Blood Red City

by Justin Richards

  There was a little place Jed knew off Seventh Street. The main shop was a dispensing chemist, but they developed photos too, sending them away to Kodak. Jed could have done that himself, but he was naturally wary. He didn’t really believe that Felix was keeping tabs on him, but Jed was taking no chances. He wasn’t sure what he had on the film but he was sure he wanted to keep it to himself for the moment.

  The chemist was short and balding, with a sheen of perspiration across his forehead as he checked a ledger for Jed’s name.

  ‘Haines, Haines, Haines,’ he murmured as he ran a sweaty finger down the page. ‘Ah yes … Yes.’

  ‘There a problem?’ Jed asked. There was something in the man’s tone that made him suddenly uneasy. ‘The film is back, isn’t it? It’s been over a week.’

  ‘Oh, it’s back. Yes…’

  ‘But?’ Jed prompted.

  Behind him the bell hanging over the door jangled as another customer came into the shop. The chemist frowned, and Jed glanced back. A man in a dark suit and blue tie was examining a display of shaving brushes.

  The man spoke without looking at them. ‘No hurry. I’m just looking.’

  The chemist turned back to Jed. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He disappeared into the back room. He returned a few moments later with an envelope stamped with the Kodak logo. He handed it to Jed. ‘There’s no charge.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A fault, they said. With the film.’

  Jed pulled open the flap of the envelope and tipped out the glossy photographic prints inside. They were all completely black, except for the narrow white border.

  ‘It happens, apparently.’ The chemist smiled apologetically.

  ‘So I see,’ Jed muttered. He stuffed the prints back into the envelope. On the way out, he brushed against the man now approaching the counter and muttered an apology.

  The man in the suit smiled thinly, looking at Jed through watery, pale blue eyes. ‘No problem.’

  No problem, Jed thought as he stood outside, breathing in the cold March air. There certainly was a problem. But was it really with the film, or was something more sinister going on? You’re just getting paranoid, he told himself. Pictures taken in the middle of the night without a flash. Of course they were dark. Maybe he’d make out some detail if he examined them closely.

  He slid the envelope into his coat pocket and set off back towards the office.

  Inside the shop, the chemist handed another envelope to the man in the suit. It was identical to the envelope he had given Jed. Except that the photos and negatives inside were not blank. The man in the suit glanced through them, checking everything was in order.

  ‘You looked at these?’

  The chemist shook his head quickly. ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘Good.’

  The man in the suit handed over several dollar bills. Enough to make the chemist raise his eyebrows.

  ‘Keep the change,’ the man in the suit told him. Whoever had already seen the pictures when they were developed would be persuaded to forget about them in a similar way. It was a shame, the man thought, that they hadn’t known about them sooner – they could have intercepted the film on the way to the lab.

  He pushed the prints back into the envelope. As he closed it, he glanced at the name written in block capitals on the flap: ‘JED HAINES’.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was the speed at which things happened, or rather didn’t, that frustrated Sarah the most. The war itself went in fits and starts – nothing for what seemed like an age, then a flurry of action and activity and news. It was the same in the battle against the Vril.

  After the information from Crowley and Jane, there was a few days of excitement as they tried to interpret what they had discovered. But soon the interest dwindled and the theorising and investigation became a chore. Not that Sarah could do much investigating. She didn’t have an aptitude for code-breaking or seeing patterns like Wiles. She didn’t have the patience for research of Elizabeth Archer or the interest in the occult of Miss Manners. Guy seemed used to the lulls between the action, and Leo Davenport never seemed at a loss for things to do.

  Sarah felt she was rapidly being reduced to Brinkman’s driver. That wasn’t what she’d signed up for, and she wasted no opportunity to tell him so as she ferried him from meeting to conference and back to the Station Z offices.

  So when he called her into his office, she suspected it was to give her yet another pep talk and explain the importance of what they were doing.

  ‘I know you’re frustrated that you can’t get more involved,’ Brinkman said.

  ‘And that everything takes so long.’

  Brinkman held up his hand. ‘I know. In many ways it’s the nature of the job. Which is why I’m sending you to Cheshire.’

  Sarah stood up, suddenly angry. ‘You’re having me transferred? Just to keep me out of trouble? How dare you!’

  Brinkman suppressed a smile. ‘Sit down. Cheshire is just where you start. I’m not having you transferred. I’m having you trained.’

  Sarah sat down, still wary. ‘Trained? What do you mean, trained?’

  ‘As a Special Operations Executive agent. They have a, well, a sort of school for agents. I’m putting you through it. If you’re going to get involved properly then I want to make damned sure you’ve got the skills you need to stay alive.’

  ‘What sort of skills? I can fly planes and shoot, but you can’t train someone for the work we do.’

  ‘That’s largely true. But there’s a lot you can learn that will be useful. Now, while there’s something of a lull in things as you’ve been at pains to point out to me whenever you can, seems like as good a time as any. You start with parachuting and then I believe it’s sabotage techniques. Just don’t practise them in the office. You report to SOE on Monday.’

  * * *

  The first thing that was made clear to Sarah when she reported on the Monday was that no one used their real names. Even the SOE instructors, Sarah suspected, were not who they said they were. She was ‘Sparrow Hawk’, which she thought was actually quite appropriate. There didn’t seem to be any system to the names: a shy mousy brunette girl was ‘Boxer’ and a middle-aged man with thinning hair who seemed to be constantly sweating was ‘Sardine’.

  What surprised Sarah most was the variety of training. She had started at RAF Ringway in Cheshire, parachute training. They moved her on quickly from that when she told them she knew what she was doing, and had parachuted into Germany.

  ‘Well, not really,’ she confessed to the instructor. ‘Back in 1934 I was working in a flying circus and we did shows all across Europe. My plane crashed, engine failure. I had to bail out. That was in Hamburg.’

  The instructor, whose name like so many of the instructors was apparently ‘Smith’, nodded. ‘That’s good. You’ll have to be convincing where you’re going.’

  Whether he thought she was going into occupied territory or simply meant the rest of the training, she wasn’t sure. It took her several minutes to persuade him she wasn’t making it up.

  Sabotage training at Brickenbury in Hertfordshire was exhausting and Sarah wasn’t sure how useful it might be. She was good at the practical side of things, but the theory she found tough going. It was one thing to set explosives and rig them to go off, quite another to read through pages of notes about which devices to use when, and what different types of explosives, fuses, and detonators were called. But there was a perverse satisfaction in twisting the handle of a detonator, or waiting for a fuse to do the job, and watching a small building or the shell of a vehicle explode into flames and smoke.

  She was more convinced by the Commando combat course – which involved a train journey to Scotland that was almost as much of a test of endurance as the outdoor survival training that was included when she got there. A group of grizzled, experienced men who were obviously itching to get back to some real action taught Sarah and her anonymous colleagues all they needed to know about finding food, lo
cating water, creating a shelter, and how to make a smokeless fire. She also learned the basics of a form of unarmed silent killing which the instructors called ‘Defendu’.

  * * *

  Gradually, over the days and weeks, Hoffman was able to suppress the images – to keep them at the back of his mind rather than overprinted on his every thought. He felt some affinity with the Watchers, though he could never tell anyone that, of course. Kruger, the scientist in charge of them, probably put it down to macabre curiosity that Hoffman spent so much time here with them, watching them sleep.

  The girl, Number Seventeen, in particular intrigued him. She had connected to an Ubermensch without the need for a bracelet. The link had been weak and indistinct, but a link nonetheless.

  Looking down at her, apparently sleeping peacefully, Hoffman wondered who she was. Most of them were volunteers, so she had probably been plucked from the League of German Girls – the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Had she volunteered for the tests that revealed her innate psychic ability, he wondered?

  He heard the noise as he turned to go. A scratching, scraping sound, so quiet he almost missed it. Hoffman walked slowly round the bed, trying to trace where it came from.

  Her hand was scratching at the sheet, describing a shape on the cotton.

  Hoffman wanted to go home. But for the moment he must continue to be the person he had become, whatever the consequences. Drop his guard for a second, and he would be dead, no matter how resilient his body had become. So he strode over to where a tired nurse sat making notes at a small desk in the corner of the room.

  ‘Get a pencil and paper quickly,’ he ordered. ‘I think Number Seventeen is drawing.’

  * * *

  The cat didn’t need much sleep and it rarely had to rest. Even so, it was a long way to the city. It could have got there quicker by jumping into the back of a truck that stopped for fuel at a gas station on the highway. But the cat didn’t want to be noticed. It kept to the shadows, off to the side of the road.

  When it was hungry, which was not often, it ate, creeping up on small rodents – even unwary birds – and pouncing. With its senses and speed and viciousness all sharpened by the Vril that controlled it, the cat rarely lost its prey.

  It didn’t get impatient, it was just following instructions. But even so, there was a hint of satisfaction somewhere in what remained of its feline brain as it padded to the top of an incline and saw the city in the distance ahead. The tops of the taller buildings appeared first, and then gradually the whole vast expanse of Los Angeles was laid out before it.

  * * *

  They propped her up in the bed and she stared straight ahead, eyes unfocused. The pencil in her hand swept over the paper, sketching out a horizon. Then the detail – the buildings, streets, a car approaching along the road leading down the incline.

  One last detail – the same on every sheet – and the drawing was done.

  * * *

  The cat watched the car approaching. Not wanting to be noticed, it moved silently and swiftly to the side of the road.

  * * *

  Kruger pulled away the drawing as soon as it was finished and handed it to the nurse. She numbered it and added it to a pile at the foot of the next bed.

  Hoffman watched as Number Seventeen started on a fresh picture. Grass and trees, seen from a low angle.

  ‘They are moving off the road,’ Kruger said. ‘Whoever they are.’

  ‘Whatever they are,’ Hoffman said. ‘See how low the point of view is.’

  ‘An animal?’ Kruger wondered. ‘A dog perhaps? And this image over the picture, always the same shape…’

  * * *

  The cat watched the car as it drew level. It caught a glimpse of the driver – a young man with curly dark hair.

  The cat turned to watch the car speed away, hissing with irritation that its journey had been interrupted, even though only for a few moments. Mouth wide, teeth bared, saliva spotting the nearest grass.

  * * *

  The girl turned, staring directly at Hoffman. Her mouth opened wide in a sudden hiss of anger – teeth bared, saliva spotting his face.

  He stepped back, surprised, wiping the back of his hand across his cheek.

  ‘I think it’s a cat,’ he said.

  * * *

  The cat made its way back to the side of the road. Once it finally reached the city, then the search would begin in earnest. It knew roughly where to start, but it would still take days, perhaps weeks or even months, to find what it was looking for.

  There was an image constant and clear in its mind. The artefact it needed to locate. It could feel it, the slight trembling in the air that drew the cat onwards, growing almost imperceptibly stronger as the cat headed in the right direction, as it drew closer to its goal.

  * * *

  Jed glanced down at the map unfolded on the passenger seat of his car. It looked like it would take him about another hour. Keeping his left hand on the wheel, he traced his finger along the paper road towards his destination.

  It had seemed simple enough back in the city. Just set off towards where he had seen the strange aircraft heading and see if anyone had seen anything. But now he was on his way, driving through miles of deserted countryside and wasteland, he realised what a mammoth task it really was. The empty space on the map translated into hundreds – maybe thousands – of miles on the ground.

  Even if someone had seen it, the chances of Jed finding them were probably minuscule. Even if they remembered – it was weeks ago now, but this was the first chance he’d had to get out of the city. Looking up from the map, Jed ran his hand through his curly, dark hair and continued down the road.

  * * *

  He hated touching them. Hoffman was quite sure it wouldn’t work, but it was still the obvious thing to do – and if he had not suggested it, Kruger probably would have done.

  The Vault was deep beneath the castle, secured behind a huge metal door, like the airtight hatch of a submarine. The guard snapped out a ‘Heil Hitler’ as Hoffman approached, then spun the locking wheel in the centre of the heavy door and swung it open.

  Hoffman entered what looked at first like an operations room. Maps hung on the walls, plans and documents were spread out over wooden tables under a high, vaulted ceiling. Alcoves stretched into the distance, shadowed in darkness though Hoffman knew exactly what each contained.

  He walked briskly down the long chamber, past the tables and into an area that was more like a laboratory. At the end of it was another identical hatchway door. Few people knew what lay beyond that, and Hoffman shuddered at the memory of what he had seen there.

  But his interest was in a workbench to one side, against the wall. Laid out on it was a variety of artefacts – pottery, glass, metal, ceramic, all neatly labelled. All ancient. At one end of the workbench lay several bracelets, rings of chunky metal inlaid with a gleaming silver tracery.

  He reached out a tentative finger towards the nearest bracelet. Nothing. Carefully, warily, he picked it up, holding it only by the edges. Immediately the silver tracery glowed a brilliant white and the inside of the bracelet erupted. Thin orange filaments sprang out, probing, searching for flesh. If he put the bracelet on, Hoffman knew, the filaments would find his wrist. Metal spikes would spring out to hold him immobile as the filaments burrowed through his skin.

  Hoffman had a wooden box in his other hand, already open. He dropped the bracelet into it, and at once the filaments drew back inside the metal.

  Number Seventeen was still drawing – a hazy view of a street with hollow doorways and scattered dustbins. Nothing to distinguish where the city or town might be. And over the top, the same symbol sketched again as on all the other drawings.

  ‘The Reichsfuhrer should be told,’ Kruger said to Hoffman as he handed him the wooden box.

  ‘I shall inform him when he returns,’ Hoffman said. Himmler was at meetings with Hitler all week. Often, Hoffman went with him. He didn’t enjoy the experience.

&nb
sp; Kruger opened the box. If he thought it odd Hoffman had put the bracelet inside, he didn’t comment. He removed the bracelet. It was hinged and he pulled it open. He closed it round the girl’s right wrist. It hung heavy and inert as she drew.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kruger said, disappointed.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Hoffman told him.

  ‘I suppose not. But we can always hope. I wonder if it is worth trying the other bracelets we have? One of them may be a match.’

  ‘It needs to establish a link at both ends,’ Hoffman pointed out. ‘It must match not just the girl but whoever, whatever she is seeing through. We can establish a link at one end with the ritual but even that doesn’t always work, and we never know which of these it might link to.’ He waved his hand to take in all the sleepers across the whole room.

  ‘Then this is probably as good as it gets,’ Kruger said.

  ‘We are lucky she is picking up anything at all,’ Hoffman said. He gently pushed back a strand of the girl’s hair that had fallen forward across her face. Not that she noticed.

  * * *

  Sarah hardly noticed the passage of the days – the weeks. Spring was turning to summer without her really noticing. Most of the time she had no idea where she was. The people she was with changed constantly, as everyone seemed to do the training stages in a different order. Maybe, she thought, it was a deliberate policy to dissuade any of them from becoming friends. Not just a security consideration, she realised, but because for many of them this training would lead to almost certain incarceration or death.

  Knowing that meant she saw her colleagues in a different way. She realised that the bluster and arrogance of some of the men, the spiky abruptness of some of the women, was down to nerves more than character.

  The final stages of the training seemed more sedate. Sarah spoke some French, and learned more. She was shown how to forge documents – which required a lot more patience that she’d ever believed she had. She spent a day learning to fire and handle enemy guns and explosives – almost as long as they’d spent teaching her about Allied weapons.