Authors: David Downing
“Okay,” Kensley said when he was finished. “And I got the message about the priest staying over in Chicago. But you didn’t say how many days.”
“He never said, and asking might have made him suspicious. He’s that kind of man.”
“Not to worry—I’ll have someone check with the railroad. But I’ll want you with me at Grand Central when he does get in—he may be the only priest on the train, but if there’s a whole convention, I’ll need you to finger him.”
“Fine,” McColl agreed. “Just let me know when.”
“Will do. Now, one other question—what’s left of your cover? The Germans obviously know you work for us, but who else?”
McColl thought about it for a moment. “I had no actual contact with any of Har Dayal’s people in San Francisco, and I used a false name when I hired the private detective to keep watch on them, so I’ve no reason to believe that the Indians would recognize me or even my name. And the same goes for the
Irish. There was no mention of me in de Lacey’s letter to Devoy, and Father Meagher obviously didn’t know who I was or he’d have watched me like a hawk. So it’s just a matter of whom the Germans have told. And since they don’t seem to have shared their knowledge with their allies on the West Coast, we can only hope that they’re equally tight-lipped here.”
Kensley asked if they had access to a photograph.
“Not that I know of. There was one in the Shanghai paper, but it was dark and blurred—my mother would have had trouble recognizing me.”
The American looked relieved. “Okay. So how long are you staying? Do you have your passage home booked yet?”
“No. My boss in London is expecting me back by the end of the month, but a few days here or there won’t make much difference.”
Kensley raised an eyebrow. “Business must be good, to stay in a place like this.”
McColl sighed. “Not that good. My colleagues made some sales in Chicago without me, and they got a bit carried away.”
“Still …”
“Oh, I’m not complaining. Or moving. How long have you been in New York?”
Kensley hesitated, as if weighing up whether to answer. “About five years. I came down from Toronto in 1909. I was a policeman there.”
“A Mountie?”
Kensley grimaced. “A detective.”
“Of course. So how do we keep in touch?”
Kensley took a card from his pocket and passed it over. “If you ever need to speak to me, ring that consulate number and leave a message for me. Say that Jack called. I’ll leave messages for you at the hotel reception. Or I may simply turn up in the lobby. If you see me, just walk on by and meet me here in the coffee shop a few minutes later. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Kensley slid himself out of the booth, stood up, and raised a hand in farewell as he turned to leave. As the Canadian pressed his hat down over his bushy hair, McColl was reminded of someone trying to close the lid of an overfull suitcase.
But the man seemed intelligent, which boded well.
McColl went back up his room and had almost finished unpacking when someone else rapped on his door. He took his gun from the suitcase, stood to one side, and asked, “Who is it?”
“Your brother,” Jed said loudly.
McColl put the gun back under a pillow and opened the door. “How did it go?”
“Not bad. One definite and three probables, I’d say.”
“Great.”
“So Mac and I thought we could all celebrate with dinner and a show. If you don’t have anything else planned?”
“Sounds wonderful. When are we leaving?”
“Soon as you’re ready.”
It proved an enjoyable evening once the elephant in the room had been wheeled out and discussed. McColl knew that Cumming would disapprove—to put it mildly—of his revealing anything of his Service activities, but as long as Jed and Mac were also in the line of fire, they deserved some sort of explanation. He didn’t tell them everything by any means, but he did admit to working, on a part-time basis over several years, for a government organization.
“It started when I went to Russia in 1909,” he went on once they’d secured a table in a Broadway restaurant and ordered roast turkey with all the trimmings. “An old acquaintance from Oxford looked me up a few weeks beforehand and said that a friend of his had a proposition that might interest me. So I went to see this friend, who knew more about my upcoming Russian trip than I did. He had a short list of Russians whom he wanted me to get in touch with—men he and his superiors
thought they could count on to support England in an international crisis.” The spoken appeal had been to his patriotism, but he had eventually come to realize that Cumming had deliberately seduced him with the unspoken promise of adventure.
“I won’t go into details,” he continued. “You get the general idea. This man—the one who sent me—was willing to pay me a small amount for doing this, to cover expenses and supply a little profit on the side, but he was very insistent that I should see such work primarily as a means of serving my country. And I did. I do. I went to Tsingtau for him—I’m sure you can guess what for—and I ended up having to make a run for it. The man with the knife in Shanghai was almost certainly hired by the Germans to make an example of me. There was another attempt in San Francisco that you don’t know about—another man with a knife waiting in my wardrobe—”
“What?” Jed exclaimed.
“Yes, I know. But I was luckier second time around—someone warned me there was an intruder in my room, and the British consul called in the federal police to deal with him. The reason I’m telling you both all this is that the Germans may have another go, and it’s possible—not likely, but possible—that they’ll try again when the three of us are together. So keep your eyes open whenever you’re with me.”
“But there was no one waiting at the station when you arrived,” Mac said hopefully.
“No, and there’s a chance a deal has been done between London and Berlin—a sort of gentlemen’s agreement to let each other be. But we can’t count on it, so be careful.”
“And I don’t suppose you’re taking questions?” Jed asked perceptively.
“I’d rather not.”
“Okay, but surely you can tell us what happened with Caitlin.”
McColl looked at the two of them. “Why, have you got bets on the outcome?”
“No!”
“We traveled on the same train. But she hasn’t seen her family for months, so I don’t suppose I’ll see her for a few days.”
“And then?” Jed asked, with the bluntness of youth.
“And then what?”
“Will you be staying on here or will she be coming to England?”
So that was how they saw it, McColl thought. He could hardly blame them. “Neither for now, but we’ll see,” was all he could think to say, and he was saved from further questions by the arrival of their food.
The dinner was excellent, and so was the only show they could find with empty seats. A two-hour roller coaster of music and comedy put them in high spirits, which they soon found they shared with most of the city, if the Friday-night revelers thronging Broadway were anything to go by. With work the following morning, they restricted themselves to a couple of drinks and walked happily back to the hotel. As far as McColl could tell, his earlier revelations had not made his two companions overly nervous. Should he be pleased that he hadn’t spoiled their fun or alarmed that they hadn’t taken the situation seriously enough?
Mac’s insistence that they all check McColl’s wardrobe eased his mind somewhat, and while the two of them were doing so, he pocketed the latest note the staff had slipped under his door.
Once the wardrobe had been declared safe and his companions had disappeared, he tore the envelope open and read the message. “Meagher arrives Grand Central at ten on Sunday morning,” Kensley had scrawled. “See you at nine-thirty outside the barbershop.”
They all spent Saturday morning in the showroom, either talking to prospective buyers or, in Jed’s case, passing comment on each New York princess that walked past their
window. After lunch McColl left the two of them to handle trial drives and walked back to the hotel, hoping to find a message from Caitlin. There was none. He reminded himself that she would be fully engaged catching up with family and friends, but he couldn’t quite quiet the mean little voice in the back of his mind telling him it was over and that a cold but beautifully written note would soon arrive laying out all the reasons they couldn’t go on.
There was nothing he could do about it, other than turn up unannounced at the family house in Brooklyn, loudly declare his undying love, and insist that she do the same. Something he had no intention of doing. Not yet, anyway.
He found a lunchroom serving meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and two veg for fifteen cents, then took a long walk, heading east into a world of dirty streets and yellow-brick tenement buildings whose only decoration was a latticework of fire escapes. As good as lost, he was accosted by an enterprising urchin who offered to sell him the way back to “safety.” The neighborhood reminded McColl of Glasgow, and he half suspected he was safer here among the tenements than he ever would be on Fifth Avenue, but he handed over his dime in exchange for some very basic directions—“See that tall building? That’s the Woolworth Building. It’s the tallest building in the world. Just walk toward it and you’ll end up on Broadway.”
That evening he went out again with the others, and this time they drank rather more, so much so that they ended up chorusing Al Jolson’s recent hit, “You Made Me Love You,” with sufficient volume to warrant an in situ lecture from one of New York’s finest.
McColl felt distinctly hungover next morning but managed to reach Grand Central Station on time. Kensley seemed in little better shape, and the two of them smoked their cigarettes in silence until a third man arrived. “Jack, Andrew,” was the extent of Kensley’s introduction. Andrew was probably
around McColl’s age, as thin as Kensley but with fairer hair and mustache.
At nine forty-five the three of them took up position within sight of the platform egress, and only seconds later the first passengers from the 20th Century Limited were streaming past. Three priests appeared before Father Meagher, who eventually emerged, resplendent in cassock and biretta, trailing a porter and a trolley piled with the familiar suitcases.
“That’s him,” McColl told the others.
They watched the priest lead his porter across the concourse and into the waiting room opposite, then followed as far as the entrance. Kensley turned to McColl. “He knows you, so keep your face turned away. Andrew, what’s he doing?”
“He’s telling the porter where he wants the suitcases. Now he’s paying him. And now he’s sitting down, with his back to the door.”
McColl risked a look over his shoulder, just in time to see a man approach the priest.
“He’s talking to someone,” Andrew said. “An Indian, by the look of it. And the Indian’s picking up one of the suitcases.”
“The newspapers,” McColl guessed.
“You’d better follow him,” Kensley told Andrew.
The latter watched for a few seconds more, then walked swiftly after his quarry.
“Meagher’s not moving,” Kensley murmured.
“More business?” McColl wondered.
They didn’t have long to wait. According to Kensley, the priest’s second visitor was older, clean-shaven, wearing a slate gray suit and hat.
“They’re talking,” Kensley told McColl. “And Meagher’s handing over an envelope. One of your letters. Okay,” he said reluctantly, “since Meagher knows you by sight, you’d better take this guy. But for God’s sake don’t lose him.”
“Can I turn around?” McColl asked.
“You don’t need to. He’s coming our way.”
The man passed within a few feet of them, and McColl slipped into his wake. The courier—if that’s what he was—still had the envelope in his hand, but he stowed it away in an inside pocket as he started down the ramp to the subway platforms. A train was thundering in, and McColl’s sudden realization that he might not have the nickel required induced a few moments of panic, but a frantic scramble through his pockets proved successful, and he made it through the barrier in time to step aboard. The man in the gray suit was at the other end of the car, examining the subway map.
Which might be good news, McColl thought. It suggested a local knowledge no better than his own.
He hung on to the strap as the train stormed and clattered its way through the tunnel. Thirty-Third Street, Twenty-Eighth, Twenty-Third, Fourteenth, and soon they were into the names—Astor Place, then Bleecker. It was a fairly shoddy suit that the man was wearing, McColl thought; there were clear signs of wear at the cuffs and elbows. It was the sort of suit an aging errand boy might wear.
Like a lot of others, he got off at Fulton, and McColl followed him up and out. They emerged onto Broadway, two blocks down from the towering Woolworth Building. His quarry crossed at the light and walked in that direction, turning left down Barclay Street toward the Hudson. McColl kept some forty yards behind him but had the feeling he was being overly cautious. The man hadn’t looked back since leaving Grand Central, another indication that he was just hired help.
Beyond West Street a long line of piers jutted out into the river. The one opposite Barclay was host to the Hoboken Ferry, and this, it transpired, was the man’s objective. McColl followed him on board and took a seat a few rows behind him. The ferry was soon under way, and as it plowed a diagonal course across the mile-wide river, McColl stared back at
Manhattan and the low clouds brushing the peak of the Woolworth Building.
All the big British shipping lines used Manhattan piers, but their German equivalents were here on the New Jersey shore. McColl and his unwitting guide had already walked past the North German Lloyd terminal when the man turned in through the gates of its Hamburg America rival. He ignored the passenger terminal building, headed around the side of the enormous quayside warehouse, and walked into what looked like an accompanying suite of offices. McColl hesitated and decided against following him inside. If the man didn’t come out in a few minutes, then perhaps …
Five minutes later he did come out, counting out green dollar bills with his thumb. His fee, McColl assumed, but he supposed he ought to make sure—Hamburg America wouldn’t be going anywhere.