by H. B. Lyle
“That’s what we want!” Kell cried, triumphant. “That’s our job. To protect what we have, to conserve, to secure. That’s what security means.”
They stared at each other across the desk. Finally, Wiggins shook his head. “I need to be somewhere else. This ain’t for me no more.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Next you’ll be telling me you’re skipping town on this new unsinkable ship. Maybe I should buy you a packet.” His laughter died on his lips. “You’re serious?”
Wiggins nodded.
“Think it through. It’s been very difficult lately. Take some time.”
“I think pretty quick.”
“But I need you,” Kell said. “Van Bork is still at large. And the Empire needs you.”
“The Empire, eh?” Wiggins scraped back his chair and stood up. He’d had enough talk of the Empire in the army; he’d fought for the bloody Empire against a ragtag army of Afrikaner farmers, and he hadn’t much liked it then.
He felt a sudden pang of disappointment. It surprised him, and it had nothing to do with any plan to set up a whorehouse. Peter being in the pay of Special Branch, he realized with a lurch. If it hadn’t been for that, he could have railed at Kell, at the Empire, at the state; he could have used all those highfalutin revolutionary terms, and maybe even meant them a little. But Peter was bent, just like Bela before him, as bent as the Empire itself.
Were Peter and Tommy right all along about him? he suddenly thought bitterly. Was he nothing more than a rich man’s hunting dog—running around picking up sticks, first for Sherlock Holmes, then the army, and now Captain Vernon Kell and the bloody government itself?
But no, even if there was some truth in that, he was damned if he was going to take anything from those murdering bastards. Even if they were right, they were wrong. They’d always be wrong.
He would listen to Sal. She was right, just as Martha was. He needed to find Bela, or forget about her. One or the other.
Kell strode around the desk toward him. He realized he’d made a mistake mentioning the Empire. “Look, I’ll lend you the money for a passage, if that’s what you really want. On condition you come back if we’re in real trouble.”
“You mean war?”
“I’ll buy you a passage on this Eighth Wonder of the World. In return, you cable me where to reach you, so I can recall you if necessary.”
Wiggins stood by the door and shook his head. “I’m done with having debts.” He shot his hand out suddenly, surprising Kell.
They shook hands for the first time, and probably the last.
Wiggins closed the office door behind him, even got halfway across the hall. Then he remembered how much money he had in his pocket; he thought about what he might have to do to earn a passage to New York.
He poked his head back into the office. “What did you say that wonder ship was called?”
Kell beamed at him. “The Titanic.”
HISTORICAL NOTES
Some of the events and many of the characters depicted in the novel have a basis in historical fact: in particular, the mission of Bernard Trench and Vivian Brandon to Germany, the events outside Parliament at the suffragette demonstration known as Black Friday, and the Siege of Sidney Street.
Trench and Brandon
Royal Marines Captain Bernard Trench and Lieutenant Vivian Brandon undertook a spying mission to northern Germany in the summer of 1910, sponsored to the tune of £10 by Mansfield Cumming. The circumstances of their capture in Borkum are related in the novel accurately. The use of flash photography at night did indeed prove their downfall. They were tried and convicted later that year, and spent three years in prison. There is no mention in official records of anyone else in attendance, be it Cumming, Kell, or Wiggins. This is unsurprising, however, as the whole episode was a distinct embarrassment to the British government in general, and the intelligence community in particular.
Black Friday
On the eighteenth of November, 1910, more than 300 suffragettes and suffragists gathered outside Parliament to constitute their own “parliament,” in protest at the decision to ditch the Conciliation Bill granting limited suffrage to women. Eyewitness accounts, as well as photographic evidence, attest to the incredibly rough and violent handling of the protestors by the police. The subsequent police report whitewashes this brutality, as does the report in the Times newspaper the following day. The authorities also did everything they could to suppress the photograph of Ada Wright that appeared in the Daily Mirror. The picture shows her slumped on the pavement, with two policemen looming over her, and rather gives the lie to any notion that the police behaved proportionally.
The Siege of Sidney Street
Contemporary accounts of the events at Sidney Street on the evening of the second and the day of the third of January, 1911, are very similar to the account in the novel. Superintendent Mulvaney organized the preparations for the siege much as described, and the siege turned into a gruesome gunfight that ended in the fire. Huge crowds, Winston Churchill among them, came to watch. The bodies of Fritz Svaars and Joseph Sokolov were found in the wreckage of the house. There is no note in the official records as to the identity of the informant who placed Svaars and Sokolov at 100 Sidney Street. We now know this was Wiggins. Similarly, although the police expected to find Peter the Painter at the same address, his body was never found—indeed, Peter disappeared from any official accounts and was never heard of again. This is another mystery that has now been cleared up.
The Baker Street Irregulars
In his own accounts of Sherlock Holmes’s work, Dr. Watson briefly acknowledges the role of the Irregulars on three occasions. Young Wiggins is cited as the leader of the gang working on two cases—A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four—while in a third case, Wiggins is mistakenly identified as “Simpson.” Dr. Watson’s accounts are notoriously hazy on dates and names, however, and most historical sources are convinced that the Irregulars, and Wiggins in particular, played a far more substantial role in Holmes’s work than Watson credits. This would be in keeping with the mores of the time, where it was rare for lower-class people—and street “Arabs” or urchins in particular—to be given prominence. There is no mention of Tommy, or Big T, in any of Dr. Watson’s accounts. It may also be that after the cases referenced above, Holmes himself wanted Wiggins’s name taken out of any accounts so as to maintain the effectiveness of the child agents.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I must thank my editor, Nick Sayers, for patience, insight, and steak; my agent, Jemima Hunt; everyone at Hodder, especially Eleni Lawrence and Cicely Aspinall.
Thanks, too, to all the team at Quercus USA, especially Amelia Ayrelan Iuvino, Nathaniel Marunas, Amanda Harkness, and Elyse Gregov.
Thanks to: Saul Dibb, Stephen Guise, and Tom Lyle.
Thanks also to the staff of the British Library, where much of this book was researched. I drew on too many historical sources to name them all here, but I must mention the following: The Defence of the Realm by Christopher Andrews, The Security Service 1908–1945 by John Curry, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 by Keith Jeffery, The Quest for C by Alan Judd, and especially The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street by Donald Rumbelow.
Most of all, I want to thank my family: the wondrous R and E, and my partner Annalise Davis, for her sharp wit, innate wisdom, and inspirational energy.
