Previously: Mercenary Leon fails on a mission because of David, better known as the Prince of Wales. Socialite Wallis Spencer is also a spy. MI6 makes them a team. David becomes king. David abdicates and they marry. The Windsors escape oncoming Nazis. Leon shadows their every move. Leon dies. His family mourns his death.
The blonde was back at her blackjack table at the Rialto in Nassau, none worse for the wear. The buzz around the casino was the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Freeport where he would take up duties as governor. He and his wife arrived safely because of the work of Leon Johnson, now dead. She thought she should feel some guilt for putting a bullet in his back, but she did not. Her only regret was that she never went to bed with him. From the first moment she saw him saunter into the casino in his white linen suit she thought him so desirable she wanted to throw herself into his arms, but that would not have been professional. And she always thought of herself as a professional.
Her real name was Alina Romanov, perhaps the last of the Russian dynasty still alive, although she had no way of knowing for sure. The name her mother told her to use was Aline Montgomery—a reference they now lived in Montana. Her mother changed her own name from Anatolia Ribbentrop to Toni Montgomery. Her mother said the name Montgomery would give a hint they were of English descent, which, of course, they weren’t. Aline had never had any contact with the Romanovs or Ribbentrops. Her mother Toni told her not to try to make a connection with them or else her life might be endangered. Aline took comfort in the stories her mother told her to while away the evenings in their Butte, Montana, brothel. It didn’t bother her. She slept well every night—hardly any noise at all, unlike most respectable hotels.
Her mother, Toni, never kept the truth from her, no matter how ugly it was. Because of her upbringing, she was able to make it seem not that bad at all. Toni was a member of one of the oldest, most wealthy monarchies in Europe, the Romanovs. As a child, Toni had no idea there was evil in the world and its appearance shocked her very much. She told her daughter she never wanted her to be sheltered from evil. That way she would never be shocked by it. The evil first appeared with the coming of the Bolsheviks who vowed to kill everyone in the royal family, even the cousins. Her parents paid a handsome sum for a member of the Ribbentrops of Germany to marry her and take her away to live in the Bahamas. The Bolsheviks would never find her, her parents told her. But, of course, they did. The Bolsheviks assassins killed her husband and would have killed her if it hadn’t been for a Bahamian bodyguard. He was only sixteen years old, but he dispatched the assassins efficiently.
As Aline grew, her mother added details to the story. Toni made love to the bodyguard, and it was wonderful. A sad romantic husky tone entered her voice, as though that one night was the most fulfilling moment of her life which she would never have again.
“His name was Leon Johnson.” Toni’s voice became husky as she spoke his name. “He was the best lover I ever had.”
Perhaps the earliest emotion Aline experienced was that of deep sorrow for her loving mother. She decided to ask her mother about this man every chance she got. Aline loved the twinkle that entered her mother’s eyes when she said his name.
Leon Johnson. She paused and gazed out the window to the long verandah. What if he was the same man she killed in Lisbon? The same name. The same lethal skills. The same sensuality. What a waste.
“Hey, stop daydreaming!” A man’s rough voice interrupted her thoughts. “I said hit me!”
Aline dealt the card, but she continued thinking about her past. Toni told her she felt safe once she reached the wilds of Montana. No Bolshevik would think of looking for her there. She settled in Butte and with ease found a job at the local whore house. None of the other girls had her looks and refinement. From the beginning she earned top dollar for her skills.
Within a month of her arrival at the brothel, an out-of-shape young man who had not yet developed his paunch stopped over for the night. After his brief encounter with Toni, he stayed on for six months. He was a gold miner named Harry Oakes. He was born in Maine and went to medical college until he heard about the Klondike gold rush. He dropped out of college and mined in the Klondike, California and anywhere else where there was the slightest hint of a gold vein. He was on his way to Kirkland Lake Northern Ontario until he became enamored of the wiles of the wayward cousin of the Romanov family.
“For a brief moment in time,” Toni told her daughter, “I thought I was about to return to a life of opulence to which I had been born when I told Harry I was carrying his child.”
“How do you know it’s mine? After all, you’re a whore,” Harry protested.
“But you paid me to move into your hotel suite six months ago, and we’ve been playing house ever since,” she told him.
She described to her daughter exactly how dejected Harry looked. It was like the recess bell had rung and he had to go back to class.
“Babe, you know I love you, but I got my future to think about. I told you my parents are rich. That’s how I could afford medical school and afford to run around the continent looking for gold. I’ve even got some high falutin’ relatives in England. If I play my cards right, I could end up as a duke or earl or something.” He grimaced. “I’ve even got to get rid of this American accent I’ve picked up along the way. Why, if I go home after striking gold and with a wife from a brothel and a baby, I’d might as well kiss my dreams of high society good-bye.”
Toni shrugged. “Well, I know what it’s like being high society one day and out on my ass the next.” She stuck out her hand. “Been nice knowing you, Mr. Oakes.”
He shook his head. “Oh no, I’m not going to be that way. Hang on here until I hit the mother lode. I promise to send you a healthy check every month for you and the baby. And when the kid is old enough to work, send him to me. I know I can fix him up with something.”
Aline smirked as she dealt out a new hand of cards. Well, he got the gender wrong but at least he was good to his word. He didn’t say he’d fix me up with something respectable, just with something.
“When do you get off work tonight, gorgeous?” one of the men sitting around the table asked.
“Passed your bedtime, gramps.” Aline threw in a snipe about the guy’s age to make him shut up. It always worked.
Gramps, like I ever knew what it was like to have a gramps. I mean a nice old man who loved me and kept his hands to himself.
The man she called gramps stood and walked off in a huff.
“We’re starting a new game, ladies and gentlemen,” she announced in a clear, well-intoned voice. After all, her mother taught her to behave like a lady even if she wasn’t one. She paused hardly a moment before dealing the cards.
I actually loved my mother. She did what she did to stay alive. And she made only two mistakes in her life, and they were both Harry Oakes. I can’t blame her for the first one. At least I’m alive because of it. She couldn’t be held completely accountable for the second one. Mother was on her death bed because of pneumonia in 1925 when the letter came from Harry saying he had a glamorous job lined up for me in the Bahamas. My mother encouraged me to go to the Bahamas, even though I was only twelve years old. I always looked older than my age. That was better than dying a whore in Butte, Montana.
Aline could tell when she walked down the gangplank that Harry—now in his middle-aged full rotundity–didn’t know whether to embrace her with the full sentiment of a father/daughter reunion or to shake hands as a business courtesy to a new employee. Aline made it easy on him by extending her hand to him, which he shook with the efficiency of a stock broker. Harry meant nothing to her.
The past was the past. Hatred just made wrinkles show up on your face sooner with nothing to show for it. Revenge was for suckers.
Harry took her to the Rialto, showed her around the casino and asked her about her poker skills.
“Mother taught me all about poker, among other things,” she replied.
They settled on the terrace where a server took their orders for lunch. Sipping his wine, he gazed out at the ocean. “I hope all the checks I sent your mother arrived every month.”
“What checks?”
“Didn’t she tell you? I sent monthly checks to help raise you.”
Aline shrugged. “All I know is I never went hungry and always had nice clothes to wear.”
Harry nodded. “She got the checks all right.” He kept staring at the shore. “I don’t blame her for not telling you. She was a classy broad.”
“She wasn’t a broad,” she replied in a firm voice.
“You’re right, of course.” His apology was quick. “I’m the guy who spent his life digging in dirt for gold. I ain’t got no class.”
She didn’t say a word but just stared at him.
“Did Toni ever mention anything about the organization?”
“What organization?”
“Good. She had a head on her shoulders.” He took another sip of wine. “How can I explain this? Each country’s government has spies to resolve problems they don’t want splattered across the newspapers. But ordinary wealthy people have problems they don’t want splattered across newspapers either. So who are they going to hire to resolve their problems?”
“I thought that was what the Mafia was for.” So far, Harry wasn’t impressing Aline at all.
“They’re a very clannish group,” he explained. “Besides, they like to be the bosses, and rich people want to run things themselves. They want someone to go in, get the job done, take their money and forget about it.”
“Mercenaries.” Aline rolled her eyes. “They’re called mercenaries, Harry.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s a good name for them.”
“Are you telling me my mother was a member of this group of scumbags?”
“No, no. She was one of the poor ordinary rich people who hired the scumbags.”
“So you’re one of the scumbags.” Aline enjoyed nettling her father.
“Well.” He smiled rakishly. “I didn’t get all my money mining gold.”
“So, you think I’d agree to be one of these scumbags?”
“They pay very well. And you’ll be groomed before the first mission. Right now all you have to do is pass messages to our top agents.”
She finished her drink. “Well, if my mother thought well of this organization, then who am I to say no?”
“Glad to hear it.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now we can eat.”
The server put plates in front of each of them.
“Your first assignment is tonight. You will pass a note to a Bahamian man who will be wearing a white linen suit.”
Aline remembered her first meal at the Rialto as the best meal she ever had. Ever since then she’d never had any regrets, until Lisbon.
“Baby, if you don’t get your head out of the clouds, I’m leaving.”
When she focused on the present of 1940, she saw gramps had returned. “You promise?”
The other men around the table laughed. Aline looked over the shoulder of the old man and saw Pooka standing in the casino door.
“The table’s closed.” Aline walked straight to the old woman, took her by the elbow and escorted out to the beach. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Won’t that mess up your pretty shoes?” Pooka asked.
“I don’t give a damn about the shoes. Walk.”
It didn’t take them long to be at water’s edge and out of the lights of the Rialto.
“I told you never to come here.”
“But I thought you’d want to know Jessamine is dead. As soon as she heard about Leon she walked into the ocean.”
“And the boy?”
“You wanted him dead too?” Pooka’s eyes widened. “He’s so strong. Like his papa. I know I can control him for you.”
“You know very well the orders from the commander was that the entire Johnson family was to die.” Aline twisted Pooka’s arm.
“Are you sure?” the old woman asked.
Aline took off her left shoe and pressed a button on the heel. A sharp, slender knife shot out. She slammed it repeatedly into Pooka’s neck. The old woman crumbled to the sand. Aline looked down at her and noticed how wrinkled she was. She kicked her over and over until the body entered the surf.
She must have been eighty or ninety years old. It was time for her to die.