M, King's Bodyguard

by Niall Leonard

  All at once the staircase ended, and I found myself facing another narrow green-tiled hallway, this one bending off to the right. I moved along it briskly, trying to soften my footsteps, hugging the wall to my left and keeping my gun raised and ready.

  I emerged from that passage onto the deserted Underground platform, at each end a brick-lined tunnel that curved off into darkness, only the first thirty feet or so lined with electric lights. I stopped, and held my breath, and listened, trying to block out the sound of my heart thumping in my chest. There, from the eastbound platform, behind me—a scrabble, a skitter of ballast. I ran through the connecting passage and scanned the platform on the far side; it too was empty—but now I could hear a noise from the tunnel to my left: footsteps, as faint as rats’ claws on rock.

  Akushku was fleeing eastward, as I’d feared, along the tunnel to the next station.

  Quickly I clambered down over the edge of the platform, stepped out onto the tracks and headed after him. The electric lights, intended for cleaners and maintenance men, were so caked in grease and soot their illumination was as feeble as starlight.

  No, I thought, ten steps down the tunnel—this is idiocy. I had taken enough headstrong risks without pursuing an armed terrorist alone along a railway track. It was time to return to the surface, raise the alarm and send a team of men to each and every station along the line. With my gun raised I started to walk backwards, slowly, towards the safety of the eastbound platform.

  “Stop there, Mr. Melville.”

  The voice that rang out was firm and calm—melodious, even—and the accent unplaceable; it sounded like Oxford English, slightly tinged with Russian, or perhaps German. I stood still, too angry to even curse my own folly.

  “Stay very still. And kindly drop your weapon.”

  His exquisite politeness, and that patronising tone, were making my blood boil, but he had me at an utter disadvantage. I stretched out my arm, carefully uncocked the hammer of my pistol and let the weapon fall. It struck a rail with a clang and tumbled into shadow. Now, too late, my eyes were adjusting to the dimness, and I could see, at intervals along the tunnel, the arched recesses where workmen could store equipment or shelter from passing trains. Akushku had concealed himself in one and waited, and I had walked right past him, into his trap.

  “Can I turn around, at least?” I said.

  “This might go easier for you if you did not.”

  “Easier for you, you mean.” Keeping my hands out clear of my sides, I turned slowly around to face my fate. It came to me briefly that I should have gone home last night—said goodnight to Amelia, kissed my children one last time—but I shoved those thoughts aside. Wishes were no good to me now.

  Akushku had emerged from his alcove and now stood silhouetted in the light spilling from the platform ten feet beyond him. I could just make out his sharp cheekbones and his slight smile—neither smug nor gloating, but wry, as if to him this victory was just a minor skirmish in a long war. I could make out very well his raised pistol and the rock-steady hand that held it.

  “So will you tell me your surname, Aleksandr?”

  “Why do you need to know my name?”

  “For my own satisfaction. I presume I won’t live to pass it on.”

  He tilted his head. “I have many names. The one I was born with…I don’t particularly care for.”

  Why had he not pulled the trigger? He could have shot me and been on his way by now. Behind him the empty platform curved away, bright and bare and empty. I thought I glimpsed a flicker of movement at the very far end, but only for an instant; it was wishful thinking, I scolded myself, born of desperation. I shifted my weight very slightly towards Akushku. How quickly could I cover the distance between us?

  “Don’t,” he said quietly. He stretched his arm a mite farther, and the muzzle of his gun stared at me, a little black abyss.

  “You know, Aleksandr,” I said, “you might kill me, but a hundred officers will take my place.”

  “Perhaps, but none of them will be as dangerous as you. Europe’s most infamous policeman. You very nearly stopped me.”

  “Nearly stopped you? I think you’ll find I have stopped you.”

  “Today, yes. But I will get another chance. And killing the great Melville will be some consolation.”

  “Well, then, don’t let me delay you.” I spoke with more coolness than I felt. I didn’t want to plead with this dog for my life, but I didn’t want to provoke him either, with bluster or threats. It seemed he wanted to talk, and I was happy to let him, in the hope that…well, I didn’t know what I hoped might happen, but I wanted to be alive when it did.

  “I just need to understand…” Akushku hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Why you do this. You are a man of some intelligence. You do not despise working people—you were a peasant once yourself. For centuries the Irish have been persecuted and starved by the English bourgeoisie, and yet you work for them. How do you sleep at night? What lies do you tell yourself?”

  A political debate was the last thing I’d expected. Indeed, it might be the last thing I did.

  “I believe in democracy,” I said. “It’s slow and it’s inefficient, but it’s our best hope. Mankind can better itself without violence. Men like you demand Utopia and don’t care who you kill to get it. You shoot and bomb because your arguments have failed. Maybe you mean well, but you’re deluded.”

  “I’m deluded?” Akushku laughed. “You really think democracy makes a difference? That the bourgeoisie would ever agree to give up one ounce of their wealth and privilege? They grow fat on the work of the poor, and when the poor rise up, the rich hire men like you to beat them down. And you tell yourself you are doing it for the good of the people. Which of us is really deluded?”

  I was poised on edge, tensing myself to lunge at him. He might shoot me, but that was his plan anyway, and I didn’t see why I had to go along with it. However his concentration never seemed to waver for an instant, and the muzzle of his gun barely drifted.

  “Look where your delusions have led you,” he went on. “You are going to die alone, here in this tunnel. You will sacrifice yourself for the bourgeoisie. Yes, they will miss you, like they miss a good hunting dog, or a fine horse. But tomorrow they will buy another.”

  “I don’t do this for the nobs. I do it for ordinary men and women. The ones who just want work and bread and a roof over their heads and to raise their children in peace.”

  “All this talk of peace, from the man who came down here to kill me.”

  “I came down here to prevent a war.”

  The young man shook his head, as if in regret. “Then you are a fool.”

  “You meant to kill the Kaiser, and start a war. But I stopped you. I’ve done my job, and you’ve failed, so…here we are.”

  “You are mistaken. Yes, I want to kill the Kaiser. But I am not trying to start a war. I am trying to prevent one.”

  “Away and shite,” I snapped. His pious sermon had started to irritate me.

  “The perfect royal servant,” snorted Akushku. “You stand at the shoulder of the King, you hear everything and understand nothing. Wilhelm despises your King Edward. He means to take his—”

  The crash of the gunshot in that confined space stabbed into my head like a knife, and instinctively I clapped my hands to my ears and crouched. For a moment I even thought that I had been shot, and braced myself for a wave of pain—but there was nothing. Ears still ringing, I opened my eyes and stood up straight and saw the man once called Akushku sprawled across the rails, one side of his face pressed into the grimy gravel, his eyes wide, blood spurting from his nose and from the massive wound to the back of his head.

  Thirty feet away Steinhauer leapt down from the station platform and raced towards me. He was in his socks, I noticed—he must have taken his boots off to creep unheard al
ong the parallel platform. Akushku’s mouth was working, as if he was trying to speak.

  “William!” called Steinhauer. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, I think, Gustav, thank you—” My own voice echoed in my head; hearing it I realised I was still alive and felt a rush of gratitude and relief. “He was about to tell me something.”

  There was a faint groan from Akushku. He blinked, and the fingers still loosely curled around his pistol’s butt and trigger twitched slightly.

  “Scheisse,” said Steinhauer. He pointed his revolver downwards and fired twice, at close range, into the anarchist’s skull, blowing it into a misshapen mess of hair and bone and brains.

  26

  The little church in Stepney was empty but for myself, the organist and the pallbearers I’d hired. I stared at the plain deal coffin resting on two trestles before the altar and listened to the organ music reverberating softly round the chapel and realised this was the first moment of quiet contemplation I’d had in weeks. I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

  After Steinhauer had administered that hasty coup de grâce we had not lingered by Akushku’s corpse. We left the body where it lay on the tracks, clambered back onto the platform, retrieved Gustav’s boots and headed back up that endless winding staircase, only to collide with four uniformed officers hurrying down. The big sergeant I’d met at Marble Arch had spotted the open door of the Underground station and summoned reinforcements. I’d misjudged him earlier—once he was properly briefed he acted decisively; with his assistance I had the station secured and the body spirited off to the mortuary, all unnoticed by the public. By the time the place reopened, there was nothing to mark Akushku’s passing but some glistening stains on the ballast between the tracks.

  Steinhauer had hurried off to rejoin his Kaiser, relaxed and almost jovial now he had fulfilled his mission. For my part, even now we had dealt with Akushku, I could not drop my guard—there were plenty of other malcontents out there, though few of them so lethal. I passed the word around that the suspect with the missing finger had been apprehended. Those who needed more details would get them in due course.

  Victoria’s funeral had carried on, though not without further incident. When the cortege arrived safely at Paddington, where the funeral train waited to carry coffin and mourners to Windsor for the late Queen’s lying-in-state, Wilhelm’s last-minute escort of giant Germans demanded seats on the train, causing some ruffled feathers. There were more shenanigans still when the coffin finally arrived at Windsor: the honour guard of the Household Cavalry had been waiting for hours at the station in the bitter cold to draw the catafalque to the royal chapel, and their horses had grown fractious; when the procession started they set off so briskly the traces connecting them to the hearse broke. While the cavalry officers squabbled sotto voce and blamed one another, the party of common sailors who made up the Royal Navy’s escort ripped the emergency cord from the train, lashed it to the hearse and towed the coffin to Windsor chapel themselves. The military brass and the civilian dignitaries quickly fell into line behind them, as if this arrangement had been intended all along.

  All this I had witnessed without trying to intervene; there were already enough cooks involved to ruin the finest broth. Of course the press had loved the sailors’ gesture, hailing it as a spontaneous demonstration of affection for the late Queen, and a fine example of British military initiative. Next time there was a royal funeral, I had no doubt, British sailors would draw the hearse again, and the nobility would claim that part of the ceremony had been their invention.

  What a circus, I thought now, as I sat in that Stepney chapel watching a shaft of sunlight warm a saint’s stained-glass halo. True, I had been part of the troupe, but it amused me when real life, in the shape of crying children or flatulent horses, disrupted pompous ceremony. It was always the most shallow and precious courtiers who got into a flap. Victoria herself, when I knew her, had never been thrown by such interruptions; she’d been in the job so long she’d grown a sense of proportion.

  But Victoria had been dead for weeks, and now she lay at rest in the royal mausoleum at Frogmore beside her beloved Albert. Kaiser Wilhelm and his enormous Imperial retinue had gone home; Steinhauer and I had embraced at the station, fellow veterans, the battle won.

  “You must visit Berlin as my guest, William.”

  “I will, Gustav. Very soon.”

  The other European nobles had dispersed to their own kingdoms, and their security was no longer my concern.

  As for the Akushku business, that was quickly becoming a mere anecdote between myself and Steinhauer. No one else—not even my Special Branch officers—knew the whole story, and I was sure I would never tell it. Posterity could go hang, and historians too. They were little better than journalists anyhow, in my opinion, trying to pass off speculation, gossip and invention as fact. Already the everyday details—the mishap with the cold horses, the squabbles over seating—were being polished out of the record, and all official accounts of the funeral were full of breathless, sentimental reverence.

  Even the kinematographic records of the funeral were misleading, I realised now. The footage had been duplicated hundreds of times and distributed to every corner of the British Empire. I’d first seen it in the company of the King himself, all of us sitting in flickering darkness, listening to the rattling of the projector. We both saw that moment when Edward and the Kaiser had ridden past that platform by Marble Arch, and Edward’s steed had bucked and reared. It had been spooked by my gunshot, but I had already put about the rumour that it was the racket of the camera itself that had scared the horse. The King for his part had made no remarks and asked no questions; and I for my part had volunteered no answers. So much for Gustav’s contention that kinema showed the whole unvarnished truth.

  Now the door to the vestry rattled open, rousing me from my reverie, and the young priest I had engaged for this service emerged clutching his missal, followed by two altar boys. The body of the deceased had been dragged from the Grand Union Canal near King’s Cross two days earlier. She had been so long in the water her features were unrecognisable, apart from the fair hair that fell in tangles round her face and shoulders. Around her neck I’d hung a crucifix on a chain; she’d been a Catholic, after all, like myself. Under the chain’s links dark purple marks were still just visible on her grey skin.

  “Strangled,” the mortician had said. “Perhaps because of the baby she was carrying?” I’d made no comment, but let him wonder.

  The priest caught my eye, and I nodded and rose to my feet. Turning to the altar he raised his hands, and the tootling of the organ faded into silence.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”

  Perhaps I had saved the German Emperor, and saved Europe from war, but it had been a damned close thing, and now I thanked God for guiding me to that platform where Akushku had lain in wait. And I asked him to look kindly on those colleagues of mine who had given their lives assisting me, and to have mercy on the souls of those who died less nobly—Lady Diamond, her husband and the unfortunate young girl lying in a plain deal coffin before me.

  “Incline Thy ear, O Lord, to the prayers with which we humbly entreat Thy mercy, and in a place of peace and rest establish the soul of Thy servant Angela Minetti, whom Thou hast called out of this world…”

  27

  “With the help of Herr Steinhauer, bodyguard to His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser, my officers identified the terrorists, hunted them down and dispatched them in short order. And now, six weeks later, the press and the public are none the wiser. The operation can be accounted a complete success.” Anderson had delivered his summary with an offhand modesty. The Prime Minster, Lord Salisbury, nodded thoughtfully. A giant of a man both in height and girth, with a massive beard of a style that had been fashionable twenty years earlier, his physical stature made the King look slim and dapper, and he seemed permanently short of b
reath.

  “I believe some credit is due,” suggested the King, “to Chief Superintendent Melville.” Edward leaned back in his winged armchair—we were meeting in a drawing room at Buckingham Palace—and tapped his cigarette into a gilded ashtray on a stand to his left. Victoria would have been disgusted at her son’s smoking in an official audience, but Victoria was gone now, and etiquette followed the Crown, not vice versa.

  “Of course, sir,” agreed Anderson. “The Chief Superintendent demonstrated outstanding initiative and courage from first to last.”

  Salisbury and Anderson were seated on sofas facing Edward; I was standing, not quite to attention, to the right of the King and two steps back, keeping my face impassive and disinterested, as if the three men were discussing the weather. But I was paying careful attention. Twenty Prime Ministers had served Queen Victoria, four while I had been her bodyguard, and I had never been asked to attend an official audience until today. It was Salisbury who had specifically requested my presence; that was not a good sign. This Prime Minister disliked commoners who did not conform to their station, and he considered me little more than a hired thug. I doubted he was going to recommend me for a medal.

  “So Chief Superintendent Melville was working under your direct supervision?” asked Salisbury. It was such an innocuous question I was immediately on my guard, but the Assistant Commissioner seemed happy to go on blowing his own trumpet.

  “Indeed. William reported to me throughout and kept me fully informed of all developments. We work as a team. Following my advice and guidance, of course.”

  “And you, Chief Superintendent. Did you follow the advice and guidance of the Assistant Commissioner?”

  “His leadership was invaluable, sir,” I replied. Anderson gave me a sharp look, as if he’d expected a more fulsome tribute, and still didn’t sense where this was headed. The Prime Minster addressed his next words to the King.