The English Assassin Read online

  “What are they doing?” Una Persson asked.

  The ataman spoke almost regretfully. “They are hanging a dandy. There aren’t so many as there were.”

  “He seems brave.”

  “Surely courage is a characteristic of the dandy?”

  “And yet those old men plainly hate him. I thought Cossacks admired courage?”

  “They are also very prudish. And a little jealous.”

  The tightening rope knocked the blue hat from the fair hair; it covered the face for a moment before falling to the mud. The dandy gave his captors a chiding glance. The Kubans slapped at the rumps of the two horses on the other end of the rope. Slowly the dandy was raised into the air, his body twisting, his legs kicking, his face turning red, then blue, then black. Some noises came out of his distorted mouth.

  “Sartor Resartus.” Karinin guided Una Persson past the gallows and ducked to push back the flap of his yurt and allow her to precede him. The yurt was illuminated by a lamp on a chest—a bowl of fat with a wick burning in it. The little round room was tidily furnished with a wooden bed and a table, as well as the chest.

  Karinin came in and began to lace up the flap from the inside.

  Una Persson removed her coat and put it on the chest. She unbuckled her ammunition belt with its holstered Smith and Wesson .45 and placed it on top of the coat.

  Karinin’s slanting eyes were tender and passionate. He stepped forward and took her to him. His breath smelled of fresh milk.

  “We of the steppe have not lost the secret of affection,” he told her. They lay down in the narrow bed. He began to tug at his belt. “It comes between love and lust. We believe in moderation, you see.”

  “It sounds attractive.” Much against her better judgement she responded to his caress.

  NYE

  Ironmaster House was built of grey stones. It was Jacobean, with the conventional small square-leaded windows, three floors, five chimneys, a grey slate roof. Around its walls, particularly over the portico, climbed roses, wistaria and evergreens. Its gardens were divided by tall, ornamental privet hedges; there was a small lawn at the front and a larger lawn at the back. The back lawn ran down to a brook which fed a pool in which water lilies were blooming. In the middle of the lawn, a water-spray swept back and forth like a metronome, for it was June and the temperature was 96°†F.

  From the open windows of the timbered sitting room it was possible to see both gardens, which were full of fuchsia, hydrangeas, gladioli and roses all sweetening the heavy air with their scent. And among these flowers, as if drugged, groggily flew some bees, butterflies, wasps and bluebottles.

  Inside the shadowy house and seated on mock Jacobean armchairs near a real Jacobean table sat Major Nye in his shirtsleeves; two girls, one fair and one dark; and Major Nye’s wife, Mrs Nye, a rather strong-looking, weather-beaten woman with a contemptuous manner, a stoop and unpleasant hands.

  Mrs Nye was serving a sparse tea. She poured from a mock Georgian, mock silver teapot into real Japanese porcelain cups. She sliced up a seed cake and slid the slices onto matching plates.

  Major Nye had not bought Ironmaster House. His wife had inherited it. He had, however, worked hard to support the place; it was expensive to run. Since leaving the Army and becoming Company Secretary to the Mercantile Charitable Association, he had lost his sense of personal authority. Many of his anxieties were new; he had previously never experienced anything like them and consequently was at a loss to know how to cope with them. This had earned him the contempt of his wife, who no longer loved him, but continued to command his loyalty. One of the girls in the room was Elizabeth, his daughter. He had another daughter, Isobel, who was a dancer in a company which worked principally on ocean-going liners, and he had a small son who had won a chorister’s scholarship to St James’ School, Southwark, a school reputed to be unnecessarily brutal but, as Major Nye would explain, it had been the only chance “the poor little chap had to get into a public school”, since the major could not afford to pay the kind of fees expected by Eton, Harrow or Winchester (his own school). In the army Major Nye had rarely had to make a choice; but in civilian life he had been given only a few choices and most of his decisions had been inevitable, for he had his duty to do to his wife, her house, and his children. During the summer they usually took a couple of paying guests and they also sold some of the produce of their market garden at the roadside. Mrs Nye was seriously considering selling teas on the lawn to passing motorists.

  Major Nye had to work solidly from six in the morning until nine or ten o’clock at night all through the week and the weekend. His wife also worked like a martyr to help keep the garden and the house going. Her heart was weak and his ulcer problems were growing worse. He had sold all his shares and there was a double mortgage on the house. Because he was insured, he hoped that he would die as soon as his son went up to Oxford in ten years’ time. There were no paying guests at the moment. Those who did turn up never came for a second year; the atmosphere of the big house was sad and tense and hopeless.

  Elizabeth, the dark-haired girl, was large-boned and inclined to fatness. She had a loud, cheerful voice which was patronising when she addressed her father, accusing when she spoke to her mother and almost conciliatory when she talked to the fair-haired girl with whom, for the past nine months, she had been having a romantic love affair. This affair had never once faltered in its intensity. The fair-haired girl was being very polite to Elizabeth’s parents whom she was meeting for the first time. She had a low, calm, unaffected voice. Her name was Catherine Cornelius and she had turned from incest to lesbianism with a certain sense of relief. Elizabeth Nye was the third girl she had seduced but the only one with whom she had been able to sustain a relationship for very long.

  It was Catherine who had asked Elizabeth to get Major Nye to collect Jerry Cornelius from Cornwall and deliver him to Ironmaster House where her brother had been picked up by Sebastian Auchinek’s agents and transported to Dubrovnik. Catherine had come to know Sebastian Auchinek through Una Persson who had introduced Catherine to her first lover, Mary Greasby. Una Persson had once possessed mesmeric power over Catherine similar to that which Catherine now possessed over Elizabeth. Una Persson had convinced Catherine that Prinz Lobkowitz in Berlin would be able to cure Jerry of his hydrophilia and so Catherine had been deceived into providing the collateral (her brother) for the guns which had helped reduce Athens. She had also been instrumental in delivering Jerry into the hands of his old regimental commander, Colonel Pyat of the ‘Razin’ 11th Don Cossack Cavalry, who, for some time, had been obsessed with discovering the reason for Cornelius’s desertion. He desperately wanted, once he had proved Jerry authentic, to revive the assassin and question him.

  Catherine was only gradually becoming aware of her mistake. She had still not voiced the suspicion, even to herself, that Una Persson might have deceived her.

  “And how is the poor blighter?” asked Major Nye, dolefully watching the water fall through the overheated air and rolling himself a thin cigarette. “Hypothermia, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure, major. I haven’t heard from Berlin yet. It’s confused, as you know.”

  “It beats me,” said Mrs Nye harshly, rising to collect the tea paraphernalia, “how your brother managed to get himself into that state. But then I suppose I’m behind the times.” Her wide, cruel mouth hardened. “Even the diseases have changed since I was a girl.” She gave her husband a sharp, accusing glare. She hated him for his ulcers. “You haven’t eaten your scone, dear.”

  “Old tummy…” he mumbled. “I’d better see to that weeding.” His wife knew how to whip him on.

  “The heat…” said Catherine Cornelius, and her bosom heaved. “Isn’t it a bit…?”

  “Used to the heat, my girl.” He squared his shoulders. A funny little smile appeared beneath his grey moustache. There was considerable pride in his stance. “Drilled in full dress uniform. India. Much worse than this. Like the heat.” He lit the ciga
rette he had rolled. “You’re the cream in my coffee, I’m the milk in your tea, pom-te-pomm-pom-pompom.” He smiled shyly and affectionately at her as he opened the door which led into the back garden. He gave her a comic, swaggering salute. “See you later, I hope.”

  Left alone, Elizabeth and Catherine looked longingly at each other across the real Jacobean table.

  “We should be getting back to Ladbroke Grove soon if we’re not to get caught in the traffic,” said Catherine glancing at the door through which Mrs Nye had passed with the tea things.

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “We shouldn’t leave it too late, should we?”

  J.C.

  Jerry’s coffin was being rocked about quite a lot. The train carrying it stopped suddenly once again. It was about a mile outside Coventry. The awful smell always increased when the train was stationary. Was it the steam?

  Colonel Pyat got up from the dirty floor to peer through the little hole in the armour plating of his truck. The light was fading but he could see a grimy grey-green field and a pylon. On the horizon were rows of red-brick houses. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the evening; it had been exactly three days since the train had left Edinburgh. Pyat brushed at his torn and grubby uniform. He had nothing else to wear, yet it was now far too dangerous to be seen in military uniform outside London. He munched the last half of his stale sandwich and sipped a drop of vodka from his hip flask. There had been no change in Cornelius and Pyat had had no time to revive and question him. The colonel had given up his original ambition, anyway; now he hoped he might use the contents of the coffin as his safe conduct, his guarantee of asylum, when he reached Ladbroke Grove and contacted one of the Cornelius relatives. Matters had not gone well in Berlin after Auchinek and his Zaporozhian allies had arrived. Somebody had told Pyat that no-one could hold Berlin for more than a month and he hadn’t believed them. Now this knowledge was his consolation— even the Jew would not last long before someone else took over what was left of the city.

  From within the coffin came a further succession of muffled shrieks and cries. Pyat heard a querulous shout from further up the train. Another voice replied in a strong Wolverhampton accent.

  “Electricity failure, they think. The two other trains can’t run. No signals, see.”

  Again the distant shout and the Wolverhampton voice replying: “We’ll be moving shortly. We can’t go until the signal says we can.”

  Pyat lit a cigarette. Sourly he paced the carriage, wishing he had thought of a better plan. A week ago England had seemed the safest state in Europe. Now it was in chaos. He should have guessed what would happen. Everything broke down so rapidly nowadays. But then, on the other hand, things came together quickly, too. It was the price you paid for swift communications.

  The light faded and the single electric bulb in the roof glowed and then dimmed until only the element shone with a dull orange colour. Pyat had become used to this. He settled down to try to sleep, convinced that the sharp pain which had returned to his chest could only be lung cancer. He wished he had some cocaine.

  He began to nod off. But then the sounds from the coffin filled his head. They had changed in tone so that this time they seemed to be warning him of something. They had become more urgent. He stretched out his boot and kicked at the coffin. “Shut up. I don’t need any more of that.”

  But the urgency of the cries did not abate.

  Pyat climbed to his feet and stumbled forward with the intention of unstrapping the lid and putting a gag of some kind into Cornelius’s mouth. But then the truck lurched. He fell. The big Pacific-class loco was moving again. He hugged his bruised body. His eyes were tightly shut.

  * * *

  It was dawn.

  A green Morgan of the decadent Plus 8 period droned swiftly along the platform, passing the train as it pulled at last into an almost deserted King’s Cross station. The car followed the train for a moment, then turned off the platform into the main ticket office and drove through the outer doors and down the steps into the street. Through his peephole Colonel Pyat watched blearily, certain that the Morgan had some connection with himself. A strong smell, like that of a fair quantity of hard-boiled eggs, reached his nostrils. He spat on the boards and jammed his eyes once again to the spy-hole.

  Expecting a large crowd at King’s Cross, he had planned to lose himself in it. But there were no crowds. There was no-one. It was as if all the people had been cleared from the station. Could it be an ambush? Or merely an air raid?

  The locomotive released a huge sigh of hot steam and halted.

  Pyat remembered that he was unarmed.

  If he emerged from the carriage now, would he be shot down? Where were the marksmen hiding?

  He unbolted the sliding doors of the wagon and slid them back. He waited for the other passengers to disembark. After a few seconds it became clear that there were no other passengers. A few small, innocent sounds came from various parts of the station. A clatter. A cheerful whistling. A thump. Then silence. He saw the fireman and the driver and the guard leave the train and swagger through the barrier towards the main exit, carrying their gear. They wore dirty BR uniforms; their caps were pushed back as far as possible on their heads. They were all three middle-aged, stocky and plain. They walked slowly, chatting easily to each other. They turned a corner and were gone. Pyat felt abandoned. Steam still clung to the lower parts of the train and drifted over the platform. Pyat sniffed the smoky air as a hound might sniff for a fox. The high, sooty arches of the station were silent and the glass dome admitted only a little dirty sunlight.

  Because it was dawn, a bird or two began to twitter in the steel beams near the roof.

  Pyat shivered and got down. Walking to the far side of the platform he took hold of a large porter’s trolley. The wheels squeaked and grated. He dragged it alongside the armoured carriage. He felt faint. He looked warily about him. Silent, untended trains stood at every platform. Huge black and green steam engines with dirty brasswork faced worn steel bumpers and the blank brick walls beyond. They were like monsters shocked into catatonia by a sudden understanding: this had been their last journey. They had been lured into involuntary hibernation, perhaps to remain here until they rusted and rotted to dust.

  Pyat manhandled the heavy coffin onto the trolley. It bumped down and a somewhat pettish mewling escaped from it. Pyat took the handles of the trolley with both hands. He strained backwards and got it moving. He hauled it with some difficulty along the asphalt. The wheels squeaked and groaned. In his filthy white uniform he might have been mistaken for a porter who had been mysteriously transferred from some more tropical station, perhaps in India. He was not really as conspicuous as he felt.

  He trudged through the ticket barrier, crossed the grey expanse of the enclave and reached the pavement outside. The streets and buildings all seemed uninhabited. Wasn’t this the heart of London? And a Thursday morning? Pyat looked up at the bland sky. There were no aircraft to be seen. No dirigibles. No flying bombs. The bright early sunshine was already quite warm. It dulled his shivers.

  A tattered horse-drawn lavender cab stood untended by the kerb outside the main entrance. Now that the Morgan had disappeared, it was the only form of transport in sight. The driver, however, was nowhere to be seen. Pyat decided that he did not care about the driver. With almost the last of his strength. Pyat got the coffin into the hansom and climbed up to the box. He shook the reins and the bony mare raised her head. He flicked her rump with the frayed whip and shouted at her. She began to walk.

  Slowly the hansom moved away, the horse refusing to go faster than a walk. It was as if the hansom were the only visible portion of an otherwise invisible funeral procession. The horse’s feet clopped mournfully through the deserted street. It reached Euston Road and began to head due west for Ladbroke Grove.

  PROLOGUE (continued)

  … and perhaps the greatest loss I still feel is the loss of my unborn son. I was certain it would have been a son and I had even named it
, my subconscious coming up with a name I would never have chosen otherwise: Andrew. I had not realised what would happen to me. The abortion seemed so necessary at the time if she were not to suffer in several ways. But it was an abortion of convenience, scarcely of desperation. For a long while I did not admit that it had affected me at all. If I had ever had a son after that, I feel it would have banished the sense of loss, but as it is it will go with me to my grave.

  —Maurice Lescoq,

  Leavetaking

  SHOT TWO

  THUNDER BRINGS COMA BOY BACK TO LIFE

  Only a miracle could save nine-year-old Lawrence Mantle, said doctors. For four months he had been in a deep coma. Twice he ‘died’ when his heart stopped beating. There was no sign of life from his brain, surgeons told his parents. Then, in the middle of a thunderstorm, it happened. A flash of lightning and a loud thunderclap made nurses in the children’s ward at Ashford hospital, Middlesex, jump … and Lawrence, still in a coma, screamed.

  London Evening News, 3 December, 1969

  THE OBSERVERS

  Colonel Pyat had first met Colonel Cornelius in Guatemala City, in the early days of the 1900–75 War, before the monorails, the electric carriages, the giant airships, the domed cities and the utopian republics had been smashed, never to be restored. They met at some time during what is now called the Phoney War period of 1901–13. They were both representing the military establishments of two great and mutually suspicious European governments. They had been sent to observe the trials of the Guatemalans’ latest Land Ironclad (the invention of the Chilean wizard, O’Bean). Their two governments had been interested in purchasing a number of the machines should the trials prove successful. As it happened, both Pyat and Cornelius had decided that the ’clad was still too primitive to be of much practical use, though the French, German and Turkish governments, who also had observers at the trials, had each ordered a small quantity.