Elizabeth took a step backward as the figure shuffled toward them. But Harry remained rooted to the spot. He was incredibly pale, shivering with fear. A withered hand reached out for him, and he let out a cry.
It was choked off abruptly.
* * *
A hand clamped on a neck. The man’s face screaming above, eyes bulging in terror.
The paper thrust aside and on to the next image.
A body lying on the floor. Bare, skeletal feet beside the man’s head. The decayed leather strap of a broken sandal trailing from one foot.
Number Nine pushed the paper away, hardly pausing before starting on the next image. The old woman’s startled face—up close. A withered hand punching toward her.
* * *
The hand was dry, like forgotten autumn leaves. Elizabeth reeled back from the blow, colliding with the frame of the door. Her legs gave way beneath her and she fell. The shriveled, desiccated figure loomed over her, moonlight streaming round it. The rhythmic percussion of a stick of bombs growing louder as they approached. Her vision blurred, faded … Died.
The sound cut out.
Everything went black.
* * *
The old woman’s body was a crumpled heap on the ground.
Number Nine pushed the paper away. Kruger pulled the pencil from the man’s cold fingers, pushing another sharper one into place immediately.
The pencil sped over the paper. The shape of a dimly lit corridor began to form, gray scratches across the paper. Impressions and ideas rather than sharp details as the Ubermensch moved quickly along the corridor. Through heavy doors, the hint of wood grain sketched into place, out into the night and the ruined city.
CHAPTER 20
It was with a mixture of nervousness and excitement that Sarah Diamond traveled into the center of London the next morning. She couldn’t imagine what Pauline Gower would say to her transfer. Her reaction was sure to be extreme—but whether extreme anger and resentment or extreme indifference Sarah couldn’t guess.
That was a potential problem for later though—one that Colonel Brinkman could deal with, hopefully. And at the back of Sarah’s mind was the possibility that she would return to the Air Transport Auxiliary in due course anyway. She couldn’t bear the thought of being away from flying for very long. Perhaps she could continue to fly for the ATA occasionally while working for Station Z.
Once she knew what Station Z was and what it did, she’d have a better idea.
For now, though, she stood across the street from the offices, just as she had when watching them clandestinely. She was expected, she had every right to be here. But she felt as nervous as a schoolgirl on a first date. What would she find? Once through the doors, despite her hopes of continuing to work with the ATA, she knew that there would be no turning back. It would be a threshold crossed in more ways than one.
So she stood and watched, and waited for Guy Pentecross. There was a calmness and sensibility about the man that had touched something in Sarah, even though it was a contrast to her own impulsive personality.
“I wasn’t sure whether to wear uniform.”
The unexpected sound of his voice made her heart jump, and she spun round.
“God, you startled me.”
“Sorry.” Guy smiled apologetically. He was wearing his Foreign Office suit, like the day before. Or one very similar. Sarah hadn’t even considered putting on her ATA uniform—it was designed for the practicality, and chill, of flying rather than office work.
“I guess you’re as wary of going inside as I am,” Guy said.
“No,” she said quickly. “I was just…” She stopped and laughed. Who was she kidding? “Yes,” she admitted. “I have no idea what we’re going to discover, what we’ll end up doing.”
His eyes glinted. “Exciting, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she agreed, but hesitantly. Then, more confidently, she decided: “Yes, it is.”
In the event, they never made it inside. They crossed the road, only to meet Colonel Brinkman hurrying out of the door.
“Come with me,” he said, without breaking step.
Sarah and Guy fell in behind him.
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.
“British Museum.”
“I didn’t know it was open,” Guy said.
“It’s not.”
“So if we’re not going to see something we must be going to see someone,” Guy said.
“Absolutely right,” Brinkman agreed. “Leo Davenport just telephoned. He says Elizabeth Archer was attacked last night.”
With no further explanation as to who Elizabeth Archer might be or why Davenport was at the British Museum, Brinkman increased his pace. Sarah and Guy exchanged glances and hurried to keep up. Although it was a little way, it was undoubtedly quicker to walk than to try to drive through the remnants of the previous night’s bombing.
* * *
Brinkman evidently knew his way around the museum. There was a smell of dust and age in the air. Sarah caught glimpses of empty galleries, and of burned out rooms where incendiaries had fallen.
“It’s taken a bit of a beating,” Guy said quietly.
Sarah didn’t reply. There was nothing really to say. So much of London had “taken a bit of a beating.” She didn’t consider the city to be her home, not really. But she felt for it like it was a living thing, just as she felt for the people who did live here.
The building was a rabbits’ warren of corridors and stairways. They descended deeper and deeper below the main structure until they emerged into a vast cavernous space all but filled with crates and shelves, boxes and storage cabinets.
The sound of Davenport’s voice drifted to them from somewhere out of sight. Its soothing tone was punctuated by the sharper timbre of a woman’s voice. As Brinkman led them through the maze of shelves and cabinets, the words became clearer.
“I am fine, thank you, Leo. Now please stop fussing and let me get on.”
She didn’t look fine. Brinkman introduced the elderly lady with Davenport as Elizabeth Archer. She forced a polite smile, but Sarah was sure it was painful, her face was so bruised. Around the purple discoloration, she looked pale. She remained seated behind her desk, and Sarah suspected she didn’t trust herself to stand up. What had happened to her?
Davenport answered the unspoken question: “Elizabeth was attacked last night. As she was leaving here.”
“My God—who by?” Guy asked.
“I keep telling Leo, I’m quite all right. Poor Harry was killed by the brute. I was merely … inconvenienced.”
“We need to get you checked over,” Brinkman said.
“No,” Elizabeth Archer told him, “we don’t. I’m a bit shaken, I don’t deny it. Bruised, but it looks worse than it is.”
“Should we tell the police?” Sarah asked.
“Absolutely not,” Brinkman said immediately. “This was no ordinary attack.”
“Then—what?” Guy demanded. “The poor woman was badly injured, however brave a face she puts on it.”
“‘The poor woman’ has a name, you know,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Miss Archer.”
“It’s Mrs. But I’ll thank you to call me Elizabeth.” She turned to Brinkman. “He should be easy enough to find. The young lady’s suggestion of involving the police may not be such a bad notion.” She shook her head. “I’m doing it now, I’m sorry. I assume ‘the young lady’ has a name too.”
“You still haven’t said who attacked you,” Guy pointed out once Davenport had introduced them.
“The man from the coffin, from the burial site,” Elizabeth said, as if this had been obvious from the start. From Guy’s expression, Sarah knew he was no more enlightened than she was.
“It was my fault,” Davenport said. “I shouldn’t have had that thing brought here.”
“You weren’t to know he’d suddenly wake up.”
Sarah tried again: “Who?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Elizabe
th said. “A dead chieftain from a hidden Bronze Age burial site in France. Probably about four thousand years old. He certainly looked it.” She shuddered.
“And he—woke up?” Guy said, amazed.
“He certainly did. I take it you’ve not been with Station Z for very long.”
“Our first morning,” Sarah admitted. What the hell had they got themselves into?
“Well, if he’s wandering about in the open, someone should report it soon enough,” Brinkman said. “Are you sure I can’t get a doctor over to check you’re all right?”
“Quite sure. The doctors of London have more urgent cases than a bruised old lady who was knocked over and bumped her head, I’m certain of that.”
“This Bronze Age chieftain, whoever he is,” Guy said to Davenport. “He was in the sarcophagus you shipped back? The one you wanted to stop the Germans getting hold of?”
Davenport nodded. “That’s the fellow. Beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered.”
“Your point?” Brinkman asked.
“Two points, really. First, why did he wake up now?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Elizabeth said. “Could be the change of environment, though I think that’s unlikely.”
“External factors then,” Davenport said.
“I think so,” Brinkman agreed. “Someone woke him up, simple as that.”
“What’s the second point?” Sarah asked.
Guy shrugged. “Another question, really. Why did the Germans want him? I mean, did they know what was going to happen?”
“I suspect it may be the Germans that woke him up,” Brinkman said. “He’s been sent his orders.”
“Orders?” Sarah echoed. “You mean, like they sent him a radio message or something?”
“I doubt it was anything so direct,” Brinkman said. “Now, since I’m obviously surplus to requirements here, I’ll head back to base.” He turned to Guy and Sarah. “Not you. You can both stay here with Davenport and Mrs. Archer. It’s as good a place to start as any. Elizabeth—show them what was recovered from Shingle Bay.”
* * *
Across the street from the British Museum, a thin figure stood huddled inside an ill-fitting raincoat it had found half-buried in the rubble. It kept to the shadows, features shaded and indistinct. Its bare legs and feet, protruding from the coat, were bony and discolored, etched with wrinkles and scratches.
It had watched the three people arrive at the museum, had noted the sense of purpose and urgency of step in the tall uniformed man who led them. When the same man emerged again, alone, the Ubermensch followed.
It did not feel the cold, sharp stones under its feet as it picked its way through the remains of a building. All its attention was on the man ahead. It stopped for nothing, pushing aside occasional other pedestrians to maintain its course.
When the man it was following finally entered a large office building, the Ubermensch positioned itself on the opposite side of the road. It stood close to the spot that Guy Pentecross and Sarah Diamond had chosen to keep watch, and waited patiently. It would wait forever if it had to, or until it received new orders or identified a useful source of information.
A light rain dappled the pavement. The Ubermensch turned to look upward. It had not felt the rain on its face for so long … Now the moisture soaked into the dry skin, filling it out a little, giving it fresher color.
* * *
Picking her way through the streets, taking a shortcut back to her house, Dorothy Keeling hoped the rain wouldn’t come to anything. She had her head down, and didn’t see the man until she collided with him.
“Careful,” she chided. “You wanna watch where you’re going.”
The man didn’t move. Dorothy peered up at him through cataract-dimmed eyes. She’d seen his feet were bare, and he looked like he was wearing only a tattered coat. His face looked … old. She couldn’t really make out his features. But there was something about his deep-sunken eyes that almost made her walk quickly on.
No, she thought. He was down on his luck like she was. So instead, she asked: “You all right, dearie? You look half done in. Caught in the bombs, I expect, like I was.”
He didn’t answer, staring down at her. Perhaps he was in shock. It could happen. Dorothy had stood frozen to the spot for hours, not saying a word, after the bomb hit her house.
“You get bombed out?” she wondered. “They tried to move me out of my home, but I wouldn’t go. Told me it wasn’t safe, but where is safe these days? These nights? I may as well get bombed to death in me own home as out on a strange street, that’s what I say.”
Still the man didn’t reply. But Dorothy persisted. She sensed a kindred spirit. “You know what you need? A good cuppa, that’s what. You come along a me—it ain’t far. Get you a nice cup of Rosie.”
Dorothy lived out toward Blackfriars. It was a bit of a walk, but she often wandered a long way. She had nothing else to do after all. The man still said nothing as he followed her to the house. He didn’t comment when they arrived—didn’t seem at all worried that the whole of the front had been torn off, so that Dorothy’s home looked like a opened dolls’ house with every room on display.
“You have to keep dusting,” Dorothy said as she led the way through where the front door used to be. Past the stairs, the kitchen was more or less intact, offering some privacy. “It’s dreadful when it rains. Dreadful.” She pronounced it “dretfull.” “Just let me put the kettle on. There’s no sugar, of course. Unless you’ve got coupons?” she added hopefully. “No, I didn’t think so.”
She carried the tray with the tea things through to the sitting room. They could look out across the debris in the street at the broken faces of the houses opposite, although Dorothy couldn’t see much past the broken wall of her own house.
“There’s no one left here now but me, you know,” she said sadly. “Even Mrs. Willis moved out last week. I thought she’d stay at least. Took her cat with her, more’s the pity.”
The man watched her sip her tea from a cracked cup before he sipped at his own. If her eyesight had been better, Dorothy might have noticed how he held his cup exactly as she held hers. How his stick-thin little finger curled out just a little, mirroring her own. She might have mentioned that they said Hitler drank his tea like that—little finger extended as if he was proper English, proper brought up. How dare he?
She could see well enough to notice that when the man set down his cup, he lifted a book from the shelf close to his threadbare armchair. She couldn’t see what it was—she didn’t have much time for the books. Couldn’t really focus on the print.
“That was my Teddy’s chair, that was. Long time ago now. But I still keep his books there. He liked to take down a book and read a bit, like you’re doing.”
Slowly, the man turned the pages. When he got to the end, he started again. She watched him leaf through the same book four times before she struggled to her feet and collected up the tea things. She fumbled as she reached for the man’s cup. Even her hands were giving out now.
The man looked up from his book at the noise. She smiled at him, and put his cup on the tray. She’d make a fresh pot. It was something to do at least. As she made her way out of the room, her foot caught on the edge of the rug and she stumbled slightly, bumping her shoulder into the doorframe, making the cups and saucers on the tray rattle. She glanced back, smiling apologetically. “I’m all right,” she assured him.
His voice was cracked and dry. “Careful,” he chided. “You wanna watch where you’re going.”
* * *
Hoffman lifted away the paper. It showed a picture of a book, open on the Ubermensch’s lap. The text was Greeked and unreadable. Pictures were vague outlines.
The next picture showed the old woman again. She was carrying a tea tray from the room, looking back over her shoulder.
Then the book again.
“It is acclimatizing,” Kruger said. “See how it has been through this same volume several times already. It
will go through it again and again until it understands what it is looking at. Until it has assimilated all the data.”
Hoffman nodded. He remembered how it had been last time. “Just like before,” he said.
“Language will come quickly. The rate of absorption is really quite phenomenal. It will learn. How to read, how to speak, how to behave.”
Hoffman watched Number Nine start on a new sheet. Another image of the book as the Ubermensch began the process of learning. But Kruger was wrong, this wasn’t about language or behavior, at least not in isolation. The Ubermensch was learning how to become human.
CHAPTER 21
The official story was that Harry had been killed in the previous night’s bombing—along with a good number of other people, no doubt. Guy was angered that the man’s family would never know the truth, but that anger was tempered by the fact that at least they would know he was dead. There were so many families who were in limbo, not knowing if their loved ones posted as “missing in action” were still alive. Hoping for the best, fearing the worst.
He pushed thoughts of the dead man to the back of his mind, and followed Elizabeth Archer as she led the way through the corridors of the museum.
“Have you worked here long?” Sarah was asking.
“Since I was younger than you.”
“An ambition fulfilled?” Guy wondered.
“Not really. I wanted to be an actress. I rather fancied taking to the stage.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Davenport assured her with a smile.
They passed through a large exhibition gallery. It had been cleared of contents and was just a vast empty space. The walls were blackened by smoke, and the damage to the ceiling was extensive.
“Incendiary bombs,” Elizabeth explained. “Over a dozen of them hit in one night about six or seven weeks ago. Gutted the place. The museum’s been closed ever since. Not sure when we shall open again, to be honest.”
“I’m surprised you stayed open this long,” Guy said. “Did you lose much of value in the fires?”
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