Blood Red City (29 page)

For the moment, Mary sat in the prime position, Crowley on one side of her. Jane sat opposite, eyes half closed, unspeaking. Where Jane was slight, Mary had a fuller figure. In contrast to Jane's short, dark hair Mary had blonde hair that reached almost to her waist.

Once the candles were lit, Crowley signalled for the lights to be extinguished. He allowed Mary to run the session, calling for Enlightenment, the fingers of her hand warm against his. The heavy bracelet scraped against the table top as she moved her hand slightly. It hung loosely on the woman's wrist.

After almost half an hour of going through the motions, it was obvious that Mary was making no connection today.

‘Would you like to try?' Crowley asked Jane.

She was staring down at the table, but lifted her head at his words.

‘Mary won't mind, will you, Mary?' he went on.

‘No, of course not,' Mary said. From her tone, she minded a lot.

‘You see.'

‘I do not see,' Jane replied. ‘Not clearly. Not now.'

‘Then change places with Mary. Do you want to see?'

Jane frowned. ‘I … I don't know.'

Mary stood up. The bracelet slid down her wrist. Jane's eyes followed it. ‘Bracelet,' she murmured.

‘It's mine now,' Mary told her.

‘Bracelet,' Jane said again, louder, firmer. ‘Bracelet.'

‘Give it to her,' Crowley said quietly.

Mary hesitated for a moment, then pressed her thumb into the palm of her hand so that she could slide the bracelet off. ‘I want it back.' She dropped it on the table in front of her, then stood up and walked round to where Jane was sitting.

Jane too stood up. ‘No,' she said. ‘You really don't.'

She took Mary's place in the chair next to Crowley. Hesitantly, she reached out for the bracelet. As her fingers touched it, the silver tracery round the outside flared a brilliant white. Crowley reached out to stop her – perhaps this was not a good idea.

But he was too late. Jane had already picked up the bracelet. The bright light from it faded to a glow as she opened it, and closed it round her thin upper arm, above the elbow. Her expression did not change. But the bracelet seemed to tighten in place. Blood oozed out from beneath it, dripping to the table. Mary gasped. The others at the table were pale as they watched.

Jane's eyes opened wide. They seemed to darken as she stared unfocused into the distance.

‘
Now
I can see!'

‘What do you see?' Crowley asked. ‘Tell me. I must know.'

‘I see who I am,' Jane said. ‘What I must do. What will happen. And how it will all end when the Vril awaken and come among us.'

*   *   *

He gave up counting the bodies. German and Russian soldiers, peasants and civilians, horses … The road through the desolate, blighted landscape was like a pathway through hell.

The driver was a veteran. Hoffman had joined the detachment commanded by the officer he had met in Dresden to travel to the Eastern Front. But they had been diverted to the Caucasus, so he had been forced to find another unit moving up to join the troops advancing towards Moscow.

‘It's nothing like what they tell you,' the driver said. He was too weary and battle-scarred to worry about speaking his mind to an SS officer. Or perhaps he simply hadn't noticed the dark uniform beneath Hoffman's greatcoat. ‘The plan is that the land we capture will supply the food we need. But it doesn't work like that.'

‘Not when the retreating Russians burn the crops,' Hoffman agreed. ‘Not when we kill the peasants who should be farming it.'

‘That makes little difference,' the driver said, bumping the truck over another dead body. ‘To farm land like this you need tractors. The Reds drove them all away. They evacuated the tractors, not the people. What's that tell you about them, eh?'

Hoffman didn't answer. It told him that someone realised that resupply was going to be a problem for both sides. It told him that his fellow Russians were prepared to sacrifice anything to protect their homeland. It told him that at some point – probably with the onset of another winter – the German advance would grind to a halt and might never get started again.

His hand strayed to his chest, resting over where the photograph of Alina nestled safely inside his jacket pocket. Was she still in Stalingrad? Was she waiting for him as she'd promised? Would he ever see her again?

The driver was still talking, but Hoffman wasn't listening. It didn't matter what he said. Nothing mattered. Alina first. Then he would think about getting to Moscow, and finding out what they already knew about the Vril.

*   *   *

Guy envied Leo his place in the repaired Lysander. Not just because he was sharing the small plane with Sarah, but also because the plane was a hell of a lot quicker than waiting for their rendezvous with the submarine and the subsequent journey.

They had managed to escape from the Labyrinth while the SS soldiers were confronting the Minotaur. Quite what had happened down in the tunnels, Guy didn't know. But from a safe distance outside the fence line, they had watched through the thinning smoke as the soldiers brought out their wounded officer who was quickly stretchered away.

Brinkman kept the stone axe-head with him. There was some value in getting it back to London as quickly as possible, but that had to be weighed against other considerations.

‘I don't doubt Miss Diamond's abilities,' Brinkman confided in Guy as they waited on the shore for a signal from the submarine. ‘But we can't count on anything. If the plane gets shot down, then the axe-head could fall into enemy hands. If our submarine gets hit, then we're all going to the bottom of the sea and the axe with us.'

‘That's a sobering thought,' Guy told him.

Mihali rowed them out into the secluded bay where the submarine was due to meet them. It was a clear, summer's sky and the moon was bright despite being a mere sliver of a crescent, a contrast with the crashing, stormy sea and thunderous sky when they had arrived. The submarine was due to surface at 1am local time.

‘It's hard to know exactly where it will appear,' Mihali told them.

‘Hopefully, not right underneath us,' Guy said.

‘I imagine they'll check their periscope first to make sure everything's safe,' Brinkman said.

‘Well,' Guy said to Mihali, ‘thanks for looking after us. But I can't pretend it's been fun.'

‘The fun may not be over yet,' Mihali told them.

He was the one facing the shore, Guy and Brinkman sitting opposite him in the little boat as he worked the oars. They twisted round to see what Mihali was looking at.

Lights. A cluster of small lights, torches perhaps, on the shoreline.

‘Not your people come to see us off?' Brinkman asked.

‘Sadly not.'

As if to prove the point, there was a flash followed by a crack of sound. At the same moment as the noise reached them, something splashed into the water close to the boat.

‘I think they've seen us,' Guy said.

Memories of Dunkirk rose unbidden in his mind as there was more gunfire. Bullets splashed into the water all around them like a sudden rain shower.

‘Keep rowing,' Brinkman ordered Mihali. ‘See if you can get us out of range.'

As he spoke, several shots hammered into the wooden side of the boat. A splinter whipped past Guy's face. He swore and ducked down low.

The sound of gunfire was drowned out as the sea around them began to boil. Caught in the wash, the boat dipped and rolled alarmingly. Water sloshed in over the side. More gunshots cracked past. A huge, dark shape reared up out of the bay, water gushing white and foaming off the sides of the submarine's conning tower as it thrust up into the clear night sky. A bullet pinged off the metal.

‘Go!' Mihali shouted. ‘Get yourselves on the deck.'

A hatch swung open at the top of the tower. A moment later, gunfire rang out from the submarine. The lights on the shore went out as the German soldiers turned off their torches.

‘What about you?' Guy yelled at Mihali.

‘Don't worry about me. I'll swim round to the next bay. Let them shoot up the boat, and assume we've all escaped on the sub.'

Mihali dropped the oars, and pulled Guy into a quick embrace as he pushed past towards the front of the boat. Brinkman got the same treatment. A bullet grazed past Guy's arm, ripping his sleeve close to the shoulder. Then he was leaping for the deck of the submarine, just clear of the surface of the bay. Water washed across it, making it slippery.

Brinkman grabbed Guy's arm – though whether to support Guy or for his own benefit it wasn't clear. The steel hull rang with a scatter of impacts. Guy looked back in time to see Mihali diving out of the small rowing boat and striking out strongly through the water, away from the submarine. He'd have to put some distance between them, to avoid being dragged down in the submarine's wake when it dived.

The ladder up the conning tower was on the far side, shielded from the gunfire. Even so, it was a difficult climb up the slippery, wet rungs. At the top, sailors in lifejackets caught hold of Guy and Brinkman and bundled them quickly through the hatch.

Guy all but fell to the deck inside, half climbing half sliding down the ladder. He collapsed to his knees as he landed, before hauling himself upright in time to help Brinkman down. They turned to find a uniformed submariner watching them with amusement.

‘I'm hoping you're the two chaps I'm expecting and not some unfortunate Greek fishermen who just happened to be passing.'

‘I think we're your passengers,' Brinkman assured him.

‘Then welcome aboard, gentlemen. I'm Captain Whitaker, and I expect you're about ready for a mug of tea.'

Above them, the hatch clanged shut as the last of the sailors descended to join them.

*   *   *

Mercifully, the rest of the trip back passed without incident. Brinkman and Guy delivered the precious axe-head to Elizabeth Archer at the British Museum as soon as they could, even before calling in at the Station Z offices.

‘It's nothing much to look at,' she told them, as if they were somehow to blame for this. ‘But I shall make a full analysis. It is remarkably well preserved.'

She shuffled through a pile of papers on her desk and handed several sheets to Brinkman. Looking over his shoulder, Guy saw that they were sketches of the room at the centre of the Labyrinth.

‘I drew these from Leo's description of the chamber where you found this,' Elizabeth told them. ‘I'd be grateful if you could take a look and tell me if there's anything we've missed or got wrong. Oh, and this one too.'

She pulled out another sheet – this one with a drawing of the Minotaur. Even though it was only a rough sketch, it made Guy shudder at the memory of the real thing. Here, back in London, it had all seemed so distant, almost like he had dreamed it. But the sketch brought home the reality of what they were dealing with like a hammer blow.

*   *   *

In a room lit only by black candles, four people sat at a round table, their hands on the polished wooden surface, fingers touching.

‘Anything?' Leo Davenport asked.

‘Shhh,' Miss Manners told him. ‘I need to concentrate.'

‘Waste of time, if you ask me,' Sergeant Green muttered.

‘I don't think that's helping,' Sarah whispered back.

‘Yes!' Miss Manners gasped. ‘Yes…'

‘Here we go,' Leo said quietly.

‘Darkness,' Miss Manners breathed. ‘We live in the dark places. Sleep in the depths beneath the earth. A few of us keep guard. A few of us watch and wait, learn and plan …'

‘The usual story,' Green murmured. ‘I told you – we never learn anything new.'

Sarah shushed him again and the sergeant lapsed into silence.

‘Is she finished?' Leo wondered. ‘I want to scratch my nose.'

‘No,' Miss Manners told him sharply, glaring through the flickering light. The effect was just as forceful even without her spectacles. ‘Keep the circle intact. There is more, I can feel it.' She closed her eyes again and took a deep breath.

‘Speak to me,' she muttered. ‘Speak to me again…' Then, abruptly, her whole body stiffened. ‘We sleep,' she hissed. ‘But our long sleep is almost over. We already have one key. We know where to find the second. The third will be brought to us…'

She lapsed into silence for several seconds. Then Miss Manners opened her eyes again. ‘That's it,' she said calmly. ‘A little more than usual, but whether it's of any use…' She raised her hands from the table. ‘Now where are my glasses?'

‘You mentioned keys,' Sarah said as they stood up. ‘Three of them. Those must be the axe-heads.'

Green turned on the lights and set about extinguishing the candles. Dark smoky trails drifted upwards from the blackened wicks.

‘It seems likely,' Miss Manners said, ‘given what you've told us about what you found in Crete. But don't read too much into the word “key”. What I say is my brain's best interpretation of what comes into my mind. It's like you're getting an imperfect translation of something I only dimly glimpsed.'

‘But it all helps,' Leo said. ‘Even if we don't yet understand how.'

‘We'll see what the colonel thinks,' Green told them. ‘He phoned just before we started to say he and Major Pentecross are delivering the axe-thing to Mrs Archer at the British Museum.'

Sarah's excitement at the news was evident. ‘They're back? Safely?'

‘So it seems.'

‘Why didn't you tell us before?'

Green stifled a smile. ‘Miss Manners is always saying we have to be calm and unemotional in here. So we didn't want you distracted. It might have interfered with the séance.'

 

CHAPTER 29

On 23 August 1942, the German 6th Army, together with support from elements of the 4th Panzer Army, crossed the river Don and laid siege to Stalingrad. Aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe the same day reduced much of the city to rubble. Hoffman watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as six hundred planes passed overhead in a seemingly unending wave that turned the sky almost black. How many civilians were left in the city he wondered? How many would die today? And was Alina among them?