“Very good, sir… I’ll drop you off now…”
The Prime Minister and bodyguard stood together on the steps of 10 Downing St and looked on as the Humber pulled away, executing a three-point-turn a few metres further along before powering past again in the opposite direction, heading back toward Whitehall once more with Brandis as the only occupant.
“An intriguing man, sir,” the Special Branch detective observed solemnly as they watched the vehicle turn left at the end of the street and disappear.
“Intriguing indeed, Hodges,” Churchill muttered as he considered what Brandis had advised.
“Unusual accent he has, isn’t it sir?”
“Very…” the Prime Minister agreed in a thoughtful tone, nodding slowly. In the two decades years that the newly-appointed Prime Minister had known the enigmatic James Brandis, the man’s unusual and quite unidentifiable accent had been a constant source of curiosity. There was a definite suggestion of time spent at Eton, yet there was also a distinct trace of Boer and the hint of something more exotic that was possibly Eastern European.
The accent also varied dependent on Brandis’ mood, and on occasion there’d be certain words that would stand out as being uttered in a different accent, in stark opposition to the rest of his speech at the time. In all his years of worldly experience, Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill had never before encountered anyone like the man, and that in itself made James Brandis an extremely intriguing individual.
After becoming prime minister, he’d commissioned an extensive investigation by MI5 which had completely failed to produce any useful information on Brandis’ true identity, and despite continued requested from British Security Services to take the man into custody for a thorough interrogation, Churchill had steadfastly refused. Brandis had proven in their infrequent meetings to be a quite reliable source of extremely useful intelligence for the man who would one day become prime minister, and as such he was reluctant to damage the relationship they’d developed. James Brandis was a man far more useful at large than he could ever be under lock and key.
“Come on, Hodges,” Churchill roused himself from his thoughts and consulted his pocket watch. “We’ve still time for a spot of tea before I’ve the pleasure of entertaining the US Ambassador this afternoon.” One of the constables standing at the steps of Number Ten opened the door for them as the Prime Minister turned and made his way inside with Detective Hodges in tow.
West India Docks, Isle of Dogs
Tower Hamlets E14, London
The West India Docks, built between 1800 and 1802, were the brainchild of wealthy merchant Robert Milligan and the West India Merchants of London, and were a direct reaction to the increase of theft and delays at London’s existing wharves. Part of the Isle of Dogs, one of the largest meanders of the Thames, they were originally constructed as two separate import and export wharves, connected at each end so as to allow ships arriving from the West Indies to unload quickly at the first dock, then immediately sail directly around to the second and load up again for the return journey. Covering twelve hectares in area, the entire perimeter was surrounded by a six metre high wall with entry and exit strictly controlled to deter any would-be thieves.
Brandis had driven the Humber Pullman down West India Dock Road, over the Blackwall Railway crossing, and through the main gates into the dock area itself, the high walls towering on either side. No one at the gates moved to stop or even slow him — the guards all knew him and knew better than to get in his way. Once inside, he turned left and drove eastward, heading parallel to a line of warehouses to his right. Designed by architect George Gwilt and son (also George), the five storey, red-brick structures formed a continuous line along the northern and eastern side of the Import Dock and allowed merchants and dock owners to more effectively receive and process the masses of imported goods received every day from the West Indies and other far-flung parts of the British Empire.
Movement along the cobblestone access road fraught with danger, with hundreds of dockworkers threading their way back and forth through a constant flow of trucks and horse-drawn carts as they worked to distribute imported goods stored behind those brick walls. It took Brandis a good twenty minutes or more of stop-start movement to finally reach his destination, two-thirds of the way along to the far end. Two uniformed guards stood outside a pair of thick wooden doors that barred the entrance to a warehouse outwardly no different to any of the others along the line, and as they caught sight of Brandis’ car approaching, they moved quickly to pull those doors wide and allow him access.
He turned and drove inside, giving a smile and a brief wave of recognition as he passed them. The pair were well-paid and were professional former police constables, and as such they knew exactly what was expected of them in the performance of their duties. The moment the Humber had passed through those doors, they closed and locked them once more without a single word.
Once inside the warehouse, Brandis was forced to stop quite sharply. His first action after turning off the engine was to reach under the dashboard next to the steering wheel and open the secret compartment there that held his pistol. The weapon, a large Colt .45 automatic, appeared in his hands just long enough for him to make a customary check that it was loaded and ‘safed’ before it disappeared into a shoulder holster beneath the jacket of his suit coat.
There was barely enough space inside to fit the vehicle, and opening the doors to exit was a similarly tight squeeze. The parking space was surrounded by a cage of steel bars and heavy-gauge chain-link fencing that left just a metre or so above and on either side to manoeuvre. Brandis climbed carefully from the car, not bothering to lock it, and walked around to the front of the vehicle where a barred door was set into the cage.
He unlocked the door and stepped through, carefully locking it again behind him as he entered the main warehouse area. There was electric lighting suspended from the high ceilings above, but none of it was turned on. The interior was dark and musty, with little illumination filtering through, most of the barred windows on either side of the building covered by thick wooden shutters that were usually closed.
The open plan itself was markedly different to what might pass as a normal 1940s layout, and had been designed by Brandis himself. Deceptively larger that it appeared from the outside, almost the entire space within the building was taken up by twenty-six rows of tall steel racking that rose floor to ceiling and were split into two sides of thirteen racks positioned at right angles to the caged parking area with a wide central aisle running through the middle between them.
Each rack was more than twenty metres long and carried four sets of shelving along its entire length, spaced a metre apart. Taking into consideration the metre-high open space on the floor below each shelf, this provided for five levels of storage on each of the racks’ 20-metre lengths. The aisles between each were tight, but carefully spaced to allow passage for a small but heavy forklift that currently sat idle, parked by the cage door as Brandis entered. The dark silhouette of a second, identical forklift could be seen at the far end of the central aisle, motionless as the first.
Due to direct influence from German advances in shipping practices prior of the late 1930s, most of Europe had standardised prior to the Second World War on a wooden cargo pallet sizing of 100 x 100cm (approximately 39⅓ inches on each side in Imperial measurement). Each of the 130 individual shelves on those twenty-six rows was stacked with twenty of those standard-size wooden pallets, and each individual pallet carried six low, rectangular metal boxes, each of which measured 50 x 30 x 12cm, allowing six such boxes to fit comfortably onto each pallet