Sun Cross 2 - The Magicians Of Night (5 page)

“Well,” Mayfair grunted at length, “least said about that the better, perhaps. And you arrived in this country last September and volunteered… again.”

Tom felt himself blush as if Mayfair had unearthed a stint with a ballet troupe in his past. After Spain he really should have known better. “Hell—begging your pardon, sir. But nobody back in my country seemed to be standing in line to do anything about Hitler…”

“You need hardly apologize, Sergeant Saltwood.” The old man closed the folder again and looked across at him from under jutting brows. “Will you take it?”

Tom hesitated for a long time, all the topics that the old man had
not
brought up—like,
Who is this man REALLY and, for that matter, who are you?
and
Why don’t you get somebody from regular Intelligence?
and
What’s scared you into sending someone at a time like this?—
combining in his mind into a strong odor of rat. He’d gotten Hillyard’s telegram asking him to come back to London for “family business”—a code between them from their days with the Brigade that had meant “I’ve got a job for you…”—two days before the panzers had come rolling out of the Ardennes Forest like a tidal wave of iron and fire.
At least
, he reflected wryly,
I was already packed
.

“There are, of course, a number of explanations as to what might be going on,” Hillyard said, in the deep, brocaded baritone that wouldn’t have disgraced an RADA performance of
King Lear
. “Sligo may very well be a confidence trickster, out to take the SS for whatever he can.”

“That’s not something
I’d
care to try, unless I had some way of getting out of that country real fast.”

“As you say,” Hillyard agreed. “But stupider things have been attempted—and have succeeded. In fact, he may know that Hitler has a blind spot where the occult is concerned. Then again, Sligo may be mad…”

“He’s definitely mad,” Mayfair put in. “According to one of our sources, he seems to suffer from a number of rather curious delusions, apparently without affecting his usefulness to the SS.”

“The third explanation,” Hillyard went on, “is that the occult group—composed of several genuine occultists from Paris and Vienna spiritualist and theosophist circles—is a cover for something else, some new weapon or device that is being developed, and
that
is what we’re worried about.”

He folded his hands on one jodhpurred knee—like Tom, he’d had a change of uniform, a wash, and a shave in that rented room in Dover, but then, he’d always managed to look neat, even when crouching in a Catalan sheep pen under Luftwaffe fire. “We still don’t know how the Germans took the fortress of Eban Emael—the key to that whole section of the Maginot Line. We only know that it was impregnable and that it went without a shot being fired.”

“Conversely,” Mayfair added, “the occult trappings could just as easily be for Sligo’s benefit as for ours or Himmler’s. From all we can ascertain, the man definitely believes himself to be a wizard. Whatever he has or may have invented, he may attribute to magic, just as our system of radio directional finders grew out of an attempt to invent a death ray—something the Nazis are still working on. The Nazis may have enlisted his assistance by humoring his belief.

“In any case it makes no odds.” He picked up his pipe again, and appeared to be surprised—as pipe smokers invariably were—to find that it had gone out. For a moment he sat cradling it, his dark eyes gazing out past Tom, into some middle distance of thought, and Tom saw weariness descend upon him like a double load of grain bags carried too far—the weariness of waiting and wondering, less urgent perhaps than the ground-in ache in his own flesh, but ultimately just as exhausting. At least for the past ten days his own thoughts had been absolutely concentrated on the moment: cover, spare ammo, a place in the retreating trucks. He hadn’t had time, as this old man had, to consider the larger implications of that tidal wave of gray-clad men sweeping across the flat green Belgian landscape—he hadn’t spent the past ten days wondering
What the hell will we do when the Germans land at Dover?
knowing that every gun, every truck, every grenade and clip of ammo the British Army possessed had been left on Dunkirk beach.

Then Mayfair sighed and straightened his shoulders again, as if reminding himself,
First things first
. “Are you interested? You’ll be put ashore by submarine, probably near Hamburg; we’ll give you the names of contacts in Hamburg and in Danzig as well—if you have to flee in that direction—for you to radio for instructions about when and where you’ll be taken off again. You’ll have a couple of German identities, with uniforms, passbooks, ration cards, maps… photographs of the men involved, if we can get them in time. Colonel Hillyard tells me you’re a man to be trusted to do the job and not to panic if things come unstuck. At present, Sligo’s group is headquartered somewhere in the wilds of Prussia near the Polish border, and you may have to make a judgment about which direction to run. But that can all be worked out later. The question is, are you willing?”

“To kill Sligo?”

Mayfair
nodded, unfazed at the bald statement that the mission was, in fact, being undertaken for the purpose of murder. “If you can ascertain what they’re up to, of course we’d like to know that, too. But I understand you’re not a scientist. The main object is to kill Professor Sligo, at whatever cost.”

Tom glanced over at Hillyard. His brain was still ringing with the alarm bells of unanswered questions, where it wasn’t thick with sleepiness and exhaustion, but he guessed if he were to ask now, he wouldn’t get answers anyway.

But two years of fighting in Spain, of ambushes in dry ravines and blowing up bridges and trains, of firefights in the streets of Madrid, and of the thornbush morasses of guerrilla politics had taught him that Hillyard was a man to be trusted. Hillyard met his eyes and nodded.

“I’m your man,” Tom said laconically. Then he added, “God willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Mayfair
’s mouth tightened. “As you say,” he agreed, and his tone was dry. Elsewhere in the building, the radio announcer’s voice chittered frighteningly on.

“So what’s the story?” Tom fished in the pocket of his uniform tonic for makings as he and Hillyard emerged onto the high porch and paused to let their eyes adjust. With every window in the city swathed tight in blackout curtains, the darkness was startling, darker even than open country would be, for the shadows of the buildings blocked the dim ambient glow from the dusting of stars overhead. The night was fine and warm, the moist, thick smell of new-cut grass drifting to them from the little park in the center of the square, the colder, damper breath of moss-greened pavement and last year’s dead leaves rising from the sunken areaway that dropped like a dry moat below the porch to either side of them. The freshness of the air and the sweet, calm silence of the night cleared his head and drove back the exhaustion that seemed to weight his bones.

Tom’s match made a startling glare in the blackness. “You know as well as I do they’ve got guys in regular Intelligence who know German.”

“So they do. I’ve booked us rooms over in Torrington Place.” Starlight gleamed on the bald curve of Hillyard’s head as he led the way down the narrow porch stairs, his gas mask swinging awkwardly at his belt. “My guess is that Alec—Mayfair—” He corrected himself, “—couldn’t get approval from Intelligence to send one of their men. It’s not his department, you know.”

“It’s not?” They passed the little park. Against the pale scars of cut-up earth, Saltwood saw the low, dim bulk of a redbrick air-raid shelter, new and raw and waiting. He remembered Madrid again, and what he’d seen of the village of Guernica. Though the night was warm and peaceful, he shivered.

Hillyard shook his head. “He approached me privately, asked if there was anyone from the Brigade who’d be reliable. Most of the native Brits, I might add, have already vanished into the F.O.’s murky ranks—not that that affected my choice much. If he hadn’t arranged to call you back now over this, Id still have been waiting for you on the docks.”

“I bet you meet all the ships, honey.” Tom grinned and made a smooching noise in the dark. From behind them came the sudden, full-throated rumble of a car’s engine—a big eight-cylinder American job by the sound of it—and a moment later a lightless black shape swept gleaming past them and away into the dark. “Whoa—somebody was sure thinking when they drew up the blackout regs… What’s up?”

“Well, there’s been a certain amount of discussion about forming guerilla forces, probably based in Scotland…”

“You don’t think England’s going to surrender, then?”

“Never,” Hillyard said decisively. “You’ve been in the fighting, so I don’t know how much you’ve seen of what the Luftwaffe and the German army did to Rotterdam…”

“I’ve heard.” Saltwood’s voice was grim.

“It’s going to be bad here,” Hillyard went on, suddenly quiet, as if he sensed all those families, all those children, all those peaceful lives and day-to-day joys that lay like a vast, murmuring hive around them in the lightless city. “And it may get bad very soon. But Churchill’s never going to surrender.”

“And with all this going on,” Saltwood said thoughtfully, dropping his cigarette butt to the sidewalk and grinding it out under his heel, “Mayfair still thinks this mad professor of theirs is important enough for me to go over to Germany now?”

There was long silence, broken only by the strike of the two men’s boots on the sidewalk and by the occasional surge of traffic—punctuated now and then by the startled screech of brakes—a few blocks away in Gower Street. But there were few passersby. Everyone in London—everyone in England, Tom thought—would be glued to a radio tonight.

They turned a corner, Hillyard seemed to know where he was going—but then, he always did, and could see like a cat in the dark. He steered Tom carefully across the street to avoid an entanglement of sandbags and barbed wire around some large building, nearly invisible in the pitchy gloom. Once they were stopped by a coveralled civilian, a fat old white-haired man wearing a warden’s armband and carrying a gas mask strapped to his belt, and asked for their papers, but when he saw their uniforms by the quick glow of his flashlight he hastily saluted and waved them on by.

At length Hillyard said, “We’ll probably have a little bit of breathing space, anyway—the latest reports say the German armored divisions are already turning south to mop up France.”

“Makes sense if Hitler wants to secure naval bases on the Channel.”

“So it does. But if there is to be an invasion, Mayfair seems to think that whatever Sligo is doing will make the situation worse. He’s been scared pretty badly.”

“Yeah, but… a
wizard
, Bill?”

And Hillyard laughed. “Well, I didn’t read the reports. That should be the Red Cow opposite.” He gestured toward what appeared to be a solid and anonymous wall of dark buildings on the other side of the narrow lane. “There isn’t a wireless in the hotel room. Think you can stay awake long enough for a beer?”

“I always knew you could smell beer across a street.”

Together they plunged across the bumpy pavement, dark as the inside of a closet, narrowly missing being run down by something powerful and nearly silent—a Dusenberg or Bentley, Tom guessed by the throb of the engine—that passed close enough to them that the wind of it flapped their trouser legs against their calves. Having spent twenty-four hours in a shell crater on the beach listening to machine-gun bullets smacking into the sand on all sides of him, Tom didn’t bother to jump, just quickened his stride enough to let the whizzing car pass.

“
Here lies the body of Thomas Leander Saltwood
,” he quoted his own epitaph, “
who survived union goons in the West Virginia mines, special deputies in the California orchards, two years of fighting in Spain, nine months in a Spanish prison, the German invasion of Belgium, the shelling of the Dunkirk beaches, Luftwaffe strafing on the Channel, his commander’s driving on the way up to London
…”

“Watch it, Sergeant!”

“…
only to be killed in quest of beer by a careless driver during the blackout in the streets of London
. You remember that case of Chateau Lafitte you found in Madrid?”

“Ah,” Hillyard said reminiscently as he reached into the stygian pit of a darkened doorway for a handle—even on the step here, Tom could now hear the hushed murmur of voices and smell the inevitable warm fustiness of beer and bodies within, “A very good year.” More than the wine, Tom remembered the bombing raid that had been going on when they’d found it… remembered his commander casually pouring out glassfuls for them both in the ruins of the old cellar, listening to the explosions getting nearer and nearer and remarking,
That one’s two, three streets away yet… plenty of time… hmm, sounds like they’re dropping mines
… “I remember old Palou insisting on unloading the wine from his cart during that big raid. ‘They are only Germans, but this… this is money…’ ”

“Funny what you get used to. I met Californios when I was working the Long Beach docks who wouldn’t get up from the suppertable for an earthquake but who swore they’d never go east of the Rockies for fear of tornadoes—
tornadoes
, for Chrissake!”

In the broad slit of yellow light as Hillyard opened the pub door, Tom saw his commander blench. “Er—have you seen many tornadoes?”

And Tom, who’d grown up with them, only laughed.

He took a seat at a table in a corner, under a moldering trophy head some aristocrat had shot in Kenya and an enameled tin ad for Green King Ale. The pub was very quiet, the scattering of workingmen and housewives there speaking softly, if at all, over their pints of ale and bitters, listening to the chatter of the radio announcer’s voice.

“…general withdrawal of all remaining forces to Dunkirk. On the Channel, the destroyer
Wakeful
was torpedoed and sunk, only a few survivors escaping to be picked up by the motor drifter
Nautilus
and the danlayer
Comfort
, themselves heavily loaded… the
Queen of the Channel
, with 920 men aboard, bombed and sunk, her crew and passengers picked up by the store-ship
Dorrian Rose… Harvester, Esk, Malcom
… the minesweeper
Brighton Belle
sunk in the Channel, her troops rescued by the
Medway Queen
… destroyers heavily engaged with shore batteries…”