to come and investigate, Marc knew Henderson would kill them without a thought.
Henderson passed over a crowbar before screwing a silencer to the front of his pistol. Marc ran his hand along the oiled bar and glimpsed inside the suitcase: ammunition, a compact machine gun, a zipped pouch in which Marc knew lay gold ingots and a stack of French currency. The clothes and toilet bag seemed like an afterthought, squeezed into the bottom right corner. Marc found it miraculous that Henderson could lift all this, let alone carry it several kilometres through the port.
After fastening leather buckles and tipping the jangling case back on its side, Henderson faced the building and lowered his knee into the puddle. Marc leaned against the wall and stepped up so that his wet boots balanced on Henderson’s shoulders.
‘Now I’m really glad you didn’t tread in that pile of turds,’ Henderson noted.
Despite nerves and his precarious position astride Henderson’s shoulders, Marc snorted with laughter.
‘Don’t make me giggle,’ he said firmly, walking his hands up the brickwork as Henderson stood, raising Marc level with the landing window between ground and first floors.
Marc rested his chest against the wall, then took the crowbar from his back pocket.
‘You’re heavier than you look,’ Henderson huffed, as Marc’s unsteady boots tore at his skin.
The oak window frame was rotting and Henderson felt a shower of flaking paint as Marc dug the forked tongue of the crowbar under the frame and pushed as hard as he dared. The catch locking the two sliding panes together was strong, but the two screws holding it in place lifted easily from the dried-out wood.
‘Gotcha,’ Marc whispered triumphantly, as he threw the window open.
To Henderson’s relief, Marc’s weight shifted as the boy pulled himself through the window. He crashed down on to plush carpet inside, narrowly avoiding a vase and a knock-out encounter with the banister.
Beeswax and old varnish filled Marc’s nose as he hurried downstairs. The building was small, but its pretensions were grand and paintings of wigged men and naval battles lined the short flight of steps down to the back door.
Henderson grabbed his suitcase as Marc pulled across two heavy bolts and opened the back door. Beyond the stairwell the ground floor comprised a single large room. They moved amongst desks and cabinets, separated from the waiting area at the opposite end by an ebony countertop and spiralled gold rails.
Marc was fascinated by the tools of bureaucracy: typewriters, rubber stamps, carbon papers and hole punches.
‘So they keep blank passports here?’ Marc asked, as he stared at the banks of wooden drawers along one wall.
‘If they haven’t run out,’ Henderson said, as he slammed his heavy case on a desktop, tilting a stack of envelopes on to the parquet floor. ‘But we can’t make a passport without a photograph.’
Henderson pulled a leather wallet out of his case. The miniature photographic kit comprised a matchbox-sized pinhole camera, tiny vials of photographic chemicals and sheets of photographic paper large enough to produce the kind of pictures used in identity documents.
‘Go stand under the wall clock,’ Henderson said, as he worked with the tiny camera, inserting a small rectangle of photographic paper.
Henderson looked up and saw a peculiar mix of apprehension and emotion on Marc’s face.
‘Nobody ever took my photograph before,’ he admitted.
Henderson looked surprised. ‘Not at the school or the orphanage?’
Marc shook his head.
‘We’ve got very little light,’ Henderson explained, as he propped the camera on a stack of ledgers. ‘So I need you to stay still and keep your eyes open.’absolutely
Marc stood rigid for twenty seconds, then rushed forwards on Henderson’s signal.
‘When can I see it?’ he asked, as he blinked his stinging eyes repeatedly.
‘I have a developing kit,’ Henderson explained. ‘There must be a kitchen somewhere. I need you to find me three saucers and some warm water.’
As Marc raced upstairs to find the kitchen, Henderson began looking around the offices for blank passports. He discovered an entire drawer full of them, along with a wooden cigar box containing all the necessary stamps and, most helpfully, a crumpled blue manual detailing the correct procedure for dealing with a consular passport application.
One of the telephones rang, but Henderson ignored it and began shaking his photographic chemicals, ready for when Marc came back with the water.
A second phone thrummed as Marc came downstairs with three saucers and a tobacco tin filled with hot tap water. Henderson found the ringing irritating, but with France in chaos it didn’t surprise him that the consular phones would