“If the Russian had been their source of information, there would be nothing you could do to replace his services, at least in terms of hijacking Russian supplies. Why should they show any interest?”
“Because Archie didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to let anyone get the best of him. Whoever killed Egorov hurt his business. That’s not something any crime boss in Boston or London would let slide.”
“Yes, I see,” Kaz said. “He can’t afford to appear weak.”
“Which means that he already knows who did it, or that Egorov wasn’t the primary source of his information.”
“You mean someone else in the embassy?”
“Yeah. Or Archie already took care of things. Maybe the guy who pulled the trigger is floating facedown in the Thames right now.”
“Perplexing indeed,” Kaz said, raising his head to check the sky. “Cloudy today. Bad bombing weather.”
“I could do without another night of that,” I said. “Why do you think they came back?”
“The Germans? Because we didn’t expect them.”
“Archie Chapman did.”
“From what you told me, Archie Chapman still expects the Boche to charge across No Man’s Land. Do you think someone as crazy and bloodthirsty as he really reads all that poetry?”
“Yes, I do. He may be nuts, but he’s not unintelligent, and he came under his captain’s influence at an early age. He’s been cultivating everything he learned in the trenches since then. Cruelty, killing, and the beauty of words. Maybe they balance each other out, who knows?”
“Maybe he’s just crazy,” Kaz said.
“Strange, coming from a guy as comfortable with books as he is with a gun.”
“Poets are mad. Scholars are merely preoccupied.”
“Mad Jack,” I said. “That’s what they called Sassoon, according to Archie.”
“He went off his head after his brother was killed at Gallipoli,” Kaz said. “Tried to get himself killed, I’ve heard, but ended up coming back alive each time he went out on a raid.” We turned at the end of Rotten Row, slowing our pace a bit. I thought about Diana, and her need to confront death. Kaz looked solemn, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. Diana courting death, Daphne dead and gone.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.” I laid my hand on his shoulder as he wiped the sweat from his face, both of us breathing deeply in the cold morning air. “Kind of odd, isn’t it, to think about a guy like Sassoon with Archie Chapman? What would they have had in common? Archie, from the East End, and Sassoon an educated officer?”
“He wrote a poem called ‘Conscripts,’” Kaz said. “I don’t recall all of it, but it spoke about the different kinds of men trained for combat. The educated, the sensitive, along with the rougher men, whom at first he disliked. Near the end, it went: But the kind, common ones that I despised (Hardly a man of them I’d count as friend), What stubborn-hearted virtues they disguised! They stood and played the hero to the end.”
“So he admired a guy like Archie for staying alive,” I said, “when his brother didn’t?”
“Who knows?” Kaz said. “Who knows what a poet or a madman thinks? Or a killer like Chapman? I have enough trouble in this war without trying to ferret out the secrets of the last.”
“I’m doing my best to keep you out of trouble, Kaz. Don’t do anything to make that job harder.”
“Thank you, Billy. You are a good friend.”
I clapped Kaz on the shoulder and picked up my pace, trying not to get left behind. I remembered those words, spoken with a different accent, years ago. It had been Nuno Chagas, speaking to my dad. Nuno was a Portugee lobsterman who ran his boat out of Cohasset Harbor. He’d been a smuggler, bringing rum and whiskey in from offshore boats during Prohibition. He wasn’t a hoodlum, just the son of an immigrant, a working stiff who did what he had to do when the Depression hit and lobster became a luxury many could do without. He and Dad, along with Uncle Frank, used to go out fishing every now and then. A few bottles found their way home, but it was a favor, not a payoff. One day Nuno had a problem. A big problem. He’d made his liquor runs for the Gustin Gang, run out of Southie by Frankie and Steve Wallace. The Wallaces weren’t saints, but they were local Irish boys, and they robbed other thieves as much as they robbed anyone else. They were connected politically, and while they were arrested frequently, charges had a way of being dropped. I guess they were tolerated. Nuno had no beef with them, but a rival outfit was trying to elbow its way in, aiming at taking over the Boston liquor market. It wasn’t the Italians, and no one could prove the rumor that it was Joe Kennedy, making a buck however he could. But that didn’t matter. Goons from out of town were threatening guys like Nuno, and the Gustin Gang threatened right back. Each side wanted Nuno to work for them. Or else… I was only a kid at the time, but I remember Nuno coming over to the house on Sunday, dressed in a suit that was worn to a shine. He’d thanked my father, and told him what a good friend he was. Dad said, My friend’s troubles are my own, and then Nuno stayed for Sunday dinner.
“My friend’s troubles are my own,” I said, and felt the presence of my old man, and the odd feeling of understanding what he’d meant, finally. The depth of it. This was more than words, it was the quiet opening of the heart, the indelible definition of friendship.
Kaz looked at the ground, strangely, just as Nuno had done. We walked in silence, everything necessary having been said. I never knew what Dad had done to fix things for Nuno, even when I asked him after I made rookie and wore the blue. Nuno got out of the business right after Frankie Wallace got himself gunned down by an Italian gang from North Boston, and if he missed the money, he seemed glad to be legit. I often wondered exactly what Dad had done, and if he’d ever spill the beans.
“Anything new about the Russians and Katyn?” I asked, after we stopped to stretch.
“Yes,” Kaz said wearily. “The Russians will issue a report on Katyn soon. The bodies of those poor souls are being dug up once again. Only Russians are serving on their hand-picked commission; they’re not even letting their own tame Polish Communists participate.”
“No doubt what the verdict will be?”
“None at all. They will lie, and tell the world the Germans killed all those Polish officers. And the world will believe what it is told to believe.”
“But you have evidence, you have Tadeusz.”
“Tadeusz has not spoken a word since you met him,” Kaz said. “Nothing.”
“But the Red Cross saw all that evidence; the Germans brought them in. The letters and documents, all the dates ending in 1940. That has to count for something.”
“The Russians will plant their own evidence, and their scientists will all swear it was dug up. The commission is headed by Dr. Nikolai Bordenko, head of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A very respectable figure. He will be believed.”
“If he’s so respectable, why would he put his name to a lie?”
“Billy, the Russians are as ruthless as the Nazis. His family would be killed or sent to a Siberian labor camp at best.”
“Article 58,” I said.
“What?”
“Sidorov told me. It makes it a crime in the Soviet Union to not report any activity against the state. It gives the NKVD a blank check to arrest anyone.”
“Ah, I see,” Kaz said. “If you refuse to do what you are told, and your family does not turn you in, they can be arrested.”
“Nice and neat.”
“Yes. Unfortunate that they will dig up those bodies again. It would save everyone a lot of trouble if they simply wrote their report and let them lie in peace.”
I didn’t see any bomb damage on my way to New Scotland Yard, but gray smoke was visible to the east, from the area around St. Paul’s and the dockyards farther down the river. It drifted lazily across the morning sky, marking the remnants of last night’s sudden devastation. More bricks to stack in piles. More bodies laid out on the sidewalk.