Blackest of Lies (2 page)

"It's done.  Back down to the kitchen and through the tunnel again."  Riordan remained frozen in fascination, staring at the body.  "Move right now or, so help me, I'll put the next four in your ear."

Riordan turned with a start and followed him to the door.  Gallagher took one glance back to make sure that nothing had been left behind and then removed the key from the bedroom side, locking the door behind him. That would give them a little more time in the morning while the staff dithered about forcing it or not.

Behind them in the bedroom, motes of dust and feathers from the pillows glinted in the moonlight as they settled on the face and body of Horatio, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Secretary of State for War.

Saturday 20 May 1916 0730 hours – 1700 hours

Hubert stepped out of the hallway into a side street in Holborn and closed the outer door of his block of flats behind him. He pocketed the keys and turned to cross to the other side, leaping back – out of sheer reflex – as the black Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost screeched to a halt at the kerb, missing him by an inch or so.  A moustachioed man in his late middle-age, narrow-chested despite a bulky greatcoat, popped his head out.  “Get in, Hubert!” he ordered.  “Don’t waste time asking stupid questions – get in beside the driver!”

Hubert jumped in and slammed the door behind him, turning to look at the other man. The car sped off, causing two brassy Clydesdales to jingle their Covent Garden waggon to an abrupt halt at the corner of the street.  Hubert grinned at the violent oaths echoing after them as they screeched round into Judd Street and then on to the Euston Road. He raised his eyebrows at the Head of MI5, Major Vernon Kell.  “What’s going on, sir?”

“We have the mother of all disasters on our hands, Hubert,” said Kell, with a slight stutter, as the car rounded another corner on two wheels.

A corner of Hubert’s mouth curved up in a sardonic smile.  The very thought of having the ‘mother of all disasters’ at the same time as the ‘war to end all wars’ seemed seriously bad luck, to say the least.  “How’s that?”

“Last night, or sometime this morning, Lord Kitchener was assassinated at his home down at Broome.”

Hubert’s jaw slackened.  “What?”

“Quite.”  Kell pointed to the other occupant of the back seat.  “This is Colonel Fitzgerald, Lord Kitchener’s Personal Staff Officer.  Sir, this is Lieutenant Christophe Hubert, late of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.  He’s only been with us for a few weeks but I’ve stolen him from my second-in-command, Holt-Wilson, to assist us on this.” 

Hubert and Fitzgerald somehow found each other’s hand in the violence of the driving. 

“Hubert will liaise between myself, you and Special Branch.” 

Fitzgerald nodded without humour or cordiality and Kell turned back to Hubert.  “We’re off right now – good God, Mason, have a care with your driving! – we’re off to collect Assistant Commissioner Thompson from Downing Street.”  He paused for emphasis.   “Special Branch was responsible for Lord Kitchener’s protection squad.”

Hubert sat silent for a moment until he saw Kell waiting for some sort of reply.  “I’m sorry … I’m sorry but this has completely floored me.  Kitchener assassinated!"  He nodded to Fitzgerald.  “My sympathies, Colonel.”  Hubert glanced back at Kell.  “I fancy the Commissioner’s interview won’t be a happy one.”

Kell grunted.  “I very much doubt it.  But we’ll need his help, and the Colonel’s here, to work out how we’re going to handle this.  It goes without saying that this will never be secret for long – but we have to squeeze every second we can out of the gap before it
does
leak out.  And that means getting down to Broome and putting a lid on it, PDQ.”

Hubert’s mind was still frozen but two years of fighting in Belgium, seeing men blown apart within feet of him, had trained him to shake off that sort of mental paralysis and
think
.  “First thoughts, then – perhaps we could announce that Kitchener has developed influenza?  There’s a lot of it about, according to the papers.  Keep him at home for a couple of weeks?”

Fitzgerald leaned forward holding on to a door strap.  “I have already made it perfectly clear to Major Kell that Lord Kitchener would
never
let himself be absent for that length of time.  He was always very reluctant to delegate things.  It wouldn’t be long before some document would need his personal attention and it would be brought down to Broome.  The game would then be up.” 

To Hubert, Fitzgerald’s voice sounded thick – plummy, but thick – as though his tongue was somehow too big for his mouth.  “How long, then?”

Fitzgerald, thrown against the side of the car by another frightening manoeuvre, thought for a moment.  “Three days!”

Kell swivelled slightly to look at him, appalled.  “You cannot be serious, surely!”

“Three days,” said Fitzgerald.  “Three days.”

**********

Gallagher stuck out a rigid arm to stop Riordan walking in front of one of those big black Rolls’ that was roaring along the road not far from Kings Cross.  Sure, the Specials would be expecting them to take the train from Euston up the west coast to Liverpool and catch the ferry there back to Ireland.  But he had a better idea – up the east coast to Edinburgh from Kings Cross and then west to catch the Larne ferry.  Exasperated, he glowered at Riordan and pulled him by the sleeve across the road.  “Didn’t your Mammie ever tell you about traffic, you moron?  The last thing I want is some copper identifying your mortal remains on the Euston-bloody-Road.  Get your wits about you.  If you have any.”

Within minutes, they were striding on to the main concourse of Kings Cross railway station.  Gallagher thrust a hand at Riordan.  “Right – here’s some money to get your own ticket.  Make yourself scarce for half an hour or so and then buy it.  I don’t want to see you until we board the train.  It won’t take them long to work out there was two of us in that bedroom.”

Riordan nodded without comprehension.

Gallagher sighed in frustration.  “Christ.  So … they’ll be looking for a
couple
of Micks, if they’ve got any sense.  You follow?”

“Right, Sean.  I’ll just go off and get meself a cup of tea or something and see you later.”

“That sounds grand.  I’ll get my own ticket right now and meet you on the Edinburgh platform five minutes before the off.”

Riordan wandered away in search of his tea while Gallagher, glancing around under his eyebrows, wandered over to a set of postal trollies loaded with bags.  He walked past them until he found one marked ‘Exeter’.  It would be taken over to Paddington, maybe, and out on a mail train from there.  Doing a final check around to make sure there was no one watching, he took both guns – his and Riordan’s – wiped them clean and pushed their dismantled sections deep into several different mail sacks.  Someone in Land’s End, or some other bloody horrible place, was going to get a hell of a shock.

Like a man without a care in the world, he strolled back to the concourse and went to buy his own ticket.

**********

Kell tapped the driver on the shoulder.  “There he is, Mason!”  The car swung over and crunched to a halt just outside the entrance to Downing Street.  A man wearing a rather old-fashioned soft hat, formal coat and wing collar made to get into the car but paused for a moment, hand upraised and eyes screwed shut.

He groaned and stood, crouched, for a moment.  “Damn it!” he said and got into the car, sitting in the middle between Kell and Fitzgerald.  Kell introduced him to the other two men.  “Gentlemen, this is Commissioner Thompson of Special Branch.”

“Special Branch!” said Fitzgerald, making no attempt to offer his hand. 

The car roared off again, throwing Thompson into the back seat.  “Dear God!”  He held up his hand again.  “Wait a minute …” He held up his hand again and sneezed violently.  “Sorry!  Bloody cold … can’t shift it.”  He wiped a rather large mottled nose with a garish handkerchief and sniffed loud enough to be heard above the roar of the car.

“Wonderful!” said Fitzgerald,
sotto voce
.

The car continued to snake among the other vehicles on the road at terrific speeds, stopping only once on account of a traffic policeman.  Thompson leaned out of the window and yelled obscenities at him.  After that, the way was clear and they picked up speed through the eastern suburbs of London.

Thompson looked over at Kell.  “You’ll want to know what happened at my meeting with Asquith, I suppose, Kell.”

“I thought I’d wait until you were ready, Commissioner.”

“It was bloody awful, as you might imagine.”

“Do we have any leads?” asked Hubert.

Kell interjected.  "Sorry, this is one of my officers – Lieutenant Christophe Hubert."

Thompson nodded grimly, “Pleasure.  As to the question of leads, we just might.  But it’s still conjecture, really.”

“Why am I not surprised?”  Fitzgerald’s lisped disdain was very clear.

Thompson looked carefully at him.  “Are you trying to tell me something, Colonel?”

“You need me to be more explicit?  Very well, it was your department that was charged with protecting Lord Kitchener,
the
most important person in the Empire at this moment in time.  Now he is dead – shot in his sleep, unable even to defend himself.”

Seeing Thompson about to explode, Hubert broke into the conversation.  “What did you mean by ‘conjecture’?”

Thompson turned slowly to face him, keeping his eyes fixed on Fitzgerald until the last moment.  “Kitchener was shot four times at close range.  We’re still working on the bullets but they're probably from a Mauser.  My waters tell me we’re looking at the work of the IRB."

Hubert sat in silence for a moment, letting the appalling idea percolate through.  His first reaction was one of simple disbelief.  They very idea that
anyone
in Britain would want to kill the driving force behind the war was lunacy.  He pulled his collar up against the chill of the morning air blasting through the open side window of the car.  "The Irish! For God's sake ... let me be clear – are we talking about the Irish Republican Brotherhood?" he asked, stunned by the thought.

Thomson nodded grimly.

“But …
why
?”

Fitzgerald cleared his throat. "Well, if it is the IRB, the Harp issue might be at the back of it.  Lord Kitchener received a request from the Irish regiments at the Front for permission to wear the symbol of the harp on their tunics.  He never really had much time for the concept of Welsh and Irish regiments.  I‘ve no idea if this was behind his refusal but refuse he did."

Thompson slid towards Kell as the car rounded a corner at speed.  "This upset our Hibernian brothers and the IRB used the matter as the excuse they needed to issue a death warrant.  Of course, you never know, his assassination at this precise time – perhaps it’s simple tit for tat.”

“You mean retaliation for the Easter Uprising?” Hubert mused.

“Exactly.  Personally, I think it’s more about antagonism to the prospect of British troops back in Ireland after the War – killing Kitchener might make the Government think again, that sort of thing.  At any rate, we set ourselves to watching one or two promising Murphies but we were caught with our trousers around our ankles.”  Thompson sat in grim silence for a moment and then glanced back at Hubert.  “The thing is that the Mauser is the preferred weapon of a very nasty piece of work called Sean Gallagher."

"Gallagher!" said Kell.  He looked at Hubert.  "Gallagher is one of the IRB's most effective killers.  Commissioner Thompson and I have chased him up and down the country – and always he manages to stay one step ahead of us.  Speed the day we can put a rope round his neck."

Thompson picked up the story again.  "He’s a strange mixture of parts – quite well educated within the limits of his class. But something went wrong inside him a long time ago: he’s the most ruthless man I've ever heard of. A devil with the ladies, too.  If he's involved, we'll have one hell of a time of it.”  Thompson shook his head in thought.  “Then again, to be fair to the IRB, God bless 'em, we know that Gallagher is very much a loner and the evidence we have so far points to
two
men.  That may rule him out and it’s not as though Kitchener didn’t have enough enemies elsewhere to keep us busy.  Some of those are very powerful indeed.  We’re spoiled for choice, really, when it comes to potential suspects.”

“Do you think it might have anything to do with Casement and his lot?” prompted Hubert.

“Well, that’s certainly
one
possibility. Casement is a traitor and we’ll surely hang him if he sets foot again on British soil but we don’t even have to look that far.  There are members of our own Government who were, shall we say, less than enamoured with Lord Kitchener. They’re not beyond the odd, seriously dirty trick.  I can’t say any more than that at the moment but that’s the reason we had men down at Broome to protect him.”

Kell slipped his gloves off and toyed absent-mindedly with them for a moment.  “And now we’re in the eye of the storm.”

Thompson nodded.  “The PM wants us to keep this under wraps until we can work up something that will stop it turning into a world-class disaster – God knows what, though.  You can imagine his reaction when I told him.  This is the worst thing that could have happened to us.” 

“Worst time, too,” said Fitzgerald, moodily.

“Indeed – the Branch is stretched wafer thin right now rounding up strays from the Uprising so most of my people are not even on the mainland.”  He cleared his throat and spoke more authoritatively.  “The bottom line is that damage limitation is the order of the day.  We can take any action – any – to soften the blow on the country and the war effort.  'All resources, all solutions, without restriction' are ours to command – the PM’s very words.  And that, as far as it goes, is the current state of this bag of nails we have on our hands.”