by Rod Rees
‘Masks?’ asked Vanka incredulously. ‘Like they wear in the Quartier Chaud?’
‘Yes, that way no one will be able to recognise either of us.’
‘I like the idea of making your act a bit more theatrical,’ mused Burlesque. ‘We could ‘ave a coupla birds wiv really big charms wandering around in the …’
‘Shut up, Burlesque,’ snapped Ella, and to her amazement,that’s just what he did. ‘I need you, Vanka, I need you to help me design a trick so big that no one will ever imagine that it is a trick.’ Ella suddenly became aware that Burlesque was hanging on her every word. ‘I need you to help me design the temple, the hounfo.’
‘Wot’s a hounfo?’ asked a suddenly nervous Burlesque. ‘Is it expensive?’
An hour later Ella and Vanka – having left a half-pissed and very happy Burlesque asleep in the Pig – were sitting back in Vanka’s rooms.
Vanka had lapsed into a fretful silence as though he knew what he should do, but couldn’t bring himself to actually do it. It took half a bottle of Solution and nearly an hour’s worth of dark brooding before he pulled himself out of his mood. ‘Is this Daemon – the one Crowley was talking about – the one you want to take back to NoirVille?’ he asked.
There was no point in lying. ‘Yes, I got that much out of Crowley. He was a tough one to read and he blocked most of his mind off to me, but I found out about the Daemon and one or two other bits and pieces of useful information. The main thing though is that Crowley has given me a golden opportunity to rescue the Daemon.’
‘So come on, tell me: why is it so all-fired important that you abduct this Daemon? Are you mixed up with the Blood Brothers? Are they making you do this? Do they want the Daemon back in NoirVille so they can milk it of its blood?’
Ella sighed. ‘It’s too difficult to explain, Vanka. All I can tell you is it’s something I have to do; I have to help the Daemon escape Crowley and take her to NoirVille.’
‘I don’t like this, Ella. I think all this milking of Daemons is wrong.’
‘Vanka … please … you’ll just have to trust me: this has got nothing to do with stealing the Daemon’s blood. I don’t mean the Daemon any harm, quite the contrary in fact. But I do need your help to rescue her.’
Vanka shook his head. ‘It’s madness, you know. To kidnap a Daemon from under the nose of Heydrich is … madness. And even if you succeed, the SS will hunt you down.’
‘The Demi-Monde is a big place. And once I get to NoirVille I intend to disappear.’
Wasn’t that the truth?
‘Yeah, but anyone helping you will have to disappear too. They’ll need a new name, a new identity, a new home, a new life. To evade the SS will cost a lot of money. It’ll take a fortune in bribes and hush money.’
‘How much?’
He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Probably half a million guineas.’
‘Vanka, how would you like to earn a million guineas?’ enquired Ella quietly.
Vanka looked up from the doleful consideration of his near-empty glass of Solution. ‘A million guineas?’ He laughed. ‘No one’s got a million guineas. That’s more money than in all of the ForthRight.’
‘No it isn’t. The Ministry of Psychic Affairs has over fifteen million guineas to its credit in the Blood Bank in Berlin.’
‘You learnt that while you were holding Crowley’s hands, didn’t you?’ There was a distinct flavouring of admiration in Vanka’s voice.
‘Correct. I now know all the Ministry’s bank account details, all the passwords they use to access it … everything. I could clean out their account like that.’ She snapped her fingers.
‘Then why are you telling me this?’ asked Vanka suspiciously.
‘Why aren’t you down at the Bank now, making yourself a very rich woman?’
‘Because I need your help. I need your help to make that Daemon vanish from Dashwood Manor.’
‘A million guineas?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Just tell me why you put on that act with Crowley. Why did you vamp him?’
‘Crowley is suspicious of me so I acted out what he expected me to be: a pantomime WhoDoo mambo. It worked too: he just dismissed me as a brainless, oversexed Shade. And a man who’s thinking what it would be like to jump my bones ain’t thinking about the things he should be thinking about.’ She gave Vanka a grin. ‘I thought I vamped him pretty good: what do you think?’
‘I think you could … well, never mind what I think.’
For five minutes Vanka strode up and down the shabby room lost in thought. Finally he turned to Ella. ‘Okay, Miss Thomas, you’ve got a deal.’
Ella leapt up out of her chair, threw her arms around Vanka’s neck and pressed her lips firmly against his.
It was Vanka who broke away. He gave Ella a sideways look. ‘Remember, Ella, I’m only human.’
And that, Ella decided, was the big problem.
22
The Demi-Monde: 55th Day of Winter, 1004
The greatest and most compelling aim of UnFunDa -Mentalism is to reclaim the racial purity of the Aryans (as the direct descendants of the Pre-Folk) lost during the Fall and to eliminate all contaminating UnderMentionable aspects from the population. Whilst modern Eugenical studies contend that, over ten generations, it will be possible to breed out the UnderMentionable impurities from the Aryan people, it will also be necessary to sup -plement these more considered aspects of Eugenical policy with Exterminationist strategies designed to eliminate – finally and totally – UnderMentionables from the breed -ing pool. This policy of Extermination I call the Final Solution.
– My Struggle: Reinhard Heydrich, ForthRight Free Press
It was bad enough when word came that Comrade Leader Heydrich would be personally interviewing the Daemon and that the interview would be taking place at Dashwood Manor. That, by itself, was enough to throw the household into panic.
It was the codicil to the message that had threatened to reduce Trixie’s governess to gibbering insensibility. The instruction that His Holiness Comrade Crowley was intent upon holding a séance in the Manor’s ballroom, a séance that the Leader and other notables would be attending, had been almost too much for the woman’s fragile constitution to bear, especially as it was to be, according to the note, ‘a séance designed to unlock the Daemon’s darkest secrets and to use whatever conjurations and adjurations are necessary to make said Daemon pliant and obedient’.
Trixie’s governess almost crumbled under this weight of responsibility and the thought that the Manor would soon be the venue for something as outré as a WhoDoo séance. To have her home playing host to a psychic and – so they had been warned – a Shade witch was intolerable. And when the gang of rather uncouth workmen had arrived to construct this mysterious thing called a hounfo in the Manor’s ballroom she became nigh on hysterical. But after a quiet word from the master and a glass of twenty per cent Solution, she rallied and turned all her nervous energy towards preparing Dashwood Manor for the Leader’s arrival.
Under Governess Margaret’s impassioned – and often tearful – instruction the servants polished and scrubbed, swept and tidied until the Manor was immaculate and smelt of beeswax and bustle. Never had the Manor been so clean and polished nor the wooden floors buffed to such a dangerously lustrous sheen. But for Trixie the most singular aspect of this premature Spring-cleaning was the servants being instructed to take down all of the mirrors that hung in the hallway and in the drawing room.
Her father noted Trixie’s confusion. ‘The Leader has an aversion to mirrors. He will not look into them,’ he said by way of explanation. This only fuelled her curiosity.
‘But why?’
A shrug from her father. ‘Who knows, Trixie? The Leader is different from the rest of us mere mortals. Perhaps,’ he added in a whispered aside, ‘he does not wish to see what he has become.’ This thought made the Comrade Commissar pause for a moment and then he edged closer to his daughter. ‘And we must be careful of what Reinhard Heydrich has
become. As my daughter, Trixie, you will be introduced to the Leader, but it is doubtful whether he will deign to talk with you. But if he does, you must answer his questions correctly as a good Daughter of the ForthRight. No demurral and none of your famous sarcasm. You may be young, Trixie, but your youth will not protect you: just remember it is treason to express doubts about the rightness of what the Leader says or does. For a female to question the ForthRight’s ultimate victory over the other peoples of the Demi-Monde is HerEsy.’ He paused for a moment as though running through a mental checklist. ‘You know your UnFunDaMentalist catechisms? You may be asked to recite them by Heydrich; the man is a stickler for Party dogma.’
A nod from Trixie.
‘Excellent.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘And keep that Eyetie slave of yours out of sight. Heydrich hates the Medi races almost as much as he hates Shades and nuJus.’
Despite their having been advised that the Leader would not be arriving at the Manor until the evening, Heydrich’s cavalcade swept into the grounds a little after one o’clock that afternoon, the Leader’s Mercedes steam-limo set in the middle of a phalanx of armoured pantechnicons full of SS militia.
Captain Dabrowski had drawn up his company in front of the house to provide an honour guard, but he and his men were ignored by the four black-uniformed men who clambered out of the steam-limo and across the driveway’s swept gravel to the steps that led to the main doors of Dashwood Manor. Trixie knew them all; their engravings were forever on the front page of The Stormer. All were Heroes of the Revolution: Vice-Leader Comrade Beria; His Holiness Comrade Crowley; Colonel Clement, the head of the SS; and, of course, the Comrade Leader himself.
Trixie was beside herself with excitement: to be actually meeting the Leader in the flesh! It was the dream of every good member of the RightNixes – the ForthRight’s youth movement – to meet with the Great Leader face to face.
She tried to calm herself. The Leader’s arrival had been so unexpected that she and her father had had to rush to greet their distinguished guest, but now she stood with her presentation bouquet and dressed, a little uncomfortably it had to be admitted, in a stylised peasant’s dress – the Party was encouraging women to shun the ‘decadent’ styles coming out of Paris – embroidered with blue Valknuts. Trixie hated the dress, but her governess had insisted.
Her father gave the Party salute, intoned the Party oath and then bowed a greeting. ‘Good afternoon, my Leader, you do my home tremendous honour.’
‘You are not wearing a uniform, Dashwood,’ said Heydrich, who then proceeded to make a critical study of the garden, obviously assessing the defences. ‘I require all members of my government, when on official business, to wear their uniform. By wearing a uniform we signal that we are all of one accord. It demonstrates, Comrade Commissar Dashwood, that you have sublimated your individuality to the will of the Leader and of the Party.’ He tapped at the side of his highly polished boot with the riding crop he was carrying. ‘One day all men in the ForthRight will be obliged to wear uniform, and when they do it will signal that their identity is in the Party’s gift; that individuality and independence of thought are decadent and obsolete, that their only function in life is to obey.’
The Comrade Leader spoke very quickly, as though his mouth had to hurry to keep pace with his mind. Trixie was still musing on what he said – trying to memorise it for repetition at the Academy – when he moved to another subject. ‘I have come to interview the Daemon,’ said Heydrich abruptly. ‘You have a study I might use for this purpose?’
‘Why yes, Comrade Leader.’
‘Then have the creature brought there.’ Heydrich’s gaze drifted towards Trixie. ‘Is this your daughter, Dashwood? Is this the girl who has been assisting with the Daemon’s interrogation?’
‘Indeed, Comrade Leader, may I present my daughter, Lady Trixiebell Dashwood.’
Trixie curtsied and automatically recited the mantra of the RightNixes, ‘One Race Defines Us, One Party Unites Us and One Leader Commands Us.’ She held out the bouquet and one of the Leader’s flunkies took it.
‘Charming,’ murmured the Leader as he held out his hand to Trixie. ‘You are to be congratulated, Comrade Commissar, on siring such a perfect flower of Aryan womanhood. With girls as beautiful and as racially pure as this I am confident that the bloodstock of the ForthRight will soon be free of the contaminants of the UnderMentionable races.’ He smiled at Trixie. ‘You must always remember, Lady Trixiebell, that ABBA has given the women of the ForthRight the divine task of breeding out the racial impurities that defile our Aryan birthright. My advice is that you marry young and be fruitful.’
During the moment when the Leader had shaken her hand she had a chance to study him more carefully. He was tall, narrow-hipped and lithe – his svelte body wonderfully presented by his ink-black uniform – and his long face was dressed with an imperious nose and narrow-set, very pale eyes. He was a perfect specimen of the ‘ForthRight Man’, the Aryan male.
An impish, unpatriotic and decidedly dangerous thought popped into Trixie’s head: perhaps though he could even be considered too perfect. It might have been how soft his hand was when he had shaken hers. It might have been that his uniform was too immaculate or that his eyes contained no humour or humanity. There was something almost doll-like about him: as though she were meeting with an emotionless, soulless automaton.
The slap of the Leader’s riding crop against the black leather of his jackboot snapped Trixie out of her reverie. ‘So to work, Comrade Commissar; we cannot, through indolence or the squandering of time, allow the reins of government to slip from our grasp.’
As Heydrich and his party were shown into the house, Trixie and her father trotted after the Leader’s delegation. Trixie was just in time to see the Leader being shown into her father’s study and Crowley, with Clement at his heels, wandering off in the direction of the ballroom, presumably to check on the construction works being done in advance of the evening’s séance. As soon as the study door was shut, Beria began barking out orders, demanding that the Daemon be summoned.
Five minutes later the creature was escorted down from its room by two of Clement’s SS troopers. As Trixie watched it descend the staircase, she was amazed by how sanguine the Daemon seemed. It even bade her a jaunty ‘good afternoon’.
Didn’t the silly thing know it was going to meet the Leader?
Once the Daemon was shown into the study, Beria shut the door and stationed two large and imposing SS soldiers to guard it. As Beria forcefully reminded Dashwood, no one was, in any circumstances, to disturb the Leader whilst he was in conference with the Daemon.
The Dashwood household settled into a sort of hyperactive indolence: everyone ready at an instant to do the Leader’s bidding but not daring to do anything whilst they waited. Trixie decided to return to her embroidery, but as she was climbing her way up the staircase that led to the upper floors of the Manor and her bedroom, she saw Captain Dabrowski dodge back into one of the guest bedrooms on the first floor.
Odd …
But not as odd as what she saw when she peeked through the door’s keyhole. The Captain was kneeling next to the empty fireplace, apparently listening to the wind whistling up the chimney. She turned the doorknob and to her amazement found that the Captain had bolted the door from within. Perplexed and not a little aggrieved by his antics, she rapped on the door. A second later the bolts were pulled and the door was edged open. ‘Yes?’ said the Captain in a decidedly disrespectful and impatient tone.
‘What are you doing in there, Captain?’ Trixie demanded in a loud and imperious voice. ‘I know you have jurisdiction over this house regarding security but what I saw you doing …’
She wasn’t allowed to finish. The Polish Captain reached out, grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her into the room. Trixie gave a squeak of complaint but when she saw the revolver in his hand and noted that it was pointed in her direction she decided that any more squeaking might not be a good idea.
‘Are you mad? My father …’
‘Miss Dashwood: shut up! I have been presented with an ABBA-sent opportunity to find out what that bastard Heydrich …’
Bastard? Trixie flinched away from the dangerous insult.
‘… is up to. If you are quiet and do what you are told, then I will leave here without harming you. But if you attempt to call out or to raise the alarm then I will silence you … permanently. Make no mistake, these are desperate times and I will not hesitate to sacrifice one life to save millions. Do you understand?’
The look in Dabrowski’s eyes convinced Trixie that he was in earnest. She nodded her agreement.
‘Very well,’ said the Captain, ‘if you will come and sit with me by the fireplace, I think we will hear history being made.’
‘What?’
‘The chimney at this side of the house runs up from your father’s study. By sitting quietly we can hear everything that is said in that room.’
‘You can’t eavesdrop on the Leader,’ Trixie protested.
But they could.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Williams, would you take a seat?’
For an uncertain moment Norma Williams stood by the door of the shadow-draped room. No one had told her who she was to meet, but from the panic that had enveloped the house she guessed it was someone important. She moved towards the desk and took the leather tub chair indicated. Closer now, she could see who her host was.