by Jeff Dawson
‘Go on.’
‘Your freedom was granted on the proviso that you kept your head down and went back to living a quiet life… Something, of course, you were unable to do. And last October, when the chance came again to poke your nose into the business of intelligence matters…’
He cut in, irked.
‘What happened in London – the Russians – was not by design, I can assure you. You think I do this for fun?’
She sipped her drink again.
‘A few weeks ago there was a break-in at a bank in Holborn, London, the very bank where you had stored those documents. The security box was opened, its contents were stolen. Because the contents were stolen, the powers-that-be called in their debt, specifically a gentleman named William Melville, head of the Secret Service, who enforced your recruitment as an agent of MO3. It is on their behalf that you are now in the United States on a dangerous mission… and as an expendable commodity.’
It seemed pointless denying it. It would ring hollow. She continued.
‘Now here’s where it gets interesting… The contents of the security box.’
‘What about them?’
‘Seems they amounted to a single Manilla envelope.’
He nodded.
‘What hadn’t been banked on was that within that envelope there existed no documents at all, merely a copy of Music Collector, a magazine for those who appreciate phonograph records…’
It was true. The joke was on them. Finch got an inner kick at his own punchline.
‘Very clever, Captain Finch. But I’m sure you’ll reveal the documents’ true whereabouts eventually. And that, fundamentally, is what we want to know.’
‘We…? You… You’re German secret service?’ he spluttered.
‘N-Abteilung…?’
She laughed dismissively.
‘Right, that’s it… Up!’
He gestured for her to rise and tucked the gun inside his jacket again.
A waiter arrived with the soup.
‘But, sir…’
‘I’m sorry, my wife is suddenly not feeling very well – motion sickness.’
‘I’ll keep it warm for you, sir.’
Finch hustled her away and steered her back towards their cabin. This time, in the corridor, he made sure to ram the barrel hard into her back. Inside the cabin, he motioned her to the far end by the window.
He had no clue what to do with her and would have to improvise. He put another cigarette in his mouth and went to light it, but had left his lighter on the dining-car table.
There was a knock on the door. The waiter returning it. He reached to answer it with his back turned.
The short sharp stab of a karate chop to the neck felled him to the floor.
Standing over him was a seven-foot Native American with the skin burnt off down one side of his face, the flesh a contusion of scar tissue, pus and raw, flapping skin, matted in long bedraggled hair. His right hand was in a thick black leather glove.
Teetonka.
Finch was stunned. Pain shot up behind his ear. The acrid taste of fear bit in his throat.
I still have the gun…
It had clattered across the floor between them. The giant Amerindian moved, but the space was cramped, he couldn’t stoop quickly enough. Finch beat him to it.
He was a big target. Finch aimed for the centre of the chest and pulled the trigger.
Nothing… She had emptied it.
The huge man leered down, baring his teeth, laughing at him.
Finch turned to Katia and raged up at her.
‘So that’s your game, is it? All you little rats in it together.’
Chapter 17
Teetonka smacked the gun out of Finch’s hand as if it were a mere plaything. It hit the wall with a crack and the silencer sheared off, rolling across the floor. He raised his huge fist and prepared to rain it down on Finch’s head. Finch flung up a pitiful arm in defence.
‘Stop!’
The cry from Katia threw Teetonka.
‘Leave him!’
There was a look of confusion on the oversized man’s wounded face. Finch flicked his eyes over to Katia. She cast a sideways glance. She was on his side.
It gave Finch brief respite – nothing now but the rhythm of the train, thundering west at a tremendous lick.
The giant of a man changed tack and moved to her instead. He swung a forearm. It landed a smash to the side of her face. She crumpled to the floor.
Despite his own physical limitations, Finch struggled to his feet and leapt onto Teetonka’s back. Burns like his would have been agonizing, he knew… fresh burns. He had treated enough of them in the field hospitals of South Africa. He sunk his fingers into the mess of flesh on the side of his face.
Teetonka gave a guttural groan and, reflexively, elbowed Finch hard in the ribs. It was like a kick from a mule. He flew into the door and doubled over, gulping for air, his diaphragm in spasm. The giant leather fist came down like a sledgehammer and caught Finch on the temple. He was flat out on the floor again, stunned, immobile, still gagging for oxygen, his vision disturbed, part blacked. And then came huge hands clamped around his throat.
Finch discerned movement. Katia was coming round, dazed. This time it was she who flew onto Teetonka’s back, beating at him fiercely but ineffectually. The hands around Finch’s throat loosened momentarily. But the huge Amerindian shrugged her off. She cracked her shoulder on the light bulb. The room went dark. And Finch felt the crush again. He clutched at the giant hands but they were immoveable, solid. There was only moonlight, but enough to see the man’s gritted teeth and the psychopathic stare. The side of his face was now a bloody pulp.
Finch struggled to maintain consciousness but it was slipping. This time his vision went completely, a peripheral sense to be snuffed out on the way to complete bodily shutdown. He had been without sufficient oxygen for the best part of a minute already, he knew. It would not take much longer.
Visions flitted through his mind… of childhood… of school… of his doctor’s surgery… of treating old ladies’ bunions… of a shingle beach in Norfolk and a one-armed man… of Russians on the streets of London… of South Africa… the battlefields of the veld… of running for his life in Cape Town…
Of Annie…
And then he resigned himself to it… surrendered. He had cheated death more times than any one man had a right to. His chest heaved, the lungs sucking for the air that did not come…
Suddenly the hands were gone. He was convulsing, panting, moaning with every precious breath; nothing beyond that than the express, with its rocking and rolling and furious, monotonous clickety-clack.
It was Katia. The cord from the venetian blind – she had somehow reached up to get it round Teetonka’s neck. She had crossed her wrists, locking them against each other, negating resistance. And he was doing everything that a fighter shouldn’t – pulling at the ligature, scratching to get a thumb under the cord, instead of peeling off the arms that were inflicting the damage.
She knew what she was doing. He could see it in their combined shape. She was walking backwards towards the window, preventing Teetonka from establishing a defensive foothold. But the cabin was small and they slammed into the window.
‘My bag,’ she urged. ‘Bullets.’
She had removed them from the gun, knowing full well he would take the Luger from her, he realized. She had let him. She had gleaned more information from him as the subject of his stupid questioning than if she had interrogated him at the point of it. The same old trick.
With a blast on the whistle, they were into a tunnel. It was pitch black, the outside noise suddenly deafening. Then out again…
The Luger. Where was it? He was on his hands and knees feeling around. He could see she had wrapped her legs around him. They were toppling over backwards. It had skidded under the bed. He stretched his hand out to it. It was beyond his reach.
He breathed deep and extended into the stretch, finding another inch, the
n two. With broken fingers he dragged it out.
Teetonka was kicking furiously. Finch took a blow on his bad knee.
But there, on the floor… the bag. He fought to undo the clasp but another clout sent him reeling. Its contents scattered across the floor.
And then another tunnel…
When the moonlight returned, he could see the things that had spilled out: lipstick, a powder compact, keys… and a magazine with rounds in it.
‘Flip on the safety. Pull up the peg,’ she was yelling, as the big man’s legs flailed like that of a hanging man.
‘The peg?’
‘It has two wheels – either side.’
He followed her instruction and lifted the lever. It ejected the empty magazine from the stock.
The Luger was an unconventional design for an automatic pistol. Its handle, which contained the magazine, sloped back from the breach at a sharp angle, almost 45 degrees – unlike a Browning, whose grip, like most handguns, aligned more perpendicular. Finch struggled at first, but rammed the fresh magazine home.
He turned to Teetonka and aimed the weapon.
‘The silencer!’ Katia yelped.
It had snapped off. It couldn’t be re-screwed, even if he tried.
‘A pillow,’ she said.
She had meant for Finch to use it as a muffler, but he had a better idea. He grabbed one from the bed and held it over the big man’s face, pushing down hard to seal off the air. It seemed to take for ever but eventually the legs switched from a kicking to a twitching.
And then… nothing…
Katia wriggled out from under him.
There was a knock on the door. A steward.
‘Mr and Mrs Travers. Everything okay in there?’
Finch cracked the door a couple of inches.
‘Thank you. My wife had a turn and collapsed.’
‘You need a doctor?’
‘She’s okay now. It’s the blood… her sugar… It happens sometimes.’
Katia called out, for extra effect.
‘I’m fine now. Thank you for asking. We appreciate it.’
‘Very good, ma’am.’
Finch closed the door. He looked down.
‘What do we do about him?’
‘We can lock the body in the bathroom… or get rid of it.’
‘How?’
‘The window – if we slide it down. It’s dark outside.’
A sharp kick to the thigh sent Finch sprawling.
Teetonka… He was still alive.
Katia jumped on to him and smothered the pillow over his face again but he was simply too strong. He flipped her over. He fumbled to place his hands on her throat.
‘Shoot him! Do it!’ she wheezed.
Finch placed the gun to the back of his head. Then he remembered the pillow and paused to wrap it round the gun.
As they entered another tunnel it fell pitch black again, the echo screaming back in through a window with its vent still open. There was a flash, but the sound was lost. And when they exited, a man was dead.
It took a while for the snowstorm of feathers to settle, falling in the moonlight, thought Finch, like a surreal Dickensian Christmas scene.
Finch unscrewed the remnants of the main cabin’s broken light bulb and replaced it with one from the small en-suite bathroom. Lit up now, the room was damaged and dented and there was blood spreading from under the gunshot wound. Katia was already busy. She had tied a towel round the Indian’s head to stem the flow. She slid down the window and told Finch to kill the light.
‘Okay, you ready?’
He was heavy. Way more so than the bodies they had hauled in the alleyway. They managed to manoeuvre Teetonka up and prepared to launch him, head first. Finch couldn’t help but feel sorry. The burns would have been excruciatingly painful alone. What a miserable end.
‘One… two… three…’ she said, and they pushed him out partway.
Then they hit another tunnel.
There was a scrape and a thud. And, when the moonlight returned, Teetonka’s head had been sheared clean off.
Finch froze.
‘Again,’ she said. ‘Concentrate!’
This time, the large Native American was propelled out for good.
Finch pulled the blind down as best he could without its cord and turned the light on again. She urged him to clear up the feathers while she took a spare blanket to mop up the blood spillage and the bits of brain and tissue. Once done, she threw them out too.
‘Your clothes. Turn around for me.’
He did as he was told. There were a few blood spots on his sleeve, but they could be washed off.
She, however… She had been wearing a dress and bolero jacket of pale blue. She was a bloody mess.
‘My suitcase,’ she said.
He hadn’t noticed, but it sat above them on the mesh of the luggage rack. She had clearly planned this escape in advance.
She began stripping off and, by the time Finch had placed it on the bed, was down to her white cotton corset.
‘This is no time to be bashful,’ she said.
He sat on the bed with his hands over his eyes, but the attempt to avert his gaze was pathetic. She was in excellent physical shape, he admired – the body of a sportswoman. When she slipped out of her corset, too, he noticed a scar on her abdomen.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’m actually a doctor, believe it or not.’
‘I know.’
‘I need to look at your neck.’
There were red marks, bruising had already begun to show.
‘There’s not a lot can be done. Ice, but that’s not practical. Do you have a dress with a high collar?’
She nodded. It was a deep yellowy brown, like old gold. She wrestled it on.
They surveyed the patched-up damage to the room. It was presentable to a quick glance. And then she said words he thought he’d never hear.
‘Thank you.’
There was another knock at the door, the steward again. Finch took a chance and opened the door a little more widely, allowing him a look in.
‘I forgot this,’ the man said and he handed over Finch’s lighter.
‘Thank you,’ said Finch. ‘You know my wife’s feeling a little better now…’
He threw her a look and she nodded.
‘I think we’re ready to resume our meal.’
As they took their table, the train began to slow. After the rush of country air there came the smell of the city again. They were pulling into Philadelphia – ‘Philly’. There seemed nothing out of the ordinary as the passengers came and went and porters scuttled along the platform, wheeling handcarts of luggage. He heard someone remark that one of the wagons ‘may have hit a deer’.
They ate in near silence. Despite all that had happened, they were still ravenous. There were other people in too close a proximity for them to have a meaningful conversation.
After dinner, back into the night, and with the train having resumed its hypnotic rhythm, they retired to the bar. They ordered fresh drinks and lit up cigarettes and sat in the corner, safe from the distance of eavesdroppers.
‘So,’ she began. ‘Ask me.’
And he did. To which she divulged more about Muller’s grip on New York’s population, his sponsorship of the American National Party and its leader, Abel Schultz.
‘Don’t underestimate Schultz. People like him, they have a way of stoking passions, whipping things up, playing on grievances.’
‘How about that ritual – the one with me on the altar?’
‘It’s a pseudo-religious ceremony. Muller’s a secret member of a mysterious cult called the Order of Teutons – which mixes growing Germanization with Aryan mysticism and is proving popular among conservative members of the intelligentsia back in Germany. That cross they wear, it’s called a ‘sauwastika’. It’s actually an ancient peace sign – means “well being” in Sanskrit, would you believe – only the arms of the Aryan cross point in the opposite direction.’
�
�Nationalism is pretty easy to tap into. It’s cheap politics. Basic demagoguery. You don’t need mumbo jumbo like that to back it up, surely?’
She drew deep on the cigarette. The train wound on through the bends and horseshoes of the Alleghenies.
‘You have to remember, Finch, Germany as a unified state is only 30 years old. It’s having to forge its own creation myths – much like America’s doing now with the “Wild West”. You know, all those cowboy books, the Buffalo Bill shows, the “Western” cine-films it’s starting to make. Turning away from Europe. Presenting itself as a land of pioneers and frontiersmen settling a New World. Manifest destiny.’
‘You mean as opposed to being European colonists, topped up with a recent flood of cheap immigrant labour. Not to mention the extermination of the indigenous population.’
She nodded.
‘It really has no other choice. The Civil War, that’s a huge rift to heal… If it ever will. North and South, they’re still different worlds.’
‘But this Teutonic thing? Robes… human sacrifices…? I’m assuming that’s the way Kimmel met his maker?’
She nodded.
‘Don’t get all holier than thou, either. It’s not much different to what the Freemasons are up to in your country. It’s rife in Scotland Yard, most evident in the prosecuting of the Jack the Ripper case. You should know that.’
She was right.
‘Even Tammany Hall. You’ll have heard of that?’
‘I’ve seen it mentioned in the newspapers. I wasn’t quite sure…’
‘Superficially it’s a political lobby, the Society of St Tammany, largely run by powerful Irishmen with a vested interest in the lot of New York’s working class. But by origin it’s an old Columbian Order whose roots are founded in the preservation of “American purity”, whatever the hell that means.’
She sipped her drink.
‘This stuff is everywhere. It’s as if our modern age – the age of industry, of technology, of progress – it’s all too much, all happening too quickly. It’s sent people scampering back into the shadows, finding meaning in primitivism… in the occult. Spiritualism… mediums… seances… stage magic… even this fascination with Houdini… They’re all part of it, an extension of something primal within us.’
