Descendant

Even today, I find it hard to believe that I managed to manhandle Duca across the deck, and over to the rail. I can’t actually remember doing it. I do remember falling, though, and hitting the water over a hundred feet below. It was like hitting a cold concrete sidewalk.

Both of us went under, but at least Duca released its grip. I went down and down, and I thought that I would never come up again. But I managed to kick my legs and paddle with my hands, and at last I began to rise to the surface. When I finally broke out into the daylight, I found that there were crowds of people staring down at me, and it was raining red-and-white lifebelts.

Two young sailors stripped off their sweaters and dived into the water to help me. I circled around and around, looking desperately for any sign of Duca.

“There was another man!” I panted, as the sailors swam up to me.

One of them dived under the water and disappeared for what seemed like five minutes. When he reappeared, he shook his head and shouted out, “Can’t see anyone, mate! Think we’ve lost him!”

The sailors swam with me to the dockside. Between them they half-carried me up a ladder, and when I reached the top there were willing hands everywhere, all of them outstretched to help me. I was wrapped warmly in a blanket and a wheelchair was brought from the office so that I could sit down. I was shaking uncontrollably with shock.

“How are you feeling, mate?” said an elderly man in a cloth cap, leaning over me with a worried frown. He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of Woodbine cigarettes. “Bet you could do with a fag.”

For some reason, I couldn’t stop myself from bursting into tears.

Days of Silence

I was taken by ambulance to East Grinstead, in Sussex, to the Archibald McIndoe Burns Unit, which had cared for so many young Spitfire pilots during World War Two. I spent six weeks there, recovering from my injuries, while August turned to September, and the sweltering heat of the summer became a memory.

My burns were mostly first-degree, although I needed a skin graft on the left side of my neck and two fingers on my left hand were permanently crooked. I broke my collarbone, too, when I hit the water, and fractured three ribs.

It was a peaceful, almost dreamlike time. Out of my window I could see a red-tiled rooftop and the top of a large horse chestnut tree, with bright green conkers beginning to ripen on it. The sky seemed to be the same pale blue every day, as if it were a child’s painting, rather than a real sky.

I had plenty of visitors, of course. Charles Frith came to see me two days after I was admitted, along with George Goodhew and a bespectacled woman from the Home Office, who said nothing at all but took pages of notes in Pitman’s shorthand.

Charles Frith brought me a large box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray chocolates, which he immediately opened and proceeded to eat.

“Hope you don’t like coffee creams,” he said. “They’re my favorite.”

“No sign of Duca, I suppose?” I asked him.

Charles Frith picked out another chocolate and shook his head.

“We’ve had Royal Navy divers searching the whole area,” said George. “They’ve even been diving as far away as Pilsey Island, where they found Commander Crabb.”

“Thanks to your efforts, Captain,” Charles Frith added, “I think we can safely say that Mr. Dorin Duca has had his chips. Not only that, we’ve tracked down three of your dead Screechers and given them polio jabs, too. Two in London and one in Birmingham.”

“Heads removed, bodies buried in consecrated ground?”

Charles Frith put his fingertip to his lips. “The Health Minister is going to announce to the press tomorrow that the Korean Flu epidemic has been successfully contained.”

“Isn’t that kind of premature? We still don’t know how many strigoi mortii there might be.”

“True. But when we do find them, we know how to deal with them, don’t we, thanks to you.” He stood up. “By the way, the police dug up the back garden at the Laurels. They found poor old Dr. Watkins, and his receptionist, and they found Professor Braithwaite, too, and his two assistants from the Royal Aircraft Establishment. All of them gutted like herring.”

He put another chocolate into his mouth, but promptly spat it into my wastebasket. “Ye gods! Pah! Turkish delight!”

On the afternoon of my third day in hospital, I phoned Jill. Her father answered, and he didn’t sound at all pleased to hear from me.

“Jill’s not here, Captain.”

“Is she OK?”

“I said, she’s not here.”

“Well, can you ask her to call me, please? I’d really like to talk to her.”

“I’m sorry, old man, but I think you’ve already caused us enough trouble, don’t you?”

He hung up. For a moment, I thought of calling back, but then I hung up, too.

I telephoned Louise every day, however, and on the third week she flew over from New York to see me. I was out in the hospital garden by then, in a wheelchair, with a thick plaid blanket wrapped around me. She came across the lawn carrying a large bunch of flowers and a shopping bag full of books.

Her hair was cut short and pixie-feathery, so that she looked even more like Audrey Hepburn than ever. She was wearing a smart lemon-yellow suit with white piping around it. She smelled of Chanel No. 5.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “You can’t kiss me yet. Risk of infection.”

She sat down on the green-painted bench next to me. “My God, Jim. Your poor face.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not so bad as it looks. My left hand got the worst of it.”

“Jean and Harold send you their best. So does Mo. When do you think you’ll be able to come home?”

“Soon as the doctors give me the all-clear. Three or four weeks, not much longer.”

“I wish you could tell me what happened.”

I laid my bandaged right hand on her knee. “I think it’s better if you don’t know. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

“You won’t have to do this again, though?”

“No. But it’s possible that I’m still at risk.”

She raised one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “I don’t understand. What kind of a risk?”

“Well. the people I was brought over here to deal with. they’re not very good at forgiving and forgetting. I think we’ve managed to catch up with most of them, but there’s always a chance that one or two of them might have slipped through the net.”

“Meaning what? That they’re going to come after you?”

“Something like that.”

“Even in the States?”

“They don’t give up easy, I’m afraid.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Move, I’m afraid. Go live someplace else, under a different name.”

“Move? Are you serious? Where? I can’t move. I have all my friends in New Milford. My work. Besides, I don’t want to move. And I happen to like the name Falcon.”

“Sweetheart. these people are very, very dangerous.”

“So why did you agree to get mixed up in this at all? Didn’t you spare one single thought for me?”

“I didn’t have any choice. I’m sorry.”

“Oh — you’re sorry? That makes it all right, then.”

Louise stayed all afternoon but I guess I already knew that our marriage had been torpedoed below the waterline. Louise lived for her social life — her dinner parties and her charity drives and her craft classes. She would never be able to tolerate a solitary existence in a strange city, under an assumed name, jumping every time the