Ink

by Hal Duncan

  My back hits a bookcase and a glass door rattles. I have nowhere left to go, my brother and the book between myself and the door.

  “Demons!” he spits. “This is a book for conjuring worlds!”

  “You want me to make something up for your story? Some ancient grimoire, maybe? A medieval tome of arcane knowledge, of secrets and truths too terrible to tell? Will you be satisfied if I invent some spurious detail for your preposterous tale?”

  Pickering says nothing, simply stares at the prisoner with the same cold gaze he used against the Futurist spy in the room before this one—three hours ago it was now. He wonders if that hangman is still waiting outside, has a sudden absurd image of the man sipping a cup of tea and chatting with some pretty Wren as he leans against the wall of the corridor. “Yeah, we hanged three of the buggers already today. That Pickering knows what he's after. “

  That was how he first met Sarah. He was standing waiting outside a room in the Circus—that's what they call this place, just like the original, Thames House, the HQ of MI5, the Circus—when she came walking past with files in her hand, and saw him there, and smiled at him. He wasn't a major then, of course. He didn't really start to rise through the ranks until… until he learned how to not care about the pleas, the begging. For God's sake, man, I have a wife and children.

  A few words from him would be all it takes. The world is changing since the Armistice, and men like Pickering hold a lot of power in their hands. All it takes is a few words: Futurist agent; enemy of the state.

  “You know, I do have rights,” von Strann is saying. “Do your superiors know exactly why you're holding me? The grounds for your suspicions?”

  Pickering says nothing. The man knows damn well that his superiors have no more love for “Guy Fox,” with his pamphlets littering London's streets, than for the real threat of traitors within their midst, traitors with all of Moscow's power behind them. A noisome little troublemaker like this is hardly within the remit of Operation Hawkwing, but they'd probably be happy to see Pickering's bete noire out of the way. As long as it doesn't interfere with the fight against Futurism, they'll turn a blind eye to it.

  “The Stasi, the Gestapo, the NKVD, MI5—you're all the same. I understand the official designation for MI5 is the Security Service, Major Pickering. What does that abbreviate to again—SS, is it? I thought all that was dead and buried in the ruins of Berlin but, no, it's alive and well right here in Britain. Albion, I mean.”

  Pickering doesn't rise to it. Mosley's victory's just a blip and Churchill will be back in power after the next elections; people are fools and, yes, Futurism's still a menace, but it needs a cool and reasoning head to deal with it, not panic and paranoia.

  “Where is your swastika armband, Herr Pickering?” says von Strann. “Where is the swastika? You must be proud of what you're doing for king and country, for your glorious Albion, no? You ought to wear your heart upon your sleeve.”

  Pickering says nothing. He is bloody proud of what he's doing, proud to wear the badge of MI5—the eye over the crown within the pyramid—and to serve King Edward and the British Empire. Britain, he thinks, not Albion. All that tosh and nonsense, it'll all blow over.

  “Where is your swastika? “says von Strann.

  I push him back from me and push myself away, wanting to walk right out the door, right out of the house and out into the night. I could leave now, just leave him to his madness, but my legs are weak. I find myself still leaning against the glass doors of the bookcases, stumbling along the wall like a blind man, kicking the leg of the table covered with the red cloth, rattling the candlestick and dagger laid out upon it.

  I cannot shake the image from my mind, the shape that the churning swastika resolved into, not the straightforward square-barred swastika of the Nazi Party, but something more ornate, more oriental. I consider myself enlightened; I've seen more than enough in Berlin not to blanch at what the prurient would call depravity, but the image in the book, in my head, still sickens me. Two men, one down on his hands and knees, forming the lower part of this shape, the second man hovering above him in the air, contorted like a Yogic master, arms forward, back arched so his legs go straight back, then bend up at the knees. A swastika like some antique Indian sculpture, crawling man and floating spirit coupled in sodomitic union. God and Man as one.

  What kind of ritual is he planning, for the love of Christ?

  The Eye of the Weeping Angel glints before me, its flaw staring back at me as if the gemstone is exactly as its name suggests—the eye of an angel that has seen the truth beneath reality and wept for it. I lay a hand over it—not to take it but to hide it, or to hide myself from it—and my brother's hand comes down on top, holding it there. He grips the book under his other arm, closed now mercifully.

  “You understand,” he says. “Someone, something, changed history. This is not the way it's meant to be.”

  But a century of slaughter? I think. Did he actually see the same reality in the book that I did?

  “But that,” I say. “Christ, Jonni, if that is the way it's meant to be, we're better off with the Futurists.”

  He peels my hand away from the jewel.

  “I think that's what they thought too,” he says softly.

  He lays the book down on the table and takes me by the shoulders.

  “Fox,” he says, “since I looked into that book it's like there's two of me, this … this fool and someone else, someone better. Fox, I'm frightened of what I could become in this world, of what I already am.”

  He steps back from me, hands raised as if to say, Look, look at what they've done to me. His face twists like that of a child trying not to cry and then he's pulling his open tunic off and throwing it across the room.

  “I'm supposed to die tonight,” he says, “in this world. Himmler's men are on their way here to drag me out into the gardens and shoot me. That's in there as well.”

  He points at the book.

  “A different page. A different story. And I don't want to be a part of it, not anymore. Not as this. Not when I could be so much more.”

  All he ever wanted was to be the hero, a knight in shining armor or a boy from nowhere going up against a giant. Only, in this world it's silver skulls that shine on the lapels of warriors. But it's the same in that world, I think. It's exactly the same.

  “I know,” he says. “I know what you're thinking, Fox. I know the way you think. But I have to try, don't I? You know me just as well. You know I have to try. It's who I am.”

  Beneath his unbuttoned shirt, a lattice of scars is visible, a hatchwork across his chest. God, I think, what have you done to yourself, Jonni?

  “This isn't my world,” he says.

  A World Godless and Without Magic

  “Your brother knew what Himmler was planning, didn't he?” says Pickering. “He found out about Operation Hummingbird. He knew that Himmler was going to purge the SA, slaughter the last remnants of the old order and raise a new army from the ashes of the old. Fascism would be dead, Futurism victorious. He was willing to do anything to stop that, wasn't he?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Major Pickering, I am not Reinhardt von Strann. I know nothing about the man other than what I have already told you. I know he had a brother in the SA but—”

  “ You had a brother in the SA. You, Reinhardt von Strann.”

  “But, as I say, I'm not this Van Strann—”

  “ Von Strann—”

  “Sorry. Von Strann. But I wish to God I was, I'll tell you that. The Fox's Den was raking it in while my own little club was struggling to stay afloat. But then we never had bestiality on the bill. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have a light? Thanks. Please … where were we?”

  Pickering snaps the lighter closed and pockets it. Where were they? He stands up from his chair and wanders to the corner of the room, leans back against the wall, arms folded, sizing the prisoner up. He returns, takes his cap off
and lays it on the table.

  “In July 1940,” he says, “you were arrested for your activity in helping refugees escape from Germany, and sentenced to death as a traitor to the New Reich. Given the pedigree of the von Strann family, this was no small scandal. Not that your family was without scandal before this … your brother, for instance. But…”

  He stops. He's gone through this already with the prisoner, of course, so the feeling of deja vu is not unnatural but it's so deep and profound that… he can't nail it down, but something feels wrong.

  “You want me to make something up for your story?” says von Strann. “Some ancient grimoire, maybe? A medieval tome of arcane knowledge, of secrets and truths too terrible to tell? Will you be satisfied if I invent some spurious detail for your preposterous tale? What should I say? What do you want me to say?”

  Pickering stands up from his chair and wanders to the corner of the room, leans back against the wall, arms folded, sizing the prisoner up. He returns, takes his cap off and lays it on the table. How long is the bloody fool going to maintain this charade?

  A little something niggles at the back of his mind but he can't place it. He shakes it off, a distraction.

  “How did he do it?” he says.

  “Do what, Major Pickering?”

  “Become this… thing? This Jack Flash? It was the jewel, wasn't it? Magic.”

  “Major Pickering, what you are talking about is not possible: cursed jewels; magical rituals; or this von Strann, escaping from a Siberian gulag and traveling across the Futurist Bloc to the Western border in four days. It simply isn't—”

  “Two days,” Pickering interrupts.

  Goddammit, the man knows fine well. They've been over this.

  “Really?” says von Strann. “I was sure you said four days.”

  “I said two.”

  “Well, whatever. Major Pickering, I—”

  And Pickering finds himself with the gun in his hand, pointed at the other man's head. He has to stop his finger from pulling the trigger, as if another part of him is trying to seize control, to punch a hole right through the man's lies. Von Strann flinches, pulls his head back and away, but Pickering is round beside him now, his other hand gripping the bastard's chin, the barrel pressed to his temple.

  “I know you've talked to the others,” he says. “That's how I found you. I'm not the only one whose life your brother wrecked. I'm not alone in this.”

  The man flails in his grip, whimpering, a spineless coward. Yes, Pickering's talked to all of them he could find, in asylums or in prisons, under some pretext or other—official investigation into Futurist psychological warfare—Yes, we believe they were using projection, mass hypnosis—some bunkum like that. All of the poor survivors of this other Spirit of the Blitz. If they could be called survivors. And all of them mentioned the “Frenchman,” the cultured, quietly interested “Frenchman,” chasing the same story, the same legend of Jack Flash. Pickering cocks the trigger.

  “August 13th, 1943,” says von Strann suddenly.

  It's a date Pickering will never forget.

  “What?”

  The man tries to pull his head away from the gun again, but Pickering's grip is firm.

  “That's when your wife and son died, isn't it, Major Pickering? That's the story, isn't it? That's what they all said.”

  It's a date he'll never forget because it's like a knife that's buried deep in his still-pumping heart. And yes, it's what they all said. He remembers grilling them one by one, forcing them through the stories over and over again, and he would stay quiet and composed even as they wept and giggled, recounting the same scene of horror that wakes him screaming from his dreams. All of them were soldiers, officers, career army like himself, as if this Jack Flash were picking his targets by a most ruthless logic, not his enemies but the innocents they loved.

  “That's what they all told me,” the manbabbles. “August 13th, 1943. Yes, I've talked to them. But you don't understand. It isn't real. He isn't real.”

  “I've seen him,” says Pickering. “And I'm not alone.”

  “So you've talked to them. Are any of them sane? Mon Dieu, are any of them even rational?”

  Pickering pulls the gun away from the man's face. He uncocks the trigger and holsters it, leans in close to whisper.

  “Believe me,” he says, “I am the most rational man you will ever meet.”

  And that's your own form of insanity, he thinks. Isn't it?

  He didn't wear black at the funeral. He wore his uniform.

  “Then I ask you, Major Pickering. As a rational man. Do you believe in myths or do you believe in reality? Perhaps you want to believe in gods and monsters, Major, but I… I want to believe in humanity. I want my world godless and without magic.”

  The man is trembling. He shakes his head.

  “But … I've seen him too, Major Pickering. God have mercy on my soul, I've seen him too.”

  “Your brother,” says Pickering.

  The feeling sickens him a little, but it's one of the few pleasures he has left now since his world was murdered: the vicious pleasure of breaking a man. But von Strann has that strange bitter smile of a man going to the gallows with his secret still intact.

  “We are all brothers,” he says, “under the skin.”

  He pats at his breast pocket, takes out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have a light? Thanks. Please … where were we?”

  “Berlin, 1929. What was it called—your own club—by the way?”

  “Jongleurs. It was called Jongleurs. We had a man juggling fire out front. Jacques his name was—quite the crowd puller.”

  “But hardly bestiality.”

  “Hardly. The Fox's Den rather put our little juggling act to shame.”

  “So it was a successful business? Prostitution? Other criminal activities?”

  “ One rather suspected so. The proprietor was a quite untrustworthy fellow. Although from what you say, I fear I may have misjudged him. As I say, there were all sorts of stories. Oh, wait. This lighter isn't working … got it. Yes, as I say, there were a lot of stories going around. What is it that you want to know, Major Pickering? What is it exactly that you want to know?”

  Pickering stands up from his chair and wanders to the corner of the room, leans back against the wall, arms folded, sizing the prisoner up. He returns, takes his cap off and lays it on the table. Reinhardt von Strann, he thinks; or Reynard Carrier, depending on who you listen to. If it weren't for the photograph of von Strann Senior, Pickering might almost believe the cover story himself; his accent sounds Parisian enough, with just the hint of German you'd expect, and MacChuill is utterly convinced that he did debrief the man on his arrival. Jolly good sort. Great help to the war effort and all that. So what happened to the interview records?

  Oh, there's a lot of things that Pickering would like to know about this man, and he'll get to them all eventually. He checks his watch: It's early yet and they have all night if necessary. As long as it takes.

  “I've spoken to the French authorities, you know? They have no record of you either.”

  “War is a confusing time, Major Pickering. Things get lost in all the chaos, lost, forgotten or …”

  “Stolen?”

  “Lost,” he repeats. “A few little scraps of paper among … millions, Major Pickering. It must be easy for things to get jumbled up, slipped into the wrong file, lost in transit.”

  “British Intelligence is very efficient,” says Pickering.

  “I'm sure even you lose track of things once in a while, Joseph.”

  six

  THE MADNESS OF KING PIERROT

  Queer Eye for the Straight Lie

  ierrot stands there, caught in curiosity. Jack gives a quiet laugh. He strokes his staff.

  “How would you like,” he says, “to see them lying sated on the hills?”

  Pierrot's voice goes quiet with the thrill o
f the idea.

  ‘Above all else,” he whispers. “Yes. I would give anything to see … her.”

  Jack grins with lascivious spite, the Harlequin reeling his victim in. He circles Pierrot.

  “Why this desire,” he asks, “all of a sudden? Would it not sting to see them drunk with wine, these whores, these bitches, all these maidens of this town, and your own mother, Columbine?”

  He asks it innocent and sweet but stresses, oh so slightly, your own mother, darts his tongue to lick his lips.

  “You'd be a willing witness to their rites? No matter how it hurts?”

  “Of course,” says Pierrot. “If I could sit silent beneath the firs…”

  He has a distant, dreamy look, Pierrot, gazing out across the audience as Jack, behind his back, jumps up to crouch upon a prop. He holds one hand across his eyes, his fingers splayed to peep through them; his other holds the flute down at his crotch. He jiggles it and wriggles till the audience's giggles make Pierrot turn, but Jack's already pointing with the flute now, while his other hand's dropped down to stroke his chin, a thoughtful and considerate Harlequin.