The Wild Rose (55 page)

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

“He’s not coming,” Sid said.

“He is. He’s never here on the dot. Sometimes it’s ten. Eleven. Midnight. It’s always different,” John Harris said.

“Something spooked him.”

“The rain slowed him. It’s pissing it down, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“He’s twigged. I know he has. He’s a wily one, our boy. He’s managed to not get himself captured all these years. He’s cagey and cautious and he can likely smell trouble from ten miles away. He’ll not come tonight. I know it.”

John threw the hand he was playing down on the table. “You’re a right old woman, you know that, Sid?”

It was Friday night, nearly eleven o’clock. Sid and John were sitting playing spoil-five in the hold of John’s lighter, which was moored at Billy Madden’s boatyard. Sid’s mind wasn’t on his cards, though. He was too tense. John was as well, though he was doing a better job of not showing it.

They were waiting for Flynn. Sid had taken the envelope Jennie had given Joe and hidden it in the basement of St. Nick’s, inside the broken statue of the saint. He’d done it immediately after he’d left the hospital, but had he been early enough?

He had no idea when Flynn came through the tunnels to pick up the envelope. What if he’d come earlier in the week? What if he’d heard about Gladys Bigelow? Burgess’s office had told the newspapers to hold their stories for a day, but they couldn’t keep Gladys Bigelow’s neighbors and friends from talking. Or her landlord. The man who’d sold her a pound of apples the day before. Or the newsagent at the corner.

So much depended on timing tonight. On sheer bloody luck. Burgess needed Flynn. He needed to find out from him just how much Berlin knew. Sid needed him, too. He needed to find out how much trouble his brother Seamie was in. And John needed him. He needed Flynn to show up and get on the fucking boat. Now. He needed to look as if he was headed to the North Sea, as usual, so he could get a good three days’ head start before Madden figured out he was gone for good.

“Go above and see if he’s—” Sid started to say. And then they both heard it—the sound of footsteps on the dock. Sid rose from the table wordlessly and positioned himself so that he was close to the ladder, but so that Flynn would not see him as he came down it. John had told him that Flynn always climbed down facing the rungs.

Sid saw a pair of booted feet, then strong, slim legs, a satchel hanging down from a shoulder strap, and then the rest of what was a good-sized man. Looking at him, Sid was glad he’d taken Joe up on the offer of a pistol earlier in the evening.

As Flynn climbed down the last rung of the ladder, Sid stepped forward noiselessly and pressed the barrel of the gun to the back of his head. He cocked the trigger. The sound it made was unmistakable. Flynn froze.

“That’s far enough, old son,” Sid said. “Hands up now, where I can see them.”

Flynn did as he was told. And then, just as Sid was going to snap a handcuff around one of his wrists, Flynn suddenly ducked, whirled around, and drove his fist into Sid’s gut, knocking the wind out of him.

Sid staggered away from the ladder, his hands clutching his gut, trying to breathe, and Flynn scrambled up it.

No!
Sid shouted silently, stumbling toward the ladder. But John was ahead of him. He shot up the ladder in a blur of speed, wrapped one arm around Flynn’s neck, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and drove the man’s head into a ladder rung.

Flynn screamed in pain. His hands came off the ladder. He lost his balance and fell, with John still hanging on to him. Both men crashed to the floor. John gave Flynn no time to recover. He was nowhere near as big as Flynn, but he was quick. He straddled the man and started throwing vicious jabs to his face. Flynn swung wildly at him, trying to knock him off. John ducked some blows and took others, but they didn’t stop him. They didn’t even slow him. He was fighting for his life—his and his family’s.

Sid, in the meantime, had caught his breath. He found the handcuffs he’d dropped and snatched them off the floor. Flynn, already bleeding and bruised, was no match for two men. In a matter of minutes, Sid and John were able to cuff his hands behind his back, gag him, and bind his ankles.

“Well done,” Sid said to John when they’d finished with him. Sid was breathing heavily. John was bleeding. But they’d both be fine.

“For a minute there, I thought we’d lost him,” John said.

“Me, too. I—”

“John!” a voice bellowed from above. “John Harris!”

Sid and John froze. They knew that voice. It was Billy Madden.

“John! You down there?”

“Go up!” Sid hissed at him. “Act like you’re waiting for Flynn.”

“Right here, Billy!” John shouted.

Flynn’s eyes followed him. Sid picked up a long, thin, horribly sharp knife that John used for cutting lines. He quietly bent over Flynn.

“One sound from you and I go up and shoot Madden. Then I come back down here. I won’t shoot you, though. I’ll cut your throat,” he said. “Ear to ear and very slowly.”

Flynn’s eyes widened. He nodded.

“Where’s Flynn?” Billy barked when John was abovedecks.

“He hasn’t shown yet,” John said.

Billy swore. “Bastard owes me money. Or rather his master does. I was getting an envelope every month, nice and regular. This month I’ve got nothing. You tell him—”

“Billy! Come on, darlin’!” a voice called. A woman’s voice. It sounded farther away. “You said we wuz going to the Casbah, not a manky old boatyard!”

“Shut your mouth, you silly bitch!” Billy shouted. “Or I’ll throw you off the dock!”

“Billeeee!” the woman whined.

“She doesn’t watch herself, I’ll have another body for you to dump off Margate,” Billy said darkly. “Anyways, when Flynn shows up, you tell him I want to see him. The minute he sets foot back on land. I’m running a business here, not a charity.”

“Aye, Billy, I’ll tell him.”

“When are you back?”

“Three or four days, as usual. Should be fair on the way out. Might get some weather on the way back. If we do, it’ll slow us.”

“Come see me when you’re done. I’ve got another job for you. Paintings this time. Got ’em out of a big manor house in Essex. They need to go south.”

“Will do.”

Sid heard footsteps on the dock. He waited for John to come back belowdecks, but it was a good, and nerve-racking, ten minutes, before he did.

“Christ, lad, where were you? I’m nearly shitting meself here!”

“Making sure Billy was gone.”

“Is he?” Sid asked.

“Aye. I watched him. Waited till he and his tart got back in his carriage.”

“Let’s go,” Sid said.

John didn’t need telling twice. He’d already untied the lines. Minutes later, he had the boat’s engine going and they were off. They needed to make Millwall by one o’clock, and it looked like they would. About half an hour later, John and Sid were bringing the boat alongside a small dock behind the Wellington, a riverside pub. To both men’s great relief, Maggie Harris and her children were on the dock waiting for them.

“Come on! Hurry!” John hissed at them, not even bothering to tie up. One by one, he got his family on board, looking fearfully about the whole time.

Earlier that day, Sid had gone to John and Maggie’s rooms. He’d given Maggie five hundred pounds, an enormous sum of money that she’d been terrified to take, and a piece of paper with two addresses on it—one in Inverness, one in Point Reyes.

“You’ll go to Inverness first,” he had told her. “To Smythson’s Estate Agents. A man there—Alastair Brown—will look after you. There’s a little house waiting for you there. Rent’s all taken care of. When the war ends and you can travel across the Atlantic again, you can sell your boat, get yourselves to New York, and then to California. I’ll be waiting there for you. Hope you like cattle. I’ve got four hundred head.”

Maggie had burst into tears then, and Sid had had to wait until she’d calmed down to explain the rest of the plan to her. He had to make sure she was listening, that she understood what he was telling her. There was no room for error.

When she’d dried her eyes, he told her that just before teatime, she and the children must leave their rooms with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and that they must get to Millwall, to the Wellington, check into the room he’d booked under a fake name, and stay there.

“You lot,” he’d said to three of the older children, “you leave home one by one. As if you’re going out to see a friend, or do an errand. Maggie, you take the others, and your basket, as if you’re going to the market. No suitcases, you understand? You mustn’t look as if you’re leaving. Madden’s got eyes and ears all over East London.”

Maggie said she understood. The children all nodded.

“Good. Get yourselves to the Wellington and stay in the room. Just before one o’clock in the morning, get downstairs to the dock in back of the pub and wait there. Do it as quietly as you can. John and I will come for you then. Don’t say a word about any of this to anyone.”

As soon as the last of John’s brood was belowdecks, with a caution to leave the man lying on the floor there alone, Sid pushed off, John gunned the engine, and they were under way again. It took only a quarter of an hour to get to their second destination, a Millwall wharf.
BRISTOW
was painted on the old brick building, in tall white letters. Two men were waiting for them on the dock there—one was in a wheelchair, the other was pacing and smoking a cigar.

Burgess stopped pacing when he saw the boat, and went to the edge of the dock to catch the line Sid threw him. When the boat was tied, Sid went belowdecks, cut the ropes that bound Flynn’s legs, and told him to climb the ladder. Sid helped him from below, since his hands were still cuffed, and John from above. Together they got him off the boat and onto the dock.

“George, Joe,” Sid said, “I’d like you to meet Jack Flynn.”

Sir George shook his head in amazement. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “You did it.”

“Keep hold of him,” Sid cautioned, making Flynn sit down on the dock. “He’s slippery as an eel.”

Sid turned back to John. “Go now,” he said quietly. “Get out of London. Get out of the life.”

John nodded. “Sid, I . . . I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Because of you, I get to watch me kids grow up. That’s all the thanks I need,” Sid said. “Go. The more distance you can put between yourself and Billy Madden, the better.”

“I’ll see you again, Sid,” John said. “One day.”

Sid smiled. “You will, John.”

Sid untied the line and threw it to John. He waved as the boat pulled away from the dock. He hoped he would see John again. He truly did. He wanted things to go well for John and his family, but there were no guarantees. It took a long time to outrun your old life. He knew that well enough.

Sid gave one last wave, then he turned around. “That’s one problem solved. Now, let’s get Mr. Flynn up and out of here,” he said.

He and Sir George hoisted Flynn to his feet. They half marched, half carried him down the dock, to the warehouse. Joe came behind them in his chair.

“Were you able to get the telegram sent off?” Sid asked Burgess.

Ever since he’d seen the contents of the envelope Jennie had given Joe, with all of its information on British ships in the Mediterranean, Sid had been worried sick about Seamie. As they left the hospital where Jennie had been quarantined, Joe had promised him he’d get Sir George to telegraph warnings to naval command in the Mideast and to the ships themselves.

“We were,” Burgess said now, “but it’s a long and arduous chain of telegraphing to get a message from London to the Mideast. We cabled our offices in Haifa and we cabled the
Exeter
herself, but we’re still awaiting confirmations. We hope to have them in another day or two.”

“Thank God,” Sid said. “That’s a relief. A huge, bloody relief.”

Sid, Burgess, Joe, and their prisoner were just about to enter the warehouse when they were hailed from the dock by a boat that had just pulled up to it.

“Jack Flynn!” shouted a male voice. “This is Chief Superintendent Stevens, of Scotland Yard. You are under arrest. Give yourself up immediately!”