‘I do not want your pity, Mr Chevalier. I want answers.’
‘Please call me Max. And I can assure you that it is not pity making me spend my meagre savings on Henry’s services to meet with you like this. It’s curiosity. Tell me, do you actually plan to breed finches?’
‘I might. As you say, I have suffered a career setback and have more spare time on my hands.’
‘Intelligent creatures, more so than they get credit for. But very fragile, Mrs White. A sudden cold, shock or unhappiness can kill them. Prone to tumours, as well. You need to keep them warm. Feed them fennel seeds.’
‘With all due respect, I did not seek you out to discuss birds.’
‘Oh? A good intelligence officer needs to be a naturalist. I myself am currently raising a cuckoo—with the help of my lovely Susi, of course, my living pair of hands—and it is most instructive.’
‘Tell me about Peter Bloom.’
‘Ah. Now there is a rare and interesting bird.’
‘You had your own Section, practically your own miniature Service. Then you vetted Peter Bloom. Suddenly there were rumours about you being a deranged witch-hunter. You passed away very suddenly. There was talk of suicide. The Summer Court did not want you. What happened?’
Max Chevalier’s spirit puffed on the pipe. Tendrils of smoke swirled around the medium’s face like ectoplasm.
‘You have already answered your question, Mrs White. You see, I raised a fox once. It was a sweet creature as a cub, like a cross between a cat and a dog. As it grew older, it became troublesome: very good at sneaking into henhouses while still allowing itself to be cuddled. One day, it tore up my favourite pair of slippers. I took it to the backyard and shot it in the head. It looked surprised when I pulled the trigger.’
Rachel frowned. ‘So you grew too bold and Bloom was merely an excuse to put you down?’
‘Yes. In this case by planting documents on one of my agents to make it look like we had framed an innocent man, a public outcry, et cetera et cetera.’
‘What did you find about Bloom that was so dangerous?’
‘Sir Stewart asked me to vet Bloom, and I did some digging, not realising it was a trap. It turned out that Bloom’s father, Charles, was an MP for an anti-Dimensionist Labour group before he died without a Ticket. His mother, Ann Veronica née Reeve, had radical leanings in her youth and took up the struggle. And then Peter engaged in some adolescent indiscretions at Cambridge. Burned his own Ticket, if you can believe that. But that could be disregarded—rebellion is a prerogative of the young, after all. Still, I advised against hiring him. I was overruled.’
‘By whom?’
‘I believe the final decision was made during dinner at White’s, with Sir Stewart in attendance and a certain author of some renown—a Mr Herbert Blanco West.’
Rachel stared at him. ‘The prime minister?’
Max nodded. ‘I made a very bad error, then. Fortunes can turn quickly in the Service, as you know.’
‘But why was the PM involved?’
‘If you had the patience to dig up old gossip pages like I did, Mrs White, you would have discovered that Mr West engaged in an affair with a young Miss Reeve—whose subsequent marriage to Charles Bloom was very sudden indeed.’
Rachel drew a sharp breath. ‘You mean to say that—’
‘Peter Bloom is untouchable, Mrs White. Whatever your grievance with him may be, your superiors will do anything to keep him safe in order to secure favours from the highest level. The windmill you are tilting at is very high and ancient and English: privilege.’
Rachel looked at the cartoon horrors of the Great War around them and felt sick. She thought about what it felt like to share a cigarette in the trenches and then see a comrade blown apart into red mist, see green fields transformed into landscapes of death and nightmare. She remembered her first night as a volunteer nurse, the first burn victim of a Zeppelin bombing, his peeling flesh and pustules and charred skin.
And then the memory of lying sprawled on the bathroom floor, touching the spongy, seedlike thing that came out of her.
There are wounds in the world, she thought.
‘No,’ Rachel said quietly.
Max said nothing. For a moment, there was just the noise of the crowd a corridor’s length away and the eyes of the dead man looking at her, unblinking.
‘No one is untouchable. Not if we can find evidence.’
‘You are far too idealistic, Mrs White.’
‘You thought you were untouchable, once.’
‘Ah, but I was just a peasant reaching above my station. Bloom belongs in all the right clubs.’
‘There has to be a way to find proof. Locate his handler.’
‘That would present considerable difficulties. For one thing, you are still alive, Mrs White.’
‘But you are not.’
‘Mrs White, I am content with my afterlife. I have my loyal listeners, my books. The next one is going to be called How to Tame an Elephant. Fascinating creatures. Did you know that they may have souls? Edison has been testing a kind of spirit armour for pachyderms. And I have my cuckoo Goo and other creatures in Sloane Square. Why should I help you?’
It was difficult to read someone wearing another person’s body, but there was something familiar in the way Max cocked his head.
‘Revenge would be enough for most people: your enemies used Bloom to destroy you, why not use him to destroy them? Only I do not think you care about that. You are a naturalist. You like to understand creatures like Bloom. He had everything, so why did he turn, like a well-treated dog that bites its master? I think, deep down, you want to know.’
The medium’s thin lips curled in a devilish parody of a kindly uncle’s grin.
‘Ah, Mrs White, you do not disappoint.’
* * *
At five in the afternoon, two hours later, Rachel returned home to St John’s Wood, carrying a covered birdcage.
Gertrude took the cage and rolled her eyes when it chirped, but said nothing. Joe came down the stairs to meet her. He was still unshaven and dishevelled, but his eyes were brighter.
‘What do you have there, dear?’
‘Finches.’ Rachel felt playful and strangely free. Her mind tingled with ideas. She and Max had scheduled a planning session on Tuesday in a flat that he maintained on Sloane Square. In the meantime, she was going to investigate opening a credit line for their illicit operation. A part of her—the part that had been Head Girl at Princess Helena College—recoiled from the very idea of misuse of government funds. Another part found it inexplicably thrilling.
‘I thought my old bird could use some company,’ she said.
‘You know very well that I could never even keep a house plant alive.’
‘You always liked a challenge. Don’t worry, I can help. Now that I have more time on my hands.’
Joe took her hand. That was the closest she had come to acknowledging that she had trouble at work.
‘Gertrude, would you do the honours, please?’ Rachel asked.
Gertrude drew the heavy cloth aside. There was a storm of feathers inside. Two frantic, brightly coloured birds bounced from one perch to another.
‘Scheisse,’ she swore. ‘Begging your pardon, madam.’
Eventually the birds settled down. One was bright yellow-green with a red head, the other blue and grey with a hood of pale silver. Their beadlike eyes were alert. The yellow-green one cocked its head to one side and stared at them.
‘Aren’t they really difficult to keep?’ Joe asked.
‘I met an old colleague who keeps birds. Max Chevalier.’
The bird she knew to be the male started bouncing up and down at a furious pace and sang a continuous, trilling, complex song. The other bird—a female—raised her head slightly, listening.
‘What on Earth is it doing?’ Joe asked.
The male was like a wound-up toy. It continued the joyous bouncing until Rachel was sure its tiny brain would be addled. She giggled a little
, then laughed. Once she started it was hard to stop, and then Joe joined her.
Finally, they both had to wipe tears from her eyes.
‘Very well,’ Joe said. ‘I suppose I can look after these silly creatures for a while. And here I was thinking that I could go to the club later tonight.’
Rachel looked at him. ‘I think I would like it if you stayed at home, dear,’ she said quietly.
Joe blinked.
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t look so surprised. It is not like you have to jump up and down to impress me anymore.’
‘Indeed, but it is just that since—’
Rachel was dimly aware of Gertrude making a discreet retreat in the background.
‘I know,’ she said, then took Joe’s hand and led him upstairs to the bedroom.
* * *
They had not made love for six months. It was long enough to make it clumsy at first. Joe alternated between being too rough and too gentle, first squeezing and biting and grunting, then barely daring to touch her, caressing her thighs and belly with spidery fingers, a sensation she hated.
Eventually, they found an old rhythm, half-sitting, him inside her. He had the sweaty smell of a day spent in bed and his mouth tasted of tobacco. She did not care, breathed it in, lapped at his lips teasingly, tore at his greying chest fuzz with her fingers. Joe groaned. He was skinnier than she remembered. Old burn scars were prominent on his chest and wiry arms. His hands were cold.
She was close to her climax when it happened.
Joe’s eyes became white pools. Tendrils of ectoplasm poured out of his mouth and onto her skin, milky and cold. He made mumbling, chattering sounds, his voice shifting registers as if many people were trying to speak through him at once. Then the coldness was inside her, swelling.
Rachel screamed. She beat at Joe’s frigid, sweaty chest. Then she bit his shoulder as hard as she could, tasting blood.
He jolted and toppled. She rolled to the side and out of the bed.
‘Joe! Joe, come back!’
The ectoplasm floated around him for a moment like a white halo and then evaporated. She stood up, breathing heavily. Then Joe’s eyes were his own again. He stared at her and then at his hands in horror.
‘I am so sorry, Rachel. Are you all right? I am so sorry.’
She nodded. It was cold in the room and the sweat chilled on her skin. Gingerly, she climbed back into the bed and drew most of the blanket to her. Joe sat up but kept himself away from her.
‘I shouldn’t have,’ he said. ‘After … after I was decommissioned, they said most of the … ability would be gone. I’m so sorry, Rachel. It has been getting worse. I didn’t want to worry you. Especially after—’ He paused.
‘After the baby,’ Rachel said.
Joe nodded. The old guilt rose up in Rachel, colder than ectoplasm.
‘Maybe I should sleep in the guest bedroom,’ Joe said.
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘Lie down with me.’ She pulled him next to her and pressed her face against his neck. His skin was still like ice, but she forced herself to bear it, holding him tight. After a while, his breathing grew steady and he slept.
Rachel lay awake and pulled away from the chill of him, into a warm place, her India, imagined the humid heat, the smell of spices, and when the image was firm in her mind, she started making plans.
7
THE TERMIN PROCEDURE, 10TH NOVEMBER 1938
The November wind whipped up leaves in the nondescriptly opulent Chelsea Square. Peter Bloom shivered in his borrowed flesh and nervously rubbed his numb hands together. It had been a while since he last walked amongst the living and it had not occurred to him to bring an overcoat. But the autumn air was not the only thing that chilled him.
The windows of the safe house were dark. That meant George was late, and he was never late.
There were times when George had shown up drunk, or decided to lecture on avant-garde poetry instead of debriefing Peter. But the Russian never strayed from the best practices of tradecraft. Was it possible that he had not received the message in time? Or perhaps the Listener had proved to be as erratic a messenger as his appearance had promised.
The steady ticking of the spirit crown’s control unit over his heart reminded Peter that he had less than six hours left. The device’s aetheric field anchored his soul into the medium’s rented skull, but at midnight the timer would switch the circuit off and banish him to Summerland.
It sounded like a fairy tale, but the transaction with the medium, a licensed charter-body named Pendlebury whom Peter favoured due to a slight resemblance, had been extremely prosaic. For an hourly fee equivalent to that of a high-class barrister, the medium quieted the vibrations of his own soul-spark and allowed a deceased visitor to take control. It was not quite the same as being alive again—fine motor control was difficult, for example—but more than worth the price. Naturally, the use of an amnesia-inducing anaesthetic that ensured the medium retained no memories of the spirit’s actions cost extra.
Peter entered the small, barren garden in the centre of the square. Mud squelched under his polished Oxford shoes. The key was hidden under a rock, and as he picked it up he was overcome by the tang of dead leaves and earth. It took him back to the first time he met George, three years ago.
It had been autumn then, too, and Peter was still alive. He had little idea of what to expect: a fanatic, perhaps, or an unforgiving taskmaster. When George opened the door, he embraced Peter like an affectionate bear. They sat by the fireplace, in a small circle of warm light in the empty house, with its scarred wallpaper where the electric wiring had been removed, and got drunk on cheap red wine.
Towards the end of the evening, the Russian asked Peter why he’d turned. Flustered, Peter muttered platitudes about inequality and war and world peace. George seized him by the shoulders and told him to pull his head out of his backside. George’s job was to help Peter, to safeguard him, to defend him from both the British and George’s own masters who sometimes did not see clearly. He could not do that if Peter was not honest. Did Peter understand?
After that, Peter did his best to explain what had happened to him at Cambridge. George laughed so hard he started coughing, and Peter had to pound him on the back to make it stop.
Peter realised he was now kneeling in the mud. His memories always became more intense while re-embodied. In Summerland, one’s senses were muted, especially smell—not surprising since all sensory impressions were memories imprinted in the aether. Maybe that, in part, led to Fading: losing the keys that unlocked one’s past.
He stood up, brushed off his wet knees and went to the door. Before opening it, he ran his fingers along the hinges.
The pencil lead George always placed there when leaving was missing. The safe house was compromised.
Panic washed over Peter. His rented heart missed a beat. Pendlebury’s sedated soul stirred and clawed at the inside of his skull like a trapped rat.
His leg muscles spasmed. He leaned on the door and fumbled for the spirit crown’s control unit in his pocket. His hands felt like oversized mittens, but he managed to twist the crown’s tuning dial. Feedback screamed in his head, and then he was in control again.
He tried to breathe the chilly air steadily as he replaced the key in its hiding place. He risked one last glance at the safe house. Its curtainless, blank windows had a haunted look. Turning his back on it felt like a betrayal.
Peter tried a brisk walking pace but managed only a wretched limp, his leg muscles still twitching. He cursed himself for not following a more rigorous surveillance-detection route from Pendlebury’s flat in Marylebone. For all he knew, the house was under observation and he had just blown his cover.
Briefly, he considered going directly to the Soviet Embassy, simply walking in and asking for asylum. It was tempting in the manner of the strange compulsion to leap one felt when standing near a cliff’s edge. But it meant abandoning all the progress he had made so far.
No, the thing t
o do was assume he was under observation and calmly act according to his cover story—which meant attending the soirée at the Harrises’, a couple who hosted a regular social event for the intelligence community. Later, he would check George’s dead drops for messages.
Absurdly, he wondered how to explain his muddy knees to Hildy Harris.
Just as he was about to hail a cab, a black electric car slid quietly from a cul-de-sac and swerved in front of him. The back door swung open.
‘FELIX,’ said a woman sitting in the back, using Peter’s Soviet code name and motioning with a gloved hand. ‘Get in.’
Peter hesitated, heart pounding. Was this some kind of Winter Court sting? But the woman did not look like any SIS agent he had ever seen. She had round cheeks and wore pink lipstick. Her hair cascaded in cherubic ringlets under a flowered hat. The dark green overcoat strained against a generous figure. The overall impression was that of a voluptuous tulip and he nearly laughed—until he saw her blue eyes.
Her pupils were pinpoints, and the utter lack of doubt and fear in her gaze belonged to someone who had spoken to God.
Gingerly, Peter climbed into the car and closed the door.
A man in a raincoat sat behind the steering wheel. He was young, perhaps twenty-five, with a long, sad face, protruding ears and dark, slicked-back hair. Apart from the rakish angle of his bowler hat, he looked thoroughly unremarkable.
‘I am sorry about this,’ he said as he manoeuvred the car back into the flow of traffic. Like the woman, he had a faint accent that might have been Dutch. ‘We received your message, but we had to make sure you were not followed.’
‘Who are you?’ Peter asked.
‘My name is Otto. This—this is my associate—’
‘Shut up, dear,’ the woman said. ‘I am his wife. You can call me Nora.’ Street lights flickered on her face and gave it a porcelain-like pallor. ‘Now, let’s have a look at you.’
With a nurse’s impersonal touch, she patted Peter down and, before he could protest, pulled the spirit crown’s control unit from his pocket. She cradled it in her hands and smiled.
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