Tommy Lascelles, too decent

Previously in the novel: Leon, a novice mercenary, is foiled in kidnapping the Archbishop of Canterbury by a mysterious man in black. The man in black turns out to be David, better known as Edward the Prince of Wales. Soon to join the world of espionage is Wallis Spencer, an up-and-coming Baltimore socialite. David kills an ambassador in Shanghai.
Upon his return to London, David cloistered himself inside his suite at York House, a wing of St. James Palace down the mall from Buckingham. He slept in his heavily curtained bedroom for more than twenty-four hours. Once he felt refreshed, David took a long bath, wrapped himself in a plush terrycloth robe and sat down for black coffee and toast. He chatted with his personal secretary Tommy Lascelles, an affable young man who did his best to create reasons for the Prince of Wales to take extended holidays to exotic locales for hedonistic pleasures.
“How was your voyage to the Far East?” Tommy asked, opening his activities book.
“Marvelous,” David replied, sipping his coffee. “Four different very sociable ladies going and coming. Please note when Elvira Chatsworth returns to London. Include me in some event where she is expected to attend. Has Freda called? Arrange dinner for us tonight.”
“I’m afraid that will be quite impossible, sir.” Tommy kept his eyes down as he wrote in his notebook.
“And why is that?”
“Her husband is back in town.”
“Oh, bugger that.”
“It seems his grandmother Mrs. Lavinia Ward is celebrating her ninetieth birthday and all members of the Ward family are required to attend,” Tommy informed him.
“I wish that old bag would die. She’s hampering my love life,” David muttered as he lit a cigarette. He noticed a pause in the conversation. “Do I shock you, Tommy?”
“Of course not, sir.” Clearing his throat, he added, “You must have luncheon at Buckingham Palace today. Your parents have made inquiries and know you are back from your trip to Shanghai.”
“Good God. Now I have to come up with some sort of diplomatic reasons to have been there. Have any ideas?”
Tommy raised his pen from the book and scratched the back of his head with it. “Did you speak to the ambassador?”
“Lord Chatsworth? Only in passing on the Wyndemere.”
“No, no. The other one. Stationed at the embassy. The one who died.”
“I scheduled a luncheon with him but he died the previous evening. That was odd, wasn’t it? So sudden. His head plopped into a bowl of egg nest soup.”
“So you didn’t see him.”
“Oh, I glimpsed him in a crowd. I was within spitting distance but didn’t get a chance to speak.
Tommy groaned. “Spitting distance? Oh the phrases you pick up.” He made a quick note. “I wouldn’t share that one with the King.”
“Actually, I was going to drop it on Mummy. She turns this delightful shade of coral when I embarrass her.”
“Tell your father the Foreign Ministry asked you to drop in on the ambassador. You couldn’t help it if the old man dropped dead.”
“Indeed not.”
“Oh. Your tailor is waiting outside.”
David’s face lit. “Does he have the plaid slacks ready?”
Tommy arched an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Send him in.”
David noticed Tommy took special care not to slam his activities book shut. Poor chap, the prince thought. Such a decent fellow. I must shock him terribly, however MI6 specifically instructed me not to include Tommy in my secret activities. After all, he is a decent fellow.
Tommy opened the door. A short, rotund man with strands of black hair slicked across his glistening dome jiggled into the prince’s boudoir, extending a pair of slacks to his highness.
“Just as you required.” The tailor beamed.
David hid a smile as he observed Tommy rolling his eyes before exiting, closing the door behind him.
“I think you will find the crotch to be perfection,” the man announced in a loud voice.
“No need for that,” David informed him. “Tommy is not the type to linger around keyholes.”
“You never know about these blokes around here.” The man slipped into a very comfortable Cockney. He looked at the pants with askance and tossed them on a chair. “Are you really going to wear those togs, are you?”
David wagged a finger at him. “Now, now. It’s your attitude that keeps you from getting assignments to nice places.”
“You can keep your nice places. They give me the heeby geebies.” He leaned in. “Did the capsule work as anticipated?”
“Perfectly. The timing was chancy, biting and spitting at the same time. One good cough and I’d been the one with his face in a bowl of soup.”
The man smiled, revealing that a couple of his canines were missing. “Dee-lightful, ain’t they? We got the poison from a new agent we picked up from America. She’s a mean one, for sure. And she knows her herbs up in those Blue Ridge Mountains. She’s got a different one for every which way you want a man to die, she does.”
“I don’t like it when you tell me too much,” David informed him.
“Bah. It’s the only fun me and me old lady have in this business.” He paused to appraise the prince. “I keep forgetting you’re one of those royal blighters.”
David laughed. “Us royal blighters love gossip too. No, the less we know about each other the safer we are. And I don’t want anything to happen to your wife or yourself. Truly. No disrespect intended.”
“It’s hard to stay mad at a bloke like you, David.” The man grumbled and turned for the door.
“A man from the organization was there in Shanghai,” the prince whispered. “He almost ruined the whole gambit. Tried to shoot the ambassador. I knocked his gun away.”
He looked back. “I feel sorry for those rotters. Why would the organization be messed up in this ambassador business?”
“Chinese drug lords want to keep the political situation there unsettled, I’m sure.”
“Oh, think of the scandal that would have been.” The old man’s eyes widened. “MI6 said they wanted the ambassador dead, but they didn’t want it to look like no murder. Nothing controversial.”
“I took care of it. I hope.”

Disappearing on the street in Shanghai.
Previously in the novel: Leon, a novice mercenary, is foiled in kidnapping the Archbishop of Canterbury by a mysterious man in black. The man in black turns out to be David, better known as Edward the Prince of Wales. Soon to join the world of espionage is Wallis Spencer, an up-and-coming Baltimore socialite. David seduces a diplomat’s wife on a slow boat to China.
On a lower deck of the HMS Wyndemere Leon began to rouse from his sleep. By 1925 he had been on many missions for the organization but this was his first voyage to the Far East. He kept focused on creating memories to share with his mother. He could not tell anyone else in the village about his job, not even old Joe. Nor could he keep a journal of his travels. If anyone from the organization discovered he had a written record, no matter how inconsequential, he would be summarily executed. He smiled at the absurdity of it. He never knew anything to write down. For this assignment he found the necessary tickets in a pot outside his front door. First a ticket from Nassau to Panama and another from Panama to Shanghai. In China he would receive further instructions. What or from whom he did not know.
Leon glanced in the mirror and was not pleased. He looked like a clean respectable beach boy from the Bahamas, a step up from a scruffy young fisherman walking home after a long hard day on the boat in the Caribbean. Leon wanted the appearance of one of those mysterious men dressed in white linen suits, who lingered in the corners of the Nassau casinos puffing on imported cigarettes.
He could not chastise himself too much. Leon provided well for his mother and sisters. They didn’t have to be servants any more. His bank account was growing. He could afford a proper home. He had even taken a wife, a girl he had known all his life. She had laughed with him as they played in the surf. She cried with him when his father died. And now she was bearing his first child. His life of sin had been good to him. But he still wanted a white linen suit.
A day later HMS Wyndemere landed in Shanghai. A buzz from the gang plank at the other end of the liner drew his attention. Photographers held high flash powder trays and set them off at a slender elegantly dressed young man, posing at the bottom of the plank with a cigarette between his fingers. Leon looked away at the street to see a rickshaw with a coolie standing in front holding a sign, “Eleuthera.”
He walked to it, climbed in without a word, and endured a short, choppy ride to a hotel, a more respectable hotel than he was used to. That evening he ate in the proper dining room. Next to him were two older British gentlemen who had drunk more brandy than they should.
“Ambassador Chatsworth landed today,” one of them said.
“Is that so, Geoffrey?” the second replied, choking on his snifter. “What in the deuce is he doing here?”
“It’s that Shanghai Massacre mess last month.”
“Oh yes. The embassy mucked that up, didn’t they?”
“Yes, the embassy chief should be sacked,” Geoffrey announced.
“Wouldn’t that be admitting culpability? The King can’t have that, Liam.”
“I suppose you’re right, but it’s a bloody mess if you ask me.”
“You know who must be chortling over this? The damned opium overlords. As long as the government is in disarray they can do as they bloody damned please.”
Leon wiped his lips with a napkin and pushed away his plate. Perhaps that was why he was in Shanghai, to assassinate the British embassy chief to ensure continued political confusion. The waiter presented his check and moved on. Leon didn’t even look at him. When he examined the total he noticed in small letters at the bottom: “tomorrow noon marketplace.”
The sun was overhead and insufferably hot as Leon entered the bazaar. He wandered about looking at useless merchandise. The stuff sold in Freeport was better made and sold at cheaper prices. One show that caught his attention was a belly dancer. From what he could tell, under all that makeup was a Caucasian woman, skinny and not all that pretty. But she could move her hips and balance a sword on her head.
“Sir, sir,” a voice called to him. “Over here. Finest wood carvings from the Bahamas.”
Leon recognized the cue aimed at him. A toothless Chinese man extended a statue of a naked man and woman embracing. The man was too skinny and the woman’s bosom was too large. Leon waved it away, but the man pulled him closer.
“Look, look. See? Much better.”
As Leon regarded the rest of the merchandise the man slipped a small revolver in his pocket. He jerked away and walked behind a tall stack of Indian rugs. Slowly pulling the gun from his pocket, Leon read the note which stuck out of the barrel:
“Short fat bald white man in linen suit.”
This would be the day he would die. Leon knew there was no way to shoot a man in a crowded open space and escape unscathed. He hoped, at least, his mother would be properly compensated. Leon chose not to dwell upon his fate but rather chose to do his job well.
A clamor arose across the marketplace. He walked fast and with determination toward it. As Leon pushed his way through the crowd he spotted a short, fat, bald, white man in a linen suit. From the whispers around him, Leon realized this was the British embassy chief who had ordered the attack on the Shanghai students. The idle chatter he heard over dinner had been correct. With a deep breath, Leon pulled his revolver and took careful aim.
Out of nowhere a hand swooped down, knocking his gun away. An elderly Chinese man pushed him back into the crowd before storming toward the ambassador. The old man shouted a gibberish, a mishmash of Chinese dialects. The old angry man got close enough to spit on the official’s face.
“Look! Look! “A voice erupted from the crowd. “Man with gun! Look! Look!” People pointed in Leon’s direction.
The old Chinese man rushed Leon, pushing him away. “No complications!” the old man muttered.
Leon recognized the voice from years before. It wasn’t an old Chinese man. He was the man from Canterbury Castle. What was he doing there?
Police whistles blew. Uniformed Shanghai officers chased after them. As they ran by the belly dancer, she let her sword skip along the cobbled market place, causing the crowd to scatter, blocking the approach of the police.
The man grabbed the gun from Leon. “You don’t need that,” he grunted, pushing Leon down a narrow alley while he raced down the main thoroughfare.
Leon hid in the shadows and watched the man start taking off bits of his disguise until he revealed the persona of an ordinary British tourist, who leaned against a wall and lit a cigarette to watch the police run past.
That night Leon sat in the hotel dining room wondering how he would he get home. As usual his first tickets were one way. The room had been paid for one night. After he paid, he had no more cash on him. Leon berated himself for still thinking of himself as a street thug who mindlessly killed people so he could afford his next meal. He had money. He did not have to live like that anymore. He should learn to bring his own money on his assignments to deal with situations like this. A young Chinese woman dressed in a short dress flounced up and sat next to him.
“Hey, pretty boy. I give you good time.” Her hand went under the table and shoved a thick envelope between his legs.
The maître d arrived. “Excuse me, sir. She’s on her way out.”
She quickly leaned in to whisper in a completely different voice, “He’s dead. Good job.”
After the maître d dragged her off. Leon looked inside the envelope which included ship passage home and a huge stack of cash which he prudently chose not to count at that moment.

Felipe Espil, one of Wallis’s lovers
Previously in the novel: Leon, a novice mercenary, is foiled in taking the Archbishop of Canterbury hostage and exchanging for an anarchist during the Great War by a mysterious man in black. The man in black turns out to be Edward the Prince of Wales. Soon to join the world of espionage is Wallis Spencer, an up-and-coming Baltimore socialite.
Wallis stopped abruptly when she heard his subtle mention the words “hat pin.” Now how the hell would some little bastard from England know about that? She fumbled with her purse as she pulled out another cigarette. For the first time in her life, her fingers trembled. The man offered her a light.
“What did you say?”
After lighting her cigarette, he remained uncomfortably close and whispered, “We’ve read the military dossier on you and Win. The American jackasses don’t believe it, but we do. Also we’ve had collaboration from the Argentinian Embassy. Don’t worry. Felipe Espil is very discreet, but he did think we’d be interested in your many talents. And we are.”
“I’m sorry. You’re confusing the hell out of me. I am an American in Paris who is attending a party at the American Embassy. You tell me you know about my—shall we say friendship with an ambassador from Argentina. So just the hell are you?” She blew smoke in his face.
He took her by the elbow. “Let’s take a stroll in the gardens. Americans are very clever at growing flowering bushes, if not anything else.”
Wallis yanked her arm away and resisted the temptation to inflict permanent harm on his little British body. “You have some bollocks to manhandle me like this!” she spat.
“His Majesty’s secret service.”
They maneuvered their way through the crowd, onto a broad balcony and down marble steps to a garden reeking with lilacs and filled with dark shadows perfect for talking espionage.
“Let me properly introduce myself. I am Gerry Greene and officially a member of the diplomatic corps, but my actual affiliation is with MI-6. You do know what MI-6 is, don’t you?”
“Why should I?” She blew smoke in his face again.
“Oh dear. I have to be blunter with you than I had wished.”
“I prefer it that way.”
“The British Empire has two sections to its intelligence organization. Domestic cases are handled by MI-5. International cases are handled by MI-6. And MI-6 wants you to spy for Britain.”
Her high pitched guffawing broke the proper atmosphere of the embassy garden as if a firecracker exploded. “You must be kidding!”
“We know about your Uncle Sol, Winfield Spencer and many others. You have invented a new singular use for a hat pin that will never be patented. Life in the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains taught you what can be accomplished with exotic plants. Your memorable methods of mayhem are quite impressive. The finest part is like a deadly virus. You are uniquely bereft of morals.”
“That’s a nasty way of putting it.”
“But still true.”
Wallis threw down her cigarette and smashed into the garden dirt. She took an extra moment to find the best words to respond.
“I’m American. I’d love to be British but sadly I’m not.”
“It makes no difference to us. Your country clings to old-fashioned ideas about patriotism and a woman’s place—“
“But I’m not a woman,” she interrupted.
“We know. That’s why you captivate us.”
His smile annoyed Wallis. “What’s in it for me?” She didn’t know if she were tiring of the conversation or being sucked into the possibilities of an even more glamorous and profitable lifestyle.
“Money unlimited. Enough to buy all the pretty things you love. Living in the finest hotels and mansions in the world is possible.”
The word money hooked Wallis’s attention. “When does this money start showing up in my bank account?”
“Immediately. Greene stepped closer. “And more important than money, this job offers you the opportunity to torture and kill men to satiate your intrinsic hatred and lust.”
She loathed this man for knowing what lurked inside. Like a peeping tom he saw into her soul. “So what do I have to do? Pass some dreadful test or something?”
“First you have to reconcile with Win and move with him to China. Don’t worry. We have a more suitable cover for you. In a couple of years you can divorce your husband. Marry someone else but eventually you will marry the man who will become your partner.”
“You’re choosing the men I will marry?”
“Does it make any difference? You haven’t done that well on your own.”
“How rude of you to remind me.”
“I must impress upon you. This is a life-long commitment which requires enormous amounts of patience. And that life time may be very short.”
“Thank God. I’d hate to be bored.” Wallis shrugged her shoulders and glanced around the garden as if she were bored right now.
“Then listen carefully.” Greene lowered his voice close to a whisper. “You will receive a telegram from Win begging for reconciliation. Don’t ask how but recently someone has convinced him an impressive promotion would be his if he proved himself to be happily married.”
“Is it really true? About the promotion, I mean?”
“Do you care?”
“No.”
“Once you join Win in China you will meet a charming man by the name of Robbie who will offer you a guided tour of China’s most fascinating—and might I add, most sinful—cities where you will be taught the most intricate of oriental martial arts.”
“I hope it involves something kinky.”
“The Chinese do not have a word for kinky. “
“Oh.”
“Just because they don’t talk about it doesn’t mean they don’t know what it means.”

What went on behind that mysterious gaze?
Previously in the novel: Leon, a novice mercenary, is foiled in taking the Archbishop of Canterbury hostage and exchanging for an anarchist during the Great War by a mysterious man in black. The man in black turns out to be Edward the Prince of Wales. Soon to join the world of espionage is Wallis Spencer, an up-and-coming Baltimore socialite.
Wallis had now been married five years to Win Spencer and was having a marvelous time. Whenever she walked into the room she was certain Win peed himself a bit. He had learned the hard way he could never assert himself with her. If he forgot himself and tried to slap her, she would dodge his hand and thrust a knee into his crotch, then ram the base of her palm under his chin, causing him to bite his lip and bleed. Wallis followed that action with a hard kiss on his lips, transferring his blood to her mouth. Immediately she ran out of the house screaming. A few times the Army almost gave Win a dishonorable discharge for abusing his wife, but Wallis pleaded through tears to save his job.
“After all, Win is the best pilot you have. It would be unpatriotic of me to deprive my country of one of its best simply because he can’t handle his liquor and knocks me around a bit.”
“You have quite a wife there, Spencer,” his commanding officer lectured him. “You should be grateful she hasn’t pressed charges.”
Sometimes Wallis amused herself with her hat pin up a delicate portion of Win’s anatomy. She had grown more sophisticated since her days with Uncle Sollie. She lost quite a bit of respect for Win; after all, a man should be able to endure a certain amount of inconvenient pain without tears.
By 1921, Win pleaded with Wallis for a divorce because he could no longer take the physical abuse. “I am actually becoming an alcoholic,” he told her from the dining table one night. He had tears in his brown eyes.
“What of it?” she asked, blowing cigarette smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Everybody thinks you’re a drunk anyway.”
“Please give me a divorce,” he whimpered. “I don’t care if it does ruin my career.”
She hated him all the more for his begging. Wallis didn’t want to stay with him, but she needed the money. Designer dresses didn’t come cheap.
“I have a compromise,” she said with a smile and another puff on her cigarette. “Pay me two hundred twenty-five dollars a month and I’ll move out and leave you alone.”
Win’s eyes widened. “Two hundred twenty-five dollars? Why, that’s most of my salary.”
“You don’t need it. Without me you can live on base and eat in the mess hall. Don’t tell me you have a clever palate. I’ve seen what you eat.”
Win sat dumbfounded, staring at her. Within a month, Wallis and her aunt Bessie were living in Washington on the monthly stipend. And quite well. Wallis began an affair with Felipe Espil, secretary at the Argentine Embassy. He was quite worldly and adapted quickly to a romance which did not include traditional aspects of lovemaking. More importantly, his family was wealthy, and he shared money with ease and grace.
Wallis feared that she confided too much as they lay in bed during early morning hours. They passed a cigarette between them, and she described her unconventional marriage with Win including its more sadistic aspects. Espil briefly considered the hat pin experience but declined.
“No one really likes it,” Wallis warned him, “except me.”
Eventually, Espil’s wealthy family informed him they expected an heir, a duty Wallis was ill equipped to execute. Her heart broke a bit. Espil was the first man who truly gained her respect and his family’s wealth could not be easily discounted either. At the end, however, she got over the romance but the doubts of Espil’s discretion lingered. She didn’t need the truth wafting about the cocktail party circuit where it might be heard by the wrong people.
A whirlwind of social activities across America and then on the continent made Wallis forget about Espil completely over the next three years. In 1924, she and Aunt Bessie invaded France and captured the hearts of Paris upper crust. Sir Cecil Beaton, the famed photographer, took her on as his greatest challenge–how to capture her image without making her face look like a horse and how to keep her hands from looking like they belonged to a longshoreman.
One evening at the American Embassy, Wallis sat languidly in an open window puffing on a cigarette for no particular reason, other than she thought it made her look mysteriously glamorous. A handsome young man approached her. He wore a tuxedo and his hair was slicked back. Oh God, she thought, not another one.
“You’re Wallis Spencer, aren’t you?” he asked with a seductive upper-class British accent.
She barely managed a smile. “Have we met?”
“No. You’re quite well known. The wife of America’s ace military aviator.”
Wallis blew smoke in his face. “I can’t believe poor little Win Spencer is an international celebrity. He just teaches others to fly. And I’m a country girl from Baltimore.”
“Oh, you’re much more than that.” His eyes twinkled. “Everyone knows about your uncle Sol Warfield. He’s quite an inventor, isn’t he?”
“I was being ironic.” She flicked her cigarette out the window. “You may think you’re debonair in your rented tuxedo, but you are nothing. I have thrown away better men than you will ever be.” She paused and became quite irritated when he continued to smile at her. “How rude must I be?”
“Oh, I’m hoping for much, much worse.”
Wallis stood and prepared to march away when the young man said just two words.
“Hat pin.”

Eleuthera at night
Previously in the novel: Leon, a novice mercenary, is foiled in taking the Archbishop of Canterbury hostage and exchanging for an anarchist during the Great War by a mysterious man in black. The man in black turns out to be Edward the Prince of Wales. As his voyage home to the Bahamas, he recalls his early life, including his father’s death and working for the mysterious Ribbentrops.
(Author’s note: this chapter contains mature situations.)
For the next few weeks Leon spent hours wandering the grounds. His first suggestion was to replace the gate of iron bars with thick wooden doors. No one could shoot through wooden doors and make a quick getaway. Mr. Ribbentrop agreed and promptly made the changes; however, when Leon also recommended cementing broken bottles to the top of the wall, the master rejected it because he thought the house would look more like a prison than a home.
One day Mrs. Ribbentrop told Leon she felt like going to the market and asked him to accompany her. As they walked among the stalls of fruits and vegetables, she said, “I hope I didn’t put you in an uncomfortable position. I mean, you indeed have many admirable qualities but …you’re so young. What do you know of self-defense? Fighting and such things.”
“You don’t know the heritage of the Johnson family, even going back to a time and place where we weren’t even Johnsons. Back in Africa, we were warriors, not very good warriors. We lost and were sold into slavery. Each man in every generation taught his sons ancient tribal skills. My father taught me secret techniques to protect myself and to kill. Your concerns, fortunately, are unfounded. I might appear young and naïve but I am capable of being a very bad little boy.”
That night Leon awoke with a start. His bedroom was just down the hall from the Ribbentrops’ suite. Instinctively he jumped from his bed and instead of putting on his pants Leon ran naked toward their room though he heard no sounds or saw any lights. Just as he entered two men come through the open window from the courtyard. He dove at them as if he were a rock from a slingshot.
His body rammed into the first intruder, the impact sent all three to the floor. Leon leapt up and saw the throat of one of the men, exposed like a turkey neck on a chopping block. He stomped on it with his bare heel until he heard the larynx crack. Then he pressed down with his full weight until the man’s face turned blue and his last breath escaped his lips.
“For God’s sake, boy!” Ribbentrop yelled as he lumbered from bed. “What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
“Heinrich?” his wife murmured as she stirred from a deep sleep. “What’s going on?”
Ribbentrop stormed around the corner of the bed. The second intruder scrambled to his feet and lunged at him with a knife. Ribbentrop’s eyes bulged as the blade slid upward under his ribcage.
Leon turned and kicked the attacker in the back of his knee. He crumbled and dropped the knife. Leon picked it up and rammed it into the intruder’s jugular and twisted.
Both Ribbentrop and his assailant gurgled blood before falling over dead. Leon spun to the window to make sure there were not others waiting outside.
“Leon,” the wife whispered, reaching over to turn on the lamp on the nightstand, “are you all right?”
“Yes.” Caring more about what money he could find than about the life of his boss, Leon knelt by the two strangers searching their pockets. He found a few guineas and took them. “My father taught me well.” He checked her husband for a pulse. “I’m afraid Mr. Ribbentrop is dead. Your husband should have agreed to the bottle shards. They came over the wall.”
Mrs. Ribbentrop rose from the bed and neglected to put on her bathrobe on a nearby chair. A silky nightgown clung to her body. “My husband was a fool. He killed himself. Besides, they came for me. Have you heard of the Romanovs?”
“Yes, my father read the newspaper to me every day.”
“I am a cousin to the czar. We’re a ruthless family. We’ve never had a high regard for anyone’s life, except our own. Heinrich offered to marry me and take me away for a substantial dowery. So what are we going to do now?”
Leon rolled the men onto the bedroom rug. “I hope this was not special to you.”
“That’s the shame of it. Nothing is special to me. Sometimes I wish I could be horrified by blood and death.”
“I have to wrap up the assassins. I have a friend who can help me dispose of them at sea.”
“God, you are a cold-hearted bastard,” she said with twisted humor. “Do you even care the Bolsheviks are after me?”
“The Freeport authorities aren’t accustomed to triple homicides. They will bungle the investigation and be more concerned that a black boy killed two white men than the fact they killed your husband.”
“I’d explain it to them.”
‘Really? Make international headlines so the Bolsheviks will know where you are? I think you care about your own life more than mine.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I’m concerned with body disposal now.” Leon began tugging the carpet toward the door.
“What do we do about Heinrich?”
“Do you have a family physician who would rule his death a heart attack? Remember, you don’t want to make headlines.”
She smirked. “For enough money our doctor will say anything. And how did you come up with a heart attack?”
“Well, his heart was certainly attacked.” He paused. “You better call him tonight.” Leon smiled. “And yes, I’m glad I at least saved you.”
“I think I’ll move to the American West. They know how to handle Bolsheviks there.”
Leon stood and moved to the door. “I have to fetch my friend.”
She stepped over the bodies and went to him. “I’m sorry this means your job is gone. I have a large purse of gold coins in the safe. They’re yours.” She paused to mull a weighty matter on her mind. “I was wrong about you. You are a bad boy. There are jobs for bad boys. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do know. Sometime—maybe soon, maybe later—someone will approach you to do evil things for large amounts of money. That way you can support your family.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I am doing you a favor or not.”
“Believe me. It is a favor.”
“After tonight we must never see each other again.” She paused to keep tears from forming. “I have one last request as your employer.”
“Of course. Anything.” His mind was a blank as to what she might want.
She put her hands to his cheeks, pausing to consider her white skin against his black face. She pushed her lips against his.
“God, I am a Bolshevik,” she murmured.
Leon felt a surge in his body. She put her arms around his neck. He picked her up and carried her to the bed.
Leon shook his head to stop the memory even though it was very pleasurable. Coming back to the present, he sat up in old Joe’s boat to see the Eleuthera dock. Standing on the keel, he anticipated the landing. As the boat thunked against the dock, Leon bounded ashore.
“Thank you, Joe!”
“Anytime, boy. Give your ma a hug for me!”
He ran down the dusty road, passing the now-empty Ribbentrop mansion. When he reached his family’s little house his mother greeted him at the door with an embrace.
“My little boy! How good you look!”