The Bells of Hell

Home > Other > The Bells of Hell > Page 1
The Bells of Hell Page 1

by Michael Kurland




  Contents

  Cover

  A selection of titles by Michael Kurland

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Declaration as to Content, Style, and Population

  A selection of titles by Michael Kurland

  The Professor Moriarty series

  THE INFERNAL DEVICE

  DEATH BY GASLIGHT

  THE GREAT GAME

  THE EMPRESS OF INDIA

  WHO THINKS EVIL

  The Lord Darcy series

  TEN LITTLE WIZARDS

  A STUDY IN SORCERY

  The Alexander Brass series

  TOO SOON DEAD

  THE GIRLS IN THE HIGH-HEELED SHOES

  A Welker and Saboy thriller

  THE BELLS OF HELL *

  * available from Severn House

  THE BELLS OF HELL

  Michael Kurland

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Michael Kurland.

  The right of Michael Kurland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8969-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-641-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0340-3 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  This book is dedicated to lost friends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Laura Bellizzi, Angela Beske, Nicholas Blake, Lawrence Block, Kimberley Cameron, Alan Freberg, Thomas Loock, Richard Lupoff, David Vartanoff, and especially Linda Robertson for their assistance in pulling this thing together.

  Among the writers whose works have helped me recapture this period are Frederick Lewis Allen, John Roy Carlson, Winston Churchill, Father Charles Coughlin, Basil H. Liddell Hart, Adolf Hitler, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Arthur Train, as well as magazines and newspapers of the era.

  From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there’s nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.

  – Hilaire Belloc

  War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared. It can engulf states and peoples remote from the original scene of hostilities. We are determined to keep out of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement. We are adopting such measures as will minimize our risk of involvement, but we cannot have complete protection in a world of disorder in which confidence and security have broken down.

  – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 5 October 1937, Chicago

  Pacifism is cowardice. Only war brings to the highest tension the energies of man and imprints the sign of nobility on those who have the virtue to confront it.

  – Benito Mussolini, 1932

  Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.

  – Adolf Hitler

  The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling

  For you but not for me:

  For me the angels sing-a-ling-a-ling,

  They’ve got the goods for me.

  Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?

  Oh! Grave, thy victory?

  The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling

  For you but not for me.

  – British airman’s song dating from WWI

  ONE

  Tuesday, March 1, 1938

  Faust: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

  Meph: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it …

  – Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

  On the thirty-fourth minute of the seventh hour of his last day on earth, Johann August Steuber stood up in his tiny cabin on C deck of the SS Osthafen, braced himself by the door against any last-minute whimsical dips or jounces of the ship, and quickly and methodically went through the pockets of his brown tweed suit and the compartments in his leather briefcase to make sure that he was taking everything that should be taken and carrying nothing that should not be carried. His Reisepass in the name of Herr Otto Lehman, 22b Hauptbahnstrasse, Nürnberg: Ja. His papers identifying Herr Lehman as an exporter of German mechanical toys: Ja. His guidebook to New York City with the rice-paper list of contacts pasted behind the picture of the Statue of Liberty: Ja. His letter of introduction to Frau Bittleman, the landlady of the boarding house on 92nd Street in Manhattan who was hopefully expecting him: Ja.

  He located some bits and scraps of detritus: an overlooked theater-ticket stub tucked in a jacket pocket, a Berlin U-Bahn 2. Klasse ticket crunched into a small ball in the inner pocket of his vest, and, Gott behüte!, a short note from his butcher beginning Lieber Herr Steuber in a small outer flap of his briefcase. He put the room’s metal ashtray on the washstand, dropped the material in, and set it afire with a paper match from a packet from the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. After a second’s thought he added the matchbook to the blaze. When had Otto Lehman been in Berlin?
Small details prevented large problems. He spent a long moment in contemplation of a half-empty pack of Juno Cigarettes he pulled from the jacket’s outer pocket. He had bought them at the Adlon just before he left. But, he decided, a pack of cigarettes is a pack of cigarettes. The government tax stamp on the bottom with its little red swastika held no indication of where in the Third Reich the pack had been purchased. He shoved the pack back into his pocket.

  Three hours earlier, at 4:30 in the morning, the Osthafen had docked at Pier 5 at the foot of Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York City, the United States of America, its sixteen-day crossing remarkable only in that the ship’s ventilation system had only broken down once, and the engines not at all. Most of the passengers who had stayed awake to see the aging liner sidle past the Statue of Liberty shortly before midnight slept through the humming and throbbing, as two tugs pushed the Osthafen into the slip with a minimum of noise and thrashing about.

  Disembarking began shortly after eight a.m., the customs officials taking their positions in the forward lounge and commencing their rummaging about in the passengers’ luggage, asking searching questions, and examining passports. It was ten thirty by the time Steuber, his Otto Lehman passport stamped, stepped onto the gangway and headed toward dry land.

  His two steamer trunks awaited him, intermingled with the others on the oversized luggage wagon; a porter awaited him with a hand cart to take him and his luggage through to the cab stand; and two large men in brown double-breasted suits, brown fedoras, and well-polished brown shoes awaited him by the exit doors.

  One of the men stepped forward, blocking Steuber. ‘Otto Lehman?’

  ‘Yes?’ Steuber took a step back. ‘I am Otto Lehman. Who are you and what do you want?’ He told himself there was no reason for alarm, but he could feel the muscles of the back of his neck tighten.

  The man pulled a leather card case from his pocket and flipped it open. It held a gold badge pinned to the top and a government identity card underneath. He held it up about four inches from Steuber’s nose. ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation,’ he said. ‘I am Agent Parker and this is Agent Swallow. You are the man calling himself Otto Lehman?’

  ‘Calling himself? What do you mean?’ Steuber attempted to look indignant. ‘I am Otto Lehman. Here—’ He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a bundle of papers. ‘My passport, my identity card, a letter of introduction to our New York office – I export toys, the finest German mechanical toys. I am here to demonstrate our new product line.’

  He knew he was beginning to babble but he couldn’t help himself. He had taken no more than ten steps off the ship and here, badge to nose, was the verdammte FBI. They were not supposed to be so good, so efficient, so all-knowing, this joke of a J. Edgar Hoover and his ‘G-Men’. He closed his eyes and gathered himself and then opened them and smiled. Perhaps it was nothing, but if he didn’t act normal it would certainly become something. In his homeland the Gestapo would already be frog-marching him down the street merely because he blinked twice.

  Agent Parker took the papers from Steuber’s unsteady fingers and pushed them down into his jacket pocket. ‘We will give these our complete attention,’ he said. ‘You will come with us.’

  ‘What? Why?’ Steuber briefly contemplated running blindly off in some random direction, but caught himself in time.

  ‘There is some question about your identity,’ Parker said. ‘It could be, could it not, that you are in actuality one Johann August Steuber, a member of the German Communist Party and an agent of the Comintern?’

  ‘What?’ Steuber managed to look horrified. He was, as it happened, horrified. ‘How could anyone think that? Where did you hear this? How …’

  ‘Come along, bitte, Herr Steuber,’ Agent Swallow said, taking him by the arm, ‘our car is over here.’ He waved at the porter with the trunks to follow them, and they went.

  Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds later a gray Chevrolet coupe pulled into an OFFICIAL PARKING ONLY space on the pier and two men in brown double-breasted suits, brown fedoras, and well-polished brown shoes emerged from the car. They walked rapidly past the thin stream of passengers still emerging from the ship or dawdling about their luggage and went up to the steward at the bottom of the gangplank. One of them pulled out a card case and flipped it open in front of the steward’s nose. ‘Special Agent Trower, FBI,’ he said. ‘Has a passenger calling himself Otto Lehman disembarked yet?’

  ‘Lehman … Lehman …’ The steward flipped through his check-off list. ‘Ja. Herr Lehman has departed the ship. He had with him two steamer trunks.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.’

  ‘Did you see where he went?’ the special agent asked.

  ‘Nein. I do not myself even know which one he is.’

  One of the porters, a thin, scrawny man with a nose that preceded his face by several moments, paused. ‘Lehman? With the two trunks. Sure. Two guys picked him up. I had to put one of his trunks in the back seat with him and it was a tight fit, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘What two guys?’ Special Agent Trower asked.

  ‘I dunno, just two guys. They was dressed a lot like you, come to think of it.’

  TWO

  Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend

  The brightest heaven of invention!

  – William Shakespeare, Henry V

  Lord Geoffrey Saboy, Cultural Attaché to the British Embassy in Washington DC, strode into the parlor of his Georgetown residence and struck what he fondly believed was a dramatic pose, with one foot on the seat of an upholstered chair he particularly disliked. But the house had come furnished, and there it was. ‘“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done,”’ he announced. ‘“It is a far, far better place that I go to than I have ever known.” So have cook hold up dinner for me, I’ll probably be a bit late.’

  Lady Patricia stretched panther-like on the red chaise longue and smiled up at her husband. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘And where have you been?’

  ‘Out and about,’ Geoffrey told her.

  ‘And, no doubt, doing this and that?’

  ‘Exactly!’ He blew a kiss in her direction. ‘How clever you are!’

  ‘And now you’re going out again?’

  ‘In a few minutes. Sir Ronald calleth. And when the ambassador calleth, I goeth.’

  ‘What is it this time?’

  Geoffrey shrugged. ‘He consults me on things about which I have scant knowledge, and I assure him that I will get up to speed – he is fond of the phrase “up to speed” – on said topic. And then quite usually he never asks me about them again.’ He removed his foot from the chair and patted the cushion back into shape. ‘Yesterday it was Spain.’

  ‘Ahh?’

  ‘Yes. Sir Ronald wants to know everything there is to know about Generalissimo Francisco Franco. His Majesty’s government have, in their infinite wisdom, seen fit to recognize the Franco government although the war in Spain is still going on and the matter is far from settled.’

  Patricia swiveled her body around, planted her feet on the floor, and sat up. ‘I don’t like Franco,’ she said. ‘He shoots people.’

  ‘It seems to be a Fascist habit,’ Geoffrey told her.

  ‘Why on earth would our government do that?’ she asked. ‘Recognize Franco, I mean.’

  Geoffrey came over and sat next to her. ‘Because, O fairest of the fair, the PM is set on keeping the peace with Italy and Germany, and Franco is their man. Which is why Mr Eden, who doesn’t trust the Nazis, just resigned as Foreign Minister and Lord Halifax has been called in to replace him. Halifax positively swoons into his porridge when he thinks on how delightful Hitler and Göring are. Or so I’ve been told.’

  ‘What does Winston say?’

  ‘Your friend Mr Churchill says preparing for war would give us the best chance of keeping the peace. As he has been saying for the past three years.’

  ‘They should listen to him,’ she sa
id.

  ‘Curious,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It just occurred to me. Franco likes to call himself “El Caudillo”, which translates to “the leader”.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mussolini likes to be called “Il Duce” – the leader. Herr Hitler goes for “Der Führer”. Do we see a pattern?’

  ‘It must be their innate shyness.’

  ‘Yes – that must be it.’

  Patricia stood and adjusted the neckline of her lacy cream-colored peignoir. ‘I also must prepare for the outer world,’ she said. ‘I have an assignation.’

  ‘Surely not in the middle of the afternoon?’

  She laughed. ‘Not that sort – at least I don’t think so. I have met this charming Italian Embassy person, and I have decided to cultivate him.’

  ‘Ah!’ Geoffrey said. ‘Is that what they’re calling it now?’

  ‘Shame on you,’ she told him. ‘I don’t make jocular remarks about your, ah, extramarital activities, now do I?’

  ‘Perhaps because I don’t parade them up and down in front of you and discuss their good and bad qualities.’

  ‘I never!’ she protested.

  ‘You often,’ he told her. ‘But that’s all right. I am here to take care of you at such times as you need taken care of,’ he added, looking down musingly at the woman he had married. ‘And you perform the same service for me. And, what is beyond all understanding, we are actually fond of each other.’

  ‘There is to be a do at the Italian Embassy in a few weeks,’ she told him. ‘We should attend.’

  ‘If it’s to be a dinner party we should certainly go,’ he agreed. ‘Best food on Embassy Row. Is it to be a dinner party?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Well, in any case it will give us a chance to snub the German Ambassador. Herr Dieckhoff needs a good snubbing.’

  ‘We certainly seem to be fulfilling that ancient Chinese curse,’ Patricia commented.

  ‘How’s that?’

 

‹ Prev