Trail of the Twisted Cros (11 page)

“The big one?”

“The very one.”

“How nice. Cordite was used a lot in ‘Nam. Great to know how bombs can span the generations.”

“Anything else?” Winship asked, a bit miffed at being told to make lists by his subordinate.

“The media?”

“Oh yes. How did they know, and all that. And how did the FBI know. Well, it seems that the AP here received an anonymous
call, from a man with a British accent… not English, not Scotch, either…

“Anyway, the AP put the thing on the wire as an advisory, and now it’s a full-fledged story. The FBI was contacted by your
man down at Fairmont, the mining executive, and that’s the connection there.”

“So fairly soon, I expect the threat on Nixon will be known?”

“It won’t be long.”

“I’ll see if I can’t make it back before then.”

“Where are you—”

Slayton was halfway across the St. Regis lobby, leaving Winship sputtering, but assuming, correctly, his destination. Godspeed,
he thought.

CARDIFF, Wales, United Kingdom,
    12 September

Like most first-time visitors to Wales, Slayton was first struck by the huge wall of differences that seemed to close over
this western section of the British Isles. Yet he knew that Wales was fundamentally British, far more British than England.

It was in the mountain fastness and the sequestered valleys of Wales that the original Britons had managed to preserve their
way of life, whereas other more vulnerable parts of Britain had been successively overrun by invaders.

The people looked different, to begin with, Slayton decided. The Welsh were able to trace their origins back 2,400 years,
to before the Roman occupation, to a short, dark Iberian people.

An amazing thing, he thought. So small a country, next to another small country, and yet there were such huge differences
in the mere appearances of people. The English were tall and finely featured; the Welsh, short and broadly built. Slayton
was accustomed, as are most Americans, to nearly every community and every region of America having the same basic ethnic
mix, a fairly even distribution. But in Britain, this was not the case.

In fact, he realized, that was exactly what Britain—at least some Britons nowadays—had always fought. Slayton sat bolt upright
in his train seat.

Could this be the charade?

He scribbled a note to himself and tucked it away.

The South Wales Labour Exchange is located along Cardiff’s Severn waterfront in a long, low red-brick building designed so
that the view of the port by residents of the hill district is unobstructed.

A man of thirty-five years or so walked casually into the exchange, approached the hiring window, and produced his British
working documents, including a mine worker’s union card.

“ ’Eard about work out the Rhondda way. Is it true, mate?”

The clerk at the window slid the man’s papers toward him.

“Before I look, let me take a wee guess. Manchester?” the clerk asked.

“You got it right, mafe. First time, too. Nice job of it.”

“Never miss, me,” the clerk said. “Come across you Manchester lads right regular now, I do. What with the redundancies and
all that sort of rot, what?”

“I say you can stick old Maggie into the North Sea is what!”

“Only way Her Nibbs is going to know the meanin’ of the word uncomfortable is the way I see it.”

The job applicant was growing impatient with the small chat.

“Is it true?”

“What. Is what true?”

“The work, out Rhondda?”

The clerk frowned and shuffled the papers in front of him a bit more.

“There’s one colliery open and hiring now, but jobs go first to those what live there. Cannot be any guarantees I’m givin’
you.”

“Oh, but I love the land out there.”

The clerk frowned again.

“Some don’t, not at all. Those that live up over the valley look down at mid-afternoon and they see nothing but dark, the
houses all lit up like it’s the middle of the night because the sun won’t get to their level.”

“It’s the spirit of the place I’m discussin’, though.”

“Aye. And there’s that singer from Rhondda…”

“Jones, Tom.”

“And the writer?”

“Follett, Ken. An American now, I hear.”

“Now that’s the way to have it, what?”

“I’ve always fancied myself an American some day,” the job applicant said. “Some day, maybe.”

The clerk finished stamping his papers, wrote down the name of the foreman at the St. John’s Colliery, and shoved the material
back across the desk.

“There you be now, off to the Rhondda. Do you have lodgings?”

“No.”

“Try a place in a little village called Trealaw, near Tonypandy. The Colliers Arms. Run by a funny pair, the Warrys. Watch
yourself with her is my advice.”

“Ta, mate.”

The young man left the Labour Exchange, his employment card stamped approved for work as a miner. The name on his card was
Randall Monckton, but it was a fake. His real name was Ben Slayton.

TREALAW, South Wales

He was able to drop the Manchester accent and slip into one that was easier for him—middle-class Londoner. The landlady, Mavis
Warry, was immediately fascinated.

“How long will you be staying with us, flower?” she asked. She fussed over the linens on his bed while he unpacked one of
his two bags.

“I don’t really know. The work is so sketchy these days, you see.”

“Here’s what you’ll learn about me, right off the bat,” Mavis said. She had left her job at the bed and was standing now very
close to Monckton—Slayton. “I just ask a man whatever is on my mind, and I’m asking you this: why is it you don’t seem like
a collier?”

“It wasn’t my life’s ambition, love. But then, neither was living on the dole, you know. So, I became a sooty face.”

“Well, it’s not so terribly sooty now, is it?” Mavis ran a hand across his cheek, then under his chin. She smiled at him,
almost girlishly, then stepped even closer. Her breasts grazed against his chest.

“You’re the one they told me to keep a look-out for,” Monckton said.

“I am indeed.”

Monckton took her into his arms and embraced her, softly and correctly. When he released her, she was breathless.

“Come with me,” he commanded.

She followed him to the bed. Monckton lowered her to the bed, with only a sheet for dressing, and lay down beside her. She
closed her eyes while he covered her face and neck with embraces.

Then slowly—she nearly couldn’t feel his gentle tugging—he began removing her clothes. He unbuttoned a high blouse, revealing
her small, firm breasts, warm and quivering to his touch.

He traced a finger down the length of her abdomen, lingering at her navel, then roughly pulling downward at her skirt. Beneath,
she wore the garments most British women wear still—hosiery and garter belt. Monckton—Slayton—had complained that a good half
of his love life had been ruined by the advent of the damnable panty hose.

Mavis’ body was bucking, almost wildly. Her cries of urgency were muffled by Monckton’s embraces, even as he moved atop her,
kicked off his trousers, and slipped smoothly into her.

The two of them then flailed away at each other with animal abandon, each of their needs so great. When they were through,
Monckton rolled off her and lay on his back on the bed, as exhausted by the rigors of his first encounter with Mavis Warry
as by the jet lag that was hitting him at its hardest.

Mavis wouldn’t leave the man in peace, however. She coaxed his member back to life, stripped the clothes completely off herself
and straddled him to have her way.

“You another one of those odd blokes?” Jack Warry asked him as he came surreptitiously down the stairway.

“Odd?”

“I’m Jack Mavis, landlord. You’re the new lodger, is that it?”

Monckton’s face showed extreme agitation.

“Oh I see, right away you’re a bit leery about stayin’ round here. Mavis gone and scared you off with her contrary ways, has
she?”

Monckton shook his head no.

“Well then, the reason I asked you about being an odd bloke was because we got one already. Works out at the St. John’s Colliery,
when he works.”

“I’m working there, too,” Monckton said. “That is, I have to report for work there.”

“Well, then, I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of him. Maybe I shouldn’t say a word about your mate, you know.”

“No, I don’t know him yet. Why do you call him an odd bloke, anyway?”

“Actually, I don’t. Mave does. All I knows or cares is he pays his rent right proper and timely. But I was told to ask you.”

“I’m not sure—”

“Mave thinks you might be, you know, a gay boy.”

Monckton repressed the urge to laugh.

“Is that what this other… what’s his name?”

“Thatcher. Leo Thatcher.”

“That’s what Thatcher is? A poofter?”

“Who knows? Mave just wants to make sure we don’t become ‘that sort’ of place. Her words.”

“Tell your lovely wife, whom I have met, by the way, that I stand ready and willing at any time of her choice to demonstrate
my complete normality.”

“You’re all right, Monckton. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not from here?”

“Manchester, by way of London.”

“Thought so. I can always tell an accent.”

“Right-o. So now, my good landlord, I am off to the bloody mine.”

“Ta-ta!”

Monckton’s employment card was duly stamped for work, and he was given a locker and togs for the next shift, to begin in one
hour. After changing from his street clothes to the bright orange overalls and black boots, the miner’s hat with lantern and
safety belt, Monckton milled about the locker facility, drinking tea until it was time for his call.

He made his way to the tag board to check for number 290, which he held in his pocket. It was missing. He flipped through
the union copy of the work roster for number 290 and found the entry, “Thatcher, Leo, lost #290, reissued #271.”

LONDON, England, 12 September

In the Brixton district of south London lives a family of three generations by the name of Toper. Like many of his neighbors
in the shabby working-class district, Linus Toper had brought his family one by one from Jamaica, as soon as he could afford
their passage on his wages as a porter for British Rail.

Linus Toper’s son, Joshua, was born in Jamaica, but almost always lies when asked and says he was born in London. He spent
exactly one year of his life in the West Indies, and sees no reason to spoil his chances as an Englishman by admitting to
being from outside the Sceptered Isle.

Then there is Joshua’s son, Raymond, a hotheaded twenty-year-old, London-born and hateful of anyone who attempts to diminish
his Englishness by calling undue or unwelcome attention to the fact that his skin is ebony.

Raymond and his father operate one of the score of Jamaican groceries in the peeling neighborhood, a neighborhood wracked
by absentee ownership of all the housing stock, poor public services, and resultant lack of pride on the part of residents
who are forced to live in the squalor.

Linus Toper has never so much as crossed a street illegally in his long life. Rarely has he spoken to a white man, never,
except when he worked as a porter, to a white woman. Today, he still crosses the street and walks the other side when he sees
whites in his path. He does this not out of fear, but out of some enormously undue respect for a superior being.

His son Joshua has made his peace with his father’s servile behavior when it comes to whites. He has come to accept it. But
even Joshua hesitates when he comes into contact with whites. He is not respectful, he is fearful.

Young Raymond once dared to date a white girl when he was fifteen years old. His grandfather was hospitalized because of the
way it affected him. He did not mean to hurt his grandfather, but he couldn’t help but go out of his way to proclaim himself
an Englishman, with all the rights of whites.

“Your boy means to make trouble for his life. Maybe ours, too,” old Linus once told his son.

Today that trouble came in the form of a dozen brown-shirted white Englishmen dressed in steel helmets, boots, and swastikas,
carrying axes. They were members of an organization called the White Guard, and the day before they had been told that Raymond
Toper had been seen pushing a white woman in the adjoining district of Camberwell, a once solidly white community rapidly
changing to black and Asian.

The Topers were seated at the small table in the kitchen of their apartment, drinking stout and eating a ham roast left for
them by Joshua’s wife, Raymond’s mother, before she departed for an evening’s maid service job in the fashionable Belgravia
district.

Dusk was just settling over the city when the glass began shattering at the front of the Toper home. The old man was the first
to rise from the kitchen table, followed by Raymond, then Joshua.

Linus Toper was knocked down by the rampaging White Guards, who had chopped their way through parlor windows, then set the
draperies afire and set off for the back of the house.

Without a word, two of the White Guards kicked the old man as he lay sprawled on the floor. Two more tackled the next oldest
man, Joshua, forcing him face down onto the floor and going to work with their clubs against his head.

Eight White Guards struggled with Raymond, who at first managed a scream of horrendous volume, then could scream no more.
His throat had been slashed open, and was now spurting streams of crimson.

Linus Toper was already dead. Joshua Toper had no choice but to pretend he was dead. He was sure the White Guards wouldn’t
fire a gun and bring attention from the neighborhood, though he wondered where his friends were now. Hadn’t they heard Raymond’s
screams?

Many had heard Raymond’s screams. But none came to his aid, nor to the aid of the old man who had never in his life spoken
to a white woman.

The white woman whom Raymond had pushed on a street in Camberwell the day before had thanked him for his action. If she hadn’t
been pushed, an oncoming taxicab would very likely have struck her.