The Fall: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller Book 2)

by Annelie Wendeberg

  I jammed the cigarette butt into the ashtray and resumed my position next to the fireplace.

  ‘As I said already,’ rasped Moran. ‘You are to provide us with germs. We decide where and when we will use them.’

  I looked at James. He nodded at his friend.

  Anthrax bacilli (black cells), beginning spore-formation (white dots). (16)

  — day 94 —

  Goff had invested all of his energies, and the laboratory looked like new. He had prepared fresh media, purchased glassware, and ordered new test animals. Our mules had to be sacrificed. They were coming down with both diseases. Although Holmes’s sabotage had been very well planned and executed, one flaw had ruined it all. If Goff hadn’t secretly kept pure cultures, the development of bacterial weaponry would have been thrown back by two months.

  An alternative plan was needed, but a second sabotage attempt would bear a much greater risk. Two fake accidents in the warehouse would raise suspicion.

  What if I were to target not the warehouse but rather Goff and myself? What if I poisoned us? Just enough to make us both sick for a few days. But what then?

  My assistant stepped into the laboratory. ‘All mules on deck,’ he said, a little out of breath. The vessel’s engine belched and rattled. Soon, the animals would be sunk off the coast. All I had won were a mere four days plus another five to observe the new animals in quarantine.

  I nodded at him and focused back on my work. Leaning on the workbench I tried to squeeze a solution out of my mind. The petri dishes before me. Anthrax and glanders. One very dangerous, being James’s favourite. The other a little less so. An idea began to blossom.

  Durham handed me a brandy and left the study. ‘James,’ I began. ‘I would like to conduct an experiment.’

  ‘I cannot tolerate yet another extension of our project without even a single outcome.’

  ‘Obtaining the pure cultures was a success, was it not?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. But we are far from a functional weapon,’ he said and I wondered what made him so impatient. Without a war at his doorstep, there should be no reason for the haste.

  ‘It might be worth it.’

  He showed mild interest and I added, ‘You want anthrax and I am reluctant to use it because of the great danger it poses to our men, as well as the spores’ resilience on enemy territory. However, I believe I can develop anthrax vaccines. If our men were immune to anthrax, we could use it widely without much risk.’

  He turned his glass in his hands, emptied it, and rose to fetch the cigarette case from the mantelpiece. I observed him. A slender figure, always a little stiff and under constant tension. He sucked the smoke into his lungs and stared into my face for a long moment.

  ‘We talked about vaccines before, but I had never quite decided whether or not you should invest time to produce them. You should start to brew large batches of anthrax and obtain enough spores for storage. However, I do know that this is a deadly business and given the circumstances, it might be better if you develop vaccines as well.’

  ‘What circumstances?’ I asked. He pointed to my stomach. I snorted and tipped the brandy into my mouth.

  ‘At what time will you need human test subjects?’

  ‘What a cold-blooded bastard you are, James! There is no need to murder people just yet. I will have to balance the germ’s inactivation with immunisation efficiency and morbidity of test animals.’

  ‘I repeat the question. At what time will you need human test subjects, Anna?’

  ‘Three months,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Excellent. Enough time to make preparations.’ His glass clinked as he placed it on the mantelpiece. He strode to the door; all of his movements appeared calculated, but fluid. With the handle in his hand he turned to me. ‘Are you coming to bed?’

  ‘Soon.’

  — day 104 —

  James sat next to me, our cold legs sharing a blanket. The brougham had almost reached the medical school, where I was to meet Holmes to give him a list of men working for the government and the military. None of them were connected to our project and their arrest would be used as evidence for Holmes’s ineptness. I found the plan rather superficial and suspected James would try to gain a little more time for whatever he was planning behind my back. His nervousness indicated that Holmes had begun to pull his net in.

  James lifted my face to his and let his hand wander to my bosom. The message to Holmes crackled lightly. ‘Why could you not hide it somewhere else? I hate that he gets to touch what has touched you so intimately.’

  ‘Would the stocking at the inside of my thigh suit you better?’

  He glared at me, then reached for the blinds.

  ‘The curtains have never been drawn before. It might raise his suspicion,’ I noted and he dropped his hand.

  ‘Behave well,’ he said, as the carriage came to a halt. Then, he slid low on his seat and bared his incisors in a smirk. As I stepped down onto the pavement, one tension was displaced by another with a notable change in temperature. I was sweating before I had entered the medical school.

  ‘This list shows only the names of innocent men,’ I whispered into Holmes’s ear and handed him the scrap James had given me. ‘I am not certain why he wants me to give you this. He claims he wants to taint your reputation, but his planning appears hasty. I cannot see his true intentions. Three weeks ago he and I met with several men to talk about germ warfare and I have already sent you a message with their names, but I fear they might not be their real names.’

  ‘Mycroft can prove connections between Moriarty and Colonel Dr Colbert Brine from the Veterinary Military Academy as well as Mr Jaran Ridgley from the Foreign Office. And your description of the men fits those individuals,’ said Holmes.

  I was surprised and puzzled. Why did James reveal his men’s names to me? ‘Why did he want to get you out of England for a week?’

  ‘He had several meetings that were planned and executed in great secrecy. If I’m not mistaken, and I dare say I’m usually not, they plan to move the entire operation abroad.’

  ‘Hum… I could see no indication of this. But he keeps most information from me. Holmes,’ I added urgently. ‘Moriarty is, as you already suggested, forming a secret organisation with the sole purpose of defending Britain, perhaps even to pull all expertise together for an attack against another country. How could you possibly arrest such people?’

  Holmes straightened up and said loud enough for any eavesdropper to hear, ‘Thank you Anna. This is valuable information. I’ll need only a little more preparation, but soon enough, Moriarty and his men will be arrested.’

  Then, he bent down again and spoke into my ear, ‘Let that be my concern. But we must tread very carefully now. Especially you,’ he squeezed my shoulders, urgency sharpening his features. ‘Do absolutely nothing that will risk your well-being, abstain from too many enquiries into Moriarty’s actions and try to be a compliant and well-behaved lady for a while. Should the danger become too great and you need to leave in a hurry — you will always find one of my boys close by. They follow you wherever you go and if you drop your glove anywhere other than in front of the medical school, I’ll know you need help making your escape. Do you understand?’

  With the word compliant still ringing in my ear, I snorted and answered for the eavesdropper to hear, ‘Well, goodbye then,’ turned on my heels and marched out of the lavatory.

  I was glad Holmes had no clue how compliant I already was.

  — day 131 —

  The mules’ nostrils were wet and dripping. They shook their heads repeatedly, causing thick mucous to land in flecks on their neighbours’ necks, heads, muzzles. Goff watched from a safe distance, fascination distorting his face, obviously looking forward to sinking corpses off shore.

  The third group of animals was to be delivered in two days. The glanders infection had caused strong symptoms in twelve of the twenty-four animals. The other twelve had been immunised with heat-inactivated glanders germs twice duri
ng the last three weeks. However, all mules were to be sacrificed, as not to mix diseases and obtain false-positive results.

  Moran’s men were already on their way. Soon, twenty-four shots would mark the end of our first test run. I would stay and watch. After all, it was I who had sent them through this ordeal and I shouldn’t turn away from the suffering I had caused.

  The metal door creaked and two men stepped through, men I wouldn’t like to meet even in bright daylight. Moran’s undertakers had the swollen hands and reddened, enlarged noses of alcoholics. The most unreliable sort when it comes to not spreading information.

  Upon seeing the sick animals, one of them started fingering his revolver.

  ‘Go ahead if you’d like to die of a gruesome disease gentlemen. I would be the last one to hold you back,’ I said. They came to a halt, eyed me from my hat to the hem of my skirt, and started cackling.

  Hot with anger, I grabbed the stud gun from the wall, stepped forward and placed the muzzle to the forehead of the gentleman closest to me. His gaze slid from my face to the oddly shaped metal cylinder.

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t kill you, if that’s what you fear. This fancy little thing only punches a circular piece of skull bone into your brain. You’d be unconscious, but once you woke up, you would most assuredly spend the rest of your life drooling over your food. Although I am quite certain that this wouldn’t change your current situation very much.’ Now that I had their attention, I took a step back, lowered the gun, and said, ‘Put on these gloves,’ indicating a small table at the entrance. ‘As well as the aprons and masks. Mr Goff, will you do us the honour?’

  I held the stud gun out to him. Red heat crawled across his cheeks. He stepped forward and took the weapon from my hand, while the two undertakers did as I had told them. Already in safety wear, Goff shot each mule in the head, his gait springy with excitement. Whenever a mule hit the ground, the two undertakers stepped forward and dragged it outside. A loud thump on the hollow deck of the barge, then they returned for the next animal.

  Half an hour later, they started mucking the stalls and washed the remaining excrement down with Thames water. And finally, it was Goff’s responsibility to wipe off all surfaces with grain alcohol. He would probably be intoxicated from the fumes once he was done cleaning.

  Nauseous and angry, I scrubbed the work benches and moved the glanders cultures to a far end of the laboratory. Tomorrow, our work on anthrax would start. James wanted us to test the more dangerous disease as soon as possible. All the while I silently begged for Holmes to finish his investigations. How much longer could I pretend to be someone else without losing my sanity?

  The Thames at low tide, London, 1893 (17)

  After the barge had left, I paid the waiting street urchins one sovereign each.

  ‘I have the impression you are replicating faster than I can count,’ I remarked to the largest boy. He drew himself up defiantly, all four and a half feet.

  ‘Ma’am, beg’n ya pard’n, but the more the better.’

  ‘Any movements to report?’

  ‘’scuse me?’ he said, picking something from the depths of his nostrils and flicking it into the Thames.

  ‘Have you seen anything suspicious?’

  ‘Only suspicious folk are usselfs,’ he said with a wink and darted off.

  I watched them run away, wondering how shocked they’d be if they knew I had lived in the slums for years. The smallest of them caught my eye. Her thin legs stuck in dirty trousers that were too short for her, showing grimy ankles. Her boots were too large and threatened to come off as she ran. She was dressed like a boy but her long hair and girlish features betrayed her easily. Yet, she seemed to be accepted in the crowd of street arabs. Poverty had no space for most social restrictions the upper classes had invented. Perhaps she was the only girl among many brothers and her mother simply had no money to buy her a skirt. Or she had no mother at all. What if I were her mother? What if…

  ‘You are not with me,’ he said softly and I jerked my head up.

  ‘My apologies.’ I took the brandy from his offering hand, trying to recall what we had talked about. Ah, vaccines.

  I took a sip. The alcohol burned down my throat. ‘Louis Pasteur developed anthrax vaccines for sheep and cows. According to his publications, he made the vaccine by exposing the bacilli to oxygen. But anthrax germs tolerate oxic conditions quite well and the spores will only laugh at oxygen and infect anything they come across. I am not entirely certain that Pasteur told the world all his secrets.’

  I rose and placed my hands on his clenching shoulders. His gaze softened. ‘Remember that I was a student of Robert Koch,’ I said. ‘Pasteur’s rival Toussaint used potassium dichromate as an oxidant to create an anthrax vaccine. And that is precisely what I will do, too.’

  ‘You should write down the procedure, so that Goff could take the lead in case you… get ill again.’

  ‘James, I cannot bear children. How often do I have to tell you this?’

  He stepped back from me, lowered himself into his armchair, and did not speak to me for the remainder of the evening. Why would a man like James be so affected by the mere possibility of having created offspring?

  — day 142 —

  James had changed during the past few days. Tense, hurried, and impatient, he gradually changed back to the man who had abducted me. I could see the madness twitching behind his controlled facade. Soon it would pounce. When he was around, I spoke little. It was a matter of self-preservation. His mood was changing so rapidly that I was unable to foresee outbreaks of violence.

  Late at night, when his expression softened and his hands relaxed, I let my guard down a little, trying to find rest before the storm hit us both.

  He stroked my abdomen, drawing circles around my navel. ‘Is your diagnosis still the same?’ he asked quietly. My heart hiccuped. By now, I was almost certain my diagnosis had been wrong.

  ‘There hasn’t been much time to think about it. But I fear your physician might have been correct after all.’ Fear wasn’t the right word. Terror would have described it better. There was nothing lovely or innocent about the thing possibly growing inside of me. I felt as though I were to produce a perfect copy of James Moriarty. A copy that invaded my insides while its father tried to control the rest.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said, his fingers still stroking my stomach. ‘Would you be my wife?’

  I coughed. ‘What? Why?’ stumbled out of my mouth. His expression darkened. ‘My apologies,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You don’t want my child,’ he stated and I wished I could have grabbed him by his shoulders and screamed Precisely!

  ‘I never wanted to be a wife and I never wanted to have children,’ I said truthfully.

  He nodded, head lowered, gaze attached to my stomach. It was still flat, but for how much longer?

  ‘Your life changed and mine did, too. Have I not shown you often enough that I love you?’

  He must have seen the shock I felt. Why would he say this? How could I not have seen this coming?

  ‘I have always thought it was merely… physical.’ My voice thinned, my mind working frantically on possibilities for extracting myself from this trap. ‘I don’t want to be a mother. Once the anthrax test trial is over and you can do without your bacteriologist for a few days, I will see a surgeon.’

  ‘You are planning to murder my child!’ he cried.

  Certainly, I thought, gazing up at him. His posture was upright, shoulders squared, eyes wild.

  ‘What about your other progeny?’

  ‘Other progeny? You think I ever allowed that to happen?’ His voice did not soften.

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’ Again an entire sentence spoken without a single lie. Apparently he failed to notice the difference.

  ‘Nothing ever happened. They all used a sponge, they douched, none of them ever had a child.’

  I nodded weakly.

  ‘You will not murder my child,’ he snarled. ‘And I will not
allow you to put the mark of illegitimacy on my son or daughter. We will get married.’

  ‘And what then?’ I shot at him. ‘I’m to stay here in your house, the house of the man who abducted me and my father. Marry the man who kept my father in a hole for two months?’

  ‘It was necessary then.’

  ‘It was never necessary, James! Do you plan to lock me into my room again? So as to have full control? Am I to be strapped to the bed or filled up with opium?’

  ‘Of course not!’ he said, running his hand over his face.

  ‘The last thing I wanted for myself was to be a wife, serve only my husband, and have one child after the other. Plop plop plop.’

  His palm made sharp contact with my cheek. He jumped up, dressed hurriedly, barked, ‘It is about time you grew up,’ and left the room.

  With my cheek stinging, I rose and began to dress. Finding a skilled abortionist wasn’t easy. The chance of surviving such a procedure was, at best, eighty percent. If I were unlucky and a quack were to extract the child, I would most likely bleed to death. Doing it myself was out of the question. At least not with surgical instruments. A poison, perhaps? I had a flask with arsenide and belladonna and could use some of it. But the remains would not be enough to use against James, if I had to.

  The feeling of being pressed into a very small cage cut all air off. I longed to flee, leave everything behind, and find my old life with all the freedom it had provided. I paced the room. Perhaps, a great amount of alcohol could induce early labour and bleeding? I wasn’t certain. Besides, James would notice. I needed something that made me ill, as though I had an infection and not a poisoning. I stared out into the garden. A yew tree. Very toxic and it might kill me before it would affect James’s brood. Shocked by my own coldness, I stopped but then failed to imagine the alternative. I couldn’t be mother to James’s child.