Solemn Graves by James R. Benn

Author:James R. Benn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-07-10T19:36:28+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

I joined Big Mike in the mess tent. I’d sent him there, figuring it was dangerous to keep the big Detroit cop from solid food for too long, and gone alone to check with Friedman to see if we’d gotten anything back from Harding.

“Nothing from Sam,” I said, joining him with a scrambled-egg sandwich balanced on my mess kit. The eggs were powdered, but at least the bread was fresh.

“He must be busy with something,” Big Mike said. “It’s not like we asked for a lot of dope.”

“Hey, how’d you get bacon?” I said, seeing the mound he had in his mess kit. “They said they didn’t have any.”

“It pays to make friends with the cooks and bakers,” Big Mike said. “They keep back a little for themselves and their pals.”

Cooks and bakers.

I froze, my sandwich halfway to my mouth.

“Cooks and bakers,” I said, hoping that by saying it out loud, it would make sense. The phrase had jolted something in my mind, something that sparked at the mention of cooks. And bakers.

“Yeah,” Big Mike said. “What about ’em?”

“They’re professions. A lot of the SOE spy networks are named after professions,” I said. The British-run Special Operations Executive organized clandestine circuits to collect information on the enemy and maintain radio communications with London. A lot of them were named after professions. “Author, Farmer, Minister, that sort of thing.”

“Okay,” Big Mike said, his forehead furrowed quizzically.

“Fisherman,” I said, blowing steam from my coffee. “Yvonne might have been referring to her circuit.”

“Yeah, it could be. And maybe Gustave was a member,” he said. “Or maybe Gustave is a fisherman. That’s a pretty thin thread, Billy. And who’s the German?”

“Maybe Rast,” I said. “Since he brought her here from the hospital. Or the Kraut from the train, or whoever interrogated her after she was arrested.”

“It’s possible,” Big Mike said, warming to the notion. “Maybe we should ask for help from SOE.”

He winked as he said it. It wasn’t a half-bad idea. For several reasons.

Right around the time Kaz lost the love of his life—Daphne Seaton—I met her sister, Diana. Diana Seaton was unlike any woman I’d ever known. Not only because she was British upper crust and had a father with a Sir in front of his name, which were damn few and far between in South Boston, but because she knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. She volunteered for the SOE after her experiences as an auxiliary with the British Expeditionary Force in 1940. She’d gone to France to work on a headquarters switchboard, but found herself retreating with the rest of the troops as the Germans closed in on Dunkirk.

She’d made it onto a destroyer, only to have it sunk in the crossing. Diana watched helplessly as wounded men laid out on stretchers slipped from the listing deck and drowned in the cold Channel waters. She went overboard in her life jacket and managed to be picked up by one of the small civilian craft which braved the voyage.

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