The Ultimate Secret

by David Thomas Moore

  Otto listened keenly, straining for some sign of what was happening in the building. Eventually, he decided to act, waving to Ingo across the way. His partner grinned and took to the air, circling over the balcony.

  “THAT’S THE TWENTIETH folder done,” said Hotston, sliding the neatly typewritten pages into the file they’d been assembling. “It’s probably time to send the girls home, now. I imagine they’re exhausted.” The stenographers, Kate and Betty, were standing together in the kitchen, drinking coffee and smoking. They were talking softly and laughing, but were clearly tired; Kate kept stretching and yawning.

  “We’ve included a code tape with the keys,” Ledgerwood added. “Your client can finish the job at his leisure. Hell, a monkey could do it. To be honest, though, I suspect the rest of the box is more of the same, and it’s clearly just one box of many.” He looked up at Kim, frowning. “Is all this true?”

  Kim looked pale, more than a little shaken. She nodded grimly. “We think so. There have been... rumours.”

  “This will change everything. There’ll be a third Great War. And Palestine will explode,” said Hotston, softly.

  “To say the least.” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then leaned back in the shrouded armchair.

  “Can’t say I envy your position right now,” said Ledgerwood, as he started to pack Rosie away.

  “I don’t suppose you do.” The young Indian agent stood and went to the credenza, where she drew a thick envelope from the paperwork she’d laid out there. “At any rate” – she turned and held it out to Hotston – “there is your payment, and tickets home. The Committee for Ethics in Analytics has been dealt with.”

  “Thank you,” said Hotston, accepting it with a frown.

  “Bear with me a moment. I should pay the girls off and send them on their way.”

  Kim was halfway across the room to the kitchen when the doorbell rang. She looked back at the analyticists, looking bewildered, then turned to the door.

  THE DOOR OPENED and Adler was confronted with his quarry. She was only a little over five feet tall, with short, tousled brown hair and skin as white and smooth as china. She was dressed in a thick, towelled burgundy dressing gown; his eyes unconsciously followed the line from the hollow of her neck to the soft swell of her bosom, just becoming discernible where the gown cut off his view. He blinked and dragged his eyes to her face again. Even caught off-guard and at rest, her kind were unthinkingly seductive. He must keep his wits about him.

  Her eyes – a piercing, startling grey – regarded him coolly for a moment. She took in his dark curly hair and crooked nose, his American suit and shoes, and seemed very slightly to relax. She smiled wryly, and with a hint of a musical Russian accent said, “That’s not really how I’d have expected a monk to dress.”

  Adler made a hasty guess, then slipped into an Italian accent. “My apologies, signorina. Given our business here, I thought it best to be discreet.”

  The vampire nodded and stepped back, holding the door open and waving him into the apartment. “You’re early. The contact hasn’t made the drop yet. But you’re welcome to wait; I’m expecting her shortly.”

  “Thank you,” Adler said, bowing slightly as he walked in. “I don’t suppose I could impose on you for a coffee?”

  “Of course, Father – it is Father Pagano, isn’t it?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen and turned on the stove.

  “That’s right.” Keeping his movements slow and measured, he slid his hand into his jacket and loosened the Luger in its holster. “Tell me: why are you bringing these files to us? Why not simply give them to the Americans, since you are already here?”

  “What you do with them is up to you, Father,” she replied, pouring water into a steel coffee maker. “Giving them to the Americans is probably the best thing, and as you observe, you’re here already. But we wanted the Church to have them; that was always the plan.” Sadly, almost too softly to hear: “It was what he wanted.”

  “Well, then–” He drew the pistol and fired at her head in one fluid motion, and suddenly she was there, her face inches from his, his right hand held in a painfully strong grip, pistol pointed at the ceiling, plaster cracked where the shot had narrowly missed the light fixture.

  “There is no Father Pagano,” she hissed, and now her eyes flashed, and he could see her fangs, and he smelled blood on her breath. “I’m here to meet a man called Rocchio. So who are you, stranger, and who do you work for?”

  “I-I–” he stammered as she slowly wrapped her free hand around his neck and forced his chin up.

  “Answer me,” she whispered, her lips parting over his neck. “I’ll give you three–”

  Abruptly she released him and staggered back, staring in disbelief at the hardened stake buried in her chest. Bloody drool rolled down one side of her mouth, hung from her chin grotesquely. She looked up into Adler’s eyes.

  He smirked, straightened his jacket, dusted off his sleeves. “Daria Kruschchova, I presume,” he said, his German accent restored. “Formerly a Lieutenant in the Special Advance Squadrons of the Russian Expeditionary Force. Comrade and lover of Ivan Konstantinov, whose death a year ago you have been investigating and whose personal mission – in contravention of orders from the Romanovs themselves – you appear to have taken as your own.”

  Daria attempted to speak, but was reduced to a choking splutter. She slumped back on the cupboards behind her, slid to the floor. Adler knelt in front of her, held out one hand to raise her chin.

  “The rather poetic irony, of course, being that it was I who killed him.” He released her again, stood and took a step back. She glared at him balefully.

  “I would stay and enjoy the moment, of course,” he continued, cocking his Luger and taking aim on her forehead, “but I have to be getting on. It seems I need to find a monk called Rocchio.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  He cocked his ear, confirming the sounds of alarm from the apartments below, and then calmly withdrew a pair of pliers from his pocket.

  THE DOORBELL RANG twice more, followed by a frantic knocking, before Kim reached it. She peered through the spyhole and then opened the latch, a question forming on her lips.

  The mercenary, Tinkerbell, barged the door open, carbine in hands, shouting, “Move! Hurry!”

  As Kim fell back, stunned, the slender woman ran across the room, ducking between the startled analyticists, then fell into a firing position next to the sofa just as – with a clanking, humming, whistling noise Kim didn’t recognise, but which sounded for all the world like a steam train – a man suddenly appeared in the balcony window and smashed through the glass, with an automatic rifle of his own in his hands, raised and ready to fire. Kate and Betty shrieked.

  Tinks’s rifle cracked and bucked in her hands, three times, and the soldier – Kim caught only a fleeting glimpse of his face: white, with short blond hair and blue eyes, and a mad, staring smile – twitched and jerked with each impact. He pulled the trigger on his own weapon, convulsively, but was already swinging his arm as he fell, and the bullets drove harmlessly into the wall before the rifle fell from his nerveless fingers. He staggered back out through the broken balcony doors, tripped over the frame, and fell over the railing to the ground below. It was only then, as he rolled over the stone barrier, framed in the lights of the building across the way, that Kim realised he had wings.

  OTTO WATCHED WITH anticipation as Ingo descended to the balcony. He would cover his partner’s entrance, then follow him in to sweep the apartment.

  The big soldier landed lightly on the railing and stepped lightly onto the balcony proper. Otto saw him cock his rifle, raise his leg and kick in the balcony doors.

  He heard the rifle shots, saw his friend jerk and spasm, stagger backwards and fall off the balcony.

  Swearing, he climbed to his feet, hit the controls on his wing-harness, and–

  A strong arm grappled him from behind. A knife was pressed against his throat
.

  “I love fighting you fly-boy types,” said a stranger’s voice in his ear.

  Otto’s eyes rolled in his head as he tried to see his captor. “Was ist–?”

  “Complacent, you see. You become so convinced of your mastery of the skies that you forget us mere mortals can climb.”

  Otto grabbed for his pistol, and died.

  Jamie wiped his knife clean on the German soldier’s uniform and started to head back to the skylight.

  “DEAD.” TINKS WAS lounging on the sofa, booted feet crossed and resting on the polished mahogany coffee table. “At least an hour, I’d say.”

  “Any idea who killed her?” asked Kim calmly.

  The mercenary shrugged. “Someone who knew he was hunting a vampire. He used a stake. A few pistol rounds had been fired. There was nothing else to go on.”

  “And then you came back here.”

  “A few minutes ago, in fairness,” said Tinks, grinning. “Jamie’s been watching over you, so I went and joined him first to check everything out. Lucky, really; that was when the two flyboys out there decided to start moving. Both dealt with, by now. Jamie should be with us in a minute.”

  “What does this do to your mission?” asked Hotston. He and Ledgerwood had packed their equipment away by now. He was sitting at the dining table with his bags, waiting for his partner to return from seeing the stenographers safely back to their homes. “Is that it? All this effort, wasted?”

  Kim shook her head. “Happily not. Daria had already told me who she was handing the files over to, and where he would be staying. Assuming the Nazis haven’t got to him, too, I can still complete the exchange.”

  “But your employer won’t be paid, surely? Why go ahead with no client?”

  “Bless you, Dr Hotston. Daria Krushchova wasn’t the client.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  The Indian girl smiled, sadly. “It doesn’t give us a great deal of time, though. We will need to take these files to Father Rocchio and caution him to move quickly, before they get to him too.”

  She stood, brushed her hands off, and picked up the box of files. “Good luck going home, Dr Hotston. In light of the attacks on Britannia, these past days, I suspect you may have reason to regret returning before long. But I understand the draw of your homeland, especially if you have loved ones in danger. Perhaps I will see you again.”

  She looked at Tinkerbell. “We should be going. We can pick up your partner on the way down.”

  Tinks raised an eyebrow, lowered her feet to the floor and heaved herself to her feet. “Let’s go, then. Good luck, Doc.”

  The two women walked out, and Hotston found himself alone.

  MICHELANGELO SAT ON the narrow bed in his cheap hotel room in Brooklyn, and considered the old battered box sitting on the small dresser. His mind was reeling.

  For a year, he’d been investigating the death of his friend, Giacomo. The Superior General had been reluctant to pursue the matter, after the brush-off they’d received at the hands of the carabinieri, but Michelangelo had insisted, and the old man had relented. He’d not make any additional resources available, but if the young friar wanted to chase shadows, he could do so.

  It had been hard going, to begin with – Carnevale is really an excellent time to kill someone and get away with it, in Rome – and for months, he despaired of making any progress. Giacomo was buried and mourned, and the rest of the chapter got on with their lives, forgetting the fallen and continuing in the Order’s mission.

  But then Michelangelo had begun to pick up some hints. A Party official in Rome, a secret Catholic desperate for absolution and communion, had found mention of a small party of Nazis who had been granted permission to enter the city that night on undisclosed business.

  A bribe to another official had garnered him very brief unrestricted access to a MARX terminal, where the machine had confirmed that three SS agents and a Russian soldier had all arrived in the city on the day Ferrera had died, and that only the Germans had left.

  Following up on the Russian had been complex, and he’d eventually had to travel to Moscow, supposedly on a ‘cultural exchange’; it seemed the soldier had held a very high rank, in some sort of semi-secret branch of the military, and had supposedly been improbably old, born at the end of the last century. The official he’d bribed for the information had become coy and awkward at that point, suggesting that maybe it was an assumed name, and that several agents in succession had used the same identity.

  More months had passed. Michelangelo had made more enquiries, but was becoming nervous as to whose attention he might be calling on himself. The Superior General had called him into his cell and asked him to stop his investigation, worrying that it was becoming an obsession. Giacomo’s death had been a tragedy, but their duty was to the living. He’d tried to do as he was told.

  Then had come a communication from a mysterious woman named ‘Daria,’ who had been a friend of the Russian soldier’s, and had some answers as to why Father Giacomo had died. She’d wanted to meet him, to hand over some documents that would be of interest to him, and shed some light on what had happened that night. She wanted him to come to New York.

  He’d had no way to contact her back – the only way to speak to her would have been to go – but he hadn’t the money to travel, and the Superior General had no intention of paying for the flight. It had seemed hopeless, until a mysterious benefactor sent him an air ticket, paid for out of a high-level fund in the Italian Republic. Seeing God’s hand at work, he had explained the developments to the Superior General and taken the flight.

  This was far outside Michelangelo’s world. He was not a spy, not a detective; he was a priest, and a humble one, delighting in the quiet study of biology, writing papers for the Society of Jesus’ own journals and rarely doing anything remarkable. He wore glasses, and became wheezy if he ran for any length of time.

  He had met Daria at the bar she had instructed him to come to. She’d seemed too young for all of this; beautiful, and bold, but too frail and innocent. Sad, too. He’d wondered if she was Konstantinov’s granddaughter. He’d worried that she was as out of her depth as he was his.

  The documents were coming soon, she’d said. Other people were involved, other interests. There was danger, too; they may have to change their plans at short notice. She’d given him her address, taken the details of his hotel. Told him to come to her, and promised that everything would be explained then.

  And then this young Indian girl, this Kim, had come with a box, and told him that Daria was dead. She hadn’t been able to tell him anything about Giacomo, but said the box was important, that it revealed a terrible crime the Nazis had committed, many years ago, and that Daria had been killed for that secret. She’d guessed, as they’d talked, that Giacomo had died for it too. And now it was his, and she would leave it in his hands to decide what to do with it. He’d thanked her and she’d left.

  Now, he felt like a child lost in the woods; like he’d wandered into a fairy tale, and didn’t know the rules to live by.

  He sighed.

  The best thing now was probably to take the cursed thing home. Let the Superior General decide what to do with it.

  The horn on the tiny dresser whistled, and he frowned. What would the receptionist want with him? He was paid up for the day, and there was no-one left in this city, it seemed, who would want to speak with him.

  It whistled again, and he picked it up. “He-hello?”

  “Mr Rocchio?” The receptionist’s nasally accent echoed up the pipes.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a visitor here for you. A Mr Pagano? He says you have common friends in Italy, who suggested you meet up, or something. Shall I send him up?” She seemed bored, and keen to finish the conversation.

  “Y-yes, I guess. I didn’t – yes, send him up. It would be good to see someone–”

  “Okay, sending him up now.” The horn died abruptly, the whistling noise fading to silence.

  MUMB
AI, THE BRITISH RAJ, 1999

  “IT’S DONE, THEN?” asked Smith, once Kim had made herself a cup of tea and seated herself.

  “Yes, Smith.” She sipped at the drink and set it on the arm of the chair. “The box is delivered, as planned.”

  He shifted his bulk in his seat and nodded. “Any deaths?”

  “One. The vampire Daria Krushchova. The SS got to her.”

  “Ah. That is a shame. But it could have been worse.”

  “Yes, Smith.” She stared at the green leather desktop, then asked, “Why did we do it? We’ve started a war in Europe. Is this the first move towards overthrowing the Company?”

  The spymaster peered at her over his glasses. “Does everything we do have to do with India, Kim?”

  “No, I suppose, but...”

  It was early morning. Rather than spearing in between the blinds, the light crept in, grey and mild. Kim had come directly from the airfield. Her eyes felt gritty, and she was tired.

  Smith was silent for several seconds. At last, he replied, “This is undoubtedly an opportunity for us, Kim, and I daresay we shall exploit it. But the intention was foremost to do a favour for a friend, who wanted to right a wrong.”

  He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his bulk. “I was contacted, earlier this year, by two... people, I suppose. Yes. History shall call them people; who am I to contradict? Two quite extraordinary people. They are both extremely influential in their countries, and involved in a great many endeavours, and yet they spend much of their time thinking. And one thought they have had is that they should use their influence to do good in the world.”

  Smith reached for his tea, took a sip. Holding his cup in his lap, he continued. “One of my new friends encountered rumours of a terrible crime, and heard of a smaller one that he realised was perhaps connected. These two remarkable people discussed the crimes, big and small, and decided that they had to take steps to see justice done. But, while they had enormous influence, they had little ability to act directly in the world. And so they contacted me.”