The English Assassin (23 page)

* * *

Idly turning the binoculars onto his own ship and its crew, Mo Collier focused on the big box and noticed for the first time that it seemed to be moving to a different rhythm from that of the waves. It was pulsing, like a rapid heartbeat, as if, Mo Collier grinned at the thought, two people were fucking in there. Well, that was impossible. On the other hand if the contents of the box were about to go critical, he’d better warn his captain. He let the glasses fall on their string and knock against his pelvis. He took the lift down to the Operations Room. “Sir? Sir?”

Frank looked up from his manual. “What?”

“The deck cargo. It’s sort of bouncing. It might be going to blow up.”

“Oh, shit.” Frank put the book down and followed Mo up to the deck. He took the glasses and looked. “Oh, shit. I should have shifted it right at the beginning. He who hesitates is lost, Collier.”

“Fire drill, sir?”

“Bloody hell. What’s the point?” They went slowly back to the Operations Room. “Let’s have a look at a map,” said Frank when they got there. “No. We’ll make for Sardinia and dump it. Break radio silence. Tell them our deck cargo hasn’t been picked up on schedule and we’re abandoning it on the nearest dry land.”

“Can’t we just dump it in the sea, sir?”

“Are you out of your mind? We don’t want more trouble than we’ve got already. Oh, shit.” Frank slumped down in a chair. “Oh, fuck it to buggery.” He was the picture of whining impotence. Feeling this made his whine louder. At a certain pitch, his whine was echoed by a sound from the deck; the sound was almost in perfect tune, but constant, where Frank’s was punctuated by his need to draw breath.

Soon the two brothers were howling in unison as night fell and the destroyer steamed for Sardinia.

Major Nye had his trousers off. He sat on a canvas stool with an old towel round him. Mrs Nye spoke through clenched teeth as she stitched at the patched trouser leg. “It’s not as if we could afford it,” she said. “All I seem to do is
mend
. And you’re so clumsy. You must have known about the barbed wire on the beach.”

“Supervised its installation, I’m afraid,” admitted Major Nye. “All my fault. Sorry, lovey.”

It was late in the afternoon and they were outside the beach hut where they had been billeted. After being turned down by his old regiment (now an armoured vehicle corps), Major Nye had volunteered to help with the Brighton coastal defences. Then Ironmaster House, some twelve miles inland, had been requisitioned as the headquarters of the local territorials, so he and Mrs Nye had had to move into the beach hut. Major Nye was not particularly upset by the takeover. The beach hut was not nearly so much of a burden and it was less effort tending the barbed wire than it had been looking after the market garden. Major Nye felt a bit ashamed. The war was proving something of a holiday for him. For all she would never admit it, even Mrs Nye seemed relieved. Her wind-reddened face had taken on something of a bloom, though this might have been the result of the cold. It was winter and the beach hut was heated only by a malfunctioning oil-stove. Their daughters had not joined them; both girls had volunteered for work in London. Isobel, the ex-dancer, was looking after her brother, who was still at school. Sometimes, at weekends, one or both of the girls would bring the little boy down to see his parents.

“Nearly Christmas.” Mrs Nye finished the darn with a sigh. “Is it worth doing anything at all about it this year?”

“Maybe the girls will have an idea.” Major Nye went into the beach hut and drew on his trousers. He folded the tattered towel and hung it neatly over the back of the deckchair. The trousers, like his jacket, were khaki, or had been before the elements and all the patching had turned them into a garment of many indistinguishable colours. He lit the remaining third of his thin cigarette. “Tum-te-tum. God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay, et cetera, et cetera, pom-pom.” He put the tin kettle on top of the oil-stove, realised it was dry, and came outside to fill it at the tap which served his and two other huts. All these huts were now occupied by coastal defence volunteers. Many volunteers were older than Major Nye. With a loud, rasping sound, the kettle filled. The tap squeaked as he turned it off. Mrs Nye shivered in his greatcoat and, stamping with cold, got up, collapsing both their canvas stools and hurrying inside.

“A strong cuppa’s what you need after that, m’dear,” he said.

“Don’t throw away the old leaves this time,” she said. “They’ll last for another brew.”

He nodded.

They watched the kettle boil and when it was ready he flipped the lid off the mock Georgian, mock silver teapot and filled it half-full. “Just give that a minute or two to stew,” he said. He made a corned-beef sandwich for her, using thin sliced bread and even thinner slices of meat. He put the sandwich on one of their plates, taken from the tiny rack above the tiny card table on which their provisions were laid. He handed her the plate.

“Thank you very much,” said his wife. She nibbled at the sandwich. It was her tea. They were going to have a full tin of pilchards for supper.

“Well, I’d better go and check the searchlights before nightfall,” he said.

“Very well.” She looked up. “See if you can get a paper.”

“Right-ho!”

Whistling the half-remembered tune of ‘The Bore o’ Bethnal Green’, he ambled down the stony beach, following the course of his barbed wire, stopping at intervals to inspect the searchlights set on small pedestals every thirty feet. The lights had originally been used to illuminate the Pavilion during the summer months.

The sky was grey and promised rain. The sea was also grey and even the beach had a greyish tinge to it. That always seemed to happen in wartime, thought Major Nye. Above, on the promenade, he noticed that the odd fish-and-chip shop and coffee stall hadn’t yet closed. The shops were illuminated by oil-lamps and candles. All electricity was being saved for the defence effort. The places looked cosy. After making sure that all his lights were in good order, he left the beach and tramped up a ramp to the pavement, crossing the street to the shops. One of the ice-cream parlours was still open. These days, in spite of the plastic sundaes and knickerbocker glories in the window, it sold only tea and soup. The parlour also sold the
Weekly Defender
, the only newspaper generally available. A new issue was in. Large piles were stacked outside the shop. The paper’s circulation was not very good. Those piles would remain virtually untouched and would be taken away when the new issue arrived. Major Nye was one of the few regular customers for the
Defender
. He picked up a copy from a pile and read the headline as he ambled into the shop, his sixty-pence piece in his hand. “Evening, squire,” said the shopkeeper.

“Good evening.” Major Nye couldn’t remember the man’s name and he was embarrassed. “The paper.”

“Sixty, please. Doesn’t look too good, does it?”

The headlines read:
NEW GAINS FOR BRITAIN! SPIRITS RISE AS MINISTER ANNOUNCES PLANS. “MORALE NEVER HIGHER” SAYS KING.

Major Nye smiled shyly. “I must admit…”

“Still, it can’t last for ever.”

To Major Nye it seemed it had already lasted for ever, but he was, as usual, completely reconciled. You couldn’t change human nature. You couldn’t change the world. He smiled again. “I suppose not.”

“Night, night, squire.”

“Goodnight to you.”

It was almost dark now. He decided to walk back along the promenade, rather than along the beach. The smell of fish and chips made his mouth water, but he resisted temptation, knowing what Mrs Nye would say if he brought back even a few chips. It was an unnecessary expense on food which was not nourishing; also it was ‘not quite the thing’ to buy hot food from a shop. They had to keep their standards up. Major Nye had always been fond of fish and chips. When he had worked in London, he had had them once a week. Of course, the fish was terrible now, and the chips weren’t proper potato at all. And that was a consolation of sorts.

He began to go down the ramp which led to their stretch of gloomy beach. He paused and looked out at the black, gleaming water. The sea was so large. Sometimes it seemed foolish, trying to defend the coast against it. He wondered what would happen if the big anti-aircraft gun on the end of the pier ever had to fire. Probably shake the whole bally thing to bits. He smiled.

He thought he saw something bobbing on the water, quite close to the shore, about twenty yards from the pier’s girders. He peered hard, wondering if it were a stray mine, but the object had passed out of sight. He shrugged and stepped onto the beach. The shingle rattled and grated as he crossed it. Further out to sea a steamer’s siren moaned and the moan was echoed by the rooftops of the town so that it seemed for a little while that the whole of Brighton was expressing its misery.

Una Persson made the plane just as it was about to leave Dubrovnik. She clambered up over the coffin-shaped floats and through the passenger doors. Inside, the plane was dark and crowded; people sat on the floor or, where there wasn’t room to sit, clung to pieces of frayed rope fixed to the sides and roof. Refugees, like herself; though these were thin-faced civilians. She pushed through them, noticing the number of black-robed priests aboard, and found the companionways to the upper decks. There were people sitting on these, too, and she had to go up both flights of stairs on the tips of her battered boots. At last she reached the pilot’s cabin. By that time they were already airborne, though two of the big wing-mounted engines were coughing on the starboard side. She wondered from what museum the plane had been resurrected. It was German, judging by its instrument panels. There was a lot of German junk around, these days. It wasn’t surprising. Over the radio and heavily distorted came sounds she recognised as the Rolling Stones singing ‘Mother’s Little Helper’.

The flying boat circled Dubrovnik once, dipping in and out of the thick, oily smoke from the burning city. “We shan’t be seeing that again,” said the Polish pilot. Colonel Pyat, who was seated in the co-pilot’s chair, sighed. “It’ll be good to get home again. We are all ideas in the mind of Mars.”

Una gave him a puzzled look. “So you say, general.”

“C—” Colonel Pyat mopped his heated forehead. “My dear Una, I thought you had taken the train.”

“Changed my mind. Back to Blighty, after all.”

“Just as well. Maybe our luck will change with you aboard.” He raised an imaginary glass. “I salute Our Lady of Liberty.” He was eager to please, not sardonic.

“You’re tired,” she said.

“Sing a song, Una dear. An old sweet song.” He was drunk, but his white uniform was neat as ever. “If those lips could only speak, if those eyes could only see, if those…”

“The European campaigns were wholly disastrous,” said the Pole, who was also a bit drunk. She could hardly hear him over the erratic roaring of the aircraft’s engines.

“Why all the refugees?” she said. “Where are the troops?”

“That’s what the refugees wanted to know.” The Pole laughed. They weren’t making much altitude as they flew out to sea. “We
are
the troops.”

“
C’est la vie
,” said Colonel Pyat. “My dear ones will have missed me.” He drew a flask from his hip pocket and tipped it up. It was empty. “Thank God,” he said. “You’re right, Una. I am tired. I thought England would be the answer. A triumph of imagination over inspiration. Ha, ha!”

“He lost the box,” explained the Pole.

“In Ladbroke Grove,” said Pyat. “It’s been around a bit since then.”

Una sighed. “So I gather. Well, it was just another straw, I suppose. Something to keep the fire going.”

“Feeling the draught?” said the Pole.

“I’ve been feeling it all century,” said Una.

From beyond the door came the sound of people at prayer, led by the droning voices of the priests. Even the plane seemed to be praying. Una went to find a parachute before they reached Windermere.

There seemed to be gratitude in Sebastian Auchinek’s large brown eyes. He looked up as the security policeman entered his cell.

“Of course I understand that you have to do this job,” said Auchinek. “And rest assured, Constable Wallace, I shan’t make it difficult for you. Please sit down or—” he paused—“whatever you wish.”

Constable Wallace was a brute.

“I don’t like spies, Mr Auchinek.” His skin was coarse, his eyes were stupid and there was a sense of pent-up violence about him. “And should we prove that you’re one…”

“I’m a loyal citizen, I assure you. I love England as much as anyone, for all that I was not born here. Your countryside, your democracy, your justice…”

“You’re a Jew.”

“Yes.”

“There’s been a lot of Jewish spies.”

“I know.”

“So…”

“I’m not one. I’m a businessman.”

“A poof?”

“No…”

“You go abroad a great deal. Macedonia?”

“Macedonia, yes. And to—well, to Belgium, Holland, Assyria…”

“Where?”

“Abyssinia, isn’t it?”

“You’ve got
something
to hide,” said the red face, sweating.

“A poor memory.” Auchinek whimpered in anticipation.

“And I’m going to get it out of you.”

“Of course. Of course.”

“By force, if necessary.”

“I’m not a traitor.”

“I hope not.”

Constable Wallace had completed the necessary rough-and-ready warming-up ritual and he grabbed Auchinek by his grey prison jacket and pulled him to his feet. He balled his red fist and punched Auchinek in the stomach. Auchinek vomited at once, all over Constable Wallace’s uniform.

“Oh, you filthy little animal.” Wallace left the cell.

Auchinek had had enough. He sat back on his bed, careless of the vomit on his lips, chin and clothing. He gasped and cried and wished he hadn’t had his breakfast. He should have known better. Or had he planned it? He had never been clear about his identity, his own motives, at the best of times, and now he was completely at sea. For all he knew, he might be a traitor. He should have retained his military rôle. It was easier.