by Rod Rees
‘We might not have a steamship, Colonel, but we have an WarJunk. The ForthRight has in its possession the three WarJunks surrendered by AdmiralNoN Heii. I would propose that we commandeer one of them.’
‘And just where is this WarJunk of yours moored?’
‘It’s berthed under guard on the St Petersburg shore of the Volga, on the Boundary side of the Anichkov Bridge.’
‘Great. So, assuming we can hijack this WarJunk – and that’s a mighty big assumption – we’ll still have to run the gauntlet of the ForthRight artillery lined along the shore of the Volga.’
‘Yes.’
Su Xiaoxiao’s simple agreement shut Trixie up for a moment, which she used to formulate new objections. ‘It’s still impossible. An WarJunk is a complicated fighting machine, so I’ll need a hundred experienced hands to work the thing.’
‘We have Femmes in our ranks who trained on the WarJunks.’
Trixie wasn’t to be dissuaded. ‘It’s a ridiculous plan. Leading my fighters into Terror Incognita means I’m leading them to certain death. It’s a suicide mission.’
‘It’s suicide if we stay here in Rangoon, Trixie,’ said Wysochi quietly. ‘And presumably the Flagellum Hominum wouldn’t tell us to take the Column to Terror Incognita only for us to be destroyed when we got there.’
For several long seconds Trixie glowered at him, then shoved her chair back and stood up from the table. ‘You will excuse me, Femme Su, but I must consult with Major Wysochi.’ And with that the two of them retreated to the back of the room out of earshot.
Norma didn’t have to hear what was said to understand just how intense the debate was. There was much wagging of fingers, shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders, but finally, after five minutes a red-faced and clearly unhappy Trixie Dashwood returned to the table.
‘I have been persuaded by Major Wysochi that, though this adventure is madcap and nonsensical, it is a better option than to remain in Rangoon and be pounded to death by ForthRight artillery. As the Major says, it is better to die in pursuit of a dream than simply to die.’ She filled her glass with Solution, downed it in one swig and then turned to Gregor Mendel.
‘You’re certain that the Column must be taken to Terror Incognita?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, presumably, ABBA would not set a task that was beyond the wit of woman to complete.’
‘That is what the verses contained in the Flagellum Hominum suggest.’
More silence, then Trixie let out a long, long sigh. ‘Very well, when do you want the WarJunk stolen?’
Part Seven
Victory in the Coven and
in the ForthRight
36
Hereji-Jo Castle
The Demi-Monde: 70th Day of Summer, 1005
Pawnography is a term coined to describe the so-called erotic materials emanating from the Quartier Chaud designed to degrade Femmes and encourage violence against them. The word itself derives from the manner in which it persuades Femmes to sell (or pawn) their bodies to satisfy nonFemmes’ crazed and unnatural sexual lusts. By showing the sexual exploitation and humiliation of Femmes, pawnography seeks to stimulate and sustain the nonFemmes’ feeling of supremacy and dominance over Femmes and to incite them to rape and abuse. Perhaps the most notorious of photographic pawnographers is Julian Mandel whose ability to capture the Femme form in stridently heterosexual poses is infamous throughout the Demi-Monde. Using the recently developed 35mm Ur-Leica, he is able to take shots of his victims – and there can be no other term for those unfortunate and unwitting Femmes featured in these disgusting images – in natural settings, with a limited amount of light and with very short exposure times. This has led to the reprehensible trade in so-called ‘peep’ shots taken of subjects unaware of the photographer’s presence.
The Sad and All-Too-Long History of Pawnography: Emily Davison, Covenite Publications
Burlesque scanned Hereji-Jo Castle through the telescope loaned to him by Su Xiaoxiao and felt his spirits droop. He’d brought Rivets, Dong E and Odette on a constitutional to the gardens abutting the Castle to get the gauge of the place, and now, having seen the beast, he had to admit to having cold feet about the whole adventure. He had heard what Su Xiaoxiao had said about the place being impregnable but he hadn’t really believed her – no place, in his opinion, was truly impregnable. But now he wasn’t so sure.
What he saw both depressed him and scared him. Depressed him because he didn’t have a fucking clue as to how they’d be able to break into it and scared him because he wasn’t sure what they’d find inside if they did.
Bloody Rivets and his big gob!
Hereji-Jo Castle was a huge and menacing edifice that emerged out of the ground like a stone-fortified fist. It was a bunker of a place built to shut people out and it did this by the employment of an architecture that was uncompromisingly brutal. Everything about the castle was big, oppressive and intimidating. It was a military engine rendered out of huge blocks of scabrous black stone that even in the warmth of the Summer sunshine radiated a cold, lethal intent.
For long minutes Burlesque trained his spyglass on the massive front gates that seemed to be the only way into the Castle, and along the enormous slablike walls, a hundred feet high if they were an inch, searching for a chink – hah! – in its defences, for a place where an agile little man like Rivets might squeeze through. But search as he might, he could see no open windows, no convenient vines growing on the walls, no doors left ajar.
He turned to speak to Rivets and then stopped. The boy was entertaining himself by idly knocking the heads off burdocks with a stick, and for a moment Burlesque was reminded just how young he was. He was only a kid: a kid who carried a man’s worth of experiences on his shoulders. The poor little sod had seen more misery and hatred in his short life than anybody had a right to. It just showed what a resilient bugger he was, that he’d come through it all still sane – well, saneish, anyway. And now the boy had fallen in love, the object of his affections sitting amidst a crowd of daisies, absent-mindedly weaving them into chains which she then garlanded about his head.
Burlesque smiled to himself: if ever there was a boy entitled to experience a little l’amour it was Rivets.
Don’t be soppy.
He got a grip on himself and signalled to Odette to join him. She gave him a beaming smile, put her knitting to one side and wandered across in that wonderfully undulating way of hers. She sprawled down on the grass beside him and began to nibble at an apple.
‘So whaddya fink, Odette?’ he asked, nodding towards the castle.
Another of those secret little smiles as she pressed her body against his.
Stop it, you Frog minx you.
‘I ’ave none of your mostly experiences in the doing of – ‘ow you say – le domaine de cambriolage …’
‘Burglary?’ suggested Burlesque.
‘Oui, le burglary. Therefore I must bow in the ‘umble way to your expertises marveilleuse. I am ‘oping you already ’ave the plan most clever, n’est-ce pas?’
Burlesque shrugged. ‘Wish I ‘ad, Odette, my luv, but I ain’t. This Hereji-Jo place looks cast-ironed and double-bolted to me. Yeah, I’m floored, and that means we’re up shit creek wivout a paddle between us.’
‘Je ne sais pas où se trouve ce lieu que tu appelles “Sheet Creek”, mais je sais que nous ne sayons pas “oop it”. Dong E dit ce jardin s’appelle, “Le lieu de Contentements Tranquilles”.’ She must have seen Burlesque’s confusion. ‘Dong E ‘as said that these jardin ees named “The Place of the Quiet Contentments”.’
‘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.
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?’
