Cold Warriors (7 page)

"Because I like the name?" Tomas asked, baffled.

"No," Nicholson said. "Because you know what it means."

Nicholson drove Tomas to the Hermetic Division headquarters himself. "You've been fascinated by mythology since you were a child," Nicholson told him, as if Tomas might have forgotten.

Tomas shrugged. "I've always liked poetry. Poems are full of myths and I wanted to understand them."

"Very admirable. And you didn't come to enjoy the legends in their own right?"

"Someone once described myths as poetic truth. I suppose I agree with that."

Nicholson pulled on the handbrake, then clapped Tomas on the shoulder. "Or maybe they're just the literal truth." He climbed out of the car before Tomas could reply.

They'd stopped outside a small sixties block even more down-at-heel than the Edwardian mansion they'd come from. It gave Tomas some sense of the status the new Hermetic Division enjoyed. Which meant this was a demotion of sorts - but despite himself, he was intrigued.

Nicholson took him up in a vandalised lift and to the second flat on the left. The paint on its door was flaking leprously. Inside, a short hallway led through to the brown and yellow kitchen. Nicholson gestured Tomas to sit as he set about made him a cup of tea, adding milk and two sugars without needing to ask. Tomas barely noticed - he'd had three years to stop being unnerved by working with people who knew his school nickname and what colour boxers he preferred.

"You'll have heard about what the Yanks have been up to, I bet," Nicholson said as he handed Tomas his mug and took a quick sip from his own.

"What haven't they been up to?" Tomas said.

"The remote viewing experiments, I mean. Using psychics to look inside Russian missile silos."

Tomas snorted, then felt his face fall as he realised the Hermetic Division might be British intelligence's answer to that.

"Don't worry, we're not planning any of that nonsense," Nicholson said, reading Tomas's expression. "We're going to do something that actually works." He was pulling things out of his bag as he spoke, carefully placing them on the mottled formica of the kitchen table: a knife, a piece of chalk, a fragment of mirror, a small eyeless cloth doll.

Tomas looked at them warily, shifting on his plastic chair. "The Hermetic Division isn't concerned with the paranormal?"

"Was Crowley's Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn interested in the paranormal?"

"Not really. More the supernatural."

Nicholson's eyes caught Tomas's suddenly, a red-tinted brown that went with his ginger hair. "Exactly."

"The supernatural?" Tomas laughed, as if that could turn it into a joke. He watched Nicholson arrange all the objects at the five corners of a pentagram he'd scribbled on the table with his chalk.

"It's been thirty years of Cold War," Nicholson said. "And no end in sight. I don't need to tell you what Europe will be like if the Soviets win, you've seen it yourself. A boot stamping on a face forever. We've stockpiled missiles that can destroy the world a thousand times over, and so have they. We came minutes away from doing it, back in 1962. I remember sitting in my house, listening to the radio and waiting for the mushroom cloud - don't you? And needs must where the devil drives. We've made alliances with countries whose human rights records would have made the Nazis blush, all to stop the greater menace. Don't you think, in a war like this, an existential war, we should use any help we can find?"

"Yes," Tomas said. "Of course I think that. That's why I took this job. I took it to do something useful, not something
that can't possibly work
!" He realised that he'd shouted the last words, half-rising to his feet. With an effort of will he clenched his fists and sat back down.

Nicholson didn't seem bothered. He just tapped his finger in the centre of the pentagram he'd drawn, a half-rhythm that wasn't quite a beat. "And what if it really did work? What then?"

Tomas found his eyes drawn to the pentagram, where the nail of Nicholson's index finger was tap-tap-tapping against the shard of mirror. Nicholson was saying something else now, but the words were in a language Tomas didn't understand and all his attention was focused on that small piece of silvered glass.

It wasn't really very interesting. There was nothing reflected in it except the pale cream of the ceiling, with a small water stain right in centre. Only, was it really a stain? The longer Tomas stared at it, the more it looked like a face.

"Do you see her?" Nicholson asked.

And yes, Tomas did. She must have been about fifty. Her face was pudgy and white and probably hadn't been pretty even when she was younger and thinner. Tomas looked up, half expecting to see Nicholson holding some kind of photo over the mirror, but his fingers were still tapping away on the edge of the glass, and the reflection seemed to be coming from absolutely nowhere.

"What is this?" Tomas whispered.

"She died here nine years ago. Murdered, actually, which is why this is possible. That kind of violence leaves an... echo of itself."

In the mirror, the woman's reflection seemed to nod in agreement.

"It's a trick," Tomas said, tearing his eyes away from the glass to stare at Nicholson. "I don't know how, but -"

"No trick. How do you think I persuaded them to set up the Hermetic Division?" Nicholson pulled out a yellowed scrap of newspaper from his pocket. HOUSEWIFE SLAUGHTERED IN OWN FLAT said the headline. And even though the picture was grainy, Tomas instantly recognised it as the woman he'd seen in the mirror.

"Death isn't a wall," Nicholson said. "It's a veil, and it can be drawn aside. Do you want to help me figure out how?"

Tomas realised his hands were shaking and carefully clasped them in his lap. "But why?"

"Because we can use this. Because it's our duty to our country to develop every weapon we can. And because if we don't, somebody else will. Aren't those reasons good enough?"

As Tomas stared up at the ceiling of the Hotel Gellert, where the water stain really was just that, he wondered what else he could have said to Nicholson.
Some things are best left unlearnt? Some weapons should never be used?
Instead he'd just said "yes," and now here he was. He closed his eyes, though he guessed that sleep would never come - that it was something he'd sacrificed twenty years ago along with everything else.

CHAPTER FOUR

Morgan woke at dawn, just as he always did. All the questions he hadn't asked had hovered over his dreams and he didn't feel like he'd slept at all. He'd hoped the memory would have faded by morning, or become explicable in a way it hadn't been last night, but instead of the sunlight driving out the darkness, he felt like the nightmares were seeping into the day. He couldn't work like this.

Tomas was still in bed, but he was already awake, the whites of his eyes reflecting the pale morning light streaming through a crack in the curtains. His blond hair was mussed and spiky, making him look younger, almost Morgan's age.

"Who are you?" Morgan said.

Tomas rolled to sit at the edge of the bed, scrubbing sleep from his eyes. He didn't answer.

"All right then. What's the Hermetic Division?"

Tomas looked up at him. "How much did they tell you about it?"

"Nothing."

"Then clearly that's what they want you to know."

Morgan slapped his hand against the wall. "Stop it! I'm not the junior partner here, man.
You
were assigned to work with
me
."

Tomas sighed, and Morgan found himself fuming at his inability to get a rise out of him. It was like Tomas just didn't take him seriously enough.

"It's not my place to tell you," the other man said with infuriating patience.

Morgan jerked back the curtains, spilling more light into the room. Tomas instantly looked his age again, the fine lines around his eyes and mouth placing him somewhere in his late thirties. "What's the Hermetic Division, Tomas? I'm working for them - I've got a right to know."

Tomas shrugged and rose to join Morgan at the window. For a minute they both stared out over the waters of the Danube, five storeys below. Morgan's breath fogged the glass, but in front of Tomas it stayed entirely transparent.

"Hermes was a Greek god," Tomas said eventually.

Morgan frowned at Tomas's faint reflection in the window.

"Hermes - Hermetic. That's the origin of the word. He's regarded as the father of magic in some traditions. Nineteenth-century occultists were particularly keen on him."

"So the Hermetic Division is... what?"

Tomas turned to look at Morgan directly. "Listen to me - you don't need to know this. And you definitely don't want to. Don't ask me to tell you things
I'd
have been happier never knowing."

"Stop patronising me!" Morgan shouted. In a blur of action he didn't fully remember, he had Tomas pressed up against the glass of the window, Morgan's arm crushing his windpipe. "Who are you, Tomas? Who
are
you? Tell me what the fuck you are!"

Tomas narrowed his eyes but didn't fight back. Morgan knew he should let go -without air Tomas would pass out - but the other man's passivity infuriated him. He pressed harder, then harder still. No blood should have been getting through, no oxygen. Thirty seconds passed, a minute, more - and Tomas just stared back at him gravely.

Finally Morgan released Tomas and stepped back with a gasp that was almost a sob. Tomas put a finger to his throat, as if to check for any damage. "Finished yet?" he asked quietly.

Morgan jerked his head in a gesture that might have been a nod. He wasn't sure himself. "Why doesn't that hurt you? Why didn't my bullet kill you?"

Tomas's smiled bitterly. "It did hurt, so did the bullet. I can feel things - they just can't harm me any more."

"But that's..." Morgan wanted to say impossible, but he wasn't stupid. He'd seen enough to know it wasn't.

Tomas shook his head, as if Morgan had voiced the unspoken word. "No, just very difficult."

"How?" Morgan whispered.

"Rituals, old knowledge, forgotten secrets."

"Magic, you mean?"

"World is crazier and more of it than we think," Tomas said, a sing-song quotation.

"Don't quote fucking poetry at me!"

"I'm sorry. Then how's this for an answer? When our bosses realised the occult contained grains of truth in the mythical chaff, they set up the Hermetic Division to research it. And to use it."

"Why?"

Tomas eyes looked blank and distant. "Because we were in a war, and if something was out there to be found, however odd or improbable, we had to find it before the other side did. The Hermetic Division is part of the secret service, Morgan, and I'm just another weapon."

"What kind of weapon, exactly?"

"One who returned from the other side. They buried me twenty years ago, before you were even born. And two days ago, they brought me back from the dead."

Morgan realised he was gasping for breath, as if he was the one who'd been choked, not Tomas. "Back at the briefing, Giles said those artefacts can cause Armageddon. I thought he was just talking that way because he's a twat."

Tomas smiled and looked down.

"But he wasn't, was he?"

"No." Tomas looked up again, green eyes piercing. "Have you read the
Book of Revelation
?"

"That's part of the Bible, right?"

Tomas nodded. "The last book, also known as the Apocalypse of John. It describes God's final judgement on humanity, when Jesus breaks the seven seals and the four horsemen are unleashed: a rider on a white horse, who brings pestilence; a red rider who ushers in a time of war; the black rider of famine; and a pale rider on a pale horse, who is death himself. One hundred and forty-four thousand people alone are saved, and the rest are left to endure a time of terrible tribulation, fire and earthquakes, a beast with seven heads, and all the green grass of the earth burned."

Morgan slumped back down on the bed. "And that's actually true, is it?"

Tomas shrugged. "Christian evangelicals believe so. They devote their life to ensuring they're among the limited number of the elect, those who'll be saved, and they wait for the Rapture, when they'll be taken up to Heaven to sit at God's side. Others disagree. Historians see John's words as relating to the time in which he lived, when Rome was the greatest threat to Christianity. They claim the seven-headed beast is a metaphor for the Roman Empire. There had been seven Caesars up till then, you see, and Rome itself is built on seven hills. Then there's the number of the beast -"

"I've heard of that - 666, right?"

"Yes. The ancient Jews were very keen on numerology. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet had a numeric equivalent, and they used it to construct puzzles. The Bible's full of them. If you translate three sixes into letters, you get Nero - the name of the Emperor who'd most persecuted the Christians. Historians believe Revelation is polemic, not prophecy."

"I don't fucking care what they believe. What do
you
think? Is it real, or not?"

"In its details... Probably not. But the Revelation of John isn't the only apocalyptic story in biblical literature. At the First Council of Nicea, held in the year 325 by the Emperor Constantine, the early church leaders gathered to decide which books should be included in the Christian Bible, and which rejected. Some of the decisions were based on sound reasoning, others were arbitrary, political. And all the other apocalyptic books were banished to the Apocrypha - where they've remained, mostly unread, ever since.

"Other religions also have legends of an ultimate end. The Norse Ragnarok, which the artefacts are named after, foretells the death of the gods and the destruction of the world of man. Jewish and Greek legends of the flood are just another apocalypse, imagined into the past rather than the future."

"It's all just the same bullshit, though, isn't it?" Morgan said. "Yeah the earth can be destroyed - someone can press the red button. But this..."

"As above, so below," Tomas told him. "The world of magic is a mirror to the mundane world. If that world includes the power to end itself, it's almost certain the magical realm does too."