Touchstone

by Laurie R. King

  “That was his mistress, a known Bolshevik. The other man is Comrade Peter Markovitch, visiting from Russia. And of course Lady Laura you know.”

  The last person, sitting with her back to the camera, he knew as well: That blonde head could only belong to Sarah Grey, up to her pretty neck in it. Whatever it was.

  Shit, he thought. Oh, shit.

  His face must have given something away, because he felt Carstairs’ eyes lock onto him. He did not look up, just turned the photo over.

  The next document was a Photostat copy of a page from a surveillance log, neat handwriting giving details of time, location, and names. The man who had written it had noted only the names of Shiffley, Bunsen, and Laura Hurleigh; not of Markovitch or Sarah.

  The last page was another photograph, this of two men, one in the uniform of a sergeant. “Waller?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Stuyvesant shook his head to indicate that he’d never seen them before, closed the file, and slid it across the desk.

  He took a deep breath, and said, “The other woman in the photograph? You probably know that’s Sarah Grey.” No choice, really, but to drive that particular knife into his own vital parts. But judging by Carstairs’ lack of reaction, he did know.

  Was it a test, Stuyvesant wondered? Did Carstairs suspect what had taken place between Stuyvesant and the young woman up in Gloucestershire? Not that anything had taken place, not exactly. Did he have a spy within Hurleigh House? Guest or servant? Or could he merely be working from the finely honed instincts of a skilled interrogator?

  Not that it mattered. Stuyvesant had no choice but to say her name, when his every instinct was to tear the photograph to pieces. He drank the dregs of his cold, bitter coffee, and waited for the rest of it.

  “After I had elicited the information from Mr. Waller, and confirmed the links between Waller, Shiffley, and Bunsen, I rang Downing Street and asked a question.”

  “You wanted to know who suggested the private meeting at Hurleigh.”

  Carstairs blinked. “Quite. And since you seem a devotee of guessing games, would you like to venture a guess on who made the suggestion?”

  “I’d say the Duke of Hurleigh rang up his old buddy Baldwin on Sunday night and said that he’d just come up with a smashing idea to settle this bothersome Strike.”

  “First thing Monday, in fact. But yes, it came from the Duke.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Stuyvesant breathed, as the chain of events linked together in his mind. And what a pretty chain it was, to build a stranglehold on a nation: An Anarchist trained as a sapper gets his hands on some high explosive; the following day, he arranges to meet his mistress’s father, a man whose voice would be heard by the highest in the land; in the course of their casual, Sunday morning talk, the Anarchist plants a suggestion that quiet, private conversations such as the one they were having right now could do so much more good than formal meetings overseen by furious assistants and the spectacle-producing press; and finally, somehow or other, the careful Anarchist would be one of that select group, one of those voices of reason whose decisions would shape the nation’s future.

  Except that what would be heard might not be gentle reason, but twenty ounces of deadly explosive that would blast a schism through society and split every faction from its neighbor. There would be no possibility of unity in a nation ruled by vicious hatred and mistrust. Anarchy would move in. Anarchy would prevail.

  He dropped his head into his hands, no longer caring if Aldous Carstairs was looking on. “I should’ve stayed in New York.”

  “But you did not. And now, Mr. Stuyvesant, it would appear that I require your assistance.”

  “Hell’s bells. You do, don’t you?”

  “We shall search the bags of the representatives and staff, of course, but it’s going to be delicate, since trust is the entire raison d’être for the meeting. And as I said, the explosive is quite compact; a man could carry a sufficient quantity on his person to punch a hole in a ship’s hull, much less effect an assassination.”

  “Have them cancel the meeting.”

  “A forum that could well avert open class warfare on British soil? Without more concrete evidence, I will not do that.”

  “You’d trust me to find your explosive?”

  “You have done so in the past. And frankly, I have no man at present who knows more about bombs than you.”

  It was a disturbing admission—not that Carstairs didn’t have a bomb expert among his men, because why would he? But it indicated that, although he was happy enough to make use of the police to stage a raid, when it came to bombs, he so craved playing it close to his chest, that he’d risk using a stranger over bringing in colleagues from another force.

  Did Carstairs have some reason not to trust them? Did he suspect a traitor in the ranks—of Scotland Yard, maybe, or Military Intelligence? Or was he just making sure this outsider stayed outside, keeping him busy beating away a cloud of smoke?

  Or, did bringing Stuyvesant into his circle mean that Carstairs was playing a game with rules all his own? A game that, if those others—Intelligence, police—caught wind of, they would try to shut down. A game that could leave a stray American very badly burned.

  Stuyvesant pictured himself sitting across the desk from his Scotland Yard acquaintance, the man who had inadvertently given him Carstairs in the first place, telling him how he’d spent the last week. What would the Yard man do, hearing that the mysterious (and remember: somewhat distasteful) Major Carstairs was up to no good?

  First thing he’d do was ensure that Stuyvesant had no contact whatsoever with any of the principals in the case, not Carstairs, not Grey, and certainly not Richard Bunsen. And Sarah and Laura would be way off limits.

  Nope, Stuyvesant thought. I didn’t come here to dangle my legs from a chair.

  The thought process, from speculation to decision, took Stuyvesant no more than five seconds: something to be said for a life of having to think under pressure.

  “You’re pretty sure they’ll arrest the driver tonight?” he now asked Carstairs.

  “So I am told.”

  “How long can they keep him?”

  “More than twenty-four hours may be a problem. Unless he is injured during the course of—”

  “No. Twenty-four hours is plenty to inconvenience Bunsen. I’ll see Miss Grey and possibly Miss Hurleigh tomorrow.” He thought for a minute, then shook his head. “I’ve got to be honest: I can’t say there’s more than a slim chance I’ll get taken on as replacement driver. And even if I were, the closest I’d get to the actual meeting would be when I dropped Bunsen off at the door. You’ve got to regard this as a real long shot.”

  “I have the authority to cancel the meeting, if things do not go satisfactorily.”

  “Just so you’re not betting the house on my being there.”

  “Not just you.”

  “Who—” Stuyvesant stopped. “You want Grey there.”

  “Who better, to sense which man is plotting murder in his heart?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Carstairs looked, if anything, amused. “Are you telling me that you, an American agent of the Bureau of Investigation, forbid me from requiring service of one of His Majesty’s servants?”

  “Yeah, I am. You’re not going to do that to him. Let him go home, he’s done enough.”

  “Agent Stuyvesant, I will overlook your offensive overstepping of bounds because I have reason to be grateful for the affection the man Grey has developed for you. However, even you must see that with the life of a Prime Minister and the peace of a nation at stake, I may have to draw in all possible assistance.”

  “Then pick up Bunsen now. Grill him.”

  “Is that what you would do, Agent Stuyvesant?”

  The question brought him up short. It was tempting, but the problems were enormous. If a bomb did exist, there was no saying who had it, or who its target might be. Better to follow the spoor they had than to go off half cocked
and lose track of the explosive. Besides, much as a dark corner of him would like to see what Aldous Carstairs could do with the smooth-faced Richard Bunsen, it would be an interrogation of a very different order from the questioning of a pilfering supply sergeant. Breaking a man like Bunsen, a committed believer in a cause, was the slowest thing in the world. Frankly, he wouldn’t lay money on it, not even with Carstairs in charge.

  “Yeah,” he said after a while. “Yeah, I can see the problems. But let’s not bring Grey in right away. I’ll talk to him, ask him to be ready to get on the train from Cornwall, but let me see what I can do first. I can wire him and ask him to come Saturday if I turn up zilch.”

  “It would be better if I were to arrange for his transport,” Carstairs said. “A telegram would not reach him in time, considering that dinner Saturday would be the prime target of opportunity, with all the guests gathered together. And under those circumstances, Captain Grey would locate in moments the one who exhibits undue disquiet.”

  It was true; it was all true, God damn it. But it was all so tenuous: If Richard Bunsen had a bomb; if he intended to use it at this meeting and not, say, in the House of Lords next week; if the driver went gambling and got picked up; if Bunsen didn’t already have another man to hand, and if he offered Stuyvesant the job of driver-cum-bodyguard. And even then, if he could convince Bunsen that a driver-bodyguard would be useful at the Hurleigh meeting. If, if, if.

  Still, he’d known this kind of job before, cases that depended on a weird and uncontrollable momentum all their own—it was uncanny how often the sheer unlikeliness of a plan seemed to glue it together. Like one of those modern stage plays that consisted of unrelated events and segments of conversation, which came together in a kind of dreamlike logic at the end.

  No, the plan to get Harris Stuyvesant into Hurleigh that weekend would almost surely come to pieces—but as Carstairs said, if it didn’t pan out, they could always cancel it. Or they could let it go ahead, then go through every object coming into Hurleigh with a nit-comb, and require full body searches of everyone. Although Carstairs might draw a line with the Prime Minister’s person.

  In a way, that plan might be for the better. If they found the stuff on Bunsen, it would leave one Yank Bureau agent out in the cold, but it would mean one terrorist off the street. And if Bunsen came out of the meeting as blameless as he’d gone onto it, well, Stuyvesant would still be positioned to work his way into the man’s circle.

  Too, going the search-and-watch method would keep Grey clear of the whole thing.

  He nodded, his mind made up. “Leave me a message at the hotel with the word book in it if you’ve succeeded in removing Balham from play. And I’ll be in touch tomorrow after I see the two women. We’ll decide then how it stands.”

  Carstairs rose, holding out his hand. Stuyvesant gave it a brief clasp, concealing his distaste, and picked up his hat and coat.

  Aldous Carstairs listened to the American’s footsteps recede across the outer office. When the outer door had closed, he took out his note-book and wrote in it for a minute, then sat back, frowning over what he had written.

  Sometimes, it was just a matter of giving a person what he was hoping to find. He had no doubt that Stuyvesant accepted what he told him, and would do as he had asked. The man had no reason not to.

  Grey, however, was a different story. They were fast approaching the time when Grey’s intuition would be too dangerous. Best to remove him from the action, for a time.

  Stuyvesant walked, head down, through the busy streets, and was halfway to the hotel before he thought of who awaited him there, and what that meant.

  He couldn’t go straight from Aldous Carstairs to Bennett Grey with the knowledge of Carstairs’ plan still raw on his face. He veered into a tea shop and sat until the cup in front of him was stone cold, then went to find a public telephone.

  The hotel operator connected him to Grey’s room, and Stuyvesant held the receiver away from his mouth and lifted a piece of stiff paper, slowly crinkling it.

  “Grey? That you? Don’t know what’s up with these machines, I think they’re working on the lines down the street. Grey, you there?” Crinkle crinkle. “Where’s the operator, anyway? Look, I better make this short before we’re cut off entirely. Everything’s fine, it’s just that a meeting’s been called for this week-end, made some decisions urgent. Nothing really—you there?” Grey’s raised voice came clear over the earpiece, and Stuyvesant crushed the paper in his fist. “I’ve got some things to take care of here, and I don’t want to go over it on the telephone, anyway. How about I meet you at the same place we started out last night, at, say, five? What’s that?” Grey’s voice was at a shout, and Stuyvesant half-covered the mouthpiece with the fist holding the paper. “This is nuts,” he said in the direction of the receiver. “I’ll see you at five.”

  He hung up on Grey’s protestations.

  He spent the remainder of the morning in the library, reading about the men who would be at Hurleigh; the middle part of the day in a Turkish baths, sweating out the previous night’s poisons; and the afternoon in a strange hotel room, catching up on a few hours of sleep. Between the library and the baths he found a map store, and bought a highly detailed Ordnance Survey map of the area around Hurleigh. He asked his temporary hotel to wake him at five-fifteen, so he would arrive forty minutes late: the pub would be crowded and noisy, and Grey would be on his second or third drink.

  Bennett Grey was the trickiest confederate Stuyvesant had ever had to keep happy, worse than any gin-soaked, itchy-fingered gun-for-hire. He’d be so glad when the man admitted defeat and skulked home to Cornwall.

  With luck, tonight would do the trick.

  Grey was waiting at the public house, and lifted his glass by way of greeting as the big American threaded his way through the noisy crowd. Stuyvesant could see from the gesture that this was at least his third. He waved back, detoured past the bar to give his order “and a refill for my friend,” and finally slipped into the chair Grey had guarded for him. He took off his hat, putting it on his lap under the edge of the table, and unbuttoned his overcoat.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he told Grey. “I fell asleep, believe it or not. Your libraries are soporific places.”

  Grey did not react to the half lie, Stuyvesant was interested to see. The distractions of the room battered at him, so that the two statements, which were actually true when taken separately, elided into the suggestion that Stuyvesant had fallen asleep over his books. To distract him further, Stuyvesant pulled the folded Ordnance Survey map out of his breast pocket.

  “One thing I love about this country is its maps.”

  “Is that of Hurleigh?”

  “Yep.” Stuyvesant leaned forward to speak into Grey’s ear, not only for security, but for the added advantage that Grey could not see his face. “There’s going to be a private meeting this week-end at Hurleigh, between the principals of the Strike. Union and owners, with the Prime Minister in attendance. It might just be possible to get me in on it. That’s what Carstairs wanted to see me about.”

  With another man, Stuyvesant would have immediately launched off on some distracting behavior: taking off his coat, craning around for their drinks, anything to keep from having to meet his companion’s eyes. But Grey would see the actions for what they were, so instead, Stuyvesant met his green gaze openly, and allowed him to see what he could.

  He’s not psychic—but despite the noise in the room, Grey knew something was up.

  “You are trying to get rid of me,” he said to Stuyvesant.

  “Of course I’m trying to get rid of you. No offense, I like you a whole lot, but I’ve got a job to do and pretty soon you’re going to be in my way.”

  “But the Major…”

  “You’re right, Carstairs would love me to hang on to you. Hell, if I could hog-tie you and dump you on his desk, he’d put me on the Honours List for a Sir. But while his mind’s on you, he’s not focusing on the problems with Bunsen.”
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  Stuyvesant waited for the tell-tale rubbing of the forehead, but it did not come. It would appear that, given a distracting enough environment, Touchstone would react to the given truth, and miss the real truth hiding behind it. Had Grey been rested, sober, and sitting in a place where a man could hear himself think, Stuyvesant wouldn’t get away with deception.

  “So you’ll go?”

  “Tomorrow,” Grey promised.

  Stuyvesant felt a burst of relief, then told himself he couldn’t count on it until he watched the train pull out of Paddington. Not that it would matter all that much—the more he’d thought about Carstairs’ plan during the day, the more he’d suspected that the only way he’d be joining that secret Hurleigh conclave was if he held a gun to someone’s head. Stuyvesant was a veteran of so many investigative cock-ups over the years, he knew the farther a plan got from simplicity, the smaller the chance of success. An idea like this one, there were just too many opportunities for the gods of fate to step in and have a good laugh.

  And anyway, he wasn’t altogether certain that he believed in Carstairs’ mythical bomb plot. It was just too neat: that chain of supply sergeant to university friend to Bunsen; Carstairs just happening to remember the description of a man in a pub from a month before. Frankly, it stank of the man’s deviousness. Although for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what Carstairs could be working toward.

  Still, the Hurleigh meeting did not replace the substitute-driver plan, which was more reasonably within his grasp. But he wasn’t sure, when the topic of the driver’s unreliability came up at lunch tomorrow, that he would do anything to remind Bunsen of his skills as a bodyguard. His aim with Bunsen was in the longer term, and if it meant Carstairs had to draw a line through this secret meeting, even if the consequences were that Britain’s General Strike went ahead, he didn’t much care.

  The States had survived its Civil War, Britain had survived theirs; maybe it was time for this country to have another one.

  His target was Bunsen, and he mustn’t get distracted by British politics. Sooner or later, if he wasn’t arrested here, Bunsen would return to the States, and when he did, Stuyvesant intended to have sufficient information to slap on the handcuffs the moment his polished shoes hit the docks.