M, King's Bodyguard

by Niall Leonard

  “Big men, I presume?”

  “Not one less than two metres tall.”

  It was the first I’d heard of such an arrangement, and I wondered what those noble panjandrums who fancied themselves in charge had made of it. “And the Palace has consented to this?”

  Steinhauer shrugged. “My master does not need anyone’s permission. He is determined to attend his grandmother’s funeral, but that does not mean he intends to make himself a sitting duck.”

  “Forgive me, Gustav, but six huge men in a ring around His Imperial Majesty might look slightly conspicuous.”

  “They will fall back in the course of the procession through London, where the public expects to see him.”

  “Then they’ll be as much use as the feathers on his helmet.”

  * * *

  —

  The city officials I dismissed at 6:30 a.m. to brief their people while I went to brief mine. Every Special Branch officer available was on duty that day, the lame and the halt included, and they already knew very well where they were to be stationed and what was expected of them. But I went over everything again anyway.

  It came as something of a shock when at 7:22 a.m. Steinhauer and I finally stepped outside the doors of Scotland Yard; I was not as fortunate as my men: no one had told me where to go or where I needed to be. Steinhauer seemed to have had the same thought.

  “Where now?” he said.

  I hesitated. The route was two and a half miles long and certain to be packed with bodies—our task would be like sifting the sands of the Sahara. Steinhauer saw me fretting.

  “William, in the end, this Akushku is just another terrorist. And no one knows such people better than you. You know how they think. So what is he thinking?”

  Perhaps it was mere flattery, but it was reassuring all the same. I looked east towards St. James’s. “Those huge men on horseback,” I said. “How far will they escort His Imperial Majesty?”

  “As far as Buckingham Palace. Then they will fall back.”

  “Akushku won’t strike while the Emperor is surrounded. He can’t—he’ll only have one chance.”

  “So he is more likely to try after the procession passes the Palace.”

  “He knows we are looking for him. He knows the route has been swept and the sewers are guarded.”

  “He’ll want to get close.”

  “And he’ll want maximum freedom of movement. To keep his options open, and escape afterwards, if he can.”

  “And where would he find that?”

  “Along Park Lane,” I said. “The west side. Hyde Park will have all the open space he needs to manoeuvre. He could run the entire length of the cortege without any crowds to slow him down.”

  The night was dying, but its pall still lay over the city; the new day was breaking slowly, bitterly cold and damp. As the gaslights grew pale, every street beneath them became thronged with figures swathed in heavy coats and scarves, swarming up from Waterloo and Charing Cross Stations and west towards Pall Mall and Park Lane. Emerging from Green Park onto Piccadilly we were faced with an unbridgeable ocean of humanity; thousands and thousands of mourners, of every age and trade and class—men, women, children, pensioners, cripples on crutches—flowing inexorably westward, flooding the pavements and spilling into the roadway, slowing to a crawl the handful of cabs and vans still working that morning. The faces of the crowd, pinched with cold, were for the most part solemn, but underneath that solemnity was a suppressed shiver of excitement at this historic moment, as if it were a festival. Here and there over the silent masses and mingled tramp of countless feet there were even hoots of laughter from the younger and more boisterous attendees, which drew tutting and glares of disapproval from their elders.

  No one could stand their ground in such a current, so Steinhauer and I let ourselves be carried along. I felt my freshly blossomed hope shrivelling in the face of the sheer enormity of our challenge—did we seriously expect to stumble across one lone assassin in such a vast crowd? But I pushed the thought aside. We had made our choice and had to stick with it.

  I checked my watch; if all was proceeding to plan, the coffin would at that moment be on its way from Gosport aboard the funeral train, scheduled to arrive at Victoria Station at eleven. That gave us just under four hours to apprehend a man whose face we had never seen, but who almost certainly would recognise me on sight. Both of us were armed, but in this crush we would have to be within inches of the assassin before drawing our weapons—and even that risked setting off a stampede. Quite apart from the injuries and deaths that would cause, it would offer Akushku the perfect opportunity to strike, and then flee in the panic.

  Towards the junction of Park Lane and Piccadilly the human current started to slow, and the crowd thickened until the press of bodies was almost impossible to penetrate. There was no weaving through this multitude to reach the cordon. Late arrivals were pushing forwards from the rear, squeezing more and more spectators into the available space, all craning their necks to see over those at the front. Even now, hours before the cortege was due to pass, the crowd was thirty or forty deep. Steinhauer and I exchanged a look, turned back while we still could and started to jostle our way out, fighting against the human tide. Eventually we reached a point along the cordon to the south where the pack was not so dense—where the view of the procession was obscured by a kiosk—and flashed our papers at the officers on duty there. Ducking under the cordon we hurried over to the west side of Park Lane.

  By now there was a brighter glow to the east, but the sun’s rays failed to pierce the low misty cloud. The rooftops and buildings of the West End and the City to our right were nothing but black looming shapes, and ahead of us the avenue of trees faded into grey. Our breaths mingled with those of the crowd and the thousands of uniformed men on duty along the route, rising in white fumes and adding to the pall.

  Already every window and balcony along the far side of Park Lane was heaving with black-clad spectators, who’d paid handsomely for the privilege; to our left, in the trees along the eastern edge of Hyde Park, younger and more agile mourners had scrambled up to perch on branches, like outsized crows. But even with these hundreds of thousands of spectators, the whole length of Park Lane was oddly hushed; those who spoke kept their voices lowered, and there was none of the everyday racket from hawkers and bootblacks and traffic. At one point, as Steinhauer and I ploughed our way through the fringes of the crowd, I heard a blackbird sing out, so pure and sweet I was for an instant transported to a morning in the bogs above Sneem, where I used to cut turf for our family’s fire.

  I shook my head, cursing myself for daydreaming. The crowd was still closing in from the west across the grass of Hyde Park and piling up against the western cordon as thick as leaves in an autumn storm. Like me Steinhauer was looking hard at every face, hoping against hope to glimpse that vital clue—a furtive sidelong glance and turn away, a shock of recognition suddenly masked—but all we got were puzzled or neutral looks in return. We should split up, I thought briefly, only to realise how equally hopeless that would be. Our task was infinite, and dividing infinity by two would be futile. And if, by the slimmest of chances, we did encounter Akushku—and recognise him—two of us combined would have a better chance of bringing him down than one. As I elbowed my way through the press of mourners, my right hand rested on the butt of the pistol in my pocket. If I had to use it, there would be multiple casualties—in this heaving mass that was inevitable.

  “For shame! For shame! And at the Queen’s funeral—I shall call the police—”

  “Madam, as God’s my witness, it was an accident, tha’sall, look—no harm done, I’ll be on me way—”

  The voices were ten or so feet and about twenty people away, ahead of us to the right—an angry older woman and a younger man with a reedy voice, and around the two of them more voices were joining in, indignant and self-righteous. Imme
diately I closed in on the fuss, barging my way through the crowd like a swimmer ploughing through debris. I could sense amusement in the crowd as well as anger; this was the finest diversion the onlookers could have wished for—some rascal about to take a beating at the hands of the mob.

  “You’re not going nowhere! Who else you robbed?”

  Now the man’s protests were growing higher pitched and less coherent, as if he too could sense the fury of the crowd and feared what they might do to him. All the same, about six feet away I stopped and raised my hand to signal Steinhauer to hold back. Ahead of me two older men had seized a younger, wiry man in a shabby shiny suit of dark blue too small for him, and his victim was clutching her bag to her bosom as if afraid someone else might try to snatch it.

  “Check his pockets, go on, see what else is in there,” she was saying. In her forties, she was stout and florid and loudly respectable; her other hand wielded a black umbrella like a weapon.

  “Hands off me! You got no right!” the wiry young man protested, struggling. One of the men holding him punched him hard in the kidneys. He yelped and winced and sagged, and some bystanders laughed and urged that he be hit again. And still I stood back.

  “He’s a dip, that’s all,” I murmured to Steinhauer. It was not my concern—we weren’t there to protect the crowd from pickpockets, or vice versa. If the mob turned nastier still, and decided to beat that young man to a pulp, I resolved to let them. I had no intention of making myself conspicuous by intervening; instead I swept the crowd for any passer-by who seemed uninterested in the disturbance, or who wanted to avoid the two uniformed policemen with truncheons drawn I could now see barging through the crowd towards the disturbance. But I noticed no one like that, and once on the scene the officers were brisk, efficient and merciless.

  “Thank you! Thank you, ladies and gents, we’ll deal with this, make a way there, please!” one officer shouted as the other seized the suspect by the collar. The skinny man in blue looked relieved to be rescued, and he had good reason.

  “Picking pockets at Her Majesty’s funeral, you want to string him up!” scolded the woman with the purse.

  “Don’t you worry, ma’am, he won’t be trying it again.”

  The two uniforms dragged the pickpocket away, but not in the direction of the nearest station—on a morning like this there was no time for paperwork. They’d most likely find a secluded alley to impose a non-custodial sentence with fists and truncheons, then get back on duty. The sideshow having concluded the crowd closed in again as if nothing had happened, and I beckoned Steinhauer onwards, heading north.

  Soon we were roughly a third of the way up Park Lane; the light was at last growing stronger, and the fog seemed to be thinning. We could see more clearly on the far side the purple drapes hanging from the town-house balconies, rippling in the occasional breeze. It was Victoria who’d specified purple and white decor for her funeral—black was too gloomy, she had said. An odd decision for a woman who’d spent most of her adult life in widow’s weeds.

  I paused to check my pocket watch—no easy matter amid that press of bodies.

  Nine-thirty.

  Ninety minutes from now the cortege should start out from Victoria, and half an hour after that—God willing—it would reach Hyde Park Corner, then proceed up Park Lane to Marble Arch, and onwards to Paddington Station. Steinhauer and I barged on through the crowd.

  Now I fancied I could hear murmuring—but this time it was a voice in my head, telling me that from start to finish this entire operation had been a farce, a disaster. I and Steinhauer and all of Special Branch were still running round in circles, like a herd of cows panicked by a wasp. It was a fool’s errand, and I was the fool who’d ordered it. Why had I not pursued more leads, raided every anarchist club and radical household in the country, cracked heads till someone talked? Why had I wasted so much time going cap in hand to those lying gombeens from Russia and France, begging like a dog for scraps of intelligence? After all this time and effort and danger and death, I knew nothing about Akushku, or even his target. What if the man was working for the Turks or the Boers? What if the so-called plot against Wilhelm was a decoy—what if he really meant to attack King Edward or Leopold of Belgium or some European duke? If the worst came to the worst, could I even rely on Steinhauer to stand by me?

  About us the crowd milled and jostled and craned their necks even though there was nothing to see, and wouldn’t be for another—I checked my watch again—fifty-six minutes. Dear Christ! It had gone ten.

  “There,” said Steinhauer, his voice soft yet sharp in my ear. “To your right. In the bowler hat.”

  When I saw the man I knew immediately why he had caught Steinhauer’s eye. He was standing about twelve feet back from the cordon—a twitchy, well-built man in his late twenties in a heavy black coat, with pale pockmarked cheeks, wispy eyebrows and long unwashed fair hair tucked behind his ears. He seemed to radiate tension and resentment, his eyes flicking uneasily over the crowd, and his right hand constantly reaching into his coat as if to touch something. But it was not just his demeanour that caught my eye—it was the package under his left arm. Bound in cloth and fastened with a leather belt, it was the size of a large shoebox, but much heavier, judging by the tension of the suspect’s arm and shoulder. His left hand was tucked into his pocket; I could not check for a missing ring finger, but the hairs had risen on the back of my neck.

  I moved to my right, and from the corner of my eye saw Steinhauer take the opposite tack, weaving almost unnoticed through the press of bodies. For my part I had to shove the mourners aside, and I did it brusquely and without apology, ignoring their protests, keeping my eyes locked on the target. I was less than ten feet away when the pockmarked man became aware of me closing in. His eyes widened in alarm and he tried to slip sideways into the crowd, closer to the cordon, barging with his left shoulder while his right hand slipped once more inside his black overcoat. I ploughed after him, but I was slowed down by my own bulk and was still two arms’ lengths away when I saw the pockmarked man tug something black and metallic from inside his coat—a gun. I snatched my own pistol free of my pocket, roaring:

  “Clear a way, there! Make way!”

  The scrawny man turned back towards me, raising his right hand, and I raised my own, and my finger tightened on the trigger—but before I could fire, the man’s arm was flung skywards. His shot went wild, but the crowd around us heard it and surged back, screaming and shouting. Steinhauer, who had knocked the gunman’s hand upwards, now kicked his legs away from under him. I barged through the last few mourners blocking my path and brought my boot down hard on the wrist that held the pistol. The gunman screamed and clutched at his parcel as I bent down and wrenched the gun from his grasp and stuck it in my coat pocket.

  “You cannot stop me! You cannot stop me!” he screeched. He went on protesting in a thick Slavic accent as Steinhauer rolled him over and wrenched his arms up behind his back. Around us the crowd yelled in confusion and anger and milled and shifted, threatening to trample us all underfoot, but I shoved back and snatched up the clothbound bundle. It was as heavy and solid as it looked. Steinhauer had hauled the suspect to his feet.

  “Som anjel poslaný bohom,” he spat at us, his long greasy hair tangling in his mouth. “I have been sent to free the people—”

  “Move,” I grunted, and hauled him by the collar away from the procession route, aware all the time of the parcel under my arm. We were just opposite Grosvenor Gate, from where more mourners were flooding by the minute, staring at us uneasily as we dragged our prisoner past them through the gates to the trampled grass of Hyde Park itself. I saw two more constables hurrying towards us and, consigning the prisoner to Steinhauer’s tender mercies, turned my attentions to the bundle and its leather strap. I shook it, gently, and listened: but it did not rattle, nor did it smell of chemicals, and its weight was distributed evenly throughout its bulk. I fumb
led at the buckle and unfastened the belt, ignoring Steinhauer’s alarm and the incoherent protests, in various languages, of the scrawny gunman, because on some level I knew what I was going to uncover, and when I did, I stifled a curse.

  It was a Bible, a huge household Bible bound in leather. I opened it, almost hoping to find the pages carved to create a compartment for a bomb, but they held nothing except sacred verses in Cyrillic script.

  “You are fools, you are puppets, you will burn!” The pockmarked man’s eyes grew wide, and spittle flecked his lips. As the first constable arrived, I shoved the book at him.

  “DCS Melville, Special Branch. Hold this.”

  “I am Lucifer, the bringer of light!” The young lunatic wrenched at the cuffs locked behind his back and struggled in Steinhauer’s grip. “I will free this world from darkness!”

  I glanced at his left hand and saw there four intact fingers and a thumb. When I pulled the gunman’s pistol from my pocket for a closer look, the barrel was plugged with lead, and the cylinder had only one chamber. The blasted thing was a starting pistol. This idiot could not have fired a shot at me, or anyone—and I’d nearly blown his head off.

  “Scheisse,” said Steinhauer in disgust, and he shoved his prisoner towards the second constable.

  “Victoria was the whore of Babylon, and her children are the spawn of the Antichrist!” the fanatic babbled. “The dragon has seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on his heads—”

  “He’s a lunatic,” I told the uniforms. “Stick him in a Black Maria, and get back on duty.”

  And at that very moment came a thunderous crash of artillery from the heart of Hyde Park. The salute had begun—the cortege was on its way. I turned and headed back the way we had come, shouldering through the throng with Steinhauer on my heels. I kept my head up and kept looking, but in my head I could hear the Fates cackling at me.