Spotting me, he called, ‘Grub’s up soon, son,’ and pointed a stubby thumb over his shoulder at the room behind. He gave me a broad, yellow-toothed grin. ‘There’s time for a pair o’teeth first, though. What can I get yer?’
I frowned.
Muriel wised me up. ‘Albert means an apéritif. As I’m sure he knows,’ she added, looking meaningfully at the warden and smiling. She turned her smile on me, but it had an uneasy edge to it, as though she was a little nervous.
As I walked the length of the table towards them Cagney trotted before me, his excuse for a tail wagging in anticipation of the food he could smell. He disappeared through the opening behind Potter and I heard Cissie’s muted cry of welcome. The mutt was getting used to people again too fast and that concerned me: I didn’t want him to lose his usual caution in case eventually it proved dangerous for both of us.
‘We’re using the Princess Ida Room as a makeshift kitchen,’ Muriel told me, and I remembered that all the names of the private dining rooms along this floor had something to do with Gilbert and Sullivan operas. ‘Cissie’s in there playing chef and I must get back to help before she starts getting cross.’ She eyed me up and down as she sipped her drink. ‘Thank you at least for putting on a fresh shirt.’
I checked her eyes for sarcasm, but she quickly looked away. My pants were a little wrinkled, my boots none too clean, and my torn leather jacket was thrown over one arm, pistol tucked inside. The shirt was fresh though, one of a bunch I’d picked out of a Regent Street menswear shop’s smashed window, none of which I’d gotten round to wearing until now. I guess it would’ve looked better with a tie, but ties never had been one of my things, even in peacetime. Muriel moved closer to me, away from the German.
‘What would you like to drink?’ she asked, but again she averted her gaze when I looked directly into her eyes. ‘Gin and tonic, a Martini, sherry…? We’re well stocked, as you can see.’
‘Scotch’ll do.’
‘Good boy,’ approved Potter. ‘Think I’ll join yer.’ He bustled over to a small, round dining table that was loaded with the hard stuff. Rubbing his fleshy hands together he cast his eye over the wide selection. He spied the Scotch, another bottle of his favourite Grouse. ‘Lovely,’ we heard him mutter.
‘Hoke…’
It was the German and there was a wariness in his approach. I laid my jacket over the back of a chair at the head of the long table, folded so that the concealed holster would be easy to reach, before facing him.
‘It is extremely foolish for us to regard each other as enemies,’ Stern said, his manner relaxed, but still that apprehensive cautiousness in his eyes. ‘In the war I was merely a navigator doing my job, as were you as a fighter pilot. I mean you no harm now and would’ – vould – ‘hope you no longer wish me any harm. We were airmen loyal to our own countries, but all that is in the past. We can no longer live that way. We should endeavour to live in peace and, as the British themselves say, let bygones be bygones.’ Speech finished, he offered me a hand to shake.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take to the idea of shaking the hand of someone I would eventually kill, so I ignored the offer. His pale eyes momentarily hardened, and then he smiled as he let his hand fall away.
‘So be it,’ he said coldly. ‘I have made an effort to be civil – or indeed, civilized – and I shall continue to do so. You will make up your own mind about how you regard me, but I must warn you, I shall always defend myself.’
‘Please, Wilhelm.’ Muriel looked anxiously from me to Stern. ‘This isn’t necessary.’
‘Have I not just tried to make that very point?’ He never took his eyes off me. ‘I will behave honourably, but Mr Hoke must decide for himself. I have offered the hand of friendship and he has rejected it, but still I will not be the one to make trouble.’
Potter arrived between us with two tumblers of Scotch in his hands, one of them held out to me. ‘Bottoms up,’ he said cheerfully, as if he hadn’t noticed the exchange between myself and the German.
‘Yeah,’ I responded, taking the tumbler and tipping it against my lips, my gaze still not breaking from Stern’s. We all turned when another voice called from the far end of the room.
‘Dinner’s coming along nicely.’ Cissie was in the doorway to the Princess Ida Room, wiping her hands with a cloth. ‘So I’m going to socialize for a bit. I think a large g-and-t would go down very nicely right now.’ She tossed the cloth onto something behind her and headed our way.
‘You’ve earned it.’ Muriel quickly busied herself at the drinks table, glad to turn her back on the tension between Stern and me, I guess. ‘I think I’ll have another one, myself.’
Fumes from the portable oil cookers kept drifting through from next door to mix with the smell of melting wax, but they didn’t spoil our feast any. We kicked off with oatmeal soup and dumplings, followed by ‘brisket of beef’, as Cissie announced, and while tinned beans and peas may have been a poor substitute for turnips and parsnips, they didn’t spoil the taste of this particular meat pie. Together with potatoes and carrots (fresh, from my own home-grown stock), it made one of the finest meals – no, the finest meal – I’d had in three years, and by the time we’d finished pudding – semolina and Prince Roly – we were all fit to bust.
I was at the head of the table for no other reason than that I’d left my jacket over the chair there, and on my right was Cissie, who wore a coffee-coloured, below knee-length evening dress, which was a mite too tight for her. Muriel was on my left and our conversation throughout the meal had been minimal – she was still edgy, probably afraid trouble might flare up between myself and Stern at any moment Stern sat next to her, old Potter opposite him. Cagney was under the table by my feet, well fed and snoozing, content to be among friendly people again (although he’d given a small warning growl every time the German got too close), and at the far end of the table, facing me, was a strange, almost exotic creature, silent, unmoving, and black, with a pink napkin tied around its neck. Muriel had introduced me to it when we’d first sat down to eat.
‘Meet Kaspar,’ she’d said. ‘He’s our guest this evening because the Pinafore Room used to be used by members of what was known as The Other Club, a collection of, well, rather eminent people, and politicians – Winston Churchill was one of them. The politicians dined here whenever parliament was in session, industrialists and other powerful men joining them. You’ll see there’s seating for fourteen around this table, but whenever there was an empty chair and the number of people present was an unlucky thirteen, they brought out Kaspar the cat. They tied a napkin around his neck and served him every course.’
There was something I didn’t like about the three-foot-high black animal. Maybe it was its down-turned head and pointed ears, or its sinuous, snake-like tail that looped round in an almost full circle, or its arched spine etched with scrawls that looked like esoteric writings. I couldn’t figure out why, but as the evening wore on, I realized it was just the creature’s dark, brooding presence that made me feel uncomfortable; there was something ominous about it, as if it were a portent of doom rather than a good-luck charm. Now, over coffee and brandy, and some fine cigars Potter had scrounged from somewhere, the seal of the box they came in unbroken, the conversation returned to Kaspar.
‘We found it on a shelf at the back of the room,’ Cissie was explaining. ‘We thought it would add some dignity to the proceedings.’ She giggled at Muriel, hand to her mouth like a schoolkid. She’d joined the menfolk in the brandies. ‘D’you think it’ll bring us luck?’
I reserved judgement and it was Stern who answered.
‘I have never understood if the black cat means good or bad fortune to the English. Are you saying it is good?’
Potter piped up. ‘Always said meself if a black mog crosses yer path, yer in for a spot of bad luck.’
‘No, no, that’s wrong,’ argued Cissie. My grandad always told me a black cat was good luck.’
‘Wasn’t that only on one’s wedding
day?’ put in Muriel.
‘No!’ Cissie and Potter cried together.
‘There are only five of us around this table anyway,’ I pointed out, stabbing the air with my cigar. Blue smoke drifted towards the ceiling.
‘Well spotted.’
I shrugged at Cissie’s sarcasm.
‘We were just making up the numbers.’ Muriel gave her friend a worried glance. ‘I mean to say, we’re hardly a crowd, are we? What kind of discussions do you suppose they had in this room? With all those important club members – ambassadors, dignitaries, newspaper owners and editors, as well as the politicians themselves – some very momentous decisions must have been made. No church people were allowed in, by the way. But the Prime Minister himself-’
‘Don’t matter, neither way.’ It was out of character for Potter to interrupt Muriel; it’d been plain throughout the evening that he regarded her upper-class credentials with some respect, if not awe. It seemed too much whisky, wine and brandy had blurred the class division for him, and I, for one, was glad to see it. ‘Don’t matter how grand they was, how much power was in their hands, they come down with the plague jus like everybody else. ‘Cept us. We didn’t Money couldn’t buy it off, an nor could fame. Neville Chamberlain – the gerk, I mean berk – to Jessie Matthews, Ivor Novello to Herbert Morrison, Martin bloody Bormann –’scuse me, my dears – to Groucho Marx, all dead, see? Unless…’ He waved his finger around the table. ‘Unless they was like us, our blood thingy. We’re special, see? All the others…werl, all the others…’ He seemed at a loss. ‘Werl, they’re gone. Finished.’
‘Then why do you still patrol the streets, Mr Potter?’ The German was leaning forward, a cigar between his fingers. ‘If almost everybody else is gone, why do you continue with your work?’
The logic didn’t please the old boy. ‘I should give up me duty jus ‘cos things’ve changed? Without orders to stand down? With the Luftwaffe still knockin ten bells out of London? You Germans never did understand us English, did yer?’
‘And you English never quite understood we did not want war with your country. The Führer had a great…’ he considered the right word ‘…affinity with many of your people.’
‘Oh no, not very many.’ Cissie looked about ready to toss her wine at Stern. ‘What you really mean is he had an affinity with a certain type of Englishman. Some of our so-called ruling class didn’t think Adolf Hitler was such a bad chap.’
‘That is not quite correct,’ Stern replied, as smooth as Conrad Veidt. ‘A good number of the English common people understood the Jewish problem, for instance. And I think all classes accepted our right to play a major role in the governance of Europe.’
‘Only other Fascists believed that.’
‘Please let’s not argue among ourselves.’ Muriel obviously didn’t like this turn in the conversation.
The German was quick to respond to her plea. ‘I did not mean to cause disagreement between us, but you must understand that I, too, loved my country, and I have suffered as much as anybody in this room.’
I placed my empty brandy glass on the table and dropped the butt of my cigar into it. My hands remained on the tabletop, about a foot apart, fingers clenched. ‘Oh yeah, we understand, Vilhelm. After all, you were a good German, weren’t you? A good, fighting Nazi.’
He regarded me warily, trusting me not one little bit. ‘All Germans are – were – not Nazis.’
‘Hoke…’ Muriel warned.
‘Of course not.’ I leaned forward. ‘And you, personally, never really had the chance to fight us, did you? You got yourself shot down right at the beginning of the war, so we can’t hate you, can we? You hardly had time to cause much damage, and besides, you were only a navigator anyway, so didn’t personally pull any triggers or push any buttons.’
‘That is certainly the case. I told you –’
‘Yeah, you told us you were captured and interned in April 1940, isn’t that right? So why should we bear you any grudge? Hell, you practically played no part at all in the war.’
I felt Cagney stirring under the table, his weight shifting against my foot. I thought he must have sensed the rising tension in the room.
‘But you were lying, weren’t you, Vilhelm? You didn’t want us to think bad of you, not while you could use us. At least, while you could use the girls here.’
The colour – what scant colour she had – was draining from Muriel’s face. She was beginning to realize the party wasn’t going to turn out the way she’d planned.
‘What’ – vot – ‘are you suggesting, Hoke?’ Stern had placed his own brandy glass before him, although his cigar remained between his fingers. Was there a sneer on those thin, humourless lips, was there hatred behind those passionless eyes of his?
Keeping my hands on the table, I rested back in my chair. My tight grin lacked any pleasure.
‘I’m suggesting you’re a lying son-of-a-bitch,’ I informed him quietly.
‘Stop this now!’ Muriel was on her feet ‘It’s time you grew up, Hoke. This bitterness against Wilhelm – and yes, against us – is utterly pointless. Even though we saved your life you still resent us, you still look on us as some kind of burden, a nuisance you could well do without. Do you honestly think –’
‘Let him have his say, Mu.’ Cissie’s anger was suppressed, her interest centred on me. A low, rumbling growl came from beneath the table.
Stern’s smile was like my own: no warmth to it. ‘Why do you bait me like this, Hoke? Is it because you are a rather absurd and intolerant man who will not accept the idea that Germany did not lose the war after all? That in the jaws of defeat the German Reich snatched victory with a weapon so brilliantly lethal it irrevocably altered mankind’s destiny? That the Americans, with all their sophisticated weaponry and manpower, and the British who, if we are to be honest, were merely a spent force hanging on the coattails of their overseas masters, could suddenly lose to an army they thought defeated? Is that why you hate me so and imply that I am a liar? And isn’t this what you expect me to say, Hoke? Isn’t this the kind of Fascist language you want to hear from me? Isn’t this just your own idea of how a German thinks, talks?’
Muriel and Cissie were staring at Wilhelm Stern, shocked by his words. Potter, bleary-eyed and heavy-lidded, opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
My smile had frosted and my thumbs were twitching against my fingers. ‘No, Stern,’ I said finally, ‘that isn’t why I’m calling you a liar. Y’see, you made a slip while we were down there in the tram tunnel. You told us you’d witnessed starving dogs roaming the bomb-blitzed ruins of Berlin.’
His expression changed when he understood his mistake – his very stupid mistake.
‘Because, Vilhelm,’ I went on, enjoying his discomfort, ‘the RAF didn’t begin their raids on Berlin until August 1940, four months after you told us you were captured and interned over here.’
I leaned forward on the table again, a fury inside me that was intense but as cold as his pale eyes stiffening every muscle. ‘What did you do in the war, Vilhelm? I’m betting it was something pretty nasty if you had to keep it from us three years after the event. Yeah, there were plenty of your kind over here in England, pretending to be Polish, Dutch, Czech, Belgian, all kinds of runaways and asylum seekers, but in reality spies and saboteurs. Which were you, Vilhelm? Did you get to blow up any munitions factories? Maybe that’s how you got those scars on your neck, not escaping fast enough once you’d set the explosives. How about that, Vilhelm? Saboteur or spy – which was it?’
I don’t know where it came from, but the gun was in his hand in the blink of an eye, and it was pointed at me. I realized he’d deliberately kept one hand – the one holding the cigar – in view on the table while I’d been talking, the other one sneaking into a pocket for the weapon he must have picked up – from a police station, from the corpse of a serviceman, or even from somewhere in the hotel itself – during his hunt around earlier in the day, because I hadn’t returned the one
I’d taken from him yesterday. There was more movement by my feet, Cagney rousing himself. We all heard his bad-tempered growl.
‘The gun is merely for self-protection,’ Stern informed me. ‘I have no wish to fight with you, Hoke, but neither do I intend to be harmed by you.’
More commotion under the table, the mutt pushing his way through legs and chairs. Cagney suddenly appeared about halfway down, his teeth bared, a deep snarling-growl coming from his throat He wasn’t watching the German though; he was facing the door at the end of the room.
While Stern was distracted, I leapt from my chair, twisting so that I was at the back of it, and reached into my jacket pocket. My fingers were curling around the pistol butt as the door Cagney was facing burst open.
14
MY FIRST THOUGHT was to shoot the German; my second – and it was only a split second after the first – was to duck the gunfire that came my way.
Fortunately, the Blackshirts weren’t aiming to kill, only to frighten us all into immobility, but it didn’t work that way with me, because I took a dive as the mirror behind me shattered and the room erupted with the sounds of machine-gun fire and the girls’ screams. I kept rolling ‘til I was behind the thick central column as candles split in two, a lamp in one corner exploded as if hit by a cannon, and splinters from the wood panelling spat across the table. I came up on one knee in time to see Cagney scooting into the room next door. Good move, I thought as I peeked around the column, hoping to get a clear shot at the Blackshirt who was causing most of the damage. But he was waiting for me to show myself again and he peppered the column and the space next to it with a hail of bullets so that I had to fall back to avoid a faceful of lead. The drapes over the windows were shredded, the glass behind them smashed, as I cowered out of sight, biding my time. The gunfire abruptly ceased – out of ammo, I assumed – and then so did the shouts and screams. I acted fast, whipping round the square-shaped pillar, gun hand extended, searching out my target