The English Assassin (7 page)

“Old tummy…” he mumbled. “I’d better see to that weeding.” His wife knew how to whip him on.

“The heat…” said Catherine Cornelius, and her bosom heaved. “Isn’t it a bit…?”

“Used to the heat, my girl.” He squared his shoulders. A funny little smile appeared beneath his grey moustache. There was considerable pride in his stance. “Drilled in full dress uniform. India. Much worse than this. Like the heat.” He lit the cigarette he had rolled. “You’re the cream in my coffee, I’m the milk in your tea, pom-te-pomm-pom-pompom.” He smiled shyly and affectionately at her as he opened the door which led into the back garden. He gave her a comic, swaggering salute. “See you later, I hope.”

Left alone, Elizabeth and Catherine looked longingly at each other across the real Jacobean table.

“We should be getting back to Ladbroke Grove soon if we’re not to get caught in the traffic,” said Catherine glancing at the door through which Mrs Nye had passed with the tea things.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “We shouldn’t leave it too late, should we?”

Jerry’s coffin was being rocked about quite a lot. The train carrying it stopped suddenly once again. It was about a mile outside Coventry. The awful smell always increased when the train was stationary. Was it the steam?

Colonel Pyat got up from the dirty floor to peer through the little hole in the armour plating of his truck. The light was fading but he could see a grimy grey-green field and a pylon. On the horizon were rows of red-brick houses. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the evening; it had been exactly three days since the train had left Edinburgh. Pyat brushed at his torn and grubby uniform. He had nothing else to wear, yet it was now far too dangerous to be seen in military uniform outside London. He munched the last half of his stale sandwich and sipped a drop of vodka from his hip flask. There had been no change in Cornelius and Pyat had had no time to revive and question him. The colonel had given up his original ambition, anyway; now he hoped he might use the contents of the coffin as his safe conduct, his guarantee of asylum, when he reached Ladbroke Grove and contacted one of the Cornelius relatives. Matters had not gone well in Berlin after Auchinek and his Zaporozhian allies had arrived. Somebody had told Pyat that no-one could hold Berlin for more than a month and he hadn’t believed them. Now this knowledge was his consolation— even the Jew would not last long before someone else took over what was left of the city.

From within the coffin came a further succession of muffled shrieks and cries. Pyat heard a querulous shout from further up the train. Another voice replied in a strong Wolverhampton accent.

“Electricity failure, they think. The two other trains can’t run. No signals, see.”

Again the distant shout and the Wolverhampton voice replying: “We’ll be moving shortly. We can’t go until the signal says we can.”

Pyat lit a cigarette. Sourly he paced the carriage, wishing he had thought of a better plan. A week ago England had seemed the safest state in Europe. Now it was in chaos. He should have guessed what would happen. Everything broke down so rapidly nowadays. But then, on the other hand, things came together quickly, too. It was the price you paid for swift communications.

The light faded and the single electric bulb in the roof glowed and then dimmed until only the element shone with a dull orange colour. Pyat had become used to this. He settled down to try to sleep, convinced that the sharp pain which had returned to his chest could only be lung cancer. He wished he had some cocaine.

He began to nod off. But then the sounds from the coffin filled his head. They had changed in tone so that this time they seemed to be warning him of something. They had become more urgent. He stretched out his boot and kicked at the coffin. “Shut up. I don’t need any more of that.”

But the urgency of the cries did not abate.

Pyat climbed to his feet and stumbled forward with the intention of unstrapping the lid and putting a gag of some kind into Cornelius’s mouth. But then the truck lurched. He fell. The big Pacific-class loco was moving again. He hugged his bruised body. His eyes were tightly shut.

* * *

It was dawn.

A green Morgan of the decadent Plus 8 period droned swiftly along the platform, passing the train as it pulled at last into an almost deserted King’s Cross station. The car followed the train for a moment, then turned off the platform into the main ticket office and drove through the outer doors and down the steps into the street. Through his peephole Colonel Pyat watched blearily, certain that the Morgan had some connection with himself. A strong smell, like that of a fair quantity of hard-boiled eggs, reached his nostrils. He spat on the boards and jammed his eyes once again to the spy-hole.

Expecting a large crowd at King’s Cross, he had planned to lose himself in it. But there were no crowds. There was no-one. It was as if all the people had been cleared from the station. Could it be an ambush? Or merely an air raid?

The locomotive released a huge sigh of hot steam and halted.

Pyat remembered that he was unarmed.

If he emerged from the carriage now, would he be shot down? Where were the marksmen hiding?

He unbolted the sliding doors of the wagon and slid them back. He waited for the other passengers to disembark. After a few seconds it became clear that there were no other passengers. A few small, innocent sounds came from various parts of the station. A clatter. A cheerful whistling. A thump. Then silence. He saw the fireman and the driver and the guard leave the train and swagger through the barrier towards the main exit, carrying their gear. They wore dirty BR uniforms; their caps were pushed back as far as possible on their heads. They were all three middle-aged, stocky and plain. They walked slowly, chatting easily to each other. They turned a corner and were gone. Pyat felt abandoned. Steam still clung to the lower parts of the train and drifted over the platform. Pyat sniffed the smoky air as a hound might sniff for a fox. The high, sooty arches of the station were silent and the glass dome admitted only a little dirty sunlight.

Because it was dawn, a bird or two began to twitter in the steel beams near the roof.

Pyat shivered and got down. Walking to the far side of the platform he took hold of a large porter’s trolley. The wheels squeaked and grated. He dragged it alongside the armoured carriage. He felt faint. He looked warily about him. Silent, untended trains stood at every platform. Huge black and green steam engines with dirty brasswork faced worn steel bumpers and the blank brick walls beyond. They were like monsters shocked into catatonia by a sudden understanding: this had been their last journey. They had been lured into involuntary hibernation, perhaps to remain here until they rusted and rotted to dust.

Pyat manhandled the heavy coffin onto the trolley. It bumped down and a somewhat pettish mewling escaped from it. Pyat took the handles of the trolley with both hands. He strained backwards and got it moving. He hauled it with some difficulty along the asphalt. The wheels squeaked and groaned. In his filthy white uniform he might have been mistaken for a porter who had been mysteriously transferred from some more tropical station, perhaps in India. He was not really as conspicuous as he felt.

He trudged through the ticket barrier, crossed the grey expanse of the enclave and reached the pavement outside. The streets and buildings all seemed uninhabited. Wasn’t this the heart of London? And a Thursday morning? Pyat looked up at the bland sky. There were no aircraft to be seen. No dirigibles. No flying bombs. The bright early sunshine was already quite warm. It dulled his shivers.

A tattered horse-drawn lavender cab stood untended by the kerb outside the main entrance. Now that the Morgan had disappeared, it was the only form of transport in sight. The driver, however, was nowhere to be seen. Pyat decided that he did not care about the driver. With almost the last of his strength. Pyat got the coffin into the hansom and climbed up to the box. He shook the reins and the bony mare raised her head. He flicked her rump with the frayed whip and shouted at her. She began to walk.

Slowly the hansom moved away, the horse refusing to go faster than a walk. It was as if the hansom were the only visible portion of an otherwise invisible funeral procession. The horse’s feet clopped mournfully through the deserted street. It reached Euston Road and began to head due west for Ladbroke Grove.

… and perhaps the greatest loss I still feel is the loss of my unborn son. I was certain it would have been a son and I had even named it, my subconscious coming up with a name I would never have chosen otherwise: Andrew. I had not realised what would happen to me. The abortion seemed so necessary at the time if she were not to suffer in several ways. But it was an abortion of convenience, scarcely of desperation. For a long while I did not admit that it had affected me at all. If I had ever had a son after that, I feel it would have banished the sense of loss, but as it is it will go with me to my grave.

—Maurice Lescoq,
Leavetaking

Only a miracle could save nine-year-old Lawrence Mantle, said doctors. For four months he had been in a deep coma. Twice he ‘died’ when his heart stopped beating. There was no sign of life from his brain, surgeons told his parents. Then, in the middle of a thunderstorm, it happened. A flash of lightning and a loud thunderclap made nurses in the children’s ward at Ashford hospital, Middlesex, jump … and Lawrence, still in a coma, screamed.

London Evening News
, 3 December, 1969

Colonel Pyat had first met Colonel Cornelius in Guatemala City, in the early days of the 1900–75 War, before the monorails, the electric carriages, the giant airships, the domed cities and the utopian republics had been smashed, never to be restored. They met at some time during what is now called the Phoney War period of 1901–13. They were both representing the military establishments of two great and mutually suspicious European governments. They had been sent to observe the trials of the Guatemalans’ latest Land Ironclad (the invention of the Chilean wizard, O’Bean). Their two governments had been interested in purchasing a number of the machines should the trials prove successful. As it happened, both Pyat and Cornelius had decided that the ’clad was still too primitive to be of much practical use, though the French, German and Turkish governments, who also had observers at the trials, had each ordered a small quantity.

Their duty done, the two men relaxed together in the bar of the Conquistador Hotel, where they were both staying. Next day they would catch the aerial clipper
Light of Dresden
to Hamburg. Once there, they would go their separate ways, Cornelius to the West and Pyat to the East.

Through the tall, slightly frosted Charles Rennie Mackintosh windows they could see Guatemala City’s bright marble streets and elegant mosaic towers with shop-fronts by Mucha, Moulins and Marnez. Sometimes an ornate electric brougham would hum past, or there would be the anachronistic jingle of harness as a landau, drawn by high-stepping Arab stallions, rattled by; sometimes a steam car would come and go, the hiss from its engines barely audible, the sun catching its brasswork and making its stainless-steel body shine like silver. The steam car was now in use all over the world. Like the mechanical farming equipment which had turned South and Central America into such a paradise, it was the creation of O’Bean.

Colonel Pyat, leaning back in his black plush chair, signalled for the waiter to bring fresh drinks. Jerry admired his grace. The Russian had been wearing his white uniform for the best part of the afternoon and there was not a smudge of dust to be seen on it. Even his belts, his holster and his boots were of white kid, the only colour being the gold insignia on his collar and a touch of gold on his epaulettes. Jerry’s dark green uniform was fussy in comparison, with a smear of oil evident on the right cuff. Some of the gold braid frogging on his sleeves, shoulders and chest was badly snagged, too. His belts, holster and boots were black. They were not quite as brightly polished as they might have been. Like Pyat’s, his was a cavalry uniform, that of some Indian regiment by the cut of the long-skirted coat, but worn without a sash. (Pyat, who had seen some service on the frontier—largely courier work of an unofficial nature—could not place the uniform at all. He wondered if Cornelius might be a civilian given military rank for the sake of this assignment. Certainly Cornelius did not look much like an English cavalryman. The way he had undone his coat at the first opportunity suggested that Cornelius found military dress uncomfortable.)

The drinks were brought by a haughty waiter who refused to respond to Pyat’s friendly and condescending smile and left the proffered tip on the Husson silver salver he placed on the table. “Democracy gone mad!” said Pyat with a movement of his eyebrows and leaned forward to see what they had. There were Tiffany glasses. A bottle of Malvern water. A Glen Grant malt whisky and a Polish Starka vodka. Jerry looked at them all resting on the Dufrêne inlay.