by Rod Rees
And to the Baron’s astonishment, the men started cheering.
The train was early. Cassidy had only just set the bomb – he hadn’t been able to remember whether the Baron had told him he needed two hundred kilos of explosive or four hundred kilos, so to be on the safe side, he’d opted for the latter – and run the fuse behind the shed they were using as protection from the blast when he heard the whistle announcing the train’s imminent arrival. Of course, the Baron had also got him confused about the direction the train was to come at him from, but, thankfully, once he’d realised it was arriving from the Rodina side of the bridge, he’d managed to nip out and re-lay the bomb in time. A minute later, when he saw the train’s lanterns, he scratched a match on the side of the shed, lit the fuse and prayed that he hadn’t cut it too long. If the bomb exploded after the train had passed, the Baron would be mighty ticked off.
The bomb exploded exactly where Cassidy had intended: under the engine, directly beneath the boiler. Unfortunately, as he decided later, he should have used only two hundred kilos – maybe that should have been two hundred pounds – of explosive. At four hundred kilos the bomb didn’t so much derail the train as pick it up and toss it disdainfully aside. There was a huge, ear-shredding scream of steel on steel, the train seemed to pause for a moment as though gathering its breath and then it jumped the tracks and plunged down the earth embankment, dragging the line of seven carriages it was hauling with it.
Fuck!
For a moment the train lay huffing and puffing on its side like some great wounded beast. Then all Hel broke loose. The boiler exploded and if the sound of Cassidy’s bomb detonating had been loud, this was positively earth-shaking. Shards of metal flew like so much shrapnel through the air, wrecking the wooden shed Cassidy was using for cover, a flying rivet almost taking his head off. This he decided was a damned sight more exciting – and dangerous – than tending to the gardens of Dashwood Manor.
He waited a few moments until he was reasonably confident that nothing else was going to go bang and then peeked out from behind the smoking ruin of the shed. The train’s firebox had been split open by the explosion, spewing burning coals all around, and by the light from the fires the coals had started he saw that the cargo carried by the trucks had been spilled along the line. Cassidy set off at a trot to see what the spoils of war were. Initially he was disappointed, all there seemed to be were boxes upon boxes of tinned meat, but at the third wagon he struck lucky, almost tripping over long wooden boxes containing automatic rifles.
With a whoop of triumph he waved to the boy who had command of the signal rocket and a second later a red flare was arching across the night sky.
Cassidy gave a satisfied smile: he had just pulled off the first robbery of a railway train in the history of the Demi-Monde. He would be famous. It might even be the first step on a very lucrative career. All he needed was more trains.
The Baron hadn’t appreciated how difficult it would be to fashion the Polish prisoners into an army. Once they had broken out of the camp, once they had got to the wrecked train, once they were armed, then all discipline seemed to desert them. All they were intent on was revenge; all they wanted to do was to kill people … any people. But the Baron knew they didn’t have time for revenge. Once day dawned there would be no hiding from the SS and they would be hunted down like dogs. By the Baron’s calculations they had, at most, ten hours, ten hours to decide the fate of what was left of the WFA and of Trixie.
It was Crockett and his gang who, by dint of much cursing and haranguing, managed to bring about half of the Poles into some semblance of order. It was this motley crew that marched to relieve Warsaw. They came within an ace of failing.
If the commander of the ForthRight forces stationed in Odessa had been more resolute and more decisive he could have moved to block the advance of the Baron’s improvised army. But he was a man of little initiative and, confused and perplexed by the strange messages he was receiving about a breakout by Polish prisoners, he kept most of his men safely in barracks and allowed the Baron’s army to pass through Odessa largely unopposed.
If there had been fewer veterans of the Troubles in the ranks of the Polish escapees – men used to action and to taking orders – then Crockett wouldn’t have been able to keep control and the army would have quickly disintegrated into a mob.
If their attack had taken place during the day, the Baron’s army would soon have become lost in the jumble of Odessa’s unfamiliar backstreets. But at night they had the glow of the fires sweeping through Warsaw to guide them and they could follow the trails of fairy lights formed as artillery shells arched through the sky to fall with a crump on the Industrial Zone.
But most of all they were lucky that it was Spring Eve and half the ForthRight Army was drunk.
They attacked the Southgate entrance to the Ghetto. It wasn’t a coordinated or a well-managed assault but it was effective. The last thing the SS guards were expecting was to be attacked from outside of the Ghetto, and certainly not by thousands of well-armed and vengeful Poles. Resistance crumpled and in a matter of minutes the Poles were in Warsaw, but there was no time for them to rest on their laurels. The Baron and Crockett drove their men on, screaming at any who paused to pillage wagons or became involved in firefights, reminding them that the bigger prize had yet to be won.
The odd thing was that as they advanced through the ruined streets of Warsaw they met surprisingly little resistance. All the Baron could assume was that Clement had received word of their impending attack and, determined not to find himself fighting an enemy to the front and to the rear, had pulled his forces into a defensive line to the east of the Ghetto. With disturbing ease the Baron’s army smashed through the SS and made it to the barricades that marked the final line of the WFA’s defence.
Baron Dashwood barely recognised his daughter: he had to convince himself that this dirty, ragged girl with the hacked crop of hair was indeed his beloved Trixiebell. But it wasn’t just the change in her appearance that the Baron found difficult to accept: she had, in just a few weeks, metamorphosed into someone completely different from the skittish and unworldly Trixiebell he had known and loved. She had become harder and colder. Even the embrace she had given him seemed reluctant … almost embarrassed.
But he had to admit to being mightily impressed by the way she managed her army and her officers. She was decisive and she was respected and all of the battle-hardened WFA officers who made up her command team unquestioningly acknowledged her authority.
Maybe, the Baron decided, when all the fighting and the mayhem was over, he would see his Trixiebell again. But looking at the huge sergeant who loitered so protectively behind his daughter, the Baron had the feeling, as all fathers have at some point in their lives, that Trixiebell wasn’t his any more. He had been superseded in his daughter’s life by this brutal Sergeant Wysochi.
It was the Sergeant who his daughter turned to now. ‘Divide the fighters brought in by my father between our four regiments. The newcomers are to be integrated into the WFA.’
‘It might be better to allow my men a chance to rest for a moment, to get something to eat. They’ve been living on scraps …’
Trixie looked at her father with something approaching shock on her face. She was obviously not used to her orders being questioned.
‘Father,’ she said in a voice so low that only the Baron and Wysochi could hear her, ‘I command here. When I give an order it is to be carried out. This is not a debating chamber and I do not run my army as a democracy. Do you understand?’
The Baron was thunderstruck. ‘But all I was suggesting, Trixie …’
‘Father, please. When we are with others you will address me as Colonel or Sir.’ Trixie turned back to Wysochi. ‘Disperse the newcomers between the four regiments. It’s eleven o’clock now: I want the army ready to break out of the Ghetto at midnight. I want to attack while the SS is still off balance.’
‘There is a problem, Colonel,’ said Wysochi. �
�A number of the newcomers are – were – officers in the ForthRight army and have expressed a reluctance to take orders from WFA commanders.’
‘Is there a focus of this protest?’ Trixie said quietly.
‘A man named Wozniak. He was a colonel before he was purged.’
‘Have former Colonel Wozniak join me.’
The man who was ushered into Trixie’s presence was tall and dirty and the labour camp had left him with a twitch in his left eye and a heavy limp. But although he had been physically bashed about by his time doing hard labour on behalf of the ForthRight, his arrogance remained undiminished.
‘Where is this Colonel Dashwood I have been brought to see?’ he demanded.
‘I am Colonel Dashwood,’ said Trixie quietly, ‘and I generally expect my soldiers to salute me when they are brought into my presence.’
Wozniak gawped at Trixie. ‘You’re the Commander of the WFA? No … this must be a joke. You’re just a girl. This is ridiculous. I’m not taking orders from a girl.’
If Trixie was disturbed by Wozniak’s disdain she didn’t show it. ‘I have four thousand men under my command, Wozniak, and I think you will find that they all accept my orders because they have confidence in my abilities as a military leader. The thing that matters isn’t my gender but my ability to lead and to kill SS.’
The grim implacability of what Trixie said gave even the bumptious Wozniak pause. He looked at her a little more carefully. ‘I am sorry, young lady, but war is a field of endeavour only trained men have any business being involved in. Girls like you should confine themselves to nursing the wounded and cleaning.’
‘I presume from this that you will be disinclined to obey my orders?’
‘Correct, and I will instruct my men to do likewise.’ He shook his head. ‘No, to have a woman leading an army is quite unacceptable.’
Trixie was quiet for a moment. And though Wozniak took this as a sign of the girl’s indecision, the Baron knew otherwise: Trixie was always quiet when she was struggling to control her temper.
No one said a word: a deathly silence fell on the room. Then slowly and deliberately Trixie took her pistol from its holster and placed it on the table in front of her. This done, she began speaking again as though Wozniak hadn’t said a word.
‘The one thing I have learnt during my time fighting the SS is that there is no place for ambiguity or debate in an army. So, I ask you just one more time, Wozniak: for the sake of the Polish people, will you take my orders?’
Wozniak looked about, trying to gauge the mood of the other men gathered there. Then his eyes settled on the pistol resting in front of Trixie. He obviously came to the conclusion that this was just a show of bravado on her part. She was, after all, just a girl.
‘No,’ he said finally.
Trixie raised her pistol and shot him through the forehead.
The Baron was rendered speechless by the implacability of his daughter. He had never believed Trixie – or any woman for that matter – would be capable of such a barbarous act. It was unthinkable … unbelievable …
Trixie continued giving orders as though nothing untoward had happened, as though she routinely shot her officers. A chilling thought occurred to the Baron: maybe she did.
Part Four
Spring Eve
MAP OF THE QUARTIER CHAUD.
PLATE 4
34
The Demi-Monde: 90th Day of Winter, 1004 – Spring Eve
Operation Hoodwink: The ultimate success of Operation Barbarossa and of the Final Solution turns on the usurping of the nuJu-controlled financial power of the Rialto Bourse. Item One: Vice-Leader Comrade Beria is to undertake a black propaganda programme designed to deceive Doge Catherine-Sophia into believing that the objective of Operation Barbarossa is the invasion and subjugation of the Coven rather than the Quartier Chaud. Item Two: Efforts will be made to sponsor and promote the work of Robespierre and others in the Quartier Chaud sympathetic to the ForthRight to sever ties with Venice and to make political and religious alignment with the ForthRight. Item Three: Royalist cryptos within the ForthRight will be fed disinformation to be communicated to Venice. Item Four: Efforts will be made to ensure only weak/incompetent leaders take control of Rebel forces within the Warsaw Ghetto, this to minimise potential obstacles to the successful execution of Case White. Item Five: An Export Licence for the delivery of M4s to the Coven to be issued, the weapons to recompense for services rendered to the ForthRight by Empress Wu.
– minutes of the ExtraOrdinary PolitBuro meeting held under the guidance of the Great Leader on the 39th day of Winter, 1004 (copy to be withheld from Comrade Commissar Dashwood)
Norma had no idea how long she had been held in the cell. There were no windows so it was impossible for her to distinguish night from day. In fact, the only way she could mark the passage of time was by the trays of food that were periodically pushed under her cell door, but as all she was fed was fruit and water the meals soon merged into one. There was no breakfast, lunch or dinner in Wewelsburg Castle, there was only feeding time.
Now she was really stuck in the Demi-Monde. Now she was really one of the Kept.
By her best estimate, it was maybe a week since she and Ella Thomas had entered the sewers. She remembered going down into that stinking blackness, she remembered the brick smash -ing into her knee, she remembered being swept away, fighting for her life in those putrid rapids, but after that … nothing. The next memory she had was lying – cold, wet and exhausted – washed up on a mud bank at the side of the Rhine.
A couple of children had found her and then two burly men had carried her to a mean little hut and dumped her on a cot beside a pot-bellied stove to dry out. The Witchfinder had come the next day. She remembered him examining her – she still had the bruises where the bastard had poked and prodded her – and then he’d had her loaded into a closed steamer to transport her to Wewelsburg Castle. She knew the name of the place because the Witchfinder had taunted her for the whole of the hour-long drive, taunted her about the impossibility of being rescued from Wewelsburg Castle.
For days all she had to do was sleep, eat and listen to the rats scratching around in the darkness. Only once had her captors visited her, to strip her of all her studs and her earrings and make sketches of her tattoos, but even this they had done in total silence.
But today, she sensed, was going to be different. Today there seemed to be a frisson of excitement in the air. From what Norma guessed to be early morning she had heard people scurrying to and fro along the corridor outside her cell and the barking of orders.
Now, as she lay on her hard cot, she heard boot heels snapping on the flagstones as someone marched down the corridor towards her cell. The footsteps came to a halt at her door. She heard a key turn in the lock and then the creak of the door as it reluctantly opened on oil-hungry hinges. Her visitor entered the cell holding a lantern before him and Norma had to flinch away, shielding her eyes from the glare.
‘On your feet, Daemon.’ It was the Witchfinder, his voice hard and angry.
It took a real effort of will for Norma to sit up. She had given up hope of being saved, she had given up hope of ever getting back to the Real World.
‘Take her,’ the Witchfinder ordered. ‘I want her cleaned up and her hair dyed – and I mean all her hair – within two hours. She must be made presentable for His Holiness.’
Two women SS warders grabbed Norma, pulling her to her feet, then dragged her out of her cell and along the corridor to a small, cold bathroom decorated in surgically white tiles. There they tore off all her soiled clothes, forced her to stand under a scalding hot shower whilst she was washed and scrubbed and her hair bleached a platinum blonde colour.
When they had finished, the Witchfinder came to inspect the naked Norma. ‘She has no tail,’ he observed in a disappointed voice.
‘Daemons of her rank are subtle creatures, Witchfinder Major,’ answered one of the female guards, ‘able to ape the form of humans perfectly.’
A disappointed grunt from the Witchfinder. ‘She is very gaunt,’ he observed. ‘Perhaps a little too gaunt.’
‘Not gaunt, Witchfinder Major, healthily slim,’ replied the guard. ‘Her diet has been in full accordance with the principles of Living&More laid down by His Holiness Comrade Crowley. Since she came to Wewelsburg, she has been fed just fruit and filtered water. All bad humours and harmful toxins have been purged from her body. She is purified just as the Other, in ExterSteine, has been purified.’
The Other? ExterSteine?
‘Very well,’ said the Witchfinder. ‘Bring her to the steamer.’ From somewhere Norma conjured the strength to protest. ‘Look, pal, I ain’t going …’
She was silenced by a savage slap across her face. ‘Be quiet, Daemon, you are not to speak. If you utter one further word I will have you gagged. Remember, I know you for the trickster you are. You should understand that all have been forewarned to be on their guard lest you seek to subvert them with your unholy wiles and your silver tongue.’
Norma almost cried: she was so tired, so dispirited, so helpless that she was only a moment away from being broken. She was just so fed up with being in pain, being cold and being abused. All she wanted was to get out of the Demi-Monde and to go home.
But at least they let her retain her modesty, handing her an ankle-length sheath made of rough white cotton which she gratefully slipped over her body. Then they manacled her wrists behind her back and led her to a steamer standing puffing in the courtyard of the Castle. Well, not just a steamer but a veritable convoy of steamers. Crowley, it seemed, was taking no chances: he didn’t want there to be any risk of Norma being rescued again.
The Witchfinder called over the SS-major in command of the convoy. ‘You understand your orders, Comrade Major? Your men will provide an escort to the Hub and will then establish a cordon sanitaire around ExterSteine at a distance of one mile. Under no circumstances are you or any of your men to come closer than that, otherwise your somewhat uncouth psychic vibrations will interfere with the ritual to be conducted by His Holiness Comrade Crowley. Understand?’