by Ken Follett
Margaret found her voice and said: “I got lost in the blackout and bumped into a pillar box.”
It was his turn to be surprised. He had taken her for a working-class girl. Now, hearing her accent, he realized his mistake. Without a blink he reverted to his former persona. “I say, what jolly bad luck!”
Margaret was fascinated. Which was his real self? He smelled of cologne. His hair was well cut, if a fraction too long. He wore a midnight blue evening suit in the fashion set by Edward VIII, with silk socks and patent-leather shoes. His jewelry was very good: diamond studs in his shirt front, with matching cuff links; a gold wristwatch with a black crocodile strap; and a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. His hands were large and strong-looking, but his fingernails were perfectly clean.
In a low voice she said: “Did you really leave the restaurant without paying?”
He looked at her appraisingly, then seemed to reach a decision. “Actually, I did,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.
“But why?”
“Because, if I’d listened for one more minute to Rebecca Maugham-Flint talking about her blasted horses, I should have been unable to resist the urge to take her by the throat and strangle her.”
Margaret giggled. She knew Rebecca Maugham-Flint, who was a large, plain girl, the daughter of a general, with her father’s hearty manner and parade-ground voice. “I can just imagine it,” she said. It would be hard to think of a more unsuitable dinner companion for the attractive Mr. Marks.
Constable Steve appeared and picked up her empty mug. “Feeling better, Lady Margaret?”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harry Marks react to her title. “Much better, thank you,” she said. For a moment she had forgotten her own troubles in talking to Harry, but now she remembered all she had to do. “You’ve been so kind,” she went on. “Now I’m going to leave you to get on with more important things.”
“No need for you to rush off,” the constable said. “Your father, the marquis, is on his way to fetch you.”
Margaret’s heart stopped. How could this be? She had been so convinced that she was safe—she had underestimated her father! Now she was as frightened as she had been walking along the road to the railway station. He was after her, on his way here at this very minute! She felt shaky. “How does he know where I am?” she said in a high, strained voice.
The young policeman looked proud. “Your description was circulated late yesterday evening, and I read it when I come on duty. I never recognized you in the blackout, but I remembered the name. The instruction is to inform the marquis immediately. As soon as I brought you in here, I rung him up on the telephone.”
Margaret stood up, her heart fluttering wildly. “I shan’t wait for him,” she said. “It’s light now.”
The policeman looked anxious. “Just a minute,” he said nervously. He turned to the desk. “Sarge, the lady doesn’t want to wait for her father.”
Harry Marks said to Margaret: “They can’t make you stay—running away from home isn’t a crime at your age. If you want to go, just walk out.”
Margaret was terrified that they would find some excuse to detain her.
The sergeant got off his seat and came around the counter. “He’s quite right,” the sergeant said. “You can go any time you like.”
“Oh, thank you,” Margaret said gratefully.
The sergeant smiled. “But you’ve got no shoes, and there’s holes in your stockings. If you must leave before your father gets here, at least let us call a taxi.”
She thought for a moment. They had phoned Father as soon as Margaret arrived at the police station, but that was less than an hour ago. Father could not possibly get here for another hour or more. “All right,” she said to the kindly sergeant. “Thank you.”
He opened a door off the hall. “You’ll be more comfortable in here, while you wait for the taxi.” He switched on the light.
Margaret would have preferred to stay and talk to the fascinating Harry Marks, but she did not want to refuse the sergeant’s kindness, especially after he had given in to her. “Thank you,” she said again.
As she walked to the door she heard Harry say: “More fool you.”
She stepped into the little room. There were some cheap chairs and a bench, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a barred window. She could not imagine why the sergeant thought this more comfortable than the hallway. She turned to tell him so.
The door closed in her face. A presentiment of ruin filled her heart with dread. She lunged at the door and grabbed the handle. As she did so her sudden fear was confirmed and she heard a key turn in the lock. She rattled the handle furiously. The door would not open.
She slumped in despair with her head against the wood.
From outside she heard a low laugh, then Harry’s voice, muffled but comprehensible, saying: “You bastard.”
The sergeant’s voice was now anything but kindly. “You shut your hole,” he said crudely.
“You’ve got no right—you know that.”
“Her father’s a bloody marquis, and that’s all the right I need.”
No more was said.
Margaret realized bitterly that she had lost. Her great escape had failed. She had been betrayed by the very people she thought were helping her. For a little while she had been free, but now it was over. She would not be joining the A.T.S. today, she thought miserably: she would be boarding the Pan Am Clipper and flying to New York, running away from the war. After all she had been through, her fate was unchanged. It seemed so desperately unfair.
After a long moment she turned from the door and walked the few steps to the window. She could see an empty yard and a brick wall. She stood there, defeated and helpless, looking through the bars at the brightening daylight, waiting for her father.
Eddie Deakin gave the Pan American Clipper a final once-over. The four Wright Cyclone 1500-horsepower engines gleamed with oil. Each engine was as high as a man. All fifty-six spark plugs had been replaced. On impulse, Eddie took a feeler gauge from his overalls pocket and slid it into an engine mount between the rubber and the metal, to test the bond. The pounding vibration of the long flight put a terrific strain on the adhesive. But Eddie’s feeler would not go in even a quarter of an inch. The mounts were holding.
He closed the hatch and climbed down the ladder. While the plane was being eased back into the water he would change out of his overalls, get cleaned up and put on his black Pan American flight uniform.
The sun was shining as he left the dock and strolled up the hill toward the hotel where the crew stayed during the layover. He was proud of the plane and the job he did. The Clipper crews were elite, the best men the airline had, for the new transatlantic service was the most prestigious route. All his life he would be able to say he had flown the Atlantic in the early days.
However, he was planning to give it up soon. He was thirty years old, he had been married for a year, and Carol-Ann was pregnant. Flying was all right for a single man, but he was not going to spend his life away from his wife and children. He had been saving money and he had almost enough to start a business of his own. He had an option on a site near Bangor, Maine, that would make a perfect airfield. He would service planes and sell fuel, and eventually have an aircraft for charter. Secretly he dreamed that one day he might have an airline of his own, like the pioneering Juan Trippe, founder of Pan American.
He entered the grounds of the Langdown Lawn Hotel. It was a piece of luck for Pan American crews that there was such a pleasant hotel a mile or so from the Imperial Airways complex. The place was a typical English country house, run by a gracious couple who charmed everyone and served tea on the lawn on sunny afternoons.
He went inside. In the hall he ran into his assistant engineer, Desmond Finn—known, inevitably, as Mickey. Mickey reminded Eddie of the Jimmy Olsen character in the Superman comics: he was a happy-go-lucky type with a big toothy grin and a propensity to hero-worship Eddie, who found such adoratio
n embarrassing. He was speaking into the telephone, and now when he saw Eddie he said: “Oh, wait. You’re lucky. He just walked in.” He handed the earpiece to Eddie and said: “A phone call for you.” Then he went upstairs, politely leaving Eddie alone.
Eddie spoke into the phone. “Hello?”
“Is this Edward Deakin?”
Eddie frowned. The voice was unfamiliar, and nobody called him Edward. He said: “Yes, I’m Eddie Deakin. Who are you?”
“Wait. I have your wife on the line, ”
Eddie’s heart lurched. Why was Carol-Ann calling him from the States? Something was wrong.
A moment later he heard her voice. “Eddie?”
“Hi, honey. What’s up?”
She burst into tears.
A whole series of awful explanations came to mind: the house had burned down, someone had died, she had hurt herself in some kind of accident, she had suffered a miscarriage—
“Carol-Ann, calm down. Are you all right?”
She spoke through sobs. “I’m ... not ... hurt—”
“What, then?” he said fearfully. “What’s happened? Try to tell me, babe.”
“These men... came to the house.”
Eddie went cold with dread. “What men? What did they do?”
“They made me get into a car.”
“Jesus God, who are they?” The anger was like a pain in his chest and he had to fight for breath. “Did they hurt you?”
“I’m all right ... but, Eddie, I’m so scared.”
He did not know what to say next. Too many questions came to his lips. Men had gone to his house and forced Carol-Ann to get into a car! What was happening? Finally he said: “But why?”
“They won’t tell me.”
“What did they say?”
“Eddie, you have to do what they want—that’s all I know.”
Even in his anger and fear, Eddie heard Pop say Never sign a blank check. All the same he did not hesitate. “I’ll do it, but what—”
“Promise! ”
“I promise!”
“Thank God.”
“When did this happen?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“Where are you now?”
“We’re in a house not far—Her speech turned into a shocked cry.
“Carol-Ann! What’s happening? Are you okay?”
There was no response. Furious, frightened and impotent, Eddie squeezed the phone until his knuckles turned white.
Then the original male voice returned. “Listen to me very carefully, Edward. ”
“No, you listen to me, shitheel,” Eddie raged. “If you hurt her I’ll kill you, I swear to God, I’ll track you down if it takes as long as I live, and when I find you, you punk, I’ll tear your head off your neck with my hands. Now do you read me loud and clear?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, as if the man at the other end of the line had not expected such a tirade. Then he said: “Don’t act tough. You’re too far away.” He sounded a little shaken, but he was right: Eddie could do nothing. The man went on: “Just pay attention.”
Eddie held his tongue with an effort.
“You’ll get your instructions on the plane from a man called Tom Luther.”
On the plane! What did that mean? Would this Tom Luther be a passenger, or what? Eddie said: “But what do you want me to do?”
“Shut up. Luther will tell you. And you’d better follow his orders to the letter, if you want to see your wife again.”
“How do I know—”
“And one more thing. Don’t call the police. It won’t do you any good. But if you do call them, I’ll fuck her just to be mean.”
“You bastard, I’ll—”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER THREE
Harry Marks was the luckiest man alive.
His mother had always told him he was lucky. Although his father had been killed in the Great War, he was lucky to have had a strong and capable mother to bring him up. She cleaned offices for a living, and all through the Slump she had never been out of work. They lived in a tenement in Battersea, with a cold-water tap on each landing and outside toilets, but they were surrounded by good neighbors who helped one another through times of trouble. Harry had a knack of escaping from trouble! When boys were being thrashed at school, the teacher’s cane would break just before he got to Harry. Harry could fall under a horse and cart and have them pass over him without touching him.
It was his love of jewelry that had made him a thief. As an adolescent he had loved to walk along the opulent shopping streets of the . West End and look in the windows of jewelers’ shops. He was enraptured by the diamonds and precious stones glinting on dark velvet pads under the bright display lights. He liked them for their beauty, but also because they symbolized a kind of life he had read about in books, a life of spacious country houses with broad green lawns, where pretty girls with names like Lady Penelope and Jessica Chumley played tennis all afternoon and came in panting for tea.
He had been apprenticed to a jeweler, but he had been bored and restless, and he left after six months. Mending broken watch straps and enlarging wedding rings for overweight wives had no glamour. But he had learned to tell a ruby from a red garnet, a natural pearl from a cultured one, and a modern brilliant-cut diamond from a nineteenth-century old mine cut. He had also discovered the difference between an appropriate setting and an ugly one, a graceful design and a tasteless piece of ostentation; and the ability to discriminate had further inflamed his lust for beautiful jewelry and his longing for the style of life that went with it.
He eventually found a way to satisfy both desires by making use of girls such as Rebecca Maugham-Flint.
He had met Rebecca at Ascot. He often picked up rich girls at race meetings. The open air and the crowds made it possible for him to hover between two groups of young racegoers in such a way that everyone thought he was part of the other group. Rebecca was a tall girl with a big nose, dreadfully dressed in a ruched jersey dress and a Robin Hood hat with a feather in it. None of the young men around her paid any attention to her, and she was pathetically grateful to Harry for talking to her.
He had not pursued the acquaintanceship right away, for it was best not to seem eager. But when he ran into her a month later, at an art gallery, she greeted him like an old friend and introduced him to her mother.
Girls such as Rebecca were not supposed to go unchaperoned to cinemas and restaurants with boys, of course; only shopgirls and factory workers did that. So they would pretend to their parents that they were going out in a crowd; and to make it look right, they would generally begin the evening at a cocktail party. Afterward they could go off discreetly in pairs. This suited Harry ideally: since he was not officially “courting” Rebecca, her parents saw no need to look closely into his background, and they never questioned the vague lies he told about a country house in Yorkshire, a minor public school in Scotland, an invalid mother living in the south of France and a prospective commission in the Royal Air Force.
Vague lies were common in upper-class society, he had found. They were told by young men who did not want to admit to being desperately poor, or having parents who were hopeless drunks, or coming from families that had disgraced themselves by scandal. No one troubled to pin a fellow down until he showed signs of a serious attachment to a well-bred girl.
In this indefinite way Harry had been going around with Rebecca for three weeks. She had got him invited to a weekend house party in Kent, where he had played cricket and stolen money from the hosts, who had been too embarrassed to report the theft for fear of offending their guests. She had also taken him to several balls, where he had picked pockets and emptied purses. In addition, when calling at her parents’ house he had taken small sums of money, some silver cutlery and three interesting Victorian brooches that her mother had not yet missed.
There was nothing immoral in what he did, in his opinion. The people from whom he stole did not deserve their wealth. Most
of them had never done a day’s work in their lives. Those few who had to have some kind of job used their public-school connections to get overpaid sinecures: they were diplomats, chairmen of companies, judges or Conservative MPs. Stealing from them was like killing Nazis: a service to the public, not a crime.
He had been doing this for two years, and he knew it could not go on forever. The world of upper-class English society was large but limited, and eventually someone would find him out. The war had come at a time when he was ready to look for a different way of life.
However, he was not going to join the army as a regular soldier. Bad food, itchy clothes, bullying and military discipline were not for him, and he looked sickly in olive drab. Air force blue matched his eyes, however, and he could easily see himself as a pilot. So he was going to be an officer in the R.A.F He had not yet figured out how, but he would manage it: he was lucky that way.
In the meantime he decided to use Rebecca to get inside one more wealthy home before dropping her.
They began the evening at a reception in the Belgravia home of Sir Simon Monkford, a rich publisher.
Harry spent some time with the Honorable Lydia Moss, the overweight daughter of a Scottish earl. Awkward and lonely, she was just the kind of girl who was most vulnerable to his charm, and he enchanted her for twenty minutes more or less out of habit. Then he talked to Rebecca for a while, to keep her sweet. After that, he judged the time was right to make his move.
He excused himself and left the room. The party was going on in the large double drawing room on the second floor. As he crossed the landing and slipped up the stairs he felt the thrilling rush of adrenaline that always came to him when he was about to do a job. The knowledge that he was going to steal from his hosts, and risk being caught red-handed and shown up as a fraud, filled him with fear and excitement.
He reached the next floor and followed the corridor to the front of the house. The farthest door probably led to the master bedroom suite, he thought. He opened it and saw a large bedroom with flowered curtains and a pink bedspread. He was about to step inside when another door opened and a challenging voice called out: “I say!”