“Continue.”
“There was this ship that was going to France and then Mexico. They knew I had been in the merchant marine.”
“You were to be the radio operator,” Hawkins said. The man nodded. “What was that message you were trying to send out?”
“That we’d been stopped—if we were stopped. The only thing they were concerned about was the captain. They didn’t trust him. They were afraid he’d steal whatever was on the ship. If he didn’t go straight from France to Veracruz we were to sink the ship, or set it on fire, and alert them. I was only to contact them if something went wrong or when we landed in Veracruz.”
“Were you to contact anyone ashore in Veracruz?” Hawkins said.
“No. We were told nothing about that.”
“Did you know what was on the ship?” W asked.
“We thought—guessed—it was a shipment of weapons for Mexican supporters. We never thought it was objects of great value. That’s when all the trouble started.”
“How so?” Hawkins said.
“Petru and Leonte, after the navy stopped us, when they realized something valuable like that was on the ship, they began talking. They went mad. They decided that since the shipment wasn’t going to get to Mexico, anyway, that we might as well take advantage of the opportunity and help ourselves.”
“Steal the cases,” W said.
“Yes. I thought it was crazy, but they were greedy. Where will we sell these things, I asked. But they would not listen. When I didn’t want to go along—I swear!—they began talking and then, without asking me, they tried to enlist the other crew members. They all went mad with greed, they all thought they were going to get rich.” He sniffed in contempt. “They were not university men like I was. They did not think. Idiots. Ask them! I will talk to them if they will not tell you the truth.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” W said.
“Why?”
“The ones in the engine room?” Hawkins said. Marinescu nodded. “I shot them.”
“They’re dead? I see.” He soberly thought that over a minute. “Then they got what they deserved.”
“I want to make sure we get this very clear: Captain Perez did not know you were aboard and as far as you know the people receiving the shipment in Veracruz did not know you were aboard,” W said.
“That is right. We were not to contact anyone ashore.”
“Then what?” Hawkins said.
“We were to go home, or go to Panama with the ship and get off there, if we wanted to.”
“When you sent one of these two radio messages, were there code words to be sent?” Marinescu rather feebly nodded in assent. He seemed to be wearing out from the interrogation, his face now drawn and gray. The nurse began hovering at the door, arms folded, looking annoyed.
“Are you willing to send one of these messages on our command?” W said.
Marinescu hesitated, then tried to shrug and grimaced instead, his breath a tiny gasp. “Sure. What does it matter now?”
“I don’t think there’s any need for the civil or maritime authorities to be involved in this affair, do you?” Hawkins said.
“I should think not. I must warn you, however, we may intern you until the end of war,” W said.
Marinescu suddenly roused and grinned. “Oh! Fine. That won’t be long.”
“Anything else we can think of?” W said.
“Yes,” Hawkins said. “Where’d the cases come from, do you know?”
“No. Only that they came off a Russian ship. In Constanta.”
“You mean the Soviet Union?” Hawkins said.
“Yes. From Odessa.” His eyes rolled slightly, he put his hand over his stomach. “I feel a little sick—” His face turning vaguely green. The nurse stepped back into the room and sharply ordered them out.
“We’re done anyway,” W said. Hawkins drew out his Hi-Power again, snapping up a stricken, frightened expression on Marinescu’s face. Hawkins pulled the slide back, ejected a round, set it on the stand, and nodded. Marinescu hastily nodded back.
-15-
The waiters cleared away the plates of grouper poached in coconut milk. General Houghton snagged a piece of johnny bread from the basket and then waved that off, too.
“How’s it coming?” W said.
They’d been working hard and fast, Hawkins dictating to Alice, while Lilly, the other mail censor Houghton pulled off the floor, hung each painting on a wall and photoed them with the Rolleiflex. They all came down for dinner together. Alice and Lilly were Hawkins’s age, Canadians in their early twenties. They rose to go.
“Lilly, stay a moment,” General Houghton said. He checked the corridor and shut the door, picking up a dossier from the side table.
She stepped back, slipped back into her seat, wary, slightly confused, “General, if I did some—”
“No, no, you’re fine.” She visibly relaxed. Lilly was a fit-looking girl of average height, not much of a tan—she must be spending more time in that basement than the beach—with startlingly green eyes. There was a curious, searching quality to her expression that bespoke an intelligence that was measured, holding back, sussing it all up. And a soigné polish, thoughtfully put together, very urban. Unlike many of the censorship clerks, she didn’t say the hell with it because there were no men around. That pointed to a sense or vision of self, who she thought she was. Interesting, Hawkins thought. There also was a gold wedding band on her finger. Good guess her husband was in one of the Canadian services.
The general paused a long moment, flipping through the dossier.
“I understand you are trained on the Typex cipher machine,” the general said.
“Yes, I was—am.”
“Have you ever used the portable one, with the crank?”
“Some. We have to be ready to use them if the power goes out.”
“Right. I see a valid driver’s license, two years at Royal Victoria College, volunteered from there.”
“Yes—”
“Bilingual family, French Canadian father, English mother, secondary school in Saint-Laurent, Quebec—”
“Where is that?” W said.
“Suburb of Montreal,” she said, “by Mont-Royal.”
Ah, yes, Hawkins thought, a Montrealer.
“A year of Spanish,” Houghton said. “Married to Hector Billedoux. He’s in the army—where?”
“Yes—somewhere in England. First Canadian Division.”
“Very good.” He slapped the folder shut and lightly threw it aside. “I am temporarily seconding you to the Secret Intelligence Service.”
“Oh. I thought we already, well, here—”
“The censorship station? Not exactly. We need a cipher clerk in Mexico.”
“Excuse me?”
Houghton nodded her over to W.
“Mr. Hawkins here has to go into the country covertly,” W said. “Although he will carry a radio for emergencies, given the situation, it won’t be practical for him to take a cipher machine, too suspicious. We’ll need secure high-level communications. The problem is, we and the other Commonwealth countries no longer have embassies in Mexico, and the one man who is there is too exposed. We are going to covertly insert you into the country separately with a portable Typex. Hawkins has to leave immediately, you’ll follow and catch up.”
“What—I’m a clerk, I’ve never been out of the office—”
Lilly seemed absolutely flabbergasted, now badly rattled, her eyes damn near rolling back in her head. Hawkins sympathetically watched her nervous reaction. This surely was not what she had signed up for. Nice girl. Sheltered, middle-class life in a prosperous suburb. Thought she’d serve her country and have a nice adventure in Bermuda. Like being at a women’s college, down here, in the Princess Hotel, in loco parentis and all that, watching over you. Now she was
being told she had to be a Mata Hari, only without the dance and revealing costume. On her own in a foreign country she’d never visited. It was, in truth, like learning to swim by being thrown off a bridge.
She started to protest. “I—no, I didn’t sign up for this.”
“I gather you didn’t read the papers you signed,” the general said. No response, an open-mouth stare. Obviously not, Hawkins thought. “We can transfer you at any time to a regular enlistment,” Houghton said. “You are now in the British SIS. Like everyone there you now have a reserve rank. Umm … probably second lieutenant.”
“I outrank my husband? I can’t outrank Hector!”
“I’m afraid you’ll both have to carry on.”
“But I’ve never been to Mexico. Been to Toronto once, Ottawa a couple of times, Quebec City, upstate New York, Vermont, now here, I—” Her eyes glancing at the door and then again and again gave it all away. Out. She wanted out—where’s the door, that was all she could think of, pure instinct screaming, like running from a burning building, breathing slightly hard now. “How would I do that?”
“We’re going to give you an American passport and fly you down to a remote section of the Texas border,” W said. “We’ll give you a certified check. You are to buy a new car. Reliable. You’ll take your things, of course, and the portable Typex. Also a radio, although taking the encrypted messages to Western Union should not be a problem, businesses do that regularly.”
“I’m not meeting Hawkins?”
“No. We won’t come into contact at all, only remotely, probably by phone,” Hawkins said.
“I drive in?”
“We’ll give you a map,” W said. “You’ll go out of town into the desert, around the customs stations, then drive across the desert and get back on the main highway to Mexico City. You are to take the main roads, drive straight through, if possible. The highways there are generally quite safe, but we don’t want to take chances.”
“Mexico City!”
“We’ll arrange a good hotel in a top neighborhood.” She grabbed hard on a thought. You could tell from her expression, getting indignant.
“Isn’t there a man? This is a man’s job!”
“There isn’t a man,” General Houghton said. “And there is not going to be a man. You know the machine, you have a driver’s license and you studied some Spanish, which is very helpful. We don’t have time to do the background checks, the training, the clearances on anyone else. Many girls are stepping forward today to do new things, and they are succeeding. Like this operation here. I wouldn’t be sending you if I didn’t think we could rely on you.”
Hawkins watched, wondering if a stiff drink wasn’t in order right about now. Lilly stared at the general, then slowly shifted her gaze to W and then to Hawkins and back. Her head started to shake a bit.
“You’re from Saint-Laurent, outside Montreal?” W said. She nodded. “I grew up in Winnipeg.”
“Oh.” Quietly, “Never been out west.”
“Practically on the frontier. Wanted to get out. The war came along, duty called, I volunteered. Best decision I ever made. Wouldn’t be here now.”
“I see. Yes,” she said, beginning to settle down, “I’ve heard that sort of thing. Hector seems rather excited from his letters. I hear from—” There was a long pause. Hawkins thought he detected a sigh. “From time to time,” she added. Her chin, then her head, sank toward her chest. She obviously wasn’t hearing as often as she’d like.
At first Hawkins had been vaguely amused, her distress a bit distant—she’d signed those papers rather casually, hadn’t she? But now, without warning, he felt a tremendous connection and sympathy, as images and memories of a woman he’d met on his last mission, a woman he had fallen for hard in a way that didn’t feel like a fleeting crush: Daisy van Schenck. The scion of an old New York Knickerbocker family now down on her luck, she’d played a pivotal role in cracking that case. He thought back again to the morning they’d spent over tea and coffee at the Saratoga Race Course, watching the horses work out in the morning light, talking about galleries in Manhattan and marchés in Paris, followed by an incredible night at a lavish racing ball. Tough and resourceful, ruthless, too, in her own way, they had so much in common.
The flash of Lilly’s gold wedding band caught his eye. Why didn’t I ask? he thought. What was the matter with me, what was I thinking—or not? For a moment he felt almost stricken by the idea. But … but. It would’ve been so soon. Too soon. Had to leave so fast, he thought, had to get here. Like Hector, had a war to fight, only right now, today.
And if war is dangerous, espionage in wartime is doubly or triply so, he thought. What are my chances of seeing this through to the very end? Marriage at the bare minimum is a promise, but what kind of promise can I make with the tread of hobnailed Nazi boots echoing in all corners of the globe? I can’t even write back and tell her how much I still care unless I’m in New York or Bermuda—too big a security risk. People were almost getting married on train station platforms, that was true, but at least they could send a letter home. I can’t have a home. For her, each and every day watching the mailman walk by would be a moment of pain, longing … and fear. No, wouldn’t be right to dump that on her, not in a world as chaotic as this one, who knows where or how we’ll all end up.
Lilly is lucky, Hawkins realized. “Let’s have a toast,” he said.
“To opportunity?” W said. He smiled, jumping to a bar by the side for a bottle of Crown Royal, quickly pouring a set of drinks.
“To the ones we leave behind?” Hawkins said.
“To king and country!” General Houghton said.
“Yes.” A small wry smile from W, a glance at Hawkins. The general didn’t quite get W’s drift, but he wasn’t wrong. “And Canada!” W added.
Lilly held her glass up near her lips, thinking hard, then her eyes snapped back into focus very suddenly, mind now organized by a single thought.
“To doing our duty,” she said. “Like Hector.” The glass raised, “My husband.” She added, “Get this over and get him home,” then popped it back.
“To duty!” they echoed.
Hawkins slammed his back feeling the numbing warmth slide down his throat, seeing Daisy in mind. And love, he thought.
-16-
Pick your poison, indeed, Hawkins thought. What’s worse? Swimming in your own sweat on the deck in the sun? Or choking in the heat and humidity in the forecastle? He decided sitting in the shade made more sense, for the moment. Then he heard footsteps.
“Launch’s coming, sir.” It was Chief Petty Officer Farley. He and six other Royal Navy sailors were aboard in civilian clothes, all with carefully concealed pistols—no chances this time. Hawkins stepped out to the rail, made the mistake of touching it, bounced his fingers back the way you would off a hot stove and squinted into the steamy haze. HMS Dendrobium was visible about a mile astern, rippling like a waving flag in the Caribbean heat waves. Blake had tailed them all the way from Bermuda. They now were about twenty miles out of Veracruz, getting close. The launch meant only one thing: Blake had gotten an important radiogram. Farley and his navy men quickly lowered the accommodation ladder over the side. One went down and rushed back up with a single sheet of paper and handed it to Hawkins. He started to read, saw nothing but white glare and stepped back into the shade.
Flash from HMS Malabar Bermuda: Today received telex from W at British Security Coordination in NYC. States he is in contact with British national employed Parke-Bernet Gallery in New York. Confirmed PBG received feelers from individuals in Mexico re: sale of valuable artworks including Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Braque and others. PBG wary as to identity of individuals, sources, legitimacy, possible fencing of stolen merchandise due to contacts being unwilling to appear in person in NYC, high quality of items as stated, unusually large number of items & requested financial arrangements specifically wire transfers
to Mexican banks. W states he believes it is certain involves objects under our investigation. Due to apparent difficulties to arrange sales in NYC, possible US impoundment, ascertain danger of Mexico City sales. W states no further information, otherwise continue on as planned. Good luck, Blake.
Hawkins carefully tore it in tiny pieces, scattering them over the rail. Of course, they’d go to Parke-Bernet. Hell, I’d go to Parke-Bernet, he thought. Sure, there were other galleries, but none matched the prestige and clout of the big auction house on the south end of the Bergdorf Goodman block, kitty-corner across the street from Tiffany’s main branch. He’d been there a few times over the years trying to get them to take on the small valuables he’d picked up in Europe to supplement his income. The fresh smell of money usually overpowered the aroma of roasted chestnuts and pretzels from the street carts.
Could they fence the works in Mexico? he wondered again. It was a real concern. Risky at auction, he thought. Have to take less, presumably, but … could that bring in enough for whatever the hell it was they were doing? Maybe, maybe not, but in either case they probably wanted every dollar they could get, if not for whatever operation was at hand, then for the next.
Hawkins checked back. Dendrobium was winching up the launch. The ship turned and disappeared into the August heat as planned, back into the Gulf of Campeche. Dendrobium was going to meet the Santa Lopez in Colón, on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal, and take its sailors off. They didn’t want the Royal Navy too close, lest they be spotted from the shore.
An hour and a half later Veracruz slowly rose out of the sea, a big city of white-and-dun buildings with red tile roofs, punctuated by undulating church domes and spires, sprawling along the shore. Outside the city center the curving white beaches were packed with people. A few minutes later the ship turned by a long stone fortress, approached the port and took the harbor pilot aboard. As the ship slowed, the oppressive temperature, a thick, wet, claustrophobic casket of heat, rapidly mounted, the steel deck now burning through the shoes to the soles of the feet. A tug slowly began nudging the Santa Lopez into a berth.
The Hungry Blade Page 7
