Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, Vol. 1

by James R Benn

  “Very well, Billy. I won’t yell at you. But you should know General Eisenhower kicked a colonel out of that room for you. He wanted to have you close by. He also has rooms here. Even for Americans, the Dorchester is exclusive real estate these days.”

  Kaz refilled our glasses. “For myself, Billy, I must admit that I’ve always had a weakness for the Dorchester. I stayed here with my parents when it was new in 1932. When I was at Oxford, they would visit once a year and they always stayed here, in this very suite. We spent Christmas 1938 in this room, with my two sisters.” His eyes drifted away and focused on something that I couldn’t see.

  “Where are they now? Still in Poland?”

  No response. Kaz just seemed to be in a dream. Daphne reached out to touch his arm. He came back from wherever he was.

  “They are dead. All of them.”

  He set down his champagne at his place and sat. I realized it was the first time I’d met anyone who had actually suffered from the war. Back home it was all newspaper headlines and here it had been file folders, coffee, and drinking buddies so far. I felt bad about asking, but I could tell he had his pain carefully stored in that faraway place. So I asked.

  “How?”

  “The Nazis decided to eliminate anyone who might resist them. The intelligentsia, officers, government officials. And the aristocracy. We do not have a monarch, but the ancient clans had their leaders, their barons and counts. Or had them.” He was quiet for a minute. Daphne and I sat down, and she filled in the rest.

  “Piotr was at Oxford, doing graduate work in foreign languages when the war broke out. He volunteered for the Polish Free Corps when they organized here.”

  “So how did you end up with Eisenhower?”

  “The Polish Army was gracious enough to grant me a commission. I have a heart condition that would normally keep me from active service, but I know a number of European languages, a talent that is suddenly in great demand.”

  “And all this?” I gestured around the room.

  “My father had significant land holdings and investments. He was a very shrewd businessman, and knew that sooner or later Poland would be overrun from the east or the west. He was right, except it was from both directions. He kept most of the family fortune in Swiss accounts. I am now the sole beneficiary of his wisdom.”

  “So you stay here where you have good memories.”

  “It is all that is left, Billy. In my country, there is even less.”

  “I hope you’ve got plenty stashed away. This place must cost a fortune. Hope your money lasts longer than the war.” Daphne shot me a glance that said, shut up. Maybe you didn’t talk about other people’s money in England. Then I saw a sadness in Kaz’s eyes as he looked at Daphne.

  “That is of little concern. Now, let us talk about Norwegians before the food is brought up.” It didn’t take a Beantown detective to figure out all that money would probably outlast his heart. I was glad of the change of subject.

  Kaz gave me the lowdown on the meetings with the Norwegians. Major Harding was going to Beardsley Hall to give the king and his advisers a top-secret briefing. Kaz was to be his interpreter, although most of the Norwegians spoke English to one degree or another. I was to go as—well, let’s just say I was going, too.

  The briefing was about Operation Jupiter. When he mentioned that name, Kaz lowered his voice and looked around as if we were standing on a Berlin street corner. Operation Jupiter was the plan for the invasion of Norway. It had been created by the British, but they hadn’t had the resources to carry it out until we entered the war. Now it was going to be the Allies’ first offensive against the Third Reich. Before winter set in, we were going to invade Norway. British and American forces, along with the Norwegians, were going to take Norway back. This would protect the Murmansk convoys bringing supplies to the Russians, and give the Allies air bases within fighter range of Berlin. It sounded like we were about to win the war.

  The Norwegians had been lobbying for Operation Jupiter, and now they were going to be told it was on. We were going to deliver the news jointly with a British delegation headed by a Major Charles Cosgrove. The Norwegians were going to have their government officials there, along with officers from the Norwegian Brigade and commando units. It sounded like we would be heroes.

  “Should be a breeze.”

  “Breeze?” Kaz asked quizzically.

  “He means it should be easy,” Daphne explained.

  “Ah! Yes, I understand, but actually it may be more like heavy winds. Ciękie wiatry, my friend.”

  There was a knock at the door. The food came in, two carts’ worth of covered plates and bowls. It smelled great, and we never got back to why it wouldn’t be such a breeze.

  CHAPTER ▪ FOUR

  THE ALARM RANG. IT was 6:00 a.m. Oh six hundred hours, I thought, as I suddenly remembered I was in the army. What a disappointment. It was dark as a dungeon in my little room, and I had to turn on the bedside lamp to make sure I didn’t walk into a wall. It was raining. I could tell by the greasy streaks of water on my tiny dirty window.

  Ten minutes later I was dressing and packing for a few days in the country with the Norwegians. I put on a pair of freshly pressed olive drab wool serge pants and a starched khaki shirt with the mohair olive drab field scarf tucked in between the second and third buttons. I bent over to tie my shoes, brown laces on brown oxfords. I was a properly drab soldier, and thought about how dull the olive green and khaki brown were in comparison to police blue. Cops in uniform stood out in a crowd, it said, Here I am, a man in blue. I guess soldiers preferred to fade into the forest instead of standing out. That first day on the job in Boston, my badge had felt solid and weighty as I pinned it on my new blue shirt. It was everything I had ever wanted. Dad had been called out on a homicide during the night, so it was only Mom and little Danny to see me off. Danny had shined my shoes for me, getting more black shoe polish on his hands and nose than on the shoes, but they still sparkled. They both stood at the door and waved, and more than a few neighbors stood on their porches to watch the Boyles send off their second generation to serve with Boston’s finest.

  Funny thing, it was the First World War that had gotten Dad and Uncle Dan jobs with the department. After the police strike in 1919, none of the strikers got their jobs back. Governor Coolidge saw to that, and it got him into the White House. The city needed new cops fast, and what better source than the veterans, just back from the war, jobless, trained, and in need of dough? Dad and Uncle Dan signed up, along with plenty of their buddies, and that bunch of recruits stuck together, looked out for each other, did favors for each other, protected each other. For more than twenty years. That’s a lot of favors, and now some of those guys were pretty high up in the department. Some were dead, too. Being a cop wasn’t all about favors, you know.

  Now, it was another world war that was taking me away from the cops. Funny. One generation gets in, another gets pulled out. Like war was a tide that washed over us, leaving some on the high ground and dragging others out to sea.

  I stood up, shoes laced tight, and pulled my army-issue Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol out of the duffel bag along with its holster, belt, and spare clips. The damn thing weighed a ton. I was used to my Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special revolver, a piece you could wear snug under your shoulder or in your back belt and not feel like you were lugging around an elephant gun. But that was back in Boston and here I was in London with this cannon. There was a war on, so I didn’t see any sense in leaving it behind. I put it in my overnight bag along with a few other things and grabbed my field overcoat, olive drab, of course.

  I went down to Kaz’s room and knocked. He had promised to have coffee and toast sent up, and I wasn’t about to turn down room service on his dime. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Daphne opened the door in the midst of buttoning her uniform tunic.

  “Come in and help yourself, Billy, we’re almost ready.”

  I made a beeline for the cart with a steaming pot o
f coffee surrounded by toast and pots of jam. Remembering that I was supposed to be an experienced detective, I turned to her as soon as I had poured a cup and asked, ‘We?’

  “Oh, yes. I’m also Major Harding’s driver, didn’t you know?”

  “A dame? I mean, uh, a lady driver? Why can’t Harding drive himself around, or have me do it maybe?” Daphne’s eyes were narrowing and she was about to give me what would have been a very unladylike answer when Kaz strolled in from the bedroom, casually knotting his tie.

  “Billy,” he said with a smile, “I believe that the word ‘dame’ has quite a different meaning in American English from that which we are used to. You must explain it to me later. And, Daphne, you must forgive our guest for not understanding the special circumstances here in England.” He seemed to be enjoying our discomfort, with an expression of detached amusement that he wore as well as his clothes.

  “Very well, Piotr. If I must.” She took a deep breath, as if she needed stamina to explain the obvious to a blundering idiot.

  “Billy, you should know that even General Eisenhower has a woman driver here. It is part of our duties. It wouldn’t do for foreigners to be driving around the country on what they would consider the wrong side of the road, and then getting lost. You see, we’ve taken all the main road signs down, to confuse German paratroopers; they seemed a very real possibility only a year ago. The major does like to drive himself, as he did when he picked you up in the jeep. But today is an official trip in a staff car, and I shall be at the wheel.”

  To emphasize the point, she picked up a pair of kid-leather driving gloves and idly slapped them against her thigh. Oh, to be a kid again, I almost said out loud. I stuffed toast in my mouth instead.

  We picked up Harding at another hotel and headed north out of London. As we pulled away from the curb, Daphne gave me a smile in the rearview mirror.

  “Billy,” she said, “as soon as we turn up ahead, watch for the street name, it may interest you.”

  I was game, although I couldn’t see why a London street name would be that interesting. We turned and I watched as we drove up a street lined with shops and homes, nice brownstones, except they were all painted white. I craned my neck to see the street sign up ahead.

  “Baker Street?” I tried to think what that meant, and I saw Daphne stifling a smile. Next to me in the backseat, Harding shook his head just a bit as he unfolded a newspaper.

  “Baker Street! Sherlock Holmes!”

  “I thought you might fancy that, being a detective yourself,” Daphne said. “There, up ahead on the left, is 221B. Or where it would be, if it were real.”

  I shifted over toward Harding to get a good look out his window. There it was, a sign above a shop that said 221B BAKER STREET. My mouth hung open. I looked around at the ordinary street and the white-painted buildings, looking clean in the morning rain. Where were the fog, the streetlights, the gray atmosphere? The horses pulling carriages, bringing troubled clients to Watson and Holmes? I had to admit I had been impressed with Big Ben and all, but for a kid who had devoured all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this was really something. I was on Baker Street, driving by the rooms of Holmes and Watson! I sort of wished it were all in black and white and gray, like in the movies.

  “You a fan of Doyle?” asked Harding.

  “Sure,” I said, then struggled to keep the gee-whiz quality out of my voice. “Sure, him and a lot of others, too.” I didn’t want to admit that the only book I had ever read cover to cover was a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. I turned around and watched Baker Street fade away as we turned the corner and drove around a park, heading out of the city. Gee whiz, I’m in the land of Sherlock Holmes.

  We left Regent’s Park behind us and the buildings started to thin out. Traffic was heavy coming in to the city, but in our lane, out going was light. Daphne was actually a very good driver, and she seemed to know her way around. Without any signposts identifying towns, direction, or roads, it seemed impossible to navigate, but she managed it. Kaz sat up front with her, an open map on his lap, which he occasionally consulted as he pointed out an upcoming turn. He turned in his seat and held up the map for me to see.

  “We’re going to a little town called Wickham Market, on the Suffolk coast,” he said, pointing out the bulge of land that curved out into the North Sea. “About one hundred miles or so from here. Beardsley Hall is an estate on the Suffolk Heath where the Norwegians are headquartered. Ironic, since the hall is built around an old castle fortification, which used to guard that part of the coast against Viking raids. I’m sure some old English bones in the ground protest the current occupants of the hall!”

  “Better Norwegian Vikings than Germans,” Daphne added.

  “Well, yes, if we can be sure of that.”

  I could see Daphne look in the rearview mirror and cock an eyebrow at Harding, who was silent, reading the London Times. He gave her the slightest nod, which she passed on to Kaz. These three seemed to have their own language.

  “OK, Kaz, what’s going on?” The great American detective at work.

  “We have indications that one of the Norwegians may be a spy.”

  “A traitor?”

  “We really don’t know,” Kaz said, shrugging his shoulders as he turned to half face me. “It could be a traitor, or a German agent planted among the Norwegian troops who made it to England in 1940. It would have been easy for someone with false papers to mix in with retreating British, French, Polish, and Norwegian troops.”

  “That would have taken some planning. The Norwegian campaign was over pretty quickly.”

  “Exactly. Which supports the theory that it is a traitor within the Norwegian ranks. All we know from our sources is that such an agent exists. But there are thousands of Norwegians in uniform in England now. The Norwegian Brigade, merchant marine, naval, and RAF units, King Haakon’s court . . . a spy could be anywhere. He could be very highly placed or situated where he can do no harm.”

  “How do you guys know about this?” There was a silence. Harding put down his paper and spoke.

  “The British secret service picked up a number of German agents who were positioned in this country before the war. They were mostly sleeper agents, sent here with radios to await word when they were needed. Our man tried to contact one of these agents just when British counterintelligence picked him up. We tried to set up a meeting so we could scoop up the spy, but he evaded us. All we could get from interrogating the sleeper was that there was a spy among the Norwegian forces in England, and his code name. Prodigal Son.”

  “So we’re going to tell the Norwegians about the invasion scheduled for this fall, with a German agent lurking around somewhere?”

  “Looks like you’re going to start earning your keep real quick, Boyle,” Harding said, returning to his newspaper.

  “Don’t worry, Billy,” Kaz said. “Everybody who is anybody among the Norwegians in England will be there. All we need to do is identify the spy. Before he finds another way to contact Berlin and betray the invasion. No, take the right fork, Daphne.” He turned his attention back to the map.

  “Are you sure, dear? I swear we go straight here toward Sudbury.”

  Great. My first assignment is to find a needle in a haystack and these two can’t even find the road the haystack’s on. I leaned back and shut my eyes, pretending to sleep so no one would ask me how I planned to discover who the spy was.

  I pretended pretty good, and woke up a while later when Harding nudged my shoulder. “Cut the snoring, Boyle, we’re almost there.”

  The rain had stopped, but there were still dark clouds rolling in, from the sea, I guessed. We were on the heath, which is British for a damp, cold, treeless swamp.

  “What the hell did the Vikings want around here anyway?” I asked. Nobody answered me, and soon my attention was drawn to Beardsley Hall off in the distance, silhouetted against the gray sky. It was massive. Four stories tall, it squatted on green landscaped grounds that stood in stark cont
rast to the gloomy heath surrounding us. Green ivy-covered granite gray stone nearly up to the top floor. At one end of the building stood a crenellated castle tower. Kaz played tour guide.

  “The original foundation and tower were constructed around 900 AD. Rebuilt in the mid-1400s and expanded during the reign of King George, during your American Revolution. The great hall was built during the Victorian era, with the reconstruction of the tower completed at the turn of the century, at great cost to the Beardsley family. No matter, though, since the patriarch made his fortune investing in African diamond mines. The family line ended when all the sons died in the Great War. The government took over the hall and granted it to the Norwegian government in exile in 1940.”

  “Will there be a test?”

  “Oh yes, indeed!” Kaz laughed. He always seemed to know something I didn’t. We turned onto the wide gravel drive and took it to where it made a circle near the main entrance. Daphne slowed the car and the tires crunched the white crushed stone like a prizefighter cracking his knuckles. The long lawn was manicured and green, enclosed by thick hedges trimmed at a uniform height for a hundred yards on either side. I guess having an unemployed army of Norwegians hanging around made for good lawn care. A Norwegian flag, red with a blue-and-white cross, hung limply in the damp air, not even trying to flap a welcome. On either side of the main door sentries stood, armed with Sten submachine guns, grim looks, and polished boots. Only their eyes moved, like cop eyes, on high alert, checking each new person who moved into their domain. As we got out of the car, the double doors of the entrance opened and an officer almost ran out to greet us, followed by two more enlisted men. He wore the same kind of British Army uniform Kaz did, except his shoulder patch read “Norway.” He was short and thin, and his movements were quick, almost hurried, his eyes darting among our party until he spotted the brass.