His Master's Voice part 2: An MI7 Assassin origins story
Stone leaned towards her conspiratorially. ‘In Germany, you know, they’re banned from eating bratwurst,’ he said.
Welcome to MI7 Assassin! My new WW1 thriller kicks off with two origins short stories to warm you up: His Masters’s Voice and Scent of a Killer.
Thank you to my generous paying subscribers for supporting my writing on this platform. And welcome to all recent subs who’ve joined us! You’re most likely here because of all the Doctor Who material, but I hope you’ll stick around for MI7 Assassin, because it’s a real pageturner.
My paying subs get the hot thrill of reading His Master’s Voice the Sunday before it goes out to everyone else on Wednesday, but regardless of when you get your hands on it, I’ve love to hear what you think of it, so give me your feedback below!
Missed part one? Read it here:
His Masters’s Voice part 2
The Voice was the one weapon Stone had not taken into account. The Voice that was the imperial embodiment of the most powerful nation on Earth. That must never be defied, on pain of unimaginable consequences. The Voice that was sapping his spirit, taking away his resolve, confusing his senses.
On trench raids, nothing was ever left to such chance. The raiders always made a night-time recce the night before, familiarising themselves with the lay of the land. Working out where the enemy’s strong points were. And any weapons or booby traps that could be an unpleasant surprise.
So Stone had planned his assassination of Crowe with considerable care.
He had driven up to Colchester from London the previous weekend to study his house in The Avenue. He knew the town well from his music hall days, when he’d performed at the Grand Palace of Varieties in the High Street. But he needed to get inside the house and familiarise himself with the layout and where the bodyguards were, and the best way to do this was to make friends with a female member of staff.
In this third year of the war, there were few home deliveries. So one of Crowe’s servants went out to purchase provisions from the local shops every day and Stone was waiting for her. She was in her early forties, he judged, and carried herself well, tall and angular with dark blonde hair gathered into a neat bun at the back of her neck. Under her somber winter coat, he noted she had a sedate, brown, ‘make do and mend’ dress. His mother had one rather similar. It had originally been a Victorian crinoline gown. Something in the set of her mouth and the lines around her eyes spoke of grief. Stone had seen it on the faces of so many wives and widows. Her black armband confirmed her loss.
Stone had inherited his thick black hair from his mother, but where she had a classic English rose complexion and a rather narrow, drawn face, he had his father’s square jaw and aquiline nose. Or so he was told. He’d never met his father. It was hard to be sure from the only photograph he had of him.
Stone had not had too many difficulties with the opposite sex. In fact, some women said he looked like the matinee idol Ivor Novello. Especially with the dark shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep. But he didn’t really want to look that handsome. It might give women – or men – the wrong idea about him. Especially as he wasn’t sure what the right idea was. He was still figuring that one out.
He tailed her as she visited various market stalls in the High Street and then followed her back into a butcher’s shop on Crouch Street. She asked for ten bratwurst sausages and as the butcher wrapped them in greaseproof paper, Stone leaned towards her conspiratorially. ‘In Germany, you know, they’re banned from eating bratwurst.’
‘They’re probably eating American corned beef instead,’ she said sardonically.
‘Yes you’re probably right,’ he responded curiously. She seemed surprisingly well-informed about life in Germany. Maybe it had something to do with her master being half German.
‘They’re called Victory Sausages now,’ said the butcher coldly, annoyed by his intervention.
‘And quite right, too,’ Stone said. ‘But, you see, in Germany they need the cow guts to make the gas cells for their Zeppelins.’
‘Really?’ smiled the woman. The butcher looked at him suspiciously. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I read it in the Daily Express,’ replied Stone nonchalantly, and turned back to her. ‘Apparently it takes more than 250,000 cows to make just one Zeppelin.’ He winked at her. ‘That’s a lot of gas.’ She grinned. ‘Actually, I’ll have some of those “Zeppelins” myself,’ he ordered.
‘They’re Victory Sausages,’ insisted the butcher. ‘And they were the last ones.’
‘Looks like I’ll have to do without, then.’
‘Yes I’m afraid you will,’ said the butcher firmly.
Stone followed the woman outside.
‘I’m so sorry I deprived you of your supper,’ she smiled at Stone.
‘That’s all right. Enjoy your victory.’ He looked at her laden baskets. ‘Oh, please. Let me give you a hand.’
Despite her protests, he insisted he give her a lift back to The Avenue in his car. It was a Ford Model T, manufactured in Britain, with a right hand drive. He’d paid for it in cash some months before and given a false name and address: Eamon Peters, the name he used to introduce himself now. She was Anna Hampson and she explained she was the new cook for a house in The Avenue. His car had the customary huge gas bag secured to the roof, designed to solve the petrol shortage. ‘Look,’ he laughed, ‘I have my very own Zeppelin.’ A side wind caught it and it almost broke free from its ‘moorings’. ‘Whoah! The Zeppelin’s trying to escape!’ She laughed and he stole a quick sideways glance, catching her look of appreciation. Maybe no one had tried to make her smile recently.
It was Anna’s afternoon off, so, after dropping off her groceries, he offered to take her for a drive in the country. After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted his offer. It was wartime, after all.
They went to the quaint village of Dedham and had tea and hot buttered crumpets at the Sun Inn in front of a blazing fire. He found himself enjoying her company immensely. She knew a lot about the war, and possessed a keen analytical mind. She talked about the recent Battle of Jutland in considerable detail and gave her opinion that it was actually a defeat for the British navy. He had to resist revealing the knowledge he was privy to as an MI7 agent as well as the information he had illegally acquired in Room 38. He told her how he’d been invalided out of the army with shell shock and was now working as a munitions superintendent. He wore an ‘On War Service’ badge to keep the white feathers at bay. He said he’d come up to Colchester to look for work. The factories in the town had to be safer than Silvertown, where he was currently employed. It was a disaster waiting to happen. He’d heard there were vacancies at the Paxman factory.
She’d only been in the job a few weeks, with just one maidservant helping to run the house, due to the wartime staff shortages. Crowe had three bodyguards who acted as his butler, valet and footman, but were rather lacking in finesse. Pugilism seemed more their style, she said wryly. This was all valuable information for Stone, but he didn’t pursue the subject further. To him they were like German sentries he’d observe on a recce. He had no further interest in them. She revealed that her husband had died at the Battle of Loos. ‘But that was over a year ago,’ he said gently. ‘That’s a long time to be in mourning. Were you very much in love?’
‘I wear the armband to stop men being too forward.’
‘Am I being too forward?’ he asked, leaning towards her. She kissed him passionately by way of reply. He could feel her hunger, and knew she wanted him. After kissing her back, he pulled away. Stone had fought at Loos, too, so he was interested to know what regiment her husband was in, but she didn’t want to talk about the past. It was wartime and she knew what she wanted. ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said, looking meaningfully at him.
Such brief encounters were so much more commonplace than anyone liked to admit. It was dark as they drove back to Colchester, with Anna leaning up against him, her hand on his thigh. She asked him to park down the road from the house, which suited him more than she knew. Her room was in the basement, next to the kitchen, with both rooms looking out onto a small railed-off sunken courtyard. He waited a couple of minutes out on the pavement while she let herself in through the side door of the house, and then swiftly walked up the drive and vaulted over the railings down to the courtyard. He was able to climb in through her window, thus avoiding entering through the servants hall. They still had to be careful because they were not completely secluded: there were coal cellars leading off from the kitchen that were used as shelters, so there was always the risk of an air raid. The Zeppelins regularly used the moonlit railway line from Colchester to London to guide them to their industrial targets, with any remaining bombs being dropped on the town on their way back to Germany.
Hers was a typically bare servant’s room – an iron-framed bed, a dressing table, and a chair – but was all the barer for no personal effects, such as a photo of her husband. ‘They’ve still got to be sent down,’ she explained. ‘I want to be sure the job is satisfactory first.’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
She lit a Craven ‘A’ cigarette and offered him one, but he declined. ‘It’s a lot of work and his bodyguards aren’t pulling their weight. He hired them to protect him, so they think they’re too good to do anything else. And it all falls on my shoulders and Brenda’s. That’s the … well, I don’t know what you would call her anymore. General dogsbody.’
‘What does the master’s wife think of it?’
‘Mrs. Crowe? It’s strange.’ Anna took a drag on her cigarette and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘She’s German – and that’s also strange. Why isn’t she locked up like all the other German women in this country? That’s not right, you know.’
‘What was the first thing that was strange?’
‘Well, I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but the mistress rarely visits. She prefers to stay in their London apartment.’
‘More things to do in London?’
‘No. That’s not it. She stayed one weekend and I was awoken in the middle of the night by her terrible screams. I don’t know what he was doing to her, I dread to think. But the next morning she looked awful. She’s absolutely terrified of him.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Seven o’clock! I must make his dinner. Back soon.’ She carefully stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette, leaving the rest to smoke later, gave him a quick smile, and left.
While she was gone, Stone leaned back in the solitary chair and considered what he knew. There were a number of mysteries. A top official at the Foreign Office is half-German, and responsible for the naval blockade of Germany. He has a German wife Clema, whose favourite uncle is a German admiral who has proposed unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain. Holtzendorff’s infamous memorandum had been intercepted by British Intelligence and Stone had discovered a copy in Room 38.
‘If we were to break England’s backbone, then the war would immediately be decided in our favour. England’s backbone is its shipping, which brings to the islands of Great Britain the imports necessary to maintain daily life and the war industries, and which ensures its solvency abroad.
‘I am not afraid of saying that, given the way things now stand, with unlimited submarine warfare we can force England to sue for peace in five months. This, however, applies only to unlimited submarine warfare.’
To say that Crowe’s family connection to the head of the German Admiralty made him a security threat would be something of an understatement. Was he a German agent as so many alleged, and was this the real reason he was faking the British blockade?
There was a further mystery. Why wasn’t this a concern for British intelligence? The British people were whipped up into a frenzy of hate by the press with newspaper headlines that encouraged mob violence against Germans living in Britain. Headlines like ‘Clear Out The Germans Say The People’ and ‘The Women Rise Up in Wrath Against A Nation that Poisons Their Sons & Murders Innocent Children.’ Those were two of Captain Pollard’s headlines, and ones he was particularly pleased with. He had showed them to Stone as examples of the style he was looking for.
As a result, German men were interned in prison camps for the duration of the war. And German women held in lunatic asylums ‘for their safety’.
But not Clema, Crowe’s wife. She was able to go about her normal life unchallenged. None of this smelt right, reflected Stone.
‘Finally,’ whispered Anna entering her room and locking the door. ‘But we need to be quiet. Christopher and Brenda are still clearing away and washing up. Now where were we?’ she smiled invitingly as she reclined on the bed.
He hesitated. He had been lost in his thoughts about the mysteries surrounding Crowe. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked as he joined her.
She smiled, lifting her arms and lacing them behind his head, drawing him down to her. ‘Yes’, she whispered.
‘We may not see each other again, so do you–’ She silenced him with a long slow kiss. After a few minutes she drew back and looked up at him.
‘We’re just two lonely ships that pass in the night. Tomorrow you’ll go back to your life and no, we won’t see each other again.’
That was perfect for Stone’s plans but there was still a problem. It wasn’t the age gap. After all, he’d once had a fling with Madam Octavia the Snake Charmer who was in her fifties.
The problem was that he was usually attracted to exotic women, the stranger the better. And Anna was far from exotic: she was normal, homely even. Far removed from the women he’d encountered in the music halls and written about in his first book, Backstage, rejected by the publishers because it was too racy.
He tried imagining Anna as Beatrice Zagni, the female contortionist he also had a brief affair with. Beatrice, often known as the female Sandow, the great body builder, was double-jointed and could do all manner of remarkable things with her body, but he rather thought Anna would be strictly missionary position.
As she lay there, waiting patiently for him, he desperately scanned his memories for someone else suitable.
He was a sucker for a foreign accent. So finally he imagined Anna as Monique, who he had helped during the retreat from Mons. He had rescued her from Sergeant Dawes when he discovered him looting her home. Stone stopped him and Dawes had grudgingly admired him for his courage. But he still had to ‘stripe’ him for insubordination. Hence the small scar on Stone’s left cheek. Stone had seen Monique a number of times since and he always found her as alluring as any Kirchner pin-up. That did the trick. He was back to his usual form, his performance was satisfactory, and all was well.
Later as Anna slept, Stone checked his watch and slipped out of bed. It was 1am and time to go to work, familiarising himself with his method of entry and exit for when he came back the following weekend to carry out the assassination.
He silently pulled on his clothes and quietly padded out of her room in his bare feet, then stood in the passageway for a few minutes, listening for any movements within the house. All was silent. He checked the basement, familiarising himself with the kitchen, the servants’ hall and the back door, including the key on the chain hanging conveniently next to it, in case he should have to make a fast exit through the house. Stone passed two other bedrooms, one he judged to be Brenda’s, and the other a bodyguard’s, judging by the deep bass snoring emanating from within. He then made his way upstairs and through the rest of the house, up to the fourth floor. He passed the remaining two bodyguards’ rooms, who unlike their colleague, slept quietly, and finally faced the door to Crowe’s study. He didn’t go inside, instead he retraced his steps back down to the basement, and into Anna’s room. As he slipped back inside, she stirred and mumbled something. He whispered goodbye to her but she was already fast asleep again. He quickly put on his socks and shoes and climbed out the window.
Outside, the night was still and cold, dim moonlight barely breaking through a thin blanket of high cloud. Stone circled the house, checking that all the windows were dark. He came back to the front and effortlessly shinned up the drainpipe at the front of the house to the third floor, so he was level with the top of an impressive bay window. He leapt from the drainpipe and landed on all fours on its sloping roof. Easy enough for an aerialist. It was just as well the publishers rejected The Aerialist, so no one knew about his secret talents. They had said it wasn’t exciting enough. Crossing the stage on a wire was ‘too run of the mill’ they said. Hah! What did they want? Blondin crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope? The rejection still rankled with him.
Balanced there, he looked directly through a large sash window into Crowe’s magnificent library on the top floor. It was laden with antiquarian books up into the eaves of the house. He checked the window fastening and it was easy enough to open. This was where Anna said Crowe spent his evenings after dinner. He would read until ten o’clock and then go to bed. Stone looked up. His plan after dispatching Crowe was to jump across to the drainpipe, but if something went wrong and the alarm was raised, the quickest route would be to climb up over the roof and then down through the spreading branches of the cedar tree into the grounds. He wasn’t going to risk making his getaway by car. There were few vehicles on the country roads at night and with one telephone call to the police the London road could be blocked at Witham or Chelmsford. He’d have to make other arrangements.
Having made his recce, Stone was satisfied with his plan. He carefully retraced his footsteps over the bay window, jumped for the drainpipe, grabbing it firmly with both hands, and quickly and efficiently shinned down, a dark shadow barely distinguishable amongst the other shadows. Back on the ground he dusted off his hands, a firm but satisfied smile on his face, and slipped off into the night.
And so it was the following Saturday Stone made his move. He caught the train from Liverpool Street to Colchester in the morning. He needed to make arrangements for his escape after the execution. It was market day and the town centre was thronging with crowds. He headed to the Hythe station and from took a short train ride to the outlying village of Wivenhoe. There he met up with the skipper of a Thames barge in the Black Buoy, one of Wivenhoe’s seemingly endless pubs, and after supplying him with several pints of ale and a steak and kidney pie, came to a mutually beneficial arrangement for his escape. On his return to Colchester, it was growing dark and Castle Park was closing. He hid his coat and hat in the shrubbery near the bandstand.
It was now 6pm, and he still had hours to spare, and not wanting to spend more time than necessary in a public house in case his face was remembered, he took himself to the Vaudeville Electric Cinema at St Botolph’s Junction. It was a warm haven and was showing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He was a great admirer of Jules Verne, but his mind was elsewhere and he could barely take in the story. Not least because, before the film started, the audience was shown a newsreel of the Western Front. The display card that claimed ‘A great victory on the Somme’ with sanitised images of the trenches only hardened his resolve.
At nine that evening Stone stood on the pavement outside Crowe’s house. He could see the warm yellow lamplight shining from Crowe’s study window. The rest of the house was in darkness. Even the top of Anna’s window in the semi-basement. He glanced around at the deserted street. The wind was picking up, causing the privet leaves of the hedge to shiver and rustle. Satisfied there was no one around, he pulled on his balaclava and slipped into the grounds of the house. Halfway up the drainpipe, he was hit by a sudden squall of wind and rain, the wet metal turning slippery in his hands and he grasped it tighter, squeezing it between his thighs for extra grip. Then he jumped across onto the bay window roof and eased the library window open.
Mauser in hand, he stepped inside and confronted the head of the Contraband Committee.
But now, the Voice of the ruler, the Voice that required tribute, loyalty and obedience at all times, had paralysed him. He was totally under Crowe’s spell.
He had the Voice of his headmaster. The Voice of his commanding officer. The Voice of his bishop. He had it drummed into him since childhood that no one challenges the Voice. Because they must know their place. That’s the purpose of the Voice. How dare he think otherwise?
The rain began to lash against the glass. A storm was coming. Crowe saw the look of submission in Stone’s eyes. He pressed home his advantage. ‘What made you decide to kill me, young man? Are you an anarchist? A revolutionary? A peace prattler? I’m curious.’
‘None of the above.’
‘None of the above. Sir.’
‘None of the above, sir. I just want the war to stop. Sir.’ He was no longer thinking for himself, simply responding to the Voice as it was intended to be responded to.
‘That’s most commendable. But, as I’ve explained, it isn’t possible until the German Empire has been wiped off the face of the map,’ said Crowe, like the fate of millions could be decided with a cartographic sleight of hand.
‘I understand that now, sir.’
‘And you know a great deal about my blockade. How did you come by this secret information?’
‘I read it in the Daily Mail, sir,’ said Stone unconvincingly.
‘Hmm,’ said Crowe. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He was a thirteen-year-old boy again, standing in his headmaster’s study, trying to lie his way out of trouble.
‘Maybe you were in the navy? I’ve found sailors can have trouble understanding the complexity of the blockade.’
‘No, sir. The army, sir.’
‘Then remove your mask, soldier.’
Stone took off his balaclava. Crowe regarded him thoughtfully.
‘I can see you’re clearly a decent young man who has somehow lost his way. And from your eyes that you’re tired. Very tired.’
‘I haven’t slept properly in months, sir.’
‘It’s all been a bit too much, hasn’t it, soldier?’
Stone nodded miserably in submission. ‘Yes, sir. I just want the voices in my head to stop, sir.’
Crowe nodded sympathetically. ‘The voices told you to do this, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, sir. I just don’t want to think anymore.’
‘I understand. It’s always best to leave the thinking to your superiors. So maybe you should give me the gun for safe-keeping, soldier? That would be the sensible thing to do, don’t you think?
‘Yes, sir. You know best, sir.’
‘Oh, I do indeed.’ An almost-benign expression on his face, Crowe leaned back in his chair and held out his hand, radiating the confidence of generations of rulers whose every command is obeyed.
A broken Stone was so relieved by his master’s kindness. He was as docile as any dog. If he had a tail, he would have wagged it now. Like a sleepwalker, he slowly moved forward to give the Mauser to Crowe.
As the rain increased its ferocity, ricocheting off the window for attention. Rat-a-tat-tat, like machine gun bullets. And the wind furiously tossed the branches of the trees beyond the window, dark shapes churning in a wild carousel. There was a first crash of thunder. And then another.
And it was the first day of the Battle of the Somme again and the enemy guns were going crazy, tossing great geysers of earth into the air, along with endless screaming bodies. And Dean was one of them.
As they advanced across No Man’s Land, Sergeant Dawes was torn apart by machine guns that were meant to have already been destroyed.
Again the enemy batteries roared like thunder. Not the creeping barrage that they were supposed to ‘shelter’ behind as they advanced. But the German artillery that didn’t fit the optimistic diagrams in the newspapers. And Duncan’s head was blown off his shoulders.
And then they reached the wire, which was not meant to be there either. It was meant to be dealt with by the seven-day British bombardment. Even the most cursory aerial check would have revealed this to the Generals, but it made no difference to their brilliant battle plans.
Another enemy shell exploded and there was nothing of Ralph left below the waist. He looked pitifully up at Stone. ‘Is it a Blighty one, mate? Or…?’
‘It’s “Or”, mate.’ Any further words were stuck in his throat. There were no words for any of this.
And as the insanity continued, Stone was screaming to the heavens, ‘Let me die with you. Let me die with you.’ Only the scream was sealed inside his head because he had been struck dumb.
In the library, as the storm raged outside, Stone started as if woken from a nightmare. He struck Crowe across the face with the Mauser, feeling the crunch of cartilage as he broke his nose. The terrier had turned. ‘You’re a liar. Sir. You’re all liars.’
Because of this man, millions had died. Millions more would die. In a war that could last forever. He struck Crowe again with the Mauser, bringing him crashing to the floor.
‘You scum. You murderous scum,’ cried Crowe thickly, as blood streamed down his face. His eyes gleamed with impotent rage, knowing he couldn’t fight back against the younger Stone. ‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. I’ve told you. A quick war is no solution. Germany has to be punished! Punished. Punished!’
The calm, superior, voice of the ruling elite was gone. In its place was a throttled, impassioned cry, choking with rage. ‘They have to suffer, you see? They have to be h-h-humiliated.’ He looked knowingly at Stone. ‘Because they are disgusting. F-f-filthy animals. They are not human.’
Stone looked at him, nonplussed. Whatever he was talking about, it was not the war.
Crowe staggered to his feet, gasping for air. ‘They can’t get away with their crimes. I need to rub their faces in the dirt for what they did. Oh, yes.’
‘Did to you?’
‘At that … sc-sc-school.’
He was reliving a nightmare. Whatever had happened to Crowe at his German school, he was back there again.
‘But I never s-s-surrendered. I fought them. But there was too many and then, they…’ He tried to calm himself. ‘I have every r-r-right to punish them.’
Stone nodded to a painting of a young, imperious-looking woman on the library wall.
‘Is that why you married her? Clema Gerhardt, niece of Henning von Holtzendorff, head of the German naval staff. So you could punish and hurt and humiliate her, too?’
Crowe looked outraged that this inferior creature could dare to challenge him. And could see him for who he really was.
‘Not very chivalrous, is it… sir?’
His face flushed with guilt, Crowe hurled himself at Stone, who sidestepped and delivered a short undercut punch to his kidneys. Crowe staggered and slumped back into his seat. ‘What do you know? You know n-n-nothing.’
‘I know you like to do to your wife whatever it was they did to you. ’
Crowe raised his chin and did his best to look down his swollen and bleeding nose at Sean, fixing him with a steely glare. ‘I don’t have to explain my marriage to a common assassin.’
‘Then I’ll explain it for you. Clema is your punchbag. A vessel for your rage. So you can get back your sense of power. That’s why she can barely bring herself to live with you, because she’s so terrified. Yet she cannot escape you, anymore than you were able to escape your tormentors.’
‘You are talking r-r-rot.’
But the implications of his words bore fruit on Crowe’s face. Not guilt now but confirmation. Beneath the veneer of an arranged marriage between two first cousins, there had been another, darker transaction going on. And he saw Stone as one of his original tormentors. He fitted that template so well. He was filth, like they were. He was life-threatening, like they were. He had taken away his power, like they had.
His voice was increasingly guttural and German. ‘You animals! Do your worst! You want me to beg for mercy…? Nein! Never! S-S-surrendering only leads to renewed molestation.’
'Gott mit uns!’
The words galvanised Stone into action. They were the last words of so many German prisoners before they were executed. And he shot Crowe between the eyes.
Crowe was thrown back by the bullet’s impact, and slumped to the ground, his blood splattering across his books.
Stone stood there for a moment staring down at Crowe’s body, breathing deeply, feeling the adrenalin race through his veins. He turned to the window to leave, and heard the door to the study open. He crouched and turned, raising his gun in one fluid motion, expecting to see one of the bodyguards.
It was Anna.
She entered, wearing her dressing gown. She stared silently at Crowe’s crumpled body on the floor, his face an unrecognisable mess of blood and torn flesh. Stone held his breath, keeping the Mauser trained on her.
When she turned to him he was taken aback by her expression of fury. ‘You bastard. You used me.’
Stone’s mind raced. If I let her live, she could describe me to the police. She’ll have to die, too.
