After what seemed like a very long interval, nor did the plane drop from the sky, I said, creakily, “So what’re you saying, Paul? That we’re phase two in the plan to breed the master race? I thought that mongrelization was what they were trying to avoid.”
“Yes, but they were fascinated by mutts and the idea of breeding. They even saved Aryan-looking Jewish kids from the ovens and gave them to good Nazi families to raise, which they shouldn’t have done at all if they really believed their racial purity line. And all that skull measuring they did and the Mengele experiments with twins…”
I recalled something he’d just said and interrupted. “What did you mean by ‘lucky me’ just now?”
“Oh, just that Mutti gave me and Miri the blood lecture, which apparently you didn’t get. I mean, did you think I figured all this out myself?”
“She told you she married Dad to advance the racial theories of the Third Reich?”
“Not in so many words, but we were often told that the Nazis lost because they were too pure and noble and so she was sacrificing herself to inject some sneaky-smart Jew genes into the mix. I mean, didn’t you think that the peculiar assortment of physical characteristics in our family had something to do with the way she treated the three of us? Oh, right, you kind of forgot some of that. In any case, we were disappointments in the Übermensch department, although of unimpeachable Aryan appearance: I was a thug and Miri was a whore, but you were, so to speak, the golden mutt who would make all of it worthwhile. That’s why she killed herself. The two of us were out of reach and she didn’t want to distract you from your studies with having to care for an old lady. Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillianten for heroic Mutti. You look surprised, Jake. You never figured this out?”
“No, and I want to thank you for bringing it to my attention. We should have more of these brotherly talks-I feel so terrifically up now. Gosh, and what a shame Mutti didn’t stick around to see the prodigal return in glory to judge the living and the dead. She would’ve been so proud!”
Paul ignored my sarcasm as he almost always does and replied mildly, “Yes, I’ve always regretted it. Are we finished with this, by the way? Because I have some thoughts about your present situation.”
After that, we talked strategy, and he developed his idea that the whole thing was a con and what that meant for our actions while in the U.K., and I thought he made sense. Of course it was a con. Wasn’t everything?
The plane landed. We drove to London, in a limo supplied by Osborne Security Service, the security firm Paul had engaged. The driver, one Brown, was an agent of said firm and according to Paul an ex-SAS piano wire artist. He did not impress me, being rather slight and weaselly in appearance. At the hotel I had rather too much to drink-understandable under the circumstances, I believe-and went to bed. In the morning, far too early, I awoke to a crushing headache, a foul, dry tongue, and my brother, dressed in his clericals, with the information that we were moving immediately. Apparently, his security team had spotted some bad guys and we needed to shake them. I allowed him to get me together and in short order we had picked up Crosetti, who seemed to have turned into a hostile little twerp overnight. He was barely civil on the ride to Oxford.
I may have dozed but awoke to Paul’s voice describing something he had found at some church in the old City. He thought it was the grille Bracegirdle had used to encipher the letters, which I suppose was a major find, but, frankly, I could not work up much interest at the time. I am a man of settled habits, as I believe I have indicated, and zooming around in cars in foreign parts holds no attraction. I noticed young Crosetti’s eyes were shining, though, and I might have drifted back to sleep were it not for Paul’s mentioning that this grille had been swiped by a young woman. Who else could it have been? I dismissed out of hand Crosetti’s opinion that it could also have been Carolyn Rolly. The crime had Miranda’s prints all over it: the innocent come-on, the inveigling into the confidence of the perhaps lonely curate, the swift, violent denouement…Miranda! I didn’t even bother to argue with him. I recall thinking that we have the ciphers so she had to come to us with her grille, and I recall a sense of anticipation such as I have rarely known, like a kid on the way to a carnival.
We approached the outskirts of Oxford as it was, getting on toward noon, and I was growing hungry. I mentioned this to Paul and he told me that we were to meet Oliver March in a country pub. Shortly after this information passed, Brown started to drive like a lunatic, swerving across four lanes of the M40 at the last moment to shoot onto the A40 and then quickly leaving that for a local road, just west of Oxford.
Crosetti asked him if he were trying to lose our pursuers and Brown replied, “No, just one of them.” After this we roared down smaller roads, throwing up rooster tails of water and mud and tossing us all around unmercifully. I caught a look at my companions, who seemed to be enjoying the ride, and perhaps also enjoying my increasing discomfort. Then, after a particularly jarring turn down what looked like a farm track, Brown halted the car, leaped out, popped the trunk, and dragged from it a long black nylon bag. I left the car too, staggered over to a low fence, and was sick for a good long time. When I recovered, I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and looking in that direction saw our Brown under a bare roadside willow, with a huge exotic-looking rifle propped in a crotch of that tree and pointing down the road. A blue BMW drove toward him at speed and when it was about a hundred yards away he shot it. Its engine made expensive breaking noises and the car rolled to a stop, with steam rising from its hood. Brown put his rifle back in its bag and noticed me standing there goggling and dabbing at my mouth with a handkerchief.
“Are you all right, sir?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Did you just shoot somebody?”
“No, sir, just the vehicle. This is a Barrett rifle, sir, nothing like it for stopping a car. Father Paul wanted some privacy for this meeting.”
I stared at him and he took my elbow. “We should get back in our car now, sir.”
We did and drove off down some more little roads until we came to a perfect little English village, whose name I have quite forgotten: Dorking Smedley? Inching Tweedle? Something like that; and pulled up in the yard of what looked like a coaching inn off the cover of a fancy biscuit package: thatched roof, black Tudor beams, heavy, purplish, leaded glass, the kind of place Dick Bracegirdle used to frequent for a pint of malmsey. We all trooped inside except for Brown, who waited with the car, talking into a crackling radio.
Inside it was dim and cozy, with a fire in the grate. A large man with unfashionable red sideburns was behind the bar, and when he saw us he nodded and gestured to one side, where there was a door. Through the door was a small room with a gas fire and a battered round table in it, at which sat a slight, handsome man in his late fifties wearing a tweed jacket, a tattersall shirt, and a black wool tie. He stood when we came in, and Paul made the introductions and we all shook and sat. This was Oliver March, the companion. Another evidence that Paul has taken charge of this expedition. I didn’t mind. I felt like one of those great black bladders of industrial chemicals one sees in barges in the harbor, inert and massive, pushed about by little tugs.
After some small talk, March said, “Well, secret meetings. It all seems so odd: when did you last see your father and all that…”
At this I started and looked wildly at Paul, who explained that it was a famous painting of a Cavalier boy being questioned by Roundhead soldiers, a figure of speech. The professor continued. “Yes, quite: and I would not have agreed to meet with you in such an inconvenient place were it not for your suggestion, Father Mishkin, that the police explanation of Andrew’s death was not accurate.”