Deadly Jewels (4 page)

“Give up independence, get sanitation,” Richard said. This time the irony was felt by everyone in the room, and the mayor gave him a hard look. Well, he would: all of those incorporated villages were now Jean-Luc's domain. He didn't really care how they got there, as long as he could make some money from them.

“I'm not sure that I understand what the sewers have to do with the crown jewels,” I said. Someone had to get to the point. “If they were stored here, they were stored in the basement with the gold, isn't that the story?”

“It's more than a story,” snapped Patricia. She took a second to compose herself, then said, carefully, “They really were here. That's not a rumor. That's true, and I'm going to prove it. But you're right about there being a rumor. The
rumor
is that some of them stayed here, they were stolen and smuggled out through the sewers.”

She paused. “The rumor is that there are still British crown jewels here in Montréal somewhere. And I believe that
that's
true, too.”

*   *   *

It was a gamble, and no one knew that better than Winston Churchill himself. The nation was taking a gamble on him, and he was taking a world-shattering gamble with its future.

“You're a bloody Cassandra,” his friend Frederick Lindemann told him. “Nobody wants to hear what you have to say, and you're always right, which makes it all a damned sight worse.”

“Not always,” Winston grunted. “Was wrong about the war in Spain—thought they knew what they were doing. Was wrong about the king's abdication—still angry with him about it, in fact.”

“You've been right about Germany all along,” said Frederick. “And that's what bloody counts.”

Was it?

He'd already started setting things in order. On the same day that Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands, he'd taken the prime minister's seat in the House of Commons Chamber for the first time and ruthlessly woke Britain from her appeasement. On this, the darkest of nights, he hoped he wasn't too late.

The British Expeditionary Force, long considered the finest fighting machine in the world, was standing alongside the French army. But everyone knew how poorly trained and equipped the French were. Still, the BEF would take care of things; they always did. Who could have known what would happen?

Now, he knew.

His aide had woken him at 7:30 on May 15, five days after he became prime minister. “Urgent telephone for you, sir. Monsieur Reynaud, the French president.”

Paul Reynaud was hysterical. “We are defeated!” he screamed. “We have lost!
Tout est perdu!
”

Winston put down the telephone, took a deep breath, and wrote his first letter to the president of the United States. There was simply no time to lose: France was about to fall, and Britain was clearly going to be next. The Americans had to enter the war. “We expect to be attacked here ourselves, both from the air and by parachute and airborne troops in the near future,” he wrote. “If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and are not afraid of that. But I trust you realize, Mr. President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.”

“It's all about the Americans now,” he told his wife. “We've got to get them involved. They have to see that it's the only course.”

“It may not be in time,” she said.

“I know. I know that.”

The next day, he put legislation before the House of Commons that
The Daily Telegraph
described as “the most sweeping constitutional measure ever placed,” giving the government full powers over both property and persons in Britain. Defending it before the war cabinet, he was able, somehow, to find the right words: “It had hitherto been thought that a seaborne invasion of this country was an enterprise which the Germans could not hope to launch with any prospect of success for some considerable time. I think the events of the past few days and the grim possibilities of the next must cause us to modify our views.”

Days later, Boulogne fell, and Calais was under siege. The boys from the British Expeditionary Force were flooding the beach at Dunkirk, right up against the English Channel, and that had to be his first concern: getting them out. Getting them home. Keeping them alive.

They'd fought fiercely and well, they'd endured a nightmare crossing northern France, only to find themselves caught between the sea and Jerry, with nowhere to go, past exhaustion, wounds going septic, and no hope of escape.

British warships were unable to make it to the beach because of Dunkirk's shallow harbor. There was only one thing to do. “Get me everything,” Winston told his aide. “Every Thames River sightseeing boat, every fishing boat, every yacht, everything that can cross the Channel, I want them over there, evacuating.”

“Sir?”

He was impatient. “They can ferry men out to the warships. Let the call go out!”

It did, and the miracle of Dunkirk was that they responded, every last one of them. It still gave him chills, the bravery, the sacrifice, the instant and unequivocal support. Yachts, pleasure boats, yawls. Sailboats from a sailing school. Ferries, trawlers, sloops. Fishermen all up and down the coast battening their nets in preparation for hauling a different catch altogether onto their decks.

Anything that had a means of propulsion was called for—and everyone answered the call. All of them sailing straight into horror: Calais aflame, the Luftwaffe strafing the beaches and the harbor, boats exploding, and still there they were, going over again and again until all the boys were safe. That was who the British were, thought Winston. That was who was worth saving.

He didn't have time to waste. As soon as the “little boats” had performed their miracle, there was more to be done. Most of the men had been saved, but their fighting equipment was still littering the beach in France, being picked up and over by the Germans. Britain's munitions factories were already running day and night, but it would take months to replace what had been lost.

Britain didn't have months.

Two things had to be done: weapons, airplanes, and warships had to be purchased from the United States. And Britain's wealth—some of it in gold, but most of it in the form of securities—had to be kept out of German hands.

Winston had a plan that would take care of both.

 

CHAPTER THREE

Well, at least I could see why my boss was suddenly so interested in history. PR was one thing; finding buried treasure was, as the ad says, priceless.

And I could see something else, too: if he stayed involved, this could quickly get so far out of hand that we'd never recover. The feds would get involved. Great Britain would get involved. Well, those things were going to happen anyway; but it would be one thing for Richard and me to deal with it, and something else altogether to leave it to Jean-Luc. He would assume he could handle them the way he handled local politics, and
that
meant that it would all blow up, and blow up very quickly.

Talk about a PR nightmare. Treasure ships, indeed!

I took a deep breath and looked at the guys sitting silently across the table. “I know you know who I am,” I said, choosing one of the two at random to address, “but it would be helpful if you could return the favor.”

If he was upset by my sarcasm, it didn't show. “Yves-Robert Blouin,” he said blandly. “Assistant commissioner and commanding officer, C Division, RMCP.”

Oh, hell. Of course: the feds were already in on it. Who else
but
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be involved, if Patricia was right? That made all the sense in the world, and complicated the matter no end. I looked at the other man. “And you, monsieur?”

“Regional director, CBSA.” He was apparently to remain nameless; and who cared, really? What mattered was that the feds were in on this in force, and in civvies as well: both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency have impressive uniforms for those in the organizations' higher echelons, but these two guys weren't wearing them.

“Well, this is all very interesting,” I said, keeping my voice as level and uninterested as I could. “Mademoiselle Mason, if you could return with me and Monsieur Rousseau to our office, we can talk more about how far your research has gone, and how specifically we can be of assistance to you.”

Jean-Luc was nodding. If someone else wanted to do the work, that was just fine with him, as long as he got the credit. And any errant crown jewels that happened to be lying around as well, of course. “You will keep me informed,
naturellement
, Madame LeDuc?”

I exchanged another glance with Richard. My initial thought had been right: this thing was going to get very out of control very quickly if we didn't do something. Jean-Luc might be enjoying the attention he was getting now, but this was going to turn into an interagency pissing match that he didn't have the ability or intelligence to foresee—and that he didn't have a chance of winning, though he'd gladly bleed the residents of his city dry in the attempt.

“This meeting is perhaps premature,” I suggested. “
Messieurs
, gentlemen, my office will be happy to work with Mademoiselle Mason and McGill University on this matter. If I understand the situation correctly, no current crime is under investigation, yes? And as this is Montréal, even if there is a cold case to be reviewed, that surely falls to our
own
police force?” I looked hard at Jean-Luc and, miracle of miracles, he picked up on what I was talking about. “But of course it is our own police force that will do any investigation!” His voice was explosive, outraged. “That is a given.”

“Should it lead to issues of interest to the national or international community, then of course
monsieur le maire
will be quick to inform you,” I went on, and then turned to Patricia. “Mademoiselle Mason? Perhaps you would like to accompany us to our office now so that we can discuss specifics?”

She was still looking a little dazed, which was surprising: institutions of higher learning practice cutthroat politics, and she should have been accustomed to territorial disputes. “Well, yes, of course,” she said uncertainly, looking back at Jean-Luc as though for direction.

He nodded, his fingers tapping a quick tattoo of sound on the edge of the conference table. “Please go ahead, mademoiselle,” he said generously. “These gentlemen and I will continue our conversation.” He'd found my path of navigation through the quicksand and was ready to follow it enthusiastically. Jean-Luc might have started out liking the federal attention, but once he realized how much they outweighed him—and how little they were impressed with his office—his survival instincts came to the fore. I could usually count on that.

Manipulation of my boss?
Mais oui
.

Once in the corridor, though, I rethought my invitation to go chat
chez moi
. The reality is that my office is located in a public building, and either of the gentlemen we'd left—or a host of other people—were liable to walk in on us at any moment. Interrupt us. Overhear us.

And this was something I'd rather keep control of, at least for as long as I could.

There were plenty of places in City Hall that, one could argue, were private, but I'd had a thought. Getting Patricia out of the building altogether seemed like the best possible solution to keeping the lid on her information, and there were only two other places in the city that I was absolutely, positively guaranteed were private. One of them was my apartment, and both Ivan and I have always been clear that it constitutes neutral territory. It's a place of refuge: he doesn't bring his work there, and neither do I. That left only one option.

“Have you ever,” I asked Patricia Mason, “been to the Montréal Casino?”

*   *   *

Nothing exciting had ever happened to Alexander Craig.

His father had been a banker, and it was correctly assumed by everyone involved that the young Alex would be a banker as well. He didn't mind; in fact, he rather liked the work, the precision of it, its predictability. He was meticulous and correct, and the cloister-like enclaves of the Bank of England's Foreign Exchange Control in Threadneedle Street suited him to a T.

He was in his office every morning promptly at nine o'clock. He preferred milk, no sugar, in his tea when elevenses rolled around; and he went to the same restaurant for lunch every day precisely at one. There were no crises, no panics, not even any decisions of tremendous import to be made. Each day was like the one before it and the one that would follow, and Alex was comfortable with that.

His wife, Marjorie, knew little about his work and expected nothing more: it was always very hush-hush. “Boring, if we knew the half of it,” she guessed, and spent most of her time tending to the needs of the couple's two daughters.

And then came the Friday when Alex Craig came home and did not have his usual whiskey at 6:00, did not have his usual exchange of banalities with his wife about his day, did not inquire into the menu for dinner. Instead, on this Friday, he told Marjorie to pack. “We're moving to Canada.”

For the first time in his life, something intensely exciting was happening to Alexander Craig.

He'd been plunged from his predictable stable routine into something fearful and exciting and historically significant, and didn't know whether to be pleased or dismayed by it. For Alex was preparing to supervise a special convoy, to cross the Atlantic with Britain's gold reserves as well as the vast wealth it possessed in negotiable dollar and foreign securities. Once there, he would act as the custodian of the foreign stocks and bonds privately owned by British citizens and corporations, securities that had been taken over by the government to fight the war.