World in Flames

“Nothing. All smiles. Didn’t seem surprised at all. Very cool.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t know?”

Robert looked across at Rosemary. It was the kind of glance she used to give a student when he didn’t know what came after Hamlet’s “To be or…”

“All right then,” she conceded. “So she would have to know — if she’s with him all the time. I mean if she is his wife? Was she wearing a ring?”

“What — oh, I don’t know. Never noticed.”

“Men never do.”

“Ring wouldn’t prove anything. Not these days-” He saw the hood of the Prices’ Honda dip toward the deck as it pulled up behind them. “Keep the doors locked,” he told Rosemary. “I won’t be—”

“Stay here? Locked in?” she said, adopting a cockney accent to convey the apprehension an upper-middle- class upbringing wanted to subdue. “Not ruddy likely. I’m coming with you.” As Robert walked around to the left side of the car and opened her door, the wind buffeting his tweed jacket, he felt the bulk of the gun against his chest. If there was any comfort in it, it was also a reminder that he hadn’t practiced with the service-issued sidearm for at least three years — at Norfolk, Virginia, when he’d first taken command of Roosevelt. Opening her door, he gave her his hand and flashed a honeymoon smile. “Get Mrs. Price — if that’s who she is— off to one side. Get her talking. I want to jaw with her old man.”

“Yes,” Rosemary said hesitantly. “All right. You know—”

“He was very defensive about not having joined up. When old McRae, remember, challenged him about being a lecturer at LSE.”

“Hello!” Mrs. Price called out jovially. “A bit nippy, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Rosemary. “Still, expect it won’t do us any harm.”

“Do us the world of good, I should think,” said Mrs. Price. “Fresh air. James smokes a pipe.”

They were drawing level with a yellow school bus from some girls’ school, a few giggling as Robert walked by, one of them calling out, “I say there, tall, dark, and—” There was more laughing.

Robert nodded at Mrs. Price, but kept walking toward her husband at the stern, addressing him with a questioning air. “I’ve never seen snow like that before. Have you?”

“Oh—” said Price, looking up, “the pink stuff? Yes — it’s quite common up here.” Both men were close to the rail, spray catching their face, Robert, despite his preoccupation about the Prices, automatically wondering what the fresh-to-salt-water ratio was in the loch. For a sub diving, it would be critical information, altering the density and therefore the sub’s buoyancy. If you didn’t react fast enough to a sudden change, you’d be dead.

“You’re familiar with these parts then?” he said to Price while leaning eagerly into the wind against the rail without looking at Price but remembering that at the bed-and-breakfast place, Price had said it was his first trip to Scotland.

“Ah — yes,” Price conceded, adding hastily, “well, you know — I’ve read a lot about Scotland. Before I came.”

Robert said nothing for a second or two, his gaze fixed on the fog cascading down the bank they had just left, encircling them. “I heard an interesting story the other day.”

“Oh — yes?” said Price politely.

Brentwood was still watching the shore. “Yeah. It was about this guy — kept following a sergeant and his wife. They were taking a trip through the Sierras — back in California. Wherever they went, he went. Well, after a couple of days, this sergeant pulled the guy over and told him that if he didn’t bug off, he’d get his head blown off.”

There was a long silence, and all Brentwood could hear was the ferry’s wake boiling furiously into the calm loch.

“Rather silly of the sergeant,” said Price. “I mean, to threaten people like that. I would have thought all he needed to do was call up the local constabulary. You know, the police. Register a complaint.”

Robert turned to look at Price, noticing the man’s hairline was receding — something he hadn’t been aware of at the McRaes’. There Price had looked well groomed, hair combed down over the front in a stylishly casual forelock. He wondered how much else he hadn’t noticed about Price.

“Funny you mentioned that,” said Brentwood, “about calling the police. The sergeant did look for a phone. It was high in the mountains, you see. Not many people around. When he did find one, it had been trashed. Line cut.”

Price shook his head, tut-tutting. “Vandals everywhere.”

The change in Price’s tone from his off-balance surprise in the car to his present air of confidence told Brentwood his bluff wasn’t working. He should have asked the Englishman point-blank. Instead he’d given the man time to think, regain his balance.

“Anyway,” continued Price, “what do you think the police could have done — to help the sergeant? The sergeant could have been delusional.”

“I don’t think he was,” said Brentwood, his eyes fixing Price.

“Look, old chap,” said Price. “You’re making me a bit nervous with that bulge in your jacket. I’ve made a bit of a cock-up with all this, but — well, I suppose this won’t assuage you very much, but I’m not who you think I am. Nor is Joan.”

Robert Brentwood said nothing, waiting.

“Point is,” continued Price, pushing the disobedient lock of hair back, “Special Branch didn’t see much point in unduly alarming you — certainly not on your honeymoon. And especially given what you sub chaps’ve done for us re the convoys. We’re all terribly grateful.”

Brentwood let the flattery go by him like the spray. “What Special Branch?”

“Scotland Yard. Joan and I have been tailing you ever since you left Surrey. Your wedding.”

“What the hell—”

“Peter Zeldman,” Price cut in, “your executive officer, was best man. Georgina Spence — your wife’s sister — was bridesmaid. Young William Spence was killed in the Atlantic— looked after by Lana Brentwood — your sister. It’s through her looking after him that you met Rosemary, correct? I mean, you took young Spence’s personal effects to his parents during one of your shore leaves from the Roosevelt. How am I doing?”

“Anyone could have learned all that stuff,” said Brentwood, “reading a paper down in Surrey.”

“Do be reasonable, old sport!” said Price, flashing a Special Branch card.

“You’ve got American Express, too, and you’re a blood donor. Right?” Robert challenged him. “Anyone can get cards printed up, sport! Many as they like.”

Price slipped the card away, glanced behind them, squinting in the sun-infused fog, seeing Rosemary and Joan Price ambling from the ferry’s bow back toward the cars. Another few minutes and the ferry’d be across the loch. “Look,” said Price, “I don’t want to be indelicate, old boy, but d’you know your sister Lana was transferred to the Aleutians?”

“Sure I know,” responded Robert Brentwood. “She wrote me. Her ex is a string-puller. Congressmen in his pocket. What’s indelicate about that?”

“I mean the real reason she was transferred?”

Robert Brentwood shrugged. “I told you La Roche is the original sleaze-ball. Besides, Aleutians is a combat zone.” He paused, looking hard at Price. “The Russians are trying to get through the back door. There’s a navy hospital at Dutch Harbor. So?”

“Well, I’m not saying La Roche had nothing to do with it, but he ‘lucked out,’ as you Americans put it. The navy already had a good reason to banish her up there.” He paused, still looking at the far shore. “Your sister was transferred to the Aleutian theater, old boy, because her care of young William Spence, shall we say, exceeded the requirements of duty.” He paused to let it sink in. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Captain, she performed certain — shall we say—’favors.’ “

“What the hell d’you mean?”

“I think you Americans call it a blow job.”

Rosemary heard a crack — Price’s watch smashing against the ferry’s bulkhead as Robert Brentwood felled him with one blow. “You son of a bitch!” Price stayed down, only daring to raise himself slightly on one arm, the other held up in submission.