‘But I’m not a doctor. How can I tell him what I don’t even know?’
Cissie’s eyes were wide and pleading. ‘You saw for yourself what happened at the sanatorium, you know how their experiments failed each time.’
‘We didn’t know anything at all! They wouldn’t even discuss individual cases with us, they kept us in the dark about everything.’
‘If different blood types could be mixed, then the doctors would have saved themselves!’ Cissie reasoned.
Hubble, irritated by the squabbling, smacked the side of my chair with his cane. He got our attention.
‘There is one thing I’m sure they didn’t try,’ he said in that creepy faraway voice of his. ‘They did not take all of the donor’s blood and transfer it into the recipient’s empty system.’
It was breathtaking in its flawed logic and now I knew he was completely insane. I wondered if his mental state had always been shaky, or if the disease itself was rotting his brain.
‘That’s ridiculous, you fucking lunatic!’ Couldn’t help it, had to make him aware of my considered opinion.
This time his cane bounced off the side of my skull. The blow was too weak to hurt much, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him stagger, only McGruder at his side preventing him going down all the way. A chair was quickly brought over, and when they’d settled him into it, facing me, about two yards away, I noticed that every part of him – his hands, his legs, shoulders, head – was trembling. His chest was heaving as he tried to regain his breath.
‘No, it is not ridiculous,’ he insisted between gasps, as if I were the lunatic. ‘The recipient’s blood will be slowly drained as blood from the donor will be slowly used to fill the veins.’
I laughed. Maybe it was hysteria, but I honestly appreciated the humour of his twisted reasoning. It was so outrageously and brilliantly simple.
‘You will kill both persons.’
For once I didn’t mind the ‘vill’. After all, Stern was speaking up for my benefit as well as his own. They’d kill me anyway, whether they carried out the transfusion or not, but I preferred a fast bullet to a leisurely bleeding.
‘Your man will have died from blood loss before his body will accept the new blood.’ Stern spoke quietly, authoritatively, a teacher explaining a difficult problem to a child. ‘Conflicting blood types will not even be the cause: you will kill this unfortunate man just as surely as if you had slit his throat with a knife.’
‘His blood will be replaced as quickly as it is lost!’
The shout set Hubble wheezing again and McGruder watched over him anxiously. The Blackshirt leader held a handkerchief to his mouth, his body doubled-up in the chair, his shoulders jerking as spasms ran through him. When he straightened and took the handkerchief away I could see it was specked with blood. He took in a long, deep breath and I heard a peculiar faint whistling sound from inside his chest. His eyes were blurred with dampness now, the lustre in them dimmed.
‘We’re wasting time,’ he said weakly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
Someone grabbed my shoulders from behind and the goon who’d been rummaging around in the bag on the floor held up both ends of the rubber tubing, a stupid grin on his face.
‘Wait, wait a minute.’ I was out of laughter and getting more desperate by the moment. ‘Listen. There are only four of us with the right kind of blood to resist the disease, five counting the fink here.’ I nodded towards Muriel, but she wouldn’t even look at me. ‘Don’t you get it? Even if the transfusions did work, you could only save a handful of your people. The rest are gonna die.’
‘Ah, then you admit the transfusions could be successful?’ The notion seemed to please Hubble.
I shook my head violently. ‘Not a chance in hell. I’m just applying common sense.’
He smiled at me. Bared his yellowed teeth and smiled. ‘This first transfusion will be our test, and it will be successful. By our second or third attempt, the procedure will be perfected.’
I understood now why Hubble was prepared to wait: let any mistakes be made on the first couple of mugs, so that any problems would be ironed out by the time it got round to his turn. Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all.
‘After that we will move out of the city into the suburbs and surrounding countryside where we will find others like you. Eventually every one of us will be saved.’ He barked the order, eager to proceed. ‘Attach the tube to him! Miss Drake, will you be so kind as to assist – I’m sure you must have learned something about transfusions during your stay at the sanatorium.’
I wasn’t sure of the expression I caught in her downcast eyes as she leaned over me. Was it fear, or plain old-fashioned misery? Was she beginning to regret double-crossing her friends already?
‘Listen to me,’ I whispered as she turned my wrist beneath the rope, exposing the veins of my forearm. Our heads were close. ‘Tell them it isn’t gonna work. Think of us, Muriel, think of Cissie. D’you want her to be killed?’
Her voice was low too. ‘She’s a Jew, isn’t she?’ she said.
My head straightened, knocking against the high back of the armchair. I don’t know why, I should’ve expected it, but I was shocked. Under that sweet veil of English genteelness beat the heart of a viper. And in the three days I’d known her, telling her of my folks, the reason I’d joined in the bloody war long before my own country had been forced to come off the fence, making love to her, sleeping with her, I’d never once suspected the hatred she nurtured for her fellow man, the prejudices that had twisted her soul so that she believed her allegiance lay with a Fascist bigot who had been prepared to betray his own country. And I realized she hadn’t concealed a thing. The plain truth was that none of our conversations had ever drawn close to the darker side of her nature. I hadn’t asked – and presumably neither had Cissie in all the time she’d known Muriel – her opinion of Jews, niggers, gypsies, of Adolf Hitler and his Master Race ideology, Fascism, Nazism, hadn’t even mentioned it. And nobody had asked her if she’d be prepared to turn in her friends to the people who meant to steal their blood. You see, she hadn’t lied. She just hadn’t been honest
And then I wondered again about the look I’d caught in her eyes. It was fear, not regret, I was sure of that now. So what did she have to fear? I suddenly had the answer.
‘You realize it’s gonna be your turn sooner or later, don’t you?’
I’d kept my voice low, and I took pleasure in seeing her hesitate for a split second. I watched her push the unacceptable truth away, her expression hardly changing, just that remoteness returning to her eyes, and I knew there was nothing more I could do. I raged inside as she stretched the skin of my lower left arm, pushing the muscles aside so she could locate a particular vein.
Tin buckets were being brought in by other Blackshirts; they placed them close to the man lying by my chair, while the bag-man drew out a scalpel.
‘One more question, Muriel,’ I said to delay the inevitable. ‘How did you find these people? How did you know where to look? All the years playing cat-and-mouse with these creeps and I’ve never known where they came from. If I’d had any idea where their HQ was I might have taken the battle to them.’
It was Hubble who answered for her and, despite his poor condition, he did it with some delight. ‘One man against a fortress? I hardly think so, my bumptious American friend. You see, while you had your palace, I had my castle.’ He wiped moisture from his lips with his blood-flecked handkerchief. ‘But Miss Drake merely used her common sense and returned to the place where she had first set eyes on us. The National Gallery is one of our control centres, you see – at least, it was in our efforts to capture you. Didn’t you realize that some of my men had followed your mongrel dog to the palace? How do you suppose we finally located you? Fully aware of just how elusive you could be, we had vehicles waiting at as many main road junctions as possible, all controlled from the great gallery at Trafalgar Square. Miss Drake found several of my soldiers still at that control point just ten min
utes after leaving this hotel. After that it was only a matter of waiting for the right moment, when you were relaxed with a good meal and perhaps a little the worse for alcohol. The plan worked very well, wouldn’t you agree?’
I felt a sharp pain as Muriel drove the hollow needle into a vein. She put a metal clip over the rubber tubing as blood began to flow. The man on the floor suddenly shrieked as the bag-man cut into his wrist and held it over one of the buckets. Muriel released the clip and blood quickly filled the tubing to emerge in a thin stream from the point of the needle at the opposite end; confident no air bubbles would be carried into the recipient’s veins, she pushed the needle into his arm.
‘You’re murdering me, Muriel,’ I said quietly, but she just turned away.
‘You can’t do this to him!’ Cissie had struggled to her feet, but one of the guards caught her by the hair and pushed her down again. Old Albert Potter was outraged by that and lumbered up to defend her, shoving the Blackshirt away. Wilhelm Stern also decided it was time to do something about the situation and grabbed the nearest guard’s rifle, using it to lever himself off the floor. Another goon quickly stepped in, smashing his club hard against the back of Stern’s head; the German went down on one knee, his arms raised to ward off the next blow. Cissie wheeled round, despite the hold on her hair, and jammed her knee into her attacker’s groin. He yowled with pain as he let her go.
But it was over in seconds. The Blackshirts swarmed over them, clubbing them with sticks and guns, knocking them down and kicking them as they lay sprawled on the floor. And there was nothing I could do to help my friends. As much as I struggled, I couldn’t break free from the ropes that bound my wrists. But I could use my feet.
Muriel swiftly stepped aside as I kicked out and the man behind me, who had held my shoulders all this time, fought hard to pin me down. I dug my heels into the carpet, rocking the chair, more Blackshirts rushing towards me, pushing past Muriel, the big guy, McGruder, among them. My right hand gripped the end of the chair’s arm and, as I jammed my heels into the carpet I lifted, pushing backwards, the guard behind desperately trying to stop me. The armchair tilted, overbalanced, began to topple.
The guard did his best to hold it, but my legs were straightening, calves and thigh muscles straining. The first Blackshirt stumbled into me and his added weight sent the chair completely over, so that it fell backwards, tilting to one side because of the obstruction behind. We went down with a crash, landing on the half-naked man lying on the floor, and I felt something loosen with the jolt.
We lay there in an untidy heap, the man beneath the pile feebly trying to push us off. For a short while there was silence, as if everyone had been taken by surprise. My head was against bare flesh, my wrists still bound to the chair. I could see the tubing lying a few inches away, the steel needle missing, blood oozing from the open end. The Blackshirt on top of me was trying to disentangle himself, the reek of him and the one underneath me filling my nostrils.
I was almost ready to quit Sick as these clowns were, their numbers were overwhelming. My body sagged, giving in to pain, giving in to despair. This time we really were sunk.
Then I heard a familiar noise. A kind of distant rumbling.
16
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for the German bomber pilot to find his target for the night – hell, he must have seen those hotel lights from twenty miles away. I lifted my head to see everyone staring up at the high ceiling as though the noise was coming from the rooms above. The chandeliers began to vibrate.
Then there was a deafening blast as the windows of the next-door restaurant blew in, glass and stone shrapnel roaring through to the room we were in, bringing with it more glass from the dividing wall. The whole building seemed to rock to its very foundations, the chandeliers waving in the wind the explosion caused, the walls and pillars around us trembling, shaking off dust. The tall mirrors cracked and furniture was swept forward as if carried by some invisible tidal wave. Brittle cadavers disintegrated, their various parts tossed into the air, and saucers and cups, cake tiers and lamps, withered plants and rotting napkins all flew towards us, carried by the storm, pulverized by the broiling gust
Some Blackshirts dropped to the floor, hands over their heads for protection, others cowered where they stood: they were the unlucky ones, the force of the blast knocking them off their feet, sending them crashing into the furniture or pillars, their screams faint under the thunderous row. I was fortunate: I was shielded by the back of the chair I was tied to and the goon on top of me. Even so, chair, Blackshirt and I were pushed across the floor, pellets of glass and masonry tearing into the soft cushioning of material and flesh. The Blackshirt howled and rolled away from me, writhing as he tried to reach a glass shard embedded in the back of his neck.
One of my wrists was loose – it was the chair’s arm I’d felt give a little when we took the tumble – and it didn’t take much to tug it from its bindings. I was twisting round to work on the other one when another earth-shaking boom set the world spinning once more. The second bomb must’ve landed on the Savoy’s roof, because the crashing, tearing noise continued as it dropped through the upper floors. The final explosion threatened to demolish the whole building. Great drifts of dust cascaded from the ceiling and lights, enveloping the lounge in a powdery mist.
Although dazed, the pain in my ears threatening to split my skull, I worked on the rope, blinking grit from my eyes and spitting more from my mouth. Frustrated, I got a foot against the chair’s arm, then pushed against it, at the same time pulling the rope with both hands. The cushioned arm came away from the rest of the chair just as the third bomb hit another part of the building, this one falling on the other side, somewhere near the main foyer. The avenging angel of the night skies was making the most of this dazzling target and I knew he’d be banking already, turning sharply to get back over us again. I yanked my arm free as a section of ornate ceiling right above me began to crack. A chandelier crashed to the floor, followed by another, this second one demolishing a macabre tableau of mouldered corpses that had taken silent tea for the last three years in a discreet corner of the room. Two brown marble pillars in the same corner collapsed, bringing down a large section of ceiling with them, fire from the room above falling with the debris. There were shouts and screams from all around as Blackshirts tried to flee and I saw two disappear beneath a shower of rubble as another part of the ceiling broke away. A kneeling woman, her hair white with dust, her black uniform in tatters, was trying to pull a piece of glass, shaped like a long, curved scimitar, from her chest, and when it finally came free it released a cascade of blood that splattered onto the carpet. She fell backwards, her dark-fingered hands clawing the wound, and was drenched by her own blood.
A deep whooshing alerted me to more trouble to my right and as I turned my head a huge tidal wave of flame billowed through from the main entrance foyer, swallowing up everything in its path, burning carpet, walls and furniture. I fell back, drawing my legs up, head tucked in, arms folded over my hair, fearing the fire would not stop until it had swept through to the other side of the building. But I felt the heat instantly recede and when I looked up the flames were being sucked back into the foyer. I guessed incendiaries had been sent with the bomb, all exploding together, causing the firestorm. The fire still filled the top of the short stairway to the foyer, and it had left smaller blazes behind in its retreat. Shapes moved before it, figures rushing to and fro in panic, not knowing which way to go, which way to get out. As dark rolling clouds of smoke curled through, poisoning the air, stinging eyes and scorching throats, the lights began to flicker.
Only a few feet away om me Hubble lay on his side, his chair on top of him, and just for a moment, one brief wink of time, and in all that confusion, our eyes met. Now tiny needles of fire glittered in those dark eyes of his and I felt as if I were looking into the burning hatred that lived inside his soul. His mouth opened as he shouted something, but I couldn’t hear what it was over the storm of screams, crashin
g masonry, and the crackle of fire.
I pushed myself to my feet and stood there, unsteady, half-crouched, my joints stiff and my head reeling, dust and smoke filling my eyes, a bedlam of sound filling my ears. As I raised my hands to wipe dirt and tears from my eyes I noticed the flanged needle was still sticking from my arm. I pulled it out and tossed it away, globules of blood oozing from the wound. There was no time to stem the flow – I had to make a break for it before the Blackshirts got over their panic and before the goddamn room collapsed in on itself. Instead I tore off the rest of my shirt and quickly dabbed at the blood before dropping the bloody rag to the floor. McGruder and another goon were on their feet and leaning over their leader, pulling away the chair that pinned him to the floor; Muriel was closer to me, on her knees, body crouched over, her silver dress torn, a flap hanging loose to expose her shoulder. I quickly searched the immediate area for a fallen weapon, figuring I’d kill all four before I took my leave, but suddenly an arm wrapped itself around my neck from behind.
In a reflex action, I fisted my left hand in the palm of my right, and shot my elbow back, as swift and hard as I could. Spittle dampened my cheek as my attacker huffed and doubled up. I spun round and kicked his legs from under him; he went down like a sack of bricks. Wasting no more time on him and forgetting about dealing with Hubble and his goons – but having to resist the urge to snap Muriel’s neck as I rushed past her – I joined Cissie and Stern, who were struggling with their guards. The German was held by one Blackshirt, while another was beating him with his fists; Cissie was tussling with a black-garbed, crop-haired woman, who gripped both her wrists and was trying to force her back down onto the floor. First punching the Blackshirt in front of Stern in the kidney area so that his hands dropped to protect himself, I then belted him hard in the side of the jaw. His head snapped away from me and his knees buckled. Without waiting to see if he was out for the count, I wrenched the second goon away from Stern and drove my fist into his stomach, following through with a punch to the bridge of his nose (the best place if you mean business). His eyes crossed and Stern helped by chopping the underside of his hand against the man’s neck, so that he fell without protest. I swiped the first man, who hadn’t quite gone down yet, with the sharp point of my elbow and felt bone in his nose disintegrate. He might have screamed as he tottered back – his mouth opened and his neck stretched – but another explosion from a room somewhere close by drowned out all other sounds. The floor seemed to heave and more cracks appeared in the mirrors and walls as they shuddered. It was like being in an earthquake as other parts of the ceiling collapsed and pillars shifted their positions.