“The worse it gets, the better it gets,” says Skelton, with a smug expression.
“Quite,” returns Garmouth. “But let us not become complacent, gentlemen. There is still one more component to be put in place before the plan can be executed. Burnside?”
All eyes turn to the bureaucrat.
“I've established contact, and begun sounding out the subjects,” says Burnside. “In fact, tonight, I'm playing host to Major Beaumont and his remarkable wife.”
“Good!” Garmouth hits the table with the flat of his hand. “This gives us a window of opportunity. Do not waste it!”
He stands up, and several members exchange puzzled glances. Garmouth doesn't usually leave his seat, but he's clearly nervous, or at least excited. The leader goes to the panoramic window and looks out over the near-paralyzed city.
“Millions of people choking on the very air they breathe, gentlemen! The father sees his child suffering and can't help, the daughter struggles to help her dear old mother, the sick and the lame collapsing and the strong unable to do enough. Confusion, despair, anger. And all the while the ghosts of London rise, sowing fear and panic among people already demoralized. We have managed to conjure up the perfect storm for those we serve, gentlemen!”
Garmouth turns towards his subordinates, his face bloodless with emotion.
“And all completely pointless, gentlemen, unless we achieve the ultimate consummation! Unless we make the sacrifice at the right time, at the right place, the ones we serve will not be able to make this their world. The smog will sustain them for a while, of course, but without the final consummation, the window will close and they will leave us again.”
There's a chorus of protest.
“Unthinkable that we should fail!” shouts Skelton.
“You forget yourself,” retorts Garmouth. “It was unthinkable that our wider brotherhood would fail in 1940. It was unthinkable that Rolt would fail in 1945. But fail they did. This time there can be no mistake. Remember, the Star is activated tonight. That starts the countdown to the sacrifice. All our efforts must be focused on the culmination of all our hopes! Absolute power over the common ruck of spineless mankind!”
A brief flurry of applause breaks out. Garmouth gives a slight bow, and resumes his seat.
“Now, gentlemen, let us get down to details!” he says and smiles. “After all, as the saying goes, ‘the Devil is in the details’.”
Chapter 9: The Best-Laid Plans
Rachel is getting ready to make breakfast when she hears the familiar sound of a taxi drawing up outside the house.
“Is that Daddy and Granddad?” asks Emily, jumping down from the table and starting to run into the hall. Rachel follows, and by the time she reaches the front door, Emily has already opened it to reveal Nate standing on the doorstep. Rachel rushes forward, envelopes her father in a hug.
“Dad! Oh, God, I've missed you so much!”
“Hey, don't crush me, sweetheart. I'm an old man now!” says Nate, his voice shaky.
“Dad, it's so good to see you!” Rachel gasps, emotion combining with the foul air to make her breathless. “Let's get out of this god-awful stuff.”
Tony appears, having paid off the cab, and helps with the luggage. Emily stands looking on as the second act of the tearful reunion takes place in the hall. Tony takes his little girl's hand and gives her a wink.
“Hey, where's this granddaughter of mine?” says Nate, finishing the hugging session.
“I'm here, Granddad!” says Emily, rushing up to him.
“Oh, wow, you look a lot like your mommy,” says Nate, hunkering down. “And a lot like your grandmother. I wish she could see you.”
“I wish she could, too,” says Emily. “I know she was very nice.”
“She was one in a million, just like your mom,” replies Nate. “But hey, let's not talk about the past! We've got lots of stuff to do! When this horrible fog goes away, will you show me all the great things there are to see in London?”
Emily nods.
“Yes, I will! I like the zoo best!”
“Me too!” exclaims Nate, scooping her up. “Well, Tony, when my little girl said she was going to marry an Englishman, and an army officer at that, I had my doubts. I shouldn't have worried.”
“Glad to hear it!” says Tony, “But could we carry on this conversation over some scrambled eggs? I'm famished!”
They go into the kitchen, Nate carrying Emily, and Tony pulls out a chair for Nate. Rachel starts making breakfast.
“Hey Dad,” she asks, “did Tony tell you you'll be staying at the Bloomsbury Hotel? It's a real posh place. All the crowned heads have stayed there through the years.”
“Yeah, he did mention it,” replies Nate. Then, to Emily, “I'm staying at a posh hotel. Would you like to come for a posh supper sometime?”
“Yes, if there's cake,” says the girl.
“I'm sure they've got cake, otherwise all those kings and queens wouldn't stay there,” says Tony.
Breakfast passes quickly with talk of Nate's flight, the hotel, and what's happening back in the States. When that topic comes up, Nate becomes less cheerful.
“Ah, things aren't great. You've got this McCarthy guy stirring it up, and a real piece of work called Nixon helping him. I don't mind saying,” he adds, “I wonder if they'll let me back in when I fly back.”
“Why's that sir?” asks Tony, pouring some coffee for his father-in-law.
“Union organizer, radical journalist, champion of the working man,” puts in Rachel, while scrambling eggs.
“Don't forget the real zinger, the crime of 'premature anti-fascism',” adds Nate. “That makes you an outright commie to some of those creeps in Congress.”
“Who's Auntie Fascism?” asks Emily, causing general laughter.
“She's nowhere near as nice as Auntie Charlotte, and we're never going to have her over to visit,” replies Tony.
Emily seems satisfied with the explanation.
“Okay, missy, back in your chair,” says Rachel. “Or it's no eggs for you!”
***
Graeme enters the corner shop to see Sandy bending over the shelves setting out the morning newspapers. At the sound of the bell, she turns, sees him, and smiles.
“Hello!” says Sandy. “You're an early bird. Thought you might have a lie-in!”
“No,” he replies, trying to saunter over to her like John Wayne. “I don't need that much sleep.”
As soon as he's said it, Graeme feels the overwhelming urge to yawn, and struggles to suppress it. Sandy looks at him, head on one side, and giggles.
“You poor soul, you didn't have much fun last night,” she says, reaching up to touch his cheek.
“Aw, that's nothing, I just came by to see if you were okay. Your mum rang, said they'd sent you home.”
“Yeah,” she says, “well, they had no beds free anyway. But after they gave me oxygen for a bit, I felt better. Doctor says it was down to all that filth in the air and something he called hyper-ventilation, something like that.”
“Well,” says Graeme, shuffling his feet, “I'm glad you're all right.”
“You might have saved my life,” she points out, folding her arms and looking serious. “Do you remember the ghosts?”
Graeme tries to recall their panicked escape from the Hammersmith Odeon, but the images from the horror film blend into what might be real-life specters. Somehow he can't disentangle the two. He shakes his head.
“Kind of, but I'm not sure if it was real, you know?”
“Me neither,” says Sandy, “but I know it wasn't natural, you know? Not normal. There's talk about a gang attack, and mass hysteria, and all sorts of stuff. But there's nothing in them about it at all.”
She gestures at the newspapers, looks back at him, her eyebrows raised.
“I know,” he says, “and there was nothing on the BBC. It's as if nobody wants to admit it. Maybe it's one of them state secrets, like in the films!”
“Life's no
t like the films, Graeme!” chides Sandy, but she looks uncertain.
“Well, I'm sure they'll sort it out. The government, I mean,” he explains, trying to think of something positive to encourage her. “I mean, we got through the war all right.”
Sandy looks unconvinced by this argument and is about to speak when Graeme remembers something, reaches into his jacket.
“I've got your book, the address book,” he says, taking it out.
“Oh, I forgot!” she exclaims. “Thanks for bringing it back. Mum says you sounded really upset on the phone.”
“Well, I was,” says Graeme, handing over the little book. “I was proper worried about you. But now that you're all right, I'd better be getting along to work.”
“You didn't have a look through it by any chance?” she asks, looking down at her address book.
“No! Well, I looked for your mum's number, under M, of course. Why?”
“Nothing,” she says, looking up and smiling. “You're a good man, Graeme Robson, that's for sure. Let's have another go, at the pictures, I mean. A good night out, but we'll make it a comedy next time, eh? Maybe Bob Hope or something like that. And we'll wait till after this horrible smog's gone.”
She gestures at the blank rectangle of the shop window. Nothing of the street is visible.
“Yeah, that would be great,” says Graeme, buttoning up his jacket.
“What you smiling at?” she asks as she walks him to the door. “I say something funny?”
“No, no, it's great! Look forward to it! Glad you're okay, is all,” he replies, somehow managing to bump into the door frame on his way out.
In the smog, the foulness of the air doesn't seem so bad, now, as if he's armored against it. He sets off for work in a wonderful mood.
She called me a good man, he thinks, savoring the moment. A man!
***
Jane Pardoe's cluttered office sends a different message from Bryce's Spartan apartment. As the rogue agent enters the crowded room, he looks around at the packed bookshelves, overstuffed filing cabinets, boxes of archaeological samples, and the small desk almost buried under files and documents. But he says nothing, merely sits down in the chair she indicates.
“Well, Colonel, I think some of our assumptions were right,” she begins. “It seems that the visions of your troubled acquaintance, the medium, might be the key to the mystery.”
Jane picks up a sheaf of handwritten notes and offers them to him, but instead of moving to take them, Bryce shakes his head.
“I'd rather hear the short version, professor, if you don't mind. And I hope you were discreet? No more contacting old friends, asking for help on occult matters?”
“No!” she exclaims. “I did all this myself, using my own personal library and what I was able to find here.”
“Good,” he responds curtly. “Then let's get on.”
He's even less pleasant than when we first met back in Duncaster, she thinks. What on earth can have happened to him?
“If you're waiting for me to tell you the story, I'm not going to,” says Bryce, running a finger down his scar. Jane realizes she has been staring at his damaged features.
“So sorry,” she says, flustered and dropping some of her notes. “None of my business, quite so.”
Bryce doesn't move to help her. Instead, he takes out a cigarette case and stares up at the office skylight.
“You realize this is every bit as great a crisis as we faced during the war?” he asks. “Then, as now, the fate of the world hung in the balance. Then, as now, questionable acts had to be performed in the name of what some called the side of freedom. Others called it the lesser evil. It think the latter term is more applicable to the current crisis.”
“I don't understand,” says Jane, reordering her papers. “We are attempting to stop a conspiracy that would devastate London, perhaps the world?”
“So I believe,” replies Bryce. He lights a cigarette.
Feel free, she thinks, resisting the urge to waft the smoke away with her notes. Instead, she starts to skim them.
“Very well, the first point is that the five-pointed star in the drawing is possibly the Star Wormwood as mentioned in Revelation. The star is supposed to poison the world's waters and herald the Apocalypse. If we accept that most visionary accounts, in the Bible or elsewhere, are a bit garbled, we can link the Star Wormwood to the poisoning of the city's air. That is, for the Star to be somehow activated and unleash great evil, the air must first be foul.”
“Which it is,” says Bryce, contemplating his cigarette. There's no hint of irony in his voice despite the tobacco smoke now mingling with the acrid tang of the smog that's permeated every building overnight.
“Quite,” she goes on. “Well, this Star seems to be a physical thing, in the sense that it requires five sites to be somehow sanctified to evil to form its points. These could, so far as I can tell, be anything from a desecrated church to a medieval plague pit, or perhaps a place where some terrible crime was committed. Unfortunately, there are so many places that fit the bill in London that finding the right five would be difficult. If time is pressing, it's simply impossible.”
Bryce gives an irritated shrug, taps some cigarette ash onto the floor.
I'm telling him what I don't know again, she realizes.
“Fortunately,” she goes on, “there is something I do know for sure. The Order of Eschaton wants to brings about chaos, panic, death, and thus bring down the established order and seize power in this country, then move on to greater things. Now obviously if they have the army, the police, and so forth on their side, they wouldn't need to bother with dark magic, would they? So they clearly require non-human allies to achieve their aims.”
“Demons,” says Bryce, simply, looking straight at her. “We needn't mince words. If you want to find a fancy term, like ‘paranormal entities,’ by all means keep it to yourself. Intellectual face-saving is not a priority here. Demonic beings are to be unleashed, that's the plan, yes?”
“Yes,” she admits, “that is standard magical practice, except that normally, sorcerers only tried to harness one or two demons to serve them. This seems to be much more ambitious. And potentially far more hazardous, I mean, to the Order, not just everyone else. Demons are simply hard to control.”
Bryce ponders the ceiling again for a moment, then asks, “What if the plan isn't to control them, but to work for them? To hand the earth over to them and operate as a kind of quisling regime? Then the Order would get the power they crave, albeit at a price.”
Good lord, he's got a dark imagination, Jane thinks. But he might have hit the nail on the head.
“I think you're right, unfortunately,” she says. “But they must be totally insane to think they'll be spared if they help a host of evil beings conquer our world!”
“Among individuals, madness is quite rare, but among groups of ambitious, unscrupulous men it is very much the norm,” Bryce observes. “Their mindset is of largely academic interest. What I want to know is how to stop them.”
Again, Jane shuffles through her notes, finds a sheet with a few short sentences on it.
“Well, that's the odd thing,” she says, “because no matter how hard I look, I can't find any reason to think they'll succeed simply by invoking the Star Wormwood. It creates a paranormal environment that somehow meshes with the smog. I suspect this is because anything unnatural and hostile to life makes our world more bearable to these, all right, ‘let's just call them ‘demons.’ What's foul to us is pleasant to them, insofar as they can experience pleasure.”
“So the Order took advantage of the smog in more than one way?” muses Bryce. “It doesn't just help spread panic and limit the authorities' response, it makes London more hospitable to their masters? Clever. But go on, professor, I'm interrupting you.”
“Yes, as I was saying, bringing a few demons into our earthly dimension or plane of being, whatever you choose to call it, is only a temporary measure. Unless the Star Wormwood portal lin
king our world is kept open somehow it will soon close and suck the demons back into wherever they come from.”
Bryce gets up and for a moment Jane thinks he's going to try pacing back and forth in a cluttered office about twelve feet square. Then he stops and, his back to her, asks, “And is there any hint as to how this doorway is to be wedged open, so to speak?”
Why, thinks Jane, do I get the impression you already know how it could be done, or at least suspect?
“There's a reference to the blood of the lamb, but it's all rather confusing because that's a very conventional Christian image,” Jane replies. “It means innocence being sacrificed, of course.”
“Of course,” Bryce says, without turning around. Then he pinches out his cigarette and throws the stub into her wastepaper basket.
“I'm sorry I can't be more useful,” says Jane. “But there is one other thing.”
Bryce turns, then, and she sees something new in his normally impassive face.
Doubt, she thinks, uncertainty so severe, it's a torment. Anything that worries the Colonel so much must be truly terrible.
“Professor?” he asks, with a humorless smile. “Are you expecting me to guess?”
Caught staring again, she thinks, rummaging among another heap of papers.
“Here it is,” she says, “the drawing made by Maria Castanos.”
Jane holds up the lurid picture, points to the symbol at its center.
“Does it seem familiar to you? No? Think of it as a tower, a metal framework like a pylon, and these lightning bolts take on a certain significance.”
Bryce frowns, his doubts apparently put aside while he tackles the puzzle. After a few moments' thought he shakes his head.
“I may have seen it, but there are so many symbols and trademarks.”
“Quite,” says Jane, “but it was when I was cross-referencing your list of suspected members of the Order of Eschaton that something clicked. They all hold high office in a very important organization. One we all know. One that has tremendous power to influence public opinion.”
The Smog (The Sentinels Series Book 3) Page 11
