The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  ‘I know what you’ve done, girl. I want to know why.’

  She met his eyes. ‘I am of the Order of Leaves. This has been my life.’

  Kelly seethed. ‘You’ve given your life to this? To this idiocy?’

  Karina nodded. ‘It’s been my duty. All that I’ve known.’

  Kelly seized her by the wrist. His hand encircled it with surprising speed and strength, closing tight around the bone. Winter never imagined anyone could do that to her and still be breathing a second later.

  ‘Listen to me, girl,’ the old man hissed, his voice grave. ‘In the end we knew them for what they were. Murifri, the greatest of angels, came to me and said, “Hell itself is weary of Earth. The Son of Darkness cometh now to challenge his right, and seeing all prepared and provided, desires to establish himself a kingdom.” Those words will burn in me forever!’

  The light from the window faded, lost to cloud. Kelly’s face paled in the shadows of the cell. For a moment he looked almost like a ghost, haunting a different century.

  ‘Soon the visions in the glass terrified us,’ he continued. ‘We knew them then, Dee and I. These angels we had summoned were fallen. They named themselves the Ascendance but they were devils. Their fire was unholy. They sought to claim our world, rule it with flame. All that was done was lies!’

  He stared into Karina’s eyes, his gaze accusing. ‘What you have gathered is a work of darkness! Damn you, girl, Dee wanted it lost!’

  She shook her head, calmly. Now there was no trace of her startled reaction to Kelly’s disapproval. The muscles of her face had buried it completely.

  ‘No. He didn’t. He told you he’d destroyed the grimoire but he hadn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was knowledge. Dee believed that all knowledge was sacred. You know that, Sir Edward.’

  ‘Don’t presume to speak to me of Dee, you insolent child!’ spat Kelly. ‘There was nothing sacred in this matter! He burnt every volume! In Prague! I witnessed it!’

  ‘No,’ said Karina. ‘You only saw the originals burning. Dee copied everything. Every word he’d transcribed. Every rune. He had followers. Acolytes. Other alchemists. He shared it among them, across Europe, across the world. He concealed it over five continents. Nobody knew who else possessed the pages but his knowledge survived. It was preserved.’

  Kelly’s eyelids quivered. He continued to clasp Karina’s wrist. ‘It was destroyed. Dee assured me it was done.’

  ‘We are the Order of Leaves,’ said Karina. ‘It is our duty to defend the Language of Fire.’

  Winter had the impression she was reciting a vow, as if these were words she had known since childhood.

  Kelly released his grip on her wrist. He threw the book to the floor. It landed with a slap of leather on stone. Dust rose around it like smoke.

  ‘Dee’s final folly,’ he breathed, exhausted by the conversation. ‘No wonder he ended his days in poverty, telling fortunes to idiots.’

  Karina retrieved the grimoire. She held it up to Kelly’s face. It was a gesture that should have been provocative. She made it seem conciliatory.

  ‘You should know I’m going to destroy this.’

  Kelly looked between the book and Karina. ‘That’s not your duty,’ he retorted, twisting the last word into a jibe.

  ‘I know it’s not my duty. But it’s my decision.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m the last of the Order,’ said Karina, emphatically. ‘This would survive me. And the world has too many people who want it. It needs to be destroyed. I just had to know for sure what I’ve given my life to. Thank you, Sir Edward.’

  Winter heard a sound then. It came from beyond the tower, a faint, distant droning, almost like a hum of wasps. The forest was so abnormally quiet that the noise had registered immediately. Winter crossed the cell to the solitary window and peered out over the treeline.

  He could see nothing at first. The sky was empty, a colourless expanse of cloud. But the sound was growing closer, louder. Now it had a rhythmic, mechanical quality to it.

  It was the sound of rotor blades.

  25

  A helicopter was approaching, cutting through the sky from the east, its blades a grey haze.

  Winter immediately recognised the squat, snub-nosed design and elongated tail. There was no telltale red star stamped on its fuselage but it was unmistakably Soviet military. A Mil Mi-4 – known to NATO as the Hound. An ugly but nimble assault and transport craft. And this one was armed – Winter saw the brace of gun pods fixed beneath the nacelles – making its incursion into Western airspace all the more audacious.

  ‘Stay down!’ he yelled.

  The guns flashed, the twin barrels releasing a stammer of bullets. The volley studded the tower’s exterior, ripping into the stonework. Tiny chips of granite flew from the window’s frame, spitting into the room like hail.

  Karina shook away the shower of debris. She had instinctively fallen to shield Kelly. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Winter was flat against the wall, gun in hand. He tore a quick, cautious glance outside. The helicopter hung like a giant grey dragonfly, droning as it hovered. The whirl of its blades made a downdraught powerful enough to touch his face. Winter squinted into the warm rush of air. The craft’s canopy window was obscured by reflected sky but he could just glimpse the helmeted figures inside.

  ‘Russian army. Acquaintances of yours, I imagine.’

  ‘Damn them. How did they find us?’

  ‘Christ knows. But they’re here.’

  The chopper waited, its gun pods idle for the moment. And then it tilted, banking to the left, nudging even closer to Schattenturm. Its incessant blades were loud as hammers now. This was a targeting approach.

  ‘Down!’ cried Winter, hurling himself to the floor.

  There was a fresh barrage of gunfire. This time the bullets violated the room, shrieking through the aperture and striking the far walls with a flare of sparks, some stabbing into the carved runes. Others fell into the corners with a tinkling of metal. The sound was strangely musical.

  Winter lay there with his face in the dust, his gun still tight in his hand. The bullets had changed the room. This empty cell felt like a trap now, every inch of it potentially tripwired.

  He concentrated on the rumble of the rotor blades, using its volume to judge the craft’s proximity. The drone had diminished. In seconds the sound was significantly quieter, receding to the right. Moments later it was fainter still, the murmur of blades moving behind the opposite wall. The chopper was manoeuvring, circling the tower, no doubt preparing for another attack.

  Winter eyed the gun in his hand. It looked redundant now, almost ludicrous. He knew he was utterly outmatched in firepower but his mind still dialled through the tactical possibilities, each more improbable than the last: a single, ridiculously lucky shot into the cockpit, straight into the pilot’s skull; an equally blessed bullet into the fuel tank, igniting a fireball that would, in theory, put the chopper into a death-spin. Perhaps a crippling round into the rotors themselves?

  No. He might as well throw the bloody gun. See what good a lump of metal did against a fully armed Soviet military assault helicopter. He glanced across at Karina, who was still shielding Kelly with her torso. She had her blade in her hand. The thin, sharp reed glimmered in the cell’s half-light. They exchanged a look that told him they were sharing the same thought. Yes, they could race down the stairs and run into the forest. But they would be picked off in seconds.

  Winter raised himself from the floor and, absently brushing dust from his suit, positioned himself directly in front of the window. He knew he had just become a target – and a clear one at that. Every instinct he had rebelled at the thought. The sensation was queasy, almost vertiginous, as if his body was firing warning signals through his entire nervous system. But he stood there, stock-still.

  He embraced his gun with both hands, locking his fingers into a cradle, keeping the weapon steady. He aimed it ahead of him, in
to the sky, and waited for the chopper’s return.

  He wondered if this was a death wish.

  The hum of blades intensified. The sound was building from the left, implying that the helicopter had almost completed its arc around the tower. And yes, there it was, suddenly shining gunmetal-grey against the anaemic sky of Schweigenbach.

  Winter watched it approach, saw it tilt once more, the nose dipping, the guns levelling. It moved with a strange, impressive grace, an insectile predator, perfectly calibrated to kill. He could see that the craft packed other armaments beside its guns. There were four air-to-surface rockets strapped to the fuselage, bristling with lethal possibility. One of them would kill them instantly, he knew. All four would doubtless take down the tower, reducing it to so much forest rubble.

  Winter matched his gun against the craft. He imagined the pilot was smiling. Sod him, he thought, and smiled himself.

  The helicopter simply hovered there, marking time. Its blades clipped the air, suspending it above the trees, the branches quivering in the downdraught. It seemed in no rush to fire. As if sensing some unspoken stalemate, Winter hesitated around his own trigger.

  ‘Throw your weapons to the floor.’

  There was a new voice in the room, cold and resonant. Winter knew it at once.

  ‘Do it now.’

  Winter let his gun drop from his fingers. It hit the ground with a jolt of metal. Outside, the blades of the helicopter continued to thrum.

  Winter turned from the window, his hands raised in a reflex gesture of surrender. Malykh was framed in the cell’s doorway, draped in the dark folds of his leather trenchcoat. There was a pistol in his hand, aimed squarely and unequivocally at Winter’s head. Two troopers flanked him, dressed in the unmarked fatigues Winter had come to associate with this unit. They gripped Garanin machine guns, potentially targeting everyone in the room.

  Winter understood. The helicopter had been a distraction, a ruse that had enabled Malykh and his troops to enter the tower unseen and unheard. Now they controlled Schattenturm’s sole exit. It was textbook infiltration technique.

  Damn. He should have been sharper.

  Malykh stepped into the room, his boots ringing on the bare stone. He nodded to Karina, the gesture curt and perfunctory. The gun remained on Winter.

  ‘You too, Lazarova. Drop the blade.’

  Karina paused, visibly reluctant, considering a clearly limited set of options. Then she opened her hand and let the blade tumble from her palm. It struck the ground with a spindly clatter. Winter glanced across at her. There was something furious and newly vulnerable behind her eyes. He sensed that she had just torn off a part of herself.

  The blade rolled across the rutted floor, stopping just short of Malykh’s boots. The Soviet officer reached down to retrieve it, taking care to keep his gun locked on Winter. He turned the slender, porcelain-handled weapon in his hand, watching as it glinted among the shadows, catching the fractional light in the room. Its hilt was decorated with carved leaves.

  ‘This blade of yours always intrigued me,’ he began, conversationally. ‘It is unique. Clearly not standard military issue. I chose never to ask how you came to own it. I wanted you to confide in me. I waited for that.’

  Malykh traced a gloved finger along the silvered edge, as if daring it to cut him.

  ‘Such a profoundly elegant thing it is. So fine. So fierce. So much like you.’

  His forefinger found the tip of the blade and rested there. The crowning spike pushed against the soft leather of his glove, indenting it, almost piercing it.

  ‘Graceful. Remarkable.’

  Malykh folded his fist around the blade. His mouth, too, tightened, forming a determined ridge. The leather began to pucker, creasing as his fingers exerted pressure. He grunted.

  ‘And yet, in the end, only a weapon.’

  He exhaled, sharply, his mouth twisting at the edges, determined to contain a reaction.

  ‘And any weapon can be bested. Broken.’

  Malykh opened his fist. The blade was balanced on his palm. The razored edge had slit the glove, splitting the leather across the span of his hand. There was blood on the knife, bright and oily. It dripped from the Russian’s fingers.

  ‘You simply need strength. And spirit. Ideology, you might say. Always the superior weapon.’

  Once again he crushed his fist into a tight ball. This time Karina’s blade buckled, contorting like a length of wire. Malykh gave a final, triumphant grunt and tossed the ruined weapon to the floor.

  ‘We shared ideology once, you and I. Or so I imagined. Did you always intend to betray the motherland?’

  ‘Something you should realise,’ replied Karina, her words cool and measured. ‘I’ve never known a motherland.’

  Dee’s book was in her left hand. Winter’s silver lighter was in her right. She struck a flame and brought the two objects together.

  Malykh observed her, implacably calm even as the soldiers either side of him raised their guns, ready to respond. ‘You could never allow yourself to do that. We sought that book for so long, Karina. I’ve seen you kill for it. You could not let it burn.’

  Karina shook the book by its covers, exposing the pages within. The lighter glowed a hot yellow against the tattered wad of paper. She moved it closer, close enough for the thin dance of fire to tease a corner of parchment.

  ‘So kill me before I do it. Or could you never allow yourself to?’

  Malykh swung his semi-automatic, training it upon her chest. He fixed it there for a moment. And then he shifted target again, returning his aim to Winter. There was a crisp click as the pistol cocked, its hammer now primed for a shot.

  ‘I will kill your English friend.’

  ‘So do it.’

  Winter felt the gun upon him. There was a prickling dryness in his mouth. He heard the throb of the helicopter’s blades merging with the beat of the pulse in his temples. He glimpsed a white light at the very periphery of his vision. The edges of his world were becoming milky, gauzy. It was like a creeping blankness, claiming his sight. He had experienced this sensation before. He had faced death then, too.

  Winter fought the phenomenon with a rapid succession of blinks. The room snapped back into focus.

  ‘You have no desire for him to live?’ asked Malykh.

  ‘Not my concern. Do what you wish.’

  The parchment began to smoulder.

  ‘Your focus is admirable,’ stated Malykh. ‘You are an exceptional soldier.’

  Winter locked his gaze with Karina’s, searching for a private connection. He found nothing in her fixed, defiant stare. In that moment he had no doubt that she would allow him to die. Perhaps that was how men like him should go, said the small, close voice he always heard at times like this. A dispassionate act of execution. An assassin’s death. There was a neat symmetry to it, after all.

  He nodded to her. Do it. Burn the bloody thing. Cast it back to Hell.

  Her face was set. Only the fractional shift of her pupils told him she was making a decision.

  ‘I’m sorry, Christopher.’

  Winter girded himself, resolved to the bullet. Let it be fast, at least.

  Karina flung the book to the floor. It landed at Malykh’s feet with a soft smack of leather on stone. The Russian regarded it for a moment, a quiver of satisfaction around his mouth. And then he picked it up, pressing his bloodied glove to the smouldering edge. There was a final, desultory wisp of smoke. It rose into the air and was gone.

  ‘So you do have loyalty. I only wonder if it’s to the book… or the Englishman?’

  The same question had just occurred to Winter.

  Malykh thumbed through the pages, the runes passing before his eyes in a flicker of ink. Karina watched him and said nothing.

  ‘Fascinating,’ he declared, his voice detached. He closed the grimoire and placed it in the pocket of his trenchcoat. ‘It was worth the years of pursuit, then. Though I imagine you never doubted that.’

  Again she met
him with silence.

  Malykh closed the space between them. He took Karina’s jaw with his right hand, tilting it towards him, his glove leaving a smudge of blood on her chin. His other hand slid into her hair. And then he pulled her head close and took a terse, possessive kiss. Winter saw him shut his eyes as he did so.

  Malykh let their lips part. When he opened his eyes again Karina was looking back at him with undisguised contempt. He paused for a moment, observing her. ‘Everything was a deceit, then.’

  Karina nodded.

  There was a brief but telling flutter of muscle, just beneath Malykh’s clouded eye.

  ‘At least I took my pleasure from your body,’ he said. Winter felt an absurd flash of jealousy at the thought.

  Karina gave a brittle smile. ‘Yes. If only I could say the same.’

  Once again a nerve pulsed beneath Malykh’s eye.

  ‘How did you know we were here?’ Karina asked him.

  ‘The Stasi. They shared their recently acquired intelligence on this tower’s location. Your friends beneath Berlin were, I am told, exceptionally obliging. All it required was the application of a little light. Such sensitive eyes they possessed. Altogether too much time in darkness. It cannot be healthy.’

  He looked down at Sir Edward Kelly. The old man had said nothing since the Russians had entered the cell. He was huddled against the stone wall, his angular bones bunched together, as if trying to wrap himself into the shadows, disappear entirely.

  Kelly regarded Malykh in turn. And then he scrabbled in the pocket of his breeches. With a surprisingly deft flick of his fingers he sent a coin wheeling into the air. It spun with a wink of gold in the gloom.

  ‘How do you do, sir. I find myself imprisoned for counterfeiting. Apparently it’s a crime. I always approached it as art.’

  Malykh snatched the coin from the air. He scrutinised it for a moment and then flung it aside.

  Kelly’s eyes brightened mischievously. ‘I fear my talent may be underappreciated. They’re masterpieces, you know. Aren’t they, boy?’