CHAPTER TEN
I’d gone back to the Dorchester, retrieved my Colt. 38 police special from my duffel bag, donned a shoulder holster, and resisted the temptation to sit on the couch, put my feet up, have a drink, and think things through. It was tough since a suite at the Dorchester with Kaz’s well-stocked bar had a lot more going for it than reporting to Colonel Harding then visiting a crime boss deep underground. It was tempting to goof off, get drunk, and forget about Kaz, dead Russians, and Diana risking her neck. But I knew the momentary respite would be followed by a hangover, and all the problems I was worried about would come flooding back, with a headache to boot.
So I told myself I was a first lieutenant now, and duty called. I was proud of my newfound sense of responsibility as I strode across St. James’s Square and up the stairs at Norfolk House. Within minutes, I wished I’d stayed on the couch with a bottle.
“What have you found out?” Harding said, leaning back in his chair and drumming his fingertips on the arms. No preliminaries, no how are you, isn’t it great to be back in London? Harding was permanently impatient, like a man late to someplace much better than this, his foot tapping in irritation at the forces holding him down-to this desk, this place, this city far from the fighting, where I knew he longed to be. I was part of what kept him here, if only by association, but I suffered for it just the same.
“Captain Kiril Sidorov is NKVD, as you thought. He’s spying on the Poles, using a hotel employee to pass him information,” I said.
“That’s interesting. What does it have to do with Egorov’s murder?”
“I don’t know. The Russians are about to release their own report on Katyn, and I think they want to know if the Poles have anything up their sleeves. Could make for bad blood.”
“OK,” Harding said, lighting a Lucky and blowing smoke over the papers strewn on his desk. “What do the Poles have?” He said it casually, not meeting my eyes, as if he weren’t really asking me to betray Kaz.
“More of the same,” I said. “I’ll stay on top of it.”
“Who told you about Sidorov’s inside man?”
“I followed him.”
“You saw the meet?”
“Yeah. At Victoria Station. I trailed his contact to the hotel.”
“And?”
“I told Kaz.”
“Is the hotel guy still in one piece?” Harding didn’t give anything away. Anger, satisfaction, joy, any of these could be lurking beneath the surface of his angular face.
“Yes. They’ll put him to good use.”
“You mean feeding misinformation to our Allies the Soviet Union. You remember them? The guys fighting millions of Nazis on the Russian front?”
“The Poles are our Allies, too, aren’t they?”
“Listen up, Boyle. Your job is to find out who killed Captain Egorov. Stay out of any squabbles between the Poles and the Russians. Understood?” Harding ground out his cigarette in a cut-glass ashtray, oddly beautiful in its crystal clearness, even filled with gray ash. I thought the murder of thousands was more than a squabble, but I knew what to say.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. What else?”
I told him about the map that the kid had pinched from Egorov’s corpse, about Archie Chapman and the possible black market connection. He nodded calmly, listening to my plan to seek out Chapman at the Liverpool Street Underground.
“Makes sense,” he said. “That why you’re packing that revolver?”
“Chapman is a hard case, from what I’ve heard. If he’s responsible, he won’t appreciate questions about Egorov.” I shifted in my seat, trying to settle into my jacket so the bulge wouldn’t show under my arm.
“What did you find out at High Wycombe? Big Mike said something about a fast getaway? I couldn’t get much out of him, except a lot of talk about a WAC.”
“That’s Estelle. He’s got a date with her tonight, and was headed back there this afternoon to pick her up. All part of the investigation, of course. She had a run-in with a Russian officer who broke up a conversation she was having with one of his pals. She identified him as Egorov.” It occurred to me that Estelle’s brief description of the Russian she had been talking to, that he spoke flawless English, fit Sidorov.
“What about the MPs?” Harding said.
“I ran into Bull Dawson up there, the guy who helped me out in Northern Ireland. He’d just been assigned to Eighth Air Force, so I decided to start with a friendly face. He gave me the heads-up that the MPs were looking for us.”
“Because you were asking about Russians?”
“Yes. There’s something odd going on. Bull had a big map in his office, showing targets in Europe. He had two places marked in Russia, well behind their lines. Mirgorod and Poltava. Are we going to bomb Russia, Colonel?”
“If we were, I doubt the Eighth would invite a delegation of Russian officers to their headquarters. Whatever it is, it sounds top secret. I’ll see what I can find out. Let me know if Big Mike comes up with anything in his, ah, investigation. And meanwhile, you stay focused on Egorov.” I was about to promise to be a good soldier and sell out Kaz and the London Poles when heavy footsteps in the outer office heralded Big Mike’s return from High Wycombe.
“The bastards transferred her! She’s gone, goddamn sonuvabitch!” Big Mike was not happy. He wasn’t much on military protocol, and I knew he and Harding had some kind of odd understanding, born out of long hours together in cramped quarters, that allowed them to bicker like old friends. Even so, he had the sense to slow his forward momentum, remove his cap, and mutter, “Sir.”
“Estelle?” I asked, although the answer was obvious.
“Damn right. They did the paperwork yesterday, right after we skedaddled. I went to see Bull and he filled me in. Orders from the top brass at Eighth Air Force. She was on a transport to Tangier by nightfall. Can you believe it?”
“You hit a nerve,” Harding said.
“Yeah, but was it because of a top-secret air operation or the fact that she recognized Egorov?” I said, half to myself. Or was it that she had gotten close to Sidorov, even for a moment of harmless flirting? How would the Russians get that sort of pull with the U.S. Army Air Force?
“Can you get her back, Colonel?” Big Mike was still stuck on his missed date.
“Hell no, Big Mike,” Harding said. “I’m only a light bird, not a miracle worker. Find a new girlfriend.”
“Jeez, Colonel, she was a swell kid.”
“She still is, Big Mike. She’s not dead, she’s on her way to Morocco.”
“That ain’t any kind of place for a gal like Estelle. Sir.”
“Colonel, I’m heading over to Liverpool Street,” I said, trying to cut off the argument over Estelle’s fate.
“Report to me in the morning,” he said. I left as fast as I could, their voices rising in unreasoning determination at my back. Outside, early winter night had descended, cloaking London in blacked-out darkness. The few vehicles on the street cruised slowly, their tires clinging to the curbside to guide them, as they laid on the horn at every intersection. I crossed Trafalgar Square, making my way through crowds of GIs looking spiffy and confident, and swaggering in small groups, with a sprinkling of other services and nationalities thrown in. Most of the females were with Americans, who were guaranteed to have ready cash, chocolate, and cigarettes.
Buildings were still sandbagged, great walls of them thrown up during the Blitz to protect homes and offices. Windows were decorated with tape in large white X s, precautions against shattered glass shards. I’d never seen an intact window after a bombing, so I guessed it was one of those things people did to help them believe they’d survive a stick of five hundred-pound bombs. Pieces of tape hung in tatters, neglected since the last raid months ago. Many of the sandbags had fallen, burst at the seams, the burlap weathered and rotting.
Working girls stood at corners, offering their services to anyone within earshot. Some were gaudily made-up, their red lipstick and rouge visible even in the city’s darkness. Others tried to imitate them, but their threadbare coats, false smiles, and drawn faces gave them away. Bombed out, husbands dead, wounded, missing, or just gone, they offered the motions of sex to boys who could’ve been their kid brothers or sons. It would be a transaction, maybe fair, maybe not, but one that could satisfy only in the moment of release, or with the relief of cash and forgetfulness. I wanted to shake them by the shoulders, the women and the boys, but I didn’t know what I’d tell them. Go home? Hers might not be more than a Tube station, and he might never see his again. I turned away, the crush of loneliness and desire heavy, the sadness of these couplings nothing I wished to witness. I scurried along the Strand, cries of Hey, Yank nipping at my heels, and I felt unaccountably afraid. For all these people gathered together tonight, for Estelle in Tangier, for Diana in disguise, for Kaz and Tadeusz, even Sidorov in all his icy mysteriousness. But not for myself, no. I was fine. I was between a Polish rock and a Russian hard place, lying to my boss, wishing I had a fistful of drinks, and looking to find a killer crime boss deep underground. I was doing just dandy.