The Great Game

by Lavie Tidhar

  He worried about his library but there was nothing he could do. He came on two more of them there and killed the first one by breaking his neck, twisting it with a gentle nostalgia, then dropped the corpse to the floor, and the second one turned, and with the same motion Smith flipped the knife and sent it flying.

  He went to retrieve it, pulling it out of the man's chest. The man wasn't quite dead yet. His lips were moving. "Zu sein," the man said, the softest breath of air. To be. Smith strained to hear more but there was nothing left in the man, no words or air.

  Smith straightened. He couldn't take them all. He was against the wall when he heard a barked question – "In der Bibliothek?"

  Two more bullets, a man dropped at the open door. Shouts behind now, no more pretence at secrecy or stealth. Smith said, "Warten sie!"

  Wait.

  "Mr Smith."

  The voice came from beyond the door, a voice in shadows.

  "Ja."

  "You come with us, now, Mr Smith. No more play."

  The voice spoke good English, but accented. It was young, like the others. A fully trained extraction team, but too young, and they did things differently these days.

  "Don't shoot," Smith said.

  The voice chuckled. "You are late for an appointment," it said, "arranged a long time ago."

  Smith smiled. "Take them," he said, loudly.

  There was the sudden sound of gunfire outside. Heavy gunfire. Smith ran, jumped – dived out of the broken window. The whistle of something flying through the air, entering the room he had just vacated. He rolled and covered his head and there was a booming thunder and he felt fragments of wood and stone hit his back and his legs and the night became bright, momentarily.

  When it was over he raised his head, looked–

  The old lady from M.'s, the lace and china shop, was standing with her hair on edge, a manic grin spread across her face. She was holding the controls of a giant, mounted Gatling gun, a small steam engine belching beside it. "Take one for the Kaiser!" she screamed, and a torrent of bullets exploded out of the machine like angry bees, tracer bullets lighting up the night sky, as M. screamed soundlessly and fired, mowing the black-clothed attackers as though they were unruly grass.

  Spies, Smith thought, trying to make himself as small as possible. They'll take any excuse to let their hair down.

  The firing stopped and then someone was beside him, grabbing him. He turned and saw Verloc from the bookshop, grinning at him – the first time, perhaps, he had ever seen him look happy.

  "Come on!" Verloc said. He pulled Smith, who stood up and followed him. The two men ran across the cabbage patch, over what was left of the fence (which wasn't much) and into the field beyond.

  Smith could hear M. screaming again, then a second round of shooting. His poor house. No. 6 would never be the same again, after this. He should have taken care of this business on his own.

  Well, too late now.

  Turning, he saw Colonel Creighton, the baroness by his side, going through the garden and into the house, the colonel armed with a curved khukuri knife, the baroness, less ostentatiously, with a couple of small-calibre, elegant hand guns, one in each hand. He raised his head and saw, floating above the house, a long, graceful black shape: an airship.

  "Don't let it get away," Smith said. Beside him, Verloc grinned. "Shall we?" he said.

  "Let's," Smith said.

  Verloc went first, and Smith followed. Back towards the house. M. covered them, but there weren't many of the attackers moving around, any more. "I need at least one of them alive," Smith said.

  "Let's see what we can find," Verloc called, over his shoulder. They reached the wall of the house and Verloc, with a litheness that belied his age, took hold of the drain pipe and began to climb. Smith, less enthusiastically, followed.

  It was not a tall house and they reached the roof easily enough. The airship had been moored to it but the remaining figures on the roof were busy climbing up it and clearly they had changed their minds about their chances and were keen on getting away. Smith knew M. would shoot the balloon but he feared they had used hydrogen, and he didn't want yet another explosion.

  "Halt!" he said. Verloc had twin guns pointed at the escaping men – some sort of light-alloy devices he didn't have a moment before – he must have picked them up off the fallen soldiers. Smith himself had one of the guns.

  "Schnell! Schnell!" Verloc fired. He couldn't help himself, Smith thought. It couldn't have been easy, all those years, without even a burglar to attempt Verloc's bookshop.

  One, two, three men fell, screaming, clutching wounded legs. Verloc liked going for the knees. These soldiers, at least, were unlikely to walk again.

  Then he saw him.

  The man was young and moved with a grace that Smith found himself, suddenly and unexpectedly, incredibly jealous of. He had come from the other side of the wall, out of shadow. Smith had almost missed him. Then the man lifted his hand and something silver flashed, for just a moment, and, beside Smith, Verloc grunted in pain and dropped, quietly, to the floor.

  "Verloc!"

  "Don't worry… about me," Verloc said. His hand was on his belly, a blade protruding from between his fingers. Blood was seeping through, falling onto the wall.

  Smith was already moving, towards the young man, his vision clear, his mind as cool as water. He saw the flash of a new blade and side-stepped it and unhurriedly entered into the young man's range and head-butted him, hearing the bones of the nose breaking. His fingers found the young man's neck and pressed, the thumbs digging. He applied pressure – just enough. They were attempting to fire at him from above, the airship cut loose and rising higher, but M. had him covered, firing low, and Smith grabbed the unconscious man and dragged him to where Verloc lay still. He knelt to check him but Verloc was no longer breathing, and so Smith dragged the young man by the arm to the edge of the roof and fell over it, dragging the younger man down with him.

  He hit the ground, rolled, and the younger man followed. Smith dragged him away when there was a long, high whistling tone and he saw, turning on his back, a silver metal object flying in a high arc, as though in slow motion, from M.'s position towards the rising airship–

  With the colonel and the baroness running out of the house, as fast as they could–

  He heard M. shout, gleefully, wheezing with the effort, "Take one for the–"

  The object hit the dark moving spot that was the airship–

  Smith closed his eyes shut, tight. But even then he could see the airship, as bright as day, its image burning on his retinas as a bright ball of flame erupted in the sky above, turning the night to day and the airship into a heap of disintegrating wood and cloth and burning parts and people.

  FIVE

  "A nice cup of tea?"

  They had taken over Verloc's bookshop. Verloc himself was laid out in the main room, amidst the books. Smith had never figured out if Verloc had actually liked books. He had once been married, had a family, though Smith didn't know what had happened to them. Verloc was a bomb-maker by trade. Now he lay amidst the dusty penny dreadfuls and the three-volume novels and the serials from London, and the books from the continent, and it was quiet in the shop.

  They had carried the unconscious captive from the airship to Verloc's back room and propped him in a chair. Verloc had a samovar in the shop and M. had taken to lighting the coals and heating up the water and sniffed disapproval at the state of the milk, but pronounced it at last drinkable.

  Smith had known M. for many years but she had never changed. She had the appearance of a harmless old lady, and as she grew older she simply became more herself. She had had a name but no one could remember what it was. Her work had been legendary. There were few places a little old lady couldn't penetrate.

  Now she bustled to and fro, making the tea, using the chipped old white china mugs Verloc had kept in the shop. She gave them a good rinse first. The prisoner meanwhile was coming to in the chair. He did not look happy.


  "Was ist Ihre Mission?" Smith said. The prisoner looked at him without expression and then said, with a note of disgust, "I speak English."

  "As you should," Colonel Creighton said, stiffly. "Now, what were you after, boy?"

  The prisoner merely nodded in Smith's direction. "Him," he said.

  Smith said, "Why?"

  The prisoner said, "You know perfectly well why, Herr Smith."

  Colonel Creighton looked sideways at Smith. "Do you?" he said.

  "No."

  "Then you shall have to remain unsatisfied," the prisoner said. The colonel raised his hand to hit him, but Smith stopped him with a gesture. "Was it to do with Bangkok?" he said, softly.

  At that the prisoner's face twisted. "Der Erntemaschine!" he said. Then he shook his head and a grimace of pain crossed his face. "Nein," he said. "Nein."

  "Smith? What is he doing?"

  The prisoner was convulsing in the chair. Smith hurried to his side, tilted his head back. Foam was coming out of the man's mouth. Smith touched two fingers to the man's neck, felt for a pulse. "He's dead," he said, after a moment.

  The colonel swore. Smith stared at the corpse. A false tooth, carrying poison, he thought. Standard issue – he should have remembered.

  Old. Getting old, and sloppy, and forgetting things.

  Forgetting things could get you killed.

  "What," M. said, materialising with two mugs, handing one to each blithely, "is a damned Erntemaschine?"

  "Ernte," Smith said, "means harvest."

  "So Erntemaschine–"

  "A machine for harvesting. A…" He hesitated. "A harvester," he said, at last.

  He knew that, behind him, M. and the colonel were exchanging worried glances.

  "That's what they used to call you," the colonel said at last, softly. The words seemed to freeze and hang in the air.

  But Smith shook his head. "The word for a manual harvester is different, in German," he said. "What did he mean, a machine?"

  M. said, gently, "Drink your tea, dear."

  Smith sipped at it. "It's good," he said, by way of thanks. Truth was, he could barely taste it. He felt raw, hurt. The room swam. The colonel caught hold of him. "Easy, there, old boy," he murmured.

  They used to call him the Harvester.

  So now someone else was laying claim to the title. Someone else was harvesting people, the way a farmer harvested corn, or wheat.

  "I'm going to London," he said, at last. "Help me dispose of the bodies?"

  It was hard, backbreaking work. The village rallied round, even those who hadn't been to the fight. By dawn there had been nothing left of the airship or its crew, but a new mound of earth, like an ancient tor, stood by the ruined house.

  "Too bad about your cabbages," the baroness said. She had been wounded in hand-to-hand combat inside the house, and now wore her arm in a sling. Her eyes shone. "I miss the old days, sometimes," she said. "Then something like this happens and I think maybe retirement's not so bad."

  Smith nodded. He had tried to rescue some of the books, but most were beyond help. Torn, burned pages floated like dark butterflies in the air. "We never truly retire, though," he said. "Do we?"

  "No," she said. "I guess we don't." Then, coming closer, putting her hand on his shoulder, gently: "I'm sorry about Alice."

  He shrugged. "It's the life," he said, "each of us chose."

  "Not all of us had the choice," the baroness said.

  The worst part had been seeing the bee keeper again. He showed up just as Smith was preparing to leave. Day had come and the sky was clear and bright. Smith wore a suit that had seen better days. He needed to go into the town, to catch the train.

  "I am so sorry," Smith said. The old man gazed at him. Once he had been the greatest of them all. Even now he was formidable. He was not that old, but he had suffered much, and had retired shortly after the Bookman affair. Rumours spoke of a lost love, a brotherly conflict, of captivity and strange experiments that had made his mind different, alien to the everyday. They were just that, rumours. No one but the bee keeper knew what the truth was, or what kept him in the village.

  The bee keeper merely nodded. "It is the life we choose," he said. "Mycroft always knew what he was doing."

  "Will you… pursue an investigation?" Smith asked. The bee keeper shook his head. "There is no art to it," he said, with a slight smile. "I already know."

  "Then tell me."

  The bee keeper shook his head again. "It will not help," he said. "Yet you are suited to this task, in a way I am not. It requires not a singularly great deductive mind, such as mine, but a tenacious sort of controlled violence. What you are after is not a mystery, but the conclusion of one. A great game we had all been playing, and which is now coming to an end… or to a new beginning."

  "I don't understand."

  "Look at the stars," the bee keeper said, "for answers." And with that last cryptic, unhelpful comment, he was gone.

  Smith shook his head. This was Mycroft all over again. Then he decided to leave it, and climbed into the hansom cab.

  "Market Blandings, please, Hume," he told the driver, who nodded without speaking and hurried the horses into action.

  Smith settled back inside the cab. He closed his eyes. The horses moved sedately, the motion soothing. In moments he was asleep.

  SIX

  Hume dropped him off outside the Blue Lizard on Market Blandings' sleepy high street. The hansom cab rode off and Smith, still tired and aching, decided to go into the pub to refresh himself before catching the train.

  Whereas the Emsworth Arms, down the road, was a spacious, quiet place, the Blue Lizard, even this early, was noisy, and it smelled. It was a small, dank place set away from the river, and Smith had difficulty getting to the bar to order an ale and breakfast.

  It felt strange to be out of the village. He knew the Bureau kept rural agents around the village – making sure the inmates remained where they should. Confirmation of that came quickly. As he was tucking into his fried eggs a small, slim figure slid into the seat across from him. Smith looked up, and his face twisted into an expression of dislike that made the other man grin.

  "Charles," Smith said.

  "Peace," the other said, and laughed.

  "I thought they hanged you," Smith said.

  Charles Peace shrugged. "I'm a useful feller, ain't I," he said, modestly.

  "Useful how?" Smith said.

  "Keeping my eyes open, don't I," Peace said. "Sniffing about, by your leave, Smith. Ferreting things."

  He looked like a ferret, Smith thought. But he was nothing but a rat.

  "What do you want?" he said.

  Peace tsked. "No way to talk to an old friend," he said mournfully. "You know you shouldn't be out of the village, Smith."

  "I'm back on active."

  "Really." Peace snorted. He was a violinist, a burglar, and a murderer. Which is a different thing entirely, Smith preferred to think, to a killer.

  Murderers didn't have standards, for one.

  "Really," Smith said.

  "I did not get the memo."

  "I don't doubt that."

  Charles Peace looked sharply up. "What does that mean, me old mucker?" he said, almost spitting out the words.

  Smith ignored him. The Blue Lizard was busy with rail workers, farmers in for the market, and such visitors to the castle low enough on the social pecking order not to have been extended an invitation to stay at the castle grounds. It was dark inside and the air turned blue with cigar and pipe smoke. Across from him, Peace made himself relax. He rolled a cigarette, yellow fingers shaking slightly as they heaped tobacco into paper. "Having a laugh," Peace said, smiling again. His teeth were revolting. Smith pushed away his breakfast, took a sip of ale. "You have something for me?" he said at last.

  But now Peace was disgruntled. "Should report you, I should," he said. "Out and about, when you should be retired an' all."

  Smith looked at him closely. Had Fogg not rescinded the wat
ch order on him? He had assumed Peace had a message for him from the Bureau. But if he hadn't, what did he want? Smith knew the instructions that affected him, and the rest of the village. Watchers were told that under no circumstances were they to engage with retired agents. Report and wait, was the standing procedure.

  So what was Peace playing at?