Damn the Fates, I thought. This jig’s not done. Akushku hadn’t struck yet, and with every moment that passed, his window of opportunity was closing. Our task was not impossible. I had to focus, to think like Akushku—and if that had not led us to him yet, I had to think harder.
24
And still the crowd grew denser—fifty deep, sixty. It felt as if every man, woman and child in the Home Counties had crammed themselves into that one long avenue, and behind them every other resident of Great Britain was arriving. Their voices murmuring together sounded like a restless sea, interrupted every few seconds by the crash of the artillery salute and accompanied by the mourning bells that had begun to chime from all of London’s churches. Underneath the solemnity and decorum I could sense too the crowd’s growing excitement. Yes, it was a sombre occasion, but it was also a spectacle the like of which might never be seen again—kings and princes and nobles from every corner of Europe and the Empire, marching together in all their magnificent pomp and finery.
Steinhauer and I had no appetite for the spectacle but hurried north, approaching Marble Arch. To the right I could make out one of the platforms erected for the press and noticed two photographers jockeying for the best vantage point, fencing with the legs of their tripods. The artillery salutes pounded steadily on, and I felt a shiver run through the crowd, and the hushed eager chatter faded. Around me spectators were craning their necks to look south, listening intently—and now I could hear it too: the beat of muffled drums. The cortege was coming up on Hyde Park Corner. I glanced again at my pocket watch: eleven thirty-five, perfectly on schedule. The fatal moment was upon us, and Steinhauer and I were adrift on a black ocean of people, as helpless as shipwrecked sailors.
As the crowd surged forwards towards the barrier, the two of us pulled back. Already packed impossibly tight, the onlookers wanted to pack themselves tighter still. Even if we’d been able to, there would have been no point in fighting our way to the front of the crowd—we’d have been wedged fast there, unable to move.
“Whatever he’s planning, he’ll be in position by now,” I said to Steinhauer. “Our best hope is to get to the other side of the cordon, into the road itself, and scan the crowd from there.”
“Then let’s get to a crossing,” said Steinhauer.
As we set off towards Marble Arch, where there was an official access point to the funeral route, I was swept by a fresh wave of frustration. At the start of this affair, a lifetime ago, Gustav had had a high opinion of me; after today, he would not. He was about to see first-hand my disgrace, and it was all too likely I’d drag him down with me. And to fail so publicly, with the whole world as witness! I glared up at the platforms where the photographers had stopped jostling and were poised with fresh plates at the ready.
I stopped so abruptly that Steinhauer nearly ran into me.
“What does he want?” I asked aloud. “Akushku.”
The German looked puzzled, but only for an instant. “To change the world,” he said. “To make history, by killing my Emperor.”
And now, through the melee of bobbing heads and hats, I could see the head of the procession approaching from the south: Villiers the Lord Chamberlain and the rest of the royal household on foot, staffs of office in their hands, and beyond them, emerging from the mist, came eight white ponies drawing a catafalque draped in white and purple.
“In public, for all the world to see,” I said. The final crash of the artillery echoed off the buildings opposite us; now the only other sounds were tramping hooves, jingling harnesses, marching feet and the muffled drums. We were nearly shouting, but there was no danger of being overheard.
“Public or private, what difference?” said Steinhauer.
“Remember what we talked about, Gustav: it’s not just the act, it’s the impact—on the people. Akushku wants not only to kill Wilhelm, but for everyone to see him do it. That is why it must be here, today, now.”
At those words something flickered in the back of my mind—pastel-coloured fragments, edged with ash. Blackened and singed paper rustling in the draught, in a grate piled with ashes.
“The tickets.”
“Tickets?” Steinhauer looked baffled.
“In Angela’s fireplace, after the raid. He’d burned the music-hall tickets. Angela said Akushku always burns his evidence…”
“You have lost me.”
And now I saw it. “They weren’t music-hall tickets—Christ preserve us!” I gasped. “With me. Quickly!”
I ploughed through the crowd towards the cordon, and it was like running through a herd of cattle, as more and more spectators pushed forwards at right angles to our path. As I tried to shove my way through I could see the vanguard of the procession almost abreast of us and feel the pounding of the muffled drums hammering on my chest—just as my own heart was hammering, so hard I thought it might burst. Let me not be too late, I prayed, let me not be too late—
“Where are we going?” said Steinhauer. He had to yell to be heard over the hooves and boots and jingling harnesses.
“The Arch,” I said. “The platforms—”
Ahead of us was Marble Arch, the massive monument that had once served as the entrance to Buckingham Palace, before being moved up here to the western end of Oxford Street. Around it the crowd was solid, packed perhaps two hundred deep, bodies wedged in between barriers lined by two rows of troops, in the bright red tunics and white pith helmets of a colonial regiment. I moved to the left, skirting round the back of the crowd, like a man trying to edge around a quagmire.
“They weren’t for the music-hall,” I was babbling to Steinhauer. “The tickets in the grate. A man like Akushku has no time for music-halls.”
“Then what were they?”
“Tickets for the kinema! Over there, look—” I pointed to the second wooden platform that had been erected in the shadow of the Arch, offering a commanding view of Marble Arch and the road around it. “The kinematograph cameras on the platform—”
“Gott in der Hölle—you think he will strike here, in front of them?”
“Yes, so all the world can see it—”
At last we had reached the knot of officers guarding the crossing point. The sergeant in charge, a good head taller than me, scowled as I fumbled for my warrant card, clearly taking us for troublemakers.
“We need to get through the cordon now, and you need to come with us,” I said.
“You’ll just have to wait till the procession’s gone past—”
“Now,” I said. I found the document and stuck it under his nose, and he stiffened to attention—even saluted, the bloody fool. His younger colleague was quicker-witted. “This way, sir,” he said, leading us briskly towards the cordon, where two wooden barriers at right angles to the main barrier formed a long passageway designed to allow the free movement of military personnel. By now the crowd had grown so dense the two barriers had nearly been clamped shut by the pressure, and the four of us—Steinhauer and I and the two policemen—had to squeeze down the narrowing path in single file, elbowing away the spectators on either side.
At last we were on the road itself, free of the crowd, only to find the cortege less than a hundred feet away, bearing down upon us like a juggernaut. The drums were thundering and the burnished breastplates and helmets of the Household Cavalry gleamed as a solitary ray of sunshine pierced the pall of cloud. Steinhauer surveyed the crowd, scanning the faces, but such was the mass of humanity surrounding us it was like trying to spot one leaf in a forest. The huge sergeant and the willing constable who had come with us hovered at our shoulders, waiting for orders, as the tramping and the jingling and the drumming grew so loud they nearly deafened us. We had a perfect view now down the whole length of the procession—a dazzling array of gilded uniforms and cloaks, and in their midst the gun carriage, moving silently and smoothly on rubber tyres, bearing a pitifully small coffin draped
in purple silk and topped with the sceptre and crown.
And directly behind it, three abreast, rode King Edward, his brother the Duke of Connaught and Kaiser Wilhelm in his billowing grey cloak, their horses trotting steadily three abreast—a perfect, slowly moving target. We were too late. In God’s name—why had I not thought of this earlier? Steinhauer was staring at the platform where the photographers were lined up. He was trying to calculate the sight-lines, I realised, to identify the place where his Emperor would be directly before the cameras, just as Akushku would have done…But among the pack of photographers there were three moving-picture cameras. The operators were cranking furiously; each of them had a grandstand view, and now the catafalque was almost at the arch, Edward and Wilhelm and the Duke in its wake. Any moment now those three cameras would capture moving images of a massacre, preserving them in hideous detail for all time.
Three moving-picture cameras. I shook my head and tried to remember—it had been late at night, I’d been so tired I could barely think, and I’d skimmed Quinn’s memorandum about the platforms for the world’s press. At Marble Arch, eight photographers, and two moving-picture cameras, one from Pathé, the other from a firm called Hepworth—
Two cameras. Christ in Heaven. Not three.
I pulled my hat off as if about to pay my respects and held it in front of my face. Steinhauer beside me did the same, though he still did not grasp quite why. With no time to explain—the procession was nearly upon us—I turned and strode across the road only yards from the head of the advancing cortege, willing myself not to break into a panicked run and praying that the assassin would not recognise us and launch his attack prematurely.
We had less than sixty seconds before the Kaiser and the King reached this spot.
At the foot of the steps leading up to the platform a uniformed constable of barely nineteen was on duty, already standing to rigid attention for the passage of the cortege. When I flashed my warrant card in his face he looked panicked and indignant.
“The moving-picture men, you checked their papers?” I barked.
“Yes, sir, well, my sergeant did, he’s over the other side—”
“Did they all have permits?”
“Yes, sir. Well, most of them, one had so much equipment he couldn’t find his—”
“Which?”
“Er—the one at the far end, in the dark green suit—”
I didn’t wait for the lad to finish but pounded up the steps to the platform, pulling my pistol clear of my pocket. The photographers were hiding under their black-cloths; two of the kinema operators, cranking away, did not even notice my ascent onto the platform, while the third—the one in the green suit—lifted his head from his eyepiece, straightened up and looked directly at me.
He was a striking young man, Akushku: athletic in build, with fine, even features, wavy fair hair and piercing blue eyes that now betrayed the merest glint of recognition—and not a trace of panic. With calm, swift movements he stepped back from his moving-picture camera and stooped to grasp the handle of a polished oak equipment box behind him.
The wooden lid of the box shattered with my first shot, blowing off the handle and sending vicious splinters flying in all directions. Akushku fell back, clutching at his face, while I cursed—I’d been aiming for his head. Blinking away the shrapnel the young man threw himself down among the tripods and equipment of the cameramen crowding the platform, so absorbed in their task they were bizarrely oblivious to the lethal drama unfolding at their feet. They were blinkered by their black-cloths and had not even heard the shot—the cacophony of thumping drums, jangling horse-brasses and clattering hooves was drowning out every other sound.
I wove among them, trying to get a clear second shot, closing in on Akushku, determined at all costs to stop him from grasping that polished wooden box and hurling it at the cortege. The box was the bomb, I was now sure; my wayward bullet had very nearly blown me and him and every man on that platform to kingdom come.
As the anarchist scrambled for cover I saw Steinhauer haul himself up onto the scaffold at the far side to outflank Akushku. The terrorist saw him too and reaching round behind his back wrenched a pistol from his waistband. For one dreadful moment I thought Gustav would get shot point-blank in the face—but seeming to realise in that instant he could either fight or flee, Akushku chose the latter. Rolling towards the rear edge of the platform, he tumbled backwards off it and simply dropped out of sight.
25
“Gustav,” I called out. “Check that crate of his—but carefully, for God’s sake—”
I rushed towards the far edge of the platform—even now Akushku could be fighting his way back towards the procession—stashed my pistol, gripped the edge, swung over and dropped down, half expecting to catch a bullet before I’d hit the ground. But when I staggered to my feet, there was no sign of the anarchist anywhere.
The platform stood on a tangle of wooden struts; to each side and the front the crowd was packed more tightly than sardines. Akushku could never have fought his way into that tight mass of onlookers—he must have escaped north-east. At that very moment he might be struggling through the rear of the crowd, tracking the procession up the Edgware Road, hoping for another chance to strike. In the second it took me to work that out, the huge sergeant and his young colleague dropped heavily from the platform above me, landing with an almighty thump of hobnailed boots; and over the thunder of the drums, the tolling of church bells and the pounding of a thousand horses’ hooves, I had to bawl to make my voice heard.
“Don’t use your whistles. Find more officers, spread the word, we’re looking for a fair-haired man of thirty, missing his left ring finger, in a dark green suit—no hat.” That detail alone would mark him out—only a lunatic would walk the streets bareheaded. “He’s armed and dangerous and he must be stopped at any cost—go!”
They dashed away to either side, grabbing nearby officers and shouting instructions. I left them to it and raced away north towards the Edgware Road. Off to the right was Oxford Street; all of its shops and offices were closed. There was only a handful of pedestrians that I could see, and they were heading towards me, not away, and none of them was the fugitive. I ran on to the corner of Great Cumberland Place, the narrow road heading north parallel to the Edgware Road, thinking that perhaps Akushku had sought a back route, but the street was blocked with horses and military wagons; the army had set up a temporary base here, the last barrier an armed anarchist would try to penetrate.
Among all this mourning black, Akushku in that green suit should have been easy to spot, so where was he? The man had vanished. No, that was impossible—he’d had only moments. He must have found a hiding place, and not just on the spur of the moment, but reconnoitred in advance. He might have forced a window or a door so he could get off the street until the hue and cry died down. Entering a building would mean allowing himself to be cornered and run to earth—he would want to keep moving. But short of flying, or escaping along a sewer tunnel, there was no other means to escape unseen—and the sewers had been secured.
Then again sewers weren’t the only tunnels.
I spun on the spot. There, a hundred yards north of the camera platforms, was the new Marble Arch Underground Station, opened only a few months previously. I raced towards it. Every Underground line had been shut down for the duration of the funeral, and the entrance to this station was blocked by a metal trellis stretched across the entrance to the ticket hall and secured with a heavy padlock and chain. I tugged at the lock—it had not been tampered with. To the right of the public entrance was a staff door, painted red to blend in with the shining tiles of the station’s outer wall, and that too was shut firmly. But there, still glistening on the paving-stone immediately before it, was a single speck of blood.
Akushku’s? Had he been cut by a flying splinter when I fired at him? Seizing the handle, I gave the staff door a hard shove
, and felt it move, half an inch. The lock had been picked.
Bracing my shoulder against the door I shoved again, harder. It yielded slowly—something heavy had been wedged up against the far side. Either that, or Akushku was behind it pushing back. I retrieved my pistol from its holster and slammed my shoulder into the door again, once, twice, forcing it back, until the gap was wide enough for me to pass. And now I hesitated. I knew very well I should be calling for assistance—but I also knew that if Akushku got as far as the lines below, nothing would stop him running along the tunnel to the next station. He might yet have an opportunity to strike.
Squeezing through the gap, I stumbled into a dim, unlit ticket office. The weight against the door was indeed a filing cabinet; Akushku had heaved it over onto its side. At the far end of the office the door to the main concourse lay open. Cocking the hammer of my revolver I moved quietly towards it, aware that he could be watching me, concealed in an alcove or behind a pillar, and aware too that I was doing everything I always told my men not to do: pursuing a suspect without calling for assistance or telling anyone where I had gone. But I was so close, and every second was critical.
Bracing my pistol with two hands I swept the concourse, my finger sweating on the trigger. The station was empty. Three lifts carried passengers down to the platforms, but they had all been switched off, and their doors lay wide open. Beyond them yawned a dim green-tiled passageway under a sign that read emergency stairs. I headed towards it, straining my ears, and caught far below a clatter of shoes on metal-edged steps. Nothing for it—I had to follow. The distant footsteps were drowned out by the sound of my own boots clomping down. If Akushku paused, or turned back, I hoped I would hear him before I ran into him.
The spiral staircase seemed to drill downwards forever. It descended anticlockwise; with my gun in my right hand I would have a clear shot. Was Akushku left-handed? It would make little difference in a space such as this, I realised; bullets and ricochets and broken tiles would fly all over the place like shrapnel.
M, King's Bodyguard Page 24
