He also wished he wasn’t about to ruin his day. He didn’t look forward to wiping the good humour from Kingstone’s face and dimming the newly bright eye. He wanted nothing more than to spend time helping the two men plan a carefree day, lying at ease by the lake in the shade of a beech tree, just thinking, snoozing and bothering the occasional trout. For a moment he toyed with the idea of leaving Kingstone in happy ignorance of the black car and its cargo of killers booming towards them. But only for a moment.
KINGSTONE LOOKED AT his watch. “So—we’re saying we’ve got how long? An hour. Anything more than that would be a bonus. Any chance of a bonus, Marcus?”
He seemed undismayed by the news and Joe acknowledged that the prospect of action in which he was directly involved appeared to be a stimulant to the senator. He’d grasped the scene at once, wasted no time on recriminations of the “but you said I’d be safe here” type and got straight to the essentials. Joe’s first estimate of the man’s character seemed to have been pretty accurate. The spider in the cup had lost its venomous hold on him as Rippon had predicted and the newly revealed leader of men padded over in his socks to refill his cup from the coffee pot.
Marcus was keeping up with him and already on his feet on the way to the door. “Extra time? Certainly! I can add a quarter of an hour. I’ll ring the local police station and ask them to put back the diversion signs they dragged away into the hedge two days ago on the B road. That broken bridge they thought they’d mended requires a bit more attention perhaps. Look here …” He turned to the table and drew a quick sketch on the back page of the newspaper. “Block them at this point and they’ll have to take the diversionary route. Down several miles of single-carriage hollow lane.” He chuckled. “We might not see them again until Christmas. Bound to get stuck in a car that size. They can’t have had any idea where they were headed for. Or what they were heading into,” he added with satisfaction.
“Disturbing, perhaps, to think they see no need to care,” Joe said lugubriously.
They were not deflated. “Were your boys certain of the number, Sandilands?” Kingstone asked.
“Two. Two fedoras. Excellent choice of headgear! For hired guns, of course.” Joe heard the gung-ho flavour in his own words beginning to echo their mood. He would resist a descent into melodrama. He added lightly, “Your London thug is not going in for anything so frivolous as a boater this season. He prefers to signal his evil intent with something more sober in black felt from Lock in St. James’s Street.”
Kingstone ignored him. “Your men, Marcus?” he wanted to know. “I’m not aiming to start a range war here! This isn’t their fight. Call them off! Send them home.”
“Not a chance! This is their home. Has been for centuries. Defending it and its guests is their duty and their pride. Besides—they’re all raring to have a go. Some of them have unfinished business with the Germans.” He flicked a glance at Joe. “Um … that’s what I told them. That we’re protecting an agent of Uncle Sam from the dark forces of the Prussian Empire. I say—did I oversteer? Shall I rewrite that scenario? I can think of something else …”
“No.” Kingstone spoke firmly. “Let’s give blame where blame is due for once, shall we?”
They fell silent, waiting for the revelation of identity they all craved, but he said thoughtfully, “Not sure whether this battle will be an afterthought of ‘the last lot,’ as you call it, or a foretaste of the next.” He sighed and went on more briskly, “Enough excuses, enough politicking. In the end it comes down to identifying your enemy, choosing your ground, checking your weapons and blasting him to hell before he does the same for you.”
“The Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington would have approved of those tactics.”
“They are their tactics, Marcus.” Kingstone was almost jovial again. “Strategy … tactics … dirty tricks … I learn from the best.”
“Quite agree! Malplaquet, Waterloo or Belleau Wood where you chaps did so much damage—it usually works,” Marcus said eagerly. He hurried on with practicalities. “Right then. These Germans—or their hirelings—we know their number and we know when they’ll arrive. They’re foolhardy enough to attack us on our home ground. Let’s have a weapons check. Three of my men have twelve-gauge shotguns. They need to get close up with those to do any real damage but the ‘spray and pray’ gestures they tend to use can scare a man to death all right. Stay behind them at all times, is my advice. Two of the blokes have deer guns. Rifles. Ex-fusiliers. They don’t need sights.” He looked from Joe to Kingstone, seeing dismay on one side, anticipation on the other. “Just the blasting business to come.”
“Your men, Marcus—I say again—I don’t want them blasting or being blasted on my account,” Kingstone said. “They must be for back-up use only. Last resort. Clear? By that I mean, should I fail to defend myself and the household is put into danger. They’re coming for me. And I’ll be ready for them. At least I shall be if you can kit me out with something for my feet. A man can’t go into battle in his socks. I have my own pistol. I’ll set them a long trail—I’ll be down at the far end of the lake. Let me have a rod. Might as well get me a brace of rainbows for supper while I’m waiting …”
Joe groaned. This was getting away from him.
“They’ll be coming up against someone who’s survived stronger forces than theirs in beechwoods!” Kingstone’s voice was grim and purposeful. “The forests of the Argonne. Autumn, nineteen eighteen. Vile weather. Cold and wet. Supplies not getting through to the Doughboys of Pershing’s First Army. We were eating the beechnuts from the forest floor to stay alive.”
“Autumn nineteen eighteen? Ghastly time! But you didn’t have long to suffer by then.” Lydia’s voice was sympathetic but calm. “And you were back home by Christmas,” she added comfortably.
“No, we didn’t have long! Some only had minutes of life left.” With a tight smile, he fished about in the unfamiliar depths of the pocket of his borrowed trousers and produced an American army wristwatch. He put it down on the table.
They all looked with curiosity at the handsome timepiece. An Elgin with blue hands on a face the colour of vanilla ice-cream, silver case and worn brown leather strap.
Wondering what to make of this, Lydia stated the obvious: “It’s saying ten o’clock, Cornelius. It’s eight o’clock now. Your old watch is telling the wrong time.”
“No. It says exactly the right time. Talk of an Armistice had even filtered through to our part of the forest in early November but we didn’t believe it. We’d only been over in France for one hundred days. Some of our officers would have been mightily put out if it were all coming to an end so swiftly before they’d had a chance to take a decisive swing at the enemy. Or earn their next promotion.” His voice was grating, bitter. “My unit’s next task was to charge a particularly heavily defended position. Uphill, through trees, against a barrage of machine-gun fire. We’d tried it once. This was our second attempt. We all knew it would be our last.”
To interrupt or not to interrupt? Joe was longing to remind him that time was still of the essence. But this seemed to be the very point Kingstone was making and he held his tongue.
“The morning of the eleventh we charged as ordered. Fifty yards … a hundred yards and I was still running. And then, on my way up, I stumbled across a machine-gun pit with four German soldiers in it. They could have killed me at any moment in my dash straight towards them. They hadn’t. They were waving their arms in the air, grinning and babbling and pointing to their wristwatches. I had enough German to understand that word had passed down their line that it all ended at eleven A.M. In an hour’s time. I believed them. Their communications systems were always better than ours. No way were they going to kill me or have me kill them for the sake of an hour. They were young guys. My own age. I might have had a different welcome from a grizzled, battle-hardened crew.”