Comes the War

by Ed Ruggero

  They rode in silence for a while, and soon the rhythm of the cars made Harkins sleepy. He folded his arms across his chest, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and leaned back. He was vaguely aware of Sinnott leaving the car and opened his eyes once to see Wickman sitting across from him, face hidden behind a newspaper. He let himself be pulled down again, eyelids and limbs heavy.

  And then he was back on the LST, but this time he was trapped inside the stuck hatch with Ensign Cedrick and the one-legged sailor, and his brother Michael was outside, swinging at the bent dogs with Beverly Ludington’s teapot, trying to free them. Harkins kept calling Michael’s name, but his little brother was beyond hearing. Harkins yelled to Cedrick, “He can’t hear me!”

  Cedrick peered around the edge of the hatch, then leaned back inside and said, “He’s dead!”

  Michael took a few more heroic swings, then just walked away, arm in arm with Staff Sergeant Cortizo. Somehow Harkins, though still inside the flooding compartment, could see the pier with its temporary morgue and a line of telegram delivery boys standing beside their bicycles, dark uniforms buttoned tight, messenger bags slung over one shoulder. One of them, a cheerful, freckle-faced kid of no more than sixteen, assured Harkins that he could ride clear across the ocean to Philadelphia.

  “I’ve done it before,” the boy said.

  Harkins startled himself awake, slipping off the bench seat and getting his legs tangled with Wickman’s.

  “You okay?” Wickman asked.

  “Great,” Harkins said. He shook his head to clear it. “Why the sudden interest in Kerr?”

  “What?”

  Harkins climbed back onto the bench. “First he wanted me to stop investigating Batcheller’s murder, then he got me out of London completely. Now he wants me back. What the hell has changed?”

  “Well, we are supposed to be spy-catchers. The OSS, I mean. Counterespionage. If Kerr has been turned, it’s our job to find out. Especially if he had something to do with Batcheller’s murder.”

  “But why does he need me?” Harkins asked. “Getting me trained for the invasion was important enough so that I had to drop everything and hurry out to the coast; now it’s not so important, or not as important as playing detective back in London.”

  “Maybe he thinks you’re a good investigator,” Wickman said. “Or maybe you’re being paranoid.”

  “I may be paranoid, but you’ve got to admit that an unusual number of people have been trying to kill me lately.”

  Wickman chuckled, though Harkins hadn’t meant it as a joke. He looked past his reflection in the window. Soon it would be dusk and they’d cover everything with blackout curtains, but for the moment the Devon countryside looked like the very definition of peace.

  “I’ve got some other questions about our Major Sinnott, too,” Harkins said.

  “He’s a puzzle, that’s for sure.”

  “You ever figure out what he does with the money you’ve been giving him? For his so-called special project?”

  “No,” Wickman said. “What does that have to do with Kerr?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Harkins said. “Maybe something.”

  * * *

  Harkins and Wickman met Lowell outside OSS headquarters on Grosvenor at twenty-one hundred; both men wore civilian clothes.

  “I’m so very happy to see you, sir,” Lowell said to Harkins. She was wringing her hands, worried about him.

  Harkins thought about giving her a hug. Instead, he just said, “Thanks, Lowell. I’m happy to be seen.”

  The driver took a deep breath, shook her hands as if flinging water from her fingers.

  “Right, then,” she said. “A night on the town is it? Are you sure that’s a good idea, Lieutenant Harkins, after what you’ve been through the last couple of days?”

  Harkins had a story ready to explain his bruised ribs and other injuries, but the rumor mill hadn’t been affected by Eisenhower’s order to keep the disaster secret. Lowell knew about the sinking by the time Harkins called her. She had the same stock of fantastic rumors that Harkins had heard in the first twelve hours, plus an additional one: that there had been a mutiny on a U.S. Navy ship.

  “I appreciate your concern, Lowell,” Harkins said.

  “We’re working,” Wickman said. “Sort of.”

  Wickman and Harkins had agreed to divide their efforts, spending part of their time looking at Lionel Kerr—whose questionable loyalties had sparked Sinnott’s sudden interest—and part of their time looking at their boss. Their ace-in-the-hole for protecting Cushing was the questionable provenance of the so-called “secret” report Gefner had filed at Eighth Air Force. Harkins wasn’t sure that was enough to save the pilot, and he was determined to keep digging until he had something better.

  When he climbed into the backseat, Harkins found the notebooks he’d entrusted to Lowell.

  “Did you read my notes?” he asked.

  “Of course, sir,” she said.

  “Solve the crime yet?”

  “I’m this close,” she said, holding her thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart.

  “Well done,” Harkins said. “Can you find a pub called the Lamb and Flag?” Sinnott had mentioned the place a number of times.

  “The one in Marylebone, you mean?” Lowell asked. “Major Sinnott’s pub?”

  In the backseat, Harkins and Wickman exchanged a look.

  “Why do you call it that?” Harkins asked.

  “Oh, it’s just one of the places the drivers take him pretty regularly. Or, I should say a place where we pick him up in the mornings.”

  Harkins sat back, looked out the window at the blacked-out London streets and said to Wickman, “It might be worse than we thought.”

  The Lamb and Flag turned out to be a narrow-front building set back from the street a good forty or fifty feet. A crowd of men in uniform and women in wool skirts spilled onto the sidewalk, where a rectangle of light from the doorway lit up the alley.

  “Hope this isn’t the night the Krauts decide to go after blackout violators,” Harkins said as they approached.

  “May I come along, sir?” Lowell asked. “After I park the car?”

  “I don’t know, Lowell,” Harkins said, studying the crowd. “You might stick out. I don’t see any other women in uniform.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet I can find a chap to escort me in, sir,” she said.

  Wickman was already out of the car when he stopped, leaned back in, and addressed Harkins. “She can keep an eye on the door for us,” he said. “Warn us if Sinnott shows up, which is a distinct possibility.”

  Harkins looked at Wickman, then at Lowell.

  “Okay,” he said. “You can be the lookout.”

  “The lookout! Yes, sir,” she said, smiling again. “It will be just like one of your American gangster movies.”

  “Let’s make it one where everyone gets away,” Harkins said. “Not the kind where we all get machine-gunned in the back alley.”

  Harkins and Wickman headed inside and straight to the bar while Lowell parked. Wickman asked for a pint; Harkins shook his head and asked the bartender, “You know Major Richard Sinnott?”

  “I do indeed. Comes in here all the time.”

  The bartender looked to be in his fifties, bald on top, with wild tufts of gray hair spreading out like wings from the sides of his head. He wore a dingy white shirt under a dark vest, a row of three medals on his chest.

  “You served in the last one?” Harkins asked.

  “Highland Light Infantry,” the man said, pulling his shoulders back. He was missing three bottom teeth. “Name’s Starkey. Richard Starkey.”

  Wickman and Harkins introduced themselves, then Wickman asked, “You seen Sinnott around lately?”

  “No, but he might be down on the Devon coast. Been hearing rumors they stopped a German invasion down there. People have been talking about fires out on the channel and shooting everywhere. I didn’t hear anything on the BBC, but I’m not sure they’d tell us anyway
.”

  So much for the big secret, Harkins thought.

  “How often does Major Sinnott come in here?”

  “Seems like two, three nights a week. I think he starts here most nights, though some nights he ends up here. We’ve a couple of rooms upstairs where he’s been known to sleep it off.”

  “He ran a tab here, right?” Harkins asked.

  Starkey cocked his head, and the angle along with jutting wings of gray hair made him look like a too-large terrier.

  “Kind of a personal question, isn’t it?”

  Harkins had anticipated this. “It would be,” he said. “Except that I lost a good bit to him in poker, and he said I should come around and pay off his bar bill. I tell you, he was a lucky bastard that night.”

  “Uncanny,” Wickman agreed.

  Harkins pulled three one-pound notes from his shirt pocket and laid them on the bar. Starkey reached for a worn ledger next to the cash box.

  “You’re going to need more than that, mate,” he said. He opened the book, licked the tip of a finger, and flipped through the pages. “He owes sixteen pounds.”

  “Wow,” Harkins said. Then, recovering, “He’s a pretty good customer, then.”

  “He’ll be a good customer after he pays his bill.”

  Harkins did the calculation. Sixteen pounds was sixty-four American dollars, or a quarter of Sinnott’s monthly pay.

  “Well, I don’t owe him that much,” Harkins said.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Wickman said. “Just so we don’t get in another card game with this guy, were there any bar tabs he paid before this one?”

  “You gents investigators of some sort?” Starkey asked.

  Harkins pushed the three one-pound notes across the bar. Starkey looked down, then pulled them toward him and put an empty glass on top. He licked his finger again, flipped pages back and forth a few times.

  “He paid a thirty-pound debt in mid-March,” Starkey said.

  One hundred and twenty dollars, Harkins thought. Almost half of a major’s monthly pay.

  “And twenty-five pounds at the end of January.”

  “Was he entertaining groups of people?” Harkins asked.

  “Sometimes he had a friend or two with him,” Starkey said. “Not so many Yanks, but some local women.”

  “Girlfriends?”

  “Of a sort, I’d venture.”

  “You said he stayed here some nights, ended here on other nights,” Harkins asked. “Any idea what other places he frequented?”

  “No idea,” Starkey said, holding up the ledger. “But I’ll bet this isn’t the only debt he owes.”

  Harkins thanked the man and walked toward the door. Lowell was standing just inside, an American sergeant on either side of her. Harkins caught her eye and motioned for her to come to him. She excused herself from her admirers.

  “Any idea where else Sinnott might go?” Harkins asked.

  “I never drove him at night,” Lowell said. “And this is the only place I remember any of the girls mentioning.”

  “We could walk the neighborhood, just check in at various pubs,” Wickman said.

  “The war will be over by the time we visit all the pubs just in this area,” Harkins said.

  “I have an idea,” Lowell said. She pushed between them and headed for the bar, where she tapped an attractive, well-dressed woman on the shoulder. They were too far away for Harkins to hear anything, but he could see Lowell clearly. She stood with her hands in the small of her back, her feet shoulder width apart, as if on parade. At one point the woman laughed at something Lowell said, tossing her hair and reaching out to touch Lowell on the shoulder. After a few minutes of earnest conversation, Lowell appeared to thank the woman, then returned to Harkins and Wickman.

  “Friend of yours?” Harkins asked.

  “I asked her if she knew Major Sinnott, and if so, where else he might frequent. She gave me two more pub names.”

  “How did you know to ask her?” Harkins said.

  Lowell smiled at him, looked back at the woman, then at Harkins.

  “Intuition.”

  While Harkins watched, a short colonel approached the same woman, chasing off the two unlucky sergeants who’d struck out with Lowell. The woman shook hands with the American.

  Harkins chuckled. “She a working girl?”

  “I don’t know that expression,” Lowell said. The woman and the colonel squeezed past Harkins to get to the door. The woman flashed a pretty smile at Lowell.

  “She just seemed like a friendly sort, so I thought she might know some of the regulars.”

  * * *

  The information Lowell had uncovered turned out to be accurate, and by midnight they had identified two other pubs where Sinnott owed substantial amounts. Harkins kept a tally in his notebook, Wickman kept a running total in his head, updating it as they moved from one establishment to the next. At the last pub, the Coach Maker’s Arms, they grabbed a table. Wickman, who looked uneasy, wanted a whiskey and soda, Lowell a pint of ale. Harkins went to the bar to get the drinks, ordered himself a water.

  “If you’d rather a Coke, we have some,” the bartender offered.

  “Where did you get Coke?” Harkins asked.

  The man smirked. “It fell off a truck, Yank. Where do you think we got it?”

  “Okay,” Harkins said. “I’ll take one off your hands.” Harkins’ Coke turned out to be the most expensive of the three drinks.

  When he got back to the table, Harkins said, “How much of the stuff shipped over from the States winds up on the black market?”

  “A third, easily,” Wickman said. “Why? You thinking of switching over to chasing good old-fashioned thieves?”

  “It would be a lot easier to make sense out of that than what we’re dealing with,” Harkins said. “So, what are the totals from the three pubs for our Major Sinnott?”

  “Fifty-seven pounds,” Wickman said. “And in February and March combined, he paid a total of seventy-two pounds.”

  Lowell held Harkins’ notebook open, ran her finger down the page with the list of bar tabs. When she looked up, she said, “My goodness.”

  “It can’t all be the ‘special project’ money I handed over to him,” Wickman said. “That didn’t start until I got here.”

  He didn’t look relieved and gulped a bit of his drink. “I might be screwed if he implicates me for the funds that came later, claims I knew what was going on.”

  “We don’t know that, yet,” Harkins said. “There might be other explanations.”

  Wickman was still not consoled.

  “A major makes about two hundred and fifty dollars a month, maybe a bit more if he’s been in uniform for a while. So that’s—what?—two months’ pay, a bit more, that he’s spent in pubs since the beginning of the year.”

  “Not to mention any payments in January, or last December,” Lowell said.

  “Shit,” Wickman said.

  “Is he independently wealthy?” Harkins asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Wickman said. “He told me he had to scrape together cab fare to get to his interviews for that scholarship, the Rhodes. He likes talking about how he pulled himself up by his bootstraps.”

  “Is he on an expense account?”

  “Please,” Wickman said, shaking his head. “I would have uncovered that in the first few minutes of tidying up the books.”

  “Maybe he has a rich friend,” Lowell said.

  “Sort of,” Wickman said. “But I’m afraid it’s me, and it was never my money to give away.”

  “He could have more than one rich friend,” Harkins said.

  28

  1 May 1944

  0300 hours

  Major Richard Sinnott sat in the darkened front parlor of a formerly elegant townhouse near Charing Cross Hospital, a short-barreled pistol on the cushion beside him, a nearly full hip flask of whiskey between his legs, waiting for Lieutenant Eddie Harkins.

  Because Harkins would definitely come fo
r him.

  When Sinnott learned of Harkins’ background as a cop and a boxer, he thought he’d be just the right guy for the team, the kind who would persist through all the boring details of counterespionage. Harkins turned out to be all that and more. The problem was that Sinnott had assumed—mistakenly, as it turned out—he’d be able to control this mere first lieutenant, have him do a quick murder investigation before Sinnott trained him to be a spy-catcher.

  Something rattled the rubbish cans in the alley behind the dooryard, most likely his landlady’s enormous cat, Beelzebub, chasing the rats that lived in the piles of rubble punctuating every street. Sinnott loosened the cap of the flask, then thought better of it. He would need all his wits for this showdown.

  The evening had started well enough, some folding money in his pocket and at least a half-baked plan for solving his problems. But as soon as Starkey, the bartender at the Lamb and Flag, described the men who’d been asking about him, Sinnott knew things were going south. He paid part of his tab, then hurried to the Running Horse, which Harkins and Wickman had also found. He ended his evening at the Coach Maker’s Arms, arriving just thirty minutes or so after his two subordinates left. They’d found his three biggest bar tabs, maybe more. Harkins, who was supposed to be investigating Lionel Kerr, was following the messy, convoluted trail of Sinnott’s money problems.

  Since arriving home around one, Sinnott had been sitting in the dark, still dressed in his rumpled uniform, scheming and waiting for dawn. The funny thing was that he’d thought the enormous bills he’d run up all over London were the least of his problems. Once he left for the continent after the invasion to chase German agents and French collaborators, well, that would be that. Let them come and try to collect from him at the front. He certainly didn’t think anyone besides the pub owners would care about his debts.

  A bigger problem was the homicidal Sechin, who just might decide that Sinnott was too much trouble. He doubted Sechin would rat him out to the OSS; he was more of a brass verdict kind of guy: one shot to the back of the head.