THIRTEEN
Dr Gibb wanted his patient to stay in bed. Eventually he compromised and allowed Anthony to leave hospital on the understanding he’d go quietly back to his club and rest. Anthony agreed to rest during the day – he was quite willing to obey Dr Gibb to that extent – and tactfully said nothing about what he intended to do that evening.
Sir Charles decided that the simplest plan was probably the best. The U-boat expected James Smith and a prisoner, and Sir Charles didn’t see any reason to disappoint them. Anthony took the part of James Smith with Sir Charles as his captive, and now the two men, their collars turned up against the cold, waited.
The beach, a long foreshore of sand that stretched darkly for miles in either direction, seemed deserted. The moon was in the first quarter and its fleeting light, hidden behind scudding clouds, showed the black expanse of the North Sea with only the occasional curling tip of white as the quiet waves lapped onto the shore. Out there, Anthony knew, were the Goodwin Sands, a treacherous graveyard for ships. Out there, Anthony knew, was a German U-boat.
A surge of triumph tingled through him as, from the dark sea, a light pierced the night.
The light flashed three times, a single, brilliant beam. Anthony thought he could just make out the bulk of a conning tower, solid black against the rippling darkness of the sea. Using the torch from James Smith’s Daimler, he flashed the signal back.
For a while nothing seemed to happen, then came the distant chink of chains followed by a splash and, from far away, the creak of oars in rowlocks. Before the boat landed, a voice hailed him in German. He replied in the same language.
He waited until the keel of the boat grounded onto the beach before saying, ‘Come ashore, all of you. I need some help with the prisoner.’
The boat crew shipped oars and, splashing through the shallows, hauled the boat half out of the water. The captain of the boat, a young lieutenant, waded towards him and saluted. He looked at Sir Charles, sitting disconsolately on the sand, a little way up the beach, hunched over as if his hands and feet were tied. ‘That is the prisoner?’
‘Yes,’ replied Anthony briskly. ‘All trussed up and ready for transport. Tell your crew to carry him into the boat. He’s a tricky devil. It’s better that his feet remain tied.’
The lieutenant gave a brief order to the crew and they all walked up the beach.
‘You have some orders for me, I believe?’ asked Anthony as they trudged up the sand.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘And a radio transmitter. The transmitter is in the boat but I have your orders here.’ He felt in the pocket of his jacket and drew out an envelope sealed with a double-headed eagle. It was addressed, prosaically enough, to James Smith.
Anthony took the envelope and put it away carefully in his inside coat pocket as they reached Sir Charles.
Anthony looked at the lieutenant apologetically. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said in German, then, in a carrying voice, added in English, ‘It’s all yours, Captain.’
From the dark sand rose up a party of Royal Navy sailors, guns at the ready.
The boat crew stood frozen in shock but the lieutenant lashed out. Three sailors leapt at him, bearing him to the ground. The lieutenant, scrabbling fiercely in the sand, managed to draw his revolver from its holster. Yelling a warning to the U-boat, he fired the pistol before a sailor kicked it away. He was hauled breathlessly to his feet, his arms securely held.
His eyes blazed at Anthony. ‘Traitor!’
‘No,’ said Anthony quietly. ‘No, I’m not. I’m English.’
The lieutenant’s shoulders sank, looking at the grinning sailors and their dejected prisoners. ‘We are all betrayed.’ A gleam of hope came into his eyes. ‘The U-boat will escape.’
‘Sorry,’ said Anthony once more. ‘Take a look for yourself.’ Behind the U-boat, dark against the moonlight, two British submarines had surfaced. ‘It’s over, I’m afraid.’
Leaving the German boat crew and the U-boat to the Royal Navy, Sir Charles and Anthony walked back up to the car. The car, with its official driver, was parked by the side of the sea road.
Anthony and Sir Charles climbed into the back and, as Sir Charles held the torch, Anthony ripped open the envelope.
It took him a little time to make sense of the closely-written German text as the writer assumed knowledge Anthony didn’t have. He grunted in frustration. ‘I’ll say this for James Smith. He’s fluent in German if he’s meant to make sense of this. In fact, I bet he is a German. I wonder if the U-boat crew know anything about him?’
‘We’ll ask them, of course,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but I doubt it. What do the orders say?’
‘Wait a moment.’ Anthony waved him quiet and read on. As he reached the end, his face altered and, with a noise in the back of his throat, he put down the document and lit a cigarette.
‘Well?’ demanded Sir Charles again.
‘They’re going to kill the King and Queen,’ said Anthony quietly.
‘What?’ Sir Charles’s voice was incredulous. ‘How?’
‘There’s going to be a bomb at the Marriotvale munitions works.’ His voice was very even. ‘There’s an official visit planned – a secret official visit.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘That’s court gossip, isn’t it? That’s exactly the sort of thing Frankie would know.’
‘Never mind about that,’ said Sir Charles impatiently. ‘What are the details?’
‘They plan to blow up the works, taking with it the King and Queen, the factory itself and all the munitions.’ Anthony clamped down on his cigarette with trembling fingers. ‘And all the people who work there.’
Sir Charles swallowed hard. He tried to speak, failed, and took a cigarette from his case. It took him a couple of attempts to light it. ‘Marriotvale,’ he muttered. ‘Do you know Marriotvale, Brooke?’
Anthony did. It was a densely populated labyrinth, hugging the south side of the Thames, a maze of docks, wharves, workshops, factories and slums between Rotherhithe and Bermondsey.
‘There’s thousands of people,’ said Sir Charles with a catch in his voice. ‘Thousands.’ He was silent for a few moments then asked wearily. ‘When’s it going to happen?’
‘At ten o’clock this morning.’
‘Ten o’clock?’ Sir Charles swallowed. ‘We’ll never evacuate the area in time. We can save the King and Queen, but we’ll never save the poor beggars who live there. Dear God, this is worse than I ever imagined.’
Anthony sucked at his cigarette. ‘There’s a chance, Talbot.’ He tapped the document, his mind racing. ‘These are James Smith’s instructions. Berlin sees the munitions factory as a legitimate military target. They refer to the huge propaganda coup they can make out it, but they’re not keen on making hay about the death of the Royal couple. Berlin wants the credit for that to go to the Sons of Hibernia.’
Sir Charles rubbed his chin with his hands. ‘The King and the Kaiser are cousins, after all,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, I can see there’d be some reluctance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kaiser’s been bullied into this.’
Anthony shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Anyway, it’s been agreed but the bombers don’t know that yet. James Smith’s instructions are to go to an address in Marriotvale and inspect the arrangements. Then, after a successful outcome, Smith’s authorized to pay a credit note for six thousand pounds’ worth of German arms to be shipped to Ireland.’ He looked up. ‘That means it’s all right, doesn’t it? After all, James Smith hasn’t got this letter. We have.’
Sir Charles swallowed once more and drummed his fingers on the car seat. ‘I don’t like to leave it to chance. It’s an Irish plan, is it?’
Anthony nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’
‘They might decide to go ahead anyway, with or without Smith. I can’t gamble on it. Not when the stakes are so high. There’s far too many lives at risk. We’ll have to evacuate the area, God help us.’ His face twisted. ‘Even so, if that damn bomb goes off, there’s bound to be casualties. I don’t see how it can be helped.’
Anthony smoked his cigarette down to the butt and pitched the end out of the car onto the hummocky grass. ‘What if I go?’ he suggested. ‘What if I take James Smith’s part?’
Sir Charles stared at him. ‘You can’t do that. What if they know him?’
‘All right, I’ll be someone acting on James Smith’s behalf. I can say he’s had an accident or something but it’s a chance, Talbot. I can be a German again.’ He jerked his thumb in the direction of the sea. ‘I could have arrived on that submarine. We’ve got the address, after all. I can say that Berlin refused permission to explode the bomb. They can’t argue with that.’
‘I bet they can,’ muttered Sir Charles.
Anthony nearly smiled. ‘Even if they do, if I can just get to see this ruddy bomb, maybe I can disarm it. I can even ask them to rendezvous with me somewhere else to plan out another operation, which means you and the police can pick up the swine. In the meantime, you can evacuate the area.’
Sir Charles shook his head. ‘Not while you’re in the house. They’ll smell a rat at once.’ He chewed his lip. ‘I like the idea of catching the bombers. If you can nip it in the bud, that’s their precious propaganda triumph gone west.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Damnit, they still win, even if we do catch them. If we do manage to evacuate Marriotvale, they’ve still brought an entire area of London to a standstill.’
He raised his hands and let them fall helplessly. ‘We’re sunk, Brooke. They’ve won, whatever happens. If the bomb goes off, they’ve won. If it doesn’t and we evacuate the area, all they have to do in the future is say there’s going to be a bomb. We can’t ignore it. It’ll cause endless amounts of disruption and thousands of pounds worth of manufacturing time.’
‘Unless I give it a go.’
Sir Charles sucked his cheeks in, then leaned forward and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. ‘London,’ he said, giving an address in Albemarle Row, Westminster. ‘We’re going to see the Home Secretary,’ he said, turning back to Anthony. ‘This is too big a decision for me to take alone.’
Anthony knocked softly at the door of 17, Nightingale Street, Marriotvale. A nightingale had never sung here. Nightingale Street was a smoke-blackened terrace among a series of smoke-blackened terraces, hunched against the looming factory wall of the Marriotvale Munitions Company.
Nightingale Street probably referred to the Crimea War, he thought, turning his collar up against the chill of the early morning. The date was about right. He felt nothing but sympathy for people who were forced to live in these jerry-built, two-up and two-down filthy slums.
He had been touched by the sight of a little street shrine, at the corner of the road. A jam jar of wilting flowers stood in front of a handwritten notice listing the names of dead soldiers from the surrounding streets. Marriotvale had very little to give, but it had been given.
He glanced at his watch and knocked once more. This time there was a sound of movement in the house, a few muffled swear-words and, after a short interval, the creak of a window being raised. Anthony looked up as an unshaven jowly face peered down at him.
‘What time do you call this?’ the man called in a carrying whisper. By his voice, he was from Belfast.
‘Five o’clock,’ answered Anthony in the precise tones of a German speaker. ‘I have a message from James Smith.’
‘Christ, I thought you were never coming. Wait there.’
The window was pulled down and, a few moments later, came the noise of feet on the stairs.
Anthony braced himself. He had an hour before the evacuation began. That was the scheme worked out with the Home Secretary and the Chief Commissioner of Scotland Yard. The Home Secretary had wanted to evacuate Marriotvale right away, but the Chief Commissioner was keen to give Anthony a chance. It would take, he argued, at least that amount of time to have enough men in the right place and, while they were being assembled, Anthony might as well try to bluff the bombers.
The door opened a crack. ‘Come in.’
Anthony stepped into the front room of the house. It was, predictably, dark, squalid and very dirty. A ragged curtain was pinned across the window and the furniture was a collection of packing cases.
The jowly man, who was barefooted and dressed in a long-sleeved vest tucked into serge trousers, took him into the kitchen, the only other downstairs room, where there was a table and two chairs. Here, with no curtain, there was daylight from the kitchen window which gave onto a tiny yard at the side of the house. The back wall of the yard was the factory wall.
‘My name’s Joseph,’ said the man. ‘My God, you’re an early bird. Sit down, why don’t you?’
Anthony gave a fastidious shudder that wasn’t entirely assumed. ‘Thank you, no. I will stand.’
Joseph laughed. ‘You bloody Germans. You’re all the same. You are German, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, that is so. I arrived on the U-boat last night. My English name is Robert Jones. James Smith had business in Germany.’
There was a clatter of feet on the stairs and another man, dressed in workman’s clothes of heavy cloth, came into the kitchen. He looked, thought Anthony, a cut above Joseph. ‘This is Kevin,’ said Joseph. ‘He’s in charge here. Kevin, this is Mr Robert Jones, as he wants to be called. He came on the boat last night.’
‘So I heard,’ said Kevin. He had an educated voice and a thin, ascetic face. ‘Well, Mr Jones? Has Berlin agreed at long last?’
‘Do we get the money?’ asked Joseph.
‘You will get a credit note for six thousand pounds to be spent on arms in Germany,’ said Anthony. ‘I trust you are aware of the generosity of the government in providing such a sum.’ Kevin and Joseph looked at each other with a quick nod of approval. ‘However, today’s scheme will not be carried out.’
Joseph, who had been rolling a cigarette, looked at him in consternation. ‘Why the hell not? We can get the King! D’you not realize that? Why, Veronica herself came up with the plan.’ With a shock Anthony realized he meant Veronica O’Bryan. ‘She worked out how we could do it. We’ve been planning this for months.’
‘It’s the Kaiser, isn’t it?’ said Kevin bitterly. ‘He doesn’t want to kill his cousin.’
Anthony nodded.
‘But his cousin is the King,’ said Joseph. ‘Doesn’t he see? The King is the heart of England. We kill him and we’ll strike a blow they’ll never recover from. By Christ, I’m damned if I’m having some bloody German turn round and tell us we can’t do it. We’re the men on the ground. We know what should be done.’
‘Be quiet, Joseph,’ said Kevin. ‘These walls are like paper.’ Joseph glared at him in frustration. ‘However,’ continued Kevin, ‘I don’t think Mr Jones here quite appreciates what’s been done. This is a patriotic scheme that will benefit Ireland and Germany.’ He drew an automatic pistol from his pocket and put it on the table. ‘Once the plan has been carried out, then the Kaiser will see its merits.’
Anthony had been afraid of this. ‘You will lose the friendship of Germany,’ he said stiffly. Kevin’s hand twitched towards the pistol. ‘There are matters at stake you cannot grasp. Take the money and forget your ideas. The Kaiser is insistent on this.’
Kevin picked up the pistol. ‘And what if we’d never got the message from the Kaiser?’ he said softly, pointing the pistol at Anthony. ‘I’m an Irishman. I don’t care who the Kaiser’s relations are. Nobody knows you’re here. I can explain the shot.’ He gave a jerk of his head towards the factory. ‘Living next to that thing, people are used to noise. I think, Mr Jones, it might be better if you’d never come.’
Anthony looked at him. Kevin had the bright, cold eyes of a fanatic. The pistol was rock-solid. The muscles in Kevin’s hand tightened and Anthony knew he was a breath away from death.
He allowed himself to look very scared. Oddly enough, it really was all pretence. His mind was working so quickly he didn’t have time to be frightened. He wanted to get to the bomb and at least attempt to disarm it.
‘Wait! Perhaps if you can show me what you have in mind, how the device will work, I can argue for you in Berlin.’ The muscles of Kevin’s hand relaxed. ‘It is true what you say. After the King is dead, perhaps, it will be different. I agree with you. It will be a mortal blow for England. When the Kaiser sees that, he will change his mind – if you let me argue for you,’ he added.
Kevin froze, studying Anthony’s face. Then he laughed and put the pistol back in his pocket. ‘It seems we have an agreement, Mr Jones. Luckily for you.’
Anthony took a deep breath. ‘You will show me the arrangements? You will do more than merely throw a bomb, yes?’
‘I think,’ said Kevin, ‘you’d better come with me, Mr Jones.’
He opened the kitchen cupboard, took out a powerful electric torch, then walked across the kitchen and opened a door.
The opening yawned blackly. It was the cellar. ‘I think you can go first, Mr Jones,’ said Kevin. ‘Joe, get a cup of tea brewed, will you? I’m parched.’
The cellar steps, which were very steep and stank of damp, led to a tiny clay-walled room, glistening with slug trails. A small circle of light rimmed the coal-hole on the street above. There was a heap of earth piled up in the cellar. They’ve dug a tunnel, Anthony thought with sudden understanding.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Kevin ironically, flashing his torch round the cellar. ‘This cellar, Mr Jones, is why we chose this house.’
He flashed his torch into the corner, showing a roughly dug hole. It was about six feet deep with a wooden ladder propped against the side. ‘Now, I’ll go first, but don’t try anything. Down we go, Mr Jones.’ Anthony could hear the amusement in his voice. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to get your smart clothes dirty, but it can’t be helped.’
The hole opened out onto a narrow tunnel, about three feet wide. Following Kevin and the beam of light, Anthony crawled on his hands and knees through the passage.
‘We’re under the factory wall,’ explained Kevin shortly. ‘We’ll come to another ladder in a minute. I’ll go up first. You’ll have to wait a moment while I see it’s all right.’
He scrambled up the ladder, leaving Anthony in the tunnel. There was a pause and the creaking sound of wood. A gloomy light shone into the hole. Kevin looked down at him. ‘Come on!’
They came out at the back of a warehouse. A wooden pallet that had covered the entrance was pushed to one side.
Anthony stretched, glad to be out of the cramped tunnel. Wooden boxes and piles of shells stood heaped up in a huge, silent room. He looked around with apparent admiration. ‘This is clever, yes?’ he said quietly.
Kevin put his mouth near Anthony’s ear. ‘One of the warehouse men is one of ours. The other’s an old dodderer and doesn’t know anything about it. Altogether, we’ve got three lads who work here.’
His teeth showed white in a wolfish grin. ‘Funnily enough, they’re all going to be off sick today. Follow me, Mr Jones.’
He led the way down a corridor formed by piles of crates, waited cautiously at the end and slipped across the gap to the next passage. ‘We have to go into the factory yard,’ he said in a low whisper. ‘Just walk as if you owned the place. There shouldn’t be anyone around at this time in the morning.’
Looking round, he waited at the end of the passage. The great double doors of the warehouse were in front of them but, set into the wood, was a smaller wicket door. Kevin took a key from his pocket. ‘You see what it is to have friends in the right places, Mr Jones. Me, Joseph, and a couple of the lads made the final preparations last night. There was supposed to be an explosives expert coming from Germany but he never turned up.’
Anthony recognized the description as that of Günther Hedtke and wondered what Kevin would do if he knew he was the missing expert. ‘I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t care, either. Your lot should learn to trust us more, Mr Jones. We don’t need anyone to tell us how to do our job.’
He walked across to the wicket door and turned the key in the lock. After a pause to make sure there was no one about, he jerked his head at Anthony to come on.
The cobbled yard of the factory was set between the three-storey high brick walls of the factory, with its rows of long black windows. Dominating everything was the chimney, rising high from the engine shed. Before them were the closed factory gates and beyond, Anthony could hear the early-morning sounds as London stirred into life.
Kevin walked quickly up the yard, away from the gates. ‘There’s some new buildings beyond the yard.’ He grinned again. ‘That’s what King George and his wife are coming to see. There’s going to be a big fuss, with flags waved and a band playing and everything just fit for a king. He’s got a beautiful silver trowel, ready inscribed with the date, to lay the foundation stone. That trowel will be the last thing he touches.’
They went up the yard between the main buildings. The land opened out and there, as Kevin had said, was the low brick wall of the foundations of a new factory building, looking very clean and raw. There was a wooden dais beside the wall, evidently prepared for the royal party.
‘Now this,’ said Kevin, ‘is where it happens.’ He stopped and pointed. ‘Tell them about this in Berlin, Mr Jones.’
He turned and grinned at Anthony. ‘Imagination’s not any German’s strongpoint, but we Irish have imagination. Imagine this. A few hours from now, all the factory hands will be out to see their precious King and Queen. Don’t be sorry for them. They’re making shells to kill your lads and are as legitimate a target as any soldier in uniform. This common land we’re standing on –’ he rubbed his foot in the grit – ‘will be covered with a red carpet so George won’t get his feet dirty. That dais will be covered in fancy cloth with fancy chairs and fancy bunting. The band will play, Mr Noakes, the factory owner will hand George his silver trowel and George will lay the stone for the new building.’
‘And then?’ asked Anthony. ‘What will happen then?’
‘Bang,’ said Kevin softly. ‘That foundation stone has been booby-trapped.’ He walked to the wall, resting his hand by the gap left for the stone. Where the stone was to go was a fine layer of cement. ‘Under there, under that cement, is a detonator. You can’t see the cable because I’ve covered it up with cement to the ground.’ He pointed back towards the warehouse. ‘It runs to the warehouse. It’s all buried, out of sight. I tell you, Mr Jones, this is a great device. All we had to do last night was lay the detonators and connect the bomb. It’s not a big bomb, but it’ll set off a stockpile of high explosive.’
He laced his hands together and cracked his fingers in satisfaction. ‘They’ll hear it the other side of the Channel. Now tell me the Germans don’t need us. This took Irish brains and Irish know-how and because of us, you can strike at the very heart of England.’
Standing in the silent factory yard, Anthony looked at the innocent gap in the wall. Kevin had told him to imagine and he could imagine only too well.
There would be pomp and ceremony and happy faces as the workers looked at the King and Queen. The women – he knew there were many women in the factory – would be admiring the Queen’s dress and enjoying the band, glad to have this little holiday, excited to see their Queen and King. Maybe there’d be children in the crowd waving pocket-money penny flags and cheering. Outside the factory, in those mean little houses, the day would seem brighter and life that bit better because of what was happening in those few square yards so near at hand. And then . . .
He had to disable the bomb. ‘It is impressive,’ he said. ‘Yes, you are right. You can strike where we cannot. You are sure the bomb is well-hidden? I would like to see it for myself.’
‘No problem about that, Mr Jones,’ said Kevin. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s twenty-five to six. I’ve got time to show you the bomb, then we’d better get going before anyone arrives. And after that, we’ll get as far away from Marriotvale as we can.’
He led him back down the yard, through the wicket gate and into the warehouse once more, threading his way confidently through the tall corridors of crates. ‘It’s at the side of the warehouse,’ he explained, coming to a stop before a five-box high stack of crates that ran the length of the wall. ‘Now you tell me if you can see anything suspicious.’
Anthony looked. He couldn’t.
‘And yet it’s in there.’ He would have said more, but, very faintly from outside, came the thrum of an engine. He looked up sharply. ‘What’s that? It sounds like a motorbike. Wait here, Mr Jones.’
Kevin ran out of the warehouse. It was the opportunity Anthony had been waiting for. The cable was buried, he knew that, but somewhere, surely, the ground would be disturbed. The crates stood away from the wall on pallets. He squeezed into the narrow dark gap between the crates and the side of the warehouse. Bent double, he ran his hands along the earth, trying to find a space where the ground had been disturbed. Dimly he registered that the motorbike had roared up the yard outside but ignored it in his frantic search.
The minutes ticked away. There! He’d found it! Anthony felt dizzy with relief. He took out his pocket knife and scrabbled in the earth. He heard footsteps behind him but carried on. He was too close to give up now. His hand was on the cable – and a gun barrel dug into the back of his neck.
‘Drop the knife, Mr Jones.’ It was Kevin.
Anthony froze but didn’t obey. Then he was sent sprawling by a kick from Kevin’s heavy boots.
‘Get up and come outside. Walk backwards towards me. Yes, that’s right. We’ve got a bit of catching up to do, Mr Jones. Hands up!’
Anthony wearily wiped the grit from his face, stood up and raised his hands. His knife gleamed on the dirt in front of him but he daren’t go for it. Dead, he was no use to anyone. Alive, he might – just might – have a chance.
Once out of the narrow passageway, Kevin waved him back out of the warehouse into the yard. ‘Walk to the dais,’ he said grimly. ‘Don’t try anything.’
By the dais was a motorbike, its rider clad in leather coat, helmet and goggles. ‘One of our friends arrived, Mr Jones,’ continued Kevin. ‘He had something very interesting to say about that U-boat you arrived on last night. Apparently it was captured by the British, which leaves me asking an obvious question. Who the hell are you?’
Anthony didn’t answer. There didn’t seem much point.
As they approached the motorbike, the rider dismounted and raised his goggles. It was Bertram Farlow.
Anthony stared at him. Bertram Farlow? As he thought of how Sir Charles trusted him, of the information Farlow must have given the enemy, he felt sick.
‘Do you know who this is?’ demanded Kevin.
Farlow nodded with grim satisfaction. His air of beneficence, like an unworldly vicar or a philosophical cabinet minister, had completely vanished. ‘You’ve caught the big one.’ He looked at Anthony with pure hatred. ‘This is Anthony Brooke.’ He ground out the name.
Kevin gave a strangled hiss.
‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Anthony, stunned. ‘Why, Farlow?’
Kevin answered for him. ‘Money. That’s it, isn’t it, Farlow?’
‘And power,’ said Farlow softly. ‘You don’t know about that, do you, Brooke? You don’t know what it’s like to be cheated of your rightful place. You’ve always had it easy. You despised me, didn’t you? I didn’t go to the right school. I didn’t have the right relations. I’ve been kept down all my life and at long last I’ve got the chance to get back.’
‘You’re nothing,’ said Anthony. ‘You’re just an errand boy.’
Farlow’s eyes gleamed in fury. ‘Nothing? You’re wrong, Brooke. I knew exactly where our friends over the water could find Cavanaugh. And I found you. You’re a bloody spy and you’re going to suffer.’
‘Never mind that,’ interrupted Kevin. ‘We’ll deal with him later, Farlow. You can see him off, if you like.’
Farlow smiled slowly. ‘I’ll enjoy that,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll learn what power I’ve got. You won’t die quickly, Brooke.’
‘Later, Farlow,’ said Kevin impatiently. ‘You’ll have your chance later. You say they’re going to evacuate the area?’
Anthony sprang.
The move was so unexpected, it sent Farlow sprawling off his bike. The heavy machine fell on them as Kevin fired a stream of bullets from the automatic.
Bullets thudded into the petrol tank. Petrol jetted out, then the tank exploded in a deafening whoosh of flame and chunks of flying metal.
Anthony felt Farlow’s fist slam into the side of his head, then Farlow’s neck jerked back and his body went limp. One of Kevin’s bullets had gone home. Anthony rolled to one side as Kevin leapt through the curtain of flames and pointed his gun. Bullets tore into the earth followed by a series of useless clicks. The gun was empty. Kevin flung away the gun and hurled himself forward towards the gap in the bricks.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ yelled Anthony. ‘You’ll kill us all!’ His head still singing with Farlow’s blow, Anthony lunged after him, catching his legs.
Kevin kicked out, sending Anthony twisting to one side, but Anthony hung on grimly, desperately trying to stop him reaching the detonator.
Kevin clawed his way across the wooden floor of the dais and kicked out once more. This time, his heavy boot caught Anthony on the chin, sending him reeling away.
With a scream of triumph, Kevin staggered the last couple of feet. There was a fusillade of sharp cracks and he gazed down in absolute shock at the blood on his chest. With his last ounce of strength he reached forward, clutching at the gap in the wall as he fell. Anthony flinched away as Kevin thudded down on the detonators.
Nothing happened.
It suddenly seemed very, very quiet. The motorbike still burned in an acrid, evil-smelling cloud of black smoke. Beside it, lay Farlow’s twisted body and, on the dais, sprawled Kevin, his eyes open wide in death, staring at the hand draped across the concrete crust of the detonators.
‘Brooke!’ He looked up as his name was called. From one of the upstairs open windows of the factory, Sir Charles leaned out and waved. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’
Anthony slumped onto the dais and waited. Sir Charles, accompanied by an infantry captain, came out into the yard at the head of a party of soldiers, complete with rifles. ‘Brilliant work, Brooke,’ he said, enthusiastically shaking Anthony’s hand.
Anthony wearily stood up and ran a hand round his tender jaw, sore from the kick he’d received. ‘Who killed him?’ he asked, looking at Kevin’s body.
The captain stepped forward. ‘We all shot at him, sir. I suppose we’re all responsible.’
Anthony nodded. ‘He’s probably better off dead. There’s another man back at the house. You’d better arrest him.’
‘We’ve done that,’ said Sir Charles. ‘As soon as we saw you and your pal safely in the factory yard, we collected Master Joseph. He’s wanted for a string of murders in Ireland.’
Anthony sat back against the wooden support of the dais. ‘I thought we’d had it at the end,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I know we had a plan, but I didn’t know it had come off.’
Sir Charles nodded. ‘You needn’t have worried. We were watching the whole time. We saw you point out where the cable and the detonator were hidden and, as soon as you and your Irish friend went back into the warehouse, Captain Black here saw to it, didn’t you, Captain?’
‘I worked as fast as I could,’ said Black. ‘You led us to the spot and then gave us enough time to cut the bomb cable.’
‘I wish I’d known,’ said Anthony, nursing his chin. ‘I knew you were somewhere around, but I didn’t know where you were or if you’d managed to disable the device. Then when Farlow turned up . . .’
‘That was a complete shock,’ said Sir Charles. He looked down at the dead man broodingly. ‘I wish we’d managed to take him alive.’
‘Kevin killed him,’ said Anthony.
Sir Charles sighed. ‘That’s fitting, I suppose.’ He looked at Anthony. ‘Come on, Brooke. I suppose you’d better go back to hospital to have your jaw looked at.’
‘Damn hospital,’ said Anthony with a grin. ‘I spent long enough there yesterday. I know it’s early, but I want a large whisky and soda.’