now enforce it. I do believe that I can ‘get at’ something that was classified in 1944.”

  “Do, then.”

  She stood up. Someone bumped her from behind, and a look of martyrdom attached itself to her face. “Do you mind?” she bellowed over her shoulder. Several people looked guilty. She turned back to Tarp. “Call me tomorrow evening. I really must go”

  To say that she faded into the mob would be wrong; rather, she parted it. She was a big woman.

  Tarp sat at the small table until the bar was empty. He finished the whiskey.

  “Want another?” the woman at the bar said. She smiled at him. He thought of what it would be like to linger over another drink there, to respond to that smile. Was she offering more than the whiskey? He supposed it might be fun to find out. “No, thanks,” he said.

  The briefcase was heavy. He admired Mrs. Bentham’s strength as he walked out of the theater and looked for a cab. A light rain was falling now, barely more than a mist, but it made taxis hard to find. At last he gave up and found an underground station and rode out to where he had left the rented car. He put the briefcase into the back and drove up to Bloomsbury, where he parked it as close as he could to the phone booth where Jenny Barnwell would call.

  The telephone jingled at one minute past ten.

  “Well?”

  “It’s me, who else? Got your message, obviously. What’s on?”

  “How’s my Belgian friend?”

  “Very quiet. Carries a gun, you know that? I don’t like messing with people carry guns; they’re troublemakers. Like you. What’s this call about, anyway? I could be boogying right now, if it weren’t for you.”

  “Boogie tomorrow. Bring my friend to the same place where we met last night. Then I’ve got a job for you.”

  “Oh, Christ! There goes my whole bleeding evening!”

  “Naturally he’ll pay as if he’d stayed the night.”

  “Naturally. You think money solves everything, don’t you! Bloody fucking American, that’s all you are. Violence and money, that’s all you people know.”

  “I need a car, Jenny.”

  “What, you want me to steal a car!”

  “No, rent or borrow. Got to have good papers. For about a week. I’ll pay well.”

  “It isn’t quite the time of day for the car rentals, chum. Still, I know some people. Take me a couple hours, you know.”

  “No longer. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Oh, naturally. All right, I’ll get a car. Doesn’t have to be fancy, does it? You ain’t visiting the Queen Mum.”

  “No. Something nondescript.”

  “Oh, just my line. Swell. All right, gimme two hours, I’ll pick up your pal and meet you at the Rose. Midnight. No, make it half after. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Tarp had backtracked mentally through the days in England and had tried to find if there had been any way by which MI-5 could know the number of the car he was driving or the name under which he had rented it. In the end it seemed too risky to go on using it. If Matthiessen’s people caught up with him now, they would take him. Rattled by the disaster in the passage, they would be looking for a scapegoat. A former Agency man with a fake passport and a Moscow tie-in would make a lovely diversion for them.

  He dropped the rental car at the all-night space of a rental agency and carried the loaded briefcase back to his hotel. He spent three-quarters of an hour going through Mrs. Bentham’s work, then separated a dozen or so pages that he needed and put the rest back into the plastic briefcase. Paying his bill, to the astonishment of the owner, who was ready for bed, he dropped the briefcase into the dumpster behind a restaurant and then went to the underground and found his slow way to Hire Attire, which was deserted and dark. He left the
bloody and torn clothes with the clean ones in a bag with a note: “Please hold until called for. Some cleaning may be in order. Black.”

  It was cold. The rain had turned to intermittent sleet. He wore a turtleneck and a heavy sweater and the tweed jacket with its wet sleeve, and still he was cold. His leg hurt. He was tired. He thought of Johnnie Carrington and found a telephone. Grimes Hospital did not want to put him through to anybody, but after much pleading on his part a resident came on.

  “I’d like to inquire about Mr. Carrington.”

  “Uh, which Carrington is that?”

  “John Carrington.”

  “Who is this?”

  “How is Mr. Carrington?”

  “I’ll have to have your name, sir. It’s regulations.”

  Tarp thought he was being stalled. Matthiessen, he thought, and he hung up. Matthiessen’s not going to save his public ass at my expense. Matthiessen would deplore Carrington’s injury, but he could be grateful that it gave him a possible way of locating Carrington’s renegade American friend.

  Renegade. That had been Repin’s word. Not so very long ago. Last night, in fact. In the noodle restaurant. It seemed an age.

  He walked for five blocks in case MI-5 were quicker at tracing telephone calls than they were supposed to be, and he let two taxis go by before he waved one over and fell into it. It had taken twenty-two minutes to let three cabs go by, and he was wet and shivering.

  “Dreadful night,” the driver said cheerfully.

  “A bit.”

  “Where to, then?”

  “Camberwell New Road.”

  The driver turned and looked him over, then slowly pushed over his flag. “Not a very bright spot, this time of night,” he said dubiously.

  “I’m not going to rob you.” Tarp dropped two bills on the front seat. “I’m too cold.”

  The pink word Rose burned its mysterious way against the rawness of the night. Tarp paid the driver and then paid him more to sit there. Many minutes later a pair of headlights slowed as they came past going the other way, then did a U-turn and came up behind.

  “Keep your motor running,” Tarp said.

  “I got no intention of turning it off. What’s up?”

  “Just checking to make sure it’s my friend.”

  Tarp waited until he recognized the slim figure of Jenny Barnwell. Then he paid the driver for the fourth time that night and climbed out.

  “You’re late,” he said accusingly.

  “Of course I’m late!” Barnwell said. Tarp looked into the car. Repin was sitting back there, smiling happily. He looked warm and pleased with himself.

  “What’s he so happy about?”

  “He taught Sara how to make brioche. She give him a couple dozen and a big kiss.”

  “Who’s Sara?”

  “Never you mind.”

  The car was a big old Humber with an engine that could have powered a truck. Tarp walked around it, still shivering a little but needing to inspect it. It was solid, well cared for. “You did well,” he said.

  “God, don’t give me a word of praise! Don’t say I did something up to snuff! Christ, I’ll croak from the shock if you approve!”

  “Get in.”

  “Bloody well right. You’re driving me back to the club. Well, you don’t expect me to walk, do you?”

  They sat in the front seat together. Rose cast its pink glow over their hands. Repin leaned forward, munching a brioche. There was a warm smell of milky coffee.

  “Sara?” Tarp said.

  “Yes, Sara,” Repin said. “Is very nice little lady.”

  Barnwell sneered. “Some Belgian!”

  Tarp handed him two pages from the sheets that Mrs. Bentham had given him. He pointed with a slightly quivering finger. “I want you to track down these people. There are nineteen of them.”

  “Holy Christ. They aren’t dangerous, are they?”

  “I doubt it. They’ll be pretty old, most of them. A lot of them will be dead.”

  Barnwell peered at the paper. The light from the car’s ceiling was absurdly dim. “‘Navigation officers and ratings, H.M.S. Loyal.’ Wot’s this now?”

  “Just find them. I want to talk to some of them.”

  “That’s all I do, find them?”

  “That’s all.”

  “You’re paying?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jenny bobbed his head. “Well, that’s not so bad, then.”

  He dropped Barnwell outside his club and turned the big car around. It was a pleasure to drive, with lots of reserve power and an affinity for the road on turns.

  “Can you spare some of Sara’s coffee?” Tarp said.

  Repin maneuvered himself into the front seat and reached back for a sack and plastic cups and a huge Thermos bottle. “Is my pleasure.”

  “Who’s Sara?”

  “Very nice, very large English female. Ask no questions.”

  “All right.” Tarp took a cup of the sweet, milky coffee.

  “Where do we go now?” Repin said. He held up a brioche. It was half a day old, but it was delicious, just faintly salty from the butter.

  “France. There’s a truck ferry from Folkstone at four.”

  “You look bad. Trouble?”

  “Much trouble.” He pointed the car toward the bridges and began to tell Repin about the day.

  Chapter 25

  The telephoned instructions from Paris took them through a village that was nothing more than two lines of gray houses along the road, one a store and one a cafe, past a gasoline station sitting by itself two hundred yards beyond the last building, past a seventeenth-century farmhouse with windowless walls up tight against the road. They were fifteen miles inland from the Pas-de-Calais coast. In the overcast, the land looked like rock covered with gray moss, bumpy and grudging and as if nothing could ever put down roots into it.

  The roads got smaller and rougher. The last two hundred yards was a rough, stony track up a hill between tough little oak trees that somehow clung to the surface as if they had been glued there. At the end of the track was a tumbledown stone farmhouse, and behind it were three even more dilapidated barns arranged in a U. They and the house were all collapsing into what had been the barnyard. There was a silent old man already in the cold house, and a younger woman with frightened eyes. Tarp thought she might be his daughter, a stick of a woman with the shrinking posture of a dog that has been kicked. She looked at the big old Humber and at Repin and at Tarp with hostile eyes.

  “Are you the caretaker?” Tarp said in French to the old man.

  “Yes.” The old man looked at the car and the ground and at Tarp. “You are the monsieur?”

  “Have you got your instructions?”

  He shrugged. He looked around himself, as if for witnesses. “I am not a servant.”

  “Who takes care of food?”

  He jerked his head. “She does. She is all right.” He said it as if Tarp had said the woman was not all right.

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “Downstairs. In the back.”

  “And her?”

  “With me, with me, what do you think?”

  “Who is in charge?”

  The old man looked at the woman. She looked as if she were going to cry. “Who is in charge?” Tarp said again.

  “You are, monsieur.”

  “Good. Do not forget it.” He looked down the rutted track as a Fiat with two French security men in it appeared. “And these?”

  “They stay at the next farm.” The old man spat. “Filth.” Tarp touched the woman’s arm. When he took his hand away, she covered the place as if he had burned her. “Get us something to eat,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Bread, eggs. Cheese. Whatever there is. Coffee.”

  “There is no coffee,” she said.

  “Buy some.”

  She stared at him. “Where?”

  The old man stepped between them. “We are not from around here. We were brought in. We are no
t experts on the neighborhood. We are not responsible for buying.”

  “You are now,” Tarp said. “Go buy coffee, sugar, jam. Now. If you do not know where to buy such things within an hour, I will kick your ass from here to the end of that road.”

  The old man tried to look him in the eye but could not, so he turned aside and spat. He had been a big man who had probably used his size to bully people as he now bullied the woman, but now his muscle had all gone slack and his bigness was mere weight. The two security men had gotten out of the Fiat and were watching the scene, enjoying it; the old man glanced at them and muttered, “Filth.”

  Tarp lowered his voice. “You are old,” he said. “It would be unfair of me to hurt you.” He put his mouth very close to the old ear, which was filled with dark hairs. “Do not force me to be unfair. I would feel very bad if I had to do something to you, because I am so much younger and stronger.” He put his left hand on the man’s jaw and turned the head so that their eyes met. “But I am the kind of man who would do it. Eh?”

  The head jerked. Tarp relaxed his hold. “Good. Go buy some food.” He turned toward the two security men, who were smiling cruelly. Tarp walked the few yards to them. There was a puddle in the road and he stepped over it, feeling his shoe sink into the ring of mud on the far side. “We are going to be a family here,” he said. “I hope it will not be unpleasant.”

  “Why should it be unpleasant?” one of them said. He had wide, childlike eyes, plump cheeks, and not much chin. His cheeks were permanently flushed, and, perhaps because he knew he looked so boyish, he wore a huge mustache.

  “So that we understand each other,” Tarp said quietly. “I am in charge here. You are not my jailers.”

  The other man, who was also young but who had a clipped dark beard and looked older, said, “We know our job.”

  “Good. When is the Cuban woman coming?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Good. And Laforet?”

  He shrugged.

  “I need to talk to Laforet. Is there a telephone?”

  “In the village.”

  “But you have communications.”