Avenging Steel: The First Collection

by Hall, Ian

  Man, did those looks turn my insides into knots. I wandered down the corridor almost forgetting what the heck I was going outside for.

  “Crawford’s-the-Bakers,” I said, starting downstairs. After just two steps I stopped. The idea of dining out on Ivanhoe’s pound gave me an idea. I retraced my steps, and was just about to put weight to Alice’s door handle when I caught her voice.

  “… working late… yes, that’s all he said… okay, bye.”

  I halted as if I’d run into glass, then stepped back from her door. I’d missed seeing her through the door window by mere inches. I almost cried on the way outside; she was reporting on me to someone, Lilith probably. Next thing I knew, I was inside Crawford’s.

  “Yes, sir?” The girl’s tone seemed anxious. “Hello in there?” She waved at me.

  “Sorry?”

  “You’ve just been standing there,” she grinned at me. “Not that I mind, I mean we’re no’ busy.”

  I began to take notice of my surroundings. Shop, yes, hungry. I dropped my gaze to the glass counter, and the sparse offerings below. Yes, it was almost closing time. “Two Rhubarb tarts, please. And I’ll take the last scone too.”

  I walked back up the bridges in a daze, munching on the dry scone. I had a lot to think about.

  Or did I?

  Would I have reported to Ivanhoe if Alice were doing anything out of the ordinary? No, because I’d never been asked to.

  Had I ever doubted her? Yes, heck I’d even followed her once.

  Did I doubt her now? Yes, dammit.

  Would I report on her to Ivanhoe? Hmm, that was a barnstormer of a question. Yes, I probably would, if I were asked to. Damn them and their conniving ways.

  The offices slowly emptied, folks waving goodbyes through the window, some asking if I had shares in the company. I just smiled, and blamed my new responsibilities.

  Then I watched my Omega watch tick the seconds away.

  Ivanhoe appeared at five fifteen. “What have you got for me?” he asked, sitting opposite.

  I handed over a list of stories, and gave him a short synopsis. All were connected with the downsizing of the German garrison, the under-guarding of many establishments, and in particular the up-grading of Grangemouth, Scotland’s only oil terminal.

  “Up-grading?”

  “Yes, it’s not expected.” I tried hard to keep antipathy out of my tone, but it proved difficult. I was in a sultry mood. “There’s not been an oil delivery in months, yet they upgrade? They start work on a larger harbor? Doesn’t make sense.”

  Ivanhoe nodded. “Good stuff. This new job’s given you increased perspective.”

  “Aye,” I sighed. “In more ways than one.”

  He leaned forward. “Look, I’ve got another wee job for you.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Yes, we’re having a wee bit of a problem with the other department…”

  “Lilith’s mob?”

  He nodded. “Yes. We need you to keep an eye on Alice for us, watch her, see where she goes to…”

  To my shock I found myself rising, standing over him. “No.” Once the traitorous word was out of my mouth, I seemed to find increased strength. “Not doing it… old chap.” I finished with his own phrase, throwing it back at him with tight lips.

  “But we need…”

  I walked to the door. “I don’t give a flying fancy for what you want!” I opened the office door, seemingly regardless of my voice’s volume. The rage surprised me; it seemed to come from nowhere. “You guys can sort it out yourselves. I’m not taking part in your stupid civil war. If you think they’re the enemy, you should go and re-think your reason d’etre!”

  I walked down the corridor, saw Alice sitting looking up at the window, open mouthed.

  “Come on honey,” I said, and watched her stand, grab her coat, and run to the door. “I’m taking you to dinner, and we’re not talking shop!”

  Blowing Lids Off, Dust Settling

  But of course, shop was all we talked about.

  Next door to the King’s Theatre sat an old pub called Bennet’s Bar. Full to capacity before and after performances, it was usually dead for a couple of hours when the punters were next door. I had chosen the site carefully; we had an hour of peace before the theatre crowd would interrupt us.

  And we got right into it from minute one.

  We both revealed who we worked for, I divulged the name S.O.E., and Alice admitted to having being recruited by the Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section 6, or MI6 for short. Yes the organizations worked in tandem most of the time, but for some reason, political or other, they did not share all information. However, as far as we’d both gleaned, they had the same boss if you went up the chain far enough.

  Lilith had recruited Alice straight from the farm; her being fluent in German seemingly enough to circuit any interview process.

  “I’m sick of the whole thing,” I said, gauging her expression for reaction. “And of course, being intimate does make us a special case, surely?” To my joy I saw nothing but honesty and candor in both her tone and answer.

  “Me too, I hate keeping secrets, skulking out the door to go and see Lilith, even though there’s not much point, I mean, she knows you. You’ve met. It seems like we jump through hoops just for their sake, their little political game.”

  What I didn’t mention was that Lilith had kissed me, long time ago, yes, before Alice had arrived, but I could still recall every little tingly nuance of it. “She came to see me when you were gone, you know. At the apartment. Brazenly knocked at the door. Mum had conniptions.”

  “What?” Her face was a picture of complete bewilderment. “That’s breaking every protocol in the book!”

  “Aye, all part of a test to see if I’d switch sides. She offered me a fortune in cash, even flashed me a come-hither smile.”

  “And you didn’t fall for it, did you?” She looked at me proudly.

  “No I didn’t.” I returned the proud smile. “Just as well, Ivanhoe was waiting outside. They were in cahoots, setting me up like that. I was mad.’

  “I’ll bet you were.” She stared into space for a second. “And that time you came home hurt. We could have reacted a lot better if we’d had an idea of what you were up to.”

  I winced. “Yeah, well that operation hit us all kinda unexpectedly.”

  “But come on, James,” her hand slipped onto my cheek, looking at me longingly. “We could have had bandages in the medicine cupboard; I bet your mum’s stocked up already!”

  We both laughed. “I know you’ve been keeping tabs on me.” I said.

  That took the smile from her face. She clasped her hands in her lap and stared at them intently. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey,” I tipped her chin upwards. “That’s in the past.” I gave the room a quick look-round; five others, no-one in earshot. “Ivanhoe asked me to do the same. That’s what blew up in my office this evening. I just exploded. Maybe I’ll be ostracized, cut off, maybe sacked. I just don’t care. We live together, I love you, and we’ve got enough to worry about without having to bother…” I stopped, looking at the tears running down her face, seemingly instantaneous, her hands clasped to her cheeks. “What’s wrong?”

  Her bottom lip trembled. “Wrong? Nothing.”

  “Then what… ?”

  She wept openly, a smile breaking out on her lips. “You said… you said, you loved me.”

  My first instinct was to deny such a heinous charge, then I slowly recalled my words.

  Crap.

  “Well,” There seemed no going back. “I do.”

  I was hit by a torrent of Alice that had never quite happened before. Lips, tongue, face squashed into mine, tears running into my mouth, her hands running through my hair, a little bit of everything.

  “Hey!” I heard a shout from the bar. “Enough of that!”

  “Sorry!” I mumbled, pushing her away slightly. We stared into each other’s eyes, knowing the truth before she said another word
.

  “I love you, James Baird.”

  “I love you too.”

  This time the words were far easier to say, and I remember hearing someone say ‘I know your mother, young Baird!’, but I didn’t give a hoots.

  We walked up the hill towards the distant hotel arm in arm with barely a space between us. In the privacy of our hotel room, after we’d consummated our new union, we made vows to each other many times.

  “No more secrets.”

  “None,”

  We made sure we were back in the apartment for nine o’clock. On reflection it seemed a lot to pay for our tryst, but I’d just got a promotion, Alice had been promoted to my old spot, we had the money, even if it was just one night a week.

  “Come on then,” Mum stood, hands on hips staring us down. We’d only got three steps into the apartment corridor. “Out with it.”

  Alice squeezed my hand in encouragement. We’d made a plan, now all it took was for me to go through with my part of it. “Well, mum, it’s like this…”

  “Yes?” she advanced down the hallway, her elbow just clearing the grandfather clock. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “Not quite, Mum.” I took strength from Alice’s embrace, not to mention the fact that we’d been in dalliance just minutes before. “I have an announcement to make.”

  I could see a playful smile creep onto mother’s face.

  “Oh, an announcement, is it?”

  Frances’ door opened, shedding light on us all, and putting my sweet sister, now in bedclothes, in the centre of the group. “Announcement?” She squeezed her hands together in front of her face, and made the most ridiculous ‘I can’t wait’ expression.

  “Oh, God.” I managed, wondering how a simple statement could take on such massive proportions.

  “Well?” Mum said.

  “Well?” Alice mocked her, smiling into my eyes.

  I whipped a finger into Frances’ face, waving it from side to side. “Don’t you dare!” I said, then turned to mum. “Alice and I are going steady.”

  There, it was out in the open.

  And we had a half hour of hugs, and funny looks and rather banal conversation before mum got Frances back in bed.

  “And I think it’s already gone a little bit further than ‘going steady’, don’t you?” Mum said on her return to the kitchen.

  I frowned. “I have no idea…”

  “Oh, James, I know you’re involved in God-knows-what, but you forget the most important old-boys network of all.” She hugged me, then Alice, then stood back, shaking her head. “Mrs. Hepworth’s daughter works at the Links Hotel. There’s not an ear in the neighbourhood that doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  And so, Biggles the master-spy went to bed that night suitably red-faced, and thinking over mother’s ‘old-girl’ network.

  And the words of his mother ringing in his ears; “I don’t have a say in what you do elsewhere, but it’s not going to happen under my roof.”

  I resisted the temptation to correct her.

  The next morning at the office, we placed the ‘signal sign’ in the window, and handed the youthful messenger a small note.

  No more secrets between us. Deal with it.

  I thought the words as straight-to-the-point as we dared.

  I sucked in my breath and waited on the sky falling down, but of course, nothing happened.

  Using hindsight it’s easy to build a story, to detect trends, see patterns, but in the normal pattern of time, some of these obvious elements pass you by. I fully admit I may have had a personal edge to breaking the story, but take little credit. My new position, however did give me a heightened sensitivity to such news.

  My first clue was the public arrest of Silas Goldberger, the owner of the Goldberger chain of stores. The towering store of the Edinburgh branch stood in Tollcross, just down the road from the apartment; it had been there for many years. Taken from his plush home in Glasgow, the arrest was soon duplicated in an attempt to arrest his sons, Jacob and Nathaniel, the department chain’s operating managers. In this, however, the Germans had missed their mark by half an hour. Both the families had fled and disappeared underground, leaving the German soldiers with nothing but charred documents in a burning oil drum behind Nathaniel’s house.

  This incident may have gone unnoticed if it had not been the sight of Mr. Goldberg’s pawn shop being closed on Thursday evening as I got off the tram opposite. The penny dropped instantly, and I asked mum if she knew anything.

  “He’s not been open since Tuesday,” Mum’s frown reaffirmed my fears.

  “Eh, I’m not sure how to put this…” I began.

  “Then just say it.” Mum cut in.

  “I need to know more, do you know anyone who would know?”

  “About Ephraim?”

  “Aye,”

  “Well, Mrs. Ancona might know something. She was an old friend of Ephraim’s wife before she died.”

  “Mum,” I pressed my hands onto hers. “This is important. Maybe very important.”

  “Hmm, I haven’t spoke for a while, but she always said my scones were good for her lumbago.”

  Mum returned ninety minutes later, an empty cake tin under her arm. “Jerry raided his flat on Wednesday morning. They took him away.” No more details worthy of note were forthcoming. I thanked her, and retired to my room.

  “I think they’re hitting the Jewish community.” I said to Alice just before bed. We were sat on the two-seater couch in my room, the hallway door open; one of mum’s stipulations if we were in each other’s rooms.

  “How do we know for certain?”

  “I’ll dig through my stories tomorrow, if they’ve made the local news anywhere, I’ll find it.”

  Five other stories sat on my desk, prominent Jews, snatched on Tuesday, and those were the ones who’d made the news; how many like Ephraim Goldberg has gone unnoticed? I told Alice immediately.

  “So our first question is, should we print this or not?”

  “I can’t. Möller knows my style, he’d spot it a mile off.”

  “Then delegate,”

  Yeah, Alice the one with all the answers; I was the youngest member of the editorial staff, and I had to delegate a story.

  “No time like the present,” I stalked off, and put my head into next door. “I have a story about Germans snatching prominent Scottish Jews. Who wants it?”

  To my surprise both Graham and Andy both raised their hands. I had no compunction in handing it to Graham Dalglish, the senior man of the two. “These stories have all been published to some extent in their local newspapers, this story is dynamite. You know I’ve got to clear it with Jerry. Be careful.”

  “No problem.”

  I felt good, I had delegated, and I had dealt with the problem at newspaper level. Now I just had to get it past Captain Möller.

  “I cannot print this in its current form.” His little German head did not look up.

  I can’t say I was surprised. “Why not? It’s already been printed in other papers.”

  Dalglish had done a good job, nothing too damning, but he had raised the point of the Führer’s problem with Jews, going back to the early 1930’s. “Are there any facts which you dispute?”

  He considered my words. “Not facts, no, but conclusions are another thing.”

  “The piece doesn’t make conclusions.”

  “No, but he does ask the reader to make their own.” His words were slow, deliberate.

  “Not overtly,”

  No,” Möller said. “But the question remains nevertheless.”

  “So we take away the question.”

  He nodded. “And the Führer’s name, no mention of him in this.”

  “Can we mention the party?”

  “No.”

  “Can we mention Herr Hitler’s number two, Rudolf Hess?”

  I was surprised when a questioning look passed over Möller’s face. His voice almost became monotone. “You are allowed to use the name of the Deput
y Führer.”

  I stood shocked. “Okay… So we can print it?”

  “Yes, with those stipulations.”

  I decided to push him further. “I take it you disapprove of the Deputy Führer?”

  His head shot upwards, his eyes burning into mine. How I did not flinch from his gaze I don’t know. “You will not repeat this conversation.”

  “Of course not,” I attempted to keep my voice level. “You have helped me before, Captain Möller, and I appreciate it.”

  I could see him in grave conflict, his frown deeper than I’d ever witnessed. Then a new emotion surfaced, and I perceived anger. “The Deputy Führer, Herr Hess, issued many laws back in the day. They castrated many Jews of their possessions and their power. They were banned from marrying outside their race, and many marriages were annulled.” Not for the first time, I marveled at his grasp of the nuances of the English language. I held my tongue, letting him get it all out by himself. “He used his power to grant dispensation to his Jewish friend, not to any other. He is not to be trusted.”

  I walked away from the German HQ with a sense of worth that day.

  Our newspapers ran with the story on the front page.

  Germans Target Scottish Jews

  And I was proud of it.

  Going to Hell in a Handbasket

  My office phone rang the next morning. “Hello?” I said, still nervous at the new contraption.

  “Ich bin Hans Schuss, Germany HQ.”

  “Yes?”

  “James Baird?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Captain Möller arrested. He tell me, tell you.”

  I swear I shivered, the temperature in my office seeming to shift considerably.

  The phone went dead.

  “My first reaction is to run.” I told Alice moments later.

  We hugged, her eyes full of tears. “But if you do, you betray your guilt.”

  “I got permission to write the story, Alice, I really did.”

  She nodded. “So we go on as usual.”

  “But the phone call?”

  Alice stood, her hands on my arms, gripping tight. “We go on as usual, we write stories, we go to the HQ before one o’clock as if nothing has happened, we go home tonight.”