The Empire of Night: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

by Robert Olen Butler

  “What have we gotten into?” my mother whispered to me.

  16

  For a few moments we just stood like that. Neither Joe Hunter nor I knew what to say to Isabel Cobb.

  She trembled on.

  Finally I whispered, “It’s all just melodrama. You’ve played this a thousand times.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said.

  She was right.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s life. But we’re acting in it. We can do this.”

  She nodded.

  She lifted her face. But not to me.

  I felt a shudder pass through her.

  And her trembling stopped, as if the curtain had just risen and she was on.

  I followed her gaze.

  Stockman was heading this way. He was looking at me as if through rifle sights, me standing with my right shoulder tucked behind her left and my arm enveloping her, pulling her close. I was very lucky that I’d not actually taken her into my arms, even in the chaste way I would have, as any son might have when his mother was suddenly terrified. This tableau was bad enough, as far as Stockman was concerned, as far as his intended woman and this snoopy journalist were concerned.

  Mother knew the look. She broke away from me at once, rushed forward to meet Stockman, whose body paused for her, whose arms opened for her, even as his severe gaze remained on me.

  She threw herself into his arms with a flurry of words.

  “Oh Albert, what’s happened to that poor man? Is he dead? And where did you go? It’s a good thing Mr. Hunter was nearby. He held me up when I was about to faint. I was swooning away.”

  She looked back to me from Stockman’s chest. “I’m sorry to have frightened you like that, Mr. Hunter. Thank you.”

  She was a pro. She was convincing.

  She laid her head on his chest again. “Can you take me away from this now, Albert?”

  His gaze upon me went more or less neutral just before he looked down at Mother. “Of course, my dear.”

  For good measure, she wobbled suddenly at the knees, threatened to slide from his arms.

  Stockman held her closer, held her up. “Be strong,” he said. “My people will take care of this. We can go in now.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Please.” She pulled away from him just enough to put her arm in his and begin to turn him.

  He gave me one more look. Grudging. I’d touched his woman, even if it was innocently. But he seemed ready to overlook this.

  I nodded at him.

  He did not return the nod, but he looked away as if I were not an issue.

  That was good enough.

  The two of them moved off toward the door into the house, Mother clinging to Stockman’s arm, her head against his shoulder.

  A Gray Suit instantly filled the space where they had stood. “Please come with me,” he said to all of us weekend guests. “Stay together and follow me quickly.”

  We complied, and he and another of his cohorts, who met us in the Great Hall, hustled us to the north end of the house and up the stairs, one of them leading us solitary denizens into the bachelor wing and the other taking the couples up to the next floor.

  Our hallway was lit with electric bulbs on sconces. The Gray Suit made sure we all went into our rooms and closed the doors, telling us, as we disappeared, to be sure to turn the lock after us.

  I did.

  I waited in the dark.

  I paced.

  I waited, and then I softly undid the lock and eased the door open.

  I looked out into the still-lit hallway.

  “Please,” a voice said sternly. “We must insist. It’s for your own safety.”

  I withdrew instantly.

  I was stuck.

  But it was just as well. My own instincts needed to be reined in now. I had nothing to do but wait until the morning and hope for a few private moments with my mother. And hope that Jeremy Miller had made good use of Martin’s gray suit and was rushing safely through the woods or along the shore by now.

  I went to my casement window and undid the latch and pushed it open.

  I listened. The action was likely to be on the far side of the house.

  The clatter of feet. The sound of struggle. These things would never carry as far as this room. Not through a window looking north.

  I lay down on the bed.

  One thing would carry, however, and about ten minutes later I thought I heard this thing: the pop of small arms fire. Once, twice. Perhaps a pistol or pistols. The sound was very distant. Perhaps Jeremy Miller had just been shot dead. Or he’d just shot his last pursuer dead. Or everyone had been shooting at shadows. Or perhaps an automobile had simply backfired on the road to Ramsgate.

  But now there was silence.

  And there was nothing to do about it.

  I got up. I took off my coat and my pistol and my shoes. I would make no further concession to my confinement.

  I thought to turn on the light at the writing desk.

  But I did not. The dark was better for now.

  I lay back down.

  Like Jeremy out there in the night, I started running from my pursuers. Thoughts. I was running in my head from thoughts. Small-caliber ones, which were harder to deal with. The big things to worry about, the fundamental things, seemed easier somehow. That was why I figured I was cut out for the work I’d done over the past six years of my life. At first, I’d dodged bullets and watched men die and I wrote about that. Lately, I’d risked myself in ways that made bullets from a bunker seem reassuringly predictable. I’d learned to kill in service for my country. To kill in unpredictable ways. Dealing with that was simple and it was deep. It was merely how this roughneck planet we all lived on was put together, and so the way to cope was already imprinted in our muscles, was coursing in our veins. But this whole thing about my mother and her men, which was whining after me in my head now: that was all just niggles. Of no consequence to me. Long ago I left off needing to give a damn about how she lived her life. Which was the way it should be for any son and mother. You have to leave, and she has to let go.

  So I slept.

  And I woke. I didn’t know how long had passed or what had awakened me.

  I rose and crossed to the window.

  Before me was barely differentiated darkness. The dark of a lawn. The deeper dark of the miniature canyon of the Dumpton gap. The dark of the woods beyond.

  And a sound.

  I closed my eyes and listened.

  This sound may have been what drew me: the distant revving of an engine. I leaned out, looked, tried to catch its direction.

  To the east, toward another darkness, was the fierce bratting of a runabout engine, moving away now, diminishing. Out there, where I knew the Strait of Dover to be, I could see a cluster of lights. A larger vessel upon the water. And someone rushing toward it.

  17

  Shortly after dawn I tried the hallway and it was empty. I went to the steps, descended into the screens passage, and emerged in the Great Hall. It too was empty. From the courtyard I heard a hammer pounding. Nails into wood.

  A Gray Suit, framed in the courtyard doorway, began to turn at my step, and beyond him I caught sight of one of the Blueboys hammering the lid shut on a wooden box about the size of a hotel room writing desk. One more of the same size sat nearby, wrapped at both ends with steel bands. Half a dozen more, the size and shape of steamer trunks, were already done. A little apart were two more of these packing boxes standing upright, each about the size of a three-drawer filing cabinet.

  The Gray Suit was the guy with the boxer’s nose. He eclipsed the courtyard, putting himself square before me and close enough to try to seem intimidating. I wasn’t intimidated, but I was still Joe Hunter the benign guest, so I kept my first impulse to myself.

  “Please, sir,” he said, straining to be polite when to be so wasn’t the sort of order he’d been hired to execute. “Guests are to stop in their rooms or in the dining room until transportation.”

  “
Transportation?”

  This guy was looking at me a little more closely now.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, working even harder at his politeness mandate. “Plans have changed. You’re Mr. Hunter, are you?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “I am to give you this,” he said, and he dipped into his inner coat pocket and withdrew an envelope. He handed it to me. “From Sir Albert,” he said.

  The envelope had my name on it. That is to say, “Joseph Hunter.” But I knew the hand. It was my mother’s.

  “How changed?” I said.

  “Sir?”

  “The plans,” I said.

  “Breakfast is served in the breakfast room. The guests will then depart.”

  “And Madam Cobb? I am in her party.”

  “She has departed with Sir Albert.”

  The boat in the night, I assumed.

  “Departed?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Where to?”

  I’d reached the limit of Boxernose’s authority to speak. “Breakfast is served in the breakfast room,” he said.

  “Thus the name,” I said.

  His brow furrowed.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I turned on my heel and beat it back across the Great Hall and up to my room.

  I sat at the desk with the envelope and I opened it.

  I unfolded a single sheet of writing paper and there was nothing of Sir Albert here, except, of course, the certainty that he had seen, openly or covertly, every word herein. She wrote:

  Dear Mr. Hunter,

  Sir Albert and I are very sorry to leave so abruptly. The accidental death of a member of the house staff has cast a pall over our weekend, and Sir Albert has decided to accompany me to Berlin. We would be happy to see you there if you can arrange passage, perhaps through your newspaper. I am anxious that the work we have done on your story will not be wasted and that my true intentions for being in Germany at this time can be accurately represented in the American press. Please wire your arrangements to me care of the Hotel Adlon.

  Best regards,

  Isabel Cobb

  I folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope and slipped it into my inner coat pocket, doing all this almost fastidiously, aware of the small sounds of it—the creasing of the paper, the ruffle of the mohair. I was gathering myself to think clearly, calmly.

  She was safe. For now, at least. She was not implicated. I was invited. Joe Hunter was still viable. For now. Or if the “for now” was as ominous as it might be, and if she wasn’t, in fact, safe, and if Joe wasn’t either, my actions were clear just the same. I’d go to Berlin.

  18

  The boys in gray made sure we went back to our rooms after breakfast and stayed there. And it wasn’t till very late morning that one of the boys in blue knocked on my room door and invited me downstairs, luggage to follow, for my trip to the train station in Broadstairs. I carried the Gladstone myself. It was comfortably weighty, though its only heavyweight secret was my Luger. I’d kept the Mauser in the small of my back. From this point on, that would be my standard practice.

  The Blue Serge led me past another of his kind who was to bring my suitcase. He led me out of the house by way of the southern door, as I’d come in, and strode ahead of me toward the Silver Ghost, which sat waiting. He opened the tonneau door. I approached and was about to enter when I had the impulse to look back up to the tower where all the action had been the night before.

  The Union Jack was flying.

  But the guy wires were gone.

  I looked just long enough to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, and I turned and entered the tonneau without even glancing at the driver.

  I sat down in the near seat.

  “Your bags will be along presently,” he said.

  The door clicked closed beside me.

  Now I knew what was in at least a couple of those boxes in the courtyard. The whole telegraph setup. The guy wire antennas were gone. The flagpole was no doubt gutted. The wireless itself was carted off somewhere in the night. Along with every other household shred of evidence against Stockman.

  They were taking no chances. Even if they’d caught Jeremy and killed him, the guy’s disappearance could trigger a search of the house. If nothing came of it, they’d set back up again. Buffington had only one shot at digging into the castle of a member of Parliament.

  A short time later my suitcase ended up in the tonneau with me. Nothing and no one else. I seemed to have retained my privileged status even without Isabel Cobb’s presence.

  At the curb before the front doors of the station, the driver hustled out to open my door and then around to pull my suitcase from the other side of the tonneau. I circled behind him and he offered to find me a porter. I thanked him and declined. I made a bit of a show in presenting him with a crown, a very good tip for the service he’d just done.

  He hesitated. Then he took the silver coin.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said.

  “And where’s the Rolls driver from yesterday?” I said, the objective of my silver gambit. “I was expecting to tip him.”

  The driver looked at me a little wide-eyed with uncertainty. He’d been pressed into this job, given the unusual circumstances, and this was way outside of both his job responsibilities and his ad hoc briefing.

  “Martin, I think his name is,” I said.

  “He was the one in the courtyard last night,” he said.

  “Oh no,” I said. “What happened?”

  The driver sniffed heavily and held his breath as if he’d just been shivved.

  He didn’t have the presence of mind simply to walk away. I waited, as if there weren’t the least doubt that he’d give me an answer.

  “He died,” the driver said, still flailing inside.

  Without giving him a chance to draw even one more breath, I said, “Did they catch the bloody bastard who did it?”

  “Not yet,” he said with a ferocity that seemed very personal, that made me wonder what kind of an okay guy our Martin might have been in a bar with his buddies. “But maybe in Ramsgate.”

  “You got him cornered there?” I said.

  “I don’t know, Captain,” the Blue Suit said, as if I were suddenly a copper trying to squeeze him for a confession. “Thank you for the crown,” he said, and he turned and moved off.

  Too bad. He probably didn’t know much more anyway. But I was left with nothing to allay my fear that Jeremy Miller was dead as a result of protecting me and my phony identity.

  It wasn’t until well past midday that I reached my room at the Tavistock Hotel. The train ride back through the same Kentish countryside my mother and I had traversed twenty-four hours earlier had filled me, of course, with an even more pressing fear. For her. Miller, indeed, hadn’t been protecting my role in this present drama so much as he had hers. I was simply carrying a spear for the leading lady. And she’d been abruptly whisked away by her Othello.

  So my bags were unopened on the floor of my room and my hat was still on my head and I was sitting at the desk where I’d been creating Joe Hunter for weeks and I was waiting as the telephone operator connected me to the American embassy.

  After I was finally rung through to some inner embassy sanctum, a man said, “Sorry, Mr. Trask isn’t here at present.”

  I left a message for him to contact me as soon as possible.

  He hadn’t expected me till tomorrow, of course. I went from stuck in a room at the Stockman House to stuck in a room at the Tavistock Hotel.

  The only thing that made the next few hours bearable was to lay a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray next to my Portable Number 3 and to turn back into Christopher Cobb and write the lead paragraphs of a king-beat news story about a German spy in the midst of the British Parliament.

  I restricted myself to the first three pages, the number I felt confident I could burn in the metal wastebasket without burning the hotel down as well. So those three pages were created slowly, each sentence being refined
and rehearsed aloud before entering the Corona and emerging from its platen and then being honed to an Alexander Popeian extreme beneath my Conklin Crescent-Filler.

  At last I received a call from the embassy and an appointment on the Waterloo Bridge, and I lit my front-page story with the butt of the last cigarette in my pack and hoped I’d have a shot at it for real someday.

  19

  I stood in the dead center of Waterloo Bridge and leaned on the stone balustrade as the western sky stopped bleeding and started bruising and the lights came on along the Victoria Embankment. Trask suddenly appeared at my side.

  “Cigar?” he said, lifting a very good one before me.

  “Sure,” I said, and we each lit up a ninepence Vuelta Abajo and blew the smoke over the river, which was running about four storeys below us, black from coal tar and Thames mud and the onflow of night.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you a chunk of my steak from Simpson’s,” he said.

  “This’ll do,” I said, taking a second draw. This was some fine stogie, with a heavy body and a taste of plantain and palm, of leather and earth, but with all that gone up together in flames so that you somehow knew all those tastes were there but they made a single new thing.

  “I ate dinner tonight with your old friend Metcalf,” he said.

  I’d had quite a feed with my old friend Metcalf, my embassy contact who sent me off to Istanbul back in May. He took me to Escoffier’s eatery at the Carlton Hotel. “Did you understand everything he told you about the food?” I asked.

  “I don’t care to know that much about a cut of beef,” he said.

  I didn’t tell Trask I listened to every word.

  Instead, we shared a nod and we each looked at the end of our cigar at the same moment. Somehow I’d always known to do this, having learned to smoke a cigar like an actor, from actors, but I never knew why it seemed so natural, even necessary. Maybe it was just to punctuate a conversation, which is certainly what it did for Trask and me, at that moment.

  “You’re back early,” he said. Though this was a declaration, he clearly was asking for the story.