Pantheon

Chapter Thirty-nine

It was dark and deserted on the platform at Union Station and, thanks to the cloudless sky, cold too. James had grabbed only what he could pack in thirty seconds from his room at the Elizabethan Club, received a warm shake of the hand and a ‘Good luck’ from Walters the butler, then run almost the entire length of College Street — past the couples sharing milkshakes in the drugstore and the medics drinking beer at the Owl Shop — until the neighbourhood got decidedly seamier. Once he had reached the railway tracks, he took a sharp left, sprinting until he could see the lights and hear the shunting and braking of the railway yard. Perhaps a cab would have been quicker, but he was too impatient to wait for one to appear. What was more, running meant there was no one he had to trust but himself.

It was nearly nine o’clock; the chances, he knew, of a train leaving for Washington just when he needed it were almost non-existent. And so it had proved. The next useful train was the Federal, the overnight service that would — if it were anything like the milk trains he knew from England — trundle through the small hours at horse-and-cart speeds, stopping and starting at every tiny little hamlet en route.

And yet it would be better than standing still. More to the point, there was little else he could do until morning and that, surely, was equally true of Preston McAndrew. As long as he reached Washington, DC, early tomorrow, and was able to get started right away, he would not be too late. That, at least, was what he told himself.

But as he paced the platform, his shirt sticky with sweat and clinging to his back, he could not escape the fear that the reverse might be true. Dorothy’s words had been clear. He said he was off to have ‘the most important meeting of my entire life’. He said that he had to go right away…

What if that meeting were tonight, even at midnight? What if McAndrew were travelling to the capital by motor car; would that mean he would get there later or earlier than by train? James cursed himself. If only he had understood earlier, he would have got to the Dean while he was still in New Haven. If only he had had the wit to put Lund at his ease. Florence would have known what to do: she’d have had Lund spilling his guts, the Assistant Dean explaining that the naked photos had merely acted as the signpost, pointing him to McAndrew’s larger, grander scheme, the one Lund had only truly grasped when he read the Dean’s lecture, Cleansing Fire. Somehow Lund had made the mistake of letting on to McAndrew what he knew, or at least what he suspected. That, surely, is why the Dean had decided his assistant had to die, so that no one else should have the same inkling.

James now understood the Dean’s aim well enough: the lecture had made that clear. He was determined to keep the United States out of the war, so that a great eugenic experiment might unfold. Let Britain suffer a catastrophic defeat and then watch the consequences, observing as the weak and the inferior were wiped out in their tens of millions while only the strongest would survive. Britain was to be a giant laboratory, its population mere lab rats, while McAndrew’s hypothesis was put to the ultimate test. And once it was done, once this cleansing fire had burnt through every corner of England, devouring the ‘runts’ from the British litter that were too feeble to save themselves, those still standing, stronger and better than the rest, would be reinforced by the return of one hundred and twenty-five of the fittest, cleverest children, safely incubated in New Haven.

It was a monstrous scheme. However much he loathed Bernard Grey and the rest of the Oxford circle that had connived in Florence and Harry’s departure — and he did loathe them — James refused to believe they could have collaborated in the entirety of such a diabolical plan. What they had colluded in was a plan to spare a special, privileged class of children, so that, in the event of catastrophic defeat, this elite might be sprinkled like top-quality seed into the soil of a devastated Britain. They doubtless believed they were saving the lives of a hundred and twenty-five innocent children who were, yes, more deserving than others because of their value to the English national ‘stock’. That was morally reprehensible enough. But there was a world of difference between planning for the contingency of a British defeat by the Nazis and positively willing that outcome. Whatever nonsense Grey and the other socialists, Fabians and do-gooding social reformers believed, they were still British patriots, firm in their support of the war effort and in their opposition to Hitler. They did not long to see German bombs flatten British cities and a jackbooted Gestapo gauleiter in every English parish hall. McAndrew must, surely, have hidden from them his ultimate purpose — that what they saw as a doomsday to be planned for, he saw as a dream to be desired. For the Dean actively yearned for calamity and slaughter, for the sake of his warped, repulsive notion of ‘science’.

But if that was the end the Dean was pursuing, James still had no inkling of his chosen means. Which meant he had no idea what he would do once he got to Washington, how on earth he would find McAndrew who would, after all, be one man in a capital city, a man who could be anywhere. If only he had understood all this yesterday or even earlier today, when there was still time. If only he could ask Lund, who might have known the answers, who might have uncovered the details of the Dean’s plan, thereby signing his own death warrant. If only, if only, if only. James kicked the gravel, the toe of his shoe sending up little clouds of dust.

Through the gloom he now saw a light, some distance away. It was getting larger and now came the first rumble of noise. He looked at his watch for the fifth time in twenty minutes. The overnight train was not due to pull in here for another quarter of an hour. Only as it got nearer did he realize that this was a train coming into the other platform from the opposite direction.

There was a sudden commotion and a flurry of colour on his own side of the tracks. James wheeled around to see a woman gesticulating at a station guard. All he could see clearly, picked out by the sodium lamps of the station waiting room — no blackout here — was a bright bulb of honey-blonde hair. And then he heard the voice and knew instantly that it was Dorothy Lake.

She saw him at the same moment and broke into an athlete’s sprint, running towards him with no restraint. She began shouting long before she had reached him. ‘You must get on that train! Quick! Get on that train!’ She pointed across the tracks at the small locomotive, drawing no more than three carriages, now slowing to a halt, hissing with steam.

James could hardly hear her. ‘What? That’s going the wrong way.’

‘No,’ she panted, catching up with him at last. ‘No, that’s the right way. That’s where you need to go. Take that train to Greenwich. Get off there and ask for Hope Farm. Harry and Florence are there.’

James felt his heart stop. For a second, he and everything around him froze. He stared at Dorothy Lake and knew in an instant — from the earnest, pleading urgency of her face — that she was telling the truth.

‘I don’t und-’ he started, but she cut him off.

‘Don’t say anything!’ she said, the glow of her cheeks visible even in the half-light. ‘Just get on that train. I can’t tell you how I know, but I know. Your wife is waiting for you. Your son is waiting for you. Go!’

‘I… I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can. The train’s right here.’

‘I have to get to Washington. There’s something I have to do before it’s-’

On the opposite platform the guard was marching through clouds of steam, inspecting both ends for any passengers still getting on or off. He had a flag in his hand.

Dorothy turned back to him, her eyes afire. ‘You must go now. I don’t know how much longer they’ll be there. Now’s your chance!’

‘Dorothy-’

‘You said that all you wanted was to see them again.’ Her eyes were both pleading and baffled. On the other platform, the guard was raising his whistle to his lips. ‘Or were you just lying?’

‘I want to see them more than anything in the world. But there’s more at stake here than me and my family.’

The guard bellowed, ‘Last call! All aboard!’

Dorothy’s eyes were now two wells of tears. ‘I wanted to help you.’

He gripped her by her shoulders. ‘I know you did. And I will never forget what you’ve done.’ A piercing sound cut through the air: the guard’s whistle. ‘I love my wife and I love my child. Very much. But I also love my country.’

They were suddenly engulfed in a fresh cloud of white steam, their voices swallowed up in a loud hiss as the pistons of the locomotive cranked back into motion.

‘There’s still time,’ Dorothy cried as the train inched slowly forwards. ‘You could jump on. Florence and Harry are less than an hour away.’

James did not answer. Instead he watched the train gather speed and move away, its tail-lamps becoming smaller and smaller until they were a mere pinprick of light, no bigger than a distant star. He did not know what to say to this young woman but at last, when the train had disappeared from view, he turned to her.

‘Dorothy, I know what this looks like. And I know what you’re thinking: that men like me, maybe all men, are snakes and that we can’t be trusted. But it’s not true. There are some bad ones, I can’t deny it. But the rest of us try to do our best, we really do. Even when it doesn’t look like it, we try to do what’s decent and what’s right.’ He wasn’t making any sense.

Now she looked at him. ‘What is it my uncle is doing in Washington that would make you sacrifice your own family?’

‘I don’t know yet and I don’t want to say until I’m certain.’ He gazed at her damp, flushed face, her distraught expression. ‘And it’s nothing you’re responsible for.’

‘I could telephone him and tell him you’re coming after him.’

‘You could, Dorothy. But I’m taking the chance that you won’t. Because you’re a good person and you have your whole life ahead of you. And look what you were prepared to do to save just one family.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘No, nor do I. Not completely. But we will. And you will have done the right thing.’ They stood in silence for a moment until he spoke again. ‘Besides. You don’t know where in Washington he is.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because if you did you would have told me.’

The stationmaster was back, checking his pocket watch. He called over to them, the only passengers on the platform. ‘The Federal to Washington, DC, this track. Federal to Washington, arriving this track.’

James looked at Dorothy Lake, and as he did so her face crumpled, the sophisticated veneer completely gone now. Impulsively, he hugged her for just a moment. ‘Thank you, for what you’ve done.’ He pulled away from her to give her an exhausted smile. ‘Wish me luck.’