The Deadly Embrace (5 page)

Sam Taggart’s new billet near the Strand had barely escaped another direct hit, and he was now down to wearing his rumpled uniform coat over a pair of borrowed oatmeal-tweed pants. He was still soaking his badly sprained ankle in Epsom salts when a staff corporal came in to say that General Manigault had called from upstairs and wanted to see him right away.

Sam put on his socks and shoes, and hobbled painfully down the corridor and up the two flights of stairs to the general’s suite. As he came through the outer office, Staff Sergeant Grossman cupped his hand over the telephone next to his ear and whispered, “He’s madder ’n hell, Major Taggart.”

“He’s always madder than hell,” Sam replied, knocking on the interior door.

The general was sitting ramrod-straight in a leather armchair in front of the polished-enamel coal stove, gazing into the fire. His shoes were resting on the grate, and steam was rising from the wet cuffs of his starched khaki pants. He had on the short uniform coat that American newspapers were already referring to as the Eisenhower jacket. After Ike had started wearing it, most of the staff officers at SHAEF had run out to their tailors to have one made.

“When does this foul weather ever end?” the general demanded, his voice husky from chain-smoking Cuban cigars. He glared up at Sam as if he were personally responsible for it. “If it isn’t raining, it’s threatening rain. Dull gray, pale gray, charcoal gray—that’s the entire weather pattern in this fucked-up country.”

Ernest Manigault was fifty-four years old, and from Los Angeles, California. A West Pointer, he had commanded a division that got chewed up at Kasserine Pass, in North Africa, before being relegated to the post of security commander for Overlord.

That was when he had sent for Sam Taggart. Five years earlier, Taggart, then still a detective lieutenant on the New York City homicide squad, had helped him out of a predicament that could have wrecked his military career when he was stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. At the time, Manigault thought that Detective Taggart had performed a miracle. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“You look like shit, Sam,” he said. “That so-called uniform is a disgrace.”

“My billet took another near hit last night,” said Taggart, sitting down in one of the armchairs clustered around the stove.

“That’s your excuse after every raid,” the general retorted, his thick, bushy eyebrows knitted together. “You’re always a mess. In fact, you have the worst military bearing of any officer it has ever been my misfortune to command.”

“I’m not happy with it either,” said Taggart.

“You shouldn’t even be an officer in this army.”

“No,” he agreed.

“The only reason I keep you on my staff is that you’re good at what you do,” Manigault said, running blunt fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair.

“Issuing parking permits and censoring mail?” asked Taggart.

“That was Colonel Baird’s doing. You know he can’t stand you. As soon as I found out, I … Look—I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

Kicking the bumper of the stove, he stood up and stretched himself to his full height of five feet seven. He grabbed a scuttle and poured a few more chunks of coal into the stove.

“Did we know the big raid was coming last night?” Taggart asked.

Manigault nodded. “The ULTRA intercepts told us. Basically, it was another Coventry problem. We can’t allow the Germans to know we’ve broken their codes. Next to Overlord, ULTRA is the most important secret we have to protect over here.”

Back in November 1940, Churchill had learned through his code-breakers that the Luftwaffe intended to fire bomb the city of Coventry, but ordered that no warning be given for fear that the Germans would suspect that the Allies had broken their most secret transmission codes. The English code-breakers had nicknamed the intelligence breakthrough ULTRA, for ultrasecret. Hundreds of civilians died in the Coventry attack to preserve it.

“A lot of people paid the price for ULTRA again last night.”

General Manigault walked over to his inlaid Regency desk and held up one of the morning newspapers. A banner headline screamed

“BABY BLITZ CONTINUES.”

“They’ve been warned to take every precaution.”

“I’m sure that will be a comfort to those who died,” said Sam, dragging on his cigarette.

“We have a serious problem,” the general said, coming back to the chair and dropping heavily into it. “The Metropolitan Police have found a corpse in one of the buildings in Cromwell Park.”

He pointed toward the window that faced onto Saint James Square. From where he was sitting, Sam could see the tops of mature elm trees, denuded of leaves and black with rain. Beyond the trees were the slate roofs of several large buildings.

“At this moment there are probably a thousand corpses lying in buildings across this city,” he said.

“Yeah, but this one is different.”

Taggart waited for him to continue.

“She worked for us,” Manigault said. “Based on the identification they found, it appears to be Lieutenant Jocelyn Dunbar.”

“The young blonde Wren officer?”

“Yes.”

“Admiral Jellico’s…?”

“Yes,” he interrupted, rubbing his forehead. “It looks like she might have committed suicide…. At least that’s what the British seem to think. One way or another, we need to know the truth. Although she wasn’t officially cleared for ULTRA or Overlord, she may have been in possession of… sensitive information.”

“Through Admiral Jellico.”

He nodded.

“In bed.”

He nodded again. Taggart had already reported the relationship to Manigault, after monitoring private communications between the two over the previous months.

“Why me?”

“You’re the best criminal investigator I have around here. At least you used to be, Sam. God, I never thought it was humanly possible for anyone to unravel that mess I was in at Fort Hamilton.”

“You were innocent,” he said. “I just proved it.”

“Yeah … well … you saved my life. I hope that counts for something.”

Taggart didn’t respond. He could now hear the low rumble of powerful aircraft engines coming from the west. As it grew progressively louder, Manigault stood up and walked to the window. Sam followed him. Although they couldn’t see anything through the dense gray cloud cover, Manigault obviously knew what it was.

“The Krauts won’t like today’s entertainment program,” he said with a feral grin. “That’s more than a thousand Fortresses and Liberators on their way to Adolf’s favorite city.”

“Since when is his favorite city one of our military targets?” asked Taggart.

“An eye for an eye,” said the general as he headed back to the fire.

“So … about Lieutenant Dunbar,” said Sam, sitting down again. “If you haven’t read the reports, there appears to be a murderer running amok in the city who has killed at least three young women in recent weeks.”

“To my knowledge, none of them worked for us. Anyway, I want you to find out what happened to her. Let me know as soon as you do.”

“I will.”

“There’s a police inspector named Drummond waiting for you. I asked that his people not touch anything until you get there. My car is waiting outside.”

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” said Taggart, heading out of the office.

On his way down the stairs, he remembered that Liza Marantz worked in the same office that Jocelyn Dunbar had. Favoring his bad ankle, Taggart hobbled down to the subbasement. He found her standing in the corridor outside her office, ordering a cup of tea from the trolley women.

“I need you,” he said, as J.P. came out of the doorway to the office, looked up, and smiled at him.

“Good morning, Major Taggart,” she said, swiveling past in a wave of Chanel.

Without a word, Liza went back into her office to grab her coat and purse. Rain was falling hard again when they got outside. General Manigault’s Humber was waiting for them at the curb. They rode across the Strand and past a long block of impressive public buildings, until they reached another small park surrounded by large mansion houses.

Taggart had already decided not to tell her the name of the victim. There was always the possibility that there had been a mix-up. If it was Joss Dunbar, he wanted to see how she reacted to the situation.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking out at the fallow gardens in the center of the square.

“To see a dead body,” he replied.

The driver stopped in front of a four-story white brick mansion enclosed by an eight-foot-high gold-painted iron picket fence. A British soldier brandishing a Sten machine gun waved them through the open gate.

The majestic edifice had big marble columns in front of it. An imposing second-story balcony with matching marble railings projected out over the circular driveway. The buildings on both sides had received direct bomb hits in recent raids, reducing them to thirty-foot-high mountains of smoldering rubble.

Taggart saw that, although most of the mansion’s side windows were shattered, it was otherwise unscathed, as if fate were preserving it for some higher purpose. Waiting under the marble balcony, out of the rain, was a gaunt white-haired man in a rain-slicked rubber overcoat. He stepped forward as Sam and Liza walked toward him.

“Major Taggart?” he said uncertainly, staring at Sam’s uniform coat and tweed pants with his tired brown eyes.

“That’s right,” said Taggart. “This is Lieutenant Marantz.”

“I’m Inspector Drummond, Scotland Yard.”

Taggart took in the inspector’s gin-blossomed cheeks and bulbous red nose. Stepping forward to shake hands, he sniffed the scent of licorice breath mints. They didn’t mask the powerful odor of gin.

Turning back to the mansion house, Drummond led them toward the shelter of the marble balcony. The January air had all the sharp bite of midwinter, and Liza shivered involuntarily from the vicious punch of the wind.

“Bit parky this morning,” said Drummond as he stopped under the exterior balcony. The trembling of his hands had nothing to do with the cold, thought Sam, watching the inspector remove a pack of Camels from his coat pocket and extend it toward them.

“Fag?” he said, looking at Liza.

She shook her head. It was still awkward for her to hear English words that meant something totally different back in the States. Two peoples separated by a common language, Churchill had said, and it was true.

“I’m still not sure why your general has demanded your participation in this investigation,” said Inspector Drummond. “We have the matter well in hand. There is really no need for you to go in there. Why don’t you and the lieutenant stay warm inside your car while we tidy up.”

“The victim had a sensitive job at SHAEF,” Sam replied. “I’m sure you understand.”

Drummond nodded. “Just following orders,” he said resignedly. “I told him it wouldn’t do.”

Taggart wondered who the “him” was as he followed the inspector across the driveway toward the huge oak entrance door. Pausing outside it, Drummond turned and pointed up at the marble railing of the second-story balcony.

“You might be interested to know that King George the Third stood up there to publicly read the dispatch from the Duke of Wellington that he had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.”

“When was that?” asked Taggart.

“Eighteen fifteen,” he said with obvious pride as they went through the entrance door into a marble-and-gilt vestibule.

To Liza, it seemed even colder inside the building than it had been under the balcony. She could hear the wind moaning through the shattered window frames at both ends of the marble hallway. Another man stood waiting for them in the rear of the vestibule.

“This is Colonel Reginald Gaines of His Majesty’s security staff,” said Inspector Drummond.

Around sixty the colonel had a thinning head of marcelled silver hair, small gray eyes, and a beaked nose. He was wearing a scarlet riding jacket with polished brass buttons down the center, cream-colored breeches, and black thigh-length riding boots.

Looking from Taggart to Liza, he shook his head disdainfully and said, “Didn’t Inspector Drummond inform you that this matter is already closed?”

“I am here under direct orders from General Manigault at SHAEF Security Command,” said Taggart. “If you want him to reverse the order, be my guest and get him on the phone.”

Colonel Gaines thought about it for several seconds before wagging his head again with obvious distaste.

“If indeed this is absolutely necessary, I will accompany you,” he said in a tone that implied he was worried they would steal the silver-ware.

“Are we riding to the hounds today?” Sam asked as they headed down another marble staircase.

“I serve the King in many capacities,” Colonel Gaines said curtly.

They went down a wide corridor lined with gold-framed life-sized oil paintings of men and women dressed in ermine robes and Elizabethan collars. Liza recognized the regent’s face in the last painting. It was the current King of England, George VI. A courtier was fitting the British crown on his head.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“It is the Royal Natatorium,” pronounced Colonel Gaines gravely.

“Sure,” said Taggart. “I should have guessed.”

Two etched-glass doors loomed up ahead in the shadows. Flanking the doors were glass display cases. Inside each one of them was a four-foot-high stuffed penguin standing in a white plaster snowscape. Liza stopped to gaze at the bird on the left. He stared back at her with a hurt, puzzled look on his face.

“Emperor penguins …
Apterodytes forsteri,”
said Colonel Gaines, as if the birds were still enjoying themselves in their natural habitat. “Captain Robert Falcon Scott brought them back for the Queen from the Antarctic … before his last, tragic voyage, of course.”

They went through the swinging glass doors into the next room.

It was no ordinary swimming pool. The gigantic high-ceilinged room was a hundred feet long and sixty feet wide, the pool itself measuring around seventy-five by forty. The colors in the chamber were a kaleidoscope of red, purple, and orange. It appeared to Liza that the walls and floor were made up of tiny ceramic tiles, each one no more than an inch square.