Touchstone (54 page)

Chapter Sixty-Nine

S
TUYVESANT FOUND THE OBJECT,
as ugly a piece of art as he’d ever seen, but it did seem to be a prize to the Duke, since he had placed it in the middle of the right-hand glass door.

Once he’d found it, he left the little china dog alone. He took up a place at the back corner of the study, as if that might get him out of its range, and waited with twitching nerves.

He jumped when the door came open and Gallagher peeped in. He quickly crossed the room and led the butler back down the hallway.

“Mr. Bunsen will be right down, sir,” Gallagher told him. “He is…not quite as indisposed as you feared. Would you…I should be happy to stand outside the door if you wish to cleanse your hands. There’s a lavatory directly across the corridor.”

Stuyvesant looked down at himself. “Good idea.”

He tried not to notice the color of the water that ran across the white porcelain, but he briskly scrubbed his face and hands. When he came out, Gallagher was still there. “Thanks, Gallagher. You go on with the rest of them. I’ll let you know when you can come back inside.” I will, or a loud boom, he thought.

Back in the study, he glanced at the clock on the Duke’s desk: creeping away from one-twenty. Christ, he hoped the bomb-maker hadn’t cut corners and bought a cheap clock.

Three minutes later the door opened again, and the part of Stuyvesant’s heart that wasn’t in his throat sank. Bunsen looked like the tail end of a bad month. His handsome face was drawn, his skin gray, his eyes dull.

“Gallagher said you needed me.” The words came out as if each were being pulled, and the effort of speech nearly had him turning his back and leaving.

“There’s a bomb.”

The man studied him as if waiting for the end of a remarkably tasteless joke.

“
Another
bomb. Someone sent the Duke one of those damn porcelain dogs he loves, only it’s filled with explosives. Set to go off in sixteen minutes. I need you to disarm it.”

At last a flicker of emotion passed over Bunsen’s face, but his slight frown was merely curiosity. “Who
are
you?”

“Honestly, does that matter at the moment?” Stuyvesant asked. “Bunsen, you need to disarm that bomb.”

“Why?”

That rocked Stuyvesant back on his heels. The man was serious.

A major shock was required. “Because if you don’t, Laura’s sacrifice—her
attentat
—will be lost. Everything Laura was, all you worked for together, was aimed at what happened in that chapel. But if there are two bombs? And one of them is here, aimed at her father? Two bombs makes her a madwoman, not a martyr. Worse—an incompetent madwoman, whose death was an accident. They’ll write her off. She gave her life for your cause, Bunsen. You can give her death meaning. Only you.”

Fifteen minutes.

“And I should also mention, the dog—that one with the blue bow around its neck—will be traced to you.”

Bunsen’s hand came up and drew hard down the length of his face. He glanced at the cabinet. “Fifteen minutes?”

“That’s what I’m told. Assuming the timer is accurate,” Stuyvesant added, unable to help himself.

“There is always that question, with a timed device,” Bunsen said. He sounded more in control.

“Can you defuse it?”

“Be more sensible to carry it out and drop it in the river.”

Stuyvesant felt a flood of relief at the thought—why hadn’t he thought of that?—then a cold question:
Who was going to carry the thing through the house?

He started to force himself upright on unwilling legs, when Bunsen added, “Of course, it might have a backup trigger.”

“Wouldn’t that have gone off when it was shipped and unpacked?”

“It would depend on the sophistication of the device. Perhaps I should take a look.”

Jesus.
Take a look.
Stuyvesant wanted to tip himself out of the window and take his chances with the ground below; instead, he went to the box of tools on the desk, aware with every step that, if the dog blew up, the left side of his body would be shredded.

“What tools do you want?” he asked Bunsen.

Bunsen came to paw through the tools, and Stuyvesant despaired: Bunsen stank of booze, and he wove slightly as he crossed over to the cabinet. “Uh, look, Bunsen. Your hands may not be quite steady enough for this.”

The man held up his hand with a pair of jeweler’s wire snips in them. Dispassionately, he watched them tremble. “You should leave.”

Yes oh yes please.
“I’ll stay.”

The look Bunsen gave Stuyvesant was as cool and amused as his expression that first evening they had met. Grief, shock, bewilderment, fury—everything was clamped down, leaving nothing above the surface but the iron-nerved sapper. “You’re sure?”

“Can we get on with it?” Thirteen minutes.

“You want to help?”

I want to run.
“What do you need?”

“Talk. If you take my mind off what I’m doing, it’ll go just fine.”

“Talk? About what?”

The odd amber eyes rose to look at him. “Why don’t we begin with why my replacement driver has such an interest in explosive devices, Mr. Stuyvesant?”

Somewhere a clock ticked, a slow grandfather-clock kind of a tick. Stuyvesant felt the sweat down the side of his body, while Bunsen just stood and waited, wire cutters in his hand. He looked as if he could wait forever.

And Stuyvesant was fresh out of lies.

“I’m an American agent,” Stuyvesant told him. “I came here hunting a bomber. I thought it was you.”

Bunsen considered that for a moment, then said, “Go on,” and turned to the object on the shelf.

Stuyvesant’s own voice came dimly through the cotton-wool in his ears, but the stream of words seemed to buoy the sapper’s movements. Bunsen’s eyes remained focused, his hands controlled, so long as Stuyvesant’s tale flowed: coming to London; meeting Aldous Carstairs; Carstairs’ offer to help; forging the links between Bennett Grey and Sarah and Laura to Bunsen himself.

“But Carstairs has plans of his own, and when I came to his office with my story of a mad English bomber, he probably thought, Why not? Here’s an English Communist, working with the Unions, who’s already suspected of similar crimes in America. At a time when England is teetering on the brink of class war, when one outrageous act is all it will take to convince the great voting public that the Unions have to be crushed, absolutely and permanently. And then one of the country’s most powerful and beloved individuals invites a group of men to his home for the purpose of forging peace: Wouldn’t it solve a whole lot of problems if that English Red were to turn viciously on his host and try to murder him?

“So he arranged for a bomb of his own, and I have no doubt there will be a number of arrows pointing at you, and that those arrows will be ready for instant publication in the press. In the end, they will prove groundless, but by that time he will already have what he was after, and your career will be ruined.

“I should apologize, by the way. For what that’s worth. I didn’t mean to, but I set him on you.”

“The rise of the Fascists.” Stuyvesant was startled by Bunsen’s voice, echoing from the storage cabinet.

“Could be. In fact, knowing Carstairs, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.” For the first time since he’d launched into his story, Stuyvesant glanced at the clock and felt a cold rush of terror: He’d been talking for five minutes: 1:37. “Do you think—” he started to say, then broke off.

Bunsen stood away from the cabinet with the dog in his hand, a hole in the bottom of it showing a spray of wires. “This? I finished it yonks ago. I just wanted to hear what you had to say.”

Stuyvesant lowered his forehead to the Duke of Hurleigh’s desk, and left it there for a long time.

An explosion, he reflected, would have made everything a lot simpler.

T
HE
A
UGUST SUN
was surprisingly hot in this distant corner of England, on the afternoon when a tall figure in a rucksack, boots, and walking stick closed in on a white washed cottage in Cornwall.

The owner of the cottage had been working in the vegetable garden when he had seen the rambler on the distant road. He had stopped to watch. When the man slid behind the hedgerows, the gardener put down his spade and went inside the cottage.

Now, twenty-five minutes later, he sat on the chopping block, his collarless shirt rolled up above his elbows, a glass in one hand. He took a swallow from time to time, and once mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

Harris Stuyvesant reached the point where walls surrounding the narrow lane fell away and the farm yard began. Two chickens scratched in the soil near the shed. The blond man sat on his chopping block.

“I think I’m lost,” Stuyvesant called. “I was looking for Land’s End.”

All he could do then was wait. If Grey went inside, or did not answer, he would leave, and sail for America next week.

But Grey stood up and walked across the yard. When he was standing in front of Stuyvesant, he put out his hand.

Stuyvesant took it gratefully. “I was wondering if you’d come after me with your axe.”

“I might yet.”

“I’d deserve it.”

“I think you’ve been hit enough. You want something to drink?”

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

Grey handed him the glass, saying, “You won’t like it.”

He was right. “God. What is that?”

“This morning’s cold tea, with water.”

“Maybe I could just have the water?”

“Come inside.”

Grey gave the American a glass of water. Then he gave him a bottle of beer, and a plate of sandwiches, and another bottle of beer, and later, some coffee. When the sun was low in the sky, the two men walked up the hill to the Beacon.

The stone was almost hot to the touch with the day’s stored sun, but Grey stretched out on top as he had all those months before, when the sun was thin and the hills were bright green instead of the tired shades it wore now.

Back in May, the General Strike had collapsed after twelve short days. The half-hearted commitment of the conjoined Trades Unions had proven no match for their government’s intensive countermeasures. The revolution failed to ignite, and although the miners themselves battled on still, no one expected them to prevail.

“You’re not drinking,” Stuyvesant said.

“No need to, here.”

“I’m glad.”

“Every so often, I am, too. And you? How are you?”

“Empty. Yes, I think
empty
describes it. I sent the Bureau a letter of resignation.”

“I thought you might.”

“The Major offered me a job.”

Grey sat up to stare at the American’s face, then relaxed. “You didn’t take it.”

“I’d rather clean toilets. Funny thing is, even before…well, I was thinking of quitting. Getting a job repairing cars. Working on the Hurleigh estate.”

“I understand the Duke wanted to raze the chapel down to the ground. The Duchess won’t let him, but he refuses to repair it. He’s going to have it deconsecrated.”

“You heard this through Sarah?”

If Grey heard the effort it took Stuyvesant to say her name, he did not comment. “You know she’s been living at Hurleigh, since getting out of hospital?”

“I keep track, even if she won’t answer my letters. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Healing takes time.”

“Some wounds don’t heal.” Broken bones knit, but time has little effect on loss of a hand, a ruptured ear-drum, or the memory of one’s best friend coming to pieces in one’s arms. Nor on the feeling that an American suitor has been responsible for it all.

“She’s strong, Stuyvesant. Give her time.”

There was little answer for that. After a while, Grey stirred.

“What was the Major after, do you know?”

“Not entirely. It’s like…have you ever been in a glass-bottomed boat? You get glimpses of life, but mostly you get the sense that there’s all kinds of currents and behaviors and obstacles just outside your little window. I have spent most of the last three months finding out about Major Carstairs, and it seems he had larger plans for the Strike than just preserving order. And I—I just fed right into it. I gave him Bunsen, I tied him back to you. I think he planned on using me in a more substantial manner, too.”

“How do you mean?”

“There were several things he did that, looking back, seem odder and odder. And things he lied to me about—that an experimental explosive had gone missing from an Army munitions depot, showing me pictures of some of the people linking that explosive with Richard Bunsen. Two of those people are now dead. The man, a Communist by the name of Marcus Shiffley, was found floating in the Thames that weekend we were at Hurleigh. His female associate turned up a few days later. And a stray Russian Bolshevik disappeared and hasn’t been seen since. The more I thought about it, the more I saw the signs of a good, clean set-up, with yours truly the one being framed. I think his story was going to be, this American with a crazy fixation on Richard Bunsen comes over, locates a couple of Bunsen’s associates, tortures them for information, and kills them, then aims himself at Bunsen. In the meantime, a bomb is sent to the Duke of Hurleigh, made to look like it came from Bunsen.”

“But that’s two ends of rope that don’t connect.”

“Yes, except, what if Bunsen had been killed by that bomb? What if at, say, one thirty-five that afternoon, Bunsen is sitting down to lunch when he’s given a message on the Duke’s stationery saying something like, ‘Please come immediately to my study, and stand near the collection so as to explain your presence in case you are seen.’ Bunsen would go, and at one forty-five, boom.”

“Was there any such note?”

“None was delivered. But by that time, all plans were shot to hell.”

“If Bunsen were dead—”

“—having been killed by his own treacherous bomb,” Stuyvesant added.

“—there would have been no one to deny the act of the unbalanced American.”

“Framing me would also have set up a nice high protective barrier against any interference from the U. S. of A. After all, what right would the U.S. have to protest a change in British politics after they’d been caught playing fast and loose outside their own borders? But then the bomb failed to go off as planned, and suddenly the whole elaborate edifice tumbles to the ground. Richard Bunsen is a hero, Harris Stuyvesant a misled but well-meaning American, and—” Stuyvesant stopped, and changed it to, “and the Truth Project is just a harmless piece of governmental research.”

“And Bennett Grey,” Grey added, supplying the missing detail, “instead of being thrust down Baldwin’s throat as the missing linchpin—the man who could have prevented the terrible atrocity of a Duke’s murder if only the Major had been given sufficient authority to repel that meddling Yank—instead, Bennett Grey is a minor curiosity permitted to slip back to his Cornish retreat.”

Stuyvesant didn’t deny Grey’s suggestion, although he had begun to suspect that, in fact, Carstairs had gone to some lengths to ensure Grey’s absence from Hurleigh that day. Suspected, too, that the Cornish retreat was not to be a permanent state.

“Have you heard from his people? The Project?”

“Not yet.”

“Will you go, if you’re asked?”

“I said I would. It’s still active, then?”

“So far as I know. Carstairs himself came out of it remarkably well, all things considered. Baldwin insisted that he be fired, but the Army decided they could use him again, and he’s just moved bag and baggage over to them. He’ll do well for them, in the next War.”

With the menacing noises coming out of Germany recently, who really doubted another war would come, sooner or later? And couldn’t a man who’d proved himself able to manufacture evidence efficiently, then commit murder to back it up, be a valuable commodity in certain circles?

Carstairs’ methodical, meticulous work was both impressive and terrifying. More than once in recent weeks, Stuyvesant had been struck by the same shiver of relief that comes with a narrow escape from walking off a cliff on a moonless night.

The worst of it was, he did not think Carstairs was finished with him, either.

“Are you staying here the night?” Grey asked.

“I could find a tree to sleep under.”

“I can do better than that. But I’d suggest you go back to the house now, before it gets any darker.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I can find my way in the dark, but if you wait much longer, I’ll end up having to carry you.”

Stuyvesant stood and extricated himself from the bramble-crowded rock. When he turned, Grey was standing at the very edge of the Beacon stone, hands at his sides, face raised to the western sky.

“Did—” He stopped.
Did you know, that Laura was going to blow herself up? Did you deliberately walk out of the chapel and allow her to choose death?
And the most terrible question of all,
Did you even begin to suspect that your sister would try to take herself along?

Questions that could never be asked, and never answered.

The true nature of Laura Hurleigh’s death had been kept out of the newspapers. However, those who mattered knew. Laura’s deliberate self sacrifice, following two brilliant days when she had guided the nation’s powers to the brink of agreement, had forced her friends, her family, and her colleagues to think long and hard about what it had meant. About what it meant when a woman like that chose to lay down her life to make a statement about responsibility.

Her death may not have become the stopper to poverty that she would have wished, but behind the scenes, it was changing, directing, even slowing the flow. A Hurleigh had made the statement: That meant something.

But Grey had not heard Stuyvesant’s cut-off question. He stood, perched at the edge of the world, swaying gently with some unheard rhythm: to and fro, to and fro.

Stuyvesant made his way alone down the hill to the lighted cottage.

Grey came back to the cottage well after darkness had fallen. The two men ate, and when the dishes were put away Stuyvesant took a bottle from his rucksack and put it on the table.

“I have to admit, the thought of that hooch of yours made me hesitate to come. So I brought you this instead.”

Grey picked up the well-aged Scotch in one hand, pinched two glasses from his shelf in the other, and led the way to the sitting room. Fire laid, drinks poured, Stuyvesant took out his cigarette case and offered one to Grey.

Grey took a cigarette. Then he asked, “Do you still have your girl’s picture in there?”

“Helen? No,” Stuyvesant said. “I…I said good-bye to her back in May. Put a match to her picture and dropped it into the Thames. The sort of romantic gesture she would have appreciated. Why do you ask?”

By way of answer, Grey stood up and took an envelope from the mantel, handing it to Stuyvesant.

It was addressed to Stuyvesant, in a woman’s writing.

Stuyvesant ripped open the flap, and slid out the contents.

A photograph of Sarah, trimmed to fit the cigarette case, and a letter.