The Sterling Directive

by Tim Standish

  ‘Like the Map Room for instance?’

  ‘Ha!’ She exploded with a short bark of a laugh, the rounded point of her chin jerking upwards. ‘Very good, Sterling. Of course, the thing about us is that we don’t need to advertise; in fact we’re terribly keen on doing the very opposite.’ She drew on the cigarillo one last time before resting it on the edge of a small silver tray where it continued to burn, sending thin tendrils of smoke towards me across the table. ‘Now, the thing is, earlier this year your friend Fuller from the Bureau somehow found out about Cooper and saw it as an opportunity. You see he is desperately keen to persuade the Prime Minister to expand their purview into counterintelligence. But arresting a brothel madam for passing on gossip wouldn’t have fitted the bill, so he persuaded her to get into the gun-smuggling game. One of Fuller’s men pretended he was a corrupt customs official who could be bribed to provide the right paperwork. The idea was to ensure some samples of ageing, semi-functional weapons arrived in America safe and sound, before arranging a significant shipment of something more modern, engine technology or something similar, tipping off the Confederate States Government and using the success to stake a claim for the Bureau’s expansion.’

  ‘Then why have they just raided their own smuggling operation? It makes no sense.’

  ‘Well, unluckily for our friends at Millbank, it turns out that Cooper was a lot smarter than they gave her credit for and used the Bureau’s sanctioned and carefully curated pipeline to transport up-to-date and operational weaponry along with the duds supplied by the Bureau. The Northerners were smart enough not to start using them immediately, waited till they had a good few safely stowed away. Then a detachment of Confederate States cavalry was ambushed near Concord by a rebel group using Maxim guns and wiped out almost to a man. Even the Bureau twigged that something was amiss and when they had the latest shipment checked they realised they had been had.’ That raucous bark of a laugh again. ‘Priceless! No medals, no budget increase, no wider brief to fight the Empire’s enemies abroad. They were fairly incandescent I can tell you.’ She smiled. ‘And then you turn up, on the very night they are about to reel Cooper in, and turn out to be a British soldier recently returned from Canada. You can see how they may have jumped to conclusions.’ She removed the cigarillo from its holder and stubbed it out.

  ‘What happened to Cooper? They said she was shot trying to escape?’

  ‘Typical Bureau, even trying to get credit for that. No, they caught her at Croydon trying to board an airship for Canada and when they tried to arrest her, she managed to get hold of one of their pistols and shoot herself. Terribly passionate people when riled, Americans.’ She must have seen something in my face. ‘I’m sorry, you must have been close.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really, just a good customer.’ In my head I was thinking back over my conversations with Mrs Cooper. Had she seen me as more? As another source of information? I could remember nothing more than gossip about other patrons or her asking my opinion on where to hang a picture or to taste a new dish for the menu. None of it seemed particularly spy-worthy. At the same time I realised that I had been hoping that Cooper’s death had been a lie, that there was hope that she was still alive and that I could have asked her why she betrayed me.

  ‘You could not have known.’ Milady’s words brought me back to the room. ‘Sadly, an opinion not shared by the Bureau, who seem to have got it into their heads that your clandestine visit was motivated by either murderous revenge or rebellious espionage or both.’ She slid a set of papers across to me. ‘Which, incidentally, would be perfectly explicable and eminently forgivable behaviour if you were an agent of our organisation.’

  I took the papers and flicked through them, glancing at the contents; two copies of an agreement that declared that I was gainfully employed by the Royal Office of Topography & Survey and in fact that I had been for the last three years. It also mentioned that the nature of my duties empowered me to adopt false identities and ‘conduct certain actions that would otherwise be outside the law’. The final page contained a date and my details with a space for a signature.

  ‘You’re saying that if I sign this and become your agent, then I can’t be arrested?’

  ‘Well you can be, but you would be released very quickly afterwards, and whichever poor uniform had brought you in would be given a stern talking to by Church, which by the way, is not something I would recommend.’

  I looked away from her to the window, staring through it at the buildings outside. I should have been home with my father, having had the satisfaction of making Edgar confess to what he had done and having persuaded Mrs Cooper to change her testimony. Sentence annulled, I was to have become a free man, leaving the army and the bitter cold of the border garrison behind for good and rebuilding a life here in London. But Edgar had challenged me in front of witnesses, and I had been angry enough to accept. In the moment, killing him had seemed like justice. Now it seemed like folly. I looked back at Milady who was observing me with a steady, calm gaze.

  ‘Why me?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘You interest me. I see potential in you. And, of course it’s a chance to tweak the Bureau’s tail which is always amusing.’

  In other words, I wasn’t to be told. Not that I expected to be and in a sense that didn’t matter as, short of bursting through the door and testing my close-quarter combat skills against those of Milady’s Amazonian companion, I saw that I had very little choice. I stared at the papers.

  Seeming to take my silence for indecision, she spoke again: ‘If you choose to join us, you will of course be able to resign once the current directive has concluded.’

  I looked up into those unreadable eyes. ‘This is not permanent, then?’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ She seemed amused. ‘In fact, it almost certainly will not be. However, we are in need of new talent at the moment, and talent is something you seem to possess. Look on it as a mutually beneficial exchange, to be extended if agreeable to both parties. If you want to leave once things have died down, then that’s up to you. If, on the other hand, you decide to stay on board, well, I for one would be delighted.’ She paused for a moment, watching the effect of her words. ‘You should understand, though, that where we work there is no rule book, no guide, no terms of engagement. There is only the field executive, what he senses and what he decides. What you decide, Sterling. Your skills, your experience, your judgement will aid you but in the end you will need to rely on your instinct as much as your intellect.’ She paused. ‘There will be hazard.’

  ‘So,’ she smiled, the hostess once again, and stood up to offer me a pen. ‘What do you say?’

  What could I say? See me out at the front door, I’ll take my chances against the secret police who control all the Empire’s data. And don’t worry, I certainly won’t tell anyone about your secret spy operation. That didn’t feel like an option that was genuinely on the table. All the same I waited for a few seconds later than was comfortable just for the look of the thing. Then I signed.

  ‘Marvellous! Now I think that there are a few more details that Church will iron out with you before we pop you out onto the street but otherwise, we are, as they say, “all squared away”.’ She stood up and I followed suit, standing as she donned her gloves. ‘By the by,’ she said, wrestling the second one on, ‘I thought that you should know that there seems to have been a temporary improvement in your father’s condition so, providing this business is wrapped in a timely manner, you will still be able to pay your filial duty. Assuming that is the main reason you came back?’

  I stared at her.

  She laughed. ‘Really Sterling, it isn’t so very hard to make the connection once you know what you’re looking for.’

  The door opened and the bodyguard strode back in with long, impatient steps. ‘The train leaves in less than 30 minutes, ma’am.’

  ‘Excellent. Thank you, Kitty. I am pleased you decided to join us, Sterling. I shall see you anon.’

  ‘Just one la
st question, Milady.’

  ‘Of course.’ All smiles and attention.

  ‘How on earth did someone like Mrs Cooper manage to get hold of Maxim guns?’

  ‘Oh you know, Sterling. Criminal connections no doubt,’ she said casually, ‘Not really our worry. Now, I really must dash or Kitty here will be terribly cross with me and, Lord knows, we wouldn’t want that.’

  And after a flurry of activity in which she took another sip of her drink, retrieved her hat and gloves and rushed out before striding back briefly to retrieve her cigarette holder, Milady finally left the room. Kitty waited patiently throughout before following her, after a brief pause for a glance that left me in no doubt as to where blame would be apportioned should any problems ensue from their delayed departure.

  And I was left alone in a room that suddenly felt very empty, with the sense of being no longer the centre of things and the lingering smell of tobacco in the air.

  Now that I’d decided to go along with the idea, being here didn’t seem so bad. I would be safe from Fuller’s retribution and clear my name. Perhaps, I mused, just as Maddox the soldier had helped me leave Charles the scandal-in-exile behind me, Agent Sterling could do the same for me now and be a clean slate to start again.

  ‘Are you staying?’

  I looked up. Church stood in the open doorway.

  I nodded. ‘It seems that I am.’

  Church walked over and reached out his arm and we shook hands. ‘Welcome aboard,’ he said. ‘First things first. Let’s head downstairs and get your Bertie sorted.’

  Church closed Milady’s office door behind us and took me back downstairs to the front hall, back along to the briefing room then down a tight set of turning steps. These led down to a narrow and dimly lit, flagstoned corridor. Church set off towards the rear, past a grimy window looking onto a small courtyard, then to an open doorway from which light spilt into the corridor. Church stood to one side and ushered me in ahead of him.

  The room was square, the floor paved with the same stones as the hallway, the walls whitewashed. By contrast to the corridor it was quite warm and brightly lit by a variety of electric lamps positioned on a tall set of metal shelves against the back wall. Against the left-hand wall was a rough trestle table, its surface crammed with cylinders, punch cards, wiring and assorted bits of semi-identifiable technology. Taking up most of the rest of the room, so that there was barely space to walk between it and the table, was a relatively new-looking analytical engine, wires and cables draped away from it in every direction.

  Bracketed to the wall in the centre of the table was a larger and more modern version of the kinetic display I had seen in Cooper’s and sitting in front of it was a slight figure in shirt sleeves and braces, engrossed in soldering something to the side of a telegraph encoder. His long white hair was archaically ribboned tight at the nape of his neck, and at first I thought him decrepitly old, then, as he stopped what he was doing and pushed himself back from the desk on a wheeled chair, I realised he was much younger.

  And then she turned around, and I realised that it was a young woman, no more than twenty years old, and my first thought was to wonder where her parents had got to. Tilting back in the chair, she shifted a set of bug-eyed goggles up onto her head and regarded us both with a look that gave the impression that, on a list of things she would rather be doing, engaging with us would not have featured highly. She had a slim face and the kind of dainty, girlish features more in keeping with a society salon than a cellar full of technological odds and ends.

  ‘What do you want?’ Her voice was high, her tone exasperated, her accent pure deb.

  ‘Patience. This is Sterling. Needs his Bertie sorting.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ I held out my hand.

  Rolling her eyes, she gave my hand a perfunctory shake and dug out a wire-festooned helmet from amongst the clutter scattered across the desk. She flicked switches on the engine which spun into life and the familiar clatter of a teletype started up. ‘Grab a chair from somewhere.’ She pointed over her shoulder towards the back of the room. I waited until she was back at the desk before I attempted to squeeze past. I found a folding canvas stool, one of several stacked by the shelves, and sat down at the desk on the side nearest the door. The screen in front of Patience flickered, strings of words and numbers rippling upwards. She leaned over and settled the helmet on my head then, seemingly satisfied, returned to the keyboard. ‘Be two minutes to mount it.’

  ‘Getting slow, Patience, used to be quicker.’

  ‘Shag a dog, Church, why don’t you?’ Patience said in an uninterested voice, still staring intently at the screen in front of her. ‘Everything’s so shuttered up now even connecting takes a genius. Too many tappers trying to steal stuff. Apparently.’ She shook her head, her eyes and mouth wide in exaggerated horror. ‘Shocking.’ She leaned forward to inspect the screen, one hand hovering over the keyboard in front of her, the other on a black dial set into a small box. ‘Which is why…’ She clicked the dial round, tapped keys, paused, tapped some more. ‘We have to make a slight detour to get to where we want to be.’

  ‘And where is that?’ I asked.

  For the first time since we had entered the room the frown vanished, and a grin darted across her pale, elfin face. ‘At this very moment … a census branch office in Tenby transmitting a batch of regular updates to the central records depot in Neath, where we are pausing briefly to indulge in some diabolical evildoing!’ She ended her explanation with a passable imitation of a pantomime villain’s laugh, then flicked the dial to a different position. I felt dots of pressure across my head as the helmet took its measurements. She watched the screen carefully, typing a series of entries.

  ‘What kind of evildoing, exactly?’ I asked her.

  She didn’t look round. ‘One. We are removing every descriptor or distinguishing feature of you from your public record so that it is impossible to identify you. Two. I am replacing all of that information with new values that in no way resemble you. Three. I am keeping a copy of your real data here so that I can produce an endless stream of false but highly believable identities for you.’ She pressed the keyboard one last time and swivelled in the chair. ‘And, voila, you are now invisible. Thank you. Thank you very much.’ She raised her hands and nodded gently, a modest conjuror accustomed to the roar of her audience.

  ‘Time, Patience. We don’t have it.’ Church’s voice behind me in the doorway.

  Another roll of the eyes. Then to me: ‘You can take it off.’

  I pulled the helmet off and dropped it on the desk. ‘Won’t they know that the information has been changed?’

  ‘They might if anyone ever bothers to cross check with paper-file copies but they won’t because they are morons. And I mean that in the literal sense. We’re using Tenby because that’s the home of a lazy senior clerk who had an unofficial connection added so that he doesn’t have to go all the way to Neath for minor changes and who was vain enough to brag about it to an on-wire girlfriend who, as it turned out,’ she continued with a smirk, ‘wasn’t that interested in meeting after all.’

  I stood up. ‘Thanks. I know where to come for all of my nefarious telegraphic needs.’

  Patience looked at me, brow furrowing slightly at this poor attempt at humour. ‘Fine.’

  Church stood to one side as I came out then leaned into the room. ‘Thanks, Patience. Oh, and I’ve told you before, tidy this place up. It’s a right state.’ Her reply, imploring Church not to be an arse, followed us out of the room as we headed back to the stairs.

  I laughed, slightly shocked. ‘Is she always like that?’

  ‘Always. Best tapper I know though. She really is a magician. And bloody knows it.’

  I followed him upstairs and through to the hallway where Miss Green was talking to someone I didn’t recognise. He broke off from the conversation and came across to the two of us.

  ‘Excuse me Mr Church. Mr Collier would like a word. He’s in operations.’

/>   ‘‘Ta Wallis. Sterling, I’ll see you later when you’re back.’

  ‘Back from where?’

  ‘Back from taking your fiancée for a romantic tour round Whitechapel.’

  ‘My fiancée?’

  He pointed at Miss Green, who stretched out a hand on which was a ring that more than made up for in sparkle what it lacked in size. ‘Shall we?’

  8. Whitechapel

  The bus was old but recently repainted and well cared for, in marked contrast to the grim and narrow lanes we trundled along. Refuse-strewn alleys led away between the hulks of narrow, variously degenerating tenements. The only sign of their residents was the occasional pale-faced glance from an upper window as we passed by. Light and warmth seemed sparse here; it was early afternoon, yet patches of frost still lay unmelted in the shadows of dreary, grey doorways. And down the middle of it we drove, a gaudy reminder of the other world. I wondered if those pale faces hated us or if they had simply learnt not to see us as we stared out at their poverty. I wasn’t surprised that the driver had a pistol holstered next to his seat.

  There were six other people on the tour, apart from Green and myself. In the front seats, nearest our guide, two Home Counties matriarchs sat side by side, thin faces bunched in concentration as they peered out through the window. They spoke little. Just behind them were a family of Germans, dressed in precisely tailored and emphatically British clothing; he in tweeds, she in a pale blue naval-themed tailor-made with the boy and girl in brass-buttoned uniforms. They were largely silent, though the younger child would, after conferring and much at his father’s insistence, occasionally ask the guide a question. Whenever he did so his English was flawless, with just a trace of accent and I could hear my father’s voice ringing out over breakfast, explaining how the Prussians would take over the world one day and that learning our language was only the first step.