by Don Jacobson
Her footsteps muffled by the thick carpeting running the length of the hall, she marched directly to the vacant desk adjacent to the great walnut-stained doors that bespoke of the Publisher’s office. Removing her gloves and stowing them in her handbag, she opened a lower drawer and deposited her purse inside. She carefully removed her hat, patting her coiffure to ensure that its normal perfection was undisturbed. Then she bent above a notepad upon her desk to compose a message.
Writing completed, the dama stepped over to the bulky DBE teletype machine and settled into the chair. She placed her message on the rest above the keyboard and began typing the strokes that punched dozens, then hundreds, and finally thousands of perforations into yellow paper tape. Those holes were the machine translation of her message which would electrify the Anubis team in London once it had been fed through the high-speed reader. The opening line told the story.
Bait taken. Winters/von Langsdorff to
London Two-Eleven___Details below.
Gatwick Airport, London, February 16, 1951
The final leg of his journey had been rocky indeed. Typical February English weather had tossed the aircraft about the sky. The airframe had groaned at the abuse, and more than one distraught passenger burst out in a screech of fear when one wing threatened to overtop the fuselage. Yet the TWA Constellation proved its mettle and settled onto Gatwick’s rain-slicked tarmac just thirty minutes behind schedule. Winters scrubbed his hand across his stubbled chin and cheeks. He had lacked the time to shave thanks to the tight connection in Paris. The Dakar flight had left five hours late from Senegal and had arrived equally late in the French capital.
His combined weariness after five days of travel, as well as rising excitement at coming closer to that which had evaded him three years before, dulled Winters’ senses. Of course, a healthy measure of conviction at his invisibility to the British, seemingly confirmed over the past six years, also contributed to his assumption that he was in no danger. That long-nurtured arrogance, rooted in his upbringing, led him to utterly ignore any of the people shuffling down the airplane’s long aisle.
Thus, he did not apprehend the wiry red-headed Frenchman who rose from the seat directly behind him. Nor did he comprehend the odd blankness, a nullity, a void in reality, that suddenly bloomed on his Six.[cxii] And, as untuned as he was, he could not sense the underlying reason for this alteration/control of his awareness. Wraithlike fingers stroked the filaments of his unconscious mind.
>rest easy
>safe
>bed and bath and drink shortly
>Fitzwilliam blind to you
>patience and calm path forward to
The image of Renoir’s painting ghosted above the corrupted contours of his mind, bringing him a surge of pleasure.
Winters, sheltered by a steward’s umbrella, clambered down the stairs rolled up to the Connie’s dolphin-shaped fuselage. Denis Robard trailed him. As if twins, the duo entered Customs to collect their luggage. Winters did not note that the Dakar revenue sticker on his valise bore a slight slash in green ink.
After Robard and Winters had slid into two different lines, neither Winter’s von Langsdorff Argentine passport nor his luggage aroused any suspicion that would warrant additional inspection by His Majesty’s Custom and Excise officers. He was passed through with no fanfare: just one more worn transcontinental traveler arriving in the heart of the British Empire, reduced as it had become.
Robard, who had been traveling light, was delayed in his passage through border control as the official deemed that his French passport required additional scrutiny. But, this was done with a wink-and-a-nod, all the better to facilitate the hand-off to a new watcher who would shepherd Winters through the Beehive to the curb where a line of black cabs was waiting to whisk all comers to destinations throughout the city.
Even with emotions smoothed and soothed by his Guide, Winters was taken aback as pushy Americans elbowed their way in front of him, taking the first two hackneys in line. The German pulled the door on the third and slid his portmanteau onto the floor before climbing in. He called out his destination to the cabbie who navigated the car away from the curb before roaring off toward downtown.
What Winters did not note, lost as he was in a pleasant reverie of what he would do to the painting when he finally acquired it, was the pair of steel-grey eyes, set in an unusual manner, peering back at him in the review mirror.
Chapter XLV
Oakham House parlor, Later that same evening
Richard Fitzwilliam and Lizzy Schiller were engaged in their favorite sport: bickering. To outsiders, their battles seemed as heated as any between Washington and Moscow with volleys fired and returned with varying degrees of accuracy and collateral damage. The family, though, compared the spats between this set of cousins with the battles of another pair—the original Richard Fitzwilliam and Fitzwilliam Darcy.
At this moment, the diminutive Mrs. Schiller was doing her best to be nose-to-nose with the towering—at least when compared to her slightly above five-foot stature—Viscount. Unfortunately, the best she could hope for was either to address the knot in his tie…or…as she did…push him down into a chair, all the better to gain a height advantage.
Her cheeks glowed with her anger as she took Fitzwilliam to task for his actions from earlier in the evening. Her aura bristled as she went after him.
“I simply cannot comprehend how you, Richard, could have allowed that bastard out of your sight! You had him locked in the back of a moving car. You could have driven him right into Scotland Yard!” she blustered.
Fitzwilliam raised his hands in self-defense before replying, “First off, my dear cousin, the cab was forced to stop several times. He could have lit off like a scalded cat if he had tipped me. While our trailing autos may have been able to track him after that, he would have been alerted that we were on to him.
“Winters ducking into the Underground when we had no watchers in place would have been an unmitigated disaster.
“Instead, I dropped him at Claridge’s where we had a team ready. Even now, as he is in the arms of Morpheus, our people occupy rooms on both sides of his and directly across the hall.”
Lizzy huffed, “I will grant you that Winters is no fool, but why not arrest him at Gatwick? There is no way he could have escaped, and we would be drinking Veuve Clicquot in memory of the Three Martyrs! I can imagine him rotting away in some dank hole that the Earl could locate—perhaps right by Hudson’s Bay in Northern Canada!”
Her pleasant thought was interrupted by The Founder who, having fortified himself with a deep draught of the Scot’s liquid art, said, “Richard did nothing…as did Denis…at my direction.
“I am not a lawyer, Grand-daughter. I left all that contract writing and legal wrangling either to my brother Philips or young Mr. Hunters. However, even I am student enough of the British legal system to understand that what we know to be true is utterly unpresentable in the Old Bailey.
“With what could we have charged Winters? Murder? Perhaps. Yet, the crime took place in time of war and in occupied France. Before what witnesses? Yes, t’is true that General Robard took statements, yet all they indicate is that the SS Standartenführer ordered the squad to fire.
“Even the rankest junior barrister could argue that Lady Kate was an admitted spy, Oberst Schiller was accounted a German traitor, and Monsieur Robard was clearly a member of the Maquis. Each received the ultimate and acknowledged penalty for their crimes in a time of declared war. None could contend against that. Consider the fates of Quisling, Laval, Lord Haw-Haw, and countless spies during and after the war.
“How many of our officers and soldiers would have to face the courts if Winters was convicted for ordering the execution?”
Bennet shifted in his wingback chair adjacent to the fire, re-crossing his legs before continuing, “Perhaps we could present him at Nuremburg. While we know that Winters is likely guilty of many SS atrocities, his simple presence in Hi
mmler’s Flash Cards only suggests that. Those who might have borne witness died at the far end of his squad’s Schmeissers.
“Even if we could assemble the documentary evidence to mount a successful prosecution, t’would take years; time we do not have.”
His pause forced the young persons grouped around him to consider the significance of his now more-often expressed concern—that his span in this here/now was much closer to the end than the beginning. So, too, did it draw the focus of Mrs. Bennet who, from her regular station behind her husband’s chair, broke the silence.
“And, we would no longer be in control of Winters’ fate. How I long to wrap my hands around his neck!”
Thomas reached up and back to pat his wife’s hand and said, “Yes, my dear, revenge on this animal would be sweet. However, if t’was just revenge we were seeking, Denis, given his special talent for wet work, could have left Winters ‘sleeping’ in his seat after everyone had debarked the airplane. Scotland Yard would have been scratching their heads over how a German-Argentine gentleman might had been murdered during the brief flight from Paris to London. Denis’ alias is unassailable. Monsieur Boulanger would have vanished into London’s fogs, never to be seen again.
“There is, though, a difference between retribution and justice, and the Universe, however, demands greater payment than an uncomplicated death for Marius Winters. T’is up to us to be Justitia’s handmaidens. [cxiii] The Wardrobe shall guide us.
“We must hold to the plan. Keep close watch over our man. He will tell us when to begin.”
The Bennets had made an early evening of it, bidding the other three couples adieu shortly after Lizzy had been mollified by Thomas’ statement of Anubis’ ultimate purpose. Fanny sat at her vanity, having cleansed her face of any residual foundation and rouge. She was doing her hundred, working her curls and scalp with her silver-handled brush. Bennet, as always, watched her, admiring her form, and acknowledging that she was aging more gracefully than he.
He had, though, eight years on her. While they had spent nearly four in the modern era, their bodies were still those of a Regency gentleman and lady, and as such were more susceptible to ailments long treatable in the modern era.
His health was beginning to betray him. Bennet’s joints, particularly his knees, felt every moment of his eight-and-fifty years. While that modern miracle, aspirin, relieved the pain, other complaints were more worrisome. Over the past months, Tom had found it more difficult to walk the golf courses that festooned the countryside between Pemberley and Selkirk. His breathing now became labored after several hundred steps. He daily thanked Oakham House’s custodians for the installation of an electric lift. He had also suffered from bouts of dizziness when he exerted himself.
Fanny knew it. Having observed her man in all his guises over the past eight-and-twenty years, she was becoming convinced…and concerned…that Thomas Bennet was entering the Winter of his life.
As she brushed her hair, Fanny pondered what would become of her if something happened to her husband before they returned to Longbourn. While she dearly loved her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and associated nieces and nephews, a longing had been growing for the familiar cadences of sisterly chatter rising in Derbyshire’s parlors. Now, with a possible conclusion to their quest before them, she could almost smell Hertfordshire’s freshness lifting over London’s eggy fug.
If Tom dies, I will be marooned here, never again to see Jane, Lizzy, Mary, or Lydia. Never again to bounce my baby Eddie, little Charles, or precocious George William on my knees, let alone to meet baby Maddie or little Maria Rose. And how I do miss my sister Philips and dear brother Edward.
Yet, I would trade all of that for a fit Thomas Bennet.
Tom broke through her brown study, “Fanny? Is aught amiss? You have stopped brushing, by my count, at three-and-eighty.”
She resumed stroking for another seventeen before she spun in the seat, propping her right arm on the chairback, to face her bedmate.
Then she offered, “I was considering a multitude of diverse items, my dear man. However, you were foremost amongst them.
“I am worried about you.
“You have always been so hale and hearty. Now, though, you do not have the same vigor as you did in years past. Is there anything you would wish to tell me? Have you seen a physician?”
Bennet was rocked by the concern in her voice. Far from being the old famous nerves with which he had been familiar, this was a woman’s mature and natural fear for the man in her life. That realization cracked through the denial which readily came to his lips but now remained unspoken.
He, too, was afraid—afraid that his health would fail before… He needed to confide with the one person who would understand.
He beckoned her over to sit on the bed by his side. After she arrived to sit thigh-by-thigh, Bennet wrapped an arm around her shoulder, gathering her in.
“There is no deceiving your eye, madam. I have been feeling my age of late.
“T’is more than just a general malaise. What may be its root cause, I cannot say. I am not weak, at least when I regulate my activities. However, if I seek to frisk about, t’is as if a vise clamps my chest. I cannot breathe, and my legs become like jelly.”
Fanny’s eyes snapped up at his face, pink now, but all too often washed in a greyish cast with his lips tending toward purple. Her hand gripped his free one.
She gasped, “Vise-like pain? Legs that are weak? Tom, those sound like the complaints my papa made in the months before he took to his bed. When the London physician examined him, all that man could do was shake his head, tell Mama that his heart was failing, and that his fate was in God’s hands! He was dead in a week.”
Bennet softly said, “Fanny, there are some matters over which we have no control, although there are fewer today than back in our day. I did seek out Dr. Wilson. He examined me and conducted some tests at The London. He detected an irregular beat, an arrhythmia, and prescribed digitalis and rest.
“What he also said was that if I exercise care, there should not be any reason for this to be life-threatening. T’will be an inconvenience, Wilson cautioned, that will force me to moderate my behavior—no more cigars, fewer heavy meals, reduced stress, and the like.”
Fanny looked at Bennet skeptically and pushed upon the spot which he had avoided, “But, of course, you neglected to tell him that your life has been nothing but stress since we stepped from the Wardrobe. You conveniently left out that you are behaving like you were five-and-twenty as we seek to bring in Winters.
“And, what will happen to me if Winters decides to dispatch you as he did Manfred? I vow, Mr. Bennet, if you do not pass off parts of this idiotic plan and are killed or drop dead because of it, I will…I will…”
Fanny stuttered into silence and broke from his caress, jumping to her feet, and dashing across the chamber. She stood with her back to him, arms wrapped around her middle, shoulders shaking as she wept over the words she had anticipated but feared owning awareness of their meaning.
His footsteps padded softly behind her. Tom’s scent—tobacco, dust, and old leather—enveloped her slightly before his arms.
She spun in his embrace and wept into his pajamas. He sought to comfort her, stroking her hair and murmuring those eternally soothing sounds. And, eventually, Mrs. Bennet calmed.
Bennet, finally assured that her emotions had settled, re-approached her final demand, speaking to relax, but without allowing any room for discussion, “Fanny, I assure you that everything about the Winters operation is under control. The other members of the team are doing the heavy lifting. All I need to do is to be there at the end. The boys will reel him in. We cannot deviate now.”
Knowing that there was little way in which she could reason with him, Mrs. Bennet played into his assumptions about women, speaking into his broad chest, “If you are sure, Tom, then, of course, you must do what you think best. I would only ask that I may be there when you bring him down
, for I would wish to see his face.”
But, if you think for one minute, dear husband, that Frances Lorinda Bennet will be the meek little woman, you have ignored every sign since the day we met!
Chapter XLVI
Pellicci’s Café, Bethnal Green Road, February 20, 1951
Winters stepped out of the black cab which had carried him from the golden quarter and Claridge’s back into the darker warrens of town. His gentle outreach over the past three days had led him from the hotel’s bell captain to one illicit gambling den and then to others, gradually ascending into the upper reaches of London’s underworld.
Marius had made certain to leave tantalizing evidence of his flush accounts as he burned through a stack of £100 notes at first one back-alley card room and then another. At each, the German let it be known that he was hoping to play in games where like-minded gentlemen were not constrained by the pedestrian table limits that he had thus far experienced. The card runner at his most recent session suggested that if he wished for unlimited wagering, there were games available, but only after his resources and antecedents had been approved.
A note passed to him by a bellman had led him to the cabstand in front of his hotel. He handed the note, a cross scribed in green ink on one corner, over the seat to the hack, waited for it to be returned, and ultimately settled back onto the stained cloth seat. His mood was elevated for he knew that this game would also give him an entrée into a world where artwork with questionable provenance was never subjected to uncomfortable scrutiny so long as they could be certified as genuine.
Winters’ near-euphoria was enhanced by a subtle presence that tamped down his natural caution while massaging his pleasure centers. His Gardiner blood, unknown to him, opened his mind to unseen dimensions while another force obscured the Guide’s meddling. Thus, he never noticed the two gentlemen, one older and moving with a noticeable limp and the other tall and youthfully agile, sliding into the black cab directly behind his in front of the hotel.