by Joel N. Ross
Tom had forgotten Davies-Frank was there. He snapped back to himself from a state as near sleep as he’d achieved in days.
Sondegger swiveled toward Davies-Frank. “Forbidden love, family man? Do you escort your children to the opera? Your daughters? Does the elder not tell her little sister— Ah, I see. Of course. They are twins. They are ten? Eleven years? They will be women soon, like my Hannalore. And your wife—Jane? June? Joan?”
“So tell me,” Tom said. “Where the fuck are you meeting Duckblind?”
Sondegger’s laughter poured into the room like cream into a bottle. “You must pardon me, Mr. Wall. I am allowed so few diversions here. I subsist on rum and speculation.”
“And the sound of your own voice. Where’s Duckblind?”
“I’m not sure I’ll tell you.”
“Talk business—I don’t give a fancy fuck for opera.”
“We do have business.” Sondegger divided his stack of paper into two stacks, then four stacks, lined precisely on the desktop. “It grows geometrically.”
“You know the deal. First the Brits want a location—then we talk.”
“Intra-articular fracture?” Sondegger’s eyes flicked to the bandage. “How did you injure your hand, Mr. Wall?”
“Playing clarinet. How did you injure your face?”
“A man betrayed me. Your hand became infected following surgery? Surgeons. They cut you open and watch you bleed. Do you ever peek at what they’ve left behind? . . . No? Fear, Mr. Wall, is an obstacle to healing. You must not allow fear—”
“You have three minutes,” Tom said. “Tell it or the hell with it.”
“You will wait upon me.” His smooth voice became a whip crack. “As you know you must.”
“You taking odds?” Tom let him see a hint of Earl’s recklessness, of his own instability.
For a moment, Sondegger hesitated. Only for a moment. “I am a man of many concerns, Mr. Wall. I am a nervous, worried, anxious man.” Sondegger’s voice was rock-steady. He slid his pencil behind his ear. “May I unburden myself?”
Tom checked his watch. “Two minutes thirty.”
“I am concerned about being immolated during a raid, as the warder doesn’t have a key to unlock my cuff. I am concerned about the contents of the cupboard in the corridor outside. I am concerned”—Sondegger lifted the pitcher of rum, topped off his cup—“that if I do not give the location of Duckblind, I will be hanged—and if I do, I will be shot.”
“Give them the wireless operator,” Tom said. “You prove yourself valuable, they’ll keep you around.”
“I am concerned about”—Sondegger’s voice became a whisper—“a surprise attack against the United States.” And louder, swelling with righteousness: “I am concerned we will not be able to speak business after I reveal my rendezvous with Duckblind.”
He upended the pitcher. Rum burst onto the desktop, soaked the stacks of paper, splashed Sondegger’s arm and chest—it smelled of molasses and musk—and he flicked Tom’s lighter, which appeared somehow in his hand. He set the flame to an edge of paper, and it spread like a ripple in a pond.
Tom startled away. “Bastard!”
Davies-Frank yelled something and bolted for the door.
“They cannot act against me, Mr. Wall, until they confirm the information.” Sondegger remained perfectly placid as the paper puckered and blackened and the desktop was consumed in a fireball. “Until tomorrow night at ten-fifteen.”
Davies-Frank, in the hall, was yelling, “The buckets, fire, the buckets.”
Sondegger stood, his chain rattling. The fire consumed his sketches, wafted ash into the burning air. His left sleeve was engulfed in flame as he softly said, “The next meeting, the treff, is at All Souls Church—with the damaged steeple. Ten-fifteen tomorrow night.” A black smudge appeared on his sleeve as the fabric burned through. The smoke was thin and bitter and the burn mark grew, a widening stain. The man had to be in pain, but his voice was a whisper, a kiss. “The clear to approach is vertical white tape in the zero of the three oh nine of the Polytechnic’s address. Visual confirm outside the church, recsig is a white umbrella, secondary meet in the shell of Queen’s Hall.”
“‘The clear to approach’? Wait—”
“And if you want Earl, Thomas, I recommend you try the Rapids.”
“I—what?”
“Your brother’s home away from home.” Sondegger’s face glowed with reflected orange light. “The Rapids.”
THERE WAS SHOUTING and the clang of a bucket and the slosh of sand. Tom couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. The smoke choked him. Sondegger knew he wasn’t Earl. Sondegger had called him Thomas.
It was impossible. Should he tell Davies-Frank and Highcastle? Did they already know? No—if he told them, he’d never speak with Sondegger again. His one path to Earl would disappear.
Sondegger knew he was Tom, knew he was looking for Earl. The Rapids? That wasn’t Earl’s club. The contents of the closet in the hall outside? A surprise attack on the United States? Sondegger was playing games, and Tom didn’t know the rules. He was too exhausted to struggle, too aware that if he stopped struggling he’d burn.
He’d burn, then. But not before he laid hands on Earl. The Rapids.
Tom stepped out of the room as Highcastle charged inside. Ash clogged the air, hung in the doorway and the hall. The guard called for a medic while the prisoner recited lyric verse.
Five steps down the hall, Tom put his hand on the narrow wallpapered door—to the broom closet or the attic, to what Sondegger called the “cupboard”—and pushed. Locked. He knocked and the door swung open.
“I heard— Smoke?” A short man stood there with straight black hair plastered to his forehead. He was in shirtsleeves, blinking like he’d been asleep. “Is there—”
“There was a fire,” Tom said, and stepped inside.
It was a small room with an angled ceiling. There was a small desk and a small window, and a black wire dangled from the ceiling to the desktop and ended in a pair of heavy black earphones. A stenography notebook lay open on the desk.
“You write it all down?” Tom asked.
“Must we evacuate?”
“It’s nothing; it’s over.”
“Has someone fetched the stirrup pump?”
Tom kicked the door closed. “You transcribe it even when he’s talking to himself?”
“Are you certain—” The man saw something in Tom’s face. “Oh, yes. Yes, every word.”
“That’s a lot of words.”
“Three notebooks a day. One never knows when he’ll say something significant.” The man blushed. “Not that I judge significance. I simply write.”
“You get the last bit?”
The man glanced at the open notebook. “The final audible words were Mr. Davies-Frank calling for a bucket, and Herr Sondegger requesting that a key be made available. But I really should . . .” He pulled out his chair, where his shiny black waistcoat was hanging. “I ought not miss anything, if the fire is . . . out.”
“Write this down: Duckblind’s next meet is All Souls Church, the one with the damaged steeple. Ten-fifteen Tuesday night. To clear the approach, you need a line of white tape in the zero—of the three oh nine of the number of . . . Shit. I can’t remember. Whatever’s three oh nine, nearby—a public building, I think.”
The man’s pen scratched as Tom spoke.
“That’s a vertical line in the zero,” Tom said. “Visual verification outside the church, the contact has to be carrying a white umbrella, and the backup meet’s at Queen’s Hall.”
“Anything else?” the man asked. “No? Then if you’ll excuse me . . .” He slipped the earphones on and his pen immediately started scratching at the notebook, as if he completed an electrical circuit between the wire and the paper.
Tom reached for the door and it banged open. Highcast
le glowered inside. “Bloody hell are you doing?”
“Research,” Tom said.
The small man said, “He obtained the information, sir.”
Highcastle pulled Tom into the smoky hall. “Let’s hear it.”
They went over it four times and confirmed the details: All Souls Church had lost its spire in the Blitz; 309 was the Polytechnic Institute; the Queen’s Hall, a concert hall, had been bombed into a shell.
“Recognition signal a white umbrella,” Highcastle said. “Nothing more?”
Tom said there wasn’t.
“Your last recorded statement was ‘Bastard!’ Then what?”
Tom told it again. Didn’t mention Earl, though. Didn’t mention the Rapids.
“Nothing more?” Highcastle said.
Tom shook his head and glanced at Davies-Frank, who was sitting beside Highcastle’s desk, taking notes. Davies-Frank was still shaken—not from the fire, but from Sondegger’s words. His daughters were twins, his wife’s name was Joan. And the Hun was inviolable. Even being on fire didn’t unsettle him.
“Nothing more, Wall?”
“You want to hear it a sixth time?” Tom asked.
“If necessary.”
“Nothing fucking more. Oh, except . . .”
“What?”
“You know the Suzy Q?”
Highcastle scowled.
“The jitterbug, Highcastle. The Hun said maybe you can show him the Shim Sham Shimmy.” Tom felt the fatigue draining off in a torrent of words. “Nothing more? Nothing fucking more? Did I mention the fucker set himself on fire? He’s standing there—on fire—and he’s telling me shit, and I’m supposed to be taking dictation? Your man, the microphone man, he missed maybe ten seconds because of the fire—how much you think the Nazi told me?”
“Why speak to Mr. Melville?”
“Melville? I had a question about the great white whale.”
“The transcriptionist. How did you know he was there?”
“I told you. Sondegger mentioned the closet, the cupboard.”
“What else did he mention?”
The Rapids, Earl. “Ten-fifteen, three oh nine. He called the meeting a ‘treff.’ All Souls Church.”
“You stay away from there,” Highcastle said.
“There’s one thing I want from you, and it’s not playing footsie with a man named Duckblind.”
Highcastle grunted.
“We done?” Tom asked.
Davies-Frank spoke for the first time in a half hour. “When we find Earl, I’ll send word to the Rowansea.”
“Nix that,” Tom said. “I’ll call you.”
“Intending to decamp?”
“Nothing for me at the hospital but bedbugs and bandages.”
“You won’t find him, acting alone. I assured the staff I’d return you—”
“What chance is there that Duckblind’ll be at this rendezvous? Ten to one the Hun’s twisting your wig. You’ll need me again—you’ll need Earl. You think he’s not playing a game?”
Silence, and Tom nodded. The Hun was a puppet master; Tom could feel the strings looming over them.
“Arrest him,” Highcastle said to Davies-Frank, meaning Tom. “When we need him, we’ll know where he is.”
“Sure,” Tom said. “When you need me, I tell Sondegger who I really am.”
A glance passed between the Englishmen, the two like an old married couple able to communicate in silence with blank faces.
“You’ve a few pounds in your wallet,” Davies-Frank said. “You’ve a suit and that horrible tie and . . . Return to the Rowansea for three days, Tom. Three days. Get some bloody sleep; you’re a catastrophe.”
Highcastle snorted his agreement.
“My advice, Tom?” Davies-Frank continued. “Forget Earl. You’ve a bad case of nerves. Return to the Rowansea and fix your bloody head.”
“You’re done with me, then?” Tom asked.
“Not quite,” Highcastle said. “First, we check all the Hun gave you was information.”
Tom didn’t understand, until they made him remove his jacket, turn the pockets inside out. His shirt, his pants, his socks. They inspected the lining of his cuffs. They examined the soles of his shoes.
“Don’t forget to check I washed behind my ears,” he said.
Highcastle folded his ear roughly forward. “All wet.”
Wet behind the ears. A joke, from Highcastle? He turned to respond, and Highcastle was running his fingers over Tom’s loud necktie. Turning it over, checking behind the label.
“You think he hid something in my tie? The man never touched me.”
“That reminds me.” Highcastle reached in his pocket, handed Tom the silver lighter. “This is yours.”
THIS TIME, the car was a Morris Bullnose, far cry from Davies-Frank’s Daimler. The driver was one of the sentries from Hennessey Gate, blond, clear-eyed, and silent. Silence was good with Tom. He closed his eyes. Sondegger said the Rapids was Earl’s home away from home. A club? But not his usual, which featured after-dinner exhibitions of Victorian plays in the attached theater. That always seemed too sedate for Earl, too square. A place called the Rapids sounded more characteristic.
Should Tom wait three days in the Rowansea? In three days, he might have forgotten about Earl, the betrayal, his boys on Crete.
The car slowed and rattled, and Tom opened his eyes. They were on a narrow road. They passed a crooked sign that said SEDGEWARE BURY. He’d tried to memorize landmarks on the drive in—a leaf-bare oak, the rise of a shallow hill, an old white church. He thought he could find Hennessey Gate again.
He grinned at his reflection in the window. He thought a lot of things. What he knew was more limited. It was December 1, 1941. Early evening. He had to find Earl, and the only lead was a Nazi agent saying the Rapids . . .
They were in the City. Heading south. The Bullnose stopped at an intersection. A group of office girls walked past, chattering about the Scarf Room at Jacqmar’s. Office girls and Kiwis—Tom’s heroes. These girls, during the worst of the Blitz, they’d wake every morning and pencil their brows, fix their faces—rouge and lipstick, whatever the hell they did—and they’d choose a dress and a hat and shoes and they’d grab their bag and pick their way among the wreckage to the office, past gutted buildings and anti-aircraft batteries, careful of their permanent waves, to take dictation, to make tea.
“Office girls,” Tom said.
“Hm?” the driver said.
Tom gestured. “She’s a live one. Could be Penny Singleton.”
“Hm?”
“Blondie in the green hat.”
“Mmm,” the driver said.
“Walks like she’s stirring July jam,” Tom said, trying to remember his squad’s pet phrases, to keep the driver looking. “Puts the burn in Hepburn.”
A horn sounded behind them. The traffic light had changed beneath its blackout hood.
“What she is,” Tom said, “is out the door—”
The driver put it in gear.
“—and over the roof.” Tom worked the handle and stepped into the road.
“Oi!” the driver said.
Tom was gone.
NOBODY HAD HEARD of the Rapids. Not the stall holders, not the railwaymen, not the bookseller’s wife or the butcher or the Poles. Not the top-hatted old gentlemen.
Not the Oliver Twist children playing in what Tom first thought was an overgrown garden. Turned out to be a field leveled when the rubble of bombed buildings had been cleared—five houses, of which nothing remained but crumbling foundations and waterlogged cellars. An acre of the country growing between tiny yellow-brick houses, reclaimed by nature’s vanguard: blackberry snarls, brittle stalks of nettle, and creeping jenny veining the ruined walls with vine.
“The Rapids?” An owl-eyed child said at
Tom’s question. “I dunno.”
“Here,” a grimy boy said. “Give us a prezzie?”
“A prezzie,” Tom said.
He was lost. Been lost a long time. He’d never find the Rapids—if it existed. It wasn’t a nightclub, wasn’t a pub, wasn’t a neighborhood or a show. He’d have to walk back his brother’s movements. Earl must have left something behind. The first step was clear.
CHAPTER
TEN
EVENING, DECEMBER 1, 1941
HARRIET DUG TWICE as deep as the tulip bulbs were tall. She picked through the bulb fiber and chose the varieties she wanted. Flair for those soon to leave, Electra for those in the field. Peach Blossom for those missing in action, and Brilliant Star for the dead.
She patted the peat tight. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry, not even here, not even alone with her hedges and her holly. In France, in Norway, in Poland and Germany and Belgium, her women could never relax their vigilance. If they betrayed themselves with a single misspoken word or ill-timed tear, they would die.
Her unwillingness to cry—for them, for herself—was as ludicrous as planting her bulbs. Yet it was all she had, once the Lizzie trundled down the grass airstrip and took flight. She broke apart a clump of dirt. Too late for tulips, the first of December, but life was hearty. Life would prevail. This spring or next, green shoots would push through the heavy earth.
“Tucked in tight,” she said. Cyclamen, bluebells, the humble snowdrop—with wallflower and polyanthus, they would create messy drifts of color, messy and vibrant. Harriet had no patience for a tidy garden. She stood from the bulbs to harvest berries from the holly before the redwings and robins did it for her. She brushed her fingers on her skirt.
She was officially the coordinating officer of WIT Section of the Special Operations Executive—which meant, in SOE argot, she was the chief’s secretary. Mr. Uphill was a kind man, an affable man, and not a very bright man. Happily, however, he was a man secure within his limits. If Harriet was slowly encroaching upon his duties, he wasn’t a whit offended. So long as she kept his appointment book in good order and fetched tea, he was entirely willing to depend upon her discretion in other matters.
