Davies, who by sheer coincidence wound up billeted next door to his CO again, couldn’t give any reason for waking up suddenly in the middle of the night. No memories of nightmares or any dreams at all lingered in his thoughts, and he was left with no more than a general feeling of unease. He sat up, and it was a few moments before he remembered where he was, sighing as he checked his watch and groaning softly at the time.
In the silence that followed, muffled sounds began to filter through to his consciousness and through the wall near the head of his bed. At first he thought there must’ve been soft conversation going on in the quarters next to his, and he frowned at what kind of discussion might be going on in the CO’s room at such a ridiculously early hour. He lay back on his bed once more, hands behind his head, but as the moments passed, Jack came to realise that the sounds on the other side of the wall, which had become decidedly rhythmic in nature, were due to a lot more than mere ‘talk’.
“Oh, that’s just swell… that’s just Jim-fuckin’-Dandy!” Davies growled softly, shaking his head half in annoyance and half in grudging admiration of Thorne’s apparent good fortune. As the unmistakeable sounds continued, building somewhat in volume and intensity, he made a mental note to at a more opportune time suggest to his CO that perhaps he could move his bed to the other side of the next room.
There was no real effort in guessing who else was present in the room — Eileen was the only other woman they’d even seen on the base, and he could hardly begrudge the pair a little time to put the events of the past few days out of their minds. He knew Thorne was carrying some serious emotional baggage, and he also knew the pair did have a history… albeit one that’d been in the distant past. He rolled on to one side and hoped they’d at least have the decency to be reasonably quiet about it.
It soon became apparent he had no suck luck…
West India Docks, Isle of Dogs
Tower Hamlets E14, London
Rupert was gone now… tucked away in his private quarters on HMS Repulse along with the precious gold he was safeguarding across the Atlantic. It would’ve been very unusual for the young man to have still been at Brandis’ apartment so near to midnight anyway, yet the place now somehow seemed empty and lifeless all the same. Rupert Gold was one of only a very select few he’d had anything close to constant contact with for the better part of ten years, and the pair had developed a close professional friendship during that time.
Brandis had done his best to create the appearance of optimism while his PA was present, but now he was alone, he had to admit he was definitely feeling something akin to a sense of abandonment. It was fortunate in a sense that he had plenty to keep him busy, and Brandis in any case wasn’t the type to dwell on misfortune. He generally found positive activity to be a far better direction in which to channel any misgivings or melancholy, and there was plenty more hard work still ahead of him once he left England.
He stood at the filled washbasin of his apartment’s bathroom late that night, staring into the mirror above it for a moment before filling his hands with a lathering of shaving soap and smearing it liberally over his cheeks and chin. It took some time, and several applications of soap before he’d covered the entirety of his bearded cheeks, chin and throat and decided he was ready to pick up the safety razor and begin the substantial task of shaving most of it off.
Against the wall to his left beside the mirror, two small photographs were pinned with thumb tacks. One was of a former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, taken not long after the turn of the century, while the other was of Brandis himself, and both showed an image of a middle-aged man that was clean-shaven save for a rather bushy, dark moustache that completely covered each man’s upper lip and extended well past on either side of the mouth. Brandis began slowly and took his time as he worked: it was vitally important the face in the mirror before him matched the style of the faces in the photographs as closely as possible.
His face seemed completely different by the time he’d finished the job, and a pair of exhausted eyes stared back at him in the mirror above mostly clean-shaven features. He’d managed a reasonable approximation Rinsing the excess shaving soap from his face and neck, he allowed a vague grin to emerge for a moment as he dried himself off once more. Dropping his towel where he’d taken it from on the bench beside the sink, he picked up a small bottle of Old Spice aftershave and slapped some onto his cheeks, enjoying the fresh feeling on his skin.
“Time to say goodbye eh, James?” He muttered softly to himself, pausing for a moment as if actually expecting an answer.
Brandis left the bathroom a moment later and walked back out into the main living area, moving across to take a seat at his desk wearing just trousers and a white singlet. A small, uneven pile of papers lay there before him, and he took one last chance to peruse them, cycling through each piece in his hands before slipping it to the rear of the cluster and moving on to the next. Every piece of official documentation relating to his identity as James Brandis was there: passport, drivers licence, birth certificate, school diplomas, trade certificates and others… the sum of a single human being in one collection of papers.
Brandis stood and carried the documents across the room to the fireplace. It was a cold night, and a small fire crackled pleasantly there, its glow adding to the room’s otherwise relatively dim lighting. He looked down at the papers in his hands one more time before carefully reaching out and letting them fall into the fire. They began to burn instantly, the colour of the smoke changing momentarily as they curled within the flame and quickly became ashes. He stood for a moment longer, as if saying farewell to the identity they carried with them before returning to his desk.
Seated once more, he reached beneath the desk much as he had the night he’d revealed the gold to Rupert, and this time he again released another secret compartment. This time it was a tall, narrow section of the desk’s left side that hinged from the rear and popped outward to reveal a single, shallow section within. A single thin, leather-bound satchel lay at the bottom, and he leaned down to collect it, placing it on the desktop. The open panel slipped easily back into place with the pressure of two fingers and a soft, reassuring click as it locked once more. Brandis unhooked the toggle and string that held the satchel closed and peeled back the flap, a little apprehensive in the anticipation of what he was about to find. He hadn’t set eyes on the thing in the better part of forty years, and he was nervous that perhaps his memory had deceived him and his work at the bathroom sink had been all in vain.
It hadn’t of course, and as he delicately lifted out the documents held within he was rewarded with a pristine new British passport right at the top of the pile. He opened it for a moment and was relieved to see that the small black-and-white picture held within was almost identical to the manner in which he’d just shaved his features. Feeling much better, he placed the passport aside and took himself back through each piece of new identification in turn, refreshing his memory. The final document was an official death certificate that had already been partially completed in the name of James Randolph Brandis. The date of birth was listed as November 22 in the year 1860, but the date of death remained blank… the only piece of information yet to be entered.