Avenging Steel: The First Collection

by Hall, Ian

“We wait for her to get away from the house, preferably onto Liberton Brae.”

  Alice led the way out of the room, heading downstairs. She turned to me. “Could you be so kind to give Mrs. Partridge a quid for her broken window?”

  “Sure,” I fished in my wallet as we crossed her living room.

  “It won’t be as much as a pound.” She said.

  “Something for your inconvenience, madam.” Alice shut her up with a wave of her hand. This spying lark was playing the devil with my finances; good job I had money left over from the last operation.

  “Can I help?” The policeman followed as we crossed the road.

  “Nice of you to ask.” Alice said. “Run round the back of the house, just in case her boyfriend gets shirty and fancies making a dash for it.”

  Off he set, rounding the building in seconds. Alice knocked the door. I heard footsteps inside. “Honey it’s me,” Alice said. “I forgot my keys.”

  And just as I thought a professor couldn’t be so stupid to fall for Alice’s trickery, Peierls opened the door. I pushed it against him, and he tumbled onto the stairs beyond. In seconds we had him secured; he was hardly fighting material.

  “What about P.C. Plod?” I asked.

  I could see her thinking. “Send him after the girlfriend. Tell him just to watch from a distance, that we’ll catch up with her right away.”

  Good policeman, like he was, he just swallowed my tale, and set off down the hill in pursuit of the girlfriend.

  “Rudolf Peierls,” I said dramatically. “We’re here to get you the hell out of Edinburgh.”

  To my surprise he looked relieved. “The Nazis?”

  “Nowhere to be seen,” I said. He was the second German I’d met recently, and it occurred to me that they had both referred to the German soldiers as Nazis, not Germans. I suppose it was a local or cultural distinction, but noted it nevertheless. “What now?”

  Alice looked around. “Do you have a car, Herr Peierls?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, you have five minutes to get ready to travel. Move.” She pointed to his retreating back, climbing the stairs. “Watch him close, he’s a fly one.”

  Upstairs, watching Peierls pack, I heard Alice’s voice in the living room. I crossed to the top of the stairs.

  “… yes, the far end of Orchardhead Road.” Pause. She must have been using the house’s telephone. “Yes, if you say so. Right. At the cemetery railings.”

  Behind me, Peierls announced himself ready to leave.

  Back downstairs, we walked up the hill to the end of the road. A sign proclaiming Wolridge Road was fastened to high black railings. A field of gravestones stood beyond. Alice gave me a peck on the cheek. “This is where you leave, sorry.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I can’t leave you on your own.” But of course my reasons were outweighed by her instructions. “There’s a car on its way. You don’t want to be here when it arrives.”

  One of Lilith’s SOE rules flashed at me; … each member should have a special function and should be prohibited from undertaking any other. Danger of over enthusiastic trying to do too much work, or work to which he is not suited…

  Damn if I hadn’t already screwed that one up, following Alice.

  I returned her peck on the cheek, all that my nose-bent-out-of-place would allow me, then walked away. Once round the corner I ran into the graveyard and slinked between stones to get close to the two figures out on the road.

  Yeah, Lilith’s voice screamed into my head; … no member must attempt to find out more about the organization than he is told…

  I was breaking my own organization’s rules willy-nilly, but I didn’t care. I felt exposed, hiding behind the tall grey stones; luckily I only had five minutes to wait.

  Two men got out of the arriving car. Ivanhoe was one, the other I also recognized. I stood in shock as Max Born shook hands with the newly rescued professor, two German Jews meeting near a graveyard.

  Alice also got into the car, and it drove away, leaving me stranded again.

  Biggles Buys a Car

  I caught a tram at the bottom of Liberton Brae, and got off near the University. I needed familiar surroundings, time to think, and a pint of two down my neck. It was dead quiet for a Friday afternoon. Charlie wasn’t in the bar, replaced by some old nanny type.

  “Where’s Charlie?” I asked.

  “Gone Love,” she answered, wiping glasses dry with a non-too-clean towel. Her greying hair seemed out of place in our retreat from learning.

  “Gone where?” I feared he’d been killed or something.

  “You know, where all the good men are going.” She winked.

  “Oh,” I said, pretending to know exactly what she was talking about.

  Luckily, she offered more. “I heard there’s a boat leaves Stranraer every night.”

  “Where the heck to?” I couldn’t think of the Germans leaving such a route unguarded.

  “Canada, where’d you think?” she laughed. “Anyway. What can I get you?”

  I sat in the darkest corner, happy in my own company, dwelling on Charlie’s disappearance, Alice’s operations, and the gulf between us despite our romantic liaisons. I had wallowed into my third pint, when I heard my name called, and a figure approached. Silhouetted against the yellow lights I couldn’t make him out. “Bairdy!”

  In seconds my eyes adjusted. “Why, if it isn’t Bobby Slight!” I stood up, and we shook hands.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked. I motioned to the empty chairs, but felt immediately uneasy. Bobby hadn’t been this friendly in years, and we’d only had a fleeting time when we’d associated together, one season when I’d taken an interest in the University Rugby team.

  “So what brings you here?” I asked, being as ambiguous as I could.

  “Well, if I’m being honest, the pickings are getting thinner, old chap.”

  His turn of phrase made me wonder when he wasn’t being honest. “Thinner?”

  “I had a word with one of the girls in admin the other day,” he looked behind him, back into the room, as if looking for eavesdroppers. There were none, the Union bar being quieter than I’d seen for a while. I counted six heads, and two were ours. “She said we’ve lost twenty-five percent from across the board.”

  Two sources in as many minutes; if they hadn’t been dropped in my lap from such differing faces, I’d have been suspicious I was getting set up. Again, the figure was lodged for a future report to Ivanhoe.

  “Are you thinking of going?” I asked.

  Bobby laughed. “With my record? I wouldn’t get past the first hurdle.”

  “Record?”

  “Oh, the Communist stuff. Not that I really believed it anyway. I think it was a phase I was going through.”

  “Aye,” I drew the word out. “These things have a way of catching up with you.”

  “How about you, Bairdy? You going to join up?”

  I shook my head, the answer glib on my tongue. “I can’t. I need to stay and keep the household. My sister’s only fourteen; it’ll be a while before she can earn enough.”

  “Ah,” he slugged a good inch of beer. “The pressures of being a breadwinner, huh?”

  “Aye,”

  “Listen, I’m passing this one around… if you hear of anyone wanting to buy a car, I know of one going cheap.”

  Ah, the real reason why he had engaged me in conversation. “Aye, what is it?”

  “Morris Minor, a ‘31, I think.”

  “What color?” As soon as I asked, I knew that it didn’t matter, it just felt the right question to ask. Considering I was jaunting all over Edinburgh, I felt a car could have come in very handy from time to time.

  “Black,” I could feel his gaze on me. “Interested?”

  “I’ll only know that after you tell me the price.”

  “Just a score,”

  Hmm, twenty pounds. I had that in my stash at home. And twenty pounds for a car wasn’t bad, not bad at all
. But of course, there would be petrol to buy, and that was strictly rationed. “I dunno,” I said, screwing my face awkwardly. “That’s a lot o’ dosh.” And an obscene image appeared in my head, us driving into the countryside, parking at a scenic spot, and making out with Alice. Oh, making out somewhere private; that suddenly made me consider it very seriously.

  Bobby must have thought I wasn’t biting. “Seventeen, then.” he said, quickly changing his tune.

  I grinned inside; so there was some wiggle room. “Fifteen quid, for cash.” I said confidently, just the same way my dad would have spoken.

  “Done!” His hand shot out like a lightning bolt. “You are the proud owner of a car, mate.”

  I arranged to meet him outside the Golf Tavern at seven o’clock, and he slipped away as quick as he’d arrived, his work done.

  As he walked out, my thoughts slipped back to Alice and where she would be. Then I considered not telling her I had a car. That would certainly spice up me following her. I supped my pint, let my head slip back into a sort of half-depressed funk, and most of it settled on my relationship with Alice. Yes, we were intimate, but it seemed to be on times of her choosing, not mine. Yes, we had our own jobs to do in the ‘resistance’, and I realized that I couldn’t know her contacts, and perhaps that was where my whole resentment settled.

  As I ruminated, I knew my ire was disproportionate. It was both childish and illogical, but it felt real, and that’s what mattered. Or more accurately, after three beers, that’s the conclusion I’d come to.

  Thankfully nature has a way of washing the slate clean.

  Five minutes into my walk across the Meadows, the heavens opened. Huge droplets of rain, the size of sixpences crashed onto the pathway, and within a minute I knew I’d be soaked through. I ran the final couple of hundred yards across the finely mowed golf course, and once inside the stairwell I flattened my back against the dark cold wall, panting at my exertion.

  For once the apartment was empty, its walls lonely and still. I gathered fifteen pounds from my hidey-hole and checked my watch. It had stopped, perhaps by the water, perhaps not. I wound it up, but it made no difference.

  “Damn it!” I cursed into the empty room. “How can I be a spy when I don’t know the bloody time?” I looked out the window to see shafts of bright yellow sunlight break through the rain clouds. I was already wet. I grabbed another bundle of banknotes, most of what was left, and headed out again.

  I supposed with a name like Goldberg, the pawn-shop owner was of Jewish descent, and as I shook my head, I fully realized the extent of my indiscipline; I really was walking around with my eyes closed.

  “Hello Mr. Goldberg.” I said on entering.

  “Hello, young Baird. What can I do for you?” His accent was Edinburgh, but there was a lilt I’d not detected before, a foreign-ness to him that my recent contacts had allowed me to read.

  “I’m looking for a better watch,” I unfolded mine from my wrist and handed it over. “Something a bit more reliable, better.”

  “Foreign or domestic?”

  “The best, whatever it is.” I then retracted slightly. “Well, not the best, but, you know, something better than this thing.” I held up the old one.

  After half an hour looking, I was no further forward. The prices had gone from ten shillings to nearly ten pounds, and nothing worked; either not good enough or not looking good; I was frustrated in my task.

  “You know who you should ask?” Goldberg finally admitted when his stock had been completely rejected.

  “Who?”

  “Black market first, but if you can’t get any joy from them, if you know any Germans.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Yes, I know, but go shoot me. But they have good watches, and being next door to Switzerland, you’d get a good deal from them.”

  What watches would I look for?”

  “Omega, or anything with the name Swiss on the front; you’re buying the movement, see, not the outside. The case is irrelevant, the movement inside is the key. Buy Swiss, you can’t go wrong.”

  I thanked him for his advice and left the pawnshop in a better frame of mind.

  Bobby Slight was as good as his word. As I rounded the corner and started down the hill of Wright’s Houses, he was standing outside the Golf Tavern, leaning back on a rather handsome little car. “Shall we go inside?” I asked as I approached.

  “Only if you’re buying,” he replied with a grin.

  For once the bar was busy, and although our conversation was a little louder than I’d have liked, with all the other patrons contributing their share, I’m sure we weren’t overheard.

  “I’m looking for a watch.”

  “What kind?”

  “Swiss probably, but nothing too flashy; basically it has to look ordinary.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  We finished our pints, he gave me the registration document and the keys, and he left with three five pound notes stuffed in his pocket.

  When I got home, Alice had returned, although she looked pensive, sitting in her room, reading an old newspaper.

  Trying to forget the gulf between us, I opened with a choice piece. “Do you know the University’s lost 25% of their male students since October?”

  She looked up, puzzled. “That’s a lot.”

  I nodded. “The new barmaid at the Union told me.” I left out the Bobby Slight, new car, and black market thing.

  “Barmaid?” she gave me a mock frown.

  “She’s about eighty!” I grinned.

  “Where are the men going?”

  “She says there’s a ‘ferry’ that picks them up in Stranraer, takes them to Canada.”

  “That’s not feasible.” She folded the newspaper onto her lap. “There must be more to this, surely?”

  “I’ll pass it on to Ivanhoe, see if he knows anything.”

  I walked along the hallway to my room, not knowing to be glad or depressed that she made no overtures towards me. As I passed Frances’ door I gave it a knock, and poked my head inside. Her whole bed was covered with 78’s, in sleeves and out. “You’ll get them scratched.” I warned. Some clarinet-driven jazz theme played softly from her phonograph.

  “Uh-uh,” she shook her head in mock petulance. “I’m careful.”

  “Hey,” I said, suddenly conscious I hadn’t spent much time with her lately. “I’ve got a couple of bob left over from last week. Do you want to do something this weekend? maybe something you’d like? A little present from me?”

  “I’ll think about it,” she smiled, suddenly gone was the teenage brat, replaced by a more somber war-girl, facing up to the realities of teenage life. “Records?”

  “Sure.” I replied, happy to have some point of contact with her.

  “Will you take me to Parlophone?”

  “No Dearie,” I gave her my dad-knows-best smile. No way would he have taken her to the full-price store on Princes Street. “If you want records, I’ll take you to a second-hand store, maybe hit the pawnshops up town?”

  She almost jumped off the bed. “That’d be swinging.”

  “Swinging, huh?”

  “Shut up. Everybody says it these days.”

  I just gave her a short salute, and walked away. It was nice to forget about the war, even for just that fleeting moment.

  It was my first Saturday up-town since I’d become a master-spy, and I found myself amazed with the number of people about. The shops were busy, the punters smiling, almost as if Jerry hadn’t invaded.

  Of course, we did go into Parlophone on Princes Street, but I made sure we didn’t buy anything. I wasn’t paying exorbitant prices for dried shellac, and I told Frances so. When we crossed the Mound, and hit the steep wind of Coburn Street, we started shopping in earnest. I recognized some of the names she browsed through, but not many.

  Tommy Dorsey, Bing Crosby, Harry James, Glenn Miller, all American, of course. With America not in the war, they still traded with us, and from what I’d witnessed that day, it
certainly seemed their recordings were widely available.

  She spent a few bob, felt important for a couple of hours, and we even stopped for a soda and ice cream ay Britani’s near Tollcross on the way home. I’d never had root-beer before, and I swear I’d never do it again. Frances, however, announced herself full, and by the look on her face, almost puked up to prove it.

  The Mathematician’s Reprise

  Sunday morning half-day at the newspaper was boring in every way imaginable. Alice was distant, the stories were one-dimensional, and any camaraderie in the office was doused from the first minute by the news of our Editor’s arrest on Saturday night.

  Even my trip to the new German Headquarters weighed heavily on me, considering Leutnant Möller’s possible friendliness towards me. The only chink of light in that awfully bleak morning was the watch on Leutnant Möller’s wrist. I had never paid attention before.

  “Your wristwatch,” I said as he handed the papers to me. “Is it an Omega?”

  He gave me one of those ‘I’m not sure if to trust you’ looks, then allowed himself a half-hearted smile. “It was a gift from my fiancée.” He looked at it for a moment. “Are you interested in wristwatches, Herr Baird?”

  “Well, sort-of.” I showed him my bare wrist. “Mine got soaked the other day, and I wanted to up-grade. I’ve tried the pawn shops, but there aren’t many Swiss watches in my price range.”

  “Ah, you go to the top of the tree?”

  And there you go, for an instant we were talking watches, the war forgotten. “I’ve been told they are the best.”

  He raised himself from his chair. “Wait here, Herr Baird.”

  For the first time in our short relationship, I was alone in his office. Not being under scrutiny, I looked around. His new office was bigger than the one at the castle, and was incredibly tidy; not a hair out of place. I was interrupted from my study by Leutnant Möller returning, a young corporal in his wake. “This is Obergefreiter Draxler.” We both nodded to each other. “He has a watch he needs to sell.”

  He pulled a watch from his pocket, and handed it to me. I recognized the Omega name immediately, and the words Fab Suisse. “How much do you want for it?”