by Winona Kent
“A tunnel,” Anthony said, at length.
“That’s what we thought, as well. It’s a bit difficult to make any sort of distinction, but look at the wall behind his head. The picture’s taken at a slight angle. You can see the curve of the segments, and the bolts holding them together. Ian thinks it might be the Underground.”
Anthony propped the photograph up against the umbrella pole, and studied it, intently. “No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because that style—those bolted cast iron rings with the deep flanges—hasn’t been used on the Underground in decades. They tested experimental concrete and a more flexible type of unbolted cast iron when they built the Victoria Line, and the new sections of the Jubilee are all done in concrete.”
“What makes you think this can’t be an older Underground tunnel?”
“The wall isn’t dirty enough. The tube’s absolutely filthy. Even if it was an abandoned running tunnel, it would be black. Totally black. That wall’s not only practically spotless—it’s been painted white. Most unusual.”
“An abandoned station tunnel,” his father prodded.
Anthony shook his head. “The original station tunnels were all decorated—plastered over and painted or lined with glazed brick. Unless someone’s been doing some recent renovations.”
“That’s not such a far-fetched supposition,” Evan said, resting his arms on the white plastic table, and adopting the same low-level scrutiny of the photograph as his son. “Take your time.”
Anthony fixed his attention on his younger brother. “Unless…”
Evan raised an eyebrow.
“Come with me.”
He led his father out of the gallery and past the ragamuffin stalls of the Jubilee Market, to the Transport Museum.
“In here.”
He found the book on one of the shelves in the museum’s shop, last copy: London Transport at War. Anthony seized it and paged through it, stopping midway through.
“What do you think?”
He held the open book up, so that his father could see the series of five black and white photographs, two of them detailing views of a round, ribbed, concrete and iron tunnel lined with rows of bunk beds…a third providing a perspective of a smaller, empty passageway…and the fourth showing women at work in an adjacent canteen, also in tunnel. The fifth picture was of the oddly-shaped surface structure, the pillbox beneath which the tunnels had been constructed.
“The Government Deep Level Shelters,” Anthony said, with some satisfaction.
Evan looked closely at the photographs. The round surface building, with its flat roof and brick entranceway, seemed peculiarly familiar to him.
“How far down did these shelters go?”
“Seventy-five to 100 feet. The average was about 80. They were built right underneath their nearest tube station. And they were huge—two tunnels, 1400 feet long, 16 feet wide, divided into top and bottom decks by a concrete slab running down the middle. They could sleep eight or nine thousand at a single go.”
“I’ve seen that before somewhere,” Evan said, staring at the picture of the round pillbox.
“Goodge Street.”
Evan glanced up at his son.
“Goodge Street tube station. The Eisenhower Centre. You know—the archives firm.”
“Yes!” Evan exclaimed.
“I think the rest are all still standing. The archives people lease a number of them—Stockwell and Goodge Street for certain…I’m not sure about the others. I know the one at Camden Town was used as a set for Doctor Who…”
“Someone at London Transport would be able to tell me, I’m sure.”
Anthony gave the picture back to his father.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I know who and what to ask for.”
Nora was, by her own calculations, exactly on time for her meeting with Herr Lügner. She parked her car in a small gravelled lot beside a nearby public house—the only one in the Quidhampton area, it appeared—and walked back to investigate the cottage that had been marked with the large red X on the German’s map. The paved driveway beside the little house was empty, the windows dark. Curiously, Nora peered inside, able just to make out the downstairs living arrangements. There were two rooms and a kitchen—the kitchen an obvious afterthought tacked onto the back, quite modern, from what she could see, well-equipped, out of character with the rest of the cottage, which was decidedly ancient.
Well-preserved, though, Nora thought, scrutinizing the dining room and, through a second window, the sitting room. Careful restoration throughout. A sensitivity to historical detail. Quite a lot of expensive antique furniture.
Nora looked at her watch again, and was momentarily seized with a fleeting panic: what if he didn’t come? What if he’d changed his mind?
Or Harris had got to him first—double-crossed her…
The very idea infuriated her. It infuriated her to the extent that she marched back to her car, and paced around it, and then sat in it again, venting her anger as she searched through her handbag for her cigarettes.
She would give Lügner until half past four—and then…
She glared at the darkened, empty cottage.
She would make Harris pay for this.
It was just five o’clock, and the offices skirting St. James’s Park were beginning to disgorge their populations of secretaries, clerks, executives and assistants. Evan and Ian both stood up as they spotted Anthony, with an armful of papers.
“There were ten shelters,” Evan’s middle son confirmed, sitting down on the bench, passing his father the notes he’d made during his lengthy conversation with the woman from London Regional Transport. “Five north of the river and five south. The sites were picked so they could be made into an express underground railway after the war. Two of the shelters were on the Central Line and the other eight were on the Northern. Only eight were built—the one at St. Paul’s was too close to the foundations of the cathedral, and the one at Oval had to be abandoned because of problems with groundwater.”
Ian already had his A to Z out and was marking off all of the sites with a blue felt pen.
“The archives firm’s leasing four of the shelters—Belsize Park, Camden Town, Goodge Street and Stockwell. Chancery Lane was turned over to British Telecom.”
“For their Holborn exchange, yes, we know all about that. What about these ones?” Ian indicated the string of three shelters on the stretch of track between Stockwell and Balham.
“They’re empty,” Anthony said.
“You’re quite sure about that?”
“Positive. Clapham South was once used as a youth hostel during the Festival of Britain, but all three have stood abandoned for years.”
“Good work, old son,” Evan said, briefly. “And what’s this?” He slipped the elastic band off a rolled-up sheet of paper.
“Plans for the layout of the shelters—they all followed more or less the same general construction principles. I thought you might find them helpful.”
“Extraordinarily helpful, Anthony,” his father said, impressed. “You’ve done an excellent job. Thank you.”
He collected his notes, and stood up.
Anthony looked at him.
“Be careful, all right?”
“Goes without saying, old son.”
“You’re my bodyguard now, are you?” Sara said, irritably. She tramped through the pigeons and the tourists of Trafalgar Square, shouldering her bag—her new bag, the one she’d had to buy to replace the one containing all of her credit cards, her money, her identity.
“I’m not,” Anthony countered. He trailed her across the square, to the northeast corner fountain.
“Well,” Sara said, “I am surprised. Isn’t anybody going to follow me about, making sure I do my job properly?”
“I don’t think so, Sara.”
“Why else would they have me sign The Act, then? ‘Awfully sorry, Sara, old girl, but we’ve recruited you to help us with our little missi
on—you’re in the thick of it now—oh! Didn’t Robin tell you? Well, he must have forgotten—still—it doesn’t matter now, does it, we’re all on the same side, after all.’”
Anthony was momentarily taken aback. “They didn’t say that to you. I was there.”
Sara glared at him.
“They had me sign it years ago,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the fountain.
“And you’re a spy as well, I suppose.”
“No.”
He tore off a piece of his still-warm buttered croissant and shredded it, and tossed the bits to the caucus of pigeons that had assembled at his feet: assorted beggars, purple-plumed, grey, brown, with luminescent green collars—all extremely well-fed and in very little danger of starving.
“It was necessary for me to sign the document, that’s all. Here.”
He offered the rest of the croissant to Sara.
She sat with it in her hand, staring vacantly at the greedy riot, and at a small Asian boy intent on catching the slowest of the bobbing scavengers.
“He used me,” she said. “They used me. They only needed me so they could go on a fishing expedition into the agency. Keeping an eye on Harry. They deliberately made our computers go down so that Ian could come in and pretend to be a repairman, when all he was doing was putting a camera and a microphone into Harry’s computer.”
“They use everybody. Robin, you. Me. It’s what they do.”
“At least you have a choice in the matter,” Sara said, bitterly. “You can always say no, can’t you? Not Muggins here. They must have seen me coming a mile away.”
Anthony passed her his carton of milk, and she drank it, angrily, through the straw.
“It’s true,” he said, “that they wanted to make contact with someone at Young and Dailey. And they had two options: you or Maureen. I don’t think they totally trust Maureen.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know—perhaps she’s just the wrong kind of person for their purposes. Perhaps they wanted somebody who was…more intelligent.”
“More gullible, you mean. Not a lot of choice left, was there, as there is only me.”
“Sara,” Anthony said, “please believe me. I know the way this business works. Your name jogged Ian’s memory. He remembered you from the summer you spent with your aunt and uncle in Vancouver. He mentioned you to my father, and they saw a prime opportunity and rang Robin up and basically commanded him to appear before them in London—no explanation, nothing. He came, no questions asked. He was told what was required of him over lunch at his hotel. And he absolutely leaped at the chance to see you again. Truly. Honestly.”
Sara finished the milk and got up to throw the empty carton into a litter basket. Anthony trailed after her again, scattering the pigeons.
“Why couldn’t he have just told me the truth?”
“Perhaps he couldn’t. Not yet.”
“Oh yes, sworn to secrecy, national security above all else, and to hell if anybody’s feelings happen to get in the way.”
“He would have, Sara. Eventually.”
“When? On his way to the airport? ‘Nice seeing you again, kid—oh, by the way, you’ve been an invaluable asset for the cause of international espionage—stay in touch, won’t you? See you in another ten years’ time, if you’re lucky.’”
Anthony looked at her, and then at the sky, and then at some scaffolding-encased monstrosity that was undergoing a cosmetic transformation in the shadow of Canada House.
“Well to hell with all four of you, that’s all I can say. Find somebody else to do your dirty work. I’m not interested. And don’t think I’m worried about what’s happened to Robin, because I’m not. I don’t care about him at all.”
“Sara—”
“I don’t care. Can’t you understand?”
She stormed away from him, refusing to look back.
Robin studied the lock. He could reach it from his side of the grillwork, manipulating it with his fingers. Standard, heavy-duty padlock, standard, heavy-duty chain.
He limped back to his improvised bed of sacks on the floor. Clever gadgetry was the stock-in-trade of the Hollywood spies—technotricks disguised as watches, exploding cigarettes. Even if he had come equipped with a lock pick—which he hadn’t—he wasn’t altogether certain he had the talent—or dexterity—to be able to use it.
He eased himself down, and sat with his back to the wall, his arms wrapped around his middle. He didn’t, for a second, believe that woman. Of course he’d heard of Nora Darrow—but he wasn’t about to let her know that. He’d had the benefit of a two hour briefing over lunch in the company of his father. Nora Darrow was a woman who’d harboured absolutely no qualms about doing away with her husband in order to save herself—just as she wasn’t very likely to go beating her conscience over his fate, once she’d got what she wanted from Evan.
He shut his eyes, and listened to the thundering of another train as it pounded down the tracks on its way to God only knew where.
Sorry about the short notice, Robin, but we needed someone we could trust implicitly.
Blood often runs thicker than the Queen’s Printer’s ink.
He remembered a detailed conversation he’d once had with his oldest brother about the curriculum at Spy High. They covered situations like this. Close combat; the theory of international relations; techniques of successful report writing; the possibility of capture.
Ian could kill a man with a toothbrush.
He could write up a pretty graphic account of it, too.
Ian would undoubtedly advise against an escape attempt.
It’s a last resort only, Robin. You have to use your good judgement. If there’s a chance you’re going to be let go, there’s no point doing anything silly. The beatings hurt like hell, but eventually they stop. You have to make yourself useful. You have to keep being needed by them. If you make a run for it and they catch you…You have to weigh up the odds and ask yourself: is it worth the risk?
Robin leaned his head back against the wall.
He had once before run afoul of the driftnet cast by his father’s clandestine fishing expeditions. He was much younger then, with far fewer experiences to guide his decisions. He was nineteen, and terrified.
He’d tried to run, but they’d tracked him down in the rain and the mud and he’d received for his troubles the lacerating edge of a leather belt across his back.
That had been a very long time ago.
He had a stock answer for the questions that invariably arose about the scars, a believable lie that generally put an end to the inquiry.
He’d been caught off-guard with Sara; he’d forgotten the marks were there. And when he’d summoned the story, Old Faithful, the lie had suddenly failed him, and he’d answered her instead with silence.
The timing was rotten. He hadn’t received permission to tell her the truth. The entire truth, everything.
He supposed now that she did know everything, or as much as his father and Ian were willing to part with, anyway, and not jeopardize their plans.
He supposed she’d be angry.
Robin opened his eyes again. There were voices on the stairs. And despite what he thought Ian’s advice would be—and he respected his oldest brother’s judgement implicitly in this particular matter—there was absolutely no way he was going to sit back and wait for Nora to do to him what she’d done to her lately beloved husband, Simon.
“No word of a lie,” Kevin’s boots clattered in the darkness. “Number 23 and Number 24 Leinster Gardens. Nothing but facades—a bloody come-on. A blank wall with windows and doors stuck on it to make certain people happy.”
From the far end of his tunnel, Robin listened. Two of them this time—Sid Vicious and his cohort, The Suit.
“What for?” Tommy asked. They’d reached the bottom of the stairs.
“What for? It’s from the great age of steam, that’s what for. When the first Underground was all steam engines, and they needed somewhere to blow it a
ll off. So when they was digging the track under Bayswater, they left a hole, and some posh twat over the road complained about it, so they put up a wall, and then another posh twat said it didn’t do justice to the neighbourhood, so they put up windows and doors and made it look like a pair of houses.”
“Bloody stupid, if you ask me,” Tommy remarked.
“Nah, it’s bloody clever, that is. My old man told me about it when I was a kid. Took me round to see it, special, one Sunday.”
They stopped at the mesh gate.
“What’s the matter with him, then?”
“Dunno,” Tommy said, curiously.
Sid Vicious had his key out. Robin waited, his body limp on the sacks, while the lock was sprung, the mesh door swung open. Ian had taught him much more than mere theory.
“Anyway, it only makes our job easier, him out like that. No struggle, see.”
The toe of a boot explored Robin’s chin.
“I reckon he’s already dead.”
The Suit bent over to see for himself. “He doesn’t look at all well, though, does he? What d’you reckon? Food poisoning?”
“Ruptured spleen, more like,” Sid Vicious answered, with a crude laugh. He gave Robin a boot in the ribs, to drive home his point, and there was an audible response from the sacks. “Told you.”
“What d’you reckon, then? Wait for your mum?”
“Yeah, she’s buggered off to Stonehenge or something. Promised she wouldn’t be long. Have a ciggie.” He turned to Robin, and shouted down at him, as if he was deaf. “Got a few moments to kill yet, Christopher Robin. Don’t wander off nowheres, will you?”
They turned their backs, and began to hunt for cigarette packages and matches.
It was an astoundingly simple matter to take the first of them down—one arm locked around The Suit’s carotids, a thrust between the legs and a sharp kick backwards to hook him below the knee and send him sprawling to the hard concrete floor.
Sid Vicious was surprised in mid-match-strike. Taken off-guard, he recovered his wits quickly, and launched himself onto Robin’s back. Robin retaliated by hurling him to the ground, head over heels, and dispatching him with a swift kick to the side of the neck.