by Joel N. Ross
Sondegger glanced at Tom, then looked with more interest at Harriet. She kept her face blank, but the Hun examined her with an owlish stare and nodded. He knew she had the microdot. And Tom could see in her face that she knew he knew; she put her hand on the piano behind her, as if to steady herself.
“With Earl dead,” Sondegger continued, “I passed my microdot to Tom. It was—”
“Step back, yobbo,” Renard said when Tom patted his pocket for cigarettes.
“Couldn’t touch me with a blade, Renard.” Tom brought the pack to his mouth. “You think the gun’s enough?”
A knife appeared in Renard’s free hand. “More than blinkin’ touch you. Stick you in the heart and watch you bleed.”
“Mr. Renard,” Sondegger said. “If you please.”
Renard flicked his hand again, and the knife was gone.
“Thank you. I handed my microphotograph to you, Tom.” Sondegger chuckled. “Another pun, for your pleasure. Handed indeed. I was obliged to—”
“I got empty hands now.” Tom lighted his cigarette. “Think you can touch me?”
“Bloody wait,” Renard said. “I’ll gut you like—”
“I was obliged,” Sondegger said, his voice gentle as the dawn, “to give you the microfilm, Tom. One inspection of my mouth, and all would’ve been lost. I was sent—as I’m sure you’re aware—to destroy the microphotographs.”
“Then why not swallow the fucking thing?” Tom said. “It was stuck in your gums for a week.”
“Leverage,” Sondegger said. “It was an unwise solution to a difficult situation. I had hoped—”
Tom glanced at Harriet and saw her hand on the open lid of the piano, saw the glint in her eye as she caught his look. He knew that glint. He nodded slightly—and she slammed the piano lid down.
Renard and Sondegger swung toward the noise, and Tom flicked his burning cigarette at the German’s face, kicked the end table at Renard. “The window! Harry, move!”
The microfilm was in Harriet’s pocket. She had to open the boarded window behind the curtain—the window Tom had broken days ago—and scramble through and run to the embassy, alert the Americans, show them the proof. But first she had to get away.
Renard was entwined in the table, struggling to right himself, so Tom swung at Sondegger with the base of a lamp. Didn’t connect, but the German flinched away from the window as Harriet slipped behind the curtain, her fingers scrabbling at the edges of the board. Renard tossed the table aside and lunged for Harriet, got a handful of curtain, ripped it from the wall. Tom side-armed Sondegger and saw Rugg standing massively in the doorway. Harriet screamed as Renard grabbed her coat. Tom stomped the back of Renard’s knee and took Harriet by the shoulders and shoved her through the window. He heard her thump to the street outside and clamber to her feet.
It was done. It was over. Nothing he could do about the Twenty Committee. Harriet’s girls were dead, and the man known as Whiskbroom was dead, and his family was dead. But the Jap sneak attack would fade into the Pacific mist. There would be no massacre at Pearl Harbor.
He blocked the window to buy Harriet more time. “It’s over,” he said as he watched Renard lift his .38.
Sondegger laughed. “And you still have no idea what it was.”
“His bird’s off and running,” Renard said.
“Cover Mr. Wall closer, if you please, Renard.”
Renard circled behind Tom. In a moment, Tom felt the gun barrel on the back of his neck. It was cold and small, a pinprick.
“I asked Mr. Rugg to allow Lady Harriet to escape,” Sondegger said. “Though I’d intended she use the front door at a time of my choosing.”
“Allow her?” Renard said. “What’s this, then?”
“All in the service of motivation, Mr. Renard.” Sondegger smiled at Tom. “I hope you didn’t believe a word of Monsieur Galland and his ‘stolen’ microphotographs. We needed to prompt Lady Harriet to deliver the information; she couldn’t think I wanted it delivered. What was it her father said, Mr. Rugg?”
“‘She knows her duty,’” Rugg said. “‘Born and bred.’”
“She is far more reliable than you, Tom.”
Tom wiped blood from his mouth. Bullshit. The Hun was still playing games.
“I am in complete earnest, Tom. I was afraid you’d prefer that your country fight in this war at any cost. But I’ve heard Lady Harriet is of unimpeachable character. She will deliver the information. And she, they cannot ignore. Of course, if she—”
“If she calls the police,” Rugg said. “We ain’t elsewhere.”
“Patience, my friend. We have”—Sondegger consulted some inner timetable—“three or four minutes. We are well armed and will exit the rear. The police are hardly a threat. And think of poor Tom.”
“Kill him and be gone.”
“He shouldn’t leave the theater knowing so little of the plot. It began, Tom, with those of us in Berlin who thought Japan’s attack an egregious mistake. Invite the United States into a war we are winning? We could not—”
“Time’s wasting.”
“Point taken, Mr. Rugg.” Sondegger cocked his head. “In brief, your brother was the best-placed American we could approach. He agreed to pass the microphotographs to his embassy, as was his duty. But at the last moment, he mentioned going directly to Washington, via the CIO. You see the difficulty?”
Tom saw nothing, felt nothing but the gun at the base of his neck. “Roosevelt?”
“Yes, I worried your president would ignore the information. He’d allow the Japanese to attack, use it as a pretext for war. I stabbed Earl when he mentioned the change of plans, but he was quite resilient. He locked me in a shed near the canal. You’ve seen the place? Well, I had to improvise to get what I needed: the only other American who’d have clearance to meet me. You. It’s now December fifth in Hawaii. It’ll be the sixth, soon. Lady Harriet has hours before X-One Day officially begins.”
“Fookin’ hell.”
“Quite right, Mr. Rugg. I’m sorry, Tom. You were a good man.” Sondegger nodded at Renard over Tom’s shoulder. “Quiet, if you please—with the knife.”
“Renard couldn’t stick a dead horse with a pitchfork,” Tom said.
Renard swiped at Tom’s head with the gun barrel. It cracked against his temple and he fell and hit the carpet rolling. He moved fast and lifted himself into a crouch before an iron hand clamped around his neck. Rugg lifted him off his feet as Renard came at him with a predatory smile.
“Kill him,” Rugg said.
Renard hit Tom twice in the stomach, two sharp jabs. “Work him first.”
“No time.”
Renard flicked his knife into his hand. He looked at Rugg over Tom’s shoulder. “Go on,” Renard said. “Me and him.”
“Fookin’ berk.” Rugg shrugged and tossed Tom through the open door and into the hall.
He hit the wall hard, barely standing, his head still throbbing from the blow of the gun barrel. The tallboy teetered next to him; the stair banister veered crazily.
“Dance for us, yobbo,” Renard said from behind him.
Tom stumbled toward the kitchen, knocking off the walls. He struggled out of his jacket, the only defense he had.
“Cut you good,” Renard said. “Watch you bleed out. . . .”
A line of fire slashed down Tom’s shoulder. He felt his shirt sticking with the warm wet of blood. He was through the kitchen door, his jacket wrapped around his bad arm. He stumbled into the table, tossed a chair back at the door.
Renard kicked the chair aside and Tom turned to face him, backpedaling past the fridge as Renard flipped the knife in his hand and slashed at Tom’s stomach.
Tom threw open the refrigerator door. It swung hard, missed Renard, and crashed against the cabinet. Food burst from shelves—margarine and tinned tomatoes and a cabbage—a p
ot clanged, and a porcelain cup shattered on the floor. Tom slipped on a tin, the cut across his stomach burning, and fell onto one knee. He clawed at the fridge door, pulling it between himself and the knife, bundling his jacket in front of him and trying to move farther behind the safety of the door.
“All good things,” Renard said, swinging the door open, out of his way, “end bad.”
Tom’s back was on fire; his outstretched hands throbbed from gripping his jacket, keeping it between him and the blade. Renard faked left, then drove the knife directly through the jacket. The blade cleaved the fabric and struck flesh.
Pain clawed Tom’s chest and he slumped back. His hands clutched the jacket to his heart, the knife handle jutting between them. The refrigerator blew cool air on his neck.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
EVENING, DECEMBER 5, 1941
“TIME’S WASTING,” RUGG said from the kitchen door.
“Keep it in the cupboard.” Renard flashed a cheeky grin. “He’s finished.”
Wall was slacked against the fridge, bloody knife handle sticking out of his chest, his breath short and sharp.
“Go on,” Rugg said. “He ain’t dead yet.”
Renard pointed his ferret nose and sniffed. “Nicked his insides. He’s dead and don’t know it.”
It was true. Rugg couldn’t mistake that smell—innards sliced, exposed to air. “Stop cunting around, then. Where’d you leave the car?”
Renard smashed the refrigerator door on the Yank. “Told him I’d watch it bleed out.”
Rugg grabbed Renard by the scruff. “The car, you squit.”
“Over near Hertford—his nibs said none too close.”
It wasn’t so bad, the two-seater Renard had hoisted. Sonder sat behind the wheel, with Rugg in front and Renard bent like a corkscrew in the dickey seat. Sonder drove casually, no hurry. He talked that way, too, like a news announcer. They passed Ludgate Circus and the Old Bailey and Newgate, and Sonder was saying, “—men done to death at Pentonville and Wandsworth, I believe. Puts me in mind of Titus Oates, who was stripped to the waist, tied to the tail of a cart, and whipped from Aldgate to New—”
They drove past Cripplegate and swung to a stop. They’d hoof it from there, Sonder said. They could hear the hum of traffic, a brace of soldiers laughing drunk, a car door closing, the chirp of some night bird.
Sonder led them to a knacker’s yard. Gravestones stuck up like broken teeth, the bones and bobbins planted deep in the dirt. Beyond the stones were old ruined steps and a wall.
“Our day for crumbling Walls,” Sonder said. He flicked on a blackout torch, so dim it was shadow.
Up the steps, there were long planks for stepping over a drop to the next building, a bombed-out shell with half floors and less walls and no roof. They drew the planking after them. The building smelled of sodden coal and the moon shone up black shapes burned on the walls by fire. Sonder read a bit of squiggle on the rubbled floor and they crossed to a corner room that was once an office.
Sonder paused in the door, his face split in smiles. “Hannalore?” he called out.
Not ash stirred.
Sonder stepped in, dug under a three-legged desk, and found a red case and a bunch of yellow flowers. He put the case on the desk and a flower in his lapel.
“Waiting on a jane, then?” Renard asked.
“Sadly, Mr. Renard, we haven’t time to wait.” Sonder pulled the case closer, cracked the clasps, and revealed a wireless. “All is in order. She must have judged herself needed elsewhere. Poor girl—she’ll hate to miss this.”
HIGHCASTLE RODE WITH the direction-finding lorry. Bugger regulations. Let Illingworth handle Central; nothing to be done there, nor anywhere. The moon was a flat gray. The DF vans were everywhere, and London was alive with wireless waves—searching for a single transmission was searching for one grain of salt in the wide bloody sea.
Highcastle sat behind a man with a headphone shoved like a hearing aid in his ear, the man sweeping the radio antenna and fiddling with the volume control. He was nervous, or desperate. He should be desperate. He should be terrified. Highcastle was.
The antenna was linked to a compass-bearing indicator, to give a position line on which an illegal transmission would lie. Two lines would give them a point. If they got bloody lucky, if they found the one rotten fish in all of Billingsgate. But the odds were 108 to 1 against. There was nothing to keep the Nazis from transmitting.
Should have hung Sondegger when he had the chance. Duckblind would be transmitting, but Rupert might still be alive. So many were set to die: Whiskbroom and his family. Lady Harriet’s girls, all the agents still working, still breathing. And worse than the agents, the Twenty Committee itself was dead.
TOM SHUDDERED AGAINST the refrigerator. His chest was wet with blood, and the smell of his sweat mixed with something rotten and visceral. His harsh breath was the only sound.
They were gone.
He pushed the jacket from his chest. The knife was pinned through the cloth, embedded in the paper-wrapped package he’d shoved inside—thick steak and wet pig kidney. The blade had still cut into his chest, but only an inch. Bless Harriet and her steak and kidney pie. The butcher’s parcel was foul, cold, and viscous. It dripped with blood and stank of offal and, wrapped in his jacket, had blocked the brunt of the knife thrust.
The cuts across his shoulder and stomach burned and his head throbbed. He peeled his wet shirt away from his skin and looked at his chest. A thin slice below his breastbone, bleeding freely, but not too deep.
He got to his feet; swayed but didn’t faint. Upstairs, he dug in the drawer for the Webley revolver and the little Colt with the ivory grip. Finally, he had a gun in his hand again. The weight of it anchored him.
What had they said? Hertford Street. He staggered down the stairs and pawed at the cabinet for the keys to Harriet’s MG. Hertford Street. Going to Park Lane or Piccadilly? He chose blindly. There were half a dozen cars on the streets, the sun a weak glow under the horizon. Was he too late? No, there—he spotted a convertible Riley, the three of them packed like clowns inside, with Sondegger driving slow and steady.
Tom drove slow and unsteady. He upended an ammo box in his lap; round-nosed lead scattered all the hell everywhere, but he managed to hand-load the Webley without blowing off his kneecap. His luck was changing.
He drove the dark streets. Saw soldiers on the corner—should he call for help? No, there was no time for explanations, no room for error. The Riley stopped at an intersection and Tom pulled behind a boarded kiosk. His eyes were heavy; he wanted to slump into the passenger seat and sleep and never wake. But Sondegger drove on, and he followed, scanning the black night with need and fear.
After a disjointed time, Sondegger parked. Tom pulled over and watched three dark shapes cut across the intersection; then he lost them. He backed onto the joining street and found them again, wraiths slipping over gravestones. He parked in the middle of the street. He couldn’t work the car door. He was light-headed, losing blood.
He messed with his bandage, readied his gun, and dragged himself from the MG. He staggered into the cemetery and climbed a dozen stone stairs to a ledge. It ended nowhere. Back the other way, there was an opening five feet from the neighboring building, a gaping bomb-blown space in the wall. Swell. His grip tightened on the gun. The pain was a distant thing. Hell, he was on borrowed time anyway.
He jumped to the next building, crashed to the floor. The Webley was ten pounds in his left hand. He crept forward, cat-silent now that stealth was useless.
Sondegger’s voice echoed from the charred walls and the sooty floor. “The happy news, Thomas, is that you’re in precisely the right place. The happier is, I’m preparing to transmit as I speak. You have vanishing little time.”
Tom followed the footprints scuffed on the floor, his Webley raised. He needed to stop the transm
ission. The scuffs led to a room at the corner. He entered the room next door, intending to approach from their flank, and heard the intake of breath an instant too late. A pistol cocked six inches from his ear. He froze, the Webley useless. They weren’t in the corner room. The scuff marks had been a ruse.
Renard was to his left, knife in hand. Rugg to his right with a .38. Sondegger was standing over the transmitter.
“Lower your weapon,” Sondegger said. “I’d rather not have noise, but I’m merely a player upon a stage. Mr. Rugg, shoot him now if he doesn’t—”
Tom dropped the Webley and raised his hands. “Where’s Duckblind?”
“Not to worry, I’ll transmit myself.” Sondegger tapped a rhythm on the transmitter. “It’s in perfect working order.”
Tom’s left hand was as empty as his mind. His right was looped in bandages, which dangled from the lump of his fist. He glanced at Rugg, his bad hand throbbing and itchy and ten inches below the big man’s chin.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Sondegger said. “I have a message to transmit. Perhaps you’d be interested to hear it. It seems the Abwehr network in England has—”
Tom fired the .25 Colt in his right hand. The crack was loud, even muffled by the bandages. The bullet caught Rugg under his jaw and punched toward the top of his skull. Tom pivoted, blocked Renard’s knife thrust with his left forearm, and fired twice into Renard’s side. Still twisting, he saw Sondegger raise an Enfield .38 with the grace of a crack marksman on a target range. Tom wrenched his arm rightward, against his spin, and fired until the .25 clicked empty. Two shots went wild before a dark hole appeared an inch off the bridge of Sondegger’s nose.
Tom’s legs tangled together and his vision darkened. Rugg leapt on him and bore him crashing to the ground. He fired the empty .25 until he realized Rugg was deadweight, killed by the first shot. He’d fallen on Tom, not leapt at him.
But Tom couldn’t shift the body. He collapsed, his legs trapped under Rugg’s unbreathing chest. The wireless was humming faintly, transmitting dead air.
