Author: Charlie Higson
Category: Horror
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/charlie-higson/page,19,49988-by_royal_command.html
‘But, sir, I’m not sure I…’
‘Go now,’ said Merriot. ‘Think over what I’ve said. We’ll talk later. And be careful. Dandy and Roan are cut from the same cloth. They’re tricky, the Irish; they’re a dangerous mix of sentimentality and violence.’
‘But what on earth were you fighting about, James? You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
James was sitting in the Inn having lunch with Charmian and Amy who seemed highly amused by his story. James, though, was taking no pleasure in it. He had lost his grip on reality and was still trying to make sense of everything.
‘And who was this boy?’ said Amy, taking a spoonful of chicken soup.
‘His name is… Spooner,’ said James. ‘He said something rude about you,’ he added, looking at Amy.
‘Oh, so you were fighting over my honour?’ said Amy with a laugh. ‘How romantic.’
‘I suppose so,’ said James, who hated lying to them. ‘I’m sorry to desert you both for so long.’
‘Well, you’re back in one piece, at least,’ said Charmian. ‘And we can enjoy the rest of the day now.’
James tried. He tried to pretend that he was a normal schoolboy going about a normal Fourth of June. They watched the Parade of Boats. They watched some cricket. They had tea on the lawn. They chatted. But James drifted through it all as if he was in a waking dream. Half the time he wasn’t even aware of what he was talking about. Only a few hours earlier he had defused a bomb and fought for his life. If it wasn’t for his painful wounds, he might believe none of it had really happened.
He had saved the King’s life and there was nobody he could tell about it.
Five o’clock came around and it was time for Charmian to go home. James kissed her goodbye and waved as she headed for the station.
Then it was Amy’s turn to say goodbye. He could tell that she knew something was wrong, but she didn’t say anything.
They promised to keep in touch but their parting was stiff and formal.
He watched her walk over to where her own aunt and uncle were waiting, but halfway there she stopped and suddenly ran back to him.
She kissed him and gripped his hands tightly.
‘It was lovely to see you again,’ she said. ‘I think about you all the time.’ And then she was off and James was left standing by himself on the pavement. He thought, not for the first time, how lonely it was to have secrets.
21
The Men in Grey Hats
Eton was still busy – it would be until after the fireworks – but the cricket matches had finished and the playing fields were quiet apart from a small group of boys playing a makeshift game in a corner of the Triangle. James and Mr Merriot were walking beneath the row of huge elm trees on Upper Club, deep in conversation.
‘I knew Nevin was following me,’ said James. ‘I spotted him a couple of times.’
Merriot smiled. ‘Yes. I wasn’t wrong about you. You do have your uncle’s blood running in your veins. You’re very observant – you don’t miss a thing, do you?’
‘Did he follow me all the way to Austria?’
‘All the way. It was not entirely coincidence that I took you boys to Kitzbühel, James. I was there on business, looking into something…’
‘Business?’ said James. ‘You mean secret business? To do with the bomb plot?’
‘No, no, no. A low-level threat from elsewhere. I don’t suppose it will amount to much, but I’m keeping an eye on it. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that it’s only the Russians we have to watch out for. Hitler could become very troublesome. We know the Nazis will try anything to overrun Austria; they believe in uniting all the German-speaking peoples. There was trouble in Austria back in February, and we can’t trust the Nazis not to try something again. Kitzbühel is close to the German border, and we have a few people in the area. They had reported increased German activity. You don’t need to know about all that, though, it doesn’t concern you.’
‘Doesn’t concern me?’ said James angrily.
‘Not at all,’ said Merriot, taken aback. ‘It has nothing to do with what the communists are up to.’
‘You took us all to an area where you were carrying out spying work and you say it doesn’t concern me?’
‘I knew it wasn’t dangerous, James,’ said Merriot. ‘It was just intelligence gathering.’
‘And how many times have you done it before?’ said James.
‘What do you mean?’
‘How many times have you used us boys as a cover, or worse?’ said James, trying to control his anger. ‘Did you know about Lord Hellebore, for instance? The Millenaria? Fairburn and his Nemesis machine…?’
Merriot stuck his pipe in his mouth and looked away.
‘I had my suspicions,’ he said quietly. ‘My fears about all of them.’
‘You were using me?’
‘You were useful, James, I’ll admit it. More than useful. I would never knowingly have put you into a dangerous situation, though… Until now.’
‘You want me to spy on Roan?’
‘Yes. She has no one else to turn to. Get her to open up to you. We need names, contacts, dates…’
‘I don’t know if I can do it.’
‘She’s not your friend,’ said Merriot, a hint of steel in his voice. ‘She handed you over to that butcher, O’Keefe.’
‘Maybe she was just fighting for something she believed in,’ said James.
‘And how, pray, was murdering you going to make the world a better place? Hm?’
James fell silent. The sun was still bright on the grass and turning the leaves of the elms an intense green. Behind them the ancient buildings of the school were glowing honey coloured against a soft blue sky. There was the scent of flowers and freshly mown grass on the breeze, and in the distance the towers and turrets of Windsor Castle rose up over the whole scene, the royal standard fluttering in the breeze.
‘This is what we are fighting for,’ said Merriot with an expansive sweep of his arm. ‘This is what we believe in. Cricket, and soccer, and cream teas, the royal family, the Houses of Parliament, schools like this one, rowing on the river, the music halls, beer and pies and laughter and common decency. Look at these elm trees; someone planted them a long time ago, with the belief that his children’s children might sit in their shade. They have grown and spread, and been cared for by generations of gardeners. And they will stand here for long after we have gone. In a hundred years boys like you will enjoy their shade in the summer and the trees will gladden their hearts in the springtime when they burst into leaf. But there are some people who would cut these elm trees down. They would say, “If we can’t all enjoy their shade then nobody should be allowed to sit under them.” There are some people who would light a big fire and destroy everything. But that is not our way – we English like to muddle through in our haphazard manner.’
‘It’s not quite as simple as that, though, is it, sir?’ said James.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Nevin shot Dandy O’Keefe in the forehead. How does that fit in with cream teas and rowing on the river? Just so that we can enjoy all this, somebody is fighting dirty somewhere and behaving just as badly as Dandy O’Keefe.’
‘Let’s not forget, James,’ said Merriot with a distinctly hard edge, ‘that the only reason Nevin shot Dandy is because he was trying to kill you.’
‘I know, sir,’ said James. ‘And I’m glad that he did. Dandy was a killer, but even so, some of what he said made sense.’
‘If communism made sense,’ said Merriot, ‘then surely the Soviets wouldn’t have to murder so many people and cause so much pain and human misery to get their way.’
‘But if we lie and cheat and kill, sir,’ said James, ‘are we not just as bad as them?’
‘It is not so simple as that,’ Merriot snapped, and there was real anger in his voice for a moment. Then he relaxed and went on in a gentler tone. ‘I understand your concern, James. There is unfairness i
n the country. Some people are very rich and some are very poor. Things will change. But change slowly. We do not want a bloody revolution, with people lined up against the wall and shot. How many people would have died if Dandy’s bomb had gone off? Hmm? Not just the King. But all those other men and women and children. The communists don’t care about individuals, about you or me, or anyone. For them there is just the mass, the proletariat, the people as one.’
‘But don’t you operate in exactly the same way, sir?’
Merriot stopped walking, taken aback.
‘No, absolutely not,’ he said.
‘You work for the good of all as well, don’t you?’ said James. ‘The good of the country, the British Empire. Which must sometimes mean that individuals get hurt. You make the same excuses as Dandy, that in order to do good you must sometimes do bad things. And you want me to be a part of it. You want me to lie to Roan, to trap her. You want me to forget that she is a human being. Is that the British way?’
James was getting heated and emotional. He knew deep down it had nothing to do with believing anything that Dandy had said, but everything to do with his feelings for Roan, despite what she’d done.
‘When you are young,’ said Merriot, ‘the world seems so simple and straightforward. There is right and there is wrong. In the cowboy films the goodies wear white hats and the baddies wear black. As you get older you realise the world is not so simple. There are men in grey hats.’
‘And what colour hat do you want me to wear, sir?’
‘James, just answer me one thing.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Would you rather that bomb had gone off?’
‘No,’ said James quietly.
‘That is the only question you have to ask yourself. Leave the rest to the grown-ups. This is not a game. We could have a fanciful political discussion, but the reality is a whole chapel full of innocent people blown to atoms.’
James looked over at the ornate roof of the chapel and tried to imagine what the skyline would look like without it.
‘What do you want me to do?’
James found Roan as soon as he got back to Codrose’s. She was hanging around in the hallway near the slab pretending to be busy and he got the feeling that she had been waiting for him. She seemed agitated but was trying to disguise it breezy cheerfulness.
Almost the first thing she asked him, in a casual way that he could tell was not casual at all, was whether he’d seen Dandy.
James waited before replying, weighing in his mind whether or not he could go through with the deception.
‘I saw him, yes,’ he said, as he had been instructed, trying to keep his voice neutral. ‘At the chapel.’
‘The chapel?’
‘In the crypt.’
Roan put her hand to her mouth, waiting for more.
‘We can’t talk here,’ said James. ‘Meet me at the fives courts – I’ll go now; you leave in five minutes.’
Roan gripped his arm.
‘James, you have to tell me what happened. Is he all right?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. We can’t talk here.’
He pulled away from her and walked quickly out into Judy’s Passage before she could say anything else.
His heart was pounding; he felt a layer of cold sweat under his sticky clothing. He had delayed talking to Roan because all the confusion had returned. When he had left Merriot he had been certain of what he wanted to do, but now, seeing her again, he had been thrown back into turmoil. When he was with her he could no longer think straight.
The streets were deserted; everyone else was making their way to the banks of the river for the fireworks. The fives courts were on the northern edge of the school next to School Field, and James had counted on them being empty.
The courts were modelled after a section of the chapel wall, between two buttresses, where generations of boys wearing heavy gloves had hit balls to each other against the stonework. In the end the game had become so popular that the school had built more than seventy replicas of this court for the boys to play on.
There was nobody playing when James got there, and the low sun was throwing the courts into deep shadow. It was very quiet. Other boys might have found the peacefulness calming, but not James. He wished that he were smashing a ball as hard as he could against one of those brick walls.
He waited for a long time, the shadows lengthening, half of him hoping that Roan wouldn’t show up, that she would run and never come back, the other half of him desperate to see her again.
Then he heard the clack-clack-clack of her shoes approaching and there she was, looking small and even more anxious than before. James hated feeling that he had this power over her.
‘I came as quick as I could,’ she said. ‘I had to run an errand for the Dame.’
‘Were you followed?’ said James.
‘Followed? I don’t think so,’ said Roan. ‘I wasn’t really looking. How much do you know, James?’
‘Dandy told me everything.’
‘Oh, God. But what happened? I have to know. I’ve been going crazy.’
‘I went to the chapel,’ said James, ‘to the crypt, and I found him there. I knew what he was planning to do.’
‘But he didn’t do it.’
‘No,’ said James. ‘I think he was looking for an excuse not to. I talked him out of it. The idea of killing all those people…’
‘But where is he?’
‘He made me promise, Roan, if he didn’t do it, he made me promise that I wouldn’t say a word to anyone, and that I’d look after you, help you, not get you into trouble.’ James could almost believe it himself, and he wished with all his heart that it were the truth.
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Roan. ‘Where is he now? Where’s he gone?’
James looked at her; there was fear in her big black eyes.
‘He wouldn’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I suppose he thought it would be safer that way. All he said was –’
‘What? What did he say?’ Roan interrupted desperately.
‘Be quiet and I’ll tell you,’ said James angrily.
‘Sorry. But I’ve been so scared. When he first explained what we were going to do, I thought it was terrible. Terrible but necessary.’
‘To kill all those people?’ said James.
‘That wasn’t the original plan,’ said Roan. ‘Originally it was just one man. Just the King. When I found out we were to blow up the chapel…’
‘Well, Dandy obviously feels the same way,’ said James, remembering how different it had really been when he had faced the cold-blooded killer in the crypt. ‘Because he had a change of heart. He said he was going to go into hiding and once he was sure that it was safe he would come back for you.’
‘Come back for me?’ Roan scoffed. ‘Who does he think he is? Does he expect me to sit around here like a dope waiting for him?’
‘Yes,’ said James. ‘He was very insistent.’
‘That man, he’s only ever thought about himself.’ A thought suddenly struck her and the fear returned to her face. ‘What about the bomb?’ she said, her voice almost a whisper.
‘He got it in there without anyone seeing,’ said James. ‘He must have got it out all right as well. I’ve seen no police. Everything at the school is completely normal.’
‘I know,’ said Roan. ‘I’ve thought I was dreaming.’
James licked his lips and took a deep breath. It was time for the next step.
‘If I’m going to help you, Roan,’ he said, ‘you have to tell me everything. How did you end up here? Who are you working for? What was your escape plan? What did you plan to do next?’
‘I can’t tell you anything, James.’
‘You must.’
‘It would put you in too much danger.’
James gave a harsh cold laugh.
‘Put me in danger?’ he said bitterly. ‘Only this morning you were plotting to kill me. Dandy sent you to make sure I went to the chapel, didn’t he?
So he could blow me up along with the King and everyone else.’
‘But I tried to warn you, James, didn’t I?’ said Roan. ‘I didn’t want you to go, really I didn’t. Don’t you remember? Why do you think I said those things, if I really wanted you to go there?’
‘But you didn’t stop me.’
‘I couldn’t. I like you, James, I like you a lot, but I’m scared. Scared of Dandy. I didn’t want to cross him. He can be very violent, James. And I’m scared of the people who hired us to do this job. They’re very powerful, and very dangerous. I don’t want you mixed up in this any more.’
‘Yes, but I am mixed up in it, aren’t I?’ said James. ‘And I don’t know why. And I need you to tell me.’
‘I don’t know, honest I don’t,’ said Roan. ‘You have to believe me. We were just following orders. And now that we’ve failed they’ll probably come after us. They don’t like failure.’
‘That’s why you have to tell me who they are so I can help,’ said James.
Roan put her fingertips to James’s face and gave him a sad smile.
‘You’re very sweet, darling, but you’re just a lad. What can you do?’
‘I may be just a boy, but I’m all you’ve got now that Dandy has gone,’ said James. ‘And you’re all that I’ve got. They want me dead, and maybe, just maybe, you’re the only person who can stop that. Unless…’
‘Unless what?’ said Roan warily.
‘Unless I just go to the police and tell them everything.’
‘No.’ Roan took hold of James with both hands now and stared deep into his eyes. ‘You have to promise me you won’t do that, darling. It’d be the end for me.’
Then she put her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth. Her skin was cool but her breath was hot. James could smell oranges and something spicy.
She put her lips to his ear.
‘The code-name of the operation is Snow-Blind,’ she said. ‘My code-name is Diamond, Dandy’s is Emerald, the man we report to is Amethyst. Amethyst works for Ruby. Ruby runs the cell in Portugal. His real name is Ferreira, Martinho Ferreira.’
‘And who does Ferreira report to?’ said James. ‘Who is the next in command?’