Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

  “I’m so sorry,” Tiger said.

  “I very much wanted to surprise her. You can understand that?”

  Tiger said, “Of course I can! What man would not? Oh, well, she’ll turn up soon enough. I’m sure it’s all very innocent, old boy. And, no, I myself haven’t heard from her in days. I’m sure she’s all right. She can take care of herself. Besides, she still doesn’t even know you are home, does she?”

  Meanwhile, Winnie, who’d had her ear pressed to the door for the last fifteen minutes, having overheard Tiger’s story of this stallion needing attention, turned away and raced upstairs. She was shivering, still wearing nothing but her flimsy pink nightgown and a silk bed jacket, and she wanted to change back into the pair of old dungarees and an old flannel shirt and boots she kept in Tiger’s closet. She then flew down the back stairs that led to the kitchen and out the kitchen door. She raced down the snowy hill to the barn, where Pale Rider was being cared for, and went straight to the sick stallion’s stall.

  The big horse appeared to be sleeping comfortably.

  She dove into a corner of the hay-strewn floor, rolling around in the mounds of loose hay and straw, getting covered with the stuff, even scads of it in her long golden blond hair.

  Then she jumped up and ran just as fast as her long legs would carry her, all the way back up the hill to Tiger’s manse, going in through the kitchen door before making her way to the front of the house and the library.

  She yanked the door open, peeked inside, and said, “Tiger, you’d better come quickly! I think your prize stallion has taken a grave turn for the worse.”

  “Winnie!” Tiger exclaimed, getting to his feet. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  It was only then that she spied Blackie Hawke coming up out of his chair with a wide smile on his handsome face. Her heart fluttered at the sight of him. Never did one man do so much for a Royal Navy officer’s uniform as his lordship Blackie Hawke.

  “Oh! Oh! It’s Blackie!” Winnie cried. “You’re home! And safe! Oh, God, I’ve missed you, darling!” She fell into his arms and hugged him as tight as she possibly could.

  Tiger chimed in, saying, “Winnie, when did you get here? I had no idea you were even on the property!”

  “Oh, Tiger, but I’ve been here all night. Ever since the vet, Annie, told me that Pale Rider had suddenly taken ill, I’ve been worrying that no one was keeping an eye on him. I left my parents’ party at the club, went home, and changed. I spent all night here, down in the stables with that beautiful animal. And the vet, my dear friend Annie, just got off the phone with me. She’s coming up straightaway to have a look at her patient.”

  Hawke, listening to all this, had gone sneaking around behind his excited fiancée. He wrapped both arms around her tiny waist and lifted her a foot or two off the ground, high into the air, and shook her like a rag doll. Lowering her to the floor, he spun her around and kissed her full on the lips.

  “My darling, you look so beautiful with all that hay in your hair. I have missed you so very much. Do you still love your old boy, still remember him after he’s been away from you for so long?”

  “Oh, my God, Blackie. Are you kidding? Just ask Tiger. He gets tired of hearing me talk about you. But, secretly, he missed you, too. I’d say the whole town hasn’t been the same in your absence. We all love you, Commander Hawke!”

  Tiger got to his feet. “All right, all right, enough of this mush talk. I’m out of this lovefest,” Tiger said, moving toward the door. “What’s everyone want for breakfast?”

  “Bacon, fried eggs, and hash brown potatoes, fried to a crisp with oodles of Heinz ketchup!” said Winnie.

  “Black coffee for me, old boy,” Hawke said, “and two poached eggs on toasted muffins. God, it’s good to see everyone so happy and safe!”

  Winnie went to the ambassador and hugged him. She said, “Thank you, Tiger, so much for inviting us to stay for breakfast. I’m starving! Isn’t it grand, having our boy back in town?”

  “Grand,” Tiger said, forcing a smile and pulling the heavy library door shut behind him.

  “Christ in a wheelbarrow,” Tiger muttered quietly to himself, making his way along the hall to the kitchen, “that bloody girl will be the death of me yet!”

  CHAPTER 40

  Washington, D.C.

  February 1942

  Exactly one week from that early morning when Hawke had first presented himself at the front door of Tiger’s Sevenoaks Plantation, Commander Hawke suddenly found himself and Winnie invited to dine with Tiger, along with a bubbly blind date, a former college roommate of Winnie’s. It was to be at the legendary and oh-so-fashionable George Town Club. Longtime home to distinguished and long-gone members of Congress, the rich and the powerful all had, at one time or another, sequestered themselves at this place to see and be seen, on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington.

  Tiger mentioned to Hawke that he had just been made a full member of the very exclusive club, and he wanted to celebrate joining the venerable Home of the Old Guard, an establishment with a grand history. The intimate second-floor dining room where their table was situated was actually the very same room where George Washington would dine with the Frenchman, L’Enfant.

  Hawke and his fiancée, Winnie, who had both resumed their somewhat attenuated feelings of deep affection for each other after his return from England, had both instantly felt at home in the place upon entering. Dark and warm walnut paneling in every room, all of it having been imported from a very grand château in Paris. Red-and-white checked tablecloths in every room. Quaint and cozy. The theme of all the art was primarily equestrian, with sporting portraits of great foxhounds of yore, and valuable old English foxhunting prints hung alongside portraits of famous winners of the Grand National and the Derby and Ascot, all adorning walls everywhere. On the ebony black baby grand piano, an embossed Tiffany silver frame, with a black-and-white autographed photo of a twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor on the set as Velvet Brown, starring along with Mickey Rooney in the much-beloved classic National Velvet.

  A few centuries’ worth of old sterling silver racing trophies were on all the mantels above the crackling hearth, and in the bookcases were the complete works of Shakespeare bound in red leather and many other grand titles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dame Agatha Christie’s memorable detectives.

  Guttering candles in bronze and black iron sconces provided a warm glow everywhere, as well as the fireplaces in almost every room to keep the cold winter night outside at bay. All very cozy. Hawke checked in with the maître d’ and gave his name. A lovely hostess in her twenties, wearing a Colonial-period blouse, white stockings, and a floor-length gathered calico skirt with slippers peeking out from beneath, appeared magically to escort the two of them to the ambassador’s table.

  Tiger was a noticeable figure, and Hawke and Winnie spied him instantly upon entering the room. Seated beside the ambassador was an incredibly beautiful girl with long, curly black hair that fell to her bare white shoulders. Apparently visiting from Spain and an old school chum of Winnie’s.

  “Welcome, all!” Hawke said, bowing slightly from the waist.

  The ever-gracious ambassador, clothed in a splendid dark green velvet blazer, probably from Turnbull & Asser, beckoned the two new arrivals to join them. Tiger was enjoying all this immensely. Had you told Tiger, on that memorable morning in the country just one week ago today, that all would have been well once more, all the planets back in their customary rotation, all the tawdry secrets of his best friend’s fiancée cloaked in a cape of silence, and that he would be having a cheery dinner with Blackie and his fiancée here at the George Town Club, he would have laughed out loud.

  Ever since the reunification of Winnie and her affianced lover, Hawke, Tiger had been relishing the slowly evaporating clouds of despair and guilt that had plagued him during all those languid weeks of his highly charged il
licit dalliance with the beautiful neighbor who lived down the hill.

  He knew he was well out of that mess, and that now his life once more had that sense of order, duty, and clarity that had stood him in such good stead all the days of his life.

  Winnie, alongside the handsome Englishman in his dress Royal Navy uniform, made her way through the jumble of tables and diners and waitstaff and appeared at the table in the corner that the ambassador had requested.

  As was always the case, Winnie saw that the eyes of many women dining in the room were fixed on the tall and handsome Englishman in his perfectly cut uniform. She could feel the palpable waves of jealousy emanating from their tables like an ill wind out of the east.

  “So sorry I’m a bit late, Tiger,” Hawke said. “I was rather trapped on a lengthy call from you know who. May we sit down?”

  “Let me guess. Your favorite uncle? Indeed, do sit down.”

  Hawke pulled out a chair and said, “Will this be all right?”

  “Of course, if you two would rather stand . . . ,” Tiger said, teasing him as always about his very formal English manners. “Be my guest!”

  Hawke forced a grin and pulled out a second ladder-back chair for Winnie, helped her to get situated, and sat down right next to her.

  Winnie leaned over and kissed the cheek of the beautiful Spanish girl sitting on her right, then turned and smiled and said, “Blackie, please say hello to my dear friend the Countess Victoria de la Maza, who’s visiting me from Spain—Madrid and Seville, to be precise.”

  “Well, hello there, Victoria,” Hawke said to the raven-haired beauty sitting between Tiger and Winnie. “I’m Horatio Hawke, but please call me Blackie. This, as you well know more than I, is my lovely fiancée, Winnie Woolworth. How do you two know each other, by the way, Victoria? You were at school together here in America?”

  Victoria smiled and said with a lovely accent that sounded like a mix of British and Spanish that indicated the señorita had been schooled at some point in England. “Hello, Commander Hawke. That’s it. We were at Miss Porter’s boarding school together, at Farmington, which is up near Hartford in Connecticut. And we became very close. I stayed with her the summer after graduation, and then we both decided on the same college and were roomies.

  “I understand you’ve just returned from London, Commander. Business or pleasure?”

  “A little of both, actually. The usual endless meetings at my office in Whitehall. But thank God I managed to get in a bit of sailing out on the Channel with some of my late German friends. . . .”

  “Seriously? But you’re at war with Germany!”

  “Wartime makes for curious bedmates sometimes, my dear girl,” Hawke said, hoping that answer satisfied her curiosity. It certainly was not far from the truth.

  It did not satisfy her. She said, “But you say your ‘late’ friends. What on earth happened to them?”

  “Terribly sad story, I’m afraid. It seems that, after putting me ashore at Dover, they ran afoul of a bad squall off Calais. Their splendid yacht, Froya, sank with all hands.”

  “How perfectly awful,” Victoria said. “And so sad for you, too. . . . My condolences.”

  Hawke gave her a sad, lingering look that he could only hope spoke volumes.

  They all chatted on. Tiger took their drink orders and a mustachioed waiter magically appeared at the table. Soon enough, the two old school chums were holding hands and giggling, telling funny stories about their legions of boyfriends during the old school days, in that bygone halcyon time before the clouds of war began to gather to the east and to the west.

  The two women had their heads close together, whispering secrets to each other now, casting sly glances at their two escorts, and Tiger took the opportunity to talk privately with Blackie about a matter that had come up only this morning.

  “Everything fine between you two, Blackie?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  “Never better, to be honest. I don’t know. She seems calmer and more collected, less like a Thoroughbred filly at the start of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, bucking and snorting in the gate and raring to go. . . .”

  Tiger swiveled his head around, looking at all the diners nearby. Luckily, no tables were within good listening distance from the quiet one in the corner. Even so, when he spoke, it was with a strong sense of the warning in that poster hanging in the hall outside Hawke’s office at the British Embassy: LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!

  “That’s good, that’s good,” Tiger said. “That means she’s putting you first now. And being your blushing bride-to-be. Well, I could not be happier for you both. Now, listen up, Your Lordship. You come bearing news, I gather. You say you were tied up on a call with you know who. No doubt your dear relation at Number Ten Downing?”

  “The Lion of England? The British Bulldog? Hell, yes.”

  “And? What’s he have to say for himself these days?”

  “That’s a conversation to be had in a secure bank vault at the U.S. Mint. So tell me, old sport, What’s up with you two lovebirds now, Tiger? Let me guess. The president now wants you to move into the White House as a permanent resident. He’s planning to install you in the Lincoln Bedroom, which, as I’m sure you know, is directly across the hall from the president’s own quarters. So, you two can now have your midnight meetings and stogies and whiskey in your bloody jammies.”

  “Not funny,” Tiger said.

  “Funny,” Hawke insisted. “Everyone in Washington thinks so. So, let me ask you again, Mr. Ambassador. What, precisely, is up?”

  “You. You are what’s up with Papa Roosevelt this morning. It seems that last night the president received a call from Churchill. The prime minister wanted to know if Roosevelt had ever met a young naval officer on loan to Washington from the Royal Navy Air Service. And that this particular British officer was widely known to be a friend of the new Chinese ambassador . . . and . . .”

  “And?”

  Tiger lowered his voice and continued. “And the president said he knew of you and was aware of the fact that you and I had become rather palsy-walsy, or, as FDR called it, ‘chummy’ as of late. Also, FDR told me that you were Churchill’s nephew—a salient fact you never mentioned to me by the way but good to know—and that you had performed brilliantly in a very dangerous commando raid aboard an enemy German vessel recently. ‘Brilliant tactics, heroic execution’ were the words Winston used to describe it. He said you would soon receive a major honor from the Queen at Buckingham Palace at a strictly private ceremony in the spring. The story of the German bomber crash-diving into the Channel and the subsequent filching of the Nazi encrypting machine would never be made public. Or spread any further than Bletchley Park. But that wasn’t the real reason he called.

  “He told me all about his planned hush-hush fishing voyage off the coast of New England. And that he had invited all the members of his cabinet plus some high-ranking military and advisers from the White House. And finally, I was included. And then he—”

  “Hold your horses, Tiger. Where do I fit in to this scenario?”

  “Apparently Churchill might be on board, and Winston has asked FDR to invite you, of all people, on the upcoming trip. He wants you aboard when the two of them host their high-level war-planning discussions, including any number of critically important covert operations scheduled behind German lines. He said there was one new mission that he wanted very much to discuss further with you, Blackie, privately. A new scheme of yours, apparently. Very dangerous, Churchill said. It involves you and your squad parachuting behind enemy lines and making your way undercover to Berlin. . . . That’s as far as he would go.”

  “Good Lord, Tiger, I just got back here. He told me it would be at least a month before he could get it approved by Admiral Godfrey and the powers that be at Naval Intelligence. . . .”

  “Well. That’s what you get for becoming a famous war hero, buddy.
Anyway, I’m asking you at the president’s request. Will you join me for this great adventure at sea?”

  “Christ! I’m up to my ass catching up on all the war work that somehow got forgotten about whilst I was barging around Britain. . . . I don’t know if I can manage to—”

  “Oh, good God, man, stop it. It’s Churchill, for God’s sake! It’s about you taking it to the Nazis once more, once more unto the breach! I’m sure your Navy superiors here in town will fully realize that you cannot even think about saying no to the prime minister. That’s your first calling, Blackie. Not going to a bunch of endless meetings all over town, talking about the bloody lend-lease schedule and other endless logistical minutiae . . . right?”

  “Of course you’re right. There’s only one man in England who knows how to win this bloody Nazi war and stave off what is sure to be the coming German invasion of our shores. It all falls to Winston, I guarantee you. He’s the only man in England who has what it takes for the British Empire to emerge, stronger, more powerful, and ultimately victorious.”

  “Now you’re talking, sailor! So, yes or no? Tell me, are you going to sign on for this epic presidential sea voyage or not? The president needs to know.”

  “I’m in, Tiger,” Hawke said with a strange reddish gleam in his startling blue eyes. “As long as Winston doesn’t give me an ultimatum to appear in London, I’m all in!”

  Tiger realized for the first time that his friend was a warrior, fire and thunder to the core. And when called upon to serve his country, he’d be first in line to put his own life on the line in this epic battle against Hitler’s Third Reich. Roosevelt and Churchill needed men like Blackie Hawke to come to the fore and confront evil, as powerful an enemy as ever to wage war against these two allies, Britain and America.

  “Now, listen to me, Tiger. Winnie tells me you received a most unwelcome visit from your father while I was away. What was that all about?”