by Ian Andrew
If her father and mother had trusted him and they obviously had, then so would she.
She began to think of what he had said about the Archives. When she finally went to sleep it was almost 02:00.
Chapter 14
02:00 Monday 18th May 2020 - London
Chef Oberaufseherin Mary Reid was just getting up from Reichsminister Joyce’s hotel bed. He watched her as she began to gather up her clothes.
“Mary, you could stay, no one’s going to be disturbing me until about seven.”
“No Uwe, I need to get home,” she said quite abruptly.
“Are you okay, you seem sort of distant?”
“Distant? I just fucked you, how is that distant?”
“You know what I mean, you seem, I don’t know, just a bit off. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Well if I didn’t think something was wrong before I do now. Fine? Seriously? You’re using fine?”
“I’m okay, just drop it will you?”
“What’s with you? Did someone upset you today?”
“No!” she answered much too forcefully.
He sat up in the bed, “Mary, what is it? Come on, you can tell me. I can solve problems.” He tried a half-smile for her.
“Look, even if there was a problem, don’t sit there and tell me you give a fuck. I’m here to do one thing for you and in return you look after my meteoric rise. So please don’t try to make me feel like we have anything beyond this.” She pulled her underwear on followed by her uniform trousers and reached up to fasten her bra strap.
“Seriously what is your problem?” his voice had hardened a little after her blunt assessment of the realities of their relationship. She reached out to the foot of the bed to retrieve her shirt from under a pillow.
He leant forward to take her hand and she shrugged it off. “Don’t Uwe, I mean it.”
“Mary, what the hell is with you? Did something go wrong at work?”
“No!” she practically yelled at him.
“Mary, just calm the fuck down. Did the Kommandos give you a hard time because, if they did, I can sort them out?”
“What Kommandos?” Mary asked. She had half buttoned her shirt and was looking down at him in the bed with a quizzical expression.
“The snatch squads. I know you had some prisoners coming in. Did one of the squads piss you off?”
“No, nothing like that. They came in, we took care of the,” she stopped and caught her breath.
“Mary?”
“It’s fine. I did what I always do as per fucking usual. How the hell do you know I had prisoners coming in anyway?”
“Because my office signs off the custody terminations, you know that.”
“Yes, but you don’t. It’s some grovelling little administrator.”
“Ah well it is and always was, but now there are so few of them coming through I like to take an interest. Especially with Turners. I do so enjoy signing them off personally and wondering if their fucking miraculous God is going to keep turning his other cheek.” He laughed derisorily. “Or if some day he isn’t going to get very, very annoyed and do some smoting down like he used to in the ancient myths.” His comments were laced with a scornful sarcasm. “They’re so pathetic. Anyway, if it all went without a hitch, then what is your problem? For fucks sake, six Turners are hardly a reason for throwing a hissy fit.”
“I am not throwing a fit.” She buttoned the rest of her shirt and bent down to put her boots on. He shrugged and relaxed back into the bed.
“There were only four.”
“What?”
“There were only four, the SS looked after the other two in the house.”
“Well, even less reason to be pissed off.” Uwe leaned away from her and over to the bedside table to get his cigarettes. He propped himself on one elbow trying to open the new packet whilst he continued, “Only four of the scum to waste your time on. I just despair with them, every time we think we’ve cleared whole areas of the country they keep crawling out from under some stone like fucking plague rats. Worthless pieces of weak shit. Telling us to love one another and be nice. Fucking nice!” he managed to open the packet and take a cigarette but fumbled the lighter. It dropped off the side of the bed. “Ah fuck it!” he said as he leant over to retrieve it. “Anyway, look where all that love and soft shit got them. I’ll love them, when they’re all fucking gone.” When he straightened back up in the bed and looked at Mary she was standing fully clothed. Her service pistol was in her right hand pointing directly at his face.
“For fuck’s sake Mary, what are you doing?”
“Do not call them that.” Her voice was dispassionately calm.
“Have you gone fucking crazy? Put the fucking gun down.”
“I said do not call them that. Apologise,” She stated it slowly and deliberately.
“For what.”
“For calling them weak.”
“You’re insane, you stupid bitch, I have your career and your life in my hands. Now put the fucking gun down.”
“Apologise.”
“I will not apologise to you for some pieces of Turner crap that don’t deserve to breathe the same air as us. Now put the gun down and I’ll try very hard to forget about this.”
“They’re not all bad people.”
“Like fuck! I’ve had just about enough of this. I’m going to get up and you’re going to put the gun down.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No Mary, I’m not. That’s what you’re going to do and as for the parasite Turners, they deserve nothing, they are nothing. They’re weak fucking cancers that continue to spread and will continue to spread unless we stop them in their tracks.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I meant you were wrong that you have my life in your hands.”
Mary stepped forward, grabbed the pillow and in one movement put it next to Uwe Joyce’s head. She pressed it hard into him with the muzzle of the pistol and pulled the trigger.
She was his mistress. She was discrete. No one ever knew she came to see him in his hotel when he was in the city. No one ever saw them together.
She went into the bathroom and folded all the used, damp towels into a tight stack that she placed beside the main room door. She took three clean towels from the bathroom. Using one of them she wiped every surface she had touched since entering the room, stripped the bedding from under the shocked looking corpse of Uwe and placed it and the towel in a loose pile on top of his body. She took the second clean towel, soaked it and left it next to the room door. She took the third and secured it as tightly as possible around the sprinkler on the ceiling. She then took the battery out of the smoke detector and ripped out the wire supplying the mains power to the unit. The forensic teams wouldn’t take long to figure out he had been shot, but she wasn’t going to make their job easier by leaving copious amounts of evidence. Taking his lighter she set fire to a corner of the sheet she had placed over him and waited to ensure it had caught thoroughly. Picking up the soaked towel and the stack of used ones she left the room without looking back. As the door shut she wedged the wet towel under the door gap like a draught excluder and checked it wasn’t visible from the corridor. She then exited the hotel the way she always came in, through the staff corridors and service ways. Dropping the used towels into one of the many housekeeping laundry bins parked along the walls she made her way to the entrance at the rear of the building.
Mary paused, listened and when she was confident she was still alone used the key-card that had been stolen long ago for the purposes of ensuring the Minister was never publicly embarrassed by a scandal. As she looked into the small alleyway and checked it was empty, she thought of Thomas Dunhill. ‘I did what had to be done Thomas. You said I was sent to do his will. Maybe his will is that I reap vengeance for the weak. I’m doing what I must.’ She walked into the dark and the door clicked closed behind her
.
Chapter 15
06:50 Monday 18th May 2020 - London
The stumpy, balding, overweight man was bustling through the door. Sweating, out of breath, his shirt pulled out of his trouser waistband at the front and a stain, from presumably his breakfast, prominent on his garish pink tie that hung in a loose knot around his chubby neck. He was propping the door open with one foot as he tried not to drop his bulging attaché case from under his left arm, whilst holding on to a sheaf of papers in his right hand. He called in a friendly, albeit puffed voice, “Leigh, welcome back.”
Leigh turned at the sound of her name and recognised the head of the Laser Research Department.
“Professor Faber! Would you like a hand?”
“No, no, I’m fine thank you,” he said as he finally bludgeoned the door into submission and got through into the foyer.
Leigh stifled a small snigger. Professor Wolfgang Faber, outstanding physicist of his generation, holder of the Reich’s National Prize for Art and Science, looked like a sack of shit tied in the middle. He always did. She remembered the last function the Todt Laboratories had hosted. As usual on the Twentieth of April they had held a formal black-tie affair in honour of the Founding Führer’s Birthday. This year’s dinner had coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Todt Laboratory Complex in London. Wolfgang had arrived for this most auspicious occasion wearing a dinner suit that was short in the trouser, a fact more remarkable for a man who was very short himself. His jacket had been the correct sleeve length but wouldn’t have met around his girth had it been fastened with a bungee and its left side sagged under the weight of his National Prize pendant. The red and white sash that accompanied the award sat crooked across his body and had been poked under a bow tie that looked as if it had been tied by a drunken sailor. His ensemble had been set off to perfection by an off-yellow dress shirt. However, no one could doubt the man’s intellect. People just forgave him his appearance.
Leigh walked back to the professor and took his attaché case. “Oh, thank you Leigh. I must say it is very good to see you back my dear, very good indeed. We have a new Gestapo head of security and he seems, well,” Wolfgang searched for an appropriate phrase, “quite keen, I suppose one could say, to start using the TOW.”
“Yes Professor, I had the pleasure,” she dropped her voice, “if one can call it that, of meeting him last evening.”
“Really, whatever for?”
Leigh recounted the story she and Heinrich had agreed on.
“Well, my dear, I shall go and have words...” Wolfgang was beginning to bluster but Leigh told him it was okay, she had diffused the situation and SS-Standartenführer Heinrich Steinmann was becalmed.
“I still don’t think it’s right that he takes my most brilliant scientist off the street in a SS car like a common criminal.” They were walking side by side into the heart of the research complex which meant the senior scientist didn’t see Leigh blushing.
She thought of Wolfgang as a brilliant and lovely old eccentric. He had been her boss since 2012 out in Canada and had never wavered in his support of her. He was the primary reason she was now the deputy-director of Project Thule.
“Thank you Professor, but really it’s okay. I’m sure it’s just because he’s new and trying to be a little over-bearing.”
“Yes dear, well, if you’re sure.”
As they walked past the steps that led up to the cafeteria, Leigh held one of the double fire doors open to allow Wolfgang to go through and followed him down an eggshell blue corridor. There were doors along both walls that led variously to offices for administration staff, male and female toilets, a couple of stationery cupboards and the cleaner’s store room. At the far end of the corridor were a further set of fire doors but these were security locked by an electronic card reader. Leigh stepped in front of Wolfgang to save him the hassle of trying to fish his card out from whatever pocket he had forgotten it was in. She had her swipe card attached to a small, retractable-cord belt-clip. However, when she tried to swipe it the reader gave a non-committal beep and the doors remained firmly shut. She tried again with the same result. After a third attempt she turned to Wolfgang and shrugged.
“It’s okay Leigh, I have mine here,” Wolfgang said as he retrieved his own card from his shirt’s breast pocket. Handing it to Leigh, she swiped it against the small black reader mounted on the door frame. The reader responded with a high pitched chirp and the automatic doors swung away from her.
The space they revealed looked like a small square box, but as they stepped into it the wall turned sharp right and opened into a long narrow room. Along the left side of it was a high counter topped by clear bullet-resistant plastic, reminiscent of a security counter at the Deutsche Bank. Behind the security screen were members of the Wehrmacht security detail that controlled entry into the Deep Underground Engineering Laboratories. At the far end of the room were four transparent circular doors set into the end wall. They were the only way in and out of the ‘Jewel’.
Leigh headed over to the counter to report her misbehaving ID card and was thankful she had decided to come in early, even if the lack of sleep was going to catch up with her later. At 07:00 there were few people coming in and out. The main rush wouldn’t start for another hour. Behind the security screen, raised up on a central plinth, were just two guards. Their numbers would also swell for the day shift. The younger of the two soldiers sat in a swivel chair behind a semicircular desk, his body mostly hidden by a raised front that housed recessed CCTV monitors. He sat placidly whilst his colleague, an older and much more jovial looking character, stepped forward to the small acoustic opening in the screen.
“Hello Leigh, welcome back. How are you after your week?” The old soldier asked the question with appropriate solemnity, given that he knew she had been up to see her parent’s gravesite on the anniversary of their death.
“Oh I’m very well Dieter, thank you. You know, it’s never going to be painless but it gets easier each year.”
Leigh reached her hand through the small gap at the bottom of the screen and the soldier gave it a gentle and caring squeeze. She smiled at him and he gave her the most caring look in return. Dieter Fischer was in his early fifties and only had a couple of years left to do before being able to retire on full pension from the Army. He wasn’t much taller than Leigh and the years had turned his hair silver grey. His round face, heavy jowls and slightly bulbous nose betrayed his love of good wine and food. He had put on weight in the last few years and was now a sort of friendly grandfather figure around the complex. He wore the rank of an Obergefreiter and had done for most of his career. The Dieters of the world were more common than not. Sign up, keep your nose clean, do nothing unusual, get paid, get married, have kids, retire. He had been posted in to the security detachment in 2013 and had recently asked to have his tour extended for the third time. His wife Margarethe and he had loved England from their first days there. As soon as their youngest daughter had left home they had sold their house in Germany and bought a small cottage in rural Essex, not too distant from the city. Dieter stayed in the soldiers’ accommodation on site when he worked his shifts but as soon as he could he headed home to what he called his ‘Two Loves’. His Margarethe and his little cottage.
On each occasion Dieter asked for a tour extension his Commanding Officer at the time had acquiesced because Dieter was one of the steady old soldiers that Junior Officers liked to have around. The younger soldiers in the security detachment either liked him as a friendly old fellow or, as was the case with his current duty partner, thought he was a bumbling overweight old man. Whilst it was true that he had only been promoted three rank levels since joining the Army, the soldiers who thought he was a foolish old soak overlooked the fact that Dieter had forgotten more about soldiering than they were ever going to learn.
Leigh had known him since her arrival in Stuttgart back in 2007. She had liked him straight away because he was always so nice to her. Margarethe, no
doubt hearing from Dieter all about the young and shy little twenty-two year old scientist, insisted he invite her to dinner. She had often been invited to the Fischer’s house after that and she and Margarethe became firm friends. After she had been posted to Toronto in 2012 they had continued to keep in touch. When they heard about her car accident Margarethe had handmade a little knitted bear and sent it to the hospital with a card from her and Dieter wishing Leigh a speedy recovery. They told her to hurry back to see them so they could give her a proper meal. Leigh had laughed on receiving the card and cried when she saw the bear. It was such a touching thing to do.
“But it’s good to be back at work. Oh, can you tell Margarethe I’ll give her a call this weekend, if that’s okay?”
“Of course it’s okay, I’ll get her to call you,” Dieter beamed, “Right I shan’t hold you up anymore, go on, off to work.”
“Ah well, that’s the problem, my swipe card isn’t working.”
“Oh give me that, it’s probably just worn out, like myself. I’ll get it fixed up for you.” He indicated her swipe card, which she unclipped and handed over to him.
The younger soldier remained silent and stayed staring at his screens. Dieter nodded over his shoulder and spoke lowly, “Well I’ll get young Herr Lukas there to do it, he of the friendly disposition. It’ll take about ten minutes to run a new one. I’ll send it down to you, but take this for now.” With that he handed her one of the security detachment master swipe cards. Similar to her own but without an ID photograph, fingerprint record or attendant security code. It was designed to be used by any of the soldiers for rapid access to most areas of the complex, without the need for biometric or numeric verification. Leigh looked past him to Lukas and then back, she winked and set off once more with Wolfgang.
As they got to the four circular doors they presented their cards into the reader slot. Leigh’s door opened immediately with no further check and she retrieved the card and stepped in. Wolfgang swiped his fingerprint and looked into the camera mounted above. A few seconds later there was a chirp and his door rotated open. He stepped into the space and the door closed behind him. After a momentary pause the door on the inner side opened and allowed him into the laboratory complex proper. The doors were officially called circular locking, electronically controlled, ingress and egress points. To everyone who had to pass through them on a daily basis they were just known as the Tubes. A short corridor led to four lifts and to the right and left of these a set of emergency stairs. Leigh normally took the stairs down to help keep her leg supple, but with Wolfgang accompanying her she thought the lifts presented a much better option.
