Stalin's Gold (6 page)

Evans joined Cooper in loading a hose. Stewart saw a gaggle of ARP wardens approaching and went to talk to them about securing the area. Away to the south, the wail of another siren pierced the London air.

* * *

A long queue stretched around the eastern and southern edges of Leicester Square. A shorter queue lined up along the northern edge.

“Well, that decides it. It’s
Rebecca
not
Gone With The Wind
. Do you agree, Claire?”

Detective Constable Tommy Cole adjusted his salmon-pink tie nervously. This was his third date with Claire Robinson. The first one had been as long ago as February, but he had been sent in March on a training course in connection with his move to CID and had only returned to duty at the Yard in July. Fortunately, no one else had taken the opportunity to move in on her and a second date a week ago when Claire had returned from leave had gone very well. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help feeling that his aspirations were far above his station. He came from a very ordinary working-class background. His father was a fitter in a factory in Wembley. Tommy had gone into the police straight from school and somehow or other landed on his feet at the Yard. WPC Robinson was Assistant Commissioner Gatehouse’s niece. Before graduating from Hendon Police College she had been to public school and her family owned a large country manor in Hampshire as well as a large house in the suburbs. She was also extremely attractive with strawberry blonde hair cut short, twinkling brown eyes, a sweet button nose beneath which lay a charming little beauty spot, and a full and welcoming mouth. She was a jolly girl, who almost always seemed to be smiling. She was also quite tall and leggy. Cole liked tall and leggy girls. All in all, she was perfect, he thought, but he couldn’t quite see what she saw in him. Cole was also tall, 6’2” to be precise. His mother said he was lean and trim – he thought he was too skinny. He would like to be at least a stone heavier and to that end he had recently purchased a muscle-building book by Charles Atlas, and had got hold of some Indian clubs and dumbbells on the cheap from a friend of his dad. To match his body he had a long, thin face. He had broken his nose when he had fallen in a cross-country race a year before and when he looked at his face in the mirror he missed his old nose. His large, blue eyes were alright, he supposed, although one seemed to be a little lower than the other and his mouth seemed to have shrunk a little since he was a teenager. Well, whatever the deficiencies of his face, Claire Robinson seemed to find it acceptable. She had even kissed it on their last outing, on the cheek not the lips, but nevertheless…

“I love Laurence Olivier, Tommy. You know that. I always wanted to see this film tonight.”

“Righto.”

They joined the end of the queue. An old, peg-legged man was singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ and shuffling along the line. Claire Robinson put tuppence in the hat he held out and put her hand on Cole’s arm. “Mr Merlin seemed rather cheerful in the office today, Tommy. Didn’t you think so?”

“I didn’t see him today. Sergeant Bridges sent me to Earl’s Court to check out some suspicious goings on.”

“Suspicious goings on. That sounds exciting!”

“Well, it wasn’t. Some old biddy said that she was sure her next-door neighbours were German spies. Said she could hear them speaking German and operating a radio transmitter.”

“And were they?”

“Well, they were speaking something like German and they had a radio, but that’s about it. They were a nice, old, Jewish couple speaking Yiddish to each other – Yiddish sounds like German, you know. They were in their seventies and had escaped here from Hungary. I told the old biddy there was nothing to worry about, but she kept on ranting at me and I had to threaten her with arrest if she didn’t pipe down.”

“So did that take all day?”

“No, after I finished sorting that one out, the sergeant asked me to go and investigate a supposed sabotage attempt at Chelsea power station.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Just a quarrel between two engineers that had got out of hand.”

Claire smiled sympathetically. “Oh, well. Anyway, Mr Merlin asked me into the office to ask me to research something for him.”

“What?”

“He wanted me to dig out some files on the First World War. Wanted to know whether there was any looting when the Germans bombed us.”

“I didn’t know that they did bomb us.”

“Yes, well, my knowledge about it was not what it should be. They had Zeppelins then and they did a bit of damage in the East End. Nothing like what we’re facing now, I’m sure, but there was damage and people died.”

“Did they? And was there any looting?”

“A little.”

“Well. Who’d think it. So I suppose he’s worrying about what’s going to happen now.”

“Yes. But he seems like a new man to me. I know he’s got an awful lot on his plate, but he seems really happy for the first time since I’ve known him.”

“Well, it’s that girl, isn’t it?”

“He has a girl? I didn’t know.”

“Yes, that Polish girl, Sonia. You know? The one he met during that American embassy case.”

Claire frowned at Cole. “Tommy Cole. A juicy bit of gossip like that and you don’t let on. I suppose everyone knows apart from me?”

“Well, I don’t think your uncle knows.”

They had reached the top of the queue and Cole paid for their tickets. They entered the foyer. “Hmm. Well, good for Mr Merlin anyway. He deserves a bit of happiness.” Claire laughed and pecked Cole’s cheek as they went through the curtains into the cinema. “As do we, Tommy.”

Chapter 6

Saturday, September 7

“Hello, Sam, keeping you busy at the old cop-shop, are they?” Sam Bridges muttered these words to himself as he and his pregnant wife waited patiently at the front door in the heat of the late afternoon. As sure as the sun would rise in the morning, he knew that these would be his father-in-law’s words of greeting. Frederick Brown was a man of regular customs and habits. He had spent his entire working life in the army, ending up as a Regimental Sergeant Major. “Order, conformity, regularity – that’s what makes the British Empire great, mark my words, Sam. Regularity in all things – from bowel movements to meal times to shoe polishing, that’s what supported our great imperial adventure. Forget all the fancy stuff – regularity, Sam, regularity!”

The door to the small cottage creaked open. “Hello, Sam, keeping you busy at the old cop-shop, are they? And there you are, my darling Iris. Looks like my grandson is going to be a big, strapping boy. Need a lorry to get her down here, Sam?”

Iris wiped her forehead with a handkerchief. “Oh, shut up, Dad, and let us in. It’s boiling out here.”

“Come on in then. I’ll put the kettle on.” Fred Brown was a solid brick of a man, with a ruddy complexion and a ramrod-straight back and, although well in his sixties, Sam guessed that he would be quite as capable of carrying out his full regimental duties now as when he had retired ten years before. Fred Brown liked his son-in-law very much.

“Peas in a pod, we are, Sam. My old Maudie, she always said that girls like to marry men like their fathers, just as boys like to marry girls like their mothers. Well, I can’t speak for boys, only having had Iris, but I reckon she was right about girls. Eh, Sam?”

And indeed, Sam Bridges could have passed for a younger Fred Brown. Excepting the hair, of course. Sam had a shock of fair hair and Fred’s, prior to its reduction to a closely cropped, greyish stubble, had been jet-black. Fred Brown scraped his fingers over the stubble as he waited for the kettle to boil.

“If I’d known you were coming, I’d have got some biscuits in. I could do you both a cheese sandwich. How about that? Or if you hang about for a bit, I could get us some fish and chips from the shop on the corner for tea? What do you say?”

“No thanks, Dad. We just thought we’d pop down and see if you were alright. It’s such a lovely day and we thought we’d hop on the bus and have a cup of tea with you.”

“Well, that’s lovely of you both. You can see that the bombs haven’t got me yet. Shall we sit in the garden?”

Iris dabbed at her forehead with the handkerchief again.

“Too hot for you, dear? That’s unlike you. You always liked the heat as a child. Just like your old dad. Maudie couldn’t stand it, but I’ve always loved it. In India, the men used to call me ‘Devil Brown’ because—”

“Yes, we know, Dad. I still like the heat, but it’s not such a wonderful thing when you’re almost seven months pregnant.” Two small beads of sweat evaded the handkerchief and slid down Iris’ left cheek. Sam thought that pregnancy had made her even more beautiful. Her curly brown perm now framed a slightly fuller face than it had at the beginning of the year. There was the slightest hint of a double chin, but Sam found this charming. In fact, he found everything about her charming – her sparkling, oval, green eyes, her high cheekbones, her neat nose and her small, determined mouth.

“Well, yes, of course. But I can move the garden table and chairs into the shade, dear.”

“Oh, alright.”

Thirty minutes later the three of them were sitting with their empty teacups in Fred Brown’s neat little garden, relaxing under the cloudless Tooting sky. The cottage was at the end of a long street of terraced two-up two-downs. It was the only detached property, a fact in which Fred took much pride, and it backed on to some old fields where allotments were kept. A small gate at the end of the garden led into these fields and to his own nearby allotment. As they relaxed in the garden, they could hear birds singing and chickens clucking. They could as well have been in deepest Kent or Sussex countryside as a fifty-minute bus ride from Big Ben. Sam and his father-in-law were stretched out in deckchairs in the small area of garden that still had some sun. Iris sat at the table in the cool shadow of the house with her feet on a chair. They had tried to avoid talking about the war as such discussions usually sent Fred Brown’s blood pressure haywire. They had heard that Fred had not slept much in the past week with all the night activity, but, as he reminded them, he could get by with a minimum of sleep as he’d learned in the army. Discussion had moved on to the naming of his grandson.

“It might well be a girl, Dad. Don’t count your chickens.”

“Poppycock, Iris. It’s going to be a boy. I know it. Aren’t I right, Sam? Now what do you think about Winston? No, I suppose you’re right. Everyone and their uncle will be calling their kids Winston, I suppose. Then again, if things don’t go so well perhaps we’ll have to call him Adolf, eh?”

Iris steered the conversation away from names to her father’s domestic arrangements. Before she had become pregnant she had come down every week from Battersea to see to her father’s cleaning and washing, but her father had insisted on her dropping this when he’d learned that a baby was on the way. He’d found someone down the street who was prepared to do for him for a modest fee. Mrs Hammond, a sprightly little widow whom Fred found pleasant company.

“She doesn’t have designs on you, Dad, does she?”

Fred spluttered the remains of his tea on his trousers. “Of course not. She’s just a nice little old lady, that’s all.”

A comfortable silence settled on them. A horse neighed somewhere in the fields. There was the sound of male laughter from one of the allotments. Sam noticed that both Fred and Iris’ heads were beginning to nod. A bee was buzzing around his outstretched legs and another flitted around between Fred and Iris. Sam looked at his watch. Half an hour and they ought to be getting back. He was on duty tomorrow and he wanted an early night. He closed his eyes. The bees carried on buzzing and Sam dozed off for a few seconds. The image of a baby came to mind. A baby with a cigar in its mouth. Winston Bridges. Hmm. Sam jerked awake. The drone of the bees had been superseded by a louder buzz and he looked up and blinked to see that the sky was filled with metal. What seemed like hundreds of planes jostled for space from one corner of the sky to the other. Sam focused his eyes and now saw a massive central core of larger aircraft, surrounded by crowds of smaller ones. The giant flotilla was heading north towards central London. This was on a different scale to the previous raids – it must be the big one – the long-awaited, major attack on the heart of the nation. The siren started to wail.
A bit late in the day for that
, Sam thought. He saw his wife and her father staring up with open mouths and looked back up to see a new formation of bombers blotting out the few available patches of clear sky.

“Come on, you two. Where’s the nearest shelter, Fred?”

Fred was still staring up in amazement. “Look. There are our boys. Go on. Get the bastards.” Iris grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the house.

They watched as waves of British fighters surged up into the sky and tore into the deadly storm cloud of German bombers. They saw some bombers and fighters spiralling down, but the vast bulk of the invaders continued inexorably on their way. A loud crashing sound came from the nearby fields and they were suddenly showered with sods of earth.

Sam shouted at the others, “Let’s get in!”

As they closed the kitchen door, Fred pointed towards the hall. He pulled open a door under the stairs and touched a light switch. “It’s too late to get to the shelter. Come down into the cellar. I’ve made it quite cosy. We’ll be alright there. Come on, Iris, give me your hand.” They made their way down the stairs. Two mattresses had been crammed into the cramped space. An old camp-burner, a relic of Fred’s army days, together with a teapot, a packet of PG Tips and some mugs rested on an upturned old crate. A book of Sherlock Holmes stories, a couple of faded issues of
Picture Post
and a copy of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
lay on one of the mattresses. Sam also noticed a bucket discreetly positioned behind the crate.

Another explosion thudded nearby and the cellar door above them clattered open and Sam jumped up the stairs to lock it.

“Alright, love?” Iris’ hands were shaking and Sam helped her down onto the mattresses. Fred reached out and patted her stomach. “The young lad’s got his first taste of action already. He’s going to be a soldier and a fine one at that.”

Iris smiled weakly. “I hope to God there are no wars for him or anyone to fight in after this one.”

They settled down for the duration. There were two more heavy explosions in the first hour, but mostly they could hear the dull thump of distant bombardment. By the time the all clear sounded at seven, Sam had read two Sherlock Holmes stories and drunk two cups of tea and Iris and Fred were both asleep. He climbed the stairs to enter the hall and pushed through the front door into the street. A house at the far end of the terrace was burning, but everything else seemed normal. He walked back through the house out into the garden and then through the gate, past the allotments and into the open fields. He thought he would be able to get the clearest view of the London skyline from the middle of one of the fields. Until he got there, he didn’t turn to look back. When he did, he saw vast billowing clouds of black smoke covering most of the horizon.
All of London must be on fire
, he thought. He stared, his mind a blank, for a moment or two, then came to his senses.
It’s best to leave Iris with her dad
, he thought. For some reason the garish music hall image of Max Miller came to his mind. Yes, the centre of town seemed to be top of the bill today and the southern suburbs were just the supporting acts. He’d have to get back to Battersea though – he needed to know whether they had a home to go back to. He felt a firm push from behind and jumped. He turned to find one of the small ponies someone kept in the fields. He put his hand onto the animal’s head and stroked it. He could feel it shaking.

“You and me both, mate. You and me both.”

* * *

Maksim tried very hard to keep his hand still as he poured more brandy into his employer’s glass. The fact that dinner had been served to the accompaniment of the racket from Germany’s largest bombing attack by far on the English capital seemed not to have disturbed Kyril Voronov at all. He had laughed and joked all night. Although most of the bombs appeared to be falling far to the east, they had heard plenty of explosions much closer to home. A neighbour had knocked on the door a little earlier to warn Maksim that Pont Street had been hit by a cluster of bombs. Pont Street was a mere five-minute walk from Voronov’s palatial house off Eaton Square. When Maksim had told him this, Voronov had only laughed louder. But then everyone knew that Kyril Voronov was a madman. No one but a madman would call Stalin an ignorant Georgian sheepshagger to his face. Everyone wondered how he had been able to survive that, but he had, as he had survived many other things – the revolution, many battles, the numerous purges. He had survived all those things and had somehow accumulated a large fortune as well. Very few knew how he had managed this, but Maksim was one of them. He had been with Voronov for nearly twenty years. He had seen the distasteful favours Voronov had done, the horse-trading, the wheeling and dealing, the torture, the murder. Call Voronov mad? Maksim himself was the maddest to stick by this ogre. But then again, things hadn’t been so bad recently – a calm, quiet, comfortable period for him at least, until the bloody Germans had decided to bomb the hell out of London.

Another nearby explosion rattled the windows. Maksim jumped and spilled some brandy on the table.

“You idiot, Maksim! What’s wrong with you?”

“Do you not think, Kyril Ivanovitch, that we should make our way to the shelter now or at least to the cellar. That sounded very close.”

“Bulls’ bollocks, Maksim. That was a long way away. By God, we’ve been through a lot worse than this and survived. And remember, Kyril was born lucky – nothing ever hurts Kyril, does it, my dear?”

Madame Anna Voronov finished her glass of Chateau Yquem and smiled weakly. “Yes, dear. Nothing ever hurts you – just those around you.”

Voronov tugged at his thick, grey beard and laughed again. “In this instance, my dear, I think you have it wrong – if a bomb doesn’t hurt me then it won’t hurt those next to me, will it – eh, Misha? What do you say?”

“You are right as always, my friend. When are you ever wrong?” Misha Trubetskoi, Voronov’s assistant and partner in all things, grabbed the brandy bottle from Maksim, poured himself a glass and then poured another, which he passed to Maksim. “Have a slug of this, for God’s sake. This will calm you down. Sometimes I wonder how you’ve lasted all this time with Kyril. Surely you should have a stronger constitution by now? Or perhaps you’d prefer one of my specials, eh?” Trubetskoi produced a hip flask from inside his jacket and waved it menacingly in Maksim’s face.

Voronov chuckled. “Leave him alone, Misha. He’s my lucky talisman, he is. He’s always been a worryguts, but I can’t get rid of him now. We’ve been through too much together. Eh, Maksim?”