by James R Benn
“If I can’t?”
“Then you’ve wasted Father’s time,” Topper said calmly. “And mine. We’d not be happy about that.”
“Billy, this is a souvenir of my time in the trenches, fighting the Boche in the last war,” Archie said. He picked up what looked like a short sword from beneath his chair. With remarkable swiftness he was up, unsheathing the blade from its scabbard. “My own bayonet, seventeen inches long, and still as sharp as the last time I gutted a Boche with it, or anyone else for that matter. Can you feel it?”
I could. He’d stepped around me, pressing the blade to my neck, and I wondered if it had been Archie and Topper that night on Fleet Street, never mind Charlie and his swollen knuckles. “Sure. My old man brought one back from France, too. He keeps his up in the attic.” I felt the cold steel against my soft neck, pressed flat. A slight change of angle and pressure and the carpet would be a helluva mess.
“Did he now? Well, I say once you’ve learned how to use a tool, you don’t let it rust.” He moved away, rubbing his thumb gently along the blade before putting it back in the scabbard, and tucking it back under the seat. “Tell me, what led you to me? Of all the people you could ask about dead Russians in London, why did you decide to visit old Archie?”
“The map,” I said. It was my only card, and I had to play it, weak hand that it was. I watched their faces, and saw the flash of surprise, too quick to hide. In a second their masks of languid cruelty returned, but it told me they hadn’t known Egorov had it in his possession.
“A treasure map?” Topper said with a sneer, buying time to figure out what else I might know.
“Of sorts. The route of a supply truck, from farms up north straight to the Russian Embassy. Like the one that was hijacked a while back.”
“Do tell,” Archie said, settling back into his chair. “Topper, refills all round. One for the road, Billy. Come back when you have something specific to offer, and something specific to ask for.”
“I’m after the murderer,” I said.
“You may be,” Archie said, “but it’s nothing to us. The Russian was nothing to us, so how can we help you? If you have something of value on offer, then it may become something to us. Until then, all we’ll do is have a drink and chat, get to know each other better.”
“Cheers,” I said when the glasses were full, resisting the urge to tell him I’d gotten to know the Chapman family well enough.
“To your father, and all the lads who didn’t come back from that last blasted war, there were enough of them.” He drank his gin down in one gulp, and Topper was ready with the bottle. “And now to you, Billy, in this war.” We all drank again.
“You’re not in the service?” I said to Topper as he filled my glass.
“For health concerns,” Archie was quick to put in. “And I need my boy here, I depend on him, and so do many others.”
“London’s dangerous enough,” I said, watching Topper sit back, clutching his drink, watching me with a stillness that reminded me of a hunter in a blind, quietly waiting for the right moment.
“True,” Archie said. “I’ve seen hundreds of poor civilians killed within a stone’s throw of my door. Life’s risky.”
I drank some more gin, thinking back to the night at Kirby’s Tavern when my dad announced they had cinched the deal to get me on Uncle Ike’s staff in D.C. He’d said exactly the same thing about life.
“No need to tempt fate,” I said, recalling the next thing he’d said.
“Exactly! You never know where that bastard death might find you. Me, I served with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, three years in the trenches, never a scratch, none that could be seen, anyway. You ever heard of Siegfried Sassoon, boy?”
“He’s some sort of poet, isn’t he?”
“He was my captain! Served with him in the First Battalion. Mad Jack, we called him. A holy terror, a man made for night patrols and the knife. A right poof he was too, but no one cared about that, not with a killer the likes of him to lead us. Taught me how to slit a throat and how to appreciate a good bit of poetry; not many that can do both well, not like Mad Jack!” He knocked back his gin and before the glass was down, Topper had it filled. He refilled his and mine and we both drank, it seeming the only sensible thing to do.
“Oh, when one of his friends-his dear friends, you know-when one of them got killed, he’d be in an awful state. Terrible. Took its toll on him, it did, all those pals of his buying it. But he kept me alive, even though there were times I’d pray for a quick bullet. Do you know his poetry, boy? Likely not, likely not. I read it still, his war stuff, I mean, when the bombs fall. Makes me feel better, remembering where I’ve been, and survived. Now listen, and you’ll know what I mean.” He pushed his glass toward Topper, who added a splash and sat back.
He read from the book, poems about rotting corpses, mud, machine guns, and death. He read between slugs of gin, and his voice rose, until the book fell from his hands and he recited a final paragraph, his face turned upward, eyes searching the ceiling for ghosts, flares, or perhaps a glimpse of heaven. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.
I sat in stunned and gin-soaked silence as he finished. The room beyond, and all the people in it, were quiet, hushed, as if in church at the end of a magnificent sermon. Archie’s eyes were half open, but I knew he was somewhere else, somewhere beyond drunkenness and memory, someplace I never wanted to see, a place worse than hell, that place I’d glimpsed in my own father’s eyes. The trenches.
I stood, glancing at the books on his shelf. All poetry, the big English poets-Blake, Wordsworth, and others I’d never heard of. Americans like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Poe. But it was the volume of Sassoon that was dog-eared, scarred with bookmarks and notations, open on the floor. Topper rose and took me by the arm, guiding me out, into the open space.
“Don’t come back, if you know what’s good for you.” He said it quietly, not a threat, more as a wishful entreaty, a desire for someone to escape the repeated misery of a father’s wartime memories. Charlie returned my revolver, and I walked out of the siding, hardly aware of the faces gazing at me.
I made my way upward. The bombing had stopped, and as I came to the surface it seemed like bright daylight. I squinted against the light and saw it was a raging fire, enveloping a building farther down Liverpool Street. Fire engines pumped streams of water that disappeared into the inferno as I made my way around the wreckage that had spilled out into the street. Firemen snaked hoses around burning timbers as ambulances stood in the rosy, flickering light, their rear doors open, beckoning the injured. Beyond, bodies lay in a row where the sidewalk was clear, dust coating them a uniform gray, their corpses merging into a single lump of shattered flesh and torn clothing. It was the ARP warden I’d talked to on my way in, along with the mother and two small children he’d been helping.
I stumbled out into the street and broke into a run, not knowing where I was going.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’d decided to join Kaz on his early morning trot through Hyde Park. I wanted to sweat out the stink of gin and poetry that clung to my skin and clogged my brain like a foul nightmare. My head was thick with the smell of smoke I’d inhaled from the fires, the hangover I’d awoken with, and the confusion I felt as I tried to sort through what I’d learned.
I filled Kaz in on my trip to the shelter and the strange interview with Archie and Topper Chapman. Archie’s alcohol-fired poetry reading, the sharp blade to my throat, Topper’s warning, the home-away-from-home setup in the tunnel, it was all strange enough. But what I really didn’t get was their entire lack of interest in Gennady Egorov.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, trying to draw in enough breath to speak and keep up with Kaz. “They were intereste
d in doing business if I had something to offer, but they didn’t give a hoot about Egorov.”
“If the Russian had been their source of information, there would be nothing you could do to replace his services, at least in terms of hijacking Russian supplies. Why should they show any interest?”
“Because Archie didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to let anyone get the best of him. Whoever killed Egorov hurt his business. That’s not something any crime boss in Boston or London would let slide.”
“Yes, I see,” Kaz said. “He can’t afford to appear weak.”
“Which means that he already knows who did it, or that Egorov wasn’t the primary source of his information.”
“You mean someone else in the embassy?”
“Yeah. Or Archie already took care of things. Maybe the guy who pulled the trigger is floating facedown in the Thames right now.”
“Perplexing indeed,” Kaz said, raising his head to check the sky. “Cloudy today. Bad bombing weather.”
“I could do without another night of that,” I said. “Why do you think they came back?”
“The Germans? Because we didn’t expect them.”
“Archie Chapman did.”
“From what you told me, Archie Chapman still expects the Boche to charge across No Man’s Land. Do you think someone as crazy and bloodthirsty as he really reads all that poetry?”
“Yes, I do. He may be nuts, but he’s not unintelligent, and he came under his captain’s influence at an early age. He’s been cultivating everything he learned in the trenches since then. Cruelty, killing, and the beauty of words. Maybe they balance each other out, who knows?”
“Maybe he’s just crazy,” Kaz said.
“Strange, coming from a guy as comfortable with books as he is with a gun.”
“Poets are mad. Scholars are merely preoccupied.”
“Mad Jack,” I said. “That’s what they called Sassoon, according to Archie.”
“He went off his head after his brother was killed at Gallipoli,” Kaz said. “Tried to get himself killed, I’ve heard, but ended up coming back alive each time he went out on a raid.” We turned at the end of Rotten Row, slowing our pace a bit. I thought about Diana, and her need to confront death. Kaz looked solemn, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. Diana courting death, Daphne dead and gone.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.” I laid my hand on his shoulder as he wiped the sweat from his face, both of us breathing deeply in the cold morning air. “Kind of odd, isn’t it, to think about a guy like Sassoon with Archie Chapman? What would they have had in common? Archie, from the East End, and Sassoon an educated officer?”
“He wrote a poem called ‘Conscripts,’” Kaz said. “I don’t recall all of it, but it spoke about the different kinds of men trained for combat. The educated, the sensitive, along with the rougher men, whom at first he disliked. Near the end, it went: But the kind, common ones that I despised (Hardly a man of them I’d count as friend), What stubborn-hearted virtues they disguised! They stood and played the hero to the end.”
“So he admired a guy like Archie for staying alive,” I said, “when his brother didn’t?”
“Who knows?” Kaz said. “Who knows what a poet or a madman thinks? Or a killer like Chapman? I have enough trouble in this war without trying to ferret out the secrets of the last.”
“I’m doing my best to keep you out of trouble, Kaz. Don’t do anything to make that job harder.”
“Thank you, Billy. You are a good friend.”
I clapped Kaz on the shoulder and picked up my pace, trying not to get left behind. I remembered those words, spoken with a different accent, years ago. It had been Nuno Chagas, speaking to my dad. Nuno was a Portugee lobsterman who ran his boat out of Cohasset Harbor. He’d been a smuggler, bringing rum and whiskey in from offshore boats during Prohibition. He wasn’t a hoodlum, just the son of an immigrant, a working stiff who did what he had to do when the Depression hit and lobster became a luxury many could do without. He and Dad, along with Uncle Frank, used to go out fishing every now and then. A few bottles found their way home, but it was a favor, not a payoff. One day Nuno had a problem. A big problem. He’d made his liquor runs for the Gustin Gang, run out of Southie by Frankie and Steve Wallace. The Wallaces weren’t saints, but they were local Irish boys, and they robbed other thieves as much as they robbed anyone else. They were connected politically, and while they were arrested frequently, charges had a way of being dropped. I guess they were tolerated. Nuno had no beef with them, but a rival outfit was trying to elbow its way in, aiming at taking over the Boston liquor market. It wasn’t the Italians, and no one could prove the rumor that it was Joe Kennedy, making a buck however he could. But that didn’t matter. Goons from out of town were threatening guys like Nuno, and the Gustin Gang threatened right back. Each side wanted Nuno to work for them. Or else… I was only a kid at the time, but I remember Nuno coming over to the house on Sunday, dressed in a suit that was worn to a shine. He’d thanked my father, and told him what a good friend he was. Dad said, My friend’s troubles are my own, and then Nuno stayed for Sunday dinner.
“My friend’s troubles are my own,” I said, and felt the presence of my old man, and the odd feeling of understanding what he’d meant, finally. The depth of it. This was more than words, it was the quiet opening of the heart, the indelible definition of friendship.
Kaz looked at the ground, strangely, just as Nuno had done. We walked in silence, everything necessary having been said. I never knew what Dad had done to fix things for Nuno, even when I asked him after I made rookie and wore the blue. Nuno got out of the business right after Frankie Wallace got himself gunned down by an Italian gang from North Boston, and if he missed the money, he seemed glad to be legit. I often wondered exactly what Dad had done, and if he’d ever spill the beans.
“Anything new about the Russians and Katyn?” I asked, after we stopped to stretch.
“Yes,” Kaz said wearily. “The Russians will issue a report on Katyn soon. The bodies of those poor souls are being dug up once again. Only Russians are serving on their hand-picked commission; they’re not even letting their own tame Polish Communists participate.”
“No doubt what the verdict will be?”
“None at all. They will lie, and tell the world the Germans killed all those Polish officers. And the world will believe what it is told to believe.”
“But you have evidence, you have Tadeusz.”
“Tadeusz has not spoken a word since you met him,” Kaz said. “Nothing.”
“But the Red Cross saw all that evidence; the Germans brought them in. The letters and documents, all the dates ending in 1940. That has to count for something.”
“The Russians will plant their own evidence, and their scientists will all swear it was dug up. The commission is headed by Dr. Nikolai Bordenko, head of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A very respectable figure. He will be believed.”
“If he’s so respectable, why would he put his name to a lie?”
“Billy, the Russians are as ruthless as the Nazis. His family would be killed or sent to a Siberian labor camp at best.”
“Article 58,” I said.
“What?”
“Sidorov told me. It makes it a crime in the Soviet Union to not report any activity against the state. It gives the NKVD a blank check to arrest anyone.”
“Ah, I see,” Kaz said. “If you refuse to do what you are told, and your family does not turn you in, they can be arrested.”
“Nice and neat.”
“Yes. Unfortunate that they will dig up those bodies again. It would save everyone a lot of trouble if they simply wrote their report and let them lie in peace.”
I didn’t see any bomb damage on my way to New Scotland Yard, but gray smoke was visible to the east, from the area around St. Paul’s and the dockyards farther down the river. It drifted lazily across the morning sky, marking the remnants of last night’s sudden devastation. More bricks
to stack in piles. More bodies laid out on the sidewalk.
“Boyle,” Inspector Scutt said as I entered the detectives’ chamber. “We wondered how you made out in the raid last night. You went to see Chapman, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I had the pleasure,” I said, sitting down in front of Scutt’s desk.
“You were right in the thick of it then,” Flack said as he joined us. “Jerry’s a bit out of practice, but he managed to drop a few from the Surrey Docks up to Moorgate. Lucky for us a lot of them got nervous, or lost, and dropped their loads short. Tore up the countryside to the southeast, the bastards did, but better there than in the heart of London.”
“Bomb alley, they call it,” Scutt said. “The whole area from the coast, between Dover and Hastings, and straight up to London. Any German bomber that aborts or tangles with our fighters will drop their bombs and head for home. Between those random hits and actual targets in the area, it gets fairly nerve-racking down that way. My wife’s family is from Folkestone, and I’ve heard plenty from them about it.”
“Plus all the crashes, aircraft from both sides,” Flack said. “There were more than twenty bombers shot down last night. If most of the aircrew got out, that means we have almost a hundred Germans on the ground right now. The Home Guard is spread all over the countryside looking for them. Hasn’t been a dustup like this in months.”
“I saw more than a dustup last night,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. Flack seemed a bit too excited about the raid for my taste.
“Of course you did, Boyle,” Scutt said, seeming to understand my reluctance to rejoice in the return of the Luftwaffe. “It’s terrible, and at the same time, it brings us back to when we all stood together, Londoners and Englishmen alone, shoulder to shoulder. With all you Americans coming along, as grand as that is, sometimes I feel we’ve lost something.”
“I heard it in the Tube station this morning,” Flack said. “People talking to each other, saying we can stand up to it. Hard to explain, and I don’t mean to sound callous, but it’s almost like the war had passed us by. Civilians, in London, I mean. Now, it’s back. Gives some meaning to all the difficulties. Rationing, homes destroyed, men scattered all across the world.”
