The Demi-Monde: Summer (44 page)

‘Well, I ain’t content, wot wiv not being able to think ov a way to get into that castle or nuffink.’

Odette smiled. ‘
J’ai beaucoup de confidance en tu, Burlesque
… I ’ave the mostly biggest faith in you, Burlesque. You are the man ‘oo entered the Convent in Venice without any of the permissions.’

‘That’s right, I did, didn’t I?’ Bucked up by the girl’s confidence, he passed her the telescope, then dug into the haversack she had carried up from the rooms they were occupying and brought out an apple. Fretting gave him an appetite.

For a minute or so Odette surveyed the Castle. ‘
C’est vraiment un édifice très formidable
, Burlesque.’

‘Nah, it ain’t formidable, it’s a real bastard, that’s wot it is.’ He took a contemplative munch on his apple. ‘It reminds me ov the Lubyanka an’ that wos meant to be impene … impene … fucking difficult to break into.’

‘
Et les ouvriers
… the navigators … what ees eet that they are doing of?’

Burlesque took the glass back and pointed it in the direction Odette indicated. The extensive and beautifully manicured gardens of the Castle were surrounded by a high wall – maybe twenty feet high and topped by vicious-looking spikes – the only entrance through which was via a pair of large wooden gates.

Or, at least, there
had
been a pair of gates.

Both the gates and the stone gateposts were in the process of being demolished by a dozen or so burly navvies to allow a huge ten-wheeled cart, drawn by eight enormous horses, entrance to the Castle’s grounds. ‘
Mieux je
can judge, the Chinks …’

He gave Dong E a quick look to make sure she hadn’t overheard him.

‘… needed to get
cette grande charrette
through
la port
so ills ont demolished
les
gateposts. Good luck
pour nous; ce sera
gettin’
dans le terrain un mite facilier
.’

Odette took a moment to disentangle what Burlesque had said. ‘
Qu’est-ce qu’elle transporte?
’

‘Beats
moi
, Odette, me darlin’. Probably
les
crates are full ov all
le
stuff this Dr Ptah item’s bin buying for ‘er laboratories. That’s wot that bird Su Xiaoxiao said, but she didn’t say
rien
abart ‘ow fuckin’
grande
these crates were. That one down there must be twenty foot long iffn it’s an inch. I wonder wot’s in it?’

Odette didn’t say anything, just lay there with an interested look on her face watching the scene unfolding beneath them.

Burlesque shrugged away her silence and took a bite out of a second apple. He gave the Castle another look, then shook his head. ‘Iffn you want my opinion, Odette, I fink we’ve got as much chance ov getting’ into that castle as we ’ave of roastin’ snow.’

All Odette did was carry on smiling.

Aleister Crowley sipped his Solution, feeling – for the first time in a very long time – that he was in command of his destiny and that he had gone some way to fulfilling the demands of the odious Septimus Bole. The meeting with Nearchus had presented him with an opportunity to capture the Column of Loci, and tonight he would persuade his very special crypto in the Coven to assist in stealing the secrets of the YiYi Project. ABBA was smiling on him and he could face the future without the worry of Bole punishing him for his failures.

His pleasant contemplation of the rewards that would accrue to him when he announced his various successes was interrupted by a careful tap on the door of his suite. Ever cautious – it didn’t pay to forget he was in enemy territory – he unholstered his revolver. The safe house the SS maintained in Beijing might be well guarded and his surreptitious entry into the Coven cloaked
in secrecy, but it never did to be anything less than careful, though, as he saw it, it was impossible for anyone – anyone outside the SS, anyway – to realise that the second-most powerful man in the ForthRight was now lodging just a stone’s throw from the Forbidding Palace.

Anyway, he knew who was attending him. His visitor was a very punctual Femme who had arrived precisely at midnight. But then, considering that the Empress Wu was so exact in the manner in which she conducted her affairs, it was to be expected that similar traits would be found in her Deputy.

‘One moment,’ he shouted as he strolled across the room. And as he walked, he adopted his most guileless expression, which, he hoped, would calm his sure-to-be-apprehensive guest. The Femme was becoming increasingly unnerved about being blackmailed.

As soon as the door opened, the woman stepped into the room, obviously anxious not to be recognised by passers-by. Unfortunately her cloak and her veil couldn’t disguise that she was young (she was slim and held herself very well), was of the highest class (the quality of her cloak and her shoes attested to that) and was hugely worried about attending him (her hands shook uncontrollably).

‘Good evening, First Deputy,’ Crowley began once the door was shut behind her, ‘or, in view of our recent intimacies, might I have the honour of addressing you as Lucrezia?’

‘Damn you to Hel, Crowley, and you would do well to mark my new title. I am now
Imperial Administrator
, having been appointed by Empress Wu successor to Mao ZeDong.’

‘Congratulations! And may I say how pleased I am to see that punctuality is not just the virtue of princes but also of Imperial Administrators.’

Lucrezia Borgia shucked off her cloak and hat, tossed them disdainfully over a couch and then, with just a moment’s
hesitation, walked across to the cabinet standing to one side of the room and poured herself a large glass of Solution which she downed in one swing. ‘Have a care, Crowley,’ she snapped, ‘that you do not goad me too far.’ She did her best to sound sharp and reproving, but Crowley could tell her heart wasn’t in it. The expression in her eyes showed just how vulnerable she actually felt.

‘Goad you? I have never felt it necessary to goad you, my dear Imperial Administrator. What you did, you did willingly, almost, dare I suggest, enthusiastically.’

The woman’s lips pursed. ‘You swine. You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you? But remember, Crowley, that I am here under duress. It is your ownership of those damnable daguerreotypes that coerces me, nothing more.’

He shrugged her protests aside and refilled her glass, ‘Your mentioning of the daguerreotypes leads us neatly to the subject of tonight’s rendezvous. Have you considered my proposition, Imperial Administrator? Will you assist me in a small endeavour I am intent upon or would you prefer that the Empress sees just how good – or should that be, how
bad
– a MostBien you really are?’

This, they both knew, was no small threat. That her very acrobatic and decidedly heterosexual antics had been caught on camera by that master of the pawnographic Julian Mandel had come as a shock to Borgia when Crowley had presented her with copies and a warning that unless she ‘cooperated’, said photographs would be incorporated in a pamphlet to be circulated throughout the Coven.

‘I was drugged,’ protested the Imperial Administrator.

She was correct in this assumption. Crowley had used the NoirVillian aphrodisiac Dizzi himself on several occasions and the results – even on the most sexually recalcitrant of partners – had always been strength-sappingly satisfactory. He guessed
that the SS agents responsible for the sting had slipped an over-large dose of Dizzi into the woman’s drink, closely followed by their slipping a mightily over-endowed young man into her bedroom. All this had been caught on camera by the hidden Mandel. The pictures had been both impressive and educational.

‘That might be true, Imperial Administrator, but you most certainly weren’t drugged last night.’

Now
that
shut the woman up.

As he judged it, Lucrezia Borgia was a closet heterosexual. Even he, who knew the venality of Demi-Mondians better than any, had been astonished by how readily she had acceded to his demands for sexual favours. As was to be expected, she had protested and wept and wailed, but gradually she had warmed to his unusual ideas regarding lovemaking. Indeed, he suspected that the woman had come to relish their trysts to an extent that he began to feel that he was, as the peasants back in Rodina might say, ploughing an endless field. Yes, underneath her HerEtical exterior Lucrezia Borgia was just another weak woman who loved being dominated by a man. He wondered for a moment whether this covert inclination was the reason why, unlike other HerEticals, she had never had her head shaved, why she had always kept her long, flowing blonde hair. Whatever the reason, the simple fact was that her appetite for ‘bingerle’, as she rather cringingly referred to the act of love-making, seemed insatiable.

Almost
insatiable.

Perhaps his rather outré demands were beginning to take their toll even on her ardour and her appetite for pain. Yes, now he was convinced that she was both ready and willing to commit treason to save her neck … and her arse from another whipping.

‘And what is this small endeavour of yours?’ she asked.

‘A simple one. At eight o’clock on the seventy-fifth day of
Summer – five days hence – you will open the postern gate in the south wall of Hereji-Jo Castle.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘There is no postern gate. There is only one entrance into the Castle and that is through the main gates.’

For an instant Crowley almost blurted out the truth, that it had been Bole who had conjured up the door, but he stopped himself. Why shouldn’t he take the credit for this piece of magic? His entire reputation as the foremost magician in the Demi-Monde was, after all, built on the manipulations done on his behalf by Bole. ‘Oh, believe me, there
is
a gate: I have used magic to create it. It is well hidden, which is probably why it is unknown to you. Indeed, I suggest that you take an axe with you to better clear the undergrowth which covers it.’

‘Very well; if such a gate exists, I will open it. What then?’

‘Three associates of mine will be waiting on you. You will lead them to Dr Merit Ptah’s laboratory, from which they will remove certain items which the ForthRight wishes to have in its possession. Once I have secured these items, the photographs are yours, an early Lammas Eve gift from your friend Aleister Crowley.’

Lucrezia Borgia fell silent as though taking a moment to consider Crowley’s demands. Then: ‘I know what is kept in Hereji-Jo Castle: you are asking that I deliver the secrets of the YiYi Project up to the ForthRight, you are asking that I deliver Empress Wu’s head to you on a platter. And
that
is worth more than the destruction of a few photographs.’

‘Then what
do
you want?’

‘The Coven.’

It was a dispirited Burlesque who returned to his hotel after another fruitless viewing of Hereji-Jo Castle and announced himself defeated. He’d done his best. He’d sat in those gardens until his arse was numb, searching for inspiration, and although he’d racked his mind until it hurt, he hadn’t been able to come up with a way of getting into the Castle. He was stumped.

In the end, it was Odette who finally solved the puzzle and saved the life of every man in the Demi-Monde.

When he’d pushed his way into their rooms, even before he’d managed to rid himself of his rain-sodden ulster, she’d been up and at him, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him into the bedroom. But much to his surprise, she hadn’t hurled him onto the bed as was her habit, but instead had sat him down at the little dressing table.

‘
Mon cheri, j’ai trouvé la solution de ton problem!
I ’ave the answer to your problem!’

‘I ain’t got a problem, Odette,’ protested Burlesque, ‘it’s just that I’ve bin tired lately.’

Odette frowned as she tried to understand what Burlesque was saying. ‘
Non, non
, I do not speak of your
force d’amour
. Eet ees the problem of the
forteresse
most
formidable.’

With that she pulled a notebook and pencil out of the pocket of her
jiangs
and spent ten minutes sketching, scribbling and jabbering away in her strange Franglo. Finally, with a determined nod, she presented her diagrams.

Odette’s scheme was as simple as it was ridiculous. The girl proposed that they
post
themselves into the Castle. Burlesque scratched his head wondering idly if his chats were back and how he could best tell Odette she was crackers without offending her.

As he understood it, Odette had got into the habit of wandering down to the market every day to buy cheese and fresh milk and during the course of her perambulations had noticed that the routine for the delivery to the Castle of the pieces of equipment Dr Ptah was buying to equip her laboratory followed a set and unvaried timetable. Each and every evening the crates containing the equipment were hauled up by steamer from the Beijing docks, unloaded and then stacked under an awning at the Hereji-Jo post office, where they remained until they were collected the next day by a horse-drawn wagon sent by Dr Ptah.

And the reason they used a horse and cart was simple: the track from the city was just a mud road, left deliberately unmade so that it was impassable to enemy armies wishing to use artillery and siege equipment against the Castle. At noon every day a wagon would trundle out of the Castle, through the gate – the newly demolished gate – in the wall that surrounded its gardens and rattle slowly along the dirt track until it was brought to a halt outside the post office. There the
wagon-master and his lad would hop down, unload the empty crates they had brought from the Castle, winch the full crates onto the back of the cart and then return to the Castle.