Crossfire, p.18
Crossfire, page 18
‘Well, we’d better,’ Stackpole said, ‘because the Russians sure as hell are.’ He looked at Saffron and gave a gentle, almost sad smile. ‘Let’s not talk about that now, though, huh?’ He reached across and ran a finger down her face. ‘Oh, God, I wish we could just be together . . . alone.’
‘Oh, me too.’
‘Are you free this evening?’
‘I don’t know. I’m going to meet the couple who are putting me up while I’m here. They’ll probably want to have supper with me. I can’t brush them off.’
‘No . . . I guess that would be kinda rude. But tomorrow night, maybe?’
‘I’d love that.’
‘Okay, let’s put that in the diary. Give me a call around six?’ Stackpole ripped a piece of paper from a notepad on the desk and scribbled down a number. ‘This is my office number. It’s where I spend all my waking hours.’
‘I know that feeling.’ Saffron put her arms around him. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘But now . . .’ he checked his watch, ‘I’m late for a hospital appointment. I figured I really should get an X-ray. Gave myself doctor’s orders.’
‘Off you go, then,’ Saffron said. ‘I really need you to be fit and healthy.’
The OSS headquarters stood in an area of Washington known as Navy Hill. It was close to the Potomac river, about a mile due west of the White House. ‘You should see the sights,’ Stackpole had said as he walked her out of the building. ‘Make a right on 23rd Street and it’ll take you all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can walk it in ten minutes.’
Saffron took his advice, and soon found herself gazing up at the giant statue of the seated president, looking like an American Zeus upon a marble throne. Around him, the inner walls of the memorial were inscribed with the texts of Lincoln’s greatest speeches. As she read his description of ‘a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,’ and of a ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ Saffron found, to her surprise, that her throat was tightening.
If New York had shown her the might, the glamour and the excitement of America, the Lincoln Memorial embodied the soul of the nation, its idea of itself, the goal towards which it was eternally striving. She knew that the real America fell short of the ideal that this memorial embodied, but there was something magnificent about a nation that was at least attempting to be worthy of its founding principles, just as there was a nobility to Britain’s dogged refusal to bow before the Nazi onslaught.
‘Stop being so soppy, woman,’ Saffron muttered to herself as she wiped a tear from her cheek. But in truth, she was glad that she’d been so deeply moved. She spent most of her working life focused on the nuts and bolts of the challenges that confronted her. It was good to be reminded that there was a reason she was doing it.
But there was also a practical side to her sightseeing. Having cast her eyes on the newly opened Jefferson Memorial and peered through the White House towards the president’s mansion, Saffron bought a city map at a news-stand on Constitution Avenue. She headed to the Washington Monument and took an elevator ride five hundred feet to the top of the marble and granite obelisk.
Looking down from each of the small rectangular windows of the observation deck, with her map in hand, Saffron pieced together a mental image of the city, memorising it in minute detail, to be retrieved whenever she needed to get her bearings. The ability to know where she was – and how to get out quickly – was essential to Saffron’s survival if things turned nasty. As she took the ride down to the ground, it gave her a comforting sense of security to know that Washington DC could be added to the list of cities that were stored in her internal atlas.
She emerged from the monument shortly after five o’clock, walked to Constitution Avenue and hailed a cab. ‘I was told to let you know that it’s just off Foxhall Road,’ she said to the driver. ‘Down at the far end of the street, all the way to the park.’
‘Got it,’ he said, and drove off.
• • •
J
ust about the time that Saffron was arriving at the British embassy, an explosives expert called Marx was leaving his workshop, carrying a brown paper package. He made his legitimate money providing the charges, fuses and detonators used in quarries and on demolition sites, and so he was familiar with pentaerythritol tetranitrate, otherwise known as PENT, penthrite, or even nitropenta, which was the most powerful explosive on the market. There was approximately three pounds of PENT in Marx’s parcel, and, following the instructions that he had been given, he took it to Griffith Stadium, on the corner of W Street and Florida Avenue, where Washington’s baseball team, the Senators, were playing that afternoon.
Marx was used to working for what he called his private customers. They paid him much more than his standard commercial rate, and in cash. He, in turn, made a point of never asking any more than the absolute minimum number of questions required to meet his clients’ requirements. It was safer that way. He therefore had no idea what the contents of his package were going to be used for, let alone the real identities of the people who’d paid for it. He knew that when it went off, the blast would be roughly equivalent to a dozen hand grenades. That was a hell of a bang, and it would make one hell of a mess. But he’d been paid in full, up front, so what did he care?
The man who sat next to Marx in the bleachers at Griffith Stadium, about twenty rows back, did not know Marx’s name any more than Marx knew his. But he recognised Marx from the description he had been given, and he had the correct code word, so Marx gave him the parcel. The second man had no idea what was in it and no desire to find out.
Then Marx said, ‘I need to take a leak.’ He got up and, without looking back, walked to the nearest exit, never to return to his seat.
The second man watched a couple of innings of baseball, then he, too, left the stadium. He took a series of trolley cars and buses, followed by a railroad train across the state line to Hyattsville, Maryland. He got on and off more times than the journey required to make sure he wasn’t being followed. In a bar next to the station, he approached a burly guy in a crumpled suit and said, ‘Are you Spanish Johnny?’
The guy didn’t look Spanish – not one bit – but he said, ‘Who’s asking?’ He didn’t sound Spanish, either.
The second man just said, ‘Got a package for you.’
Spanish Johnny took the package and said, ‘Thanks, it’s for my niece.’
‘I hope she enjoys it,’ said the second man.
The script was complete. Spanish Johnny looked at the package and said, ‘Not very big, is it?’
That was an impromptu line. The second man wasn’t sure how to reply. He shrugged and left.
Jozef Lewandowski watched him go. He held the package in his hand, considered what it was intended to do, then put it in his battered briefcase, whose once black leather was grey with dust and flecked with spots of paint.
Lewandowski looked at his watch and thought for a moment about how long it would take to get home from Hyattsville. He picked up the case and walked up to the bar. ‘Gimme another beer,’ he said to the barman.
As he drank, Lewandowksi wondered about the strange situation in which he’d found himself. Within the next seventy-two hours, the bomb sitting in his briefcase would either detonate as planned – in which case his targets would be dead and he would be a hero – or it would not, in which case his targets would be alive and well and he would be a dead man walking. He drained his glass, muttered, ‘Welcome to the Third World War . . .’ and headed outside to his truck.
• • •
S
affron’s cab ride took a little over fifteen minutes. It ended on a tree-lined street that ran along the side of a hill, filled with widely separated houses, ranging from large French-style country homes to smaller New England clapboard cottages. Finally the driver pulled up, and leaned back. ‘Here you go, ma’am. This is it.’
Saffron got out to find herself standing in front of one of the cottages. It was the last house on the street. Beyond it was a T-junction with a road running along one side of the park, which was a long, thin strip of wild, almost unkempt woodland, that – as Saffron’s map-reading and observations told her – ran down the west side of the city in a straight strip, about three miles long, all the way south past Georgetown to the Potomac.
Like most of the houses they had passed, the Playfairs’ was set back from the sidewalk, a little up the hill. It had the simplicity and the charm of a child’s drawing, with five windows, each with a set of black-painted shutters, punctuating its white facade. There was a single-storey extension to the right of the building.
Satisfied that she had established the basic geography of the neighbourhood in her mind, Saffron paid off the cabbie, took her luggage and climbed the steps to the front door.
The short woman who opened the door was dressed in denim dungarees and a pale blue cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and she was holding a baby against her hip. Her sandy hair was partially covered by a floral-patterned cotton headscarf. She had freckles across her face, a broad smile and green eyes that seemed to exude energy and life.
‘Hello,’ she said, holding out her spare hand. ‘I’m Mavis. You must be Saffron.’
‘Yes. It’s so kind of you to have me.’
Mavis grinned. ‘You may not be thanking me after you’ve been here a day or two. Come in.’ She led the way down the hallway. ‘This,’ she nodded at the baby, ‘is Arthur.’ From up ahead came the pattering of paws, a couple of enthusiastic barks and a blur of chocolate brown fur that hurled itself at Saffron. ‘And that,’ said Mavis, ‘is Franco. He’s a chocolate Labrador, so he’s totally bloody daft, but he’s a good lad, really.’
‘Well, I think he’s splendid,’ Saffron said, giving Franco a two-handed scratch behind his ears. He growled contentedly, his tail wagging furiously as he looked up at Saffron with an expression that suggested he had fallen instantly in love.
‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Mavis said. ‘I was about to make some tea. Would you like a cup?’
‘Yes please.’ Saffron followed Mavis into a sunny kitchen which had oak cabinets, a large gas oven, a breakfast nook with a table for four, and an enormous, glossy, cream-coloured refrigerator. A young Black woman was standing by the table. She wore a pale lilac uniform dress, and was holding a battered handbag in the crook of her right arm.
‘Saffron, this is Loretta,’ Mavis said. ‘She does a wonderful job looking after Arthur. Loretta, this is Saffron. She’s staying with us for a few days.’
Loretta nodded shyly. ‘Think I’ll be going now, Miss Mavis, if that’s all right by you.’
‘Of course.’
Loretta gently stroked Arthur’s head and headed towards the front door with Franco trotting after her, clearly hoping she was going to take him for a walk.
‘Franco seems an odd name for a dog,’ said Saffron, as Mavis put the kettle on the stove.
‘That was Charlie’s bright idea,’ Mavis said. ‘He thought it would be amusing to boss a fascist dictator around. You know – “Heel, Franco!”, “Beg, Franco!”, “Bad boy, Franco!”. He didn’t allow for the fact that Labradors never do a thing they’re told. But you fall in love with them anyway.’ She sighed. ‘Typical Charlie. For such a clever man, he can be thick as two short planks sometimes.’
‘Loretta seems sweet,’ Saffron said, as the kettle whistle blew.
‘She’s a diamond,’ Mavis said, pouring boiling water into a teapot. ‘Part of me feels terrible, having staff. It goes against the grain. But then I think, I’m putting shoes on that lass’s feet and food on her family’s table. You have no idea of the poverty here, Saffron. There are terrible, filthy, rat-infested tenement buildings within spitting distance of the Capitol. It’s unbelievable. The leaders of the richest country on this planet are lording it in that building, and less than four hundred yards away there are people with no jobs, no homes, no food, nothing. I know some people think I’m mad to spend my days working at a soup kitchen, but how could anyone with a conscience live here, knowing what was going on, and not want to do something about it?’
Mavis paused, smiled and said, ‘There I go, on my soapbox again. Come on, I’ll show you your room, then let’s take our tea outside. It’s a lovely afternoon, seems a pity to waste it.’
Arthur Playfair, it turned out, was seven months old. ‘Born in America, so he’s legally entitled to become the president one day.’ Mavis laughed as she fed him his bottle.
Mavis seemed to Saffron to be totally at ease in her environment. Another woman from her background, going up to Cambridge, marrying into a family as grand as the Playfairs, and then living amongst privately educated diplomats and their equally privileged wives, might have tried to get rid of her East Midlands accent, or desperately tried to fit in. But Mavis was clearly proud of her roots and saw no need to deny them. And it said a lot for her husband that he had not wanted to change her.
‘People can’t work us out,’ Mavis said. ‘They can’t understand why Charlie chose me when he could have had some posh Henrietta or Charlotte. It never occurs to them that we might love each other, and be good mates, and sod what class we come from.’
‘I’ve met those Henriettas and Charlottes,’ Saffron said. ‘I know why he’d rather have you.’
‘Thanks, duck,’ said Mavis, lifting her cup of tea in salute. The front door opened and then slammed loudly shut. ‘His lordship’s home,’ Mavis remarked with a roll of her eyes.
An upper-class male voice cried out, ‘For God’s sake, woman, get me a glass of whisky!’
‘Get it yerself, yer lazy bugger!’ Mavis called back.
‘That bloody man!’ Charlie Playfair declaimed from the direction of the living room.
‘He means our beloved prime minister,’ Mavis told Saffron.
‘He’s become so used to being adored that he cannot spot loathing, even when it’s right in front of his face . . . Oh, hell and damnation, where’s the bloody ice?’
Mavis shouted again, ‘In the bloody freezer compartment, where do you think?’
‘Granted, Roosevelt doesn’t loathe Winston personally, but he hates the British Empire with a deep and abiding passion . . .’ The voice was getting closer. Saffron heard the opening and closing of a fridge door, the cracking of ice being dislodged from a tray and the chink as the cubes hit the glass.
‘God knows how many memos I’ve written trying to get people to see sense . . .’ A tall, slim man in a dark blue suit appeared on the patio, with his tie loose and the studs of his stiff white collar undone at the neck. He had a full tumbler of whisky in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
Playfair nodded at Mavis, paid no attention to Saffron and took up a position at the edge of the patio, looking out at the garden. Saffron, in contrast, was paying close attention to him. Playfair’s face was tightly drawn, with hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones, and no trace of sagging at the jawline or chin. He had a long nose, a dark five o’clock shadow and grey-blue eyes. His black hair, shot through with the first streaks of silver at the temples, was brushed back, but a lock had fallen loose across his forehead. He looked brilliant, highly strung and a little dangerous. Saffron could see why impressionable young typists would swoon over him.
‘Finally, today I managed to get five minutes with the old boy.’ Playfair was speaking towards the garden, but occasionally looking to check that he still had his audience’s attention. ‘I told him in no uncertain terms, FDR wants to see the empire gone, preferably by the end of the war. That’s the one thing he, Stalin and Hitler all agree upon.’
‘And Winston didn’t believe you? Amazing,’ Mavis said, with heavy irony.
‘Pah! What can you expect from a man who was considered too stupid even for Harrow?’ Playfair discarded the stub of his cigarette and ground it into the stone beneath his feet. Then, apparently remembering his manners, he turned and said, ‘Can I get you ladies anything?’
‘I’ll have a beer, please, love,’ Mavis said.
‘What a good idea,’ Saffron added. ‘Can I have one, too?’
‘By all means. Coming up.’
‘Is Charlie all right?’ Saffron asked, once he was out of earshot. ‘He seems quite worked up.’
Mavis gave a dismissive snort. ‘He’s always like that. My husband’s problem is that the rest of the world refuses to believe he knows everything about everything and bow down to him accordingly. Mind you, to do him justice, he’s right about most things.’
‘He doesn’t seem to be in the least bit interested in me,’ Saffron said, more as an observation than a complaint.
‘All right, let’s do something about that, why don’t we?’
Playfair emerged from the kitchen a few moments later, carrying a tray with a bottle of whisky and two glasses of pale yellow beer. He put the tray on the table, handed the two beers to Saffron and Mavis, and refilled his glass.
‘This is Saffron Courtney,’ Mavis said. ‘She’s staying with us for a week, remember?’
‘Ah, right,’ Playfair said, with a discernible lack of interest. Then he paused, thought for a moment, and suddenly his face came alive with a beaming smile. ‘Of course! The celebrated Manhattan Mauler herself, Slugging Saffron Courtney. The PM’s pet pipsqueak Colville was showing me the paper barely half an hour ago, boasting that he knew you. Well, what an honour, champ, to welcome you to our humble abode.’
Playfair sat on one of the chairs facing the two women.
‘And you must be the not-quite-so-well-known Pinko Peer, the Honourable Charles Algernon Faversham Playfair,’ Saffron said. ‘Did I leave any names out?’
‘No more than five or six,’ Playfair said, amused by Saffron’s attitude and at last fixing her with his full attention.
‘Millicent gave Saffron a lift from the station to the embassy,’ Mavis said, apparently unperturbed by her husband’s new-found fascination with their beautiful house guest.
‘Ah, yes, that explains it,’ Playfair said, still looking only at Saffron. ‘Millicent disapproves of me. She can’t forgive me for not dying for my country.’
