The English Assassin (19 page)

A feeling of intense boredom swept over Lobkowitz. He had heard this remark made by a score of men in a score of different cities.

“That’s finished, at least,” Josef went on. “But it could all be ruined again. We must work fast.”

“Do you know what the terrorists are?” Lobkowitz asked. “Do you know what movement they support?”

“Not yet. That’s the least of our worries.” The aide tapped his teeth with his cane and became reflective. Prinz Lobkowitz asked him no further questions.

* * *

Back in the Presidential Palace, Prinz Lobkowitz felt lonely. He sat in his huge, impressive office and looked at no-one and nothing. At his back were the crossed flags of both their nations, hanging over the eighteenth-century fireplace. From a window which opened onto the balcony he contemplated the street. In the middle of the avenue, waving a sword and mounted on a horse, stood a granite statue of some other antique hero. Even as Lobkowitz looked, it blew up. It was as if every statue he glanced at immediately burst into fragments. The noble stone head rose towards him and then, as he covered his eyes, burst through the window, taking both glass and frame into the room and bouncing, chipped but unbroken, into the empty fireplace.

For a second Prinz Lobkowitz thought it was his own head. Then he smiled. He crouched down behind his massive desk, keeping it between him and the window in case there were further explosions. After all, he thought, he had no axe to grind. If they didn’t want him, fair enough. He’d be glad to get home.

The telephone began to ring. Lobkowitz felt for it on top of the desk and found it. “Lobkowitz!”

“Are you hurt, sir?” It was General Josef’s voice.

“No, not at all, but the firedog’s a bit bent.”

“I’ll be up right away.”

As he waited for Josef’s arrival, Lobkowitz sat on the edge of the desk and lit the last of his Black Cat cigarettes. Before he crumpled the packet and threw it into his wastepaper bin, he took the brightly coloured card (one of a series of fifty given away free with the cigarettes) and tucked it into the top breast pocket of the civilian waistcoat he had always worn under his uniform. It was a picture of a Triceratops, number eighteen in a series of dinosaurs.

The red-and-black packet was the only piece of scrap in the otherwise clean steel wastepaper basket. He felt for it.

The gilded doors swung open. Una Persson stood there, dressed all in black, a rifle slung over her back, a beret on her shining curls. She opened her arms to him, smiling.

“Darling! I have defeated you again!”

In the early hours of a summer morning a cat kills a mouse in the kitchen, letting it run a little way and then stopping it again. Outside in the garden large black slugs crawl over the iron furniture. There is movement in the toolshed. There is a whisper from beyond the trees.

A crowd of about 200 attacked two Army scout cars and a Land Rover in Belfast last night after one of them ran over and killed a five-year-old girl. Cars, vans and lorries were set on fire and there were bursts of machine-gun fire which injured four young children. The girl was one of a crowd of children playing on the street corner. An Army spokesman said she jumped under the wheels of the leading scout car.

Morning Star
, 9 February, 1971

A widow, her five children and an uncle died in a fire at a cottage in Pontypool yesterday. Firemen found the bodies of Mrs Patricia Evans, aged 34, Jacqueline, 13, Garry, 11, Joanne, eight, Martin, six, and Catherine, two, in a bedroom. On the stairs was the body of Mr John Edwards, aged 63, the uncle who came to rescue them.

Guardian
, 9 February, 1971

George Lasky, aged four, was drowned when he fell into an ice-covered pond in a field at Slough yesterday. He had gone on the ice to pick up a ball.

Guardian
, 2 March, 1971

Murder squad detectives set up headquarters in a holiday beach café in Cornwall yesterday after the badly-battered body of a 17-year-old high school girl had been found near the entrance to a cliff-top camp site.

Guardian
, 15 March, 1971

A three-year-old boy was found dead in a disused refrigerator last night.

Guardian
, 29 June, 1971

Lynn Andrews, aged 10, was stripped almost naked and punched and kicked to death while her mother looked on helpless, it was said in court at Woolwich yesterday. Raymond John Day (31), unemployed, was sent for trial charged with murdering the girl.

Guardian
, 30 June, 1971

Jerry Cornelius was in Sandakan when the news came of the resumption of hostilities. The news was brought by Dassim Shan, Jerry’s major-domo, while Jerry swam in the cool waters of the palace pool, all pink-and-blue marble and tinkling fountains.

Rajah? Dassim, feet together, stood uncertainly on the edge of the pool, one hand against a jade pillar. Jerry was some distance out in the middle of the pool, hidden in the shade. Milky light filtered down from the semi-transparent dome in the roof. Dassim’s voice echoed a little.

They are fighting again, Rajah.

Oh? A splash.

Does it not concern you, Rajah?

Dassim peered into the water, searching every inch of it for his master, but he could see only goldfish.

Bishop Beesley, Mitzi Beesley, Shakey Mo Collier and Jerry Cornelius stood on the footbridge staring down at the railway as the train passed beneath their feet. Through the steam they could see the open trucks piled high with stiffening corpses. Dead troops.

Jerry pushed his helmet back from his forehead and eased the strap of his pack. Well, he said, our luck’s still holding.

The smell! Mitzi Beesley, dressed in a complete ARP uniform, circa 1943, held her nose.

Her father sorted through his tin of emergency rations to see if there was any chocolate he’d overlooked. That’s not the half of it, he said. He wore khaki battledress with his dog-collar rather ostentatiously displayed at the throat.

I remember a train like that when I was a kid, said Mo Collier nostalgically. On’y in that case the soldiers on it was alive.

Same difference, said Mitzi with a wink. She rubbed busily at her blue flannel thigh as the last truck went under the bridge.

Jerry looked at his left watch. Well, back to work. Not far to Grasmere now.

They all climbed onto the lightweight Jungle Bug, with its motorbike saddle seats and its canvas windshield. Jerry settled himself in front of the driving gear and started the engine. For a moment the machine reared, its front wheels spinning, and then they were off down the narrow lane as a thin cloud of rain drifted from the fells to the west and the green hills turned suddenly black.

We’ve never fully been able to reproduce World War Two conditions, Bishop Beesley yelled over the screech of the engine and the slap of the wind. I sometimes consider it a personal failure.

Your moral dilemmas always resolve themselves sooner or later, Dad, Mitzi comforted. She reached over from where she sat alongside him on the pillion behind Jerry and straightened his M60 on his shoulder for him. Is that better?

He nodded gratefully, munching a piece of Nut Crunch he had found in the breast-pocket of his battledress. They bounced on towards Grasmere and, as the rain passed, glimpsed the lake on the far side of a hill lying almost directly ahead of them. They had heard that what was left of an enemy division was hiding out in Wordsworth’s cottage. It was a long shot, but it was something to do.

The road went through a pine wood and then bent along the eastern shore of the lake, leading directly into the town of Grasmere. The town was a ruin of looted gift shops and tea rooms. In one or two places they were forced to steer round small craters in the road. Elsewhere a sack had burst and been abandoned, leaving a litter of plaster Wordsworth busts, oven gloves and daffodil vases.

They headed for the main road with its cracked and weed-grown concrete and at last sighted Dove Cottage and, a few doors away, another cottage that was the Wordsworth Museum. There were signs of fighting in the stone, half-timbered buildings. One or two cottages had been destroyed completely, but Dove Cottage, with its roses round the door, was intact. They climbed off the Jungle Bug and readied their weapons, approaching cautiously.

Dove Cottage seemed deserted, but Jerry didn’t take any chances. He ordered Bishop Beesley forward. The bishop lay down behind a hedge and raked the windows. There was a musical tinkle as the glass broke. Bishop Beesley waited for a while and then stood up, munching a Mars bar.

A Webley .45 sounded from an upstairs window and the bullet went past him, hitting the ground. He turned, his Mars bar half-raised, and darted an enquiring glance at Jerry, who shrugged.

There was another shot. Bishop Beesley eased his bulk to the ground again, put a new clip in his M60 and fired at the window.

When there was no further answering fire, the four of them spread out and approached the cottage. Jerry noticed that the plaque on the door reading ‘Wordsworth’s Cottage’ had been holed a few times by shells larger than Bishop Beesley’s. The door opened easily for the lock had already been blown off. They went in. An American teenage girl, with long black hair and a red mou-mou pulled up around her waist, lay on the polished timber floor. Her blood had dried on her face and her left hand was missing. Apart from the girl, the downstairs rooms, with their glass cabinets of Wordsworth and Lake Poets trophies, were empty. Pictures of Southey, Coleridge, De Quincey and the Lambs smiled down at them. Shakey Mo broke one of the cabinets with the butt of his Sten and lifted out an oddly shaped object of carved ivory. He squinted at the label. Look at this! De Quincey’s drug balance. Look at the size! What a head! He put the balance into the gamebag he had slung over one shoulder and rummaged through the rest of the cabinet’s contents. He found nothing else of interest. More glass broke in the next room and the three of them trooped in to see what Mitzi was doing. She had smashed the glass partition behind which had been arranged a typical sitting room of Wordsworth’s time. She had stripped off her ARP uniform and was draping herself in the dead poet’s clothes, his hat, his jacket, his shawl and one of his waistcoats. She held his umbrella in one hand. With her Remington tucked under her arm, she tried to open the umbrella. They all laughed as she paraded round the room pretending to read from one of Dorothy Wordsworth’s diaries.

Jerry heard a footfall upstairs and raised his Schmidt Rubin 5.56 to rake the ceiling. The footfall stopped.

I suppose we’d better get upstairs, said Shakey Mo.

Jerry led the way.

The upstairs rooms were much the same as the downstairs rooms, with more cabinets and more trophies, some of which had been smashed by Bishop Beesley’s M60 bullets coming through the windows. In the front room sat a woman of about sixty. She was tall, dressed in a plain blue dress and her hair was grey. The empty Webley was still in her hand. She was evidently upset. There are guided tours, you know, she said. You only had to ask.

Bishop Beesley grinned with relish as he advanced on her. I’m going to fuck the life out of you, he said.

Jerry and the rest made a tactful retreat.

Bishop Beesley joined them later in the Wordsworth Museum where Shakey Mo was inspecting an old shotgun labelled ‘Wordsworth’s Gun’.

My God, said Beesley in disgust, even this place has a tinge of vitality. Bishop Beesley argued that since too much life had led to their present difficulties (overcrowding and so forth), then life meant death and was therefore evil. Therefore it was his duty to wipe out the evil by destroying life wherever he found it. He was a wizard at that sort of thing. Jerry had his eye on him.

Are we all finished here? Jerry asked.

They padded away, turning only to watch when Shakey Mo lobbed a couple of Mills bombs into the cottage and the museum.

Damn! said Mitzi as the buildings went up. I left my uniform behind.

She wrapped Wordsworth’s shawl more tightly around her, pursing her lips in rage as she tripped, on cuban heels, back to the Jungle Bug. Bishop Beesley, Shakey Mo and Jerry Cornelius took the opportunity to piss against a hedge; then the rain came on again.

In improved spirits, they mounted the Bug and headed towards Rydal and the big green hills beyond.

Lt. William Calley, charged with massacring 102 South Vietnamese men, women and children at My Lai hamlet, testified at his court-martial at Fort Benning, California, yesterday, that the army taught him children were even more dangerous than adults. He was taught that “men and women were equally dangerous, and children, because of their unsuspectingness, were even more dangerous”. The army also taught him that men and women fought side by side and women for some reason were better shots. He was told that “children can be used in a multiple of facets. For example, give a child a hand grenade and he can throw it at an American unit. They were used for planting mines. Basically they were very dangerous”.

Morning Star
, 23 February, 1971

Three boys died when a house caught fire in Cemetery Road, Telford, Salop. They were Keith William Troop, aged five, Peter John Green, aged three, and Matthew Percival Green, aged two. They were the sons of Mrs Joan Green, aged 22.

Guardian
, 3 May, 1971

Mrs Valerie Ridyard, aged 25, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Darren, aged five months, Michael, aged three, and Barbara, aged four, on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Her pleas of not guilty to murder were accepted. The children died in separate incidents between October 1970 and January 1971. Mr Arthur Prescott, QC, prosecuting, said the facts were short and tragic. There had been a history of conduct by Mrs Ridyard resulting in illness to the children through partial suffocation and poisoning.