Touchstone (12 page)

Not that he worried that his plans would ever be uncovered, not really—his enemies might break the language code, but the key references were known only to him. And he needed the note-books. Some day, when his labors in the public interest were ended, he would retire to a sun-drenched villa and write his book on political life—preferably,
sans
his predecessor Niccolò’s preliminary arrest and torture.

No, it would not do at all, to open his note-books’ secrets to other eyes—even Machiavelli set prudence alongside force in governing men. Still, some notes would be necessary when it came time to set down his memoirs, to illustrate the great arc of ambition he had laid out for himself.

Take, for example, the three brief notations on the previous page. The first concerned a memorandum to the Prime Minister that he and Kell of Section Five had discussed, with suggestions for the deployment of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. Baldwin was, as always, hesitant about using the authority he had been given, but together, Kell and Carstairs had taken a firm hand, with satisfactory results. The second note concerned last week’s meeting with Steel-Maitland, the outcome of which was not yet certain. And the third, in the precise writing his secretary would have recognized with dismay as a sign of anger, the words read, in their code,
Why was I not informed of the American’s presence?

He had done nothing yet to follow that up, since after writing it he had found a memorandum concerning the man and his questions, buried deep in his in-box. He couldn’t decide yet if heads were to roll. However, he should have known about the American’s interests before the man walked into his office.

Three notes, two illustrating authority, the other a reminder of the hazards of distraction. Now, on the next page, he wrote six lines concerning his day: three of summary, three of future action. He capped his pen and slipped the small book away.

He did not yet write about the changes set in motion by the restoration of Grey to consideration, because those changes were still but a tantalizing glimmer in his mind. He must make time to think at leisure, during the upcoming days, to let his mind work out a stratagem.

It would make a gem of a chapter in his memoirs, beginning with that fatuous ninny, that gift from the heavens, Mr. Harris Stuyvesant, heaving his bulk through the office door and dropping it into Carstairs’ guest chair, genial as a dog and ignorant as a brick.

It took an experienced man to spot a gem in a muck. When the American had opened his mouth to bray the name of his quarry, not one man in fifty would have seen that the man Bunsen—himself not worth a fart in the wind—had connections with the most enormous potential. And not one man in a thousand would have known that the American was exactly what Captain Bennett Grey would respond to: Grey was a born leader of men, the role assigned him by his person and his class, and after all these years with no one but pigs and peasants for social intercourse, he had to be positively
lusting
for someone to command. Carstairs had seen it happen: nurses, patients, even doctors with an intractable problem would find themselves gravitating in the direction of Bennett Grey; in response, Grey’s spine would straighten and he would summon the reserves to provide the leadership they craved.

Wheels within wheels.

The machine had begun to turn a fraction faster on Friday night, when Director Hoover’s voice came down the tinny telephone receiver. He had met Hoover some years before, and recognized him as a kindred spirit, a man who knew how to get things done. Hoover had remembered Carstairs, too, and had been open concerning his problems with Agent Stuyvesant: how close to the edge Stuyvesant had been pushed by the near-death of his brother, how unreasonable the man had been after Hoover’s recent promotion. How frustrating Hoover found it to have his agent so comprehensively fixed on Bunsen as a villain.

On Saturday, while not knowing precisely where the path would take him, Carstairs had laid the scent for Stuyvesant to follow. And on Monday, when Stuyvesant appeared at Grey’s cottage door, doggy and innocent and cut off by an ocean from his own organization, the good captain had been unable to resist the call. Add the dual impulses of carrot and stick, and it was a wonder the captain hadn’t insisted on packing a bag and coming to London with them.

If Aldous Carstairs had been another man, he’d have pulled down the compartment’s shades and done a giddy dance: Finally,
finally
he’d found a tool to prise Grey out of Cornwall.

The rest of the plan would take shape, he had no doubt.

He rewarded himself with a few minutes over the newspaper, reading the amusing account of Captain Amundsen’s polar airship, then crushed out his cigar. He glanced at his reflection in the window once more, then stood up with a sigh. Perhaps he should go past Monica’s on his way home. That was one of the advantages of the place, there were always girls up and around, and after a day like he’d had, a man needed some of the tension taken out.

But first, it was time to get back to work on the thick-headed American.

He’d given the man plenty of time to drown his sulks.

Chapter Sixteen

D
OWN IN THE SEATING COMPARTMENT,
halfway through his second double whisky, the tension in Stuyvesant’s shoulders began to subside. Thank God for booze, he thought—although the ready availability in this country had taken a few days to get used to, and his impulse on seeing a bottle placed on the table was still to reach out and tuck it someplace discreet. The Eighteenth Amendment was the most half baked, harebrained, dunderhead of a law anyone could be asked to enforce, like legislating mother love or the number of sunny days in May. Invariably, it hadn’t diminished the amount of liquor available by one drop, just cut the quality. And of course shifted the profits firmly into the hands of the criminals. Didn’t lawmakers ever think about the laws a bunch of old women asked them to pass?

Once upon a time, his job had thrown him at enemies who mattered. When he started at the Bureau, he’d worked to bring down bank robbers; after Helen, he’d gone after political subversives. Now, however, the Bureau had this damned Volstead bee in its bonnet, so that every year, a bigger and bigger slice of its budget went to hunting rumrunners, and every year, fewer and fewer agents were assigned to political crimes.

Stuyvesant sometimes thought that when a bomb went off in the White House, there’d be nobody left who knew how to investigate it.

He should’ve quit in July, after Hoover refused to pour the entire Bureau into the fire-bomb and riot that left Tim sitting in the parlor, grinning amiably at the dog. Or in January, when his boss had brushed away Stuyvesant’s theory of a single terrorist who had set three bombs and slipped away each time, undetected.

Slipped away to England, if Stuyvesant’s hunch had any validity at all, where he had a life in the open, a future in front of him, and nothing to connect him to crimes across the Atlantic.

Or he had, until Harris Stuyvesant got fed up with the crap, cashed in half his savings account, and sailed from New York, leaving behind a director on the edge of firing him and a will leaving what he had in the bank to his sister-in-law, Doris.

But he had to stop this. Every time his mind dwelled on poor Tim, he ended up maudlin drunk, and that would never do, to be drunk while Aldous Carstairs was near.

Did Carstairs ever get drunk? He couldn’t picture it. Couldn’t picture the man with a wife at home or a dog at his heels, couldn’t even imagine him doing anything as mundane as sitting in front of the fire with a book.

He was a cold bastard, there was no doubt. No doubt, either, that he was superb at his job, whatever that job’s precise details might be: Stuyvesant sure wouldn’t want Carstairs on his tail.

Grey, strangely enough—damaged, remote, and vulnerable Captain Grey—had seemed equal to the task. Not in a direct confrontation, maybe—one look at Carstairs and he’d been crippled by headache. And his face had gone stark white at the end, when Carstairs had kicked his apparent defeat upside down and marked the day his own like a dog at a lamp-post. Still, he couldn’t help feeling that under that soft and easily wounded flesh, Grey was pure steel.

If there weren’t so much riding on this, he’d almost be tempted to stand back and watch the upcoming battle. Right now, he wouldn’t be able to say who he’d lay his money on, the Captain or the Major.

And what about this idea of Grey being able to see into people’s minds, anyway? Sitting beside him on that rock, it all made a lot of sense, but the farther he got from the man’s voice, the more dubious it seemed. Could it happen that a man’s protective gear could be stripped from him like that, and leave him able to see—what was the saying?—the skull beneath the skin?

Stuyvesant ran the day over in his mind, beginning with the act with the cigarette case. That hadn’t just been the act of a five-and-dime Madame Zola. Which meant that the rest of it might be true, as well.

There sure had to be
some
reason Carstairs was so hot for the man; his not-a-mind-reader abilities would explain that, no question.

He looked up, registering a presence at his side. The attendant was there, asking if he wished another drink. The other two men had finished theirs, and left him alone in the compartment.

“Yeah, I’ll have one more. One. And if I ask for anything after that, you’re not going to give it to me, agreed?” He peeled off a Treasury bill and held it out over the man’s little tray.

“Very good, sir,” the man said, and Stuyvesant let the bill drop.

He knew that if he had to deal with Carstairs any more tonight, he’d want a whole string of drinks, but with that hefty a tip, it would take some doing to get it out of the attendant. He nursed his glass, watching the occasional light dance past the rain-washed window.

After a while, Stuyvesant became aware of a small, grim trickle of amusement. How do you play a witness without playing him? How do you get a thing that you’re not permitted to want? Fifteen years of questioning wary men and women, and today was one for the books—how do you trick a man who can see your lies even when you hardly see them yourself? Answer: First you trick yourself. He couldn’t get Grey to help him by convincing him he should, so he distracted Grey by convincing himself that Grey shouldn’t help him.

God, he was good at his job, even when the person he was trying to outsmart was Harris Stuyvesant.

He wished he had Tim to share that joke with. Of all his big Catholic family, he and Tim had been the ones to talk the same language, and even thinking about the lad made his heart ache. Or he’d settle for Tony, whom he hadn’t seen since the Tangetti case. Or even Ethel, that singer he’d recruited back in ’22 to fill an enormous gap in the Bureau’s resources: the wives and girlfriends of criminals, who knew all kinds of stuff it was a pity to miss. With Ethel on the job, he didn’t have to. Ethel was sure great at listening, to criminals or Bureau agents.

But all he had at the moment was Aldous Carstairs, slippery-tongued, black-eyed, smooth-haired Major Aldous Carstairs who excelled at the kinds of interrogations that called for pain. He might be an ally, but he would never be a friend, and Stuyvesant would have given a lot just now for a friend.

Instead, speak of the devil, and up he pops: Aldous Carstairs himself was standing where the attendant had stood, and Stuyvesant instantly regretted the large tip that had ensured a lack of further alcohol.

“Mr. Stuyvesant, I thought I might ask the gentleman if he could arrange some sandwiches for us, since we had no time for dinner. Is that acceptable to you? And it appears this room will be private enough for a conversation.”

“I ate with Grey,” Stuyvesant told him, although if it had been anyone but Carstairs, he would have welcomed sandwiches.

It would be a long time until Paddington.

Chapter Seventeen

A
FTER
C
ARSTAIRS AND THE ATTENDANT HAD DISCUSSED,
in tiresome detail, the possibilities of sandwiches and wine, he dismissed the employee and came into the compartment, settling into the chair opposite Stuyvesant. The wine arrived swiftly. The attendant poured a glass for Carstairs, then hesitated until Stuyvesant nodded at him: Wine wasn’t booze, not really.

Carstairs took a swallow, gave it grudging approval, then said, “So tell me, Mr. Stuyvesant, what did you and Captain Grey talk about?”

“The War, mostly.” Stuyvesant had anticipated the question, and chosen his answer deliberately—any man with a history of interrogations was unlikely to have served on the front line.

As he’d expected, Carstairs veered around the touchy question of What did you do in the War, Daddy? “But he actually proposed coming out to see his sister, at Hurleigh House?”

“He’ll wire his sister tomorrow, to make sure she’s still going, but we left it that I’d meet him at Paddington Friday morning.”

“Will you need a motor?”

“I’ll take care of it, thanks.”

“I’m not altogether certain I shouldn’t be there.”

“If you’re there, he won’t get off the train.”

“You could be right. In that case, I shall have to ask that you report in regularly. That’s not an option, it’s going to be a necessity.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Now look,” Stuyvesant said, before the man could come up with one more interruption. “You said that after I’d met Grey, you’d give me his story.”

“Yes,” Carstairs said. “I did tell you that. But first, please, one more diversion: May I ask if while you were with Captain Grey, you saw any evidence of his, hmm, special talent?”

“Sure. He told me all about it.”

“He
did
?” Carstairs’ voice nearly squeaked in surprise, and he leaned back in his chair, not taking those dark eyes off Stuyvesant.

“Yes.”

Carstairs’ right hand dipped into his inner pocket and came out with the slim note-book, which he placed on the chair-side table, resting his hand on its cover. The naked fingertips described small circles on the leather, under their own impulse. “Mr. Stuy—”

“You’re telling me he doesn’t usually talk about it.”

“Towards the end of his time with us, it was difficult to persuade him even to admit to any unusual talents.”

“Well, he was perfectly willing to talk to me. And yeah, he told me he can pick up deceptions in the way people behave. Usually things to do with, what did he call it? ‘Dissonance,’ I think it was.”

The dark eyes across from him seemed about to swallow him up; the fingers tightened on the leather book. “Fascinating,” Carstairs breathed. “Tell me, Mr.—”

“No, it’s your turn. What happened to the poor bastard?”

Reluctantly, Carstairs withdrew his hungry gaze, let go of the note-book, and at long last, gave Stuyvesant the information he had promised three days before.

“Bennett Grey was born in Hampshire, in 1894, eldest of three children—his younger brother and sister are still alive, his drunk of a father broke his neck going over a fence in 1912. Eton and Balliol. Oxford, that is. He was twenty when War broke out, but he bowed to his mother’s wishes and stayed on until he’d got his degree in June, then enlisted. Sandhurst, then France. In May 1918, he was in the front line preparing for a raid when a shell—possibly German, although the report said it was one of ours—landed at his feet and went off.”

“Jesus. Why wasn’t he killed?”

“Some flaw in the shell or the terrain directed the blast just enough to one side that it flung him into the air instead of blowing him apart. Although he insisted later that he had, in fact, been blown to pieces.”

“I’d guess that being blown
up
and being blown
apart
would feel pretty much the same.”

“Granted, except that his words were, ‘I was taken apart and put back together again, in a moment.’ In any case, his injuries were severe, and it wasn’t until a year later that I began to hear rumors of a sanitarium patient with peculiar abilities.”

“‘Peculiar abilities’ being the ability to read a person like a book?”

Carstairs shot Stuyvesant a speculative look. “We’re venturing into the realm of official secrets here.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty good with those.”

“So I am told. I had a trans-Atlantic telephone conversation with your director after you left my office Friday evening,” he explained. “I was assured that, although you were often insubordinate to the brink of being fired, you could be trusted with the highest secrets in the land.”

“Nice to know he likes me.” Hoover was, to Stuyvesant’s mind, a self-righteous prig.

“In that regard, what I have to say is not to reach any ears lower than that of your Director himself.”

“Look, I don’t know what I’ll need to do with it, but if you want me to say I’m not going to blab about your official secrets to anyone below me on the totem-pole, then sure, I promise not to blab.” Carstairs’ lips twitched at the slang, as Stuyvesant had expected. Since coming here, it seemed that the more irritated he got, the more strongly he acted the Greater American Booby. But hell, why rein it in? The Brits were turning out to be more tight-assed about official secrets than anyone but the Germans. And we were supposed to be their bestest allies! “But now I’ve met the man, I don’t know what you think you’ve got in Grey. If you’re imagining he can see through walls or read minds or something, well, I got a bridge in New York I’d like you to invest in.”

“I’ve told you he’s not a bloody mind-reader,” Carstairs snapped, a brief slip of control that gave Stuyvesant considerable satisfaction. “However, I am saying that he knows things he shouldn’t be able to, and that he, hmm, sees into people in a remarkable way. Objects, as well—if one gives him a genuine antique and a very good fake, he will know without question which is right, even if the questioner does not. In the same way, if one has him listen in on an interrogation, he can put his finger on precisely those places where the prisoner lies.

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘a painful awareness,’ Mr. Stuyvesant?”

“Sure.”

“Think of it as that. Because of what happened to him, Captain Grey is painfully aware of the tiniest details around him, as if he lacks, hmm, a normal man’s skin. His code name in the project he was helping us with was Touchstone. For the metal, not the Shakespearean fool.”

Well, thought Stuyvesant, at least both men were agreed as to the nature of Grey’s “gift.” “I’m not much of a man for Shakespeare. Then again, I’m no metallurgist, either. What’s
touchstone
?”

“It’s a soft stone used to prove the purity of gold or silver. But the alchemists used quicksilver, or mercury, because when one touches gold to mercury, the liquid is drawn up to cover the solid, making it look like lead. The inestimable value of touchstone is in the way it reveals the true nature of gold. In the same way, Captain Grey is drawn to the true nature of the person or thing he encounters: He cannot help himself, he reacts and reveals the nature of the person. True or false? Gold or pyrite?”

“Sounds like a useful sort of skill to have around,” Stuyvesant commented. God knew, Grey had been getting truth out of Stuyvesant within minutes of their meeting. Still, he couldn’t put out of his mind a picture of Grey’s fingertips, digging into his shaggy blond skull.

“Indeed. Unfortunately, that’s where the reality of ‘a painful awareness’ comes in. He cannot separate out what we’d like him to judge from everything else. That inability made him, as I mentioned the other day, a bit…unstable.”

“Unstable how?” Grey would have heard the false ring of the question, Stuyvesant reflected; Carstairs did not.

“He began to respond with violence, and we had to let him go. My medical team thought it likely that, given a chance to live on his own, he might toughen up enough to try again. That was, as I told you, nearly five years ago. Frankly, I’d nearly forgotten about him.”

Stuyvesant kept his face straight—straight enough for Carstairs. Any man who heard the name Bunsen and came up with Grey had to be listening awfully hard. In fact, Stuyvesant suspected that if he said the name Richard Bunsen now—Bunsen being, after all, the supposed point of this whole expedition—Carstairs would look blank for just that one revealing instant.

But Carstairs was one step ahead of him. “So there you have Captain Grey’s story. Tell me again, Mr. Stuyvesant: What led you to believe that our countries have a, hmm, shared interest in this agitator?”

As the bottle went down, Stuyvesant gave him a longer version of the story he’d told Friday, although less detailed than what he’d said to Grey. The attendant finally reappeared, bearing a plate of dry-looking sandwiches. When he was out of earshot, Stuyvesant concluded, “It’s one thing to cope with home-grown radicals who make up their terrorism as they go. It’s another thing altogether when they send for an expert to show them how it’s done.”

“You suggest that tutor to be Richard Bunsen.”

“There’s a lot pointing to him.”

“And you would like him dealt with before your country finds itself threatened by a General Strike of its own.”

“Well, we’ve got a ways to go before we reach that point, but yeah, the bud is the place to nip these things.”

“Here, it has gone far past the bud stage. One might even say the flower threatens to bear fruit. Forgive me if this is traveling familiar ground, Mr. Stuyvesant, but you know this country had a little, hmm, flirtation with Communism two years ago?”

“You mean your Labour government? Sure, I read the papers—our papers, anyway. You went Socialist for most of 1924—Red anthems in Parliament, rumors that you were changing from the pound sterling to the ruble, doing away with the royal family and the institution of marriage, all the rest. It didn’t last long.”

“No, it did not. The British voter came to his senses.”

“So, what, you think maybe Labour’s going to be voted back in?” After a week of being lectured at by one bureaucrat after another, Stuyvesant thought he might vote Red himself, if they’d promise to trim some of the damned governmental deadwood.

“Actually,” Carstairs said, “they may not bother with an election this time.”

The American glanced sharply across at his companion. Carstairs’ face was deadly serious.

“What, you honestly believe this talk about an actual…
revolution
?” In
England
?” He laughed in disbelief, but Carstairs just held his eyes until Stuyvesant’s laughter faded, then he picked up a second sandwich.

“If the possibility surprises you, Mr. Stuyvesant, I can only say you have no idea of the state this country is in. Since the War ended, pressures have been mounting. Our government have been, to put it bluntly, preparing for war. A class war. On the one side are the ruling and middle classes, the backbone of Britain, who look to the eastern horizon and see the nightmare of Russia, slaughtering their aristocracy, handing over all property to the worker, swallowing up their neighbors, stretching out greedy fingers for Britain. On the other side stand the workers, who have received generous privileges and subsidies during the War years and insist that, despite the current tight economy, those privileges are rights. The economy is coming off its artificial wartime boost and settling down. We’re going back onto the gold standard, which will narrow the profits on exports. The bottom line is, we all must tighten our belts.”

This was a phrase Stuyvesant had heard dozens of times over the years, and frankly, although his job required him to back the owners, with him it only went so far. He knew from experience which belts got tightened in the end.

But if Carstairs wasn’t just talking through his hat about the threat of revolution, it was no wonder London was in such a state. He’d feel a little tetchy, himself.

“You’ve heard of the Zinoviev letter?” Carstairs mused.

“Wasn’t that—” Stuyvesant began, but the man seemed to be thinking aloud and did not wait for his response.

“Two years ago, in October 1924, Labour lost the vote of confidence and an election was called. It was clear to everyone that the fate of the country hung in the balance, that the Socialists absolutely had to be evicted from Downing Street. A second vote in their favor, or even in the favor of their partners, the Liberal Party, might well have tipped this country into the arms of the Bolsheviks. You may doubt it, but those in Britain who mattered knew that it could happen, that in the blink of an eye, the entire continent of Europe would turn Bolshevist.

“A day or two after the vote of no-confidence, a letter arrived at the Foreign Office, intercepted by a government agency. It had come from Grigori Zinoviev. You know the name?”

“Zinoviev is president of the International Communist Party.” He was remembering this letter now.

“Precisely. The letter amounted to a set of instructions from Moscow, with Zinoviev urging his British comrades to push for the proposed treaty with Russia—a treaty that, among other gestures of support, would include a substantial ‘loan’ to the new Bolshevist state. The letter went on to address the possibility of armed insurrection. It spoke for the establishment of Communist cells among British working men—particularly munitions workers—and among British troops, especially those stationed near cities. The words
class war
figured prominently in the letter, standing against the military preparations of the ‘bourgeoisie.’ Two weeks after it was received, four days before the general election, this letter appeared in the
Daily Mail.
”

The U.S. of A. doesn’t have the corner on the dirty politics market, Stuyvesant thought. The current Teapot Dome scandal was only money, after all, not an entire country’s political fate.

“Which led the ‘bourgeoisie’ to vote Labour out. By a landslide, as I recall.”

Carstairs nodded. “The Tories would have won in any case, but with the looming threat of a Communist takeover, the vote was overwhelming. The proposed treaties with Russia were abandoned, loans were canceled, and the British government could return to the business of putting the country together.”