No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries)

by John Gardner

  As he opened the door and slid the metal cases into the Cabinet Room, Jim Mountford glimpsed Winston Churchill half turn from his heavy wooden chair, looking puzzled, but before he had time to say anything, Harvey slammed the door and James heard the clear sound of the key turning in the lock.

  Sergeant Harvey had locked the prime minister and his War Cabinet into the room.

  And also at that moment Jim realised where he had seen Harvey before. His photograph, next to that of his brother, sliding out of a file that Tommy Livermore had brought into his sister’s living room. Gerald Lees-Duncan.

  Pair of right Harrovian thugs you’ve got there all right, Tommy.

  Not sure about the Harrovian bit but they’re certainly a pair of thugs. That one’s no longer with us, by the way,

  Jim Mountford shouted. ‘Stop him! Stop Harvey now!’ and felt the man’s fist come up in an attempt to strike him in the face, felt the metal from the keys in Harvey’s hand and realised that he had more than one key clasped in his fist: a whole bunch.

  He saw Emily make an attempt to grab the sergeant who brought his fist up again and hit her hard in the face. She gave a grunt and fell to one side, hitting the wall and crumpling into a heap. Blood on her face.

  Jim grabbed for his pistol in its leather holster and tried to drag it out but changed his mind as he set off in pursuit, his brain teeming with the possibilities. What was in the cases? He stopped pursuing Harvey and shouted down the corridor. ‘Colour-Sarn’t Shaw! Spare keys! Spare keys to the Cabinet Office and the main door! Now! Quickly!’ Then he heard a rattling from inside the Cabinet Room and heard the prime minister growl, ‘Open this damned door. Get us out of here at once. What’s in these damned cases?’

  Jim dragged out his Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and shouted, ‘Stand back, sir. Out of the way, I’m going to shoot out the hinges,’ and when he heard Churchill’s distinctive, ‘Good man. All clear,’ he put two rounds into each hinge, top and bottom, close to the wooden jamb, splintering the wood and twisting the metal hinges.

  One of the two marines on duty outside the Cabinet Room helped to pull the door away, and from inside Admiral Cunningham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, finished the job.

  Colour-Sergeant Shaw was at his elbow now. ‘The main door’s open, sir. He left it open.’

  ‘Get the prime minister out, Colour-Sarn’t. Now! All of them. Quickly. Get them out, this is bloody dangerous.’

  ‘What is this, young Mountford? Is it a Nazi plot?’ Churchill gave his distinctive pronunciation of Nazi – ‘Naazzzy plot.’

  ‘I very much fear it is, sir. Please move out. Fast as you can, sir.’

  ‘Good boy. Good boy,’ said the prime minister as he headed along the passage to the door that would lead him into the Public Offices building.

  Jim looked at his watch. It was just five minutes to three. ‘Come on,’ he shouted to those of his squad who were already in the main passageway. ‘Let’s get these damned cases outside. They probably contain explosives so don’t tarry. Get them away into St James’s Park.’ He grabbed the nearest case and lugged it along the passage, feeling a terrible strain on his hands and arms. The case must have weighed a good hundredweight, and he felt his arms creak in their sockets. Two of his marines where heaving on the other case, and another couple of the lads had their hands on the one left in the passage.

  Colour-Sergeant Shaw leant over to help him, but Jim motioned him away. ‘Help the young Maren,’ he ordered. ‘Get her out, Colour-Sarn’t.’

  Emily was groggily trying to get up as Shaw reached her. Then another of the marines arrived to assist Jim with the case. They both grunted and groaned as they half carried, half dragged the metal case out into the basement of the Public Offices building, then up and out into the afternoon sun.

  As they emerged, Jim saw, first, Tommy and then his Suzie. Behind them were several uniformed police officers surrounding Gerald Lees-Duncan. ‘Get out of the way, Tommy … sis…’ he yelled. Then to his men, ‘Get everyone out of the way! Get those cases out into the park! Away from the buildings!’

  People had crowded around to see what was going on and the marines had to shriek at them, physically driving them back.

  Exhausted by his exertions, chest heaving, arms strained in their sockets, Jim managed to get the message to Tommy, and some of the uniformed police broke away, shouting at the sightseers, urging them to get out of the way. Jim heard somebody yelling, ‘UXB. Unexploded bomb! Get the hell out of it.’

  They dragged the case across Horse Guards Road and onto the grass of St James’s Park. The two marines dragging the other case from the Cabinet Room had left it on the grass, and Jim, panting and heaving told his companion to drop it and get away. The third case was now nearby, and Jim began to run back towards Horse Guards Parade, shouting to everybody to take cover. He saw Tommy and Suzie drop to the ground and the small knot of police officers hustle away the captive, Gerald Lees-Duncan.

  Then the cases erupted, the sound of each explosion merging into one thunderous roar.

  It was exactly three o’clock.

  By this time Jim Mountford was flat on the ground near his sister. The noise battered his eardrums and he felt the shock wave. As it dwindled away he heard his sister say,

  ‘Vot vos dot?’

  And Tommy replied, ‘Dot vos a bomp.’

  He thought they were both mad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Tommy said they were damned clever, the bombs. ‘If it had worked the PM and the whole Cabinet would have been wiped out. Immediate thought would have been that it was a V-2 rocket. Would’ve shaken everyone rigid.’

  ‘There’d be no metal, though. No traces of a rocket,’ Suzie countered.

  ‘Nobody was going to look immediately.’ Tommy did his all-knowing and omnipotent look. ‘Would’ve given brother Lees-Duncan time to slip away. The three cases made a crater about thirty feet across. The things went off right on three o’clock. Most efficient timer.’

  Jim asked if they knew what the explosive was.

  Tommy said it was plastique as far as they could make out. ‘The new stuff. C-4 I think they call it. Pounds of it, with nails and bits of old metal mixed in.’

  ‘So where did that come from?’

  ‘That’s the one thing lacking at the moment. Maybe we’ll knock it out of him in time.’ Tommy shook his head. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with him. General view is we’ll never get him in front of a judge. Nobody wants to admit that we allowed an assassin to get that close to Winston.’

  ‘There are other things we’ll never know.’ Suzie looked at him archly.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as did Dulcimer lure Michael to his death or did Michael just want to see if he could get her out of that nasty old habit.’ She chortled, overdoing it a bit.

  ‘You took your time getting there,’ Jim grumbled to Tommy.

  ‘Well, I thought you’d have the fella in irons. I recognised him straight off. Tipped you off; said “Bingo”. Did everything. Ball in your court.’ Tommy had started pronouncing ‘off’ as ‘orf’.

  ‘How did he work it?’ Jim was still in the dark.

  ‘Turned up, out of the blue, at Exton. Royal Marine Camp down near Exmouth. It’s the Pre-OCTU – as you know – and a holding unit. They had nothing about Harvey. But, amazingly, within an hour of him being there they found a signal posting him to the CWR. Bloody Jerries were light on their feet. I’ve seen the paperwork and it all looks first rate. Genuine as a five-quid note. Must’ve landed him near Exton somehow. He arrived on the train platform, as I say, out of the blue. Went to the guardroom and was in.’

  The next day some decisions were made and Tommy went over to see Mother Rachel and tell her that the business of a man being found dead in the convent would not get into the press. They were keeping quiet about it.

  ‘Thank the Good Lord for that.’ Mother Rachel was as ecstatic as her position would allow. ‘I was dreading headlines in the
News of the World. It would’ve been a terrible scandal. MAN FOUND IN CONVENT HORROR.’

  By way of a thank you, Tommy and Suzie were invited to the nuns’ evening meal on the following Sunday. Tommy grumbled of course, didn’t want to go, but in the end it was a most enjoyable evening: Fresh poached salmon (‘Poached in every way, I believe,’ Mother Rachel said with a twinkle), new potatoes, garden peas and a strawberry mousse. ‘You mustn’t think we always eat like this,’ Sister Eunice whispered to Suzie who nodded sagely.

  After the meal they went into chapel for the sisters to chant the divine office, and Suzie was in her element because the slow rise and fall of the plainsong brought back memories of her childhood and the time she had spent at St Helen’s when her father was still alive.

  After chapel it was announced that there was to be a special entertainment, and they all sat in the Sisters’ recreation room, while Sister Agnes did her famed impression of an elderly canon reciting ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Sister Cleo did her conjuring tricks, and very good she was: making silk handkerchiefs change colour, producing billiard balls from the air and linking solid rings together.

  ‘Don’t know how she does it,’ said Tommy.

  Last of all, Mother Rachel and Sister Eunice did the two Germans in an air raid shelter—

  ‘Vot vos dot?’

  ‘Dot vos a bomp.’

  How Suzie and Tommy laughed: a shade hysterically.

  ‘So, what’s next?’ Suzie asked when they got back to the flat above Upper St Martin’s Lane. ‘Tommy Livermore going to do his contortions, is he?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind I’ve instructed the banns to be read in the chapel at Kingscote, and in the local parish church.’

  ‘Tommy!’ she squealed. After all, they had been quietly engaged since 1941, and Tommy had occasionally blown hot and cold about it. ‘Oh, you really have done it? We’re to be married?’

  ‘Of course. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, yes please. Yes very please.’

  Smiling, Tommy leered quietly in her ear. ‘Get up them stairs,’ he said.

  ‘Tommy.’ She gave him a curious look. ‘We haven’t any stairs and it’s get up those stairs. What’s happened to your grammar?’

  ‘Heart, it’s get up them stairs. That’s the way the brutal and licentious soldiery indicate their need for connubial congress. “Get up them stairs,” they say.’

  ‘Dirty beasts,’ Suzie said with a broad smile, as she headed towards the bedroom.

  ALSO BY JOHN GARDNER

  In the Suzie Mountford series

  Bottled Spider

  The Streets of Town

  Angels Dining at the Ritz

  Troubled Midnight

  In the James Bond series

  Licence Renewed

  For Special Services

  Icebreaker

  Role of Honor

  Nobody Lives For Ever

  No Deals, Mr Bond

  Scorpius

  Win, Lose or Die

  Brokenclaw

  The Man from Barbarossa

  Death is For Ever

  Never Send Flowers

  Seaf1ire

  Cold

  License to Kill (from the screenplay)

  GoldenEye (from the screenplay)

  In the Boysie Oakes series

  The Liquidator

  Understrike

  Amber Nine

  Madrigal

  Founder Member

  Traitor’s Exit

  Air Apparent

  A Killer for a Song

  In the Derek Torry series

  A Complete State of Death

  The Cornermen

  In the Moriarty Journals series

  The Return of Moriarty

  The Revenge of Moriarty

  In the Kruger series

  The Nostradamus Traitor

  The Garden of Weapons

  The Quiet Dogs

  Maestro

  Confessor

  Novels

  Golgotha

  Flamingo

  The Dancing Dodo

  The Werewolf Trace

  To Run a Little Faster

  Every Night’s a Bullfight

  The Censor

  Day of Absolution

  Blood of the Fathers (Published under the name of Edmund McCoy and republished 2004 as Unknown Fears)

  The Generations Trilogy

  The Secret Generations

  The Secret Houses

  The Secret Families

  Autobiography

  Spin The Bottle

  Collections of Short Stories

  The Assassination File

  Hideaway

  PRAISE FOR JOHN GARDNER

  “Gardner is a master storyteller.”

  —Len Deighton, author of The Ipcress File

  “This intriguing World War II espionage police procedural is a fine thriller that provides an interesting look at the pre D-day planning … John Gardner provides a fine historical spy story.”

  —Harriet Klausner on Troubled Midnight

  “A fast-paced, suspenseful, atmospheric whodunit.”

  —Booklist on Bottled Spider

  “Richly textured, wonderfully atmospheric, and ironic, the novel shows Gardner as a smooth, polished master of the form.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Day of Absolution

  “Fascinating story … a satisfying book from a seasoned pro.”

  —Booklist on Day of Absolution

  “This is Gardner’s sixth James Bond spy thriller and one that absolutely shouldn’t be missed. The action is superb and 007 is, as always, in peak form. Never a dull moment is an understatement for this fast-moving series of explosive chapters. Highly recommended for all popular fiction collections.”

  —Library Journal on No Deals, Mr Bond

  “This is Gardner’s thirteenth novel starring the handsome, tough, romantic hero 007 since he took over the series after the death of Ian Fleming in 1964. In Seafire, Gardner again mixes sex and violence in exotic settings.… It’s a rollicking ride all the way.”

  —Booklist

  John Gardner wrote over fifty novels, including a series of highly acclaimed comic novels featuring the cowardly secret agent Boysie Oakes, and a number of continuation James Bond books commissioned by the Ian Fleming copyright holders. Visit his Web site at www.john-gardner.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  NO HUMAN ENEMY. Copyright © 2007 by John Gardner. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gardner, John, 1926–2007.

  No human enemy / John Gardner. —1st Thomas Dunne Books ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37670-3

  ISBN-10: 0-312-37670-7

  1. Mountford, Suzie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—England—London—Fiction. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—Great Britain—Fiction. 4. V-1 bomb—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6057.A63 N59 2008

  823'.914—dc22

  2008018435

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby Limited

  First Thomas Dunne Books Edition: August 2008

  eISBN 9781466849372

  First eBook edition: June 2013

 

 

 
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