Blood Red City (5 page)

There were advantages, if you could call them that. Hoffman knew from his own experiences that an Ubermensch could survive all but the most destructive of wounds. If he cut himself, he did not bleed, but the thin orange filaments that now grew inside him curled out and repaired the damage. At first, the sight of them had made him feel sick. But he had managed to come to terms with the fact that they were a part of what he had become.

Another change was that he barely needed to sleep. But even so, he was tired. He was tired of the deception, tired of the unforgiving stone walls of Wewelsburg Castle. Tired of not knowing whether his reports made a difference, or were even received. Of not knowing how Alina was – even if she was still alive. Tired of everything.

He wanted to go home.

*   *   *

If Jed had sent the film to be developed at the paper he would have had prints back the next day. But he didn't want Felix to know he had another set of photos. Not until Jed himself had seen them. Not after the way Felix had practically confiscated the camera from him and dismissed the whole ‘battle'.

There was a little place Jed knew off Seventh Street. The main shop was a dispensing chemist, but they developed photos too, sending them away to Kodak. Jed could have done that himself, but he was naturally wary. He didn't really believe that Felix was keeping tabs on him, but Jed was taking no chances. He wasn't sure what he had on the film but he was sure he wanted to keep it to himself for the moment.

The chemist was short and balding, with a sheen of perspiration across his forehead as he checked a ledger for Jed's name.

‘Haines, Haines, Haines,' he murmured as he ran a sweaty finger down the page. ‘Ah yes … Yes.'

‘There a problem?' Jed asked. There was something in the man's tone that made him suddenly uneasy. ‘The film is back, isn't it? It's been over a week.'

‘Oh, it's back. Yes…'

‘But?' Jed prompted.

Behind him the bell hanging over the door jangled as another customer came into the shop. The chemist frowned, and Jed glanced back. A man in a dark suit and blue tie was examining a display of shaving brushes.

The man spoke without looking at them. ‘No hurry. I'm just looking.'

The chemist turned back to Jed. ‘I'll be right back.' He disappeared into the back room. He returned a few moments later with an envelope stamped with the Kodak logo. He handed it to Jed. ‘There's no charge.'

‘What?'

‘A fault, they said. With the film.'

Jed pulled open the flap of the envelope and tipped out the glossy photographic prints inside. They were all completely black, except for the narrow white border.

‘It happens, apparently.' The chemist smiled apologetically.

‘So I see,' Jed muttered. He stuffed the prints back into the envelope. On the way out, he brushed against the man now approaching the counter and muttered an apology.

The man in the suit smiled thinly, looking at Jed through watery, pale blue eyes. ‘No problem.'

No problem, Jed thought as he stood outside, breathing in the cold March air. There certainly was a problem. But was it really with the film, or was something more sinister going on? You're just getting paranoid, he told himself. Pictures taken in the middle of the night without a flash. Of course they were dark. Maybe he'd make out some detail if he examined them closely.

He slid the envelope into his coat pocket and set off back towards the office.

Inside the shop, the chemist handed another envelope to the man in the suit. It was identical to the envelope he had given Jed. Except that the photos and negatives inside were not blank. The man in the suit glanced through them, checking everything was in order.

‘You looked at these?'

The chemist shook his head quickly. ‘No, no, of course not.'

‘Good.'

The man in the suit handed over several dollar bills. Enough to make the chemist raise his eyebrows.

‘Keep the change,' the man in the suit told him. Whoever had already seen the pictures when they were developed would be persuaded to forget about them in a similar way. It was a shame, the man thought, that they hadn't known about them sooner – they could have intercepted the film on the way to the lab.

He pushed the prints back into the envelope. As he closed it, he glanced at the name written in block capitals on the flap: ‘JED HAINES'.

 

CHAPTER 4

It was the speed at which things happened, or rather didn't, that frustrated Sarah the most. The war itself went in fits and starts – nothing for what seemed like an age, then a flurry of action and activity and news. It was the same in the battle against the Vril.

After the information from Crowley and Jane, there was a few days of excitement as they tried to interpret what they had discovered. But soon the interest dwindled and the theorising and investigation became a chore. Not that Sarah could do much investigating. She didn't have an aptitude for code-breaking or seeing patterns like Wiles. She didn't have the patience for research of Elizabeth Archer or the interest in the occult of Miss Manners. Guy seemed used to the lulls between the action, and Leo Davenport never seemed at a loss for things to do.

Sarah felt she was rapidly being reduced to Brinkman's driver. That wasn't what she'd signed up for, and she wasted no opportunity to tell him so as she ferried him from meeting to conference and back to the Station Z offices.

So when he called her into his office, she suspected it was to give her yet another pep talk and explain the importance of what they were doing.

‘I know you're frustrated that you can't get more involved,' Brinkman said.

‘And that everything takes so long.'

Brinkman held up his hand. ‘I know. In many ways it's the nature of the job. Which is why I'm sending you to Cheshire.'

Sarah stood up, suddenly angry. ‘You're having me transferred? Just to keep me out of trouble? How dare you!'

Brinkman suppressed a smile. ‘Sit down. Cheshire is just where you start. I'm not having you transferred. I'm having you
trained
.'

Sarah sat down, still wary. ‘Trained? What do you mean, trained?'

‘As a Special Operations Executive agent. They have a, well, a sort of school for agents. I'm putting you through it. If you're going to get involved properly then I want to make damned sure you've got the skills you need to stay alive.'

‘What sort of skills? I can fly planes and shoot, but you can't train someone for the work we do.'

‘That's largely true. But there's a lot you can learn that will be useful. Now, while there's something of a lull in things as you've been at pains to point out to me whenever you can, seems like as good a time as any. You start with parachuting and then I believe it's sabotage techniques. Just don't practise them in the office. You report to SOE on Monday.'

*   *   *

The first thing that was made clear to Sarah when she reported on the Monday was that no one used their real names. Even the SOE instructors, Sarah suspected, were not who they said they were. She was ‘Sparrow Hawk', which she thought was actually quite appropriate. There didn't seem to be any system to the names: a shy mousy brunette girl was ‘Boxer' and a middle-aged man with thinning hair who seemed to be constantly sweating was ‘Sardine'.

What surprised Sarah most was the variety of training. She had started at RAF Ringway in Cheshire, parachute training. They moved her on quickly from that when she told them she knew what she was doing, and had parachuted into Germany.

‘Well, not really,' she confessed to the instructor. ‘Back in 1934 I was working in a flying circus and we did shows all across Europe. My plane crashed, engine failure. I had to bail out. That was in Hamburg.'

The instructor, whose name like so many of the instructors was apparently ‘Smith', nodded. ‘That's good. You'll have to be convincing where you're going.'

Whether he thought she was going into occupied territory or simply meant the rest of the training, she wasn't sure. It took her several minutes to persuade him she wasn't making it up.

Sabotage training at Brickenbury in Hertfordshire was exhausting and Sarah wasn't sure how useful it might be. She was good at the practical side of things, but the theory she found tough going. It was one thing to set explosives and rig them to go off, quite another to read through pages of notes about which devices to use when, and what different types of explosives, fuses, and detonators were called. But there was a perverse satisfaction in twisting the handle of a detonator, or waiting for a fuse to do the job, and watching a small building or the shell of a vehicle explode into flames and smoke.

She was more convinced by the Commando combat course – which involved a train journey to Scotland that was almost as much of a test of endurance as the outdoor survival training that was included when she got there. A group of grizzled, experienced men who were obviously itching to get back to some real action taught Sarah and her anonymous colleagues all they needed to know about finding food, locating water, creating a shelter, and how to make a smokeless fire. She also learned the basics of a form of unarmed silent killing which the instructors called ‘Defendu'.

*   *   *

Gradually, over the days and weeks, Hoffman was able to suppress the images – to keep them at the back of his mind rather than overprinted on his every thought. He felt some affinity with the Watchers, though he could never tell anyone that, of course. Kruger, the scientist in charge of them, probably put it down to macabre curiosity that Hoffman spent so much time here with them, watching them sleep.

The girl, Number Seventeen, in particular intrigued him. She had connected to an Ubermensch without the need for a bracelet. The link had been weak and indistinct, but a link nonetheless.

Looking down at her, apparently sleeping peacefully, Hoffman wondered who she was. Most of them were volunteers, so she had probably been plucked from the League of German Girls – the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Had she volunteered for the tests that revealed her innate psychic ability, he wondered?

He heard the noise as he turned to go. A scratching, scraping sound, so quiet he almost missed it. Hoffman walked slowly round the bed, trying to trace where it came from.

Her hand was scratching at the sheet, describing a shape on the cotton.

Hoffman wanted to go home. But for the moment he must continue to be the person he had become, whatever the consequences. Drop his guard for a second, and he would be dead, no matter how resilient his body had become. So he strode over to where a tired nurse sat making notes at a small desk in the corner of the room.

‘Get a pencil and paper quickly,' he ordered. ‘I think Number Seventeen is drawing.'

*   *   *

The cat didn't need much sleep and it rarely had to rest. Even so, it was a long way to the city. It could have got there quicker by jumping into the back of a truck that stopped for fuel at a gas station on the highway. But the cat didn't want to be noticed. It kept to the shadows, off to the side of the road.

When it was hungry, which was not often, it ate, creeping up on small rodents – even unwary birds – and pouncing. With its senses and speed and viciousness all sharpened by the Vril that controlled it, the cat rarely lost its prey.

It didn't get impatient, it was just following instructions. But even so, there was a hint of satisfaction somewhere in what remained of its feline brain as it padded to the top of an incline and saw the city in the distance ahead. The tops of the taller buildings appeared first, and then gradually the whole vast expanse of Los Angeles was laid out before it.

*   *   *

They propped her up in the bed and she stared straight ahead, eyes unfocused. The pencil in her hand swept over the paper, sketching out a horizon. Then the detail – the buildings, streets, a car approaching along the road leading down the incline.

One last detail – the same on every sheet – and the drawing was done.

*   *   *

The cat watched the car approaching. Not wanting to be noticed, it moved silently and swiftly to the side of the road.

*   *   *

Kruger pulled away the drawing as soon as it was finished and handed it to the nurse. She numbered it and added it to a pile at the foot of the next bed.

Hoffman watched as Number Seventeen started on a fresh picture. Grass and trees, seen from a low angle.

‘They are moving off the road,' Kruger said. ‘Whoever they are.'

‘Whatever they are,' Hoffman said. ‘See how low the point of view is.'

‘An animal?' Kruger wondered. ‘A dog perhaps? And this image over the picture, always the same shape…'

*   *   *

The cat watched the car as it drew level. It caught a glimpse of the driver – a young man with curly dark hair.

The cat turned to watch the car speed away, hissing with irritation that its journey had been interrupted, even though only for a few moments. Mouth wide, teeth bared, saliva spotting the nearest grass.

*   *   *

The girl turned, staring directly at Hoffman. Her mouth opened wide in a sudden hiss of anger – teeth bared, saliva spotting his face.

He stepped back, surprised, wiping the back of his hand across his cheek.

‘I think it's a cat,' he said.

*   *   *

The cat made its way back to the side of the road. Once it finally reached the city, then the search would begin in earnest. It knew roughly where to start, but it would still take days, perhaps weeks or even months, to find what it was looking for.

There was an image constant and clear in its mind. The artefact it needed to locate. It could feel it, the slight trembling in the air that drew the cat onwards, growing almost imperceptibly stronger as the cat headed in the right direction, as it drew closer to its goal.