by Rod Rees
‘Not dead, Nikolai,’ answered Vanka, in the same breezy manner Kondratieff remembered so well. ‘That was just a story put around by the Code Noir so that the HimPeril would lay off hunting me.’
Kondratieff smiled. ‘Well, it would appear, Vanka, that you are making a poor fist of staying undead. The last place where you should be seen is here in Venice; even with the fall of Doge IMmanual you are still persona non grata in this neck of the woods.’
Vanka eased his long frame down into a chair and lit a cigarette. ‘Needs must when Loki drives, Nikolai. But before we get down to business I could use a drink. It’s hot work evading the Signori di Notte.’
Kondratieff served his guest with a glass of Solution and then sat down in the chair opposite him. ‘So we have to talk business, eh, Vanka? I should have guessed that this wasn’t a social call. Could it be that your return to Venice is somehow connected with the Lady IMmanual?’
‘Are my motives that predictable?’ Vanka laughed at his own comment. ‘But then, I suppose, to the Demi-Monde’s greatest expert on Future History everything is predictable.’
‘Not quite everything, Vanka. As I believe I explained to you before, there are certain InDeterminate factors – things which by their perverse nature are inherently unpredictable – which compromise the accuracy of my HyperOpia 4Telling program, and you are one of those.’ He took a moment to refresh Vanka’s glass. ‘But though you are infuriatingly InDeterminate in most respects, with regard to the Lady IMmanual your actions are wholly predictable. Am I to presume that you are now intent on saving her from the clutches of her brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my. That, I think, will be a daunting task. Word is that she is being held in the Temple of Lilith which is now very securely guarded by the HimPeril. Penetrating their security will be an impossible task.’
Vanka gave a careless shrug of his shoulders. ‘Not impossible, Nikolai, merely difficult. Josephine Baker tells me that four hundred people will be gathering at the Temple on Lammas Eve.’
‘So what? Only those with invitations will be afforded entry—’ Kondratieff smiled. ‘I see … you want my invitation.’
Vanka raised his glass in salute to Kondratieff’s perspicacity. ‘Got it in one, Nikolai. We’re both Blanks and both tall so at night I think there’s a good chance of my being able to pass myself off as the great Nikolai Kondratieff. If I can get into the Temple during the ceremony that will give me a chance to rescue Ella.’
Kondratieff shook his head. ‘Much as I applaud your courage and your determination, Vanka, I think there is something I should apprise you of … something which will doom your rescue mission to failure.’ And for the next five minutes Kondratieff explained about the bomb hidden inside the Column and his plan that it would detonate at midnight on Lammas Eve.
‘How powerful is the bomb?’
‘Very. It is designed to kill all those attending the ceremony.’
‘Four hundred people.’
‘Regrettable, but Doge William is the brother of Lilith … he is Lucifer come again and must be destroyed. The deaths of four hundred people will be a tragedy, the deaths of four million at the hands of Lucifer would be a disaster.’
‘But as you would be attending the ceremony, presumably you would be numbered amongst the dead.’
Kondratieff shrugged. ‘Again, regrettable, but as I was the man who organised the transporting of the Column from Venice to the Temple I was judged important enough to be given an invitation to attend the ceremony. If I was to be absent on such an important occasion that would raise suspicions. Grand Vizier Selim is a very astute individual and I would do nothing to fuel any doubts he might have regarding the Column. I had a very close shave only yesterday when he was inspecting the thing.’
Vanka sat silently sipping his Solution for a few moments as he pondered what Kondratieff had said. ‘Nikolai, I hear what you say, but I’ve got to try to save Ella. She’s the girl I love.’
‘And I suppose even if I refuse to give you my invitation you will still attempt to rescue her?’
‘Of course.’
Kondratieff sighed. ‘The unfortunate thing, Vanka, with you being an InDeterminate entity is that your interference during the Ceremony of Awakening could lead to the bomb not detonating. Therefore you must give me your word that in rescuing Ella you will do nothing to prevent the detonation of the bomb. Duke William must be destroyed.’
‘You have my word.’
‘Then I suppose I have no choice.’ Kondratieff stood up, crossed to the bureau standing at the side of the room and took the heavily embossed pasteboard from a drawer. He handed it over to Vanka. ‘Take it with all my best wishes, but there is something else I must give you.’ From out of his pocket he drew a silver chain with a large crucifix hanging from it. ‘I want you to have this, Vanka.’
Vanka took it reluctantly. ‘I’m not a great one for religion, Nikolai.’
‘Listen,’ said Kondratieff. ‘By inclination I am a cautious man, one who is prone to wear both belt and braces. This crucifix is my insurance policy,’ and then he explained its true purpose.
Vanka nodded his understanding. ‘Thank you, Nikolai, but, believe me, I’ll do my level best not to need it.’ With that he stood up and shook hands with Kondratieff. ‘I’ll always remember you as a true friend, Nikolai.’
And you, mused Kondratieff as he watched Vanka disappear back into the night, are the final piece in this little puzzle. It had been a rare honour, he decided, to have shaken the hand of PaPa Legba … to have shaken hands with ABBA himself.
Part Eight
Lammas Eve
Drawn for the far and disparate corners of the Demi-Monde, the nuJu diaspora that has settled in the JAD displays an eclectic taste in clothes, a taste which is heavily influenced by the re Bop music favoured by the nu Jus.
44
The Demi-Monde: 90th Day of Summer, 1005
One of the principal deities in the WhoDoo pantheon is PaPa Legba, the lwa famous for using his wits and intelligence rather than brute force to achieve his – often amatory – aims. Oddly, for a religion such as WhoDoo whose disciples are for the most part Shades, PaPa Legba is generally portrayed as a Blank. He is pictured as being a young, handsome and very virile white man, who is easily smitten by a well-turned ankle or a saucy smile. Indeed, his roving eye was PaPa Legba’s undoing: he fell in love with the beautiful and vivacious Aida Wedo, and was fated to spend his life striving to have her return his love.
Trying to Pin WhoDoo Down: Colonel Percy Fawcett, Shangri-La Books
THE TEMPLE OF LILITH: 06:00
Ella woke just before dawn. She had been waiting for this day since Lilith had been sent kicking and screaming back into the furthest recesses of her soul … since she, Ella Thomas, had recovered control of her mind and her body. But it had been only a temporary reprieve: today was the day when she would die at her brother’s hand.
She lay for a moment hovering between sleep and consciousness trying to settle herself and to drive these maudlin thoughts from her mind. She had felt Death’s frosted breath on her cheek too many times for her to shudder at his approach, but try as she might she couldn’t shift her sombre mood, depressed by the knowledge that her passing would herald the rise of her brother. Lilith might have been vanquished but Lucifer had come to take her place, and with a Dark Charismatic as Messiah it was inevitable that the Demi-Monde would embrace the Dark.
She opened her eyes, then rose from her cot to stand in the middle of the mean little cell where she had been held captive since the demise of Lilith. She felt a little unsteady on her feet, which she ascribed to being weak from hunger: the HimPerial priests who had been her wardens had subjected her to a near-fast, claiming that such a diet was necessary to cleanse her body of contaminants, to ready her for sacrifice. Nonsense, of course; all they were trying to do was weaken her, to ensure that she wouldn’t have the strength to resist her fate. Ella smiled; though her body was weak, her spirit
had never been stronger. She resolved to die with courage.
No, she wasn’t frightened of death, but just wished she had been given the chance to say goodbye to Vanka … to thank him for ridding her of Lilith … to tell him how much she loved him.
MURANO DOCKS, VENICE: 06:30
All Trixie could assume was that the rapprochement between Venice and NoirVille had made the lookouts along the Nile sloppy. Unchallenged and unmolested, the Wu manoeuvred up the night-shadowed Nile and slipped – puffing and wheezing – into the small harbour that abutted Rodin’s workshops on the islet of Murano. En route they had found out why the Wu’s boilers were being pressure-tested by the UnFunnies; during their escape from St Petersburg the WarJunk had blown a newly soldered seam in her boiler. They had limped up the Nile to Venice on half power.
As soon as the WarJunk was berthed, Trixie, Wysochi and LieutenantFemme Lai Choi San were taken to a back room in Rodin’s workshops, where the sculptor was waiting for them, accompanied by a man who introduced himself as Nikolai Kondratieff and a very disreputable looking individual named Nearchus who seemed to be well in his cups, as the half-empty bottle of Solution at his elbow eloquently testified.
Drunk or not, it was Nearchus who commandeered the conversation. ‘So you made it?’ he slurred. ‘ABBA only knows how! Takes a yard and a half of moxie to steal a WarJunk and I never thought a woeMan—’
The glare from Trixie persuaded Nearchus to abandon this particular line of social commentary. ‘Is everything ready?’ she asked Rodin.
Rodin nodded. ‘The real Column was brought to Murano to be loaded into its flotation pontoon a week ago and that’s when we made the switch. Thanks to Kondratieff here, the fake Column has been safely delivered to the Temple of Lilith and the real one is ready for you to tow to …’ he glanced nervously towards Nearchus, ‘ … to wherever.’
‘You have our thanks, Professeur Kondratieff,’ acknowledged Trixie, ‘but you do realise that once the Column explodes you and Auguste will be the most wanted men in the Demi-Monde. Perhaps you should both take berth on my ship?’
‘My thanks for your offer, but Rodin and I have other plans.’
There was an awkward silence, this interrupted by Nearchus. ‘Well, if that’s settled,’ he slurred, ‘the sooner you’re on your way the better. A WarJunk like the Wu ain’t the easiest thing in the world to hide. Just takes one informer tipping the wink to the Signori di Notte and we’re all dead meat.’
Rodin bridled. ‘All my men are reliable.’
‘Yeah, sure. But I don’t think we should be taking any chances, everyone knows that Venetians can’t keep their mouths shut. The quicker the Wu’s outta here, the better.’
Trixie shook her head. ‘My engineers tell me the Wu’s boilers need some repair work … work that’ll take the best part of the morning to finish.’
‘Fuck!’ snarled Nearchus as he slurped down another glass of Solution.
Trixie watched the man as he drank. There was something wrong with his demeanour, the way his eyes refused to meet hers. She didn’t trust him.
‘Tell you what,’ said Nearchus suddenly, ‘I’ll have my men hitch the pontoon up to the Wu while you’re doing the repairs. That way you can sail at noon.’
‘We’re not sailing in daylight,’ said Trixie firmly.
This drew a scowl from Nearchus, who obviously disliked women answering back. ‘You can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous.’
‘You’re not listening to me, Nearchus; I am not running the Nile while the sun is up! As I understand it, the pontoon is three hundred tons of dead weight and even with two fully functioning boilers the Wu is underpowered. Against an ebb tide and encumbered with a tow weighing only half that of your pontoon, we struggled to make more than five knots, and that’s why I want to sail tonight when the tide is flowing Hubwise. I want it behind me when we make our break for the Wheel.’
Obviously recognising that further argument would be a waste of time, Nearchus stood up from the table, wobbling a little as he did so. ‘Well, if that’s what you’re intent on doing, so be it; it’s your funeral. Anyway, I can’t sit here talking all day; I’ve got work to do.’
As Trixie watched the man lurch out of the room, the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right resurfaced, but she ascribed these suspicions to exhaustion. She’d hardly slept for the best part of two days.
Anyway … Nearchus had to be trustworthy. Kondratieff trusted him, and Kondratieff was a very smart man.
THE CRYSTAL PALACE, LONDON: 09:00
Sporting Chance brought a heavily veiled Norma to the Crystal Palace early on the morning of the show, passing her off as one of ‘the girls wot does the harmonising’, and such was Sporting’s popularity that no one thought to challenge her or her entourage as she swept imperiously into the great hall. And it was a great hall, enormous and intimidating, which was why, Norma supposed, Sporting had insisted she make a pre-performance visit to the place. Sporting wanted her ‘to see the elephant’ before the big night and it was just as well she had.
Norma had been to any number of rock concerts in her time, but none of those venues could compare to this. The Palace was a huge construction of cast iron and glass, built to celebrate the formation of the ForthRight at the end of the Troubles, the use of so much glass mimicking the way the Pre-Folk employed MantlePlex in the building of their monuments. It was a big, bold and very impressive structure though, to Norma’s mind, it had a cold functionality about it which she found unattractive, but this, she supposed, was an apt metaphor for the dispassionate efficiency of the ForthRight.
As they wandered out onto the empty stage, Norma’s nerve almost failed her. She’d never performed before an audience bigger than a few hundred people, so the prospect of appearing in front of one hundred thousand soldiers and a similar number of spectators was not one she was sure she could cope with. It was very, very scary.
Sporting sensed her trepidation. ‘Yus, it’s a brute ov a gig an’ no mistake, and the acoustics is crap too. That’s why I arranged for wun ov them new-fangled galvanicEnergy microphones to be installed. Gives a body a chance ov being ‘eard, ‘specially when it’s full to the brim of ‘alf-pissed soldiers.’
‘I’ll need more than a microphone, Sporting!’ Norma admitted. ‘I’ve got a feeling that I’ll be too terrified to speak. I don’t know if I’ll be able to carry it off.’
‘Ah, cors yous will. Once you’re out ‘ere struttin’ yer stuff, all yer stage fright will vanish like a virgin’s blush. Trim piece like yous won’t ‘ave a jot of trouble. Put on a tight frock wiv yer charms on display an’ you’ll ‘ave ‘em eating outta yer ‘and.’ She edged closer to Norma to ensure she wasn’t overheard. ‘Remember, you’s the spit ov Aaliz Heydrich an’ she’s the army’s pin-up, she is. Wun wiggle ov that pert little bum of yours and every Tommy in the place’ll sit up and beg for more.’
Norma just hoped Sporting was right.
THE FSS HEYDRICH ON THE NILE RIVER: 11:00
His Holiness the Very Reverend Aleister Crowley disliked ships. He found them cramped, sweaty and somehow disrespectful. And as ships went, he doubted if there could be any more cramped, sweaty and disrespectful than the FSS Heydrich. Of course, he acknowledged that the Heydrich had been designed for the brutal and prosaic purpose of securing command of the Five Rivers, but still he would have thought that the naval architects could have lavished a little more care and attention on the fitting out of Captain Worden’s quarters. There was hardly room to swing a cat.
But such was the importance of the Column to the ForthRight – and to Bole – that Crowley had ignored his instinctive aversion to all things maritime and sailed with the Heydrich. He was determined to personally oversee the seizing of the Column: Bole would brook no failure.
Taking a reassuring sip of Solution, he decided not to think about failure. Everything, after all, was proceeding very satisfactorily. Sure, Ptah’s laboratory had been destroyed, but Empress Borgia had been very coo
perative and had handed Ptah over to the ForthRight. The good doctor was now being interrogated and he was confident that the Plague’s secrets would soon be theirs. Sure, Norma Williams was still on the loose, but now the ForthRight had control of the Coven she would be hunted down and disposed of.
And Bole had been very happy with the arrangements made to rid the Demi-Monde of the Lady IMmanual. In just a few short hours she would be blown to smithereens by Kondratieff’s bomb. Moreover the message he had got from Bole was that he was equally pleased that the girl’s brother would be killed alongside her. Now all that remained was to take the Column.
‘Is the flotilla ready, Comrade Captain?’ he enquired of the Monitor’s captain.
‘All five Monitors are in position, Your Holiness,’ answered Worden. ‘Immediately we receive the signal that the enemy WarJunk has taken the Column under tow and has cleared Venice, we will move to intercept it.’
‘Excellent. And have we had word from SS Colonel Clement’s Invasion Force?’
‘We have, Your Holiness. The ten steam-barges carrying the StormTroopers are anchored at the Hubside of the Yangtze ready to land on Terror Incognita at your command.’
Crowley gave a satisfied nod. No matter what was waiting for them in Terror Incognita, two thousand heavily-armed SS StormTroopers should be enough to force a path to the Great Pyramid. Now all he needed to do was find the patience to wait until the renegade Trixie Dashwood delivered the Column into his hands.
THE DOGE’S PALACE, VENICE: 18:00
Billy was just getting it on with one of his priestesses when an imperious voice coming from the doorway halted the girl in mid-fellatio. ‘Good evening, my Doge, I hope I’m not interrupting anything important?’