She had not rehearsed this with Max. He had simply urged her to say what came naturally. She studied Bloom, but it was hard to read him with his full mask.
‘So why did you join the Service, then, Rachel?’
‘Well, I was born in Bengal. I was seven when my family moved back here, so I grew up thinking of England as this mythical place. My ayah, my nurse, made up all kinds of stories about the Queen and her court of spirits and I ate them up. I suppose I never quite stopped believing in them, in the idea of the Empire. At Princess Helena College, when the other girls picked on me for sounding different, I would tell them I was just as British as they were, and that one day I was going to work for the Queen.
‘When the war started, I handed out white lilies as symbols of cowardice to young men who would not join up. I volunteered as a nurse for a while. My father was horrified and got me a desk job at the Registry instead. Fortunately, I was very good at it—and no one there cared that I was a wisp of a girl as long as I pulled my weight.
‘Of course, real life turned out to be more complex than my ayah’s stories. But it felt good to be able to make a difference.’
‘And the Finance Section does not fill you with that feeling?’
‘I am not a snob. In a war, every soldier is important. But I have more to offer than rubber-stamping classified purchase orders. I like to think so, anyway.’ She frowned. ‘Why do you care about any of this, Peter?’
‘Well, first, I know a few things about being unappreciated.’ Bloom’s voice wavered, suddenly. He paused and made a show of adjusting his spirit crown. Rachel realised that in spite of his calm manner, something had upset him very recently. She wondered exactly where those mud stains had come from.
‘Excuse me. It is not my night with aetheric connections,’ Bloom said after a moment. ‘Second, you may be aware of the issues we have been experiencing in Spain, many of which are the result of a lack of cooperation between Winter and Summer. Your lot recruits assets on the ground, we run them, but we don’t coordinate well enough.’
‘Maybe you should take that up with liaison officers like Kim.’
‘Well, that’s the thing. Many of the young, capable officers in the Winter Court are distracted by ambition. They would rather advance their careers than facilitate cooperation. So some of us have been talking to people like you who do not lack passion but whose future paths are less clear.’
‘Go on.’
‘There might be a few things you could do for us, unofficially. If that is of interest to you, I am happy to discuss further.’
Rachel hesitated. Listening to Bloom, it was much easier to believe that Kulagin’s claims had been misinformation. There was interservice rivalry, and the Harrises’ was exactly the place to try to build ties to address it. Or to trap insubordinate officers like her before the Soviets could recruit them.
Ultimately, it did come down to faith.
‘I would like that,’ Rachel said.
‘Very well. I will arrange an ectophone call. Perhaps next week?’
‘That would be perfect.’
Bloom shook her hand again. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Rachel.’
‘Enjoy the rest of your evening. Guy Burgess told me you had plans.’
He stiffened a little, but Rachel could not tell if he blushed under the mask.
‘I always have plans,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘Can’t be a spy without them.’
* * *
A little later, Rachel said her goodbyes to Hildy and Tommy. The gathering was likely to go on until the small hours, with more than one guest staying over in the bedrooms on the third floor. Tommy held her hand tight between his and said she was always welcome, but Rachel saw the closed door in his eyes.
She waited for her cab outside, breath steaming in the chill. The cold air cleared her head. She felt a mixture of terror and exhilaration, rubbing her hands against the cold.
A street light flickered and the ectophone in her handbag rattled.
WELL DONE, the brass letters said.
WE’LL SEE, she replied to the ghost of Max Chevalier.
9
SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON THE IBERIAN PROBLEM, 11TH NOVEMBER 1938
The Special Committee on the Iberian Problem met the following evening, and Peter Bloom arrived late.
He signed the Summer Court entrance book hastily, violated protocol by not waiting for the attendant and nearly got lost on his way to the Chimney.
He had spent the last few hours in intense preparation that had left him feeling transparent and thin, a warning sign of Fading. His work had been interrupted by a furious Pendlebury, who sent him a tart ectomail complaining about soiled clothes and a headache from a poorly tuned spirit crown. Placating him required an ectophone call—another vim-costly journey to listen to the medium’s nasal voice listing his grievances.
But exhaustion and an irate medium were minor worries compared to what waited for him at the top of the tower. Standing in the Chimney’s aethervator, which was propelled to Whitehall by a massive luz counterweight, he wondered if this was what Fascist prisoners in Spain felt like when the firing squad raised their rifles.
He tried to stay calm. The Presence had a plan for him. And surely he would not be permitted in the PM’s presence if the SIS knew about his true loyalties? Unless this was all elaborate theatre to feed the Presence misinformation. And maybe the god-mind knew that, and was playing a deeper game.
He remembered the chill of its rejection, and shuddered.
The journey ana-wards took only a minute. The top of the Chimney overlapped with an electromagnetically shielded room in Whitehall. Peter stepped out of the aethervator into a glowing cylindrical Faraday cage, where C and his stone-faced deputy chief George Hill were already standing around an ectophone’s prismatic circuit. It was strange to see their usual impeccable self-images, nearly identical to the way they had looked in life, superimposed against the stark electrical geometry of the living world.
C frowned at Peter. ‘Kind of you to join us, Bloom,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, His Nibs is running behind as well.’
Peter took his place next to the two older spies. Hill was a lantern-jawed old soldier, a veteran of pre-Revolutionary Russian operations. Rumour had it he was there on the night Rasputin died. Although his face was impassive, hostility radiated from him in chilly waves. Peter gave him a smile and arranged his notes in mid-air into a floating wall of imprinted aether between them.
Then Prime Minister Herbert Blanco West entered the room.
His soul-spark was one of the largest Peter had ever seen and took up nearly half of the Faraday cage. It was a kaleidoscope of thought-forms so vivid you could almost glimpse actual images of what the great man thought and saw. Peter spotted a ship made of blue light, and faces, but they changed too quickly for him to recognise, like flames.
Another living soul accompanied him. This had to be Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of the Winter Court, the terrestrial branch of the SIS. Next to the PM, his mind was a tiny moon orbiting a huge primordial planet.
‘Gentlemen,’ West said. His voice was in sharp contrast to the soul-spark, a little wheezy, an old man’s voice. ‘Apologies for my tardiness. Parliament was murder today. I understand you have found a sword to cut through this Gordian tangle of ours. Let us find out how sharp it is.’
As C started laying out the facts of the Spanish situation, Peter could not help staring at the blaze of the prime minister’s thoughts. They reminded him of another fire, and of the night he first heard Herbert West’s name.
* * *
It was 1916, towards the end of the war. Peter was five years old.
His family sat in front of the fireplace in the cosy drawing room, one of the few in the huge Palace Gardens Terrace house they actually used. Peter’s father had just returned from the Office of Communications where he worked. His mother had spent the evening writing poetry. There were stacks of small notebooks at her feet. Peter lay on his special flyi
ng carpet—the old velvety rug behind his mother’s chair—almost asleep in the comforting murmur of his parents’ voices.
Later, he picked their actual words from his memory like shards of glass and dissected the details of the scene. The auburn sweep of his mother’s hair, his father’s round face, made apple-like by the soft light from the fire, and the plumpness that would stay with him until the illness and the end.
‘West came by the Office today.’ His father’s smell was overpowering and sweet, but that evening it was still as safe and familiar as his baritone voice.
‘Oh,’ Peter’s mother said.
‘He wants to do some war work. War work! Can you believe him? After everything his Dimensionists have done to get us into that mess in the first place.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Well, no matter what I think about the old boy’s politics, he is Herbert Blanco West. I could hardly refuse him.’ Peter’s father leaned back. ‘I said that if he was not too busy with campaigning, we would be happy to have a few morale pieces from him. He was very enthusiastic, kept saying how he wants to do his part. I wanted to tell him, HB, you did your part already by persuading Marconi to give us those ghastly ectotanks, but I bit my tongue. Just tried to play it like it was the good old days.’
‘It is a bit unfair to hold that against him, Charles. You know what I think about the Dimensionists, but it is wartime. We need all the weapons we can get.’
‘Well, that is exactly what they want us to think, isn’t it?’
‘Charles, we are both tired, let us not argue politics, please. How was HB otherwise?’
‘Looked a bit fatigued, but hale as a horse. Would not shut up about his new book. Another history thing. A “joint symphony of the living and the dead,” he called it. A bit grandiose, if you ask me.’
‘Well, if there is anyone who can succeed in something like that, it’s him. Did he say anything else?’
‘He did hint at some new affair, if that is what you want to know. But I think he has to be more careful now that he is planning to run for office.’
Peter’s mother closed her book slowly and put away her pen.
‘In fact, I did not want to know that, Charles. But thank you.’
‘I am sorry. It was unkind of me. It’s just that whenever I see him, I wonder—’
‘Well, you have nothing to wonder about,’ Peter’s mother said gently. She stood up, walked over to the other chair and stroked the man’s cheek.
‘It has been a while,’ she said.
‘Not in front of the boy, Ann.’
‘The poor boy is fast asleep. Perhaps we could—’
The electric lamp in the corner flickered and went out. A thunder-like rumble woke Peter up fully.
‘Who is Mr West?’ he asked.
* * *
‘So, who is this Dzhugashvili chap, then?’ the prime minister asked.
His voice brought Peter back to the present, and he blinked owlishly at his notes.
C rolled his eyes at him. ‘I believe that is your cue, Bloom.’
‘Dzhugashvili, Iosif, also known as Josif Stalin,’ Peter read from his notes. ‘Born in Georgia. Instrumental in obtaining early funds for the Revolution, often via criminal means. One of the contenders to succeed Lenin until the God-Builders drove him into exile.’ Peter recited Dzhugashvili’s biography while pondering the question that had troubled him since the meeting with C.
Why had West requested him, after all these years?
Even though the PM could not see spirits, Peter felt the soul-spark’s attention directed at him. It was like standing next to a bonfire.
‘Over the last decade, Dzhugashvili has been creating a network of agents and counter-revolutionary cells all over Europe, notably in Paris, Prague and Rotterdam. However, Spain is the first region where he has operated this openly. Given extensive NKVD penetration of the Communist parties of the Republic, he is taking a considerable risk. He may be genuinely trying to establish a power base in the Iberian Peninsula. It could well be in our interest to aid him.’
‘I think I met this Dzhugashvili once, in Petrograd,’ the prime minister said wistfully. ‘Back then, he wrote poetry. Not bad, if I recall correctly.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ Sir Stewart said, ‘but poets rarely make the best statesmen. Present company excepted, of course.’
The PM chuckled. ‘I was never much of a poet.’
‘That just proves my point, eh? Our aetheric colleagues have obviously discovered something interesting—with the help of our own BRIAR, of course. But they lack the perspective to understand the bigger picture. They just dance around Communists. We hunt down agitators infiltrating the unions.
‘I say that a Communist is a Communist, and this Dzhugashvili is no different. If he fails, we have the same situation as before—a Soviet puppet state on our doorstep. If he succeeds, it is conceivably even worse: an ideologue strongman setting an example to both our workers and the rest of Europe.
‘No, gentlemen, I propose we stick to the devil we know and support Franco. Maybe your chap can create pandemonium on the Republic side, but there is no need to get our own hands dirty. Besides, that did not work out too well last time, as Mr Hill well knows.’
Hill’s self-image grew pale with rage, but C raised a hand to silence him.
‘Sir Stewart is droll, as always,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he was too busy chasing agitators to read Mr Bloom’s report? Or maybe the subtle implications simply eluded him.’
It did not take an experienced soul-reader to interpret the forest of red crystal spikes that appeared in Sir Stewart’s soul-spark.
‘Look here—’ Sir Stewart started.
‘My apologies,’ C said. ‘I spoke out of turn. But I would do Her Majesty’s government a disservice if I failed to emphasise the seriousness of the matter. Previously, I also agreed to support the Fascists, but now the Soviets have upped the game twofold. First, their agents are rapidly infiltrating the Republic’s government. Second, they are providing the Republic with aetherguns to counter Franco’s ectotanks. That means sending Russian officers to train the Spanish forces. We are one escalation step away from actual war.
‘Prime Minister, sir, let us do this. We have an opportunity to turn the tables on the Soviets. We make Dzhugashvili our man, and he will cut out the NKVD cancer from Spain’s flesh. We can set conditions, install observers, steer things in the right direction. And remember, the Republic will need someone to build an afterlife. Why not Marconi? Once that is in place, Dzhugashvili may find it difficult not to embrace the virtues of ectocapitalism.’
The intelligence chiefs paused and waited for the prime minister’s response. West’s thought-forms were darker now, with hues of green and deep red. The more Peter studied them, the clearer they became. He was certain he could see dark, multi-legged shapes moving through green clouds, and a burning city.
Peter thought of Madrid, of the lie he had told Inez, and the truth that lay behind it.
* * *
That evening in 1916, after Peter asked his question, Mr Bloom frowned.
‘Peter, it is not polite to listen in to grown-up conversations. You should—’
‘Let me take care of this, Charles.’
Peter’s mother took his face between her small, warm hands and looked at him seriously.
‘Mr West is a writer, like Mummy. It means he tells stories. Except that his stories are a lot sillier than Mummy’s. And he is a very silly little man, and we are not going to talk about him anymore.’
The glass in the windows tinkled and sirens started howling in the distance.
‘Oh, bloody hell, not again,’ Peter’s father said. He stood up with a jerk, walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. A pale green light played on his features as the rumbling and the siren howls continued.
‘A zeppelin,’ he said darkly. ‘The ectoflyers are already up there. I think they are going to bring it down.’
‘I want to
see!’ Peter ran to his father and held his arms out. Mr Bloom picked him up and for a moment Peter was lost in his smell and the feeling of flying. But his father’s face was not playful at all.
‘Charles,’ Peter’s mother said, with a hint of danger in her tone.
‘The boy needs to see this. Look, Peter. This is what Mr West and his friends have brought to us.’
A silvery, cigar-shaped craft drifted slowly above the jagged skyline in the distance, scissored by pale spotlight beams. Orange and golden flames bloomed beneath its bulk, and every fiery burst was followed by a delayed thunderclap that made the windows jingle. A small whimper escaped Peter’s lips.
‘Come on, now, Peter, be a brave boy, there is nothing to be afraid of. Just watch.’
A cloud of pale, fluttering things rose up around the airship, casting shadows on its gleaming hull. It was hard to see the details, but they had wings made from a translucent white substance that glowed faintly in the dark. They reminded Peter of the moths that had scared him one time when he hid in the cupboard beneath the stairs. But these were much larger, and man-shaped. Long, flexible tendrils trailed behind them.
‘Charles, you are being an ass,’ Peter’s mother said. ‘Give him to me. We are going to the basement right now.’
‘In a minute.’
As Peter watched, a moth-man swooped along the belly of the enemy vessel. One of his tendrils snaked out, hook-like, and traced a fiery wound on the silver surface. Fire poured out like blood and the nose of the airship dipped suddenly. The white moth-things swarmed around it. The pop and crackle of the distant fireworks reached a crescendo. Several of the flyers fell from the sky, their ghostly substance evaporating into nothingness as they plummeted towards the ground. Peter gasped, hot pressure in his bladder.
‘Those are ectoflyers, Peter,’ his father said. ‘The men with wings. That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Only they can’t fly unless they eat dead people. Their wings are made from the soul-stuff, which they push out through their mouths and eyes. Would you want wings like that, Peter?’
‘Charles, that is enough!’ Peter’s mother snatched Peter from his father’s arms.
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