by C. J. Sansom
‘Where are you headed for, sir?’
‘Northampton,’ David answered, emphasizing the upper-class drawl in his voice. ‘We’ve come from Sawley. Is there a problem, Constable?’
‘No, sir, only this road’s shut off now. We’re guarding the new residential camp for the Birmingham Jews.’
Frank stared up the closed-off road. It was fringed by trees, their bare branches a skeletal latticework, brown ploughed fields on either side. In the distance he thought he made out a row of high poles, what might have been wire strung between them.
‘Is it?’ Something in David’s tone made the policeman look at him sharply.
Ben leaned forward. ‘Sae long as we get the Yids out of the towns, eh?’ he said cheerfully. ‘It’s all right, we can take the longer route.’ The constable looked at David again, then nodded and stepped away. David steered the car left and they drove in silence till they had crested a hill.
Geoff let out a long breath. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘I couldn’t help my tone.’
‘You need tae be able to act in this job, pal,’ Ben spat angrily. ‘Our fucking lives could depend on it.’
That policemen could have asked for our papers, Frank thought, taken us back to his post, and then – ‘I need to wee, I’m desperate,’ he said. ‘Can we stop?’
‘How desperate?’ Ben asked. ‘Can’t you wait a bit? When we find a cafe or somethin’ ye can go to the cludgie there.’
‘I need to go now. I’m sorry, please—’
‘We should get on,’ Ben replied. ‘I want to get as far away from thae Auxies as possible.’
‘If Frank needs to go, he needs to go,’ Geoff answered irritably. He leaned over and spoke in a whisper to David. Frank caught his words. ‘What if he pisses himself? The car’ll stink.’
They turned down another lane, high laurel hedges beside the road. David stopped the car beside a little gap, just big enough for someone to squeeze through. Ben got out and held the door open for Frank. It was strange to be out in the empty, undulating countryside. It made his head swim after his weeks confined in the hospital. He was glad of the winter coat they had given him before they left the house. He really did need to urinate but he was also thinking, this was a chance to get away. The effects of his morning pill were wearing off, he thought he would be able to run. There was a brown ploughed field beyond the hedge, the furrows still white with frost, and what looked like a thick wood beyond. He would head there, if he could get in among the trees all he needed was to find one with a large branch, then use his belt . . .
‘Come on, Frank, wake up,’ Ben said, not unkindly. He pointed at the gap in the hedge. ‘We can just aboot squeeze through there.’
‘I can go on my own.’
Ben hesitated. Natalia had wound her window down. She said with unexpected sharpness, ‘Let him go. Stop treating him like a child.’
Ben frowned, and Frank wondered if he was going to argue. He started walking across the verge, frosty grass crunching under his feet, and bent to get through the gap. Ben didn’t follow. Little thorny twigs clutched at his clothing, making him wince.
On the other side of the hedge Frank quickly opened his coat, unzipped his flies, and urinated copiously onto the ploughed earth. As he did so he looked round quickly, heart thudding fast. He took a deep breath. Then he began running, fast as he could, across the field.
It was much more difficult than he had thought. The frost had made the ground hard but he had to jump from ridge to ridge, earth cracking and flaking under his shoes. He hadn’t run for a long time and his legs began shaking; there was a pounding in his ears.
Then he felt something irresistibly strong clutch his legs and he tumbled over, face forward, his chest landing on top of a ploughed ridge. He lay there winded, gasping for breath. Hands grabbed his shoulder, pulling him roughly round. David was kneeling over him, his own face red with effort. ‘For God’s sake, Frank,’ he shouted. ‘What in hell d’you think you’re doing?’
Frank sat up, wheezing. Geoff and Ben and Natalia had got through the hedge and were running towards him. David raised his hand and they halted a little way off, standing like scarecrows in the empty field. He shouted angrily, ‘Why did you run away from us, Frank? Why?’ His voice, echoing across the fields, startled some crows at the edge of the wood. They rose into the air, cawing.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t you trust us?’
Frank looked into David’s eyes. ‘It’s not that. I just don’t think you can do it,’ he said. ‘I’m frightened they’ll catch us, they’ll get what I know out of me.’
‘Did you think you could get away on your own?’ David asked furiously. ‘Where the hell would you go?’ He grasped Frank’s shoulder and shook him roughly. ‘Where were you planning to run? If you’ve got someone who might help you round here, Frank, you’ve got to tell us about it. We’re risking our lives to get you out.’
Frank looked into the woods again. The crows had circled and were settling back in the trees. ‘There’s nobody, David,’ he said quietly. ‘I was going to kill myself. That’s what I’ve got to do. It’s the only way I can be sure they don’t win. Can’t you see that?’
David knelt beside him. ‘You shouldn’t hold your life so cheap, Frank.’
‘You don’t know what it is that I know. I’m so tired, David.’ He whispered, ‘It’s the Bomb. Edgar was working on the atom bomb, and he told me something about how they built it. If the Germans find out it would let them build atomic weapons, too.’
David stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘For God’s sake,’ he breathed. ‘Don’t tell me any more. Not another word.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you just killed me? Wouldn’t it be safer? I haven’t spoken to anybody else about what Edgar told me, nobody.’
‘You really mean this, don’t you?’
Frank nodded slowly.
David said, ‘You know that if it comes to it, we won’t let them take any of us alive.’ He sighed. ‘There’s no turning back. We all depend on each other now, we have to trust each other. We’ve got a good chance if we stick together and keep our heads. There’s a whole network of people helping us, Frank. Please promise me you won’t do anything like that again. If you try it again you could risk everyone’s lives.’
He hesitated, looking into David’s eyes, then nodded.
David helped him up. They began trudging back to join the others. David held his arm. ‘You always hated the Nazis, didn’t you?’ Frank said.
‘So did you.’
‘That’s why I’d die rather than help them.’
‘Better to confound them and live,’ David answered fiercely.
Frank said, ‘All those years ago, at university, I must’ve been a bloody nuisance, hanging round you and Geoff.’
‘You were our friend.’
‘All I ever wanted was to be ordinary, to blend in. But I can’t.’
David smiled wryly. ‘It’s been the same for me. Always.’ He laughed. ‘Even more so now, after what you just told me.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Frank whispered. ‘Don’t tell the others—’
David looked at him. ‘All right, I won’t. But you’ve got to stay alive for all our sakes, Frank.’
David got him back in the car, then stood outside for a few minutes talking with the others. Frank wondered if they might be angry with him now, especially the woman, but she caught him staring at her and smiled. Frank thought, she understands.
As they started off again, Ben said, ‘You’ve had a hard time, Frank, I know that. You did bloody well holding out against the police in the asylum. But you’re with us now, and we’ll see ye through. We will. Ye’ve got tae see that.’
‘All right,’ Frank replied. He was too weary to say anything else. They continued on through the countryside, then onto the Great North Road, now driving fast. They’re all willing to die to get me out, Frank thought. Though he was still full of dr
ead about what might happen, he felt a rush of warmth towards his companions.
Around one o’clock, after Geoff had passed round some sandwiches the colonel’s wife had prepared, and Ben had given him another pill, Frank dozed off, dimly aware of the steady hum of the wheels beneath him.
He woke up at the sound of voices. It was getting dark.
‘That’s the second train we’ve seen stopped on the line,’ Ben was saying.
‘Maybe there’s a problem with the signals or something,’ Geoff said. ‘It always seems to happen on a Friday evening,’ he added lightly, as though they were ordinary people off for a weekend drive. Frank looked out of the window. On an embankment beside the motorway, he could see a stationary train and, through its lighted, steamed-up windows, passengers in their hats and coats. ‘Where are we?’
‘Another twenty miles to London.’ Natalia smiled at him as she turned to answer.
They drove on. Frank dozed again. He was woken by the car slowing down. He became conscious of a strange, unpleasant, sulphurous smell. He sat up. It was dark outside. They were in a long queue of traffic, moving very slowly. He realized he couldn’t see any lights from streetlamps or houses, and looking ahead he saw a thick, greasy, swirling vapour in the beam of the headlights. Fog, as thick as he had ever seen it.
He sat up. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We’re stuck,’ David answered. ‘That’s the last bloody thing we need tonight. It started half an hour ago and it’s getting thicker the closer we get to town.’
Geoff whistled. ‘This is some bloody fog,’ he said.
Chapter Forty
IT WAS THE DENSEST FOG David had ever seen, and he had lived in London all his life. Not ordinary fog but a sulphurous chemical smog, with a greenish-yellow tinge. Swirling in the headlights it looked almost liquid, flowing in little waves and eddies. Through it the traffic crawled along, inch by painful inch. The sharp, sulphuric smell in the car grew stronger, and David felt a stinging at the back of his throat. Behind him, Geoff coughed and David remembered his friend was affected by smog, that he sometimes wore one of the little white face-masks you could buy from the chemists now.
‘Where are we?’ David asked Natalia.
She looked at the map, holding it up to her face. ‘Just outside Watford, I think.’
David pulled down the car window. He could see almost nothing outside; even the streetlights were just hazy yellow smudges, distance impossible to judge. He wound the window up. The car in front juddered forward and David followed, but he could only drive a few yards before halting again. Now he could make out a red glow ahead, and peering through the windscreen he saw, in a brief gap in the eddies of fog, a glowing brazier with the hazy figure of a policeman beside it directing the traffic, his arms made visible only by long white gloves.
David looked in the mirror. Frank, sitting between Geoff and Ben, was staring fixedly ahead, an anxious look on his thin face. ‘You all right there, Frank?’ he asked.
‘What are we going to do? We’re not safe, sitting here. They could get us.’
Natalia leaned back and spoke reassuringly. ‘Nobody knows we’re here. The fog helps us, it must be throwing everything into confusion.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘South of the river. New Cross. To a safe house there.’
‘It’ll take fuckin’ hours in this,’ Ben said impatiently.
‘He’s right,’ Geoff agreed. ‘It’s going to get worse the further we get into the city.’ He coughed again.
David thought a moment, looked at Frank’s scared face in the mirror, then said, ‘We could leave the car at Watford and get the tube to town. At least we’d be moving.’
‘Yes,’ Frank agreed insistently. ‘We should move, we must move. It’s not safe stuck in one place.’
Ben looked at him dubiously. ‘You’d have to stay with us, no more running off.’
‘I will, I promise.’
The car in front jerked forward again. Slowly, painfully, they approached the roundabout. The policeman raised a gloved hand for them to halt. The light from his charcoal brazier cast a strange, dim red glow inside the car. Frank shrank back in his seat. The policeman waved them on and they passed into Watford High Street, moving at a snail’s pace. There was less traffic here but the cars still crawled along; you couldn’t see the tail-lights of the car in front until you were almost on top of it.
All the shops were shut, but eventually they saw the station entrance, indistinct figures moving to and fro in its light. ‘This is it,’ David said. ‘We have to decide.’
‘What about the car?’ Geoff asked.
‘We’ll just leave it,’ Natalia said. ‘There’s nothing to identify us. The number plates are fake. I think there are going to be a lot of abandoned cars tonight.’
They left the car and walked into the station entrance, following the signs for the underground. Frank was in the middle, Ben’s hand on his arm. To David’s relief he showed no sign of wanting to run; rather he seemed happy to have them between him and the anonymous crowds of people milling about. Everyone, it seemed, had decided to take the tube rather than struggle with cars and buses. The fog had even penetrated the station entrance; David could see it swirling around the lights in the tiled ceiling, a dirty yellow-green. He had seen smog several times before, but never this thick.
‘I’ll get the tickets,’ he said to Natalia. ‘What station?’
‘New Cross Gate.’
David pushed his way to the ticket booth, leaving the others standing by the wall, Frank shrinking back against it. David thought, he’s been shut away for weeks, and now he’s in the middle of all this. He bought five single tickets, realizing as he handed over a pound note that he had little money left. He put his wallet back, feeling the hard little pellet of the cyanide pill in his pocket.
They went down the escalator and stood at the back of the platform, which was heaving with people. A train came, but those like them at the back of the crowd were unable to get on. As it pulled out the remaining passengers moved up to the edge of the platform. Next to him David saw Frank looking down at the rails with a sort of horrified fascination. He gripped his arm. It felt painfully thin. ‘All right?’ he asked.
‘All these people,’ Frank muttered. On David’s other side, Geoff coughed again.
Another train rattled in. The doors opened, disgorging a crowd of passengers. They were tired and grumpy and one or two looked ill, coughing or gasping. David, still holding Frank’s arm, guided him quickly to a double seat and sat down beside him.
The journey into London was horrible. The train was packed, more and more people squeezing into the carriage at every stop. People were complaining about the smog, saying they had never seen anything like it. Some parts of the city were worse than others, they said; you could have a patch that was almost clear and then suddenly you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. It was as though the fog moved about, like a living thing.
Frank sat staring down to where someone had dropped an empty bottle of cream soda, which rattled to and fro on the dusty wooden carriage floor. He watched it intently.
‘Bearing up all right?’ David asked.
‘Yes.’ He did not look up. ‘That bottle.’
‘What about it?’
‘You’d think you could predict how long it would take to roll from one side to the other, where it’s going to end up, but you can’t. Just little variations in the way the train moves change its trajectory.’ He looked at David seriously. ‘People can’t predict things the way they believe they can. Too many variables.’
David knew he was thinking of their journey, the hope of reaching safety. ‘Well, don’t you go rolling away anywhere.’
Frank glanced up. ‘I won’t. I promised you.’
David smiled at him uncertainly. He wished Frank hadn’t told him in the field that his secret involved nuclear weapons. He wondered if those in charge of the abduction knew, or just the Americans. He supposed that if Fran
k’s knowledge might help the Germans to build an atom bomb, it might help the British as well. And the Russians. Did the Russians have the knowledge or resources to do something like that? Nobody knew; they could have been experimenting for years. The Anglo-German treaty forbade nuclear research in Britain, but who knew what went on in secret?
They changed trains twice. The crowds were a nightmare, the smog creating a haze inside the station concourses, which were jammed with people. It took well over an hour to get to the end of the line. When they got out into the street again the smog was thicker than ever; they could see each other but little more. As they stood on the pavement a bus suddenly loomed up, invisible a second before though every window was lit, then vanishing again just as suddenly.
‘Where to now?’ Geoff asked.
‘It’s close,’ Natalia said. ‘I memorized the directions.’
She led them to the left, walking at a snail’s pace into an area of small terraced houses with low, walled front yards. David hoped to God Frank wouldn’t make a run for it because if that happened, they would lose him in this. Ben was holding his arm. There were few people about, most edging their way along, clutching at hedges and fences; without anything to fix on you lost your sense of direction immediately. They could see smudgy yellow lights from streetlamps and vague muzzy glows from the curtained windows of the houses they passed, but nothing else. Distance was impossible to judge. It was very quiet, sound muffled by the swirling fog.
They almost collided with three young women walking slowly along, one behind the other, holding hands. They held scarves over the lower halves of their faces to keep out the stinking smog. Natalia asked if they were going the right way for Kitchener Street, and was told it was the next turning. When they had gone Natalia said, ‘We should do that, hold hands. Then we won’t lose each other.’
‘Good idea,’ Ben agreed quickly. He still held Frank’s arm, and David reached out to take his other hand. Frank said quickly, ‘That’s my bad hand. Take the wrist, not the hand, or it’ll hurt.’
‘Okay.’
Natalia took David’s other hand. Hers felt warm and dry. It struck him that he had never touched her before. All the time at the Brocks’ she had avoided him; he knew she didn’t want to make him feel worse when he was reunited with Sarah. But her touch made him realize he still wanted her.