Cold Warriors

by Rebecca Levene

  Maybe if Tomas had felt better, he would have felt more. "And did he say why?"

  "Not directly. But there's something else. The Japanese, they had this American bloke working with them."

  "Richard. We used to be partners."

  "Yeah, that makes sense. He's dead, I'm sorry."

  Tomas felt grief twist a knife inside him, but he shook his head. "Don't be. He betrayed us."

  "I guess." Morgan's eyes blanked for a moment, looking back into the past. Then they refocused on Tomas's face, a bright black. "Before he died, he told me something about the Ragnarok artefacts. He said you can't find them - that you have to make them."

  Tomas froze into a long moment of stillness as he absorbed that. Then he laughed bitterly. "Of course. No wonder Nicholson was happy to let me search for them all those years. He knew I'd never find them."

  "Yeah," Morgan said uncomfortably. "That's what he says in the book. It's Nicholson's diary, from the whole time he was running the Division. You should read it. But here's the thing. There was something else Richard said, about why Nicholson couldn't send Raphael the diary till he was dead -"

  Tomas twitched and Morgan nodded, as if this was almost an irrelevance. "Oh yeah, they were working together. But what I'm saying is, I think it might be the diary."

  "What might be?"

  "The artefacts are supposed to be powerful, a big source of energy, right? And a soul is worth - well, it's worth a lot of that, isn't it? I've read the diary all the way through, and there's nothing in there about what the artefacts are or where they are. It's just the story of how Nicholson..." He laughed awkwardly. "It's him describing how he lost his soul."

  "I see," Tomas said, and he thought that he finally did. "You're saying it's the diary, the diary itself, which is one of the artefacts."

  "Yeah. It explains why Raphael wants it so much, and why it doesn't bother him that we'll have photocopied it. It's not anything in the book that matters, it's the actual, physical book."

  Tomas nodded. "You're right. I'm sure of it."

  "So can we really give it to him? Even to save Belle's life?"

  Tomas looked away, but he could feel Morgan's gaze on him, troubled and intent. The young man wanted him to make this decision - he didn't want to take responsibility for it. It was a terribly heavy burden, but Tomas supposed he deserved to bear it. For many years, maybe all of the time he'd worked for the Hermetic Division, he'd been fooled and used by Nicholson. He'd allowed it to happen and now it was his job to deal with the consequences.

  After a long time, he said, "I think we have to give the diary up, at least for now. It seems to me that Nicholson - and Raphael - have constantly been sacrificing other people for some purpose of their own. If we do the same, what does that make us?"

  The Hermitage dominated one end of a wide square, stately and far more elegant than Morgan had expected. Tomas had told him it used to be a palace. It was a monument to a Russia before the revolution, when beauty wasn't seen as something decadent.

  It seemed an unlikely place for the exchange, far too public. "Why here?" he asked Anya, as they queued for tickets like ordinary tourists.

  "Perhaps when we see them you can ask," she said flatly.

  Morgan sighed. He would far rather have come here with the other Anya, the one who actually liked him. And even better, he would have preferred to go with Tomas to collect Belle. They were supposed to exchange phone calls to confirm that Belle had been handed over before the diary was, but Morgan was sure it wouldn't turn out to be as simple as that. Splitting the exchange seemed designed to ensure it got fucked up, which was no doubt why Raphael had arranged it this way.

  By the time they were inside, they only had ten minutes to make it to the meeting place, the Hanging Garden on the second floor. All the same, Morgan couldn't help stopping to stare in wonder.

  The chequerboard floor seemed to stretch off into infinity, white arches endlessly repeating like reflections in facing mirrors. In an alcove opposite him, a monumental statue of a man and two young boys wrestled armfuls of snakes. It was an image out of a horror film, but something about its antiquity made it seem almost peaceful, a moment preserved for so many hundreds of years that all the dread had drained out of it.

  "Come on!" Anya said. She tugged on his arm to drag him away. But as soon as he started to move she dropped it, as if she didn't enjoy touching him very much.

  She led him through more tiled corridors, past the relics of Europe's lost civilisations. On the stairs to the first floor, they mingled with a group of Italian school kids, laughing and yelling as they pushed past. One of them elbowed Morgan in the ribs as he chatted to his friends. Morgan turned to shout at them, but when he saw their cheerful, carefree faces, he kept his peace.

  At the top of the stairs, Anya stopped suddenly, staring behind her with a startled, almost fearful look.

  "What is it?" Morgan said. "One of Raphael's people?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing. I saw someone... it was probably just the red hair."

  "Probably," Morgan agreed blandly.

  She grimaced. "You know, in German mythology, a doppelganger is a harbinger of death."

  "Hopefully Raphael's," Morgan said.

  They walked in silence down two more broad corridors, and at the end of them was the doorway to the Hanging Gardens. Morgan scanned the few people who were there, loitering in the shade of the neatly trimmed trees beside languid marble statues of reclining women.

  "Think you can see them?" Anya asked.

  "No one we know. Not that that means anything." A momentary twinge of anxiety made him pat the waistband of his jeans, but the rectangular bulge of the diary was still there.

  "Then I guess we wait," Anya said.

  The transfer was to take place in the Piskariovskoye Cemetery, to the north of the city centre. When Tomas arrived at its gates he found a group of disgruntled tourists being turned back by an official in a blue uniform. But the man took one look at Tomas's face, and waved him through. Raphael's power clearly ran deep here.

  Inside, the cemetery was deserted, no gardeners to tend the close-trimmed lawns and regimented trees. Tomas walked down the central avenue, wondering why Raphael had chosen this place. Beneath grass-covered mounds on either side of the path lay the unnamed war dead of Leningrad. If they hadn't died, Tomas might never have been born. Europe's freedom was bought with Russian blood. That was something else his father used to say.

  Tomas felt like he was walking through a dream of greenery and sunshine. His mind wanted to sink into the ground, dust to dust. He knew an end was approaching, but he wasn't quite sure to what. Himself? As he walked past grave after grave, a part of him hoped so.

  "Tomas," a voice said behind him.

  He'd expected Raphael to bring back-up, but there was only the old man and Belle, the little girl tucked tight against his chest. Tomas felt a bubble of nausea in his stomach, remembering the things Morgan had told him about the church in the salt mine.

  How could Nicholson have worked for this man? How could Tomas not have sensed the cancer growing inside his soul which had made it possible?

  "The girl's here," Raphael said. "Tell your people to release the book."

  "When she's safe with me," Tomas said.

  Raphael nudged Belle, and she smiled tremulously at Tomas. "It's okay, Mr Len. If you give him the book, he'll let me go."

  "Forgive me for not taking that on trust," Tomas said to Raphael. But he took out the phone Anya had given him, fingers fumbling awkwardly on the small keys. "Morgan?" he said as soon as the ring tone cut out. "Wait there. When Belle's secured, I'll give you the go-ahead."

  He hadn't taken his eyes from Raphael the whole time, but the old man didn't seem troubled. He looked supremely calm, his hair glinting white in the clean sunshine.

  "Very well," the old man said. He pushed Belle away from him. "You may go."

  She took a couple of stumbling steps, as if she was afraid this might be a trick. Raphael smi
led gently at her when she glanced back, uncertain, and Tomas ground his teeth. This was all a trap, he could sense it, and yet he couldn't seem to do anything but spring it.

  "You really came for me," Belle said, when she was only two paces away. There was a shiny tear track on each of her cheeks.

  As soon as she was close enough, Tomas reached his arm out to pull her into a hug. "Yes," he said. "Of course."

  She smiled into his eyes. "More fool you."

  He felt a small sharp pain at the base of his neck, and then nothing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Morgan held the phone pressed to his ear, despite the disapproving stare of the blue-uniformed guard. Anya hovered by his elbow, clearly itching to snatch it out of his hands and take control. He ignored her and scanned the room. There was still no sign of the agent who'd carry out the exchange. They'd probably make themselves known when Raphael gave the signal. Tomas should approve the hand-over any second now.

  It was only when the silence at the other end of the phone dragged on into minutes that Morgan realised he was listening to dead air.

  Anya read his panicked expression. "What's happened?"

  "Tomas is gone." His hand went back to the oblong shape of the diary beneath his t-shirt as he scanned the small garden. He was already backing into a corner, giving himself a clear line of sight for any possible attack.

  He didn't have to tell Anya what he was doing. She placed herself beside him, hip against his, covering the angles he couldn't. If Tomas had been ambushed, they'd be after the diary next.

  Except, after five minutes of frozen waiting, it became clear that they weren't.

  "Where are they?" Anya hissed.

  They'd been still so long they were beginning to attract odd looks from the other tourists. Anya scowled back at them until they looked away and Morgan kept his hand clasped protectively over the diary, though there was no one close enough to see it, let alone steal it.

  And then, as vivid as a waking dream, he had a sudden flash of memory: the Italian schoolchildren who'd surrounded them on the stairs as they came up. The elbow in his ribs that had distracted his attention, just when they'd been pressed closest to him and Anya had been furthest away.

  His fingers scrabbled at his waist, uncoordinated with haste. Two Japanese girls whispered and giggled behind their hands as they watched him expose the hard muscles of his stomach when he finally managed to wrench the material up.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Anya said.

  But she didn't need an answer - she could see it for herself. The book he'd been guarding so closely was a copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to St Petersburg. The diary had been taken before they even got there.

  When Tomas clawed his way back to consciousness, he sensed that only a little while had passed. Just enough time for him to be moved - and bound.

  They'd brought him to the centre of the cemetery and his back was pressed against something hard and cold. When he tilted his head, he saw a statue of a woman holding a wreath, dark against the sun.

  "Mother Russia," Belle said, "mourning her dead. Hello, Tomas."

  The girl sat cross-legged in front of him. Her shadow lay across the concrete behind her. Sometimes it looked small, sometimes so large it stretched to the grass beyond. Two great sweeps of darkness might have been the outline of wings. Tomas wasn't sure if his vision was failing him, or if he was seeing her clearly for the first time.

  "How long has the demon been in charge?" he asked her. "All the time you were with us - and how long before that?"

  "What makes you think he's in charge?"

  He tried to study her face, but the sunlight flattened it into blankness. "You're working for Raphael, aren't you?"

  "With Raphael," she said. "For the same master."

  His mind struggled to encompass that. He knew what she meant, of course. The Hermetic Division had studied Crowley and others like him, but in the end they'd concluded there was little there beyond a desire to find mystical justifications for the unjustifiable. The legends that led to the artefacts were only metaphors, imperfect human transcriptions of truths too large to comprehend. At least, that was what Tomas had concluded. Had Nicholson reached a different understanding and kept it to himself?

  "She invited me in," Belle said. "It was her choice. She wanted to stay a child forever. Never aging and never dying. I told her I could make that happen, and she was happy to give me what I wanted in return."

  A glint of sunlight caught in Belle's big blue eyes. He'd once thought he could see the demon there, struggling to escape from the spells that bound it. Now he imagined he could see Belle herself, trapped and desperate.

  "You were ten years old," he told her. "You didn't know what you were doing. They can't hold you to a deal you were too young to make."

  "Some decisions you only get to make once. You should know, Tomas. You made yours twenty years ago."

  "I know." He bowed his head. He'd thought there might be salvation for him, but not all mistakes could be undone. "So what do you want with me? You'd already won. We were going to give you the book - the artefact."

  "Ah. You figured it out."

  "Yes," Tomas said bitterly, "when it was too late to do any good."

  "And didn't you wonder about the other two artefacts? About the other things Nicholson created?"

  He felt suddenly dizzy, as if the earth was dropping away beneath him. "What are you telling me?"

  "I think you know. A part of you always knew."

  He turned his face away, because he didn't want to admit that she was right.

  Anya hadn't realised seeing herself would be so disconcerting. She'd shadowed herself on the train, but jumped to follow Morgan before they could meet. Now that one brief glimpse in the museum, the startled look on her own face, and everything inside her had shifted out of alignment. She felt both attracted and repelled, and the conflicting impulses had left her frozen in place while the other her moved on. Morgan had asked her to follow them, hoping her presence would give them an edge. Then she'd seen herself and fled, no use to him at all. She sat on a bench outside the museum, staring at the people streaming out and both hoping and dreading that one of them would be her.

  But when she finally saw a face she recognised, it wasn't her own. Round and thick-lipped and not terribly bright, she recognised it from hours of surveillance footage, and from one brief glimpse in Budapest.

  It was Vadim, Raphael's go-between.

  A group of Italian students had been loitering near the exit, their high-pitched screams and laughter a distraction from the inward spiral of her thoughts. Now, as she watched, Vadim singled out two of them, drawing them aside for an urgent, whispered conversation. Their backs were to her, but the movement of their shoulders told her they were doing more than just talking. Something was changing hands.

  Her phone rang just as Vadim peeled away from the students. She answered it as she followed him, hidden by the crowds that filled the square.

  "Morgan. I don't know what happened in there, but Raphael's man is here - and I think he has the diary."

  Morgan snapped the phone shut. He'd already grabbed Anya's arm, dragging her through the long corridors of the museum as he spoke to the other half of her.

  "Jesus Christ!" she said. "Let go of me, will you!"

  He released her, barely registering that she continued to follow him. He was jogging now, elbowing the other tourists out of the way. The place was a maze, the occasional exit sign seeming to lead only to more long white rooms. The endless chequerboard pattern of the floor made it seem like they were running in place.

  "Was that Tomas?" Anya asked.

  Morgan shook his head, then laughed.

  "What? Is there something I should know?"

  There were a lot of things, but now didn't seem like the time to share them. "A contact," he told her instead. "She's spotted Raphael's man outside and she thinks he has the diary."

  "Thank god for that!"

  "Yeah," Morgan sa
id. "Now all we have to do is catch him."

  When Raphael approached, Belle backed away. "Things to do," she said. "People to see."

  Raphael ignored her, his eyes only on Tomas. "I've waited a very long time for this," he said. His voice was almost accentless, but now Tomas was listening for it, he could hear the faint traces of Poland in its sibilants. Nicholson had sometimes talked about a Polish priest, the man who'd first opened his eyes to the world behind the world.

  "Nothing to say, Tomas?" Raphael asked. "No questions?"

  Tomas's shrug scraped the coarse-fibred rope against his body.

  "Nicholson always said you weren't much of a conversationalist."

  "I won't help you," Tomas said. "I've been a fool, but I'm not a traitor."

  "No," Raphael said, "I don't believe you're either. If you were an idiot, this would all have been a lot simpler. And it still so nearly fell apart. The diary was meant to draw you here, did you realise that? It didn't occur to me you'd manage to steal it before I got my hands on it."

  Tomas closed his eyes for a moment as another revelation hit him. "Giles sent me on this mission. Is he working with you too?"

  "No. Giles we never managed to turn - too much of a bureaucrat to take any big risks."

  "But you got him to reopen the Division, didn't you? To bring me back exactly when you needed me."

  Raphael's foot tapped a staccato rhythm against the concrete. He was keyed up in some way. Nervous or excited, it was hard to tell, and his face gave nothing away. "All we needed to do was dangle the artefacts in front of him," he said. "They were the only thing your government was ever interested in. The only reason they allowed the Division to continue. It was never the knowledge they were interested in, only the edge it might give them in their long, pointless war."

  "The war wasn't pointless," Tomas said. "And it was won."

  Raphael laughed, a dry, creaking sound. "Temporarily. There will always be conflict, Tomas, between those who believe human nature can be perfected, and those who know otherwise."