The Deadly Embrace (24 page)

“The Russian women love combat,” one of them said with open admiration in his voice. “I saw a report in Washington last week that described how they fought right alongside the men at Stalingrad … and thousands of them were killed, too.”

The brigadier removed a cigar from his mouth, and turned his gaze from the young woman back to the others.

“I don’t want to pull rank,” he said sternly, “but don’t underestimate the American WAC, gentlemen.”

“I didn’t mean to...” began the colonel apologetically.

“You know what a WAC is, don’t you, Colonel?” the general demanded, his face seemingly clouded with anger.

The colonel looked as if he wished he could crawl under the table.

“The Women’s Army Corps, General Gramm?” he answered tentatively.

The general nodded portentously before picking up his martini and finishing it in one swallow.

“The American WAC is a double-breasted GI,” he said, smiling with intimate jocularity. “Except she’s got a built-in foxhole.”

When he began to laugh uproariously at the joke, his subordinates joined in with obsequious enthusiasm.

“I’ve got to take a piss,” said the general, standing up. “This party is just starting, am I right?”

“Yes, sir,” echoed the other two officers.

The brigadier pretended to stumble into the young woman at the adjacent table before putting his hands on her shoulders.

“Excuse me, honey,” he said, grinning at her, then heading across the room to the staircase that led to the men’s room. He disappeared down the stairs.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” said Taggart.

“Don’t leave me to this fate for very long,” warned Helen Bellayne.

Taggart stood up from the table, walked across the crowded lounge, and headed down the same staircase.

There was only one person in the lavatory aside from the general: an elderly Sikh attendant with a white linen turban on his head and a freshly starched white jacket, who stood officiously next to a stack of white hand towels near the lavatory sinks. As Taggart came up to him, he picked up a towel and offered it. Taggart put a one-pound note in his tip jar and motioned him out the door. Grinning, he went.

Taggart walked over to the urinal next to the general’s and unzipped his pants. General Gramm glanced over at him for a moment before returning his eyes to the wall in front of him. He had both hands at his crotch. The lit cigar was in his mouth.

Leaning closer, Taggart began staring at him, his face just a few inches away. The general felt his gaze and glared back.

“You got a problem, buddy?” he demanded, removing the cigar from his mouth with his left hand.

“I provide a service to women who like to be beaten up,” said Taggart. “You know … masochists. We’re looking for some new male recruits.”

“Are you nuts or something?” said General Gramm, before putting the cigar back in his mouth and zipping up his pants.

“With something that small, I can see why you’d try to hide it.”

“What did you say?”

Taggart grinned and said, “You heard me.”

Gramm looked at the tailored Saville Row suit and then back at Taggart’s face.

“Are you an American?” he asked.

Taggart nodded.

“Do you know who I am?” said Gramm.

“Yeah, I know what you are.”

“You’ve got a wise mouth, fella,” said Gramm, stepping away. “Good thing I’m not looking for a fight.”

Taggart swung around from his urinal and drenched the general’s legs with urine.

“You son of a bitch,” Gramm bellowed, throwing a wild punch at the side of Taggart’s jaw.

Ducking it, Taggart said, “You probably do better punching women.”

As Gramm swung with his other hand, Taggart drove his fist into the bigger man’s mouth, feeling the sharp, familiar pain in his knuckles as the man’s front teeth caved in behind the lit cigar. Gramm dropped to the floor, his arms and legs splayed out to either side.

Still consumed by rage, Taggart kicked him in the crotch. General Gramm moaned once before he slowly rolled over to one side and clutched his genitals.

“Lloyd Barnes told me to tell you he’s doing fine,” said Taggart. “He’ll look you up personally when he gets back to the States.”

Upstairs, it was necessary to push his way through a large circle of men who were surrounding their little table.

“May we go now?” Helen asked after he worked his way into sight. “I feel as if I’m at the zoo.”

“Yeah, let’s go home,” said Taggart.

CHAPTER 22

A
s she sat nervously waiting for Charlie to return to the office, Liza began to wish that she had never heard of Rawcliff or the fabled country weekend. The whole idea suddenly seemed idiotic. Liza Marantz meets the social elite of the British realm. She had already met the military elite, and the connection had not been pleasant. All she wanted to do was go back to her apartment to read the last few chapters of
Pride and Prejudice.

At the heart of the matter was the fact that she had nothing remotely suitable to wear when she met Nicholas again. All her civilian clothing was lying inside a sunken troop transport at the bottom of the North Atlantic. When she had started packing for the weekend, it struck her that aside from one light summer dress she had inherited from a WAC who was returning to the States, there was nothing to wear but her drab uniforms.

At lunch, Liza had run out to a clothing store on Piccadilly, only to discover for the first time how ridiculously expensive women’s clothes were in the London shops. The shoes in the display window started at eighteen pounds.

“I’m afraid it’s the war,” said the young saleslady behind the counter with a trace of bitterness in her voice. “The only ones who can afford to buy anything are you Yanks.”

Liza returned to the office with a pair of brown twill slacks and a white cotton blouse. The realm’s elite were not likely to be impressed, she thought, and neither would Lord Nicholas Ainsley.

It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and she was beginning to hope that Charlie would be detained long enough in the lair for them to miss the train. But five minutes later, he came charging into the office dragging his battered suitcase. After stuffing some papers into his briefcase, he turned to face her.

“Ready, my girl?” he asked with a grin. “I wasn’t able to finish what I needed to do, but we’re bloody well going anyway.”

“Wonderful,” said Liza without enthusiasm as he shepherded her out the door.

“I hope you brought something to wear besides that tedious uniform,” he added as they stepped out onto the street.

“I have a ball gown and glass slippers in the bag,” she said tartly.

“Smashing,” he said. “I’m sure it’s a corker.”

Once he had flagged down a taxi on Pall Mall, he exhorted the driver to get them to Waterloo Station. “Flog those horses, my good man,” he barked jovially.

Traffic came to a stop before they were halfway across Westminster Bridge. It took them more than ten minutes to reach the other side.

“Blast,” Charlie growled, “we’re going to miss the bloody train at this rate.”

The side streets around the massive train station were clogged with vehicles of every shape and size. With two blocks still to go, Charlie paid off the driver, and they raced forward on foot. At the entrance to Waterloo, travelers were being funneled into one long line for a random identity check. It snaked around the building for almost two hundred feet.

“This way,” Charlie called out to her as she began trudging toward the back of the line.

He had already disappeared off to the other side of the entrance façade. When she followed him around the corner, he was standing at a small white-painted door, pounding on it with his fist. It swung open to reveal a frowning little man wearing the uniform of the British Railway Service. He immediately began motioning for Charlie to return to the main entrance. Reaching into his pocket, Charlie held up his buff invitation card with the Ainsley crest. It was like holding up a cross to a movie vampire.

The man shrank back from the doorway and waved them through before quickly slamming the door shut behind them. Inside the station, there was barely controlled pandemonium under the towering glass roof. Fish-and-chip vendors screamed their wares over the sound of shrieking train whistles as angry porters elbowed their way through the jostling crowds. But Charlie seemed to know exactly where he was going.

Long grimy trains stood waiting on almost every track. With Charlie still leading the way, they arrived at a large printed sign that read “Eastbourne-Dover.” Another railway official was standing guard at the platform gate. Without slowing down, Charlie held up their invitations again and charged straight through.

The first rail carriage they came to was painted a shiny bird’s-egg blue. The plate glass windows were trimmed in gold. An arched canvas canopy stood directly in front of the newly polished coach door. Two men in black swallowtail coats were standing next to it on the platform.

The coach door behind them was open, and on its polished façade Liza saw the familiar crest of a roaring lion. Surrounding the crest was a huge “A,” also painted in gold. One of the men in swallowtail coats observed Charlie coming down the platform, and smiled warmly.

“Welcome back, Captain Wainwright,” he said.

“Thank you, Robert,” replied Charlie as the second man took his suitcase. “And this is Lieutenant Elizabeth Marantz,” he added.

The porter’s eyes quickly scanned his list.

“Yes, of course. Please come aboard, Lieutenant,” he said as the second porter took her bag.

“The Ainsley family owns its own train?” she asked breathlessly as they stepped up into the elegant teak-trimmed passageway.

Charlie grinned and said, “Just these first two carriages. They are attached to the Eastbound Express to Dover and will be disengaged at a rail siding when we arrive at Sussex Downs.”

The car was decorated like the parlor of a fine London men’s club, with white lace curtains, dark teak paneling, and comfortable tapestry-covered furniture. At least fifty people were already crowded inside the car.

Liza was surprised to discover that very few of them were in military uniform. Recognizing Admiral Thomas Jellico in an oatmeal-tweed sporting rig, she realized that many had already changed into civilian clothing.

The second section of the carriage was arranged for formal dining, with a handsome Regency table and twelve matching chairs. The tabletop was anchored in the middle by a floral arrangement of long-stemmed roses. Surrounding the fresh-cut flowers were filigreed silver trays and bowls offering crab cocktail, eggs en rissoles, foie gras, marinated trout, roast guinea fowl, mushroom tartlets, and a wide selection of rolls and pastries.

A bar had been set up in the corner, and the people surrounding it were already sipping champagne and whiskey. Charlie headed straight for the bartender.

“Hello, Leftenant,” came a familiar voice from off to the side.

Liza turned to see Helen Bellayne standing near the window, holding a cup of tea in her right hand. She was wearing an exquisite organdy dress that looked like it might have been fashioned during the reign of Queen Victoria.

“Mrs. Bellayne,” she said. “What a lovely dress.”

“It was my grandmother’s,” she said. “Sam Taggart sends his regards.”

“Have you seen him recently?” asked Liza with genuine surprise.

“Yes,” she said. “We have become good friends.”

“Really,” said Liza neutrally.

Helen Bellayne laughed warmly and said, “Sam thought you wouldn’t believe me. I’m to give you this.”

She handed Liza a sealed envelope. Inside was a short note in his familiar choppy scrawl.

It read, “Liza—You can trust her. Sam.”

“I only wish he was joining us for the weekend,” said Helen.

“Yes, I’m sure he would be very popular,” said Liza, who was watching Admiral Jellico’s eyes as they lingered on her with barely disguised contempt.

A train whistle shrieked loudly and the carriage jolted forward, stopped short for a moment, and then rolled forward again. Charlie came from the bar with two cocktails in his hand. He presented her with one.

“Let the weekend festivities begin,” he said, downing half his scotch-and-soda in two swallows.

Fifteen minutes later, the eastbound express train cleared central London and was heading through the outer rim of the city. Charlie was on his second cocktail and ensconced on a Victorian sofa chatting with a girl in a purple silk dress that was slit up to her thigh. Liza stood near one of the windows, watching the unfolding spectacle inside the carriage.

“Fade me again,” called out a young flyer as he loudly demanded a drink at the bar.

“Now, there’s a superb dish,” Liza heard someone say with an American accent. She assumed that the person was talking about one of the delicacies on the Regency dining table.

Glancing up, she saw an American navy captain staring back at her. Just beyond his shoulder, she recognized General Kilgore, who was in a heated conversation with one of his British counterparts. Like so many of the others, he was dressed in informal sporting clothes.

Turning away, Liza got a glimpse of the English countryside through the plate-glass window, and she was immediately disappointed. Perhaps it was the pall of the dark, leaden sky, but the homes within view of the train looked nothing like the countryside in
Mrs. Miniver.
They were sadly dilapidated and badly in need of paint and repair. The small gardens in front of them were weed-strewn and untended.

“That’s the cost of having our young men spread far and wide across the globe,” said Helen Bellayne, as if reading her mind. “They will be coming home to a very different place from the one they left.”

“I hope that they will be coming home soon,” said Liza.

“Yes,” agreed Helen Bellayne. “Well, the die will shortly be cast, won’t it?”

As Liza nodded, the train began to slow down again, finally jolting to a complete stop. A few minutes later, a troop train came hurtling past from the opposite direction. It seemed to go on forever, one carriage after another crammed with soldiers, then freight cars loaded with tanks, trucks, and artillery pieces.