by Don Jacobson
“T’will be up to you and, perhaps, your father to create a world in which he will suspect nothing and be blinded by the urge to continue his revenge. Given your recent experience with both our German and Russian foes, you will know how to create the deception we require.
“I will be but an actor in the scenario. But, please do not exclude me.”
“Nor me,” Mrs. Bennet insisted.
Chapter XLIII
In front of the Church of St. John on Bethnal Green, January 6, 1951
Billy Hill was weary.[cvi] Although not yet 40, his rough life in London’s underworld had taken its toll. Prison, too many cigarettes, and too much liquor—both good and bad—made long nights like this last seem to have an extra hour or two. The watery light of a winter sunrise thrown upon the damp surface of the Roman Road served only to cast a gloomy pall along the deserted thoroughfare, emphasizing its Saturday loneliness.
Hill was breaking with his usual practice of motoring home after a long night of cards with the Kray twins and other members of their gang. He was amused that the younger set found his insights to be useful, much as he had found those elderly hands who had cut their teeth in the Moriarty/Moran organization to have a more sophisticated view of crime than simple smash-and-grab. But, six hours at the tables had left him with a fume-driven headache pulsing behind his eyes. He decided to take heed of the naggings of his wife, Gyp, to get more exercise.
As he approached Bethnal Green Road, along which he had instructed his driver to troll while awaiting Hill and his three bodyguards, the gangster passed close by a solitary gent seated upon a bench situated to offer a view of St. John’s façade. The man was somewhat older. He was bespectacled, clad in a grey overcoat above grey suit pants: his grey fedora tipped back exposing his face to examination. His features, though, proved thoroughly unremarkable to the eye. He was so ordinary that neither of Hill’s point men had paid him any mind as he sat there posing no threat, his ungloved hands resting atop his knees. Grey suited him.
Yet, when Hill was within three feet, this unknown individual addressed the crime lord in a voice that betrayed his upper-class origins, “Mr. Hill, please do not be startled. I would speak with you about matters which could prove to be of the greatest interest to you.”
As Hill, jolted from his early morning reverie, came to an abrupt halt, his men swiftly collapsed about him, forming a protective ring, weapons readied for quick action. Hill, himself, immediately dipped his hand into his overcoat’s pocket, seeking the comforting taped grip of his homemade shiv.
He coolly assessed his questioner before he growled back hoping to intimidate this interloper who dared to violate his bubble. His South London Cockney burned through, unmoderated over the years, “And, just ‘oo would you be to be interruptin’ me mornin’ constitutional?”
Unfazed, his elder replied, “You may call me Barraclough.[cvii] I assure you that you need not be concerned about my intentions. Please, I beg you, have one of your men frisk me.
“If I might be permitted to stand…”
Hill nodded and motioned to one of his guards. The man stepped forward and assisted the older fellow to his feet. While he efficiently patted down Barraclough, that worthy gibed, “I left my walking stick behind lest you consider it a threat.”
The heavy finished his work and nodded back at Hill who then motioned Barraclough to resume his seat. The gentleman patted the boards next to him in an invitation for Hill to join him. Billy sat.
Barraclough opened the conference, “I am certain that you trust your men implicitly, Mr. Hill, but I do not. What I have to say to you is quite sensitive and not appropriate for all ears. I would leave it up to you to decide with whom you share this. I do not doubt that you will find that you must offer some explanation to your subordinates, yet, underlings only require that which will allow them to complete their tasks.
“The bigger picture should be reserved for you alone.”
Hs silence left a hole which Hill’s ruminations took but seconds to fill.
Then, “Back orf, boys. Mr. Barraclough ‘n me ‘ave some biz-nez to discuss.”
The protective cloud widened to a 10-yard perimeter.
Hill challenged before Barraclough could continue, “’ow’d you find me? Not as if I’d be tellin’ the world where I wuz th’ past few ‘ours.”
Barraclough sighed as if he was a teacher being quizzed by his youthful charge, but he answered in his characteristic voice, modulating on either side of monotone, “T’is not as if your tutelage of the Kray Twins is a great secret. The organization I represent knows and understands you more than you would care to imagine. Through no failing of your own—nor that of the Krays—were we able to suss out your card parlor.
“T’is only a question of resources…and we have a surfeit of those.
“Fear not, Mr. Hill, we are not law enforcement, although it has been suggested that the Government does bend to our whim from time-to time. That factor may prove to be an inducement you will remember when you are considering my proposition.
“Another, but not the last, nor, I would imagine the least, is that we would be indebted to you. We always pay our debts from both sides of the ledger, be they to your benefit or detriment. Thus, t’would be a wondrous thing to have us owing you for a service you had performed on our behalf than, conversely, one which you had somehow denied us, forcing our eyes to another, less capable and, possibly, competitive group.
“We would find that inconvenience to be rather displeasing.”
Ah, thought Hill, now the man speaks as one of my clan, showing me the velvet glove, but reminding me that there is a fist of steel inside. But, I wonder, just how much and of what grade?
Barraclough, not noticing that he was cutting into Hill’s ruminations, continued, “I will answer your question, though, with three words that should tell all.
“The Five Families.”
Few things surprised Hill, a hardened criminal since the 1920s, comfortable as he was with the violent currents roiling the metropolis’ seedier quarters. However, the mention of the wealthiest First Circle combine in Great Britain focused his attention as nothing else would except, perhaps, intelligence of a poorly-secured shipment of sterling.
He knew the Families always trod on the side of the angels, except when they did not. Hill had heard of at least one such moment from an old hand, a large lump of muscle named Wadkins, who had survived the arrest of Colonel Sebastian Moran by Sherlock Holmes and the subsequent collapse of his crime empire. Wadkins had told a young Billy of a time when the Families had reached out to the Colonel back in the 1890s. Moran had fulfilled his commission on the platform of the Gare du Nord within a day of accepting it. Wadkins had held the miscreant as the old shikar poured a vial of vitriol on the man’s face, obliterating it.
The favor thus earned had allowed Moran to escape the noose at his trial. Holmes, curiously, did not object. The ancient Red Judge, a Wilson, instead had fitted Moriarty’s right-hand man for L-plates.[cviii] The Five Family’s beneficence had ensured that Moran’s enforced retirement at Wandsworth was mitigated by luxury furnishings, first-rate food and drink, and the old man’s preferred Cuban cigars. The esteem of the Five Families was unique and valuable. But, Barraclough had intimated that good will was but part of the potential payoff.
Whatever may be coming next, Hill was determined to hear Barraclough out. He told him as much.
Barraclough nodded and moved deeper, “We would like you to do a job of work for us. Why we ask this is unimportant.
“In early February, should you agree to my terms, you will be advised of a particular shipment which we will require you to intercept. T’will be a van moving through the streets of the city in the early morning hours. It will be preceded and followed by identical vehicles to sow confusion as to which lorry will be found carrying that which we wish you to take.
“However, as you have divined, the shipment will be in the middle vehicle. Therein will be a driver and one guard.
“Under no circumstances will anyone be injured in this heist, “his voice became harder at this, “If anything of that nature befalls our employees, t’will be you, not your confederates, who will pay recompense. Are we clear on that?”
Hill replied, “O’ course, Mr. Barraclough. Not a ‘air on their ‘eads will be mussed. Never fear. My boys know their biz-nez. An’, if’n I tells ‘em nobody gits dinged, nobody gits dinged!
“Now, whut is it you want grabbed?”
Noting the man’s eager compliance and apparent acceptance of the project, Barraclough forged ahead, “I fear that is one of those items of which knowledge on your part is not required. There will be five crates, each easily handled by a healthy man. We only require you to deliver them to us at a designated location.
“However, I would hope that you will accept that we will be forced to publicize the caper. At no point, though, will your organization be implicated. Mayhap, though, you could suggest a convenient individual who would be willing to take responsibility. That would allow us to bruit that an arrest had been made, but that the items had not been recovered.”
Hill pondered and then brightened as a name popped up, “Clive Timson would be willin’ to take the collar, Mr. Barraclough. ‘is family have been doin’ biz-nez, if you know what I mean, in the East End since dirt was young. All we’d need to do is take care of ‘is kin while he’s a guest of the King. E’s no grass, ‘e isn’t.”[cix]
“I will take your word about Timson as Gospel. Once we move ahead, you can advise how we might best offer that sort of assistance to his family. I would assume you would wish to manage those funds,” Barraclough stated. Hill nodded.
“As I earlier expressed,” he added, “being owed a debt by the Five Families is a happy circumstance. However, I would not expect you to commit your organization to an enterprise that would deliver a boon which could be enjoyed by only one person, albeit your good self. You would necessarily have to pay expenses as well as compensate your men out of your own pocket. That would be unacceptable to a smart businessman such as yourself.
“Thus, we are prepared to pay all your costs, say £10,000 with an additional £25,000 for your own time in this matter.”
Hill’s eyes widened at the idea that £35,000 pounds, less some outlays and paydays, could be his for doing that which he was always ready and willing to do. Then they narrowed as his innate greed reared its head.
His seatmate noted the change and snapped, “The Families do not negotiate, Mr. Hill. All our offers are of a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nature.”
Hill put up both hands in defense, “All right, M. Barraclough. Ya can’t blame a cove for lookin’ to better things up, if ya know whut I mean.
“ ’owever, your terms are okay with me. ‘ow will I know th’ ‘oo, where, and when?”
Barraclough rubbed both hands twice down his pantlegs, waited, and then repeated the action before replying, “I assure you, Mr. Hill, we will contact you with the requisite information on the shipment and the location where it must be delivered. I will leave the logistics of your role in the project up to you. That will include a discreet dropping of my name as an individual to whom a potential purchaser of the goods may apply.
“I must congratulate you, in advance, upon your professionalism, Mr. Hill. If the Families are satisfied with the outcome of the enterprise, I would imagine that other tangible expressions of our gratitude will be forthcoming.”
With that, Barraclough stopped speaking and once again assumed his original passive pose, hands clasping his knees. Hill waited for more, but when none was forthcoming, he hauled himself to his feet and beckoned his men back to him.
As the mobster made to move off, Barraclough called out to him, spearing him with his unusual hazel eyes, “Do not play us false, Mr. Hill. There will be no place far enough, no hole deep enough, to hide yourself from our wrath.”
Hill said nothing, but his huddled posture and nod indicated that he had heard the warning. He resumed his trudge toward Bethnal Green Road where he clambered into the back seat of his waiting car.
Bennet waited until the sound of Hill’s auto motoring away had faded into the distant background. Then he lifted himself from the bench and crossed the Roman Road, pausing beneath the church’s portico for a moment to scan the scene against any watchers.
Making his way into the sanctuary, he crossed over to where Alois Schiller stood towering above a pew bench. He was in the process of stowing the sniper scope in the hard-sided case, having already broken down the deadly Mosin-Nagant rifle he had picked up in Vienna where Soviet soldiers rubbed shoulders with their well-heeled Western counterparts.
Looking up as Bennet approached, he said, “I assume that all went well with our friend from the wrong side of the tracks. I caught your signal and came down before one of his outriders had the sense to look up.
“Please, Grandfather, promise me that you will not do that again. I may have been able to drop Hill if he had tried anything…and probably two of his beastie boys. But, the third?”
Bennet tossed Lizzy’s husband a satisfied look, “You worry too much, Alois, my boy. Hill never would have jeopardized such a payday by menacing me. For men like him, it is always about the money.[cx]
“Speaking of money, did Lord David execute our commission?”
Alois held a reverential view of his father-in-law, the Managing Director of Darcy-Bingley Enterprises, and his business acumen. He straightened from his work and assumed a stance which bespoke this attitude, unwilling as he was to allow even The Founder to intimate that his Lizzy’s father would be anything less than successful.
“But, of course, Grandfather. The purchase of La Nación closed yesterday morning in Buenos Aires. T’is now another newspaper in the DBE portfolio. With its conservative leanings and huge circulation, this is likely the paper Winters will read when he cannot get his hands on a German-language rag.”
Bennet chuckled and replied, “Now, do not get all Teutonic, on me, youngster. This scheme has far too many moving parts for any of us to assume that everything is proceeding smoothly. Was it not one of your Prussian generals from the last century, von Moltke the Elder, I believe, who wrote No plan survives the first shot?
“We must pray that gunfire—figurative or otherwise—is not a contingency in this plan.”
Chapter XLIV
Buenos Aires, February 9, 1951
Winters lounged in an outdoor café facing onto the Plaza de Mayo when the front page of a newspaper being read by a man at a neighboring table grabbed his attention. The central photograph resonated, rising out of his memory, but it was something which he had expected never again to encounter. Yet, as he strained his sixty-year-old eyes to understand what was being written about it, the reader folded the gazette and slapped it down on the table, called to the waiter and handed him a few pesos for his coffee. Then he stood and moved off, leaving the journal on one of the chairs
The German rose and stepped over to the vacated table and scooped up the newspaper. Settling back in his seat, Winters snapped the paper, removing wrinkles and folds, and scanned the front page of that day’s edition of La Nación. A five-column headline screamed of yesterday’s daring late night art heist in the deserted streets of London which had netted a band of thieves three Monets and two Renoirs. Already one of the thieves, a habitual criminal named Clive Timson, had been captured: one of the Monet masterpieces, removed from its frame and stretcher and hidden away in his work van, in his possession. The other four paintings were still in the wind.
Ach so…the theft took place while the paintings were being moved from Matlock House to the Tate. Apparently the Fitzwilliams thought they could fool everybody by sending a million pounds of art through city streets without guards. Some greedy fool must have talked of the plans. I doubt if this Timson is the mastermind. He is probably just a small fish. The whale behind the plot is waiting to collect and is already looking for buyers.
Yet, while he read the article, his eye kept being pulled to the picture that rested in the middle of the columns above the La Nación’s fold. The caption called out the words he knew by heart:
Portrait of Lady Fitzwilliam as a Young Woman (1892), C-A Renoir
A firm resolve overtook him. He rose, threw some cash on the table and, with the paper folded under his arm, hustled away from the café.
He was so intent on his mission that he neglected to notice that the same man who had left the newspaper behind had begun following him, some twenty feet behind and off to his right. Within two minutes that first fellow had peeled off to be replaced by a young matron, the makings for her husband’s evening’s dinner nestled in a net bag. Eventually she, too, was replaced, this time with an older woman, clearly of some means. That lady trailed Winters as he turned into the Thomas Cook agency and settled in front of one of the agents.
Flipping through brochures detailing Cook’s Tours to Africa, the woman hovered nearby to hear Winters booking flights from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro and then to Recife in Brazil before the trans-Atlantic hop to Dakar, Senegal. He had a one-day lay-over in that province before flying north to Paris. From there, Winters booked a final leg into London Airport. All told, the man would require nearly one week to travel from summer into winter.
Watching as he wrote a bank draft for the full amount, she heard the clerk advising Herr von Langsdorff that his tickets would be delivered to his home in San Fernando tomorrow.[cxi] He would need to present his passport at the aerodrome when he began his journey on February 11th. Winters thanked the man and left the agency.
The lady waited a full five minutes after Winters/von Langsdorff’s departure. Then she carefully dropped one brochure into her handbag, before herself leaving the agency, secure in the knowledge that Winters was moving to his next destination in the middle of a cloud of watchers. Her heels clicking on the pavement, the lady proceeded to stop at two shops—a milliners and a pharmacy—before she straightened her course and made directly to the Florida Street offices of La Nación. Crossing to the bank of elevators where she was greeted with a knowing look from the operator who instantly closed the cage and sent the machine non-stop to the top floor.