Glory Boys (41 page)

And she said ‘yes’.

Of course she did. She loved Willard. Loved and admired him. He was a man any woman in the world would be proud to have as a husband. Who else could have arranged something like this? The roses. The evening sun. The lake rippled in gold and crimson.

And it was only afterwards – after she’d said yes, and they’d kissed, and Willard himself had rowed back across the lake, and after they’d drunk champagne, and eaten oysters and lobster, and phoned their families, and made love not once but twice – that Rosalind even became aware of a tiny drip-drip-drip of disappointment.

‘Will?’ she said, addressing her three-quarters asleep fiancé.

‘Mmm?’

‘Those roses, they smelled so wonderful.’

‘Mmm.’

‘How did you manage it? Hothouse roses, they hardly ever smell.’

‘They didn’t smell. Not a whiff.’

‘Not a whiff? But…’

‘Had to use perfume. Buckets of the stuff.’

‘You used perfume? That was perfume?’

‘Mmm.’

But Willard’s ‘mmm’ didn’t mean anything at all. He’d been mostly asleep to begin with. He was fast asleep now. And Rosalind wasn’t. She was wide awake. Feeling her new diamond ring colossal on her finger. Feeling desolate in the knowledge that she’d been wooed with three thousand perfect roses, not one of which had smelled.

84

‘Gee, it’s hot, isn’t it?’ Mamie plucked at the neckline of her dress where it hung damply over her breasts.

‘Eighty-seven in the shade, barometer high, humidity high, wind six knots from the sou-south-east.’

‘You must get kind of lonesome in that little office of yours. You OK in there?’

‘Fine.’

‘You always say that. “Fine.” You ever not fine?’

‘Sometimes I guess.’

Abe reached for the cup of coffee Suky had made for him earlier. Suky believed that coffee grounds were reusable for as long as they continued to colour the water at all. Abe’s cup of coffee was a thin grey, with an oily sheen floating on the top. Neither Mamie nor Suky were the sort of company that Abe enjoyed most, but he liked the break, and the girls too enjoyed their chats with the famous airman. The two girls exchanged glances. After a little nudging and winking, Suky cleared her throat and began.

‘Do you ever… I mean… No, sorry, I shouldn’t ask.’ Suky blushed hard and giggled furiously.

‘What? It’s OK to ask.’

‘Me and Mamie were wondering if you ever had a girl. I mean… I don’t mean… You know… We were just wondering. That’s all.’

‘If you mean, have I ever, then yes. If you mean right now, then no.’

Something rose and fell in Suky’s throat at that information. It was a fairly simple bet that there was a lot of speculation over Abe’s relationship with Pen Hamilton. But Suky’s blush was pressing even harder now.

‘And Miss Hamilton. Is she …? Does she …? I guess… I’ve never heard of a lady wanting to fly airplanes before.’

‘There are a few ladies who do fly airplanes these days. Miss Hamilton happens to be exceptionally good at it.’

Suky was bursting to ask whether Pen had a boyfriend – or better still, a succession of super handsome, fabulously daring, millionaire aviator boyfriends – but Abe’s jaw was clamped shut. It wasn’t something he liked talking about. Heck, these days even the thought of it all made him uncomfortable. He kept silent and the girl went stuttering on until eventually she bottled the question. He finished his coffee and stood up.

Mamie and Suky were responsible for typing up and filing most of the paperwork that came into Marion. When a freighter unloaded its wares, a scribbled cargo note was hastily initialled and sent up to their office. Their part of things was to type up the note, making two carbons for each original. The original was filed, the two carbons passed on to Mason. Everything was like that. Somewhere down the hall, a book-keeper processed all Marion’s financial transactions into a standard set of accounts. Each week he passed up his most recent book-keeping sheets to Mamie and Suky for typing up. Payroll: the same thing. A clerk somewhere else came up with the weekly who-gets-what list. Mamie and Suky typed and filed.

And the two girls had a system. Incoming paperwork went straight into a wire basket that sat on the filing cabinet closest to the door. When they were ready – and they weren’t girls who liked to rush – they unloaded the basket and went to work. And Abe got into a system too. When he entered the room, he put whatever he was carrying down on top of the basket. When he left again he picked it up and took it away.

‘I’d best get on,’ he said.

‘Sure.’

‘Thanks for the coffee.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Well then…’

Abe reached down and picked up his papers. Not just his, but those below as well. He didn’t do it with any secrecy, he just did it.

He walked back to his office, leaving his door wide open, so anyone at all could just walk in. He began work on his flight logs. The papers he’d taken from Mamie and Suky lay on the table in front of him. It was the weekly payroll charts, written out in neat black ink. The papers lay close enough that Abe could see them, but he wasn’t copying them. If anyone had happened to enter his office at that moment, he’d have looked the picture of innocence: a man bent over his work, a man who’d accidently picked up some tedious little papers that didn’t belong to him.

And that was all they’d see. Even if they ransacked the office, examined every shred of paper, if they’d strip-searched Abe and ripped his plane, his possessions, and everything else into minuscule fragments, they wouldn’t come across so much as a comma that belonged to the incriminating accounts.

Because the chances are they’d be looking in the wrong places for the wrong things. They wouldn’t even know to keep their eyes out for the only things they should have been looking for. Things, such as:

– A cotton thread about five feet long running from Abe’s hand, casually tapping against the side of his chair, to the window outside.

– A bent paperclip, tied to the end of the thread, but only loosely tied, so that one short, sharp tug from Abe would dislodge the clip and send it tumbling to the ground.

– A couple of loose wires, each showing about a quarter inch of bare copper, part of a bundle of cables that ran down from the roof. The paperclip was hooked around one of the wires, so that every time Abe’s hand tapped on the thread, the wire touched the other one, completing an electrical circuit.

– A length of drainpipe on the roof, invisible from the ground, aimed like an artillery piece up the hill towards Independence.

– And finally this: an electric light bulb, concealed inside the drainpipe, that came on only when the circuit was closed. Because of the length of pipe shielding it, the bulb’s glow was completely invisible to anyone closer at hand.

Plus, of course, if the people looking had been almost super-humanly smart, they’d have guessed the final part of the jigsaw: a lanky storekeeper up in Independence, sitting at his bedroom window with a telescope, steadily pointed at the winking light down on a Marion rooftop. And Hennessey’s good at this game by now.
The Rudiments of Morse Code
is no longer needed. The storekeeper’s right hand copies Abe’s message as fluently as if he were copying from a sheet of newsprint.

But this isn’t newsprint that he’s copying. He’s copying Marion’s most secret financial documents. These are the documents which may one day clinch the case for the prosecution. The documents will prove that Marion is a business; that the business is vastly profitable; that the people who draw salary or profit from the business are earning easily enough to be liable for federal income tax. All the other information that Abe and Pen have so far collected hasn’t been worth as much as this. And it’s being steadily copied.

Letter by letter. Line by line. Incriminating page by incriminating page.

85

It was late afternoon. Willard had drunk half a bottle of wine over lunch and was feeling sleepy. But sleep would have to wait. He had wedding plans to sort out, endless Firm-related business to sort out, a marital home to buy and get ready.

And then there was Rockwell.

Mason was watching the man constantly now. He had put his best men on it. And so far they’d found nothing. Not a string bean. Mason’s latest report covered everything: movements, conversations, timings, dates, items searched. As ever, the man looked clean. Willard studied the report, then phoned Mason for their daily briefing. They went through various items of business, before the conversation turned, as ever, to Rockwell.

‘The guy’s clean, Thornton,’ Mason complained with a sigh. ‘He’s actually a nice guy. I reckon it’s about time we laid off him. I’m getting kinda sick of it.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Willard wanted to believe Mason, but he also felt the pressure of his father’s scrutiny, his own burning desire to prove his capability. ‘As soon as we’re sure.’

‘We
are
sure. He’s sitting three doors away from the most secret papers we’ve got. He’s not made any attempt to copy them, leastways not unless he’s writing in invisible ink on invisible paper. The guy doesn’t even keep his door closed.’

‘But he asked for an office, right? When he had a whole house to work in?’

‘Right. Only he’s not the luxury villa type of guy. You know that.’

‘Right. So why does he work for us? When he doesn’t give a damn?’

It was a well-worn dispute. The two men batted familiar arguments at each other, both only half-convinced by their own assertions. Only this time, Mason came up with something new. He brought it up with a chuckle swelling in his throat.

‘Ha! Only he does.’

‘Does what? Give a damn?’

‘Right. He wants money pretty bad. You want to guess why?’

‘His parents have a farm, you said.’

‘Yeah, only it ain’t that.’

‘There’s something else?’

‘What else would get him? What would the guy want more than anything in the world?’

Willard rubbed his hand across his forehead and was suddenly struck by a quite unexpected picture: a picture from wartime, from the simple French aerodrome where Captain Rockwell had briefed his pilots. There was a sadness in the man’s face which Willard had never noticed at the time, but which he was quite sure he hadn’t invented. What would Captain Rockwell most want? That was easy: he wanted his pilots to come back alive.

Willard didn’t say so. Instead he answered, ‘I don’t know. What?’

‘An airplane, of course. He wants an airplane which can fly to Paris.’

‘The Orteig Prize?’ Willard gripped the phone more tightly. He felt a glow of happy relief begin to spread outwards from his chest.

‘The Ortik? Yeah, something like that. Jeez, Thornton, maybe you understand that kinda thing. Me, I think the guy’s nuts. He says he doesn’t even like Paris.’

But it made sense. The thing that had always bothered Willard most was this: what possible motive could drag his old commander into a life of crime? If the answer were in order to win the Orteig Prize, then maybe the whole thing began to make sense. But Willard had become too much the perfect Investment Bureau professional to relax too quickly.

‘That accounts for Rockwell, maybe. It doesn’t account for the Hamilton girl.’

‘Right. Only like you say, she’s a girl.’

‘So? I don’t –’

‘She’s got a thing for him. I didn’t know it for sure before, but now I do.’

‘They’re together? He and she, they’re –?’

‘No. Leastways, I’m pretty sure they’re not. Only she’s hot for him. He came pretty close to telling me as much, but I figured the rest. Why else would a dame do something like this?’

The happy glow spread further still. Rockwell was nuts about planes, the girl was nuts about Rockwell. It all began to make sense. And if so, then Willard could relax. He needn’t take action. His old commander would be allowed to live, not die.

‘So we can lay off?’ said Mason.

‘Gosh, well it’s certainly nice to know…’

‘I sent some guys down to check what this mechanic Hueffer is up to. And everything Rockwell says seems to be true. They’re testing out a whole lot of airplane designs, they’ve already been speaking to a couple of airplane makers… It all checks out, buddy.’

Willard hardened. It wasn’t Mason’s place to call him ‘buddy’. Willard felt a mean-spirited desire to remind Mason who was boss. He leafed through the most recent batch of documents Mason had sent up and found a list entitled ‘Marion newcomers: last four months’. Mason had compiled the list at Willard’s request. There were fifteen names on the list and Willard began to question Mason on each one, with a needless combination of sharpness and pomposity.

But Willard’s attention was only half taken up with Mason’s answers.
What had Captain Rockwell wanted most? He had wanted his pilots to come back alive. He had wanted Willard to come back alive.
The realisation prompted a curious mixture of feelings: happiness, pride, nostalgia, longing, grief. His attention was only half on the conversation as he and Mason worked their way down the list. They reached the last name: ‘(Lundmark, Bradley ??)’

‘Why the question marks? Why the brackets?’

‘Not sure about his first name. It’s only a kid. A youngster from Brunswick that does jobs for us. He ain’t strictly a resident, only we keep him kinda busy, so he hangs out with us plenty.’

Willard shifted in his seat, annoyed. ‘Why? Why do that? That’s a security risk. We should only keep people in town who…’

Willard lectured Mason, until even he grew bored with the sound of his voice.

‘Yeah, sure, you’re right. We’ll send him back. He’s only a kid though. I wouldn’t worry.’

Somewhere a thought jabbed in the back of Willard’s brain.

‘A kid? How old?’

‘Don’t know. Fifteen, maybe.’

‘The surname? It’s not so common. Wasn’t one of your neighbours up the hill called that?’

‘What? Lundmark?’ Mason’s voice suddenly tightened. Willard spotted the tightening with glee. He’d caught Mason out and would relish pressing home his advantage.