The Nassau Secret (The Lang Reilly Series Book 8) (20 page)

              “I think we can assume the letter isn’t about moonflowers.”

              “Then what?”

              Lang ran his tongue around the inside of his lower lip as he thought. He got up and sat on the small ottoman before the breakfront, laying the letter on the desk. Then he placed the cardboard over it.

              “Take a look at this.”

              Celeste stood and leaned over. “I don’t think I understand.”

              “And I think I’m beginning to see why someone might want to kill Livia,” Lang said as though speaking his thoughts aloud.

              “Then you can explain it to me. I . . .”

              Both Celeste and Lang turned at the same time to see Gurt standing in the doorway between the den and living room.

              “Lang? We have the dinner and are. ..Oh! Celeste!” Gurt stepped forward, hand outstretched. “I did not know it was you.”

              Celeste shook the hand. “I’m sorry. I see I’m intruding.”

              “I’ll be along in a minute,” Lang said. “Celeste and I are just finishing up business.”

             
“Einen Augenblick
,” Gurt said with a look that meant just that: One moment. Although she understood Lang’s law practice did not always fit within the tidy bounds of time, she had little tolerance for interruptions of what she considered family time such as dinner.

              “I. . .I’m sorry.” Celeste repeated, gathering up her purse. “But explain to me. . .”

              “Just an idea, a guess but I think a pretty good one,” Lang said before telling her what he was thinking. He finished with “But I’ll have to look into it a little more.”

              And he would.

42.

Betchworth Station

North Downs Line

Surrey

The Next Morning

              The old man arrived on one of the four daily trains from London, just under twenty miles south. It was hardly unusual for the elderly to visit to look at potential retirement housing. Of the town’s thousand plus souls, well over a quarter were over sixty.

              On the north side of the Mole Valley, gentle green hills bracketed the town that had once been an agricultural center. Now it was home to a few commuters into the City and retirees such as the old man appeared to be.

              He exited the station onto The Street, as this short stretch of the A25 was known, and made his way to The Red Lion where he had reserved one of the six rooms behind the public house. He seemed to rely heavily on a cane as he walked. The walking stick was dark wood, thick and twisted, the sort of thing the Irish called a shillelagh.

              Except as far as the old man knew, the Irish had never hollowed out the top of the stick and added a sliding lead weight, not unlike the loaded bats outlawed in American baseball. A good swing with the weight sliding up the barrel could split a man’s skull.

              Not that the old man intended to harm anyone but being prepared for unforeseen circumstances came naturally to him.

              The Red Lion was a high-gabled, half brick building making it easy to find: It was the tallest in town. 

              As the old man came through the door, the desk clerk rushed to help with the single overnight bag. “Mr. Annulewitcz?”

              The old man nodded as he declined to relinquish his luggage. “That’s me, lad.”

              He followed the apple-cheeked young man into a small courtyard and up a flight of stairs. The room was modern and simple with a view that took in the spire of the largely Thirteenth Century St Michael’s church. The clerk demonstrated how to operate the flat screen television, the thermostat, the phone and an array of plumbing gadgets before the usual hemming and hawing that indicates a gratuity is expected.

              Jacob dropped a couple of pound coins into a grateful palm and shooed the boy from the room.

              Then he put his bag on the bed and began to spread its contents out beside it, hardly the things a potential retiree looking for a home in which to spend his golden years would carry: A leather pouch containing a number of small electrical appliances the purpose of which would be unclear to most people, a small knife, a pair of needle-nose pliers, a Lockaid lock pick gun and a pair of disposable latex surgical gloves.

              He distributed the objects among jacket and pants pockets before going into the bathroom. He checked his appearance in the mirror over the sink. The bushy white eyebrows were still stuck in place as was the theatrical makeup which not only added wrinkles but gave his skin that pallid look associated with age.

              Satisfied, he locked the room’s only entrance and went down the stairs.

              It took less than fifteen minutes to reach the cottage on Kiln Lane across from Brockham Big Field. In the afternoons, boys would be kicking a football around or the cricket pitch would be in use, eyes with a full view of the cottage. On the weekends, the owner would be in residence. Jacob had chosen a week day morning.

              Coming to out here to Surrey hadn’t been his first choice: he would have favored the building on the Albert Embankment, MI6’s headquarters. But the most cursory inspection showed the folly of even thinking about trying to get into the office of Alred James there. Guards, electronic recognition systems. It would have been easier to crash the vault at the Bank of England. A distant inspection through binoculars indicated even the exterior windows were coated with a transparent, sound absorbing plastic that would prevent electronic eavesdropping.

              No, coming here was the better part of valor, the only choice, really.

              That James had a country home was general knowledge in the sometimes not so close lipped intelligence community. Following the chauffeured Bentley one rainy Friday afternoon had taken little effort. The big black car delivered its passenger to the stone doorstep in front of Jacob now. A uniformed driver had held an umbrella while James unlocked the door.

              This was the same cottage Jacob had seen that afternoon: the roses lining the flagstones. A climbing variety reaching to the steeply slanted tiled roof, a roof that, Jacob guessed, originally had been thatch.

              Jacob took his time. As far as he could see, there were no exterior cameras, nothing that would suggest electronic security. Perhaps the disguise of age had not been needed.

              What was it the American rebel, Franklin, had said? Something about by failing to prepare, we prepare to fail. Even the English grudgingly admitted the man had a way a phrasing aphorisms, one genius he possessed among many.

              The disguise might be unneeded but, were there cameras Jacob could not see, he would be thankful to have heeded Franklin’s advice.   

              A quick glance about revealed no one in sight. Careful to step only on the flagstones lest he leave a footprint, Jacob slipped around to the cottage’s rear. The back of the house was almost entirely screened from its neighbor by a greenhouse filled, unsurprisingly, with potted roses. There were no visible cameras here, either.

              He stood on tip toe, examining as best he could the tops and sides of the door and windows before kneeling to peer into the crack between door and sill. He could see no wires or contact points that would be part of an alarm system.  

              Amazing one of the world’s foremost espionage organization’s top officers would leave a place so vulnerable. 

              The latex gloves came on with an efficient sounding snap. The Lockaid’s whir was barely audible. He took a deep breath. If there was an alarm, he only hoped it was not of the silent variety. A gentle push and the door swung open.

              Jacob stood stature still for a full minute, his eyes probing shadows, ears filled with the silence of emptiness. Dust motes danced down a single sunbeam slanting through an adjacent window. Somewhere outside a dove mourned.   

              Jacob was in a small kitchen. Four-eyed electric stove, cooler, sink. He opened the cool box. A half empty carton of cream, two browning bananas and a plastic carton of blueberries. James must dine out regularly or favor take away.

              Only one other room occupied the ground floor. Two windows across the front, fireplace to the right just on the other side of six chairs grouped around a wooden table. Other than a bowl of plastic fruit and a light coating of dust, nothing of interest here.

              Unless one took interest in the fact James was less than a meticulous house keeper.

              A battered wooden desk quite likely had begun as property of the crown. Its top, dusty as the table, displayed a lamp with reproduction Tiffany shade, three pipes in a rack and a cheap metal humidor half full of strong smelling pipe cut tobacco. Otherwise it was vacant.

              Wait. Not quite.

              In the dust was a twelve by twelve inch square. Something had been here not long ago.

              Something like . . .

              Jacob was flat on his stomach, the coolness of the floor seeping through his shirt.

              Ah! Here it was!

              His fingers were touching the electrical socket. One plug was attached to the lamp. The other . . .

              His fingers slid up the wire until he came to a plug that looked like it slid into a computer’s port.

              Reaching into a pocket, he came out with a one-inch cube with a plug on one end and a socket on the other. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Jacob produced pen knife and pliers. In less than a minute, his device was wired between the computer wire’s plug and the rest of the wire.

              He sighed his satisfaction. Unless James pulled the desk back and checked and removed Jacob’s addition, every key stroke would be transmitted to a desk top in Jacob’s home in London.

              Now, what if. . .

              He got up and began to search, careful to replace objects exactly as they had been.

              The computer was on a shelf behind a rack of neckties in the back of the closet off the single bedroom upstairs.

              Jason took it to the desk and plugged it in, careful not to disturb the dust. He was unfamiliar with the program that filled the screen but fairly certain it was encrypted. He took a flash drive from his pocket and inserted it into the computer’s port. Fifty five seconds later, the flash drive’s blinking light told him whatever the program, it was fully downloaded.

              He returned the flash drive to his pocket and the computer to its not-so-original hiding place behind the neckties.

              He was on his way to the back door when he stopped, looking at the desk. In a step, he was beside it. He removed a briar from the pipe rack, laying it on the desk top. Beside it, he put the flash drive, a comparison of size, before he used his cell phone’s camera function to photograph both.     

              Probably wouldn’t need the picture but best to be prepared.

              He returned the pipe to the rack and departed the cottage the same way he had entered.

              It sounded like the same dove was still cooing.

43.

Government House

Nassau

June 28, 1943

              By agreement, the four men had removed their jackets. Even summer-weight linen quickly became intolerable once inside where the fitful sea breezes could reach them only through open floor-to-ceiling windows. Overhead, a pair of fans lazily recirculated air humid enough to be near tangible. Even they could not prevent the sweat that stained each man’s shirt.

              They were gathered in the Duke’s private office, a small room just off the Governor General’s upstairs apartments. Edward had chosen the more intimate setting over the larger, official office downstairs where there was no chance of catching even a puff of air. Three wicker rocking chairs were at an angle to a desk behind which sat Edward, Duke of Windsor, His Majesty’s Governor General of the Bahamas. The arrangement made so his guests were in front of the two open floor to ceiling windows.

              “Now see here, Sir Harry,” the Governor was addressing Sir Harry Oakes, “you have built the Islands’ first water works, organized a bus service for the natives, created a free milk program for children and founded a fund for unwed mothers. And those are just your charitable works, don’t include the millions you have made in business.”

              Sir Harry leaned forward from his rocker and dabbed a smoldering cigarette in an ebony holder at an ashtray on a brass stand. The current American President had made cigarette holders quite the rage.

              “Excellency, I don’t take your point.”

              The Governor General leaned forward, clasped hands on the desktop. “My point, sir, is that with all your eleemosynary achievements, I fail to see why you are not willing to add your considerable wealth and experience to creating a school system in the Abacos.”

              “Excellency, throwing money at those rebellious blokes is like throwing it in the ocean. The islands were founded by Loyalists right after the Yankees broke loose. Then they, the Abaco Islanders, couldn’t get along with each other. They still can’t and they  certainly don’t get along with anyone else.”

              Sir Harry referred to a group of some seventeen hundred New York Loyalists who immigrated to the Bahamas’ northernmost islands in 1783 rather than submit to the independent American government. They founded a settlement at Carlton, now probably Hopetown, but soon split in two, the dissident group founding Marsh Harbour. With the Bahamas largest concentration of whites, the Abacos consistently opposed the royal government in Nassau, thereby opposing the very crown to which they had claimed to remain loyal.

              The Governor General lit a cigarette. He did not use a holder. “I took the liberty of consulting your friends here earlier.”

              He nodded to Harold Christe, probably the Bahamas largest single land owner, Etenne Dupuch, publisher of Nassau’s (and the Bahamas’) largest newspaper and William Swafford, president of the newly established branch of the Royal Bank of Canada.

              “These gentlemen are willing to apply their not inconsiderable resources to start a school system there.”

              Sir Harry nodded. “Good. I applaud their instincts if not their good sense.”

              Christe, probably the closest person to a best friend Sir Harry had, spoke up. “I don’t understand your opposition to providing an education to children.”

              Sir Harry came forward in the rocker. “Educating children is fine with me. It’s those sods in the Abacos that are not. Every time I’ve tried to do anything there, I’ve met local problems. Those contrary bastards would oppose the second coming on the grounds Our Lord and Savior wasn’t a proper British subject.”

              “I’ve got a few acres on green Turtle Cay I’m willing to donate,” Christe volunteered.

              “And I think I can get my people back in Canada to approve a low interest loan to the Bahamian government,” Swafford added.

              “The paper will of course support the project,” Dupuch announced.

              Sir Harry inhaled a final draft of his cigarette before ejecting it into the ashtray from the holder. “Then what the bloody hell do you need me for?”

              Edward, Governor General, rolled his eyes if frustration. “Damn little gets done without your support, Sir Harry.”

              Sir Harry pushed himself out of the rocker. “Consider you have it as long as neither time nor money are required. Now, then, I have need of the loo.”

              The Governor General pointed. “ ‘Fraid the one you’re used to is out of order. Damned old pipes must date back a century. Use the one in the private apartments. I believe the duchess is supervising the garden crew outside, so there’s no chance you’ll inconvenience her.”

              Sir Harry had never been in the Windsor’s living quarters; there had been no reason for him to. He entered into what was the Duchess’s boudoir judging by the Champaign pink silk duvet on the mosquito-netted bed, the lace and frills on the dainty furniture and the faint smell of cologne or perfume. And the mirrored vanity with silver brush, comb and various potions, lotions and powder compacts arranged with military precision. A thick book was on the edge.

              He felt more than a little uncomfortable surrounded by so much feminity, as though he had become an unwitting voyeur. For some inexplicable reason, the thought he might spy some odd item of lingerie made him even more edgy.

              Ah well, get the job done and skedaddle as his American friends might say.  

              He hurried across the room toward the only other door, a door he guessed opened into a water closet connecting with the Duke’s sleeping quarters. He managed a weak smile at the irony that the man had given up a kingdom for a woman and yet maintained the old custom of separate if adjacent bedrooms.

              His surmise had been correct: he was in a white room, standing on black and white tiles. A bath stood on iron feet across from a sink and flush toilet. Sir Harry did his business and went back the way he had come.

              Two steps into the Duchess’s bedroom, he stopped. Something had caught his eye, something on the vanity beside make up. He had stepped over to it before he realized he was about to.

              He could feel the blush spread across his face. Gentlemen did not go about inspecting women’s intimate possessions, particularly those of a woman married to someone else.

              But, what was this?

              A piece of cardboard with sections cut out in strips. Like some sort of template. What possible use . . . ?

              The copy of
Gone with the Wind
was on a corner of the vanity, a flap of the dust cover serving as a place mark. Without certainty of what he was doing, he opened the book and placed the mysterious cardboard on top of a page.

              The result was a series of words, phrases and blanks that made no sense whatsoever. But if the cardboard had been placed over some other page, perhaps in another book--or even a hand written letter . ..

              That was it! The purpose of what he was holding hit with the suddenness of a lightening bolt. And almost as shocking. What would the Duchess, the American woman, do with such a device?

              It was a near certainty she wasn’t using it in any of her ladies  social groups, the ones that saw to flowers around Government House or took food to the sick or elderly or knitted things to send to the Tommies now in Italy. 

              Like a cinema’s reel, his mind spun a scene: A moonless night a little over two years ago: Tongue of the Ocean, lights blinking across a sea supposedly devoid of ships, the calm surface suddenly spilt. . .

              “And just what are you doing?”

              Had the voice been a knife, it could have cut steel.

              Sir Harry spun around to see the Duchess in gardening duster, gloves still on her hands. She was not what one would call a beauty in the best of times. The fury that contorted her face was hardly an improvement.

              “I, I . . .” For one of the few times in his life, Sir Harry’s glib tongue failed him. “The Duke told me the loo just off his office wasn’t working . . .”

              “And I’m sure he didn’t tell you to meddle among my things as long as you were here.”

              “No, I . . .”

             
Wait just a bleeding minute! Why am I cringing when . . .

             
Sir Harry held up the cardboard. “He didn’t tell me you were a German agent, either. No doubt this little trick here was used to tell you what nights you needed to signal there were no American scout planes in the area. U-Boats can’t listen for aircraft underwater.”

              “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

              Her eyes said differently.

              He folded the cardboard. “Then you don’t mind if I take this little souvenir with me. If I even suspect there’s another Jerry U-boat within hundred miles of here, this bit of rubbish will go to the authorities in London.” He gave a laugh that had no warmth in it. “Of course, there aren’t that many U-Boats left, are there? What with the ones being sunk by Yank destroyers in convoys in the North Atlantic, your pals in Berlin may run out. This will be our little secret unless and until another shows up here.”

              She took a step and snatched the cardboard from him. “”You will
not
take that or any other item from this room.” The Duchess was clinching and unclinching her fists. Sir Harry could see the red crescents dug into her palms. “Get out! Get
OUT!
”

              Sir Harry had to consciously moderate his breathing in an effort to quiet the kettle drum that was beating in his ears. A Nazi spy! Or  collaborator.

              Only the French made the distinction.

              But if the
Kreigsmarine
was losing as many subs as the heavily manipulated BBC indicated, there was little point in causing a scandal that would only hurt Edward, Duke of Windsor. Harry liked the duke, a decent man who had gone ‘round the bend to marry the American tart. No, he would just sit on this and see what happened.

              The Duchess had watched Harry leave with vision tinted red with anger. How dare he!

              She inhaled deeply before slumping down onto the bench before the vanity. The wrinkled, red-eyed woman who stared back from the mirror bore little similarity to the face she knew.

              She sighed. Well, if Harry Fucking Oakes thought he was just going to walk away holding this over her head. . . She, Wallace Warfield Simpson, who had matched wits with British aristocracy and come away with the biggest prize ever. Well, OK it hadn’t worked out the way she had planned, not yet, anyway.

              But, then, it wasn’t over.

              Not by a long shot.