Ian Slater: World in Flames

“Almost didn’t,” said David.

Choir Williams shook his head as David’s stretcher passed on, and looked over at Williams A. “You know, Williams, that Yank’s a nice fellow. But terrible morbid sometimes.”

“Listen,” said Aussie, wandering up to Choir. “Five to one Davey boy comes through the whole operation with flying colors. Dollars! U.S.!”

“Go away,” said Choir.

“Yes,” said Williams A. “Go home, you terrible man.”

“All right, all right,” said Aussie. “Yen. How about yen?”

The pact between the surviving members of the USS Roosevelt was kept and none went public with the knowledge that at least a third of them were probably dying. The secret of their invisible yet deadly illness was not a difficult one to keep in a world where the visible horrors of the war were so widespread. It was a secret Robert Brentwood believed he could keep from the moment he and the others had landed in the wild and beautiful Highland dawn to the time he and Rosemary visited his brother David. They took him down from Middlesex Hospital after the operation to convalesce at the Spences’ in Oxshott, where Mrs. Spence spared no effort looking after him, doubtless seeing in David the chance to repay Lana Brentwood for her kindness to young William when he had been wounded in the Atlantic. At times Richard Spence felt his wife’s attentiveness to David Brentwood was almost too cloying, but remembering the terrible emptiness that William’s death had caused in their lives, he was loath to interfere. In any event, he was as much worried about the effect of Peter Zeldman’s death on Georgina. But she, like her mother, had rallied, and while the loss would always be with her, Richard could already see in her a sudden maturing. She was still passionate about her ideas, and at times as argumentative as ever, but much more willing now to listen. Peter Zeldman in a way had tamed her, forced her to look at her innermost self beneath all the varsity-bred and nourished pretensions, so that when she met David, there was none of the petulant, knowing air of superiority she had once held toward “soldiers,” but more understanding of what young William and others like him and Zeldman must have been through, a new respect for action as well as for intellect.

“Would you like me to do that?” she asked David one morning as he struggled valiantly but in vain with knife and fork, his right arm particularly painful.

“Yes,” he said. It was the way she did that simple thing, smiling as she sat down beside him, a wide open smile, utterly devoid of connivance or any intent to impress, that touched him.

Richard Spence, interrupting his puzzle in the Telegraph, watched her and David looking at each other and inwardly groaned for his savings account at the Midland Bank, wondering yet again what unjust and perverse origin lay beneath the pernicious custom that decreed the bride’s father always got stuck with the bill. And Georgina’s taste in champagne exceeded only that of her Great Uncle Geoffrey, who never helped matters with his exuberance for the Spence family forming as many connections as possible “with our cousins across the water.”

It had been only a few days after the surrender when, at about 2:00 a.m., the Spences’ high-pitched burglar alarm awoke everyone in the house. Robert was up and out of bed before Rosemary realized it. As he made his way down toward the staircase, Richard Spence was coming up in his robe, apologizing profusely to everyone gathering at the top of the stairs, “Mea culpa… mea culpa. Terribly sorry… sorry, everyone. Went down for a snack, forgot to switch off the ruddy second beam.”

“Oh, Richard!” Anne chastised him, shaking, holding the rail for support, one hand on her chest as if to slow her heart.

“You frightened the dickens out of us! Well, you’d better stay up and answer the police call. It’s your own silly fault.”

“Yes… oh dear. I am sorry, everyone.”

“No problem,” said Robert, who went down to the kitchen with Richard to wait until the police called. Richard said the station at Leatherhead would either call or send a car already in the area.

“It’s a knack,” Robert said, watching Richard preparing the tea. “You won’t believe this, but before I came to England, I thought the only way you made tea was with tea bags.” Richard was opening a quarter-pound packet of Bushell’s, the small black India leaves measured by hand before he dumped them from his palm into the brown pot into which he’d poured hot, roiling water. At two o’clock in the morning, Robert wasn’t in the mood for anything more profound than a conversation about tea.

“Even when we use pots in the States, we just dump in the bags,” he said, but Richard didn’t seem in the mood for small talk. He gave the impression that his ritual of tea making was more an escape from something he wanted to say — an awkwardness that Robert hadn’t sensed before in the Spence household. “They say,” Robert continued, “that when Prince Charles went to visit Reagan in the White House, they asked him whether he’d like tea or coffee. He said tea, of course, but they brought him this little bag and he didn’t do anything with it. Must have been on old Ronnie’s mind, because next day he asked Charles at a formal dinner about it and Charles told him that he simply didn’t know what to do with this ‘funny little bag.’ “

Richard didn’t respond, merely pouring the steeped tea, moving the spout up and down, his left hand pressed against the lid — something robotic, if expert, in his movements that indicated his thoughts were elsewhere. He handed Robert a cup of dark, amber Darjeeling. “I didn’t trip the alarm,” he said quietly. He pushed the small packets of rationed sugar toward Robert. “There was someone in here. Two of them. I was on my way down for a snack. I rang the police just as I saw them take off. Couldn’t get the car number or anything, but there’s a good chance the police might cut them off at the roundabout.” He was stirring the tea thoughtfully. “No use frightening the women.”

“No,” agreed Robert. “Was anything taken?”

“No — that’s the thing. You see—”

The phone rang.

“Yes,” answered Richard. “Oh — yes, Inspector. I see. Yes — of course. Now?”

Richard returned to the kitchen table. “They caught two people — not at the roundabout. In the cul-de-sac down a bit. They’d like you and me to go down to the station.”

“Me?” asked Robert, surprised.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see them. I’d have no idea—”

Richard was handing him the Identikit sketches of the “charmers” that Robert had sent him from Holy Loch. “Oh Christ—”

“Look, Robert — they said we could come in the morning if we liked, but I think under the circumstances — might be better if we nipped down there. I’ll tell Anne you’re coming along to keep me company.”

“All right,” said Robert.

Robert knew it was them the moment he stepped inside the Leatherhead police station. The desk sergeant was typing out the pink sheet, charging them with “breaking and entering” and “illegal possession of firearms”—.22 high-vels — the very make the superintendent at Mallaig had supposed SPETS abroad had been issued with. High-velocity, quiet, and very accurate at short range. Robert could still see the bullet hole in Price’s forehead. The two charmers didn’t look too happy — no confetti this time. The identification was simple and straightforward. There were no lineups given for Chernko’s people abroad. It would be “in camera” and they’d either be shot or, now the surrender was in place, exchanged for two of the Allies.