The Darkest Hour: A Novel

by Tony Schumacher

  Koehler slammed down the phone and drank his brandy in one gulp before standing up.

  “The chase is back on, Schmitt! We might save our careers, after all!”

  Schmitt stood and grabbed his coat from the stand, then tossed Koehler’s across to him. Kate watched the two men sprint through the outer office and sat silently for a moment watching the door as it swung shut behind them. After a brief pause, she turned to the night-shift secretary.

  “If they’re off, I might as well head home.”

  The other girl smiled and returned to her magazine, and Kate collected her things and headed out the door.

  The chase was most definitely on.

  Chapter 48

  JACOB FELT LIKE his stomach would pop. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten so much. When Chivers had given him the food to hold he didn’t know whether it was okay for him to eat or even how to eat it. Finally, the smell filling the van’s cab teased him so much, a basic instinct had taken over, and he ripped into the paper and attacked the food. The smell had almost made him delirious and he had dug in and burned his fingers on the hot, greasy chips.

  Chivers looked down at him and winked in the half-light.

  “Good nosh, eh?” the old man said, his mouth full.

  Jacob nodded. The warmth in his belly was lifting his spirits. He smiled up at Chivers, and Chivers smiled back. Jacob looked out through the windshield at the small street in which they were parked. It was full of houses, and he recognized it from when he and his grandfather had visited his mother.

  It looked different at night. The houses looked warm inside, welcoming, the opposite of the graveyard they overlooked. Jacob tried to imagine what it would be like to live in one with a mother and father and maybe a brother and a sister.

  He wondered if the people inside were listening to music on the radio. He thought about his mother playing the piano when he was very small.

  She sang like an angel. He couldn’t remember her face, but he could hear her voice. She was the best singer in the world, he thought, and now, as Grandfather always told him, she was an angel, watching over him.

  He thanked her silently for the meal he was eating, and wished he could share it with her.

  He saw Rossett walking down the street toward them and picked up the sergeant’s fish and chips off the seat, so that he could eat them while they were still hot.

  ROSSETT GOT INTO the van, and Jacob smiled and offered the package.

  “I kept them warm for you.”

  Rossett thanked him and unwrapped the food. Fresh steam belched into the van, and the windows started to fog all over again. Rossett put some chips in his mouth and then pulled his coat cuff over his hand and wiped at the cold glass of the windshield to clear a portal.

  “Did you ’ave a look?” Chivers asked around a mouthful of fish.

  “There’s a lodge at the entrance with a light on, but the gates are locked. The wall is easy enough to get over, though. We’ll make our way around from there.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “You stay in the van and wait by the wall.”

  Chivers glanced across at Rossett.

  “Don’t you want me to come in with you?”

  “It’s six feet high. I don’t mind lifting him over, but I’m not lifting you. You can keep the van running, just in case.”

  Chivers didn’t argue. He just ripped some newspaper off and wiped his mouth, then sighed loudly.

  “What do we do after this?” he asked.

  “After the cemetery?”

  “No, after all of this. Are you going with the boy?”

  Rossett took some fish and looked down at Jacob, who was looking up at him.

  “I don’t know.”

  Jacob looked down at his food again.

  “Won’t be much for you ’ere ’cept a firing squad, mate, and that’s if you’re lucky. I don’t think you’ve got much choice. If we can get ’im on a boat to Ireland or the U.S., I think you’ll ’ave to go with ’im.”

  Rossett pondered for a moment as he ate. He hadn’t considered that there might be something else for him. He’d just assumed that his path was charted, work then death. He didn’t have anyone or anything to look forward to. No love, no sense of loyalty. He just worked. He’d always assumed that his dreams had died in the bomb blast that had taken his wife and son. Glancing at Jacob, he wondered, did he have a chance of new dreams in new places?

  “I don’t know what will happen. We’ll wait and see,” he finally said, more to himself than to anyone else in the van.

  “Well, maybe you should start thinking?”

  “What about you?”

  Chivers shifted in his seat, as if the question had made him uncomfortable.

  “I’m a ducker and a diver, I’ll be okay.”

  “Maybe we can all go?”

  “Me? In America or Canada? They don’t take kindly to old communists over there, chum.”

  “Koehler knows your name. You can’t stay here.”

  “Does ’e? ’E might think ’e does, but all ’e knows is one name I use.” Chivers smiled at Rossett and tapped the side of his nose with a greasy finger. “London is a big place; there are plenty of battles to be fought. Besides, the movement needs someone to take over, seeing as you killed its bleedin’ CO.”

  “What about Sterling?”

  “What about ’im? I’ve got the guns, plus I’ve got enough men and explosives to wipe ’is lot off the map. ’E’ll be more worried than me.” Chivers shifted in his seat, as if to hide his doubt.

  “Shouldn’t you be attacking the Germans?” Rossett said, looking out the window at the houses around them.

  “All in good time. Just wait, all in good time. I’ve got to sort out ’oo’s the top dog first. Don’t you worry about me. I’ve got plenty of tricks up my sleeve.”

  “Will you be able to get the boy onto a boat?” Rossett asked.

  “I’ve an idea. There are plenty of good men ’oo will ’elp the cause.”

  “For a few diamonds?”

  “Everybody ’as to eat, even communists,” Chivers replied, looking at Rossett. “Even ex-policemen.”

  Rossett nodded and folded the paper over the chips.

  “We’d better get moving.”

  Chivers nodded, started the van, and slowly drove down the street, keeping the lights off.

  As they passed the high iron gates that led into the cemetery, Chivers looked at the Gothic caretaker’s lodge behind them.

  “You wouldn’t catch me livin’ there.”

  “There’s worse this side of the wall,” replied Rossett. He checked the rounds in the Webley and clicked it shut, then looked at Chivers.

  “Yeah, a lot worse,” Chivers muttered.

  They drove for half a minute before Rossett spoke again.

  “Here will do.”

  Chivers bumped the van onto the curb, with the cemetery wall on his side of the van. The road was narrower here, but Rossett had chosen the place well. Opposite where they were parked was a bomb site, barren and surrounded by an old wire fence that sagged under its own weight. An old battered, pre-war Leyland truck was parked on the site, and next to it, another builder’s van in slightly better condition. If anyone passed, Chivers’s van wouldn’t look out of place, almost as if a contractor had arrived too late to park it on the bomb site and had left it on the road until morning.

  “If you hear a shot,” Rossett said, “drive to the end of the road and turn right, follow the cemetery wall until you reach the far corner, and wait there as long as you can.” He made a quick scan of the street, then opened the van door and got out. “Come on, boy. Take me to your mother.”

  THE JOURNEY ACROSS London had been hectic, to say the least. The young soldier driving had done his best to follow the shouted instructions from the
map reader in the rear, but the big Mercedes wasn’t built for the narrow streets.

  They’d bounced off so many curbs that Koehler struggled to keep the brandy down.

  “We are nearly there, sir, less than half a kilometer,” the map reader said.

  Koehler looked over his shoulder out the rear window, past the three young men on the backseat. The map reader extinguished his torch and ducked down in the middle so Koehler could see past him.

  “Stop,” Koehler instructed, and the staff car glided to a halt in the middle of the road, blocking it completely.

  Werner got out of the front seat of the second car and jogged up to Koehler’s window, an MP40 slung across his chest, every inch the old soldier.

  “We’re nearly there,” said Koehler. “Tell the other car to take up position on the far side of the cemetery but not to go in. I don’t want chopping down by some idiot’s crossfire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You and your men come with us. Once in the graveyard, we’ll fan out and move slowly until we can see Rossett and the boy. Tell your men stealth is the key. Nobody does anything until I say so, is that understood?”

  “Perfectly, sir.” Werner saluted and doubled back to the other cars to pass on the information.

  Koehler turned in his seat to face the men in his car. It occurred to him that none of them was over the age of twenty, and he doubted if any of them had actually seen combat.

  “Did you hear that?” They all nodded. “This is a dangerous man, very dangerous. I want you all to be careful, yes?”

  There was a mass of bobbing heads in response. Koehler realized it was a long time since he’d led an operation of this sort. He lifted his machine pistol from the footwell and nodded to the driver to proceed.

  “Slowly . . . go.”

  Chapter 49

  “LIE FLAT SO nobody can see you,” Rossett instructed as he lifted Jacob. The boy did exactly as he was told, hugging the top of the wall and resting his cheek on the cold stone. He waited as Rossett lifted himself, with the merest of grunts, up and over, dropping quietly onto the other side. He then grabbed Jacob, helped him down, and crouched with the boy.

  All was dark, and all was quiet in the cemetery.

  Perfect.

  Rossett wanted to move quickly, but the pitch-black graveyard was littered with flat stones set in grass and shin-high tombs that were going to make progress painful if they proceeded at much more than a creep.

  The streetlamps in the road behind him played havoc with his night vision, too bright to allow his eyes to adjust and too faint to cast anything more than blurred shadows ahead.

  He felt Jacob reaching for the hand in which he held the Webley, so he shifted slightly and offered his other hand for comfort.

  “Where do we need to go?” he whispered.

  “I only know the way from the gate,” Jacob replied, his voice wavering.

  Rossett considered saying something to lift the boy’s spirits, but he couldn’t think of anything. Instead, he squeezed his hand and slowly, following the wall, they made their way toward the lodge by the main gate.

  The lodge stood silent, a brown limestone sentinel guarding the dead. Upstairs, Rossett could see one dim light through a curtain, and he watched it closely for any sign of movement.

  He jumped inwardly when he heard a dog barking a few streets away, and he glanced down in the darkness to Jacob, who was a shadow at his side.

  “You all right?” he whispered.

  Jacob didn’t reply, and Rossett hoped the boy was nodding.

  They reached the low wall that surrounded the lodge, acting as a cursory boundary between it and the cemetery. The dog had stopped barking, and somewhere, Rossett heard the sounds of distant car engines. He glanced back in the direction they had come and saw that all appeared well.

  “Here?”

  “The path, by the gate, I count,” Jacob whispered.

  Rossett saw the boy’s white hand pointing to the gate like a ghost.

  “Be very quiet.”

  “I will.”

  Rossett led the way around the side of the house, moving slowly and silently. They reached the path that led from the gate into the cemetery and Rossett stopped again, looking up at the front of the lodge.

  It was totally dark.

  In front, parked on the path, was an old car that looked as if it hadn’t moved in years, sitting lazily on three flat tires while the fourth clung on to its last few gasps of air.

  Rossett studied the gate. It was bound with a thick chain and padlock with a No Entry sign hanging from it.

  He tested the path with his toe; it was gravel, so they walked on the grass next to it.

  “Do you know now?” Rossett held Jacob’s head an inch from his mouth and whispered in the boy’s ear. He felt Jacob nod his head and took his hand again.

  It was then that the front door of the lodge opened.

  Rossett swept Jacob off the ground, twisting and standing up to his full height for the first time since they had entered the cemetery. The Webley came up from his side, and he drew a bead on the silhouette of the man at the door, maybe thirty to forty feet away.

  “Puss puss?” the man called.

  Unmoving, Rossett was just another statue in a graveyard, except this one had a gun.

  “Puss?” the man called again.

  To his left, Rossett saw a will-o’-the-wisp cat run past. The animal suddenly stopped, and their eyes met, the cat’s reflecting white so bright that Rossett thought they would throw enough light to give his position away.

  The cat waited, unsure, one paw rising in the half-light of the door. Looking over its shoulder at the intruders in its territory, trying to decide whether to get in where it was warm or stay and watch.

  Rossett bared his teeth at the cat, willing it to go.

  It did, dashing to the door and slipping past its owner, who was already halfway back into the house, no idea how close Tiddles had come to getting himself killed.

  They stood watching the house for a few moments, slowly letting their eyes adjust back to the darkness and listening to the night as the mist thickened around them in the still air.

  After a while, Rossett lowered Jacob to the ground, and the boy took his cue and started to walk slowly alongside the path.

  Rossett’s feet felt damp as they made their way through the thick grass, and he wondered if he should carry Jacob, realizing that the boy’s feet would be soaking. They had crept past maybe ten or twelve rows of gravestones, thicker into the mist, when Rossett felt Jacob veer sharply to the right, leading him away from the path and quickening his pace so that Rossett had to pull back and rein him in.

  After another ten or twelve graves, Jacob stopped and rested his free hand on a cold gray granite block.

  “Here she is,” the boy whispered as he pulled his other hand from Rossett’s and rested it on the stone, gently, as if not to wake his mother.

  Rossett looked down at the gravestone. It rose maybe eighteen inches out of the overgrown grass, and he could barely make out its chiseled writing in the darkness.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Twelve down and nine across.”

  “What do we do?”

  Rossett saw the boy kneel down, and for a moment he thought he was about to pray. Instead, he heard the sound of ripping grass. He crouched down, resting his hand on the cold granite in an attempt to see what Jacob was doing, but it was too dark and he didn’t dare to strike a match.

  Rossett looked around the cemetery while he waited. He couldn’t make out anything farther than twenty feet away except for the odd obelisk or tree, silently sleeping.

  Finally, the boy stopped what he was doing. Rossett rested his hand on Jacob’s back so as to locate him in the darkness. He leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Well?”

 
; Jacob held something up to Rossett, tapping it against his arm so that he knew what to reach for.

  It was a metal box, maybe the size of a shoebox, wet and cold to the touch. Rossett brushed the soil off of it as he felt for the edge of the lid. Eventually, his fingers found purchase and the lid shifted slightly. Rossett grunted as he pulled again, and the metal lid finally popped off and clattered onto the gravestone before falling onto the grass.

  “Shush!” Jacob whispered.

  Inside the tin lay balls of rolled-up newspaper, which Rossett probed with his fingers. Almost immediately, his fingers brushed something solid, and he took the item out of the box before resting the tin on top of the gravestone next to them.

  He guessed the object to be maybe three inches long and two wide. It felt like a cold pottery cylinder, and the urge to strike a match and inspect what he held became overpowering.

  He gave in.

  Passing the cylinder back to Jacob, he fumbled in his pockets for the matches. Quickly taking the box out, he paused and lifted his head again to look around him.

  In the distance, he heard the dog barking again but nothing else.

  All was quiet.

  “Hold it up,” he whispered as he struck the match.

  Jacob held up the cylinder, and Rossett saw it was a sealed earthenware jar with a wooden stopper jammed tight in the end. He took the jar from Jacob and lifted both it and the match to his face so that he could inspect the jar close up.

  That was when he heard the shout.

  Chapter 50

  CHIVERS HAD GONE back to eating his fish and chips in the van when he first noticed the headlamps in his rearview mirror. He watched them approach and slowly wrapped the chips back into their paper, sliding down slightly into the seat so he could duck out of sight if he needed to.

  One Mercedes pulled in behind while the other slowly eased past the van, stopping just in front.

  He waited, heart thumping, wondering whether he should get out of the van and approach one of the cars. His silent question was answered when all their doors opened almost simultaneously, and the occupants fanned out along the wall, equally spaced about ten feet apart, and all seemingly staring at him.