An American Spy

by An American Spy (retail) (epub)

  ‘Yes,’ said the general. ‘At the moment we are a very small group with a great deal to do. I only have seven officers on staff, all of whom are overworked already.’

  Jane nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’ In other words, she thought, ‘I want you as far away as I can get you.’

  ‘Within a few weeks I’ll have a full complement of men, administrators, prosecutors and investigators from the Criminal Investigation Department. None of these people have the training necessary for dealing with problems that are of a… sensitive nature.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by “sensitive”?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Those problems which cannot be considered run-of-the-mill,’ said the general, still evading the question. ‘Most of the crimes we deal with will concern petty issues: pilfering, barroom battery, trading in cigarettes and the like. From time to time we will almost certainly face more serious crimes, just as we did in the last war: specifically, desertion, murder and rape.’ He paused. ‘We have prepared for this and so have the civil authorities. This office has already established a direct liaison with the British courts as well as Scotland Yard.’

  ‘But…’ said Jane.

  ‘But indeed,’ replied the general. He paused, pushing a small silver box across the desk towards Jane. ‘Smoke if you like.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jane took a Lucky out of the silver box and lit it with the plain Zippo she’d picked up at Fort Oglethorpe.

  ‘We have a small, special investigative unit here to look into such sensitive crimes.’ He looked down at her file. ‘Since you seem to have some experience in these matters, Colonel Donovan thought perhaps you might find Major Dundee’s group of interest.’

  ‘Dundee?’

  ‘Lucas Alexander Decimus Dundee.’ The general cleared his throat. ‘Comes from your neck of the woods actually. Los Angeles. Used to work for the district attorney’s office there.’

  ‘Burton Fitts?’ asked Jane. Fitts was one of the most corrupt municipal politicians who’d ever taken graft.

  ‘Dundee quit the office,’ said the general. ‘From what I hear, that is a mark in his favour.’ He slid a large manila envelope across the desk. It had a string winder and a blob of sealing wax on it. Blue sealing wax. ‘This is his file. Normally I wouldn’t hand it out to a… person such as yourself but you seem to have some powerful friends.’ He made a waving gesture. ‘Read it when you have the time.’

  ‘So where do I find this Major Dundee?’

  ‘A country property called Strathmere about fifty miles north-west of London. Not far from a little village called Swan Hill.’

  * * *

  The man with the European accent smiled happily as he placed the object in its velvet-lined case. The small forge hissed, the open square of the brick-lined box sending out a flickering light across the gloomy length of the warehouse. As the man smiled, the hot light flickered off his thick glasses and the solid gold of his left incisor.

  ‘It is done at last. You pay me now, yes?’

  ‘You bet,’ said the man in the American colonel’s uniform. ‘First we’ve got to get you and our little surprise here back to London.’

  ‘That is no problem. I catch one of the late trains. The station is quite close by.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said The Colonel. ‘You did the United States Army a great service and we want to return the favour. Car’s just outside.’

  ‘As you wish, Colonel. It is most kind.’

  The Colonel gestured to a junior officer who had been standing by. He was holding the uniform of a lieutenant in the Eighth Army Air Force.

  ‘Would you mind putting this on?’ asked The Colonel.

  ‘I do not understand,’ said the man.

  ‘Just a little more cloak and dagger. We’re under strict orders here – secrecy, loose lips sink ships, that kind of thing.’ The Colonel smiled pleasantly.

  ‘I see,’ said the man, although it was perfectly obvious that he didn’t. It took him a few minutes but he changed into the uniform. The junior officer picked up the man’s civilian clothes and put them in a paper bag. The Colonel lowered the heat on the forge until the blue gas flame sputtered and went out. The interior of the hot box glowed cherry red. All three went out of the warehouse into the cool evening air, The Colonel carrying the velvet-lined box. The junior officer got behind the wheel of a drab Army-issue Chevrolet sedan. The Colonel and the man in the Army Air Force uniform climbed into the back. The Colonel looked at the heavy gold watch on his wrist.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Almost time for the ten ten from Cambridge.’

  ‘I thought you said we were not taking the train?’ said the man with the European accent.

  ‘We’re not,’ The Colonel answered and patted the man reassuringly on the knee. The car started up and they headed into the darkness.

  Chapter Two

  The following morning brought overcast skies but no rain and, after a light breakfast and against the better judgement of everyone she talked to, the young woman chose to get herself to Swan Hill, appropriating a courier’s olive drab jeep from the Charlton House motor pool. She’d never driven on the left-hand side of the road but, as far as she was concerned, anything was better than another interminable, somewhat smelly and claustrophobic train ride like the one she’d had coming down from Prestwick. With her duffel bag in the backseat, armed with a red cloth bound 3-to-l Road Atlas and a saddlebag lunch packed for her by the hotel, she set off just after ten in the morning.

  She managed to get lost within the first hour, which wasn’t surprising when you considered that all road signs had been removed in case of invasion years ago, but she pressed on, astounded by the suicidal narrowness of the roads, which made the side you chose to drive on of no importance whatsoever, and equally surprised by how comfortable she felt in what was truly, at least to her, an utterly alien landscape.

  Jane moved steadily east across Oxford, Buckingham and Bedford, thundering through towns and villages with names like Chipping, Tring and Leighton Buzzard, eventually striking slightly north through Buntingford, Baldock and Biggleswade, wondering if she’d somehow fallen into some child’s wishing-dream; an ancient misty world of fairies and enchanters where dragons could be slain with swords fashioned on magic anvils in secret, glowing forges deep beneath the sleeping hills. She knew she was in a country in the throes of a terrible war but it still felt as though she was in some fairy-tale land of her childhood where an elf could pop out from behind a tree at any moment and where the occasional troll lived under a bridge. This was the land of Arthur and Merlin and Robin Hood and it was a hard feeling to forget.

  Once, stopping to eat her lunch beside the road, she reached out and touched the stones of an old wall beside a stile that led out onto a small field and, just for a second, she thought she could faintly hear the past singing softly just underneath her hand. She smiled, cursing herself for a fool, then got back into the rattling jeep and continued on her way. She wasn’t here to look for the arc of history; she was here to find a story. The job was the same as ever, only the scene of the crime was different.

  By mid-afternoon, with the sky closing in again, Jane reached the small town of Royston in Cambridgeshire. Following her written instructions, she drove on for three miles until she reached the Bridgefoot Inn, a tumbledown old building with a large sign over its gloomy doorway advertising Reid’s Ale. Just past the inn she swung the jeep left onto what the road atlas called a ‘B’ road and headed north.

  According to the instructions, her destination lay midway between the turn she’d just made and the village of Thriplow, four miles to the north. To left and right, beyond the trees and bramble hedges lining the road, she could see low hills and fields broken into odd shapes by ancient hedgerows, some planted with what appeared to be turnips, others left in grass for grazing sheep.

  A minute or two after making the turn there was a shattering, deep-throated roar directly above her head and she ducked instinctively and squeezed the brake, nearly putting t
he jeep into the ditch. For a split second she caught sight of a flight of sharp-nosed Spitfires as they streamed up into the overcast, the brightly coloured RAF roundels on their wings and fuselages like archer’s targets. They were so low she could see the canvas patches over the machine-gun ports on the leading edges of the wings. Presumably there was a fighter squadron based nearby.

  With the aircraft gone, Jane started up the jeep again and followed the road as it curved through a thick stand of beech trees, boughs bent so close over the road that in a larger car they’d be scratching against the side panels of the hood. ‘Bonnet,’ she said, correcting herself out loud, remembering the passage about language in A Short Guide to Great Britain, the pamphlet that had been her only reading material since leaving the U.S. The hood was a ‘bonnet,’ the trunk was a ‘boot,’ fenders were ‘wings’ and a wrench was a ‘spanner.’ According to the guide book, gas was ‘petrol,’ a truck was a ‘lorry’ and the sidewalk was really the ‘pavement.’ The money was even worse. Copper pennies the size of silver dollars, half crowns when there were no crowns – and mostly called two and six – and shillings called ‘bob’ but never ‘bobs.’

  She came out of the small beech forest and brought the jeep to a halt again, this time intentionally. She got out and stretched her legs for a moment. In front of her, a long narrow valley opened up, the road dipping down with the trees still thick on her right, while to the left there were open, rolling fields, broken by a chequerboard of hedgerows, and low rises of land topped by lonely stands of trees.

  At the bottom of the valley where the road dipped to its lowest point she could see a half-hidden village; red tile, thatch and dark slate roofs peeking out of trees and shrubbery, with the short, crenellated tower of an old Norman church the tallest building in sight. There was a brief flash of dark blue among the trees that had to be a river. Squinting, Jane thought she could see a narrower stream running at right angles to its larger brother. Just outside the village on the smaller stream Jane saw a large building set with a mill’s undershot wheel and she knew there’d be trout nearby and probably pike as well.

  All of this was lit with a burst of cool spring light that cut down through a ragged hole in the low-running clouds above, the light strongest on the ruins of an old abbey or castle that stood on a sharp rise above the village, bleak and cold like the broken stump of a dead and blackened tooth. Swan Hill. Jane shivered as a breeze brewed up from the valley, pushing at the grass in the fields and shimmering through the beech trees with the soft, ghostly sound her mother called Heaven’s Breath.

  Like everything else she’d seen so far in England, Swan Hill looked old and tired and down-at-heel, which was fair enough, all things considered.

  The woman climbed into the jeep again and drove down into the village, the country road becoming the High Street. On the outskirts she saw a tall stone wall overgrown with ivy and through a roofed lichgate she spotted a large brick building surrounded by trees, almost surely a school. A few thatched cottages went by, left and right, and then she was into the village proper, cottages giving way to more substantial brick and stucco single- and two-storey buildings, cheek by jowl, their signboards advertising Martin’s Garage and Ironmonger, which looked as though it might once have been a blacksmith’s forge, Granby Sweets and Leeming Bakery. There was a Boots Chemist, which Jane knew was really a drugstore, a Saddle Shop, a Fish Shop, a Butcher Shop and a Drapers. The street was deserted and the shops were all shuttered and closed.

  Finally at a crossroads there was the church she’d seen from the head of the valley, a large, faded sign identifying it as St Magnus the Martyr. Kitty-corner to it on the far side of the dusty road there was a long, low, whitewashed building with a painted swinging sign above the door. The sign showed a medieval knight on a white horse, the cross on his shield identifying him as a crusader, the hacked-off heads of several dark-haired Saracens dangling from the pommel of his saddle. The name on the sign was THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

  Jane slowed and pulled off the road, parking close to the side of the country pub. The people at Charlton House hadn’t been exactly sure of where to go after reaching Swan Hill but presumably someone in the pub could give her directions. According to the plain wooden board bolted to the wall beside the narrow door, the publican and proprietor was a man named Howard Blundel who was licensed to sell ‘Ale, Beer and Tobacco to be consumed on or off the premises.’ Bar, liquor store and smoke shop all in one. Jane got out of the car, straightened her uniform and prepared to meet her first real Brit, face-to-face.

  She stepped through the door, ducking just in time to avoid smacking her head on a low beam just inside, and found herself in a long, narrow room with open doors at either end and a long, curving bar running its length. There were wooden stools at the bar and benches under a pair of half-curtained windows. The beams and woodwork in the room were dark painted oak, the ceiling was yellow plaster and the floors were bare and made of enormous planks, each one at least eighteen inches wide.

  Behind the bar, against the far wall, there were rows of casks, each one marked with its contents, port and sherry, with a bleak collection of dusty bottles on narrower shelves above. At the centre of the bar the woman could see a trio of blue-and-white decorative porcelain beer pulls. Like the street outside, the bar was empty. The room smelled faintly of wood smoke and hops and over all of it there were the dark scents of rotting plaster and mould.

  Jane turned and went through the low door on the left, stumbling down an unexpected step into a low-ceilinged parlour. Two smaller windows were fully curtained in nicotine-stained cheesecloth and on the plastered walls there was a row of framed game-fish prints. There was a massive fireplace around a hearth large enough to roast a side of beef and several plain round tables together with comfortable-looking wooden armchairs. The wide-plank floors were partially covered by a scattering of thin rag rugs in stripes of muted colour. On each of the tables there was a small vase filled with lilacs and an ashtray. To the right, against the wall, a narrow flight of stairs led steeply to the floor above. Like the bar, the parlour room was empty.

  Taking a second look at the fireplace Jane noticed that above the mantel, set on wooden pegs, there were several long, tapered bamboo fly rods and on the mantelpiece below them, a display of reels. Interested, she went over to examine them. After leaving New York it was the one thing she’d tried and found she loved – fly fishing in northern California and Colorado streams. She’d surprised herself by being good at it and she’d done the best she could to learn as much about the sport as she could, even though she only considered herself a novice.

  The top two rods were Hardy Brothers, one a J. J. Hardy Triumph, a three-piece trout rod, eight feet, nine inches long, the second an older Fairchild nine-footer. The bottom rod was a gigantic LRH Fairy Palakona, a two-handed salmon rod at least thirty years old and a good fourteen feet long. The reels on the mantel ranged from a J. W. Young Bedaux to an Ogden Smith Whitechurch with a sterling-silver drag adjuster. The rods and reels all appeared to be in perfect condition. An old, dark-varnished wicker creel with a leather strap hung from a peg on the side of the fireplace surround.

  ‘Interested in fishing then, are you?’

  Jane turned. A slight man with thinning grey hair and a lean, lined and long-jawed face stood in the doorway that led back to the bar. In his mid-fifties, the man was wearing a dark shirt, open at the neck, a dark brown jacket with worn, shiny lapels and trousers to match. His shoes were heavy and worn. The man’s clothes had a dusty look, just like the bar. He took the step down into the parlour room, hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket, his dark eyes on Jane.

  ‘Yes.’ Jane nodded back to the rods above the mantel. ‘They’re beautiful.’

  ‘Not meant to be beautiful then, are they?’ the man answered. ‘Meant to fish with.’

  There was nothing in her booklet about terse barkeepers. Jane smiled as pleasantly as she could. ‘Still, they are beautiful.’

  ‘In
the eyes of the beholder that is, or so they say,’ the man answered. ‘Belonged to my son Arthur. He was the fisherman in the family. Died in Ypres he did, blown to bits. Not enough left to fill a biscuit tin let alone a bloody casket.’

  ‘My father died at Passchendaele,’ said Jane.

  ‘Then he was as much a fool as my Arthur, wasn’t he.’ The old man paused. ‘Help you then?’

  ‘I’m looking for a place called Strathmere House. I think it’s supposed to be close by.’

  ‘Oh, aye, the sisters,’ said the man obscurely. He frowned, his thick black brows knitting slightly. ‘But we’re not supposed to talk to strangers hanging about,’ he added. ‘So says Tom Drury.’ The man grimaced. ‘Home Guard officer.’

  Jane laughed. ‘I’m not a German spy if that’s what you’re worrying about.’

  ‘I’m not worrying,’ said the man. ‘Just explaining.’ He paused. ‘You’re a Yank then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not a flyer though.’

  ‘No. A war photographer. Like Lee Miller.’ The name didn’t make the slightest impression on him.

  ‘Enough flyers of our own hereabouts. Spits.’

  ‘I saw some of them flying over.’

  The man nodded. ‘Nineteenth Squadron out of Fowlmere. That’s just down the road a little.’

  Jane smiled again. For a man on the lookout for Nazi spies, he was certainly giving out a lot of unasked-for intelligence. ‘Noisy,’ she offered.

  The man snorted. ‘Scares the hens and they stop laying. Haven’t had an egg since they moved out of Duxford.’ He paused then took another step forward, eyeing the insignia on Jane’s cap and uniform blouse. ‘A war correspondent is it?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She nodded and held out her hand.

  The man nodded, wiped his right hand on his jacket and extended it. ‘Blundel. Howard Blundel.’ He shook Jane’s hand. ‘The proprietor,’ he added.