The Yellow Glass (29 page)

He fell silent, gazing into the
fireplace at the crumbling ashes that were rapidly greying and losing their
heat.
 
I glanced over at the coal
scuttle, but there was no more coal.

“And did it work, Mr
Piotrowski?”
 
I asked.
 
“The glass?”

“What?
 
Oh . . yes, my dear.
 
For a while, it worked.
 
They fell for the glass and I made new
friends, you might say.
 
I was able to
pass on this and that to London; information that I had picked up from my
contacts in the General Government.
 
For
a time it became a black bag operation . . .”
 

The old spy was slowing
down.
 
Was it the memories, or was it the
vodka that had begun to affect him?

“Black bag, Mr Piotrowski?”

“Oh, I managed to get a small
listening device in.
 
To a room they used
for meetings and so forth.
 
I hope it was
useful; difficult to say.
 
One never
really
knew.”

He glanced over at me, his eyes
as unreadable as ever.

“Then I had to go and chance my
arm,” he sighed.
 
“They began the
deportations . .
 
to the camps.
 
Deportations?
 
Does it count as a deportation when there is no distance to go?
 
They built a camp
in
Krakόw, itself, you know?
 
Inside
my beloved city.”
 
A flicker of rage, immediately suppressed.
 
“Well, I tried to trade some stained glass:
some precious, stained glass windows from a tiny church that Jarek knew of,
deep in the countryside.
 
I tried to
trade it for the release of Zuza and Gregor.
 
I thought Our Lady might forgive me that.
 
But I chanced my arm once too often and I was
arrested.”

“They didn’t know I was a spy,
of course; if they’d known
that
I
would not be here today.
 
They never
found the recording equipment, to the best of my knowledge.
 
But they sent me to Liban Workcamp, even so;
a hell-hole where Polish and Ukrainian prisoners quarried limestone.
 
I spent the rest of the war there and survived
where so very many did not.
 
I got this
there . .” he tapped his left leg, “this scar that you observed earlier,
Kathleen.”

“What happened to Zuza and
Gregor,” I asked, quietly.

“Zuza and Gregor?
 
Well, my dear . . Zuza and Gregor also
survived.
 
Tell me you expected that one,
eh?
 
While living in the Krakόw
ghetto, my sister and her husband had found work in a factory, you see, and it
saved their lives.
 
A factory run by a
gentleman named Mr Schindler.
[45]
”

He shook the vodka bottle, but
it was empty.

“Ah, but I’m tired!
 
And drunk!
 
You hold your drink well, Kathleen.
 
For an Englishwoman.”

“Thank you.
 
‘Though I’m not sure that’s something a girl
should be proud of!”

If I’d felt a bit tipsy earlier,
I certainly felt as sober as a judge now, sitting bolt upright on the
settee.
 
Bells had been ringing in my
head for the last fifteen minutes of Mr Piotrowski’s story; I’d
got
to get all the details
straight.
 
For his part, he looked as if
he’d tied up all the ends and was ready for bed, but I couldn’t let him go yet.

“Haven’t you forgotten
something, Mr Piotrowski?”
 
I said.
 
“I mean to say, you haven’t told me the end
of the story.
 
The story of you and
Hutch.
 
And, when you have . . ” I
drained the last drop of vodka and set the glass on the floor, “ . . I’ve got a
story of my own that I
really
think
you should hear.”

“You’re a hard woman, Kathleen –
forcing a tired, bitter, old fellow to stay up so late and tell stories!
 
But I will do my best for you and it has
nothing
whatsoever
to do with your
yellow hair and deep, blue eyes,” he laughed.
 
“It
is
bitter, however, the
end of my story.
 
Bitter enough to curdle
the milk, if I had any.”

“So . . the war ended and I
returned to London.
 
I was growing old
and the limestone quarries of Liban had aged me still further, so I hardly
expected to get my old job back.
 
But I
did expect to collect my pension; that I
did
expect after so many years of faithful service.
 
And a welcome, of sorts, perhaps.
 
I felt that might not be too much to ask.”
 

“I walked back into that
building in Waterloo and enquired whether I might see Hutchcraft, who, I was
informed, had become the new head of operations at HQ.
 
But, no, no they were afraid that was not
possible.
 
Not under any
circumstances.
 
Not now, not ever.
 
They turned me away.
 
Again and again I was turned away, until,
eventually, they dispensed with any pretence at manners and threw me out of the
building.
 
I waited beyond the door until
an old colleague appeared, waylaid him and asked if he would be kind enough to
look into the matter further.
 
He wasn’t
happy about it but I persisted and he did so, for old times sake I presume.”
 

“My colleague blushed when we
met again - I remember that as if it were yesterday.
 
He had dug up the notes that my case officer
had written on the operation in Krakόw and had managed to make a carbon
copy of the document for me.
 
He pushed
it into my hands and fled, as if all the shadows in HQ were on his tail.
 
I read those notes in utter disbelief.
 
For Hutchcraft had accused me of profiteering
for my own advantage in Poland; he had virtually accused me of collaborating
with the enemy, although not in so many words.
 
It was enough to lose me my job and pension and the last vestiges of my
good name, but not enough to send me to prison.”

He hauled himself up, staggering
slightly.

“So there you have it, Kathleen;
the sorry tale of an old Polish spy.

“Forgive me, my dear, I must go
to bed . .”

 
“Just a minute, Mr Piotrowski,” I said.
 
“I haven’t told you
my
story, yet.
 
My story about
glass.”
 
He cocked his noble head to one
side.
 
“Yes,
glass
.
 
Ring any bells?
 
Well . . I say it’s my story, but
really
it’s not.
 
It’s Tristram’s story.
 
Or Rosa’s story, perhaps.”

He looked confused, but flopped
back down on the settee to hear me say my piece.
 
And say it, I did.
 
I told him everything I’d learned about the
glass and, by the time I’d finished, he didn’t look tired, or drunk, or bitter
at all.
 

Then I retrieved the envelope
from my handbag and we opened it together.

 
The barge didn’t get
as far as Dover.
 
My niece had informed
me that Reg Arkonnen owned a factory there and I’d presumed that to be where we
were heading, but we weren’t.
 
A basic
contravention of rule number one, on my part, therefore (rule number one being,
never,
ever
, presume).
 
We were somewhere between Deal and the Port
of Dover, right in the area where the Stone family lived.
 
It made a fatalistic kind of sense.
 
Try keeping Rosa out of this one, was my
first thought.

A speedboat joined us from North
Foreland, just past Broadstairs and Ramsgate, zooming around the nose of The
Humber to take up the lead.
 
The
following surge sloshed over the deck, soaking Joe Bloggs’ feet as it swilled
past the mainmast, over the port rail and back down into the Channel.
 
The wave also caught
me
unawares because I’d been crouched low in the bows, scanning the
horizon, and was comprehensively soaked.
 
Behind me, Joe gurgled and thrashed a bit; he’d been fully conscious for
hours and was as furious as a shark on the end of a fishing-line.
 
He had a right to be, all things considered.

I soon realised why the
speedboat had gone in front when I saw what was rising out of the waves to sun
itself.
 
The boat was piloting us around
the Goodwin Sands.
  
It was a calm,
bright morning, with no breath of a wind, but I shivered.
 
There wasn’t an Englishman alive who could
forget the appalling storm of the year before and the wreck of the South
Goodwin Lightship.
[46]
 
It looked so tame in the sun; just one,
northerly, sandbar partially exposed above the water.
 
Such a bright, singing, yellow - more like
bucket and spade territory than a maritime graveyard - but hop onto it, take
one step in the wrong direction and, storm or no storm, it could suck you down,
feet first, without a hope in hell of escape.
 

The pilot boat turned towards
shore, pointing directly through a deep gully that cut between the ridges of
sand and the Humber promptly listed to starboard in its wake.
 
It was then I realised that our destination
was not, in fact, Dover, but somewhere more private; some secret port of call
hidden among the white frontiers of the famous chalk cliffs.

I scrambled along the deck and
climbed down the rear cargo hold.
 
I was
beginning to tire of our game of snakes and ladders.
 
With our destination almost in sight, I felt
that the time had come to declare ourselves.
 

As luck would have it, I’d no
sooner got to the bottom of the ladder than Jay Tamang appeared at the top.
 
I dearly hoped that Severs had his hands full
navigating the barge through the Goodwins because, if not, he must have thought
he was seeing double.

“Mr Upshott,” he raised the neck
of his hood to speak.
 
“She’s awake, Mr
Upshott.”

I put my finger to my own mask,
to hush him up.
 
My mind raced.
 
Damn the woman; just ten more minutes and we
might have made dry land.
 
As it was,
there were two of us, when there should have been one, and the game was up the
minute that she went to take a look at her captive.
 
Should I create a distraction?
 
Tipping the box of steel rods into the ocean
would have been satisfying, but that container was much too heavy for us to
shift (and Jay Tamang, quick and resourceful as he’d turned out to be, was no
muscle man.)
 
Besides, just suppose that
the rods were
already
enriched with
uranium.
 
It would be a disaster to
contaminate the English Channel with that type of gunk.
 
I wished I knew more about the subject.
 
If enrichment
had
taken place, then wouldn’t there be cooling water present, and
a great deal more effective protection than one steel box?
 
I cursed myself for not picking Tamang’s
brains about the matter while I’d had the chance, because he’d
certainly
have known; the bloody cat had
distracted me from the job in hand.
 
I’d
come over all sentimental and allowed Tamang to get a decent night’s kip, when
I should have been interrogating him about nuclear fission.

But the time for chat had been
and gone.
 
The game was nearly at an
end.
 
I unzipped my suit and un-looped
the little whip from my belt.

“Here,” I shoved the thing at
Tamang, who took a step backwards when he saw what it was.
 
“You’ll have to deal with Mrs Arkonnen,
Jay.
 
Just ensure she can’t shout out to
alert the welcoming party, will you?
 
You
may not need this, but it’s better than nothing.”

I retrieved the gun from behind
the chair, and took off Joe’s heavy boots, in case I needed to run.
 
I motioned to Tamang to do the same.

“Quick, now.
 
Let’s commandeer the ship.”

And he certainly
was
quick, shucking off his boots and
flying back up the ladder.
 
He had a
score to settle with Dilys Arkonnen, of course . . I couldn’t help wondering
how he’d go about it.

——

   
I don’t think I’ve
seen anybody scale a ladder like Mr Tamang did when he clocked Aunt Dilys was
waking up.
 
He was up and out of it like
greased lightning, while she was still yawning and blinking and patting her
hair.

“Heavens, did I fall asleep at the
table?”
 
She peered round the cabin,
dumbfounded.
 
“I can’t think what came
over me.
 
What on earth is the time,
Magnus?”

“ I suppose it could be morning,
Aunt, but it’s difficult to say, stuck down here.”

“Morning?!”
 
She jumped up and then swiftly regretted it,
her backside crashing back down on the chair.
 
“Ayee . . my head’s killing me.”

“I’d make you a brew, if I
could.”

“Thank you, Magnus.
 
I appreciate the thought.
 
It’s one of my headaches, I suppose; I’m
prone to them . . although I usually get them after a lot of close work at the
typewriter.”
 
She had her head in her
hands.
 
“I must say, I feel like death
warmed up.”

“Me too, man.”

“Man?”
 
Her headache didn’t blunt that sharp tone of
hers, I noticed.

“Sorry.”
 
I was keeping on her good side if it killed
me.
 
Which it might well do.

“But, then, yesterday
was
rather tiring.”
 
She straightened her neck, as if she’d
suddenly remembered something.
 
“Yes,
indeed.”
 
Taking extreme care - like a
drunk shouldering his hangover - she got herself up and headed for the
lav.
 
“Well, no time for slacking.
 
I’ll just tidy myself up and then I’ve got a
bit of business to see to on deck.
 
You
can look after yourself, can’t you Magnus.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a
statement and I wasn’t about to contradict her.
 
Of course, I’d had some breakfast with the spies so I was alright there (though
nobody’d brought up the subject of bedpans, which I was going to have to broach
any minute).
 

Pablo plummeted from the top
bunk and came to say hello, wheezing blocked drains at me.

“Hey, boy.
 
How’re you doing, eh?”
 
We rubbed noses.

There was a slight noise from
above - the cabin hatch sliding open, softly - and an almost imperceptible
tread on the ladder.
 
I couldn’t see who
it was from the bunk, but my heart began to thump.

Aunt Dilys shut the lav door
behind her.

“I swear that cat gets bigger
every time I look at him, Magnus.
 
Are
you sure he’s not a tig . . .”

A terrifying, hooded, figure
leapt from the top of the ladder.
 
She
had no time to scream before his gloved hand was over her mouth and a knotted
length of rope looped round her neck.
 
She went limp, as he dragged her over to the kitchen, throttling the
life out of her with the garrotte.

“No!”
 
I shouted.
 
“Stop!
 
That’s not right!”

He bent her backwards over the
sink and all I could see was her thin legs lifting off the ground, one white
sandal tipping from a flailing foot.

“No!”

There was a smart rap - like a
drop of rain pinging into a bucket - and she slumped onto the floor.

“No!”
 
I shouted.
 
“What the hell have you done to her?”

Mr Tamang took off his hood and
bent to look at me, hands on his knees and breathing hard.

“I have knocked her on the head
with the frying-pan,” he replied.
 
“Don’t
worry, Mr Arkonnen.
 
All will be well.”

——

 
I crept up behind Severs and stroked the
back of his head with the muzzle of the handgun.

“Disobey me and you’re dead,”
 
I whispered.

He burbled something and tried
to turn round, so I flipped off his cloth cap and screwed the muzzle into his skull,
so that there’d be no mistaking just what I held in my hand.

“Got that?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“Good.
 
Now, keep following the speedboat and take us
in, nice and easy.
 
Just do your job and
I’ll let you live to do it again another day.”

We were well inside the Goodwins
by now, a mere mile or so away from the shore and our escort zoomed off into
the distance, leaving us to make our own way in.
 
The white cliffs loomed, closer and closer
and I was able to make out a stretch of shingle and figures gathering at the
water’s edge.
 
I’d hoped for just one or
two men that Tamang and I could overpower, but it looked like it wasn’t going
to be that simple.

“D’you weigh anchor, or can you
beach her?”
 
I asked Severs.

“She’ll go right in, but they’ve
got to ‘ave the ropes.”

Damn it; this had no more sense
than a pirate galleon sailing into a Royal Navy Dockyard, but it was far too
late to jump ship and swim for it now.
 
It was fight it out, or nothing.

I jettisoned the stifling hood
and shouted for Tamang, conscious he was unlikely to hear me through those
steel walls.
 
There was no reply.

“No ropes,” I turned back to
Severs.
 
“Just forget about the ropes,
d’you hear me?
 
Get her in as close as
you can without them.”

“But . . .”

“You’ve got your orders!”
 
I rammed the gun still harder; he had to know
I meant business.

Now we were fast approaching
land.
 
I scanned the coast for some
distinguishing features, but the small bay was an unremarkable spit of shingle
and scrub fronting the high chalk cliff, whose sparkling, white face dirtied to
a splodged, pale grey as we grew closer.
 
As far as I could see, there were no houses above the cliff, no church
spires, lighthouses nor relics of the war.
 
But . . wait a minute; the grey splodges that I’d taken to be marks upon
the pristine white, deepened in colour until I realised that they formed a
single entity; a shadowy hole which had been gouged from the face of the
cliff.
 
It was the entrance to a tunnel,
or a cave.
 
The entrance to a
hiding-place.

The barge changed course,
slipping sideways.

“No!”
 
I grabbed the wheel from Severs and righted
her with one hand, so that her nose pointed straight at land .
 
“And don’t cut the bloody engine, either!”

“But . . .”

I walloped him over the head, as
hard as I could, and then I made a dash for the front cargo hold.

“Tamang!”
 
I shouted down the hatch.
 
“Up on deck!
 
We’re motoring straight at land and we’re outnumbered.
 
We’ve got nothing but surprise on our side.”

His hooded head appeared and I
swiped the hood off him.

“No need for that now.
 
Here we go!”

He turned to shout back down the
hatch:

“Mr Arkonnen, you must hold on
tight
!”

I remember we glanced at one
another, the sad irony of Magnus’ situation (for what would he hold on tight
with
?) lost on neither one of us, before
the Humber crashed onto the shingle and surfed up the beach, like a bloody,
great, jet airliner hitting land and we were both swept off our feet and thrown
head-first into the open hold.

I got off lightly; just a
glancing blow to the cheekbone where I struck the metal ladder, while the
padded suit cushioned most of it.
 
Jay
Tamang, too, rolled with the punch and was back on his feet before I was, but
Magnus didn’t have it so easy and screamed blue murder when he was ditched out
of bed.
 
Nasty.
 
Even the great, placid cat yowled with
surprise.
 
Meanwhile, I clenched my teeth
and waited for the bigger crash, the crash that would mean the barge had hit
the cliff.
 
But it didn’t happen.
 
The Humber just shuddered to a standstill, her
motor juddering.
 
(She’d scraped up a
small mountain of shingle and sand when she propelled herself up and out of the
sea and that wedged itself beneath her bows so that her nose stuck straight into
the sky, I later discovered.)
 
The chair
sped across the cabin, followed by the bowl of apples, after which the prone
body of Dilys Arkonnen slid straight past me and wedged itself in the open
lavatory door.