Joe stirred his tea, reluctant to encounter Kingstone’s sorrow-filled eyes which held, in spite of everything, the desperate hope of a last-minute surprise. “She was there to supervise your killing. The agreed plan was to trick you into going out to meet her in the car, which would have taken off the minute you settled.”
“We’d call it being taken for a ride. Thought as much.”
“By staging our shooting party, we changed the points and diverted Onslow onto another line. Our chosen line. That Cummings glows with all the energy of a forty-watt electric bulb—he wasn’t able to shine much light into the shadowy area beyond Miss Kirilovna. She was the sole authority he had knowledge of above Onslow. He was there to look tough, growl and cover you while Onslow drove to a suitably quiet spot. Beyond that we can only speculate.”
“Execution. She was working with them all along. I wonder if she’d have pulled the trigger.”
“Possibly three times,” Joe suggested.
“Right.” Kingstone’s thoughts had kept pace with his own. “The Surrey police might well have stumbled on the scene of an American-style shoot-out?”
“Brave senator dies defending himself, taking his killers with him?”
“Huh! They’d have it on celluloid in no time. Another role for Paul Muni?”
With that reef safely cleared, Joe decided to change tack.
“Kingstone, this Nine Men’s Society … my sister suggests that you were—would a good term be ‘shanghaied?’—into membership of it.”
“That lady’s not often wrong, I’d guess. But try—press-ganged. Like your British Navy used to do with our American sailors on the high seas back in wilder times. That would be nearer the mark. If you want to man your ships with fellas who already have the skills and strength you need, you don’t go trawling for them on the city streets. You pick ’em straight off another ship. They liked my background, my circumstances and my contacts. I found myself black-jacked and hauled aboard. I had no idea they existed before they approached me.”
“The other Pilgrims—are they aware …?”
“I can’t speak for them. Societies of any kind are not something I would ever be interested in. I’ve lately joined a few clubs because that’s where I can get to meet the men whose ears I want to bend, whose arms I want to twist … but, no. I’ve never yet heard from any bona fide members that they suspect anything odd is happening right under their noses. No one’s ever quite certain who is a member of the Pilgrim Society and who is not, after all. Names are listed in the papers of course, but they vary according to where the meetings are being held. That’s all over the globe. Hard to keep track. Certain names are well know and constant—the ruling body is composed of men whose office demands it—ambassadors, your prime minister, a member of your royal family, our president—whichever man is holding the post.”
“I’d have thought Roosevelt would qualify as a pilgrim regardless of political eminence?”
“He surely would. On both sides of his family, he’s descended from very early pilgrims. Mayflower blue blood in all his veins.”
“And you, Cornelius? You had spoken dismissively of your ancestry.”
“A late ocean crosser! Only three generations ago. But that was enough for them. A technicality. They didn’t press-gang me for my bloodline. Or my money.”
“What then did they see in you that they wanted?” Joe asked, thinking he probably knew.
“My military record and reputation,” Kingstone replied, surprising him.
“Which I know to be excellent,” Joe murmured, calling to mind the medals and citations listed in the senator’s Military Intelligence notes. His stories of stopped watches, fraternisation in machine-gun nests and illicit frankfurters were entertaining but came nowhere near conveying the truth of the man’s achievements. “You’re a national hero. Or would be if you didn’t actively avoid the spotlight. But your closeness—some would say influence—with the new president … must have been of some account?”
“Less important. They never asked me to sweet-talk him. Or spy on him. I told you, Joe, that I was being coerced into making a speech before them that would swing the economic situation, which is balanced on a knife edge at the moment. I led you to believe that the motivation behind this plot—conspiracy would not be an exaggeration—was an economic one. It is not. I handed you—not a lie, I wouldn’t do that—but a half truth which you were ready, even primed, to believe. The situation is, indeed, a dire one and much depends on the outcome. Can the United States be swayed into coming back onto the gold standard, which we abandoned in April, or do we stay off it and risk ruining the economies of most other nations in the world? What terms will we make on war repayments by our European debtors? How will the president fund the launch of the New Deal he is about to unveil on the fifteenth—three days after the start of the conference? I have considerable personal interest in that because one of the clauses concerns the setting up of the Tennessee Valley scheme.”
“Three vital questions,” Joe agreed, wondering where he was going with this.
“But not ones that are exercising the Nine Men. With them, political concerns trump economic ones. They are not the same, though they’re intertwined. I can’t tell you more than I have and that’s already too much, Joe. I won’t tell you what their plan was—maybe still is—for me. It’s too burdensome for any pair of ears, even yours.”
Joe sensed from the firm way Kingstone closed his jaw and looked into the distance that he was not prepared to reveal more and Joe was not prepared to ask him. Once again, Joe feared for him. The man, it seemed, still had an image of himself as a victim. Joe had caught that same blend of defiance and despair on the faces of martyrs in lugubrious dark oil paintings as the masked executioner approached, lighted torch in hand. And here was the British bobby standing by, as impotent as the inevitable priest performing his incantations at a safe distance in the background. Joe longed to snatch the mask from the tormentor’s face and look into the features below. He was in the mask-snatching business. He knew well that it was in the black concealing silk that the horror lay. The man beneath, ugly enough no doubt, could well be known to the victim and despised by him.
“What influence are they using? What threats or incentives are they holding over your head? Can you tell me that much? It might help. I am still, after all, tasked with your protection for this next bit.”
“The usual winning combination. Carrot—to be served up back home in the States. I will not reveal the nature of this and it would not be of much use to you to know. And stick, a sample of which you have already witnessed. Person or persons unknown, as you’d say, have been threatening me—and the one I had thought dear to me—with torture and death. Their acts are ruthless, carried out at second or third hand and never attributable to the inner circle that decrees them. They can hire the best. But the men who pull the triggers and chop off the toes do not know for whom they are acting. These tools—accidents and suicides a specialty—are well chosen, effective and well rewarded. And they get away with it—unless they have the bad luck to come up against Sandilands.”
“Or be employed by Sandilands,” said Joe, with a smile. “You could be describing my Branchmen and—speaking of hired killers—how on earth did William Armiger manage to get himself in on the Nine Men’s act? Before you ask—no, it wasn’t Bill who told me about your meeting. He doesn’t know that he was spotted and we haven’t discussed it. Your officer,” he added carefully, “is the soul of discretion.”
“Ah. Interesting! I had assumed Armiger was the source of your information. I was always prepared for his loyalties to be stretched once we were back in the old country. Glad to hear he’s remained discreet. It confirms my original assessment of the man. I wasn’t going into that snake pit by myself, Sandilands. I’d used Armiger on several occasions. He’d been recommended by his boss. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI seems to see him as an up-and-coming man. His subsequent behaviour and his personality appealed to me. He passes in all ki
nds of society, from ballroom to barroom. He can foxtrot with a Daughter of the American Revolution in Washington one day and win a spitting contest on a Bronx sidewalk the next. And, you know, Joe—they’re both the real Armiger. We got on just fine.”
“He sees the potential in getting close to the man who’s close to the president?” Joe asked bluntly.
“Of course he does. That’s well understood. But I felt safer with William at my back. I made it a condition of membership that I took Armiger along with me. As he’d come over on a boat—even though it was a passage in first class on a transatlantic liner some six years ago—it qualified him for the deal. What really recommended him to them was his own status—the one he’d carved out for himself in the world of Law and Order. They see such an organisation as a potential tool in their armoury. An arms-carrying, legally and democratically appointed force with a man of theirs at or near the top? Well, you can imagine how useful that might be to them. Seed corn of the very best kind! These men think twenty years into the future. Armiger earned his own counters.” He smiled. “Picked up the old game pretty quickly too.”
Joe was about to quibble, Which old game would that be? Treachery or Nine Men’s Morris? but he bit back the words. He was becoming increasingly weary with hearing the recitation of Bill Armitage’s dubious qualities and with the revelations of shady international manipulation, which would always remain outside his sphere of influence and his understanding. Instead he commented, “I’m assuming that these top-drawer villains—the Nine Men—are beyond even the long arm of the Law?”
“They are. They’re connected. I told you so. I shall have to find my own way of dealing with them. But that’s not to say we can’t go for the second layer—the ones who carry out their wishes. I’d relish that! I’m not talking about the lower orders: gun-toters and neck-crackers like that pair of bozos we trapped down by the lake. I mean the people who make their arrangements, phone calls on their behalf, who spy on the targets, gather information, ease their path …”
“Their adjutants?”
“That’ll do.”
“Like—Natalia?” Joe held his breath, reluctant to probe an open wound, even though he suspected that wound still contained lethal shrapnel.
“Like Natalia,” Kingstone said heavily. “I never did get to hear her reasons.”
“She’d been spying on you for some time, do you reckon?”
“Not spying on. Worse than that. Knowing and betraying. Being close. I had thought—loving. But I was wrong. You can’t make people fall in love so I’m assuming they got hold of her some time after that performance in New York when it was quite clear I was knocked sideways. Perhaps she was already with them,” he said thoughtfully. “She easily acquired the kind of contacts they like, travelling around the world meeting the cream of society. I never asked her and she never told me. It always seemed like water under the bridge.”
“But what if the stream were still flowing?” Joe dared to ask quietly. The senator may have had his eyes opened but his emotions were still raw, he reckoned. “It would certainly be interesting to see a list of her … um … the relationships she established over the years.”
“You’d need to ask Julia the names of her conquests. I think when Natalia got her instructions she faked up a row with me, swept out and disappeared. Then they were free to threaten me. She’d been kidnapped, I was told. Her life depended on me and my performance. I gave them what for. What do they do next? Pile on more pressure. It’s well established. A newspaper cliché, because it darned well works! What happens in kidnappings to create terror? You send a bit of the victim’s anatomy through the post implying that the rest will follow in small instalments until death occurs. What I didn’t know was that Natalia was acting as advisor behind the scenes.”
“ ‘Someone’s got into my head,’ I think you said.”
“The someone had got into my life! She was informing whoever was overseeing the business about my habits and preferences. Right down to the chocolates. Did she get Julia to put those in my room, do you suppose?” He asked the question brusquely. “I had thought better of her.”
“I was wondering how far you thought you could trust Julia. She showed a certain regard—even warmth—for you,” Joe said speculatively, casting a fly on the water.
“I probably got that wrong as well but, yes, I thought there was a mutual regard between us. You wouldn’t expect it, given our differing situations. but we did get to know each other pretty well. The hours we spent sitting around in dressing rooms waiting for the light of our lives to come and shine on us for a while! Julia’s sharp and she’s funny and she’s well-informed. If you have an hour to kill I can’t think of a better companion.”
“She may well have wondered where her own future lay when, or if, her mistress decided to throw in her lot with you?”
“Never occurred to me. If it had, I’d have thought—she’d be taken care of. I would have welcomed her into our lives. Or paid her handsomely to start afresh.” He sighed, frowned for a moment and then confided: “But, with Natalia dead, things change for Julia. She’ll be devastated, of course, but she’ll also be independent. I’ll give you the address of Natalia’s lawyer in London. You’ll be needing that. She had no close family. They all got caught on the wrong side in that Russian business. I’m pretty sure she would have been planning to leave all she had to Julia.”
“Thank you. I’ll follow that up. I did wonder about the placing of the chocolate box. It’s possible, you know. Even probable. The two were in contact. I had Julia followed. Natalia was doing her directing from the wings, did you know? Not far away. From a house in Harley Street. The annexe of a hospital for women. An establishment that offers rather special care and repair for the female body. They have facilities dancers are often grateful for—at a price. She was clearly at home there.”
Kingstone, he was sure, had not been aware. “Lord! She would be! She told me she’d invested her money in a medical establishment for women. Branches in every continent, she said. For rest and recuperation … massage and treatment … The coming thing, the modern thing, and a way to help out her own sex and profession.” He swallowed and muttered, “I gave her some funding for it—she would never accept diamonds or gold. ‘Jewels? Too last-century for words, my darling,’ she said. The proceeds from the business would sustain her when she gave up her career—that was the idea. Better than money in the bank. It was already bearing fruit, she told me. In my ignorance I was seeing twisted ankles, broken limbs, bad backs … You’re implying abortion clinic, aren’t you?”
Joe nodded. “And the girl whose body you saw at the Yard—I don’t have her name yet—died in just such a place. An ‘intrauterine haemorrhage suffered in the course of a surgical termination of pregnancy,’ according to Doctor Rippon. I think she died on Tuesday evening and her body must have been stored on the premises awaiting burial. Perhaps she had no immediate family to claim the body and ask awkward questions? They would, at all events, be looking for a discreet disposal that wouldn’t call for the regulation two signatures by registered physicians.”
“And they used her body? For spare parts? That drama with the burial in the mud?” Kingstone frowned. “They meant her to be found. Right there. To pole axe me?”
“As a flaunting of power and evil intent, it seemed to work. Whatever this business you’ve been press-ganged for, it must be fearfully important, Cornelius.”
“I thought I’d made that clear. It’s world-changing. Believe me, the body of one little dancer would worry them as much as that squashed beetle they mentioned. The men at the top, that is.”
“But someone in the lower echelons felt otherwise. What was it Lydia said about closing Natalia’s eyes? Ritual? A sign of respect? Our first dead girl so carefully interred a foot deep in the mud had her eyes closed and was given a parting gift in the classical manner. An extravagant gesture. What was this saying?”
“I’ll tell you what it was saying!” Kingstone was growing an
gry and aggressive. “ ‘I do apologise for this, my dear. Accept this as my penance … I can well afford it. And I’m an absolute asshole.’ Who on earth, Joe?”
“Lydia has decided the man behind this is a sadistic choreographer.”
“There’s no other kind. But that’s not who we’re looking for.” Kingstone eyed him with speculation warmed by a gleam of boyish mischief. “What do you say to taking them on at their own game, Joe? You know what’s called for? A three-man mill! Three strong men, standing shoulder to shoulder, knowing the game and with the guts to put their heads down and keep shoving, can wipe the board clean.”
“Um … whom do you have in mind, senator? I doubt Marcus would …”
Kingstone shook his head. “The game board has been laid out in London and that’s where we’re going to take them on. Me, you and William Armiger.”
“Bill?” Joe could not disguise his alarm. “Sir … before you go any further with this … there’s something you ought to know about the sergeant.”
The good humour was now in the open as Kingstone replied, “I wasn’t expecting you’d have gotten there yet, Joe! I know what I need to know. He’s a ruthless, but not a conscienceless, killer. He once saved your life and now I can say he’s just added another grateful soul to his tally: mine. We both owe him. Well, what do you say? How do you like the odds? Shall we three give the Nine Men a bloody nose?”
CHAPTER 22
“I’m ready! I’ve been ready for some while!”
The swaggering words, instantly regretted, slipped out in spite of the chorus of warning voices resounding in Joe’s skull. There was no time to examine his motives, to refer to the years of careful Metropolitan police training, to question allegiances, to test himself for unthinking patriotism. He’d never thought to hear the sound of the bugle again but here he was, every inch of him tensing, his senses alert, sniffing the air like a pensioned-off warhorse.
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