The Midnight Front--A Dark Arts Novel

by David Mack

  This revelation stoked the American’s interest. “What sort of flaws?”

  “Let it suffice to say that one is a matter of engineering, the other of materials. Together, they could be exploited to undermine de Havilland’s position in the marketplace.”

  Skepticism infused the Frenchman’s mood. “And you know this … how?”

  “A pair of incidents,” Dragan said. “Last March, a Comet 1A crashed during takeoff from Karachi Airport. The flacks at de Havilland blamed it on pilot error—”

  The Russian cut in, “The Canadian Pacific Air accident?”

  “Yes,” Dragan said. “Just under two months later, another Comet 1 crashed, just minutes after takeoff from Calcutta. All six crew and thirty-seven passengers were killed.”

  “I read that report,” the American said. “It blamed the crash on a thunder squall.”

  Dragan shrugged. “I don’t deny the storm was a factor. But it was not the cause. Sooner or later, a Comet 1 will experience an in-flight disaster that it can’t blame on pilots or weather.” He goaded them with a sly smirk. “Sooner, I hope, for your employers’ sakes.”

  The Frenchman sharpened his focus, clearly intrigued. “So what has this to do—”

  The curtain opened, revealing Harris. Balanced on one hand was a tray bearing the men’s drinks. As he passed out the libations, he said discreetly to Dragan, “Phone call for you, sir.”

  “Thank you, Harris.” Dragan stood and offered his guests an apologetic smile. “Forgive me, gentlemen. I shall return promptly.” The others excused him with polite nods.

  Dragan crossed the main hall at a quick but dignified pace. Just before he reached the concierge’s desk, he caught his reflection in the glass door of a trophy case and paused to push his black hair back into place and to smooth a few rogue whiskers back into his thin mustache. Then he accepted the phone’s receiver handset from the concierge, and he stretched its cord around a corner into the coatroom so that he could take his call with a modicum of privacy.

  Knowing that only one person on earth knew to reach him at The Eddington, he snarled, “What is it, Müller?”

  “I apologize for the interruption,” replied Heinrich Müller, sounding nothing at all like the man who just a decade earlier had been the commandant of Hitler’s feared Gestapo, “but there’s news out of Bolivia.”

  Hope swelled inside Dragan, the product of unjustified optimism. “She took the bait?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Not exactly.” Müller’s tone was heavy with shame. “You were right, she was watching the roads to La Paz. But she didn’t fall for the decoy.”

  “If she didn’t go after the decoy, how do you know she—” Realization struck Dragan like a hot shower turning ice-cold without warning. “What happened? What went wrong?”

  Müller breathed a leaden sigh. “König and his guards. She took them all on the Death Road.” After a paused gravid with shame, he added, “And she captured his journal.”

  Profanities logjammed in Dragan’s mouth, the flood of invective too great for him to give it voice. He knew not to make a spectacle of himself inside The Eddington. Instead he clenched a fist and counted to five while drawing deep breaths.

  His irritating inner voice was not so considerate.

  «This is a disaster. Contain this, now!»

  Silence! I will handle it.

  “Müller,” he said at last, “round up everyone we can spare, and bring them to La Paz. Find the woman as soon as possible. Take her alive if you can, but your chief priority—”

  “Is to recover the book,” Müller said. “I remember, sir.”

  “See that you do. If you or your men kill Anja Kernova before we find that book, I’ll bury your body so deep underground the Devil himself couldn’t find it.”

  Müller was still mouthing hollow assurances as Dragan handed the receiver back to the concierge, who set it back onto the phone’s cradle behind his podium.

  Twenty-one steps back to the anteroom, Dragan told himself. Breathe and put your smile back on before you step through that curtain.

  Low chatter filled the space between his guests as he sidled back into his chair. “Thank you for your patience, gentlemen. How much would it be worth to each of your employers to see your most dominant competitor suffer a very public setback? One that could ruin it, and for which it would take all the blame?”

  The American turned cagy. “That’s a difficult question to answer, Mr. Dalca. Depending on when such an event were to take place—”

  “Assume it’s happening tomorrow afternoon. In Rome.”

  Wary looks of conspiratorial intent were exchanged among the guests at Dragan’s table. The Russian nodded. “That would be a most valuable twist of fate.”

  “I want you all to tell me exactly how valuable,” Dragan said. “Your employers knew to send you with the authority to make a deal.” He pushed a few scraps of blank paper and some pens into the middle of the table. “Write down your offer, then fold the paper and hand it back.”

  One by one, each man took a slip of paper and a pen.

  Half a minute later, Dragan held their offers in his hands.

  He smiled. “Excellent. My terms are simple. Half of your pledged amount up front, in cash. The remaining half will be due upon delivery of my promise. If I fail to deliver, your deposits will be returned in full, without question.” He steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “But in case any of you might be thinking you can renege on the second half of your payment, know this: I have never been bilked, nor will I be. Do you all understand me?”

  Fearful nods confirmed that his guests knew that his threats were not idle ones.

  “Very well. Thank you for coming. I look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow.”

  The businessmen downed their drinks with steep tilts of their glasses, and then they rose from the table to beat a quiet retreat through the main hall and then out the front door.

  Dragan stole a look through the table and inside the briefcases, using RAUM’s gift of The Sight. He was gratified to see that each briefcase was packed full of cash—American dollars, French francs, and Russian rubles, respectively.

  He sipped his Smirnoff, and then he beckoned the steward.

  The dignified, middle-aged Englishman arrived at his table. “Sir?”

  “The cases under my table,” Dragan said. “Please see them to Mr. Holcombe, and tell him I want the entire sum invested in short sales of De Havilland Aviation stock.”

  “I shall see to it at once, Mr. Dalca.”

  “Thank you, Harris.”

  Dragan enjoyed the enveloping silence of the club while Harris and two members of his staff toted the briefcases full of cash away to the waiting hands of Dragan’s broker.

  Twenty-four hours from now, I’m going to be a very wealthy man, he mused. All I need to do now is get the book back from that Russian bitch … and then justice will be done.

  * * *

  Living a lie had proved a pleasant state of affairs for Briet Segfrunsdóttir.

  It had been over eight years since the OSS had found her in self-imposed exile in northern Finland. When its agents had knocked on her door, she’d thought her day of reckoning was at hand, that they had come to take her to the Hague—or to put a bullet in her head—for her complicity in the Nazis’ war crimes. Instead, all her sins had been redacted under the auspices of Operation Paperclip, an American secret initiative to find the scientists and engineers—and also, as it turned out, the sorcerers—of the defeated German Third Reich and recruit them into the service of the world’s new master: its lone atomic superpower, the United States of America.

  They’d since given her a life far better than what she deserved.

  She had a nondescript bordering on meaningless job title, coupled with a generous salary and fringe benefits. A three-story brownstone in the heart of Georgetown. Immunity from international prosecution. Vast reserves of equipment, personnel, and money at her disposal, to facilitate her magickal resea
rch. The Americans had even let her keep her Icelandic citizenship despite having naturalized her as one of their own.

  All they asked in return was that she be their shield, sword, and all-seeing eye. It was the best deal Briet was going to get on this earth, and she knew it.

  So, she wondered as her alarm clock rang at the stroke of seven, why is my stomach a bottomless pit of dread? A slap of her hand silenced the alarm. As the only member of her household with a job that insisted on semi-regular hours, Briet slept on the left side of the king bed, nearest the end table and clock. Her lovers—Alton Bloch, a former accountant and aspiring Beat poet, and Park Hyun, a Korean woman who had escaped her war-torn country to come to America six months earlier as a refugee—took turns being islanded in the middle of the bed.

  Today it was Hyun’s turn. She snoozed on, blissfully oblivious as Briet and Alton dragged themselves out from under the covers into the unforgiving chill of a winter morning. A shrill wind rattled the bedroom windows.

  Alton scratched his hirsute chest. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Briet kissed his stubbled cheek. “You’re the best.” She slipped away to the bathroom to brush her teeth and shower.

  Half an hour later she padded downstairs, dressed for work in a simple dark blue dress, her fiery red hair coiled atop her head under a towel. As she passed through the sitting room on her way to the kitchen, a jazz melody of Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio spilled softly from the stereophonic speakers of the record player cabinet.

  In the kitchen Alton had prepared a simple breakfast of poached eggs, rye toast, and tea. His insistence on getting up each morning to cook breakfast for Briet had been one of many tiny kindnesses that had endeared him to her. He wasn’t much to look at—he was pushing forty, his brown hair was thinning, and he had exactly the physique one might expect of a longtime office worker—but Briet loved him for the art in his soul.

  And for his prodigious cock. She was only human, after all.

  They ate without small talk because he respected her preference for silence, especially early in the morning. Afterward while he washed the dishes, she took a few minutes to retreat upstairs to finish her hair and makeup. Then she visited her study to dote on a companion who had been by her side since before the war: her rat familiar, Trixim.

  Born of magick, Trixim had outlived his mundane kin by an order of magnitude. Briet credited his longevity at least in part to the degree to which she spoiled and doted on the crimson-eyed black rodent. He stood on his hind legs and nibbled eagerly as she fed him small morsels of Gruyère, and he licked chicken-liver paté from her fingertip without nipping at her. “Good boy, Trixim,” she said, scritching his head before petting him down his back. “Don’t be a troublemaker—stay in your cage until I get home tonight.” He affirmed her instruction by nuzzling her wrist with the side of his face.

  Outside the house, a horn honked.

  From the first floor Alton called out, “Your car’s here!”

  “Coming.” She dropped a few last bits of cheese in Trixim’s cage, and she locked her study’s door as she hurried out.

  At the bottom of the stairs she kissed Alton, who held her dove gray overcoat as she shimmied into it. “Thank you, my love,” she said.

  He opened the front door, admitting a wash of cold morning air. “Call me when you leave tonight. I’m making a Beef Wellington.”

  “I will. Tootles.” She waved farewell as she bounded down the steps and across the walk to a waiting black Lincoln Continental that idled outside her brownstone’s front gate, with its chauffeur standing beside the passenger door.

  The driver opened the door, and Briet climbed inside the car, which was pleasantly warm. On the bench seat were copies of that morning’s editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. A creature of habit, Briet reached for The New York Times and skimmed the headlines to take the day’s temperature.

  As was typical for a Saturday paper, there was no banner headline. The most prominent item was tucked into the top left corner: U.S. STAND ON REDS AND JAPAN DRAWS SEOUL BROADSIDE. In the center column, PRESIDENT TO TAKE A STRONGER ROLE IN PUSHING POLICY. The other top stories were similarly drab: proposals for new taxes, a threat of a labor strike in the nation’s ports, Thailand pushing for Indo-China to join it to form an anti-Communist bloc … and then, just above the fold, the buried lead:

  NEW BOMB TESTS SLATED IN PACIFIC

  Greatest Hydrogen Explosion May be Produced

  The article’s opening sentence treated the matter as if it were blasé: “The Atomic Energy Commission announced plans tonight for another series of tests for atomic and probably hydrogen weapons at the government’s Pacific Proving Grounds.”

  Is that why they asked me to come in on a Saturday?

  She dismissed the notion as quickly as she’d conjured it. Atomic weapons terrified Briet, and she frequently needed to remind herself that they and the issues they raised were explicitly beyond the scope of her duties. Fission bombs were temptations to brinksmanship in her opinion, not the sort of thing any sane person would want to see used ever again.

  Two bombs on Japan was more than enough, she brooded.

  At any rate, the United States had tasked Briet with managing a more personal brand of defense. One tailored to exploit her rare and dangerous talents.

  She finished her cursory review of both newspapers by the time her driver stopped the car outside the North Rotary Road entrance of the Pentagon. Not a word had passed between them during the trip, making it the same as every other ride they had shared. There was, after all, no point in trying to engage a lamia in conversation. The nameless demons were creatures of low intelligence and pure spite; they were reliable for simple tasks as long as they remained under firm control, but they would never be known for having “people skills.”

  Briet left the newspapers behind on the seat as she left the car and breezed through the first of several security checkpoints between her and her final destination.

  Officially, she was listed as a civilian research assistant to some mid-level naval officer, and that was what she had told both of her lovers. There was nothing to be gained by telling them the truth about who she really was, or the true nature of her work for the Department of Defense.

  After a long walk through the Pentagon’s seemingly endless corridors, almost all of which looked maddeningly alike, a lengthy and slow elevator—whose basement access point was guarded by no fewer than three armed Marines—delivered her to a sublevel not documented on any official blueprints of the Pentagon. More than six hundred feet belowground another trio of Marines with permanent frowns guarded a massive round steel door.

  One Marine checked her credentials while another stood ready to shoot her dead if they failed to pass muster. When the Marine in charge cleared her to proceed, the third man opened the door and ushered her through the massive portalway, into America’s best-kept secret.

  The Silo.

  The main space was humbling in its sheer size. The pentagonal pit measured five hundred feet across, and from its water-filled nadir to its ceiling it stood nearly a thousand feet tall. One-third of the way up from its bottom, a steel-grate widow’s walk led to the conjuring stage, a platform shaped like an equilateral pentagon suspended above the pit’s center. Mounted on the ceiling were industrial lights that bathed the catwalk and the stage in a white glare, and the sides of the platform were ringed by coal-fed braziers atop six-foot-tall stands.

  During magickal rituals orange flames would dance from the braziers, and the overhead lights would be turned off, shrouding everything beyond the stage’s edge in darkness. With the lights on, the proliferation of high-speed cameras and arcane electromagnetic sensors that festooned the walls was clearly visible. As daunting as the Silo appeared, however, Briet knew that its true marvels were hidden behind its multitude of two-way mirrored observation windows.

  Dozens of sublevels surrounding the Silo were packed with thinking machines the scientists cal
led computers. They ran on electricity and stored information on reels of magnetic tape. Inputs from the sensors and cameras were monitored by an army of technicians, physicists, engineers, and—most surprising to Briet—lawyers. While the scientists labored to quantify the exotic particles and energies of magick in order to reduce it to mere science, the lawyers concerned themselves with untangling the convoluted terms and verbiage of demonic pacts. They seemed convinced that they would find ways to exploit loopholes in Hell’s contracts and by so doing trick the Devil himself into granting special advantages to the United States.

  Standing alone on her conjuring stage, Briet felt a pang of nostalgia.

  I miss the days when I could work magick without a fucking audience.

  Footsteps on the widow’s walk echoed in the cavernous space. Briet turned to see the Silo’s director of operations, Frank Cioffi, crossing the bridge. Frank was the epitome of average, in Briet’s opinion. Pale from decades spent indoors, a stranger to the sun. Balding and bespectacled, his face was so plain it could vanish into any crowd. He favored the pedestrian attire that had become the stereotype of engineers and scientists everywhere: black trousers, a white short-sleeve button-down shirt, narrow tie, a pocket protector loaded with pens and a folding slide rule, black socks, and dull black Oxfords.

  Behind him followed two men and two women, none of whom she had never seen before. Strangers. That doesn’t bode well.

  It took the group a couple of minutes to reach the platform. Briet blamed their sloth on Frank’s short legs, ill-fitting pants, and poor health. He wasn’t a bad man, as far as Briet had been able to discern, but he was no paragon of integrity or courage, and she had never seen anyone who possessed his knack for making good clothes look bad.