by Daniel Kemp
“Where is Leeba Stockford?” he demanded as I obeyed his command, dropping my useless gun.
“I only wish I knew. When I left she was heading for the bathroom complaining of a headache,” nervously I replied.
“That was when you were whisked away by the van, was it?”
“It was, yes!”
“And where did your friends take you, Mr Redden?”
“They were no friends of mine. They put a hood over my head then tried to frighten me off from seeing her again. If you were there you would have seen that.” I've never believed in defence being the first line to any successful strategy.
“Is Shaun Redden your real name?” he asked as he rose from the chair, stubbing out yet another cigarette on the carpet beneath his feet before making his way towards me. “We need to talk,” he said as he closed the narrow gap between us, beginning to raise the pistol in his hand to my head.
With the palm of my right hand I grabbed the hammer of the gun, at the same time forcing my thumb against it, then I brought my knee up hard into his groin. Now was the time to see if the instructions I'd undergone on how to deal with a revolver would work. Although he looked out of shape, he wasn't. He hardly flinched and still held the gun tight. With my other hand I aimed a punch at his throat, but being shorter than me he ducked under it, and I ended up hitting him high on the head to no effect other than on my arm which shuddered from the wrist to the shoulder joint. At that moment I saw a shimmering band of light on his fist which slammed into my cheek, forcing me backwards towards the open door. It was as I staggered I felt my hand lose its grip on his gun. All I could do was pull his hand away from me, pointing the weapon towards the floor. Through the open door I fell, onto the carpeted hallway just as the gun went off. I remember feeling a searing hot pain in my foot before passing out in the corridor.
* * *
As I regained consciousness I could feel soft fingers touching my wrist and a warm hand across my brow. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious, but I did know I was no longer in the corridor of my apartment block. When I turned my head towards that touch, I had an intense burning sensation all over my face similar to having been scalded by a rush of boiling steam. A short comely woman, aged about fifty, wearing a white habit with a red scapular across her shoulders, was standing beside the bed taking my pulse.
“Try not to move your head too much, young man. You have had surgery for a fractured cheekbone and eye socket. Don't bite hard on your teeth or blow your nose for a few days. The pain will soon go with no more discomfort once the jawbone is bonded together, until then the splint must remain in place.When the aesthetic wears off I'll give you some painkillers and some antibiotics. It might take a couple of weeks until you'll be kissing the girls again, but rest assured you will.” She smiled as she gently placed my hand down on the crisp white sheet.
“Why is that tent thing over my foot, nurse?” I asked painfully, the splint hampering my speech.
“I had to amputate three of your toes on that right foot, the outside ones. An inch higher and you may have lost your entire foot.” I stared at her, trying to concentrate on her words.
“Did you say you amputated my toes or did I mishear that?”
“You heard correctly, yes. I'm your surgeon come nurse. I changed from being a hell-raising heretic into a Sister of the Annunciation of the Blessed Holy Mary after qualifying as a surgeon, too many years ago to remember. I keep my hand in when I'm needed,” she replied mysteriously.
“Was it the Devil who hit me?” I was still feeling the pain in my face but nothing from my foot.
There was another voice in the room.
“In a roundabout way, Shaun, it was. Name of Wilson Pérez. Originally from Chile, but now a worldwide mercenary for hire.” It was Jack that I heard although I couldn't see him.
“I thought he was South African,” I said as I ignored the pain, pushing myself bolt upright from the bank of pillows in the bed. “Ah, there you are,” I said as I saw him. “Where am I, Jack?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe! We cleaned up at your apartment then brought you here. Job had left a man inside, but Pérez shot him. He's dead. Sally's two other men nabbed Pérez in the lobby on his way out. He'd been shot in the leg,” he told me as he put my pillows in a more comfortable position.
“I never had a chance to fire my gun, Jack.”
“No, we know. We found it inside your rooms on the floor. It must have been a ricochet from his own. He's been taken care of.”
“By taken care of, do you mean that he's dead?” I asked.
“I mean taken care of, Shaun. Somethings are best not disclosed in too much detail.”
The room was sterile white, lined by open shelved, glass cabinets stocked with various medical equipment most of which I'd never seen before, nor wanted to know their purpose. It was glaringly lit with two huge ceiling-mounted, movable spotlights beside an operating table to my left. There was a collection of scalpels and the like on top of it. I wondered which ones had been used to remove my toes, but as that thought was leaving me I wondered if she had lied, because I was sure I could still feel them as first I clinched, then wriggled what was there.
“We didn't want New York's finest finding you first. That would have meant a lot of questions being asked and time needlessly wasted. We clean up our own mess, if we can.”
“You were expecting someone to pay me a visit, weren't you?”
“It was a possibility, Shaun, that's why I gave you the gun and took the precaution of leaving one of Salvatore's crew in your rooms. Unfortunately, we didn't give you enough protection,” he stated laconically as he stood from the chair he occupied and made his way over to the only window in the room. He never looked at me, just stood there gazing out onto whatever there was beyond. The window was barred.
“I've not been safe since arriving here, have I? There's not much of your story that I believe you know, especially about Penni.” The throbbing in my face would not stop me from speaking my mind.
“I think it would be more expedient to wait until we are alone, Shaun. Don't you,” he cautioned me in a severely disapproving voice.
“That would appear to be a timely reminder for me to leave you two to discuss whatever it is you need to discuss. I will return shortly, but I have other duties to perform for now. Goodbye, gentlemen.”
With that she was gone. Leaving only Jack's rhetoric to deflect my discomfort and the smell of antiseptic mixed with something else that I could not put a name to.
“The Hitler thing was a bit farfetched, but it served its purpose, Shaun,” Jack resumed as soon as the door closed behind her.
“This whole affair has been the slow collection of tiny jigsaw pieces really, and it's only now that the final ones are starting to fall into place. How long did that have you fooled?” he enquired.
“I never really believed it. I couldn't see Hitler with a Jewish girl. But it did hold my fascination, that's for sure.”
“What intrigued me the most was how long it would take before you quizzed me on that one.”
“I may have done before now, Jack, but we haven't had much time to chat. Have we?”
“No, we haven't, but now time has been forced upon us. Let me ask you a question first, then you can have a turn. You have never pushed me on the question of why you were chosen for this adventure. That has puzzled me a lot.”
“If I'm truthful I was trying to avoid the inevitable answer of just being thick enough to fall for your lies. I hoped you would eventually tell me a truth that I could cling on to, but now that I'll miss Richard's Saturday meeting I guess I'm finished in your brand of espionage before I started to enjoy it.”
“Things have recently happened that throw that meeting into doubt, but we have it covered without you or Richard being required to attend. The letter you delivered to Weilham will cause him to re-evaluate his position.”
“He thinks Richard wrote that and that implicates me, Jack.”
“Yes,
I know! That was the idea behind it. He is a dangerous man, Shaun, with even more dangerous friends. The Stockfords are our main priority. I'm sorry to admit this but your life comes a distant second.”
My head hurt, every part of my face screamed in agony on speaking and the thought of not being able to walk properly would have added further to my troubles if I'd thought long enough about it, but that last confession from Jack Price hit me harder than any shiny knuckleduster could ever do. Before I could say a word, he turned around and faced me.
“I think it's time for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No threats about onward disclosure, just trust from me. There are only two people in the whole world who know parts of what I'm going to tell you, there were more, but they have passed on, so, I'm putting you deeper in the shit than you've been. That's what I think you want and why you're not fighting to get back to dear old London. Your heart is stronger than your brain, Shaun. That's got to change, son, and soon.”
He paused for a second, examining my face as if a dramatic change might suddenly appear. None did.
“The last piece of this jigsaw happened last week in a place called Trelew, in Argentina. The real truth behind that event will never be reported, but it's the future's headline, my boy. Right, let's start at the beginning shall we?”
He fetched the chair and sat next to my bed taking a cigarette from his packet and offering me one. One part of me wanted to smash him to pieces for all his lies, the other, the wiser part, tuned in its ears and listened.
“The Vienna meeting was real. Hitler was present but you're right. When told that Leeba was Jewish he indulged his passion elsewhere. Our abdicating king, although prejudiced against Jews, blacks and almost everything and everyone who was not of his own race and stock, held no such prejudice on matters of sex. All he saw was flesh and pleasure. It was he who fathered Penina, Shaun. Penni is related to our present Royal Family and what's more they know of her and have been concealing the truth with my help.”
I said nothing to this. Not because I wasn't shocked or moved, but simply because I never believed him. Whether this confession, the ever-changing stories, or the mixing of lies and truth together was how Jack worked on dragging people into his web of deceit I did not know, but whatever was his technique it had drawn me into it. I should have wanted out, but the opposite was true. I wanted more. I was enjoying the cigarette but not his story.
“What does Stockford really know, Jack?” I asked.
“He knows very little. He was suspicious of Aberman from the very beginning, but mainly in regards to his mother. He believed they were having an affair. As to the truth of that, I have no idea. After the war ended he returned to Austria making enquiries as to meetings and attendees at the Chancery in the year they left to come here. He surmised that the origins of his family's departure started in that building. It took quite a time, the best part of twenty-five years to be precise, before he realised that it was impossible to fully uncover what I'd been told in that café, but he was able to put the twos and twos that he found out together, and he came up with four. When he and his family arrived in America he could speak very little English and had no qualifications to get a job. He was, after all, only sixteen. Within a year both of those disadvantages had been rectified. His first employment was at an apothecary's where he quickly became indispensable to its owner, a Thomas Lexington.
Richard was a dab hand at throwing together bunches of herbs that eased away the problems suffered by some ladies in the heat of New York or when disturbed by other things in their regular life. It wasn't long before he used that talent to mix various over-the-counter opioids into cures for routine illnesses such as headaches, but marketed under the Lexington label. Lexington was a brand of medication carried by the vast majority of New York pharmacy outlets and then it became nationwide. Three years after the end of the war, Thomas Lexington sold his proprietary name to Grenletech, then a subsidiary of Monsanto. Richard was kept on in the new company as assistant head of research. Now here comes the crunch. One of the early directors of Monsanto was none other than Michael Clifford.
When Richard decided to branch out on his own it was Clifford who put up the finance. But it wasn't just in the expansion of chemical science that his vision was set on, he saw an opening in applying patents for biotechnology development and Michael Clifford saw the opportunity. What has since been described as bio piracy became the core of Stockford Pharmaceutical Company and that's where his wealth comes from. Clifford now wants a huge return on his initial investment. If he gets what he's after it will shatter the balance of world power in his favour. Incidentally, before I get too far ahead of myself, Perez worked for Haynes. Just like Leeba, we also believed he killed his brother, Earl Baxter-Clifford. He probably would have killed you after you had been abducted and questioned. That, I believe, would have been his ultimate aim.”
“Does Richard know what Clifford wants from him, Jack?”
“No, but I couldn't be entirely sure of that until you placed my letter in Weilham's hands.”
“You're using both of us as bait, aren't you?”
“I was, but that's no longer necessary, Shaun. Haynes paid a visit to Richard's home last night, left him beaten and in no doubt what would happen if he went to the police. For the moment at least; you are thought to be dead.”
I drew hard on the nicotine. From the inside pocket of his jacket he withdrew a hip flask from which I swallowed gleefully, but the pain of realising that I was not as clear-thinking as I thought only dulled the physical pain that started to grow on me.
“I'm going to need something for this pain in a minute, Jack. Is there a nurse you can call?”
“Sorry, old chap, but no, only me on hand. I've been left in charge of your treatment. There is some morphine, that I think I can inject,” he exclaimed with no confidence. “If you can wait, then that nun is coming back in a couple of hours.”
“Can't wait that long. Give it to me. I'll do it!”
“Which would bring me to the middle part of my story in a nice sort of way. Your father would be proud of you, Shaun; if he was still here and could see you now.”
“My father,” I repeated in utter surprise. Was I hallucinating or would he appear at the window with my mother at his side?
“Yes, your father. It was he who found one of the earliest pieces to this conundrum whilst working for military intelligence in Italy at the end of the war. He worked alongside my investigations in the War Department up until his death.” No spirits coming through the glass or plaster then.
“You had better find a bigger bottle of Scotch and give me all the phials of morphine you have, Jack. I think I'm suffering from the bends.”
For the first time since he had begun speaking he smiled that trademark expression of self-satisfaction as his eyes narrowed into his questioning mode.
“He never spoke to you of any of this, did he?”
“Not a single word, Jack. A very closed man, was my father.”
“Ever mention a list of names he'd come across?”
“No! Nor did he mention the war.”
“Thought not,” he replied as his smile widened into almost a laugh. “I knew it,” he added and his face lit up as if Christmas, Easter and his birthday had all arrived at the same time.
“There will always be a need for the common soldier, Shaun, and we are three of them, you, your dad and me. No war can be fought without us Tommies and no war is won without them either.”
“If you say so, Jack, but my dad's dead and I'm laid up for a little while which means you're leading the charge without any reserves.” I stabbed the injection into my leg and seconds later sighed in relief.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Later Tuesday Morning, London
Hess
“I hope they have settled you in okay, Barrington, you should thank your lucky stars that it is summer and not the winter. Needs a drastic overhaul on the heating, but the intelligence budget is a mite stretched in t
hese austere times. General John had a chap here last January doing what you're about to do when it gave up the ghost completely. After three days he was signing documents admitting that he murdered Elvis Presley and was behind the Guy Fawkes plot. Would have had him confessing to initiating everything that's gone wrong in the Western world if his handlers hadn't frozen their whatnots off and asked to go home. We don't expect that from you, old boy. We only want the truth and nothing but. We will start at the beginning with dear old Gregory Stiles. Where you two met, what he was doing and what drew you to him. But first we'll order some tea. After all, some traditions still take priority in this land of ours. Not savages in all that we do, are we?”
Although Dicky knew that Barrington was almost certainly aware of the methodical methods that would be used against him, he enjoyed picking at his adversary's bones.
The top floor room, which overlooked the elevated railway tracks emanating from London Bridge station, was shuttered and lit by a single suspended light bulb under which the two sat at opposite ends of a scrubbed wooden table de void of anything other than a recording machine which was running. There were four wooden upright chairs spread unevenly around the grubby, bare, white painted walls with one door, which was closed. In a corner of the small room was a single metal bed frame with bed linen and a mattress neatly rolled at one end. There was one other person seated in the room. When the tea was delivered that person left and closed the door.
“Stiles and I are roughly the same age, Dicky, we were both born in 1908. Where I had been brought up surrounded by people of my own class, education and pedigree as it were, he had been raised doused in money. Dripping in it, he was! It had bought him a reputation of lavish generosity along with trappings of grandeur as well as a directorship of the D'Oyly Carte theatrical company. It was when he was producing Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas that he stayed at The Savoy hotel and that's where I met him in 1936. I forget which operetta it was, but that's how we first met and the reason why.”
