A Spider in the Cup (Joe Sandilands Investigation) (7 page)

“Indeed? Do calm down, Bill, and tell me when this Armageddon is about to break around our ears. Did I detect a note or two of the
Götterdämmerung
in that outburst? Do I have time to go out and get myself a gas mask?”

Armitage glowered. “No, you don’t. It’s started and you’re in the front line of the advance party. You’re not forty yet, Captain. In your prime, I’d say. I’d get myself measured for a uniform if I were you.”

Joe sighed. “Look, if it’s the thought of fighting the Germans all over again … I don’t think you need be quite so hysterical. Always worth watching, of course—the Hun—but the Versailles Treaty conditions really knocked them back. The controls on rearmament, in particular, were swingeing. It takes a devastated country longer than fifteen years to get up on its feet again.”

Armitage gave him a pitying look. “Controls? If there’s money involved, people will always get around them. Especially arms manufacturers. The French have just sold four hundred tanks to Germany. Did you know that?”

“Careless clowns! They shipped them via Holland, as if that’s going to fool anyone for two minutes!”

The pitying look hardened to withering. “Who the hell cares about dispatch dockets? Those tanks are on their way! And what about the sixty bombers they’ve had the bloody nerve to order from your own Vickers company in Birmingham?”

Joe didn’t give Armitage the satisfaction of questioning this piece of information although it was news to him.

“And our … your pathetic government will rubber stamp it and ship them off. The Luftwaffe will get their bombers all right. One way or another. German air aces—the bloody crew we were trying to shoot out of the sky—have been shopping in the States for dive bombers. They rather liked the performance of the Curtiss Hawk II. They were sent a cheque for a couple by their air chief, Goering—remember
him
? Bloody fat Hermann! He’s done well for himself. And these planes have been sent over to Germany. Where they’ll be taken apart and redesigned. Made more deadly.”

“Nice to know the new government values its war heroes. Even a defeated country has the right to defend itself,” Joe said mildly. He always squeezed information out of Armitage by quietly needling him.

“Defence! That’s the last thing their new Chancellor has in mind!” Armitage reacted predictably and rounded on Joe, his face unacceptably close, his voice low and forceful. “Adolf Hitler. Vicious little thug! All this materiel will be in the hands of a man who declared—even before he took office—that ‘We shall never capitulate. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag the world with us—a world in flames.’ ”

“Ghastly sentiments! Cue Wagnerian clash of cymbals?”

“Yes,” Armitage snarled. “Bring ’em on! That was a statement of nasty intent if ever I heard one.”

“Hitler spooking you, Bill? Terrible man, as all agree. But, look here, we’ve had him thoroughly checked. The man’s an incompetent. He’s made a mess of everything he’s put his hand to throughout his life—and that’s not much seeing that he’s an incurable layabout! He’s not even German by birth. He’s an Austrian shirker who made the injudicious decision to dodge the draft by running off to Germany. Where he was promptly shoved into the army, kicking and screaming. He played an unwilling and undistinguished part in the war at a safe distance behind the front line in the capacity of military messenger boy, I understand. He’s since gone on to fail at architecture, art, music and all the rest of his butterfly interests. One wonders what we have to fear from a man who can’t get out of bed before noon.”

Armitage gave him a scathing look. “Well, he’s succeeded now, all right, hasn’t he? And how! Straight into the top job. He must be saying something the Germans want to hear.”

“According to our man in Berlin—one of our men in Berlin—who’s met him and been granted an interview, he’s quite mad. ‘Pop-eyed but friendly,’ was his first impression. Until someone mentioned Communism and then he climbed the walls and began to chew the curtains. He frequently goes off into a raging, spitting rant, they say. Most embarrassing. Our chap didn’t know where to put himself. Can’t be long before someone realises and calls for the men in white coats. In one of his sober moments, Hitler confided to our bloke that, in his view, there was room in the world for just three empires: the German, the British and the American.”

Joe remembered the MI6 man who’d been briefing him in European politics only the day before. Tall, sandy-haired and courteous, he’d been struggling, Joe sensed, to keep his alarm
hidden under his outer shell of easy confidence. An ex-soldier like Joe, he’d sensed a sympathetic understanding and divulged more than he ought to have. And Joe was seeing here in Armitage the same unfocussed, dawning horror, hearing the same urgent need to inform and warn. Two Cassandras in as many days plucking at his sleeve and demanding that he listen to their blood-chilling message.

“And your agent believed him?” Armitage asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes, he did. I wouldn’t myself, but many do,” Joe replied lightly.

“Well, thank the Lord someone’s taking Hitler seriously. You should replay those words. They’re not the words of a maniac. Examine the meaning. ‘German Empire.’ There’s a million deaths in those two words. Such an empire would cover the whole of Europe. Bye bye France, Poland, Holland and anyone else who gets in his way. Knocked out. Italy, Austria and other satellites, gobbled up. The British? A tougher nut to crack. And it’s thought he has a sneaking admiration for the Anglo-Saxons. First cousins to the Prussians, most of them, he reckons. Though he’s got that wrong. You try feeding that idea to a Cockney sparrer and hear what he says!”

“We might expect him to try to do a deal?”

“He might try it on. Wouldn’t work. Your politicians, your aristocracy, your businessmen, plus a few nutcases might be showing him favour, but they’ll never convince the millions of ordinary folk that there’s any good can come out of an alliance with Germany.”

“The vote’s in the hands of a mass of people who still say, ‘Did my husband, my son, my uncle Alfred die in vain?’ ” Joe agreed. “We hate the French and I think we hate the Germans more. But it’s the American aspect of all this that’s got you in a lather, isn’t it, Bill?”

“Right. The American Empire. That’s the pivot.”

Pivot? An echo of his conversation with Kingstone came back to trouble Joe.

“Huge German immigrant population in the States. Considerable sympathies for the old country and its post-war sufferings under the British boot.” Armitage was talking fast now, eyes flitting occasionally to the door. “All stridently anti-Communist. In fact, they have an affinity with Herr Hitler. Brown-shirt brigades have started marching through the streets of New York—so far unchallenged. And, running the country are politicians and money-makers who, if they’re even aware the British exist, either discount or loathe them. Many admire the control and order the new breed of right-wing dictators in Europe is exercising. ‘Just what we need,’ they’re saying, ‘a touch of the Mussolinis. Get the trains running! Build those autobahns! Fix the economy!’ ”

“It’s no secret that the Americans already consider themselves the supreme world power. Perhaps they’ll be gracious enough to take on some of the onerous duties that go with the title? Take a bit of weight off our shoulders?” Joe suggested, deliberately to provoke a revealing response. “Always supposing they don’t just pull the eiderdown over their ears when the guns start banging and retreat into isolationism again.”

Armitage was grim. “Don’t scoff! Isolationism may be the
best
you can hope for. Hasn’t it occurred to you that if the US were to come out in favour of—or at the very least, fail to condemn—German expansion, this little island, for all its naval strength, will be caught like a walnut in a pair of nutcrackers? Hitler will use the States to help him bring down Britain. And the States will use Hitler to the same end. And then what?”

Joe shuddered theatrically. “My God! We could well end up seeing
you
as puppet Commissioner of Scotland Yard, Bill, in a client state. I wonder what you’ll call it? The Forty-Ninth State of the USA or Neue Deutschland? Let’s not pursue that thought. Yet.”

“Do you ever stop arsing about, man?” For an uncomfortable moment Joe had the feeling that Armitage was going to reach out, take hold of him by the shoulders and shake him. The sergeant displaced his anger by kicking a hole in a Claridge’s wastepaper basket. “It’s more than a thought. It’s a
plan
and it’s being worked on. Some of the planners will be sitting smirking around that conference table next week. Working towards our … your destruction. The buggers are right here in London. Sipping their Earl Grey from china cups in swish hotels. Honoured guests. Copper-bottomed reputations on the world stage. And the one man who can make a difference—cast his weight on one side or the other—is …”

“Right here, under our joint care, Bill? I had realised.”

“I hope you’re armed with something a bit more effective than a screwdriver, Captain. At this darned conference—this free-for-all—he’ll be rubbing shoulders with every villain in Europe and beyond that. It may not come to assassination—he’s more valuable on his two feet and reporting back to the president. He gets listened to. He’s a fair-minded man. But he’s a conduit. If he returns, primed, to tell Roosevelt what he already is disposed to hear—that Britain’s not worth his support, that it’s a busted flush, a treacherous, vindictive, self-glorifying bastard of a country—well, support, if any is coming, will go to Germany.”

Joe cleared his throat. “It’s going to be a long, sweaty month, Bill. I’ve heard you. And understood.” He felt a sudden rush of disgust with undercover skirmishings, dubious allegiances and threats of daggers in the back. Impatience broke through as he spoke briskly: “Bill! We’re not politicians, we’re not spies, we’re policemen! Let’s do what we’re trained to do. It’s
all
we can do. And we can start by remembering why we’re here. To protect that powerful and, I believe, well-intentioned man downstairs. A man I can respect. I liked him.” He strolled to the window. “How active is our bird? Could he manage that fire escape if it came to a sudden exit?”

“No problem there! He’s as spry as a mountain goat. Fists like cured hams and he knows how to use them. I wouldn’t tangle with him.”

“Weaknesses? I like to know where a man keeps his Achilles heel.”

Armitage thought for a moment then jerked his head at the next room. “There’s only one. Her, next door.”

“The ballet dancer?”

“She makes him less than he is. She reduces him to a twitching wreck. It’s pathetic. He’d follow her to the ends of the earth. Well, he does. Would marry her tomorrow, he says, but she won’t oblige. Taking little thing but I wouldn’t trust her far.” He flicked a glance at Joe and added carefully, “Russian’s her first language. Born in St. Petersburg, she claims. She doesn’t know I speak it and I’m keeping that quiet.”

“Very wise,” said Joe. “Shall we cast an eye over her billet? I think we should get to know this lady who has the attention of the man who has the ear of the president who has his finger on the trigger of the gun that’s pointed at our head.”

They entered another opulent space, the twin of the suite they had just left. Joe stood for a moment looking around for and not seeing signs of occupancy.

“Has she been here?” Joe asked.

“Her things are in the cupboards,” Armitage said, throwing open a wardrobe. “Her maid unpacked for her.”

“Maid? Is she on the premises?”

“She has a room somewhere on an upper floor. Julia’s not seen her either. I checked before breakfast.”

“Julia?”

“Julia Ivanova. The maid. She’s not some gaga old biddy—she’s as smart as a whip and pretty as a picture. If you like Russian looks. Dark, high cheekbones, suffering Madonna expression.”

“And where is she at the moment, this icon?”

“Up in her room, I expect. They’re as thick as thieves, I’d say. You ought to talk to her.”

“These are mostly evening dresses,” Joe commented, riffling through the silks and velvets on the hangers. “French labels.” He bunched the midnight blue silk of the dress at the front of the rack and drew it towards him. “Madeleine Vionnet. Oh, how smart!” He sniffed with pleasure. “And a trace of
L’heure bleue
.”

“Very apt! The Blue Hour. Twilight. That’s when she lives her life. In the evenings. She sleeps until noon, rehearses or performs until ten. The rest of the night’s hers to do what she likes with. Never sees daylight! Terrible life! At least that’s Kingstone’s version of it.”

“Different generations, backgrounds, interests … You’d wonder what on earth they had in common,” Joe said, mystified.

“Until you see them together.” The unromantic Armitage frowned and Joe stayed silent, understanding that he was struggling to clothe in words an emotional state that was outside his experience. “Weird, it was. Seemed made for each other. Very natural together … not lovey-dovey. No, nothing sloppy—just … together. In a room full of people you’d know those two were a pair. Still—she’s used to performing, I have to remind myself,” he finished with a return to his usual hard-headed asperity.

“How long have they been carrying on? Would you know that?”

“Six years. He saw her dance in
Swan Lake
at the Metropolitan when the Diaghilev company was touring the States and was knocked sideways. They say he travelled everywhere with her until they all came back to Europe.”

“Is he a faithful lover?”

“Lord, no! There was a showgirl on the liner over—maybe there were two—who caught his eye. You couldn’t call either of them faithful. They have others in their lives but they never discuss it with each other, according to Kingstone.
Tatler
magazine knows more about her past than he does.”

“And that’s a useful thought,” Joe murmured. “Worth following up, perhaps.” He sighed. “An extraordinary way of going on! Or am I being old-fashioned? Tell me—where is she at the moment? Did she spend the night here?”

“Told you—I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the maid.” And, tetchily: “This female element is all new to me too. The bodyguard’s not someone they’d confide in. If they see me at all, I’m the great gowk in the corner, always in the way unless they’re actually being shot at, then they see the point of the broad shoulders. Ideally, for this job, you’d be sans eyes, sans ears and sans you-know-what. Inconveniently, if you want a useful triggerfinger you have to have the rest of the package. Natalia turned up with her luggage and her maid on Monday. Warm reunion. I know she was here on Tuesday night, though I didn’t see her. I think I heard her though!” Armitage cringed at the memory. No sign of her on Wednesday and she wasn’t here last night, according to Julia. That’s all I can tell you.”