James Benn - Rag and Bone

“It is important that you solve the murder of Egorov,” Cosgrove said. “We must know if that was a security breach, a personal matter, or simply a random crime. If word about Operation Frantic gets out, there will be hell to pay.”

“I need to question the members of the delegation, to see if any of them know anything. I tried at the embassy and got the cold shoulder from Sidorov.”

“He’s NKVD, like Egorov was,” Bull said. “They sat back and watched, hardly ever participated.”

“Yeah. The question is, who’s watching them? Can I have Big Mike in on this, Colonel Harding? And Kaz.”

“Impossible,” Cosgrove sputtered.

“Why?” Harding said.

“Kaz speaks Russian, and I trust him.”

“He’s Polish,” Cosgrove said. “The Russians won’t stand for it.”

“How about he just listens? They ought to be used to that.”

“I’ll see if we can get him back from the Poles,” Harding said. “But he’ll have to remove the Poland shoulder patch. He’ll be attached to SHAEF headquarters, so they won’t have a basis for complaint.”

“Never stopped the bloody Bolsheviks before,” Cosgrove said. “Tomorrow the joint planning committee is moving operations down to Dover. Be prepared to join us, Boyle.”

“Dover? Not High Wycombe?”

“That’s where the Royal Navy comes in. Major Cosgrove decided that Red Air Force officers at Eighth Air Force HQ might lead people to put two and two together. So we’re moving everyone down to Dover Castle, on the coast. It’s a Royal Navy base, secure, with underground tunnels. Made to order.”

“In case there are any spies about,” Cosgrove explained, “we’ve put out word that we are giving the Russians a tour of the castle and of the defensive measures taken in the area, earlier in the war, when invasion was a real possibility. There will probably be a photograph in the newspapers of a Russian or two and some Home Guard chaps, that sort of thing.”

“Perfect. I can interview them while the public relations stuff is going on.”

“You’ll have to cut them out of the herd, Billy,” Bull said. “Those Russkies stick real close together. You can start tonight. We’ve been invited to the opera at their place.”

“Russian opera,” Cosgrove said. “Dreadful stuff.”

“Major Cosgrove,” I said, trying to sound respectful, “I’m investigating one of the London gangs that may have been involved with Egorov’s death. Archie Chapman is the head guy.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Cosgrove said. “He runs a well-organized operation for a fellow who’s off his rocker. Spreads a bit of the wealth around locally, which makes it difficult for the Met, I understand.”

“Right. I’m interested in his son, Topper Chapman. Can I get a look at his file?”

“He’s not in the army, so we wouldn’t have a file on him,” Cosgrove said.

“I mean the secret files you have access to. It may be important.”

“Very well. I’ll see what we have.”

The meeting broke up and I hung back in the outer office until everyone was in the hall. Big Mike sat at his desk, the office chair creaking under his weight as he went through a stack of files.

“What gives?” I asked him. “Didn’t you tell Harding about the truck?”

“Sure I did, Billy. I also told him about your idea to get it back. He liked it.”

“My idea?”

“Well, I didn’t want anything to mess up getting Estelle back here, so I figured we both had to come out looking good. I told him you wanted all the pubs and restaurants in Shoreditch placed off limits to U.S. personnel until the truck and shipment were returned.”

“That’s a stroke of genius, Big Mike. A lot of those joints must pay protection to Chapman. He’ll have to give it up to protect his income.”

“And his reputation. He can look like a hero on his home turf, getting us to lift the restriction. Plus he gets a few crates of peaches out of the deal. We only want fifty back.”

“You make me sound like I’m one crafty lieutenant.”

“That’s a noncom’s job, Billy,” Big Mike said as he returned to the files and forms on his desk.

It’s not every pair of lieutenants who get their shoes shined regularly at the Dorchester, but I almost wished Kaz hadn’t left our best patent leathers out for a workover. The smell of shoe polish was a reminder of home, so I didn’t mind a go with a good brush. When I was a kid, it was my job to take Dad’s shoes down cellar once a week and give them a spit shine. I’d sit on the wooden steps, with the door open behind me, listening to the sounds of the house. Mom cleaning up in the kitchen, my little brother Danny running around, and Dad fiddling with the radio. It felt like it would always be that way, that I’d never run out of weeks to put a shine to my father’s shoes.

So I liked shining shoes, but I couldn’t explain all that to Kaz. It would make me sound like I wasn’t a tough guy. I sipped good Irish whiskey instead, hearing the swoop swoosh of the brush in my mind as it went back and forth over countless pairs of shoes, the aroma in the glass a poor substitute for mink oil, leather, black shoe polish, and the traces of my old man’s sweat that I picked up on my fingers as I curled them inside each shoe, forcing out the folds and buffing them with all my might, desperate to do this job right, as if everything depended on a perfect shoe shine. I always complained, but I worked as hard as I could at it. Funny, the things you miss. Right now, I’d have given anything to have that shoe brush in my hand.

I watched Kaz knotting his tie in the mirror and felt ashamed of my homesickness. His family was dead, and his nation occupied by the Germans, with the Russians up at bat next. There was a lot of politics going on about Polish borders after the war, but reading between the lines I knew that the Soviets were going to bite off a big chunk for themselves and call the shots in what was left. I still had a home to go to. Kaz had nowhere to go, and no one to be with in England after the war. I wondered if he’d want to settle in Boston. Never mind that, I told myself. Make sure he doesn’t hang first.

“Kaz, you need to see your tailor,” I said, shaking off the melancholy. “You’re busting the seams of that shirt.”

“Do you think so, Billy? My collar feels tight also.” He put on his dress uniform jacket, the one he’d had tailored. It did look a little tight in the shoulders. There was a barely discernible patch of darker fabric where the red Poland patch had been. Kaz had been glad to be released back into service with SHAEF, and had cut the stitching with no regrets.

“It’s true,” I said. “Those weights are working. You’ve got some real muscle.”

Kaz beamed, proud of his new strength. I was glad of it, too. I knew I needed our morning workouts as well, to sweat out the alcohol I’d been dousing myself with. Some of it had been in the line of duty, but the rest was in the line of drowning my sorrows, worrying about Kaz and Diana, and feeling sorry for myself. I had to work at remembering I didn’t have it half as bad as Kaz, or everyone else in this war who might get in the way of a bullet. I started to down the rest of my drink, and then thought about what we might encounter that night at the Soviet Embassy. If it shaped up anything like the Poles and their vodka and the Chapmans and their gin, I needed to save my energy. I set the glass down. Moderation was my middle name.

Shoes shined, ribbons and brass all in order, we put on trench coats and walked across Hyde Park to Bayswater Road, heading for the embassy. Clouds blew across the evening sky, and patches of stars shone through the breaks, glimmering on the still waters of the Serpentine.