After his meeting with Schmidt, he set off for the ironworks. The day shift was about to end, and he wanted to speak with Heilman and find out what he knew.
He caught the tram out to the Victoria Docks at Bow Creek on the Thames.
The ironworks was a sprawling beast of a place on the east bank, a railway to the Thames wharf on another with direct access to the river for ships under construction.
It was very near the end of the twelve-hour shift when he arrived and caught a trolley to the main gate where workers arrived and departed. From there he was directed to the supervisor’s office where he was told that Heilman might be found as he had not yet left for the day.
Brodie was accustomed to the reserve, even outright hostility, of those among the immigrant communities against outsiders from his work for the Met. It was no different with Heilman, who at first appeared to speak very little English, a common response.
“I’m looking for a man by the name of Soropkin. Or he might go by another name.” Brodie gave him the only description that Sir Avery had, taken from a photograph that was several years old.
“Herr Schmidt said that you might be able to provide information about him.”
There was that long stare as Brodie stood in the doorway of the small office that was no more than a storeroom with a desk and a chair, and were covered with the grime and iron tailings, fine as powder, that sifted through from the bank of furnaces in the massive building.
“Soropkin?” Heilman repeated as if he had only just heard the name. He continued to stare at Brodie. Then as if he had decided something, he gave a jerk of his head toward the door. Brodie closed it.
“Soropkin,” Heilman repeated. “Der hurensohn,” he spat out. “What you English call a son of a bitch; a cold-blooded murderer— men, women, children, it doesn’t matter in the name of his cause.” Then, “Sit down, Mr. Brodie, and tell me whatyouknow about Soropkin and the reason you are looking for him.”
It seemed that Heilman spoke very good English when he chose too.
Over the next hour, Brodie explained the information the Agency had come upon, that Soropkinwassomewhere in London.
The fact that he was there was not something to be ignored. If he had something planned against the British government, then he had to be stopped.
“You are not English by birth,” Heilman pointed out.
“No,” Brodie replied, a situation that many Scots refused to accept— the English authority over Scotland, a centuries old battle that some insisted was not ended, merely waiting to rekindle.
And yet here he was, on behalf of protecting the very crown that had held Scotland under the boot for centuries. But Soropkin was another matter, and it was here and now.
“What can ye tell me about him?” Brodie brought the conversation back round to the reason he was there.
“What have ye heard through yer people?”
“Why should I help you?” Heilman demanded.
“If he succeeds in some plan, then this,” Brodie made a gesture to the vast cavern of the ironworks beyond the office, “may be burnt to the ground like most of the city along with the jobs of those men, and yerself. If ye survive.
“Ye claim to know of the man’s brutality, the deaths he has caused. I ask for yer help. If ye refuse to give it, ye are no better than the man ye hate so well and will have the blood of those who die because of it on yer hands. Yer own family perhaps as well when ye came here for the chance at a better life.”
“What do you know of a better life?”
“I know about fighting to survive on the streets, and to my way of thinking, wot I have now is worth fighting to hold onto.”
For several moments, Heilman merely looked at him. Then he slowly nodded. “I will tell you what I have heard.”
What he knew was only rumor, but he trusted where those the rumors came from. Soropkin was in London. But no one had actually seen him.
It was safe to assume that he was there for one purpose as Brodie and Sir Avery feared, to instigate a situation that Europe had seen in no less than a half dozen cities over the past two years.
It might be demonstrations in the streets, attacks on certain people in positions of power, or possibly as in Munich months earlier— a bomb set off at a prominent place or event.
It was impossible to know, but the rumors had people in the German community uneasy, watchful, yet as he said, the manhadn’t actually been seen by anyone on the streets. He was like a ghost, there one minute, gone the next.
The last word Heilman had about Soropkin was that he was rumored to have been seen in another part of London. But it made no sense. It was far from anything that might have been the sort of target the anarchist preferred— areas of power and influence.
“You will find him?” Heilman asked as Brodie thanked him and stood to leave.
