by James R Benn
“You shot at his car?” Philby said, more shocked at that than double-crossing murderers.
“One tire, that’s all.”
“Imagination and initiative,” Philby said. “We could use you over at MI6. Perhaps an American with the Special Operations Executive would stir things up a bit.”
“You run the SOE?” I asked, wondering what their meeting here was all about.
“Part of it, you might say. Never mind about that, Boyle, just idle conjecture. Probably best for you if you leave now,” Philby said, blowing a stream of smoke as he spoke.
“Why?”
“Because I need to talk to these gentlemen about the Germans. Our actual enemies, you may recall. And I need to convince your Mr. Brown, as you know him, not to have you walk in front of a truck tonight. Best be careful, Boyle. Things are not always as they seem.”
“As the head of Section Five well knows,” said Brown, leaning back in his chair, his eyes on Cosgrove, daring him to speak. “Right, Charles?”
“Sometimes, they are worse than they seem,” Cosgrove said, bringing his gaze up from the carpet. “Worse than one can imagine.”
I left. I walked down the staircase, wondering what other strange conversations were taking place in the rooms I passed by, what death sentences were being handed out, what rationalizations were being made, and what burdens had suddenly become too much to bear. Outside, a fog had descended, the sky a solid, low gray, with swirls of yellowish brown hanging like a filthy veil from the barely visible rooftops. I crossed Piccadilly with care, the heavy traffic moving slowly but steadily, headlamps on, casting their gloomy, lost light into the fog. A real accident would be likely enough, never mind a surreptitious push into a crowded street. Had Sheila known she was being hunted, or had she still trusted her paymaster? Did she know her assailant, perhaps relaxing as he put his arm protectively around her waist as they waited at the side of the road? One good push, low in the back, is all it would take. If anyone saw it, he’d be gone in seconds, a nondescript man in a plain coat, a hat pulled down low over his face, making his way through the gathering crowd. Our “actual enemies” is what Philby had called the Germans, but at times I had to wonder. Even the worst of them wore a uniform that told you who they were.
Then I remembered. The Scotland Yard tail. I looked around for the sedan and the two fedoras, but in the narrow street, choked with fog, all I could see was the next lamppost. The gabfest with Cosgrove and his pals and this pea-souper had disoriented me. But the fog hadn’t helped the guys following me either, since they were nowhere in sight. Maybe they’d decided it wasn’t worth it and given up. Or maybe they were on foot, invisible a few yards behind me.
I turned a corner, hoping it was Albemarle Street, since that route would take me into Berkeley Square. I stopped and leaned against the brickwork, listening for signs of anyone following. A truck rumbled by slowly, the driver sounding his horn to warn those lost in the fog. Footsteps sounded, the slap slap of leather soles running on pavement echoing off the buildings. A woman carrying a shopping bag walked by me, visible only for a second before disappearing into the mist. A sharp, short whistle sounded, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. I started walking toward the square, the cold and damp seeping into my bones as the sounds of running feet seemed to surround me. I heard them behind me, fading away in the opposite direction. Ahead of me, they drew nearer and slowed to a steady pace and stopped, as I tried to make out the vague outline of a figure in the fog. I stopped, and so did all the other sounds. I hoped I was only feeling jumpy, but I had the feeling there were more than two Scotland Yard plainclothesmen out there. I stepped into a doorway, trying to melt into the fog and vanish.
I heard the throaty grumble of a motorcycle as it downshifted and came my way. The fog had kept most traffic off the roads, and the sound took on the sinister quality of a hunter seeking prey. The footsteps started up again, drawing closer from both directions. The same woman with the shopping bag walked by, this time halting and giving out the same sharp whistle that I’d heard before. She was definitely not wearing a fedora. Two men came up to me, one from each side. Stanley and Clive, Topper’s henchmen.
“Boss wants a chat,” Clive said. “Come on.”
“I’m busy,” I said, trying to make out if there were others hiding in the gloom.
“That’s nice. Now hand over your pistol to Stanley and follow me. We’re close to the Green Park Tube, we’ll take that. Better underground than feeling our way through this mush.”
“OK,” I said, not seeing an alternative. I handed my piece over and asked Stanley how he was doing.
“Can’t complain,” he said. Since I’d just given him a weapon, I refrained from pointing out how I’d been right to slam his face when we’d first met, after he’d been so nasty to me. I’d told him then that if I hadn’t, he’d have just kept being rotten. Now here he was, with me outnumbered and defenseless, and he was nice as pie. It felt good to be right about that, since I’d been so wrong about everything else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They’d been on me since I’d left the hotel that morning, Clive explained as we rode the Tube in the direction of Shoreditch.
“You didn’t give us much of a chance, with that big bloke driving you around, stopping at Scotland Yard, then dropping in on MI5. A high-visibility mark, you are,” he said as the train rolled out of the station.
“What about the two detectives who followed me?”
“Not much trouble at all, especially with this fog. Seems like both their rear tires went flat while they had their eyes glued on that door at St. James’s Street. Lucky for us you left on foot. All we had to do was not lose you in this blasted fog. Not good for the lungs, you know, to be out running about in it.”
“Who’s the boss you mentioned? Topper or Archie?”
“There’s only one boss, and best to keep your mouth shut about it for now. It’s just a chat he wants, and no reason for trouble if you follow along like you’re told. Got it?”
One goon had preceded Stanley and Clive as we boarded the train, and another followed us, making sure we had privacy at one end of the car. The odds were against me, and in an enclosed space to boot. It made me very agreeable. “Got it.”
We rode in silence and took the escalator to the surface when we reached Liverpool Street, which meant that it was too early for Archie to have taken up residence underground. They led me through a twisting maze of streets, past dingy, low buildings that looked only marginally better off than the bombed-out ruins facing them. The thick, gray fog reeked of coal smoke from the chimneys on every building. They spewed gritty ash from low-grade, cheap coal. The gutters ran with stinking, greasy water, the runoff of cesspools and burned-out homes. A foghorn sounded from a freighter on the river, only a few blocks away, a low, mournful drone that seemed to come from the wounded city itself.
“Here,” Clive said as he knocked on a door painted a bright red, the thick varnish shiny and garish in this neighborhood of boarded-up windows and ruin. He gave two short raps, waited a beat, then one final thump. The door opened, and a guy whose nose had been broken a few times but who wore a tuxedo well greeted us with a nod. Piano music tinkled idly from a room down the hall, as if a bored but accomplished musician was at the keys. Off the hall, in a sitting room, a fireplace glowed with coals, the warmth as welcome inside as the smoke was noxious in the street. Lush burgundy carpeting graced the hallway, and all the walls were painted a creamy white. It was a welcome contrast to the world outside, tucked away on a small side street in a seldom-traveled part of town. The perfect location for a whorehouse.
The muscle escort peeled off as Stanley and Clive led me down the hall, toward the music. The room was flanked at one end by a grand piano and at the other by a well-stocked bar. Between them sat Archie Chapman, looking comfortable in a leather armchair, as coffee was poured into his china cup by a stunningly beautiful woman in a black negligee. At the piano, a dark-haired woman in a red evening
gown played with the keys while she smoked a cigarette in a long holder. Topper sat at the bar, and raised a glass in greeting.
“Peaches, my boy,” Archie shouted. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, and his skin glowed as if he’d just stepped from a bath. It was a different look than his subterranean guise. “Good of you to come. Grand to see you again.”
“Archie, the last time we met, you told me to never set foot in Shoreditch. Why the hoodlum-engraved invitation?”
“Ha! Good one, Peaches. I meant to say never return without a proper invite. Welcome to the Eastcheap Gentleman’s Club. It’s where I come after a night underground. Refreshing.”
“Nothing looks cheap. And where are the gentlemen?”
“Billy,” Topper said from his post at the bar. “Have a seat and take the chip off your shoulder, will you? Don’t let that business with the truck get under your skin.”
“Smart advice that,” Archie said. “We had a good go-round with the truck, me takin’ it and you gettin’ it back. Shows you learn fast, and know how to get what’s yours without burning your bridges. And that you have connections, to get the Shoreditch pubs declared off-limits. Impressive that. So listen to Topper and have some coffee. The real thing. American. Gisele, more coffee, s’il vous plait.”
“ Oui, Archie,” she said with a smile that left her eyes dead.
“I own this establishment, Peaches,” Archie continued, pausing to sip his coffee. “And you might be surprised at how many senior American officers partake of the delights here. Maybe some you know. Plenty of high-class toffs as well, military and politico. We even let in enlisted men one night a week. Supply sergeants get a special rate.”
“So business is good?”
“Very good. We did well before, but since the war, with the Americans flooding in and so much talent coming from the Continent, it’s all we can do to keep the place off the map.”
“The Continent?”
“All of our girls are from Europe, Billy,” Topper said. “When the war started, a lot of refugees came over, and many young girls were looking for work. Your average Englishman who uses our club wants something a bit different. He doesn’t want someone who reminds him of his wife or his maid. One of the odd consequences of the class structure. Continental girls are another species altogether. Frees the stodgy old men up, especially the ones with money.”
“Now, your average American, he doesn’t care. Most of ’em couldn’t tell the difference between a countess and a scrubwoman,” Archie said. “Right, Dalenka?”
“I’ve been both,” the woman at the piano said, not turning her head. “I scrubbed floors for the money when I first came to England, and now I tell them I am a countess for the money. Both I’ve done on my knees, and I tell you, scrubbing floors is much harder. And yes, the Americans are a bit naive. Sometimes it is endearing. Usually it is boring.” She blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“Dalenka is from Czechoslovakia,” Archie said. “She runs the place for me. Very smart, she is. Speaks several languages, and has a head for numbers. She is truly a countess in my book.” Archie looked almost smitten, but I knew it was for show, to bolster the morale of the talent.
Dalenka put her cigarette out, sat silently for a minute, and then began playing with both hands. She sat up straight, her long, arched fingers gliding smoothly over the ivories. Gisele put a tray of coffee down and served me, the vacant smile unwavering. The music rose slowly, building and then fading, joyous at moments, but ending on a downward slide of sorrowful deep notes that lingered in the smoky air. Dalenka’s hands remained poised on the keys where the last notes had been played. Even Archie was silent.
“What was that, Dalenka?” Topper asked in a whisper.
“A requiem by Anton Dvorak. A Czech composer. It was written as a funeral mass for soldiers.” She shut the keyboard cover, swiveled around on the stool, and looked at us as if we were dead men. Without a word, she left the room, putting her arm around Gisele, who was still smiling as tears rolled down her cheeks.
Archie nodded solemnly, acknowledging the unspoken truth that lingered where Dalenka had been. Staring at the open door, he spoke, in hushed tones. A Wounded Deer-leaps highest- I’ve heard the Hunter tell- ‘Tis but the Ecstasy of death- And then the Brake is still!
“Emily Dickinson,” I said, stunned that I’d remembered. I wasn’t much for school, or poetry, for that matter, but the sadness of that poem had stayed with me since I’d heard it in senior English class. The wounded dear, leaping for life, finding death.
“So you’re not a complete philistine, Peaches. Yes, your fellow American, Miss Emily Dickinson. ‘A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest,’ she called it, and she must’ve known about wounds, that poor one.”
“What about Dalenka?”
“She and her lover were involved with the Three Kings,” Topper said. “They were leaders of the Czech Resistance. The Nazis got all of them in 1941. Dalenka and her boyfriend were couriers, carrying everything from explosives to messages from London in and out of Prague. One spring day in 1940, the Gestapo was waiting; someone had betrayed them. The boyfriend was killed in a gunfight, but Dalenka escaped. Lucky for her that he was killed, otherwise they would have made him talk. She had false papers that got her out through Yugoslavia, then on to Portugal and finally here.”
“They all have stories,” Archie said. “Not all of them are heroic, either. But you don’t start off in Nazi-occupied Europe and end up in an East End bordello without a tale worth telling. Or not telling, as the case may be.”
“What story am I here to be told?”
“We both now seem to be looking for Russians, Peaches. Topper told me you want to know who killed that Egorov fellow. Fair enough. It had nothing to do with us. You know about the business with the delivery trucks, you’ve seen the map. Again, you’re smart enough to leave well enough alone there. Tells me you’re focused on the killer, not on farm produce. Right?”
“Right.”
“Just to get it out in the open. We’re not at cross-purposes here. There’s a certain Russian we want to find. Seeing as how you are thick with them, I figured you might be able to point us in the right direction.”
“Does this have anything to do with Osip Nikolaevich Blotski?”
“Who the hell is that?” Archie demanded.
“No one,” Topper said. “A message. One that was apparently not received.”
“Oh, that,” Archie said, scoffing. “Told you, boy, that wouldn’t smoke him out.”
“A Russian from the embassy owes you something, and you can’t find him. You crippled an associate of his, and probably gave him a message to pass on. That didn’t work, and you remembered my questions about Egorov, and thought I might be able to ferret him out?”
“See, Topper, I told you he had half a brain in his head! Yes, Peaches, that’s it in a nutshell. Will you help us?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Well, there’s the other half of that brain. Good for you, Peaches. What do we have for him, Topper?”
“Gisele? Perhaps her and a friend?”
“No thanks, my dance card is full. Who is it you’re looking for?”
“Peaches, we are asking so nicely here. Over coffee, after beautiful music. As we offer you the delights of the flesh. Why be obstinate then? We aren’t going to offer up a name until we have a deal of some sort. A handshake will do, but there has to be something between us, not simply a gift to your curiosity.”
I thought about it, and had to admit I was curious. Who were they after, and for what? I still thought there had to be a connection between Egorov, where he was killed, and the truck hijackings. I also wondered what a Russian from the embassy had that the Chapmans wanted so badly.
“I want a cut,” I said, deciding to see where this took things.
“So do we,” Topper said grimly. I think he meant my throat, not a percentage.
“Deal gone bad?”
“All is not yet lost,” Archie said,
with a stern look at his son. “There is a man who we had an arrangement with. We’re not certain if he’s done a runner. We are prepared to provide a finder’s fee if you can assist us in locating him.”
I recalled Scutt telling me that there had been no more truck hijackings recently, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the movement of Russian personnel to Dover. Did Archie think he’d been betrayed when his contact moved out, probably under secret orders? Maybe I could turn this to some benefit.
“I think I may know where he is,” I said. “But I can’t tell you.”
“What do you want?” Archie said, moving out of his chair faster than I thought he could, leaning over me. “More money, or more of the blade? Either will do the job.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t take a message,” I said. “But it’s a military secret. A group of them moved out a couple of days ago, for security reasons. So if your boy hasn’t been in touch, it’s because he can’t get away.”
“How far away, Billy?” Topper asked, taking his father by the arm and moving him back to his chair. “Take it easy, Dad, we’ll work this out.”
“Not far. I’m supposed to go there today, as a matter of fact.”
“Is this on the up-and-up, Peaches? I’d hate to think you’d try to fool an old man.”
“Why would I? There’s no reason for me to make anything up. As you said, we each have our own concerns.”
“There’s that, yes,” Archie said, nodding to himself. “What do you want for your cut?”
“Not money. If I need some help with the Egorov business, I’ll come to you. For a favor, in exchange for the one I’ll do for you.”
“You’ll deliver a message directly to this person for us?” Topper said, clarifying the terms of the deal.
“Yes, but not a lead-pipe message. I’ll talk to him and let you know what he says as soon as I can get back. I’ll probably be able to move more freely than the Russians.” I felt a little twinge of guilt at being a messenger boy for Archie, but I thought it might help before this was over to have him owe me one. And anything I could learn about his operation wouldn’t hurt either.