The client was a charming and cultured gentleman of complicated nationality and apparently limitless funds, and we celebrated the transaction liberally with vodka and caviar. After that we discussed Chekhov and explored the causes of the Russian Revolution until he fell off the chair while making a toast to the House of Romanov and had to be taken to the local A&E with a fractured wrist.
A&E were busy and we were there all night. But my client was polite and civilized during the whole time.
~ * ~
10 November, 1918
We’re all being very polite and civilized during this journey, whatever its purpose might be. We’re even being civilized to the enemy - half an hour ago we were overtaken by a car carrying three Germans of unmistakable high rank. I didn’t panic until we came upon them a few hundred yards further along, parked on the roadside.
‘They’ve got a puncture,’ said the colonel in the back of my car, and told me to stop in case we could help.
‘Are you mad, sir?’ said the major next to him. ‘It’ll be a trick. They’ll shoot us like sitting ducks.’
‘We‘re all bound for the same place, you fool. There won’t be any shooting.’
I don’t pretend to have much mechanical knowledge, but I can change a wheel with the best - although it felt strange to do so alongside a man with whose country we had been at war with for four years. I expected a bullet to slam into my ribs at any minute, and I promise you I kept a heavy wrench near to hand. But we got the job done in half an hour, with our respective officers circling one another like cats squaring up for a fight.
I stowed the punctured wheel in the boot.
‘Not too close to that case,’ said the German driver, pointing to a small attaché case.
‘Why? It hasn’t got a bomb in it, has it?’
‘Oh no,’ he said, earnestly. He had better English than I had German.
‘It contains a— I have not the word—’ He gestured to his own left hand where he wore a signet ring.
‘A ring? Signet ring?’
‘Signet ring, ach, that is right.’
‘From a lady?’
He glanced over his shoulder, and then, in a very low voice he said, ‘From the Kaiser. I am not supposed to know, but I overhear . . . It’s for the signing of the peace treaty.’
I didn’t believe him. Would you? I didn’t believe a peace treaty was about to be signed and, even if it was, I didn’t believe Kaiser Bill would send his signet ring to seal the document. Nobody used sealing wax and signet rings any longer.
Or did they? Mightn’t an Emperor of the old Prussian Royal House do just that? In the face of defeat and the loss of his imperial crown, mightn’t he make that final arrogant gesture?
‘So,’ said the German driver, ‘it is to be well guarded, you see.’
I did see. I still didn’t entirely believe him, but I didn’t disbelieve him. So, when he got back into his car, I reached into that attaché case. I expected it to be locked and it was. But it was a flimsy lock - not what you’d expect of German efficiency - and it snapped open as easily as any lock I ever forced. No one was looking and I reached inside and took out a small square box, stamped with a coat of arms involving an eagle. I put the case quietly in my pocket, got back into the car, and drove on.
~ * ~
Infuriatingly, the next few pages were badly damaged - by the look of them they had been shredded by industrious mice or even rats to make nests. I didn’t care if the Pied Piper himself had capered through that attic, calling up the entire rodent population of Hampstead as he went. I needed to know what came next.
Clearly great-grandfather had driven high-ranking officials to that historic meeting in a railway carriage in Compiegne Forest, at which the Armistice ending the Great War was signed. And on the very threshold of that iconic meeting, he had planned to go yomping off to some nameless chateau to liberate it of easily transportable loot! Carrying with him what might be Wilhelm II’s signet ring.
I carried the entire box of papers home, but after several hours poring over the disintegrated sections I gave up, and hoped
I could pick up the threads in the pages that were still intact.
~ * ~
11 November, 1918
Well! Talk about Avalon and Grarnarye! I got into that chateau at dawn, and it was so easy they might as well have rolled out a welcome mat.
And if ever there was an Aladdin’s cave . . .
The family who owned it must have left very hastily indeed, because it didn’t look as if they taken much with them. The place was stuffed to the gunnels with silver and gold plate, paintings, furniture . . . But I kept to the rule I had made earlier and only took small objects. Salt cellars, sugar sifters, candle snuffers. Some Chinese jade figurines, and a pair of amber-studded snuff boxes. Beautiful and sellable, all of them. I thought, If I survive this war, I shall live like a lord on the proceeds of this.
And so I would, have done if the military police hadn’t come chasing across the countryside. You’ll have thought that with a peace treaty being signed - probably at that very hour - they’d overlook one soldier taking a few hours extra to return to his unit. But no, they must come bouncing and jolting across the countryside in one of their infernal jeeps.
I had the stolen objects in my haversack, and I ran like a fleeing hare. I had no clear idea where I was going and I didn’t much care, but I got as far as a stretch of churned-up landscape, clearly the site of a very recent battle. There were deep craters and a dreadful tumble of bodies lying like fractured dolls half buried in mud. The MPs had abandoned their jeep, but I could see its lights cutting a swathe through the dying afternoon, like huge frog’s eyes searching for prey. Prey. Me.
The haversack was slowing me down, so eventually I dived into the nearest crater and lay as still as I could. It was a fairly safe bet they would find me, and probably I would get a week in the glass-house, but if they found the chateau loot I would get far worse than a week in the glass-house. And find it they would, unless I could hide it …
I’m not proud of what I did next. I can only say that war makes people do things they wouldn’t dream of in peacetime.
There were four dead men in that crater. I had no means of recognizing any of them, partly because they were so covered with mud and partly - well, explosives don’t make for tidy corpses. I chose the one who was least disfigured, and tipped the stash into the pockets of his battledress, buttoning up the flaps. He was a sergeant in a Lincolshire regiment. I memorized his serial number.
One last thing I did in those desperate minutes. I slipped the Kaiser’s signet ring out of its velvet box and put it on the man’s hand.
Then I stood up and walked towards the MPs, my hands raised in a rueful gesture of surrender.
I didn’t get a week in the glass-house. I didn’t even get forty-eight hours. Armistice was declared at eleven o’clock that morning, and four hours filched by a soldier who had driven the colonel to the signing of the peace treaty was overlooked.
And after the celebrations had calmed down, those of us who had survived had to bury the dead.
They say every story is allowed one coincidence and here’s mine. I was one of the party detailed to bury the bodies from that very battlefield where I had hidden. That Lincolnshire sergeant was where I had left him, lying in the mud, his jacket securely buttoned, the signet ring on the third finger of his right hand. I promise you, if I could have got at any of the stuff I would have done, but there were four of us on the task and I had no chance.
But when they brought the coffins out, I watched carefully and I saw my Lincolnshire sergeant put into one with an unusual mark on the lid - a burr in the oak that was almost the shape of England.
~ * ~
The journal ended there. Can you believe that? I felt as if I had been smacked in the face when I realized it and I sat back, my mind tumbling. What had my great-grandfather done next? Had he tried to get into the coffin later? Bu
t he couldn’t have done. If the signet ring of the last German Emperor had been up for grabs after the Armistice, I would have known. The whole world would have known.
I went back to Hampstead the next morning. I intended to scour that house from cellar to attics to find out if my greatgrandfather had recovered the Kaiser’s signet ring from the coffin—
I’ve just re-read that last sentence, and it’s probably the most bizarre thing I’ve ever written. Hell’s teeth, it’s probably the most bizarre thing anyone has ever written. I hope I haven’t fallen backwards into a surreal movie or a rogue episode of Dr Who and not noticed.
But there were no more journal pages. Eventually, I conceded defeat, and returned to my own flat. This time I ransacked the few family papers I possessed. I don’t keep anything that could incriminate any of us, of course - there’s such a thing as loyalty, even though my family are all dead. But there were birth certificates, carefully-edited savings accounts - burglars have to be cautious about investments. Too much money and the Inland Revenue start to get inconveniently interested. My father used to buy good antique furniture; my grandfather invested in gold and silver. I don’t know what my greatgrandfather did.
There were letters there, as well, mostly kept by my parents out of sentiment, and it was those letters I wanted. I thought there might be some from my great-grandmother and I was right; there were several. Most were of no use, but one was dated September 1920, and attached to it was a semi-order for great-grandfather to report to the HQ of his old regiment. He had, it seemed, been chosen ‘at random’ to be one of the soldiers who would assist in exhuming six sets of ‘suitable’ remains from battlefields in France.
Random, I thought, cynically. I’ll bet he contrived it, the sly old fox.
The six coffins, said the letter, would be taken by special escort to Flanders on the night of 7 November. A small, private ceremony would take place in the chapel of St Pol, and greatgrandfather would be one of the guard of honour.
By that time a pattern was starting to form in my mind, and I unfolded my great-grandmother’s letter with my blood racing. It read, ‘My dear love . . . What an honour for you to be chosen for that remarkable ceremony. When you described it in your last letter it was so vivid, I felt I was there with you . . . The small, flickeringly-lit chapel, the six coffins, each draped with the Union Jack . . . The brigadier general led in, blindfolded, then placing his hand on one of the coffins to make the choice . . .’
That was when my mind went into meltdown and it was several minutes before I could even get to the bookshelves. Eventually, though, I riffled through several reference books, and in all of them, the information was the same.
‘From the chapel of St Pol in Northern France, the Unknown Soldier began the journey to the famous tomb within Westminster Abbey . . . The man whose identity will never be known, but who was killed on some unnamed battlefield . . . The symbol of all men who died in battle no matter where, and the focus for the grief of hundreds of thousands of bereaved . . .’
Great-grandmother’s letter ended with the words, ‘How interesting that you recognized the coffin chosen as one you had helped carry from that battlefield shortly before the Armistice. I wonder if, without that curious burr, you would have known it? It’s a sobering thought that you are probably the only person in the whole world who knows the identity of the Unknown Warrior.’
~ * ~
All right, what would you have done? Gone back to your ordinary life, with the knowledge that the grave of the
Unknown Warrior - that hugely emotive symbol of death in battle - contained probably the biggest piece of loot you would ever encounter? The signet ring of the last Emperor of Germany - the ring intended to seal the peace treaty that ended the Great War. Wilhelm II’s ring that never reached its destination because a German car had a puncture.
The provenance of that signet ring was - and is - one hundred per cent genuine. It’s documented in great-grandfather’s journal and great-grandmother’s letter. Collectors would pay millions.
It’s calling to me, that iron-bound casket, that unknown soldier’s tomb that’s the focus for memories and pride and grief every 11 November. It’s calling with the insistence of a siren’s seductive song . . . Because of course it’s still in there, that ring, along with the loot taken from the French chateau. It must be, because in almost a century there’s never been the least hint of anyone having tried to break into that tomb.
I’m ending these notes now, because I have an appointment. I’m joining a party of tourists being taken round Westminster Abbey. Quite a detailed tour, actually. After I come home I shall start to draw a very detailed map of the abbey. Then I shall make precise notes of security arrangements and guards, electronic eyes, CCTY cameras . . .
<
~ * ~
THE LADDER
Adrian McKinty
D
onald sighed as the university loomed out of the rain and greyness. All morning he had hit nothing but red lights and now, although it was green, he had to stop because a huge gang of students was crossing the pedestrian walkway in front of him.
It was rag week and they were wearing costumes: animals, Cossacks, knights, milkmaids. Predictable and drab, the outfits had a home-made look and they depressed him. The students were laughing and some were actually skipping. It was raining, it was cold, it was November in godforsaken Belfast so what the hell had they to laugh about?
The traffic light went red and then amber and then green again and still they hadn’t all got across. He was tempted to honk them off the road but no doubt from hidden pockets they would produce flour-and-water bombs and throw them at him. He sat there patiently while the car behind began to toot. He looked in the rearview at a vulnerable, orange VW Microbus. Yeah, you keep doing that, mate, he said to himself, and sure enough half a dozen eggs cut up the poor fool’s windscreen.
He chortled to himself as the mob cleared and he turned into the car park.
“Jesus, is that a grin?” McCann asked him when he appeared in the office.
He nodded.
“What, have you got a job offer somewhere? “ McCann wondered.
“No, old chap, I am doomed to spend my declining years with your boorish self and my cretinous students in this bombed-out hell-hole of a city slowly sinking into the putrid mudflats from which it so inauspiciously began.”
“Bugger, if I’d known I was going to get an essay...” McCann said, not all that good-naturedly.
Donald took off his jacket and set it down on the chair. “Is this coffee drinkable?” he asked, staring dubiously at the tarry black liquid in the coffee pot.
“Drinkable yes. Distinguishable as coffee, no.”
Donald poured himself a cup anyway, added two sugars and picked up the morning paper.
“Before I lose interest entirely, why were you smiling when you came in? Some pretty undergraduate, no doubt?” McCann asked.
“No, no, nothing like that, I’m afraid. The students went after some hippy driving a VW Microbus... talk about devouring your own.”
“Aye. I’ve seen that thing around. New guy. Been parking in my spot. Kicked his side panels a few times. Buckled like anything. It’s an original. Those old ones are bloody death traps.”
“A windscreen covered with eggs and flour won’t make it any safer.”
McCann took out his pipe and began filling it with tobacco. Donald went back to the paper. “So what’s on the old agenda today anyway?” McCann asked.
“Nothing in the morning. Playing squash at lunchtime and then we’re doing The Miller’s Tale after lunch.”
“The Miller’s Tale? Which one’s that?”
“Do you actually want to know?”
“Well, not really, I suppose,” McCann replied, somewhat shamefaced.
The hours passed by in a haze of tobacco smoke, bad coffee, worse biscuits and dull news from the paper.
At twelve Donald slipped
off, only to be intercepted by a student outside the gym.
“Dr Bryant,” the student began in a lilting voice, and Donald remembered that he was a Welshman called Jones or Evans or something.
“Mr Jones, how can I help you today?”
“Uh, actually my name is—”
“Yes, Mr Jones, how I can help you? Come on. Out with it, man. I’m in a hurry.”
“Uhm, Dr Bryant, I’m supposed to do a presentation next week on Jonson...”
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10 Page 58