by Bill Walker
“How can you watch that drivel, Freddy?”
Rainer turned and saw his wife standing in the doorway, her satin robe barely containing her womanliness. Christ, she looked good in the morning, he thought. What does she see in this old soldier?
“I wanted to see if there was any more news about Hans.”
Ilse moved across the floor, her hips swinging invitingly, her green eyes flashing. “Can I persuade you to be a little late this morning?” she asked threading her arms around his waist.
Rainer smiled and caressed the back of her neck, something that always made her purr. “You probably could, but Erich will be in any minute. Besides, if I were to succumb to your charms, as I so often do, you would then have to answer to my board.”
Ilse’s eyes widened. “My God, I forgot. Today is the day.”
“Yes, today is the day. And if I don’t get going, it will likely be my last as Direktor of Horst and Freideke. Besides, if the vote goes my way, I’ll want to celebrate at lunch.”
A wicked smile crossed Ilse’s face. “Is that a promise or a threat?”
“Both. Now let me go, or I shall not be responsible for my actions.” He pinched her bottom, making her squeal, and walked toward the front of the house, collecting his briefcase from his office on the way. She followed, still playing the seductress.
Reaching for the door, he stopped, remembering something. “Is it all right if I take your car again? I think something is wrong with the BMW.”
“I hate it when you drive my car,” she said, the seductive mood spoiled. “The last time, you let some idiot put a dent in the door.”
“My dear, it’s not as if I wanted him to do it. It just happened.”
“But if something is wrong with yours, how will I meet you for lunch?”
Rainer bowed to her inimitable logic. “You’re right, I’ll take mine.”
He opened the door and walked onto the circular drive, his gait slowing as he noticed that the black Mercedes was gone, the gray BMW belonging to the next crew not yet in its place.
Strange. Shift changes were always overlapping. And where was Erich? He glanced at his watch and frowned. If he did not leave right now, he would be mired in traffic and would be late for his board meeting, the consequences of which would be fatal to his career. He looked back and saw her standing there, one bare, well-formed leg showing through the slit of the robe.
I am a lucky man, he thought.
“Stay inside until the next shift arrives, all right?”
She nodded and blew him a kiss. “Good luck, Liebchen!”
Waving, he opened the driver’s side door of his jet-black BMW 750IL and tossed his briefcase onto the passenger seat, climbed inside, and placed the key into the ignition.
Sighing at the injustice of Hans’ death, Rainer twisted the key, completing a circuit that led to a detonator plugged into a half-pound of semtex wired to the BMW’s undercarriage. There was a nanosecond’s delay before the massive explosion shattered the luxury car into a million fiery fragments, blowing out every window in his fifty-room mansion and leaving his hysterical widow to watch helplessly while his shredded corpse burned to cinders.
Chapter Ten
Fumbling with his keys, Michael Thorley, Jr. locked the door of his South Kensington mews flat and dashed out onto the pavement, a sweat already beading his brow and staining the underarms of his starched Harrod’s shirt.
He was going to be late again.
Cursing when he stubbed the toe of his wingtip shoes on a tilted paving stone, he managed to grab a lamppost in time to steady himself. He took a moment to glance at his watch.
8:35 a.m.
He was going to be very late.
A middle-aged woman approached, her beefy arms laden with two bulging bags of groceries displaying the Tesco logo. She smiled, a pleading look in her eyes.
“Need a hand there, Mrs. Herrick?” he said, trying to sound as if he had nothing better to do. He had to stop being so bloody nice. The older woman grinned, the lines around her eyes crinkling like tissue paper.
“Oh, you’re such a dear, Michael. Just up the steps, I know you’re a busy lad.”
“Never too busy for you, Mrs. H.”
“Oh, you’re just saying that because I’m your landlady,” she clucked, her blushing face belying her words.
He took the bags and started up the paved walk to her townhouse, a white stone affair that adjoined his mews flat. “Never. You’re the light of my life,” he said.
“Ooh, now you’re just trying to flatter an old girl,” she said, following him. “Well, I won’t lower the rent. But I will introduce you to my niece. She’s asked about you, you know. I think she rather fancies you.”
Michael placed the bags on the top step and managed a pleasant smile. Mrs. Herrick’s niece favored purple hair and safety pins through the nose. “I’d appreciate that Mrs. H, but I’m really not looking to—”
“Now, now,” she said, patting his arm in a motherly way. “You’ve got to stop squirreling yourself away, get out more often....”
She began to prattle, and Michael became even more nervous. He felt a rivulet of sweat trickle down his spine.
Really late.
He began backing down the walk. “Mrs. H, I really do have to be running.”
“I’ll tell Tilly that you’re dying to meet her!” She said, waving.
Turning, he ran toward the corner, where he saw the Number 11 red double-decker idling by the curb, an advert for Player’s cigarettes plastered along its side panel. He might make it. Putting on a burst of speed, Michael reached the rear platform of the bus just as the driver gunned the engine and began steering back into traffic. He leaped on and grabbed the stairway railing, breathing an overheated sigh of relief.
I’ve got to start exercising, he thought, feeling his heart thudding against his rib cage. Dizzy from the unseasonably warm weather and the undue exertion, he trudged into the lower level and settled in one of the seats that faced the aisle, his back to an open window. The bus picked up speed, and Michael closed his eyes when he felt a cooling breeze play across his neck, glad for a moment of relief. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow, just when the Conductor, a rotund black man with a wide smile and swinging dreadlocks, waddled up to him.
“Where to, Mon?” he asked, his lilting voice betraying its Jamaican roots.
Michael reached into his trousers and extracted a handful of change.
“Horse Guards, please.”
The Conductor deftly set the dial on his portable dispenser and rolled out the appropriately priced ticket. Handing him a few coins, Michael noted the man’s checked shirt open at the neck. The lack of a tie made for an odd look with the standard London Transport uniform. Like so many other aspects of modern life, the lack of regard for traditional dress was becoming the norm.
The ride to London proper lasted ten minutes and Michael got off the bus in Whitehall at Horse Guards Avenue and walked the rest of the way to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Occupying a tiny one-room office behind a frosted-glass door on the second floor at number 45 Whitehall Court—a rambling pile of white stone and gargoyles—it boasted bilious-green walls, a battered partner’s desk surrounded by wall-to-wall filing cabinets of a uniform battleship gray. A fifteen-year-old air conditioner wheezed tepid air from the single window, making the air smell faintly of mildew.
Michael entered the room, shed his jacket, and placed it on the coat stand next to the door. The water cooler burbled a greeting as he slid into his chair and began to study his phone messages. His coworker, Ferguson, lounged across from him, scanning The Daily Mail with disdain, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Another German War Hero Murdered,” the headline screamed in large bold type.
Everything about Ferguson was rumpled, from his patched tweed jacket and his threadbare corduroy trousers, to his wild thatch of dark-brown hair and affable hang-dog face. Even his desk looked as if it ha
d been visited by a tiny tornado, papers and personal knickknacks scattered about with careless abandon.
“’Ere listen to this!” Ferguson said, dropping his “H’s” in his inimitable Cockney fashion and slapping the paper with his free hand. The ash from his cigarette dislodged, plopping unnoticed onto his tea-stained tie. “‘The Prime Minister announced today that talks with the USSR will commence next month as scheduled, despite rumors to the contrary.’ Bloody contrary this!” he said, making masturbatory motions. “Those bloody Slavs’ll have her for breakfast.”
Michael looked up from his work, his nose wrinkling at the stench of Ferguson’s cigarette. He noticed the overflowing ashtray, a cheap ceramic dish with the Brighton Pavilion painted on it—had crept onto his side of the desk, otherwise as neat as an army recruit’s footlocker. “Don’t you ever empty that thing?”
“Sorry, mate,” Ferguson said, lifting the ceramic dish and overturning it into the waste bin. It raised a noxious cloud of ash, making the room smell even worse. “You call that number I gave you?”
Michael didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the paper he was desperately trying to study.
“You didn’t, did ya?”
“I had work to do,” he said, still not looking up.
Ferguson threw the paper aside. It landed in a heap on the floor, drawing Michael’s attention.
“Work? Blimey! That’s all you do, Mike. What about having a little fun?” He shook his head and leaned forward across the desk. “Maisy was just about a sure thing. She likes the studious type, she says. And you don’t call the number?”
Michael shrugged. “I lost it.”
“Now that’s a bleedin’ good one,” he laughed. “The neatest man alive and ‘e loses the phone number to the easiest bird in Kensington!”
“I don’t want the ‘easiest bird in Kensington.’ I want someone with a bit of breeding, someone I can relate to.”
“You want a bloody fossil, you do. They don’t make ’em that way anymore. Now, it’s all flash and trash.”
“Then I’d rather do without,” Michael said, getting irritated. “I swear to God, you and my landlady should open up a dating service. In fact, she’s got a niece. You want flash and trash? Have I got the girl for you!”
Before Ferguson could offer a retort, the phone rang. Michael snatched it up, shooting Ferguson a nasty look. “Commonwealth War Graves Commission.... No, I’m sorry Mrs. Petrie, we haven’t located the grave as of yet. We’re waiting for files from our main office in Maidenhead. I believe we’ll know for sure in about a week.... Yes, I wish we could send it over the phone, too.... Thank you, I’ll call you as soon as I have the information.”
Michael hung up just as Ferguson pulled out a buff-colored envelope from under a pile of file folders. “We got another one of those letters in this morning’s post. ‘Dear Sirs. I know this is a trifle late for such inquiries, but I am trying to locate the grave site of my late father, Sergeant Major Arthur Woodley of His Majesty’s Regiment, Royal South Wessex....’”
Michael frowned. “Hmmm.... South Wessex.... Did you make those inquiries about the last ones we had in?”
“I should say so. Took bloody forever and a day for those wankers to get back to me. If I wasn’t such a bureaucrat myself, I might have gotten—”
“What did they say?” Michael cut in, impatient with Ferguson’s usual banter.
Ferguson threw up his hands in disgust. “That’s just it. They didn’t. The bloke said, and I bloody well quote: ‘‘er Majesty’s government have no record of such a regiment.’”
“What?”
“That’s what I said. Then the bloody arse told me to mind my own business and hung up on me.”
Michael leaned back in his chair, his eyes focused on a crack in the ceiling, and tried to make sense of what Ferguson had told him. On the one hand, it was conceivable that someone could have remembered the name of his father’s regiment incorrectly. But this letter made the fifth one in six months, and everyone had unerringly inquired about that selfsame regiment: The Royal South Wessex. Far too many to be mere coincidence.
So that left the man Ferguson had spoken to. Knowing Ferguson as he did, Michael knew that it was quite possible he’d rubbed the fellow the wrong way and been told to piss off for his troubles. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a Royal South Wessex regiment buried somewhere in the files.
He sighed and rubbed his temples where a dull throbbing had begun some moments before. What was the use, anyway? Without any leads, there was no way they were going to solve the problem now, or at any time hence.
So why did it bother him so much?
Shaking his head, Michael let the chair fall forward, the spring shrieking for lack of oil. “All right, then,” he said, as he began straightening his papers. “We’ll put it aside for now, maybe I’ll call the man myself later on. Let’s not worry about it.”
Ferguson stubbed out the butt of his cigarette and pulled out another, lighting it with a flick of his battered Zippo. “Fine by me, mate. I’ve bloody well had it with those tossers. I should’ve listened to me Dad and become a bleedin’ accountant like him. Prob’ly own a bloody Jag by now.”
Turning back to his work, Michael allowed himself a tiny smile as he imagined Ferguson tending to someone’s books, his office a blizzard of paper.
The phone rang again, and Michael snatched it up, grateful for the distraction. He pushed all thoughts of phantom regiments and incompetent accountants from his mind and put on his best phone voice. “Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Michael Thorley, Jr. speaking.... Yes ma’am, the information came in yesterday, and I was about to ring you up....”
Chapter Eleven
Sir William Atwater stood in the crowd of eager tourists cradling a wiry Jack Russell terrier in his arms. Dressed, as was his custom, in a dark blue pin-stripe Savile Row suit, starched white shirt and his Hussars tie, he stood straight and tall in resolute defiance of the infirmities of old age. His snow-white handlebar mustache was precisely waxed, and his Dunn’s bowler hat placed at the proper jaunty angle. Gray lambskin gloves covered the large liver spots on his hands and a tightly furled black umbrella hung from the crook of his arm.
The dog, all pointed ears and darting eyes, quivered with anticipation that mirrored his master’s.
The tourists around him reacted with awe and a whirring and clicking of shutters as the first of Her Majesty’s Horse Guards rode into view, the sun glinting off their highly polished breastplates and helmets. As always, they rode to the strains of the “British Grenadiers,” a sprightly tune that never failed to make Sir William swell with pride.
“Watch now, Watson, that’s a good lad,” he said to the little dog. “This is the best part, isn’t it?”
Watson yipped in reply and Sir William chuckled. Ever since his Evie had passed away five years before, Watson had been such comfort. Today, as he’d done every day for the past twenty years of his retirement—Good Lord, had it really been that long already—he’d awakened at 0600, dressed and taken his breakfast at the club. At precisely 1100 hours, he could be found standing on this very spot watching the Changing of the Guard—every day—rain or shine. One must stand on tradition, after all.
When the ceremony ended, he would stroll through St. James’s Park, let Watson do his duty, and then spend the afternoon sitting in his study writing his memoirs.
Of course, they would never be published, as much as he secretly wished they would be, for as the former Director of MI6, he was the guardian of his nation’s secrets, and therefore still bound by the Official Secrets Act. No, they would never see the light of day. His executors had instructions to burn the lot the very hour of his death, and he intended to see it done, even if it meant haunting the bloody fools. Sir William chuckled to himself. He rather enjoyed the thought of being a proper English ghost.
As the last of the Horse Guards passed him, their mounts swishing their coiffed tails in unison, Watson began to whine, squirming in his master’s
arms like an eager puppy. Sir William eyed the terrier with mock disdain. “You must learn to hold your waters, old boy. England expects every dog to do his duty...discreetly.”
Sir William chuckled again, placing the dog on the pavement and attaching his leash. “Come, Watson, let us take our leave.”
They began walking toward the Horse Guards barracks through the dispersing crowd. The tiny dog pulled and strained at his leash, anxious to place his mark on familiar territory. “Easy, old boy, easy,” Sir William admonished. “We’re almost there.”
Passing under an archway between two barracks buildings, they entered Horse Guards Parade where the Guards drilled, and on to St. James’s Park, a large area of green crisscrossed by footpaths and dotted with trees. Most of its interior was dominated by a large artificial lake, and here and there were families of ducks trolling about, leaving trails of ripples to mar its otherwise glassy surface.
As with the Changing of the Guard, St. James’s Park reinforced Sir William’s belief that tradition still reigned, even if common sense in government had long since fled. And that was the rub and the main reasons he’d resigned his position at what was then considered an early age. He’d lost his stomach for the fight, especially when Harold Wilson’s Labour government began sniping at MI6’s heels, questioning every blasted move they made and calling them imperialist throwbacks.
The nerve of the man! The utter gall! It was even thought, in certain circles, that he made his frequent trips to Moscow only to receive new orders. As a result, the sixties had turned into a quagmire, and it had all gone downhill from there.
Suddenly depressed, Sir William released his hold on Watson’s leash, collapsed onto one of the ubiquitous benches and watched as the little terrier scurried over to a favorite tree, letting loose a stream of urine that darkened the bark where it hit.
