The Demi-Monde: Winter (36 page)

‘I can manage your steam-barge for you.’ The words were out of Trixie’s mouth before she had even realised she was going to say them. Everyone in the room turned to look at her in stunned disbelief. ‘I worked for two months on a barge with my father last Summer,’ she hurriedly explained. ‘That was when he was remodelling the traffic-flow system for the Rhine. I spent those months standing alongside the best bargemen in the ForthRight. I can work your steam-barge.’

She felt Dabrowski’s eyes boring into hers. ‘Are you certain,
Miss Dashwood? Men’s lives will turn on your skill. This is no place for schoolgirl bravado.’

Trixie bristled. ‘Major Dabrowski, believe me, I hold my life precious. I would not say this if I had any doubts in my ability.’

‘It’s an ebb tide,’ observed Sergeant Wysochi. He clearly knew that the ebb tide was the fiercest and the fastest – the one that challenged bargemen’s skills to the utmost.

Trixie nodded. ‘It is also the tide which will get us to Gdańsk docks quickest.’ She looked from Major Dabrowski to Sergeant Wysochi and back again. ‘So … are we going to take these barges or just stand here all night discussing it?’

There are six rivers in the Demi-Monde®. The five Spoke Rivers which rise in the central Hub lake – Mare Incognitum – flow Boundarywise and define the borders of the Sectors. These Spoke Rivers – the Thames, the Rhine, the Volga, the Yangtze and the Nile – each have an average current speed of 1 mph, though in the rainy season this can increase substantially. An ebb tide runs for 4 hours each night, when river currents reach a speed of 10 mph. The sixth river (the Wheel) is a Hub river which connects all five of the Spoke Rivers and defines the boundary of Terror Incognita.

– The Demi-Monde® Product Description Manual: 14 June 2013

Fate – ABBA – had granted Comrade Commissar Dashwood a reprieve.

The confusion and panic that enveloped the Manor following the escape of the Daemon had been such that Beria seemed to have quite forgotten the order to arrest him. All the fat man had been intent on doing was bustling the Leader out of the house and moving him ‘somewhere safer’ and he had done it so quickly that the Baron hadn’t had an opportunity to get a decent shot at him. Within fifteen minutes of the explosions rocking the house none of the members of the PolitBuro
remained. Dashwood – a little bewildered by the turn of events – had found himself alone in the Manor. No one was worried about the safety of a lowly Commissar of Transport.

But he knew his reprieve would be a temporary one, that once the furore had died down he would be purged. Sooner or later they would come for him. And by his estimation it would be sooner: Beria would probably arrest him at dawn tomorrow, which meant that he had only the rest of the night to prepare.

Yes … fate had given him a chance to fight Heydrich. For too long he had been docile. Now was the time to show that there were those in the ForthRight who were ready to fight the evil that was Heydrich’s Party. Now was the time to rally the Royalists who had gone underground and lead them in defence of freedom.

As the last SS steamer puffed its way through the Manor’s broken gates, Dashwood strode up the staircase to his room where he packed the field uniform he had worn as a colonel in the Royal Guards into a small knapsack. To this he added his Sam Browne belt and his Mauser revolver. He was ready.

There was a knock on the door and a moment later his butler, Crockett, appeared in the room. But rather than wearing his usual outfit of morning suit and spats, the butler now presented in a rather more functional get-up comprising a tweed suit and a pair of heavy-duty hiking boots. It was the pistol he had thrust in his jacket pocket that Dashwood found most incongruous. He had never felt it necessary for his servants to be armed.

‘I have taken the liberty of packing a few mementoes, Sir.’ Crockett indicated the suitcase he was carrying. ‘The miniatures of your wife and of Miss Trixiebell and such like.’

‘Why?’

‘I believe that after tonight it will be difficult for us to return to the Manor.’

‘Us, Crockett? I don’t need a servant to accompany me: I’m just going away for a couple of days on business.’

‘My understanding is that this business will necessitate your going into hiding, Sir, whilst you organise the Royalist resistance to the Party.’

‘How?’

‘How did I know, Sir? Because a good butler knows everything about his master: it is impossible to anticipate his requirements otherwise. I have also packed some sandwiches and a bottle of Solution; I have an inkling that it will be a long night. And, if I might be so bold, Sir, I would recommend the Webley rather than the Mauser; it is in my opinion a much more effective firearm.’

‘Crockett, if we’re captured they’ll execute you.’

‘Then I will have to rely on your good offices, Sir, to ensure that we are not captured.’

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

‘My family have served the Dashwoods for seven generations, Sir: it is unthinkable that a Crockett would not be on hand to assist you in this, your greatest adventure. It is time, Sir, to rid the Demi-Monde of these bastard UnFunDaMentalists.’

‘If you’re determined.’

‘I am, Sir. Shall I have Cassidy bring the steamer to the front of the house?’

‘Cassidy? Is he coming too?’

A frown from Crockett. ‘Of course. You are a Baron, after all, Sir, and a man of your rank cannot be expected to walk to war. Cassidy the gardener will accompany us as well: he is especially disgruntled regarding the mess the UnFunnies made of his front garden. Vandalism, he calls it. I have given him command of the rest of the male staff: they just await your word and then they will rendezvous with us at your convenience. I dissuaded
the female staff from accompanying us, but only, I might add, with the greatest difficulty. Cook was especially obstreperous.’

‘But there might be a Checkya crypto amongst the staff.’ Dashwood had long suspected that Beria had a spy in his household.

‘There was, Sir, but I took the liberty of burying Chesterton under the rose-bed. He will, in my opinion, contribute more to the Dashwood estate in the capacity of fertiliser than he ever did as a footman.’

Dashwood nodded solemnly; it was obviously useless to argue. ‘Very well, Crockett, you’d better tell Cassidy to get the steamer fired up.’

As he moved to the door, Dashwood wondered if Trixie was safe. He prayed that she was.

Grim-faced, Trixie Dashwood marched to war through the dock-lands of Warsaw.

She marched to avenge her father, to punish the bastards who had killed him. By the Spirits, she would make them suffer. She would have her revenge. She would build her father a monument out of SS dead. And one day she would kill Heydrich.

That she swore.

‘To the left, Major,’ she heard Wysochi call out, directing their little army.

She would stay close to Wysochi. He was a killer and she wanted to learn how to kill. She wanted to be the best killer of SS there had ever been. Instinctively she dropped her hand onto the butt of her Mauser pistol and checked her watch as they passed under one of the few gas lights still functioning in the Ghetto. She was shocked to see that it was only a couple of hours before dawn. ‘How far are we from the river?’ she asked Wysochi.

‘Just a couple of hundred yards.’ He obviously understood her concern. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got enough time. Once we get there we’ll find a boatman and bribe him to take us across to Berlin.’

‘There’ll be boatmen about at this time of night?’ Trixie asked, dubious that anyone would be mad enough to still be working at four o’clock in the morning, especially on a bitterly cold night like this.

‘Lots of them,’ the Sergeant confirmed. ‘Quite a few Comrades like to frequent some of the more accommodating establishments found in the Ghetto’s red-light district. Polish women are famous for how friendly they are towards visitors from the ForthRight.’

A few hours ago Trixie would have been shocked to her core by the thought that citizens of the ForthRight would despoil themselves by consorting with Polish whores. Not now. Now she knew the ForthRight for the rotten, stinking, hypocritical place it was. Now she knew that the Party leaders had feet of clay.

Bastards.

Wysochi saw the look on her face and misinterpreted it as one of disbelief. He laughed. ‘You will find, Miss Trixie, that a great many Party members like to while away a few hours sampling the fleshy delights of the Ghetto. They seem to prefer Polish women to the more frosty UnFunny charms of ForthRightist ladies.’

Trixie didn’t have the energy to rise to the insult. She didn’t care what Wysochi and these other Polish pigs thought of her: all that mattered was that they helped her kill SS.

A burst of cold wind circled her. Trixie pulled up the hood of her cloak and pushed herself forward through the snow. Although the streets leading to the Warsaw docks were made almost invisible by the blizzard, Trixie knew they were getting
closer to the river. The smell that was wafting towards them from the Rhine was simply horrendous.

‘That’s the Gas House, they clean all the filters at night,’ Wysochi explained when he saw her wrinkle her nose. ‘The Warsaw Sector produces all the gas used in the Demi-Monde. Not terribly glamorous and not terribly lucrative but without us Poles everybody in the ForthRight would be walking around in the dark.’

It might be worth it, thought Trixie, wishing she’d brought her pomander with her: the smell was so bad it made her stomach heave.

Wysochi was as good as his word: it took him only five minutes to find a boatman willing to take the ‘gentlemen revellers’ across the Rhine to Berlin. The eighteen of them boarded the Whitehall Gig and after a whispered plea from the boatman for them to ‘keep their fucking noise down’ they were off. Despite the blinding snow, the boatman seemed to have an unerring sense of where he was – probably, decided Trixie, he just knew to keep the smell of the Gas House at his back – and was able to guide his four oarsmen to a quay a few hundred yards upriver from the Oberbaum Bridge. Even as the boatman struggled to moor the boat against the surging ebb tide, Major Dabrowski jumped ashore and led his company cautiously up the snow-slick steps leading to the dockside.

The attack had begun.

Unfortunately the intelligence provided by Trixie’s father was wrong. His file had advised Dabrowski that the munitions would be carried on two barges: a Crowley-class steam-propelled barge towing a Beria-class unpowered drifter barge. What they saw when they had pushed their way through the snowstorm to the quayside were three barges; there was a second drifter
barge on tow. Trixie’s heart sank: whilst she was confident – well, fairly confident – of being able to manage two barges in an ebb tide, three was a different proposition altogether. Only the most proficient of Rhine watermen were capable of running a trio of barges and then only if the ruddermen managing the drifters were able men who knew their business.

The Rhine was too unforgiving a river for beginners like Trixie.

‘It’s a trio, Major,’ Trixie whispered. ‘I don’t know if I can handle a trio.’

Dabrowski shot her a look. ‘What can we do? We’ve come too far to go back.’

‘Decouple the third barge. Cut it loose.’

‘But the rifles …’

Fear and rising panic made Trixie’s reply sharper than she intended. ‘Damn it all, Major, do as I tell you or we might lose the whole cargo.’

Dabrowski didn’t have time to answer. Sergeant Wysochi and two other men, knives in hand, were already up and over the side of the steam-barge, hunting for sentries. Trixie heard the sound of a scuffle, a strangled scream and then a splash as, presumably, a body was heaved overboard. A few seconds later the Sergeant reappeared, a savage grin decorating his face. The man was an animal, an animal who was good at killing SS. ‘Secure, Major,’ he said
sotto voce.

‘Right, Gorski,’ Dabrowski snarled at the young Second Lieutenant, ‘get your men on board, half on each of the first two barges arranged along the port side. I want them ready to repel boarders. Things are going to get hot.’ He turned to Wysochi. ‘Sergeant, secure Miss Dashwood in the wheelhouse and then get two men into the boiler room and fire it up.’

‘It’s already fired up,’ commented Wysochi, pointing towards
the wisps of smoke coming from the funnel. Dabrowski blushed, embarrassed by his ignorance.

‘Shall I cast off, Major?’ Gorski asked, barely able to keep the tremble of excitement out of his voice.

Trixie stiffened. The most important lesson she had learnt during her time on the Rhine was that on board a steam-barge there could be only one master. More than one person giving orders was a recipe for disaster.

‘I give orders on this barge, Major,’ she snapped. ‘Whilst on board you will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. Do you understand?’

Dabrowski looked as though he had been slapped. ‘How dare …’

‘I dare because I am responsible for the management of these barges.’

‘I will not take orders from a woman.’

For Trixie it was an epiphany. That sneering comment from Dabrowski brought home to her that her future – her destiny – was now wholly her responsibility. Her fate was in her hands. The ForthRight had destroyed her old life so now she wasn’t obliged to follow its creeds and its social etiquette. To survive in this new, hostile world she would have to be her own woman: strong and independent. Her father had always said that intellectually she was the match of any man, now she had to prove that she had a will to match any man’s.

‘If my being a woman upsets you then I suggest that you stay ashore or find another to work these barges.’

The ultimatum had its effect: Dabrowski took a deep, deep breath and then gave a curt nod. ‘So be it. But believe me, Miss Dashwood, I will not forget this slight.’

Trixie brushed off his threat with a negligent wave of her hand. ‘It’s best if we let the barges drift out into midstream
before we get under way, that way we’ll have more room to manoeuvre. Major, have your men free the mooring ropes and cast off the three barges, and you, Lieutenant, find an axe and have somebody cut the hawser tethering us to the second drifter.’ Orders given, she followed Dabrowski on board the steam-barge. Now there was no going back.