When he later searched Malvolio’s apartment, he discovered a box containing nine more identical jars, each home to another of the twelve-legged creatures. They scratched at the glass, eager to be out. It was a warm day, but Fairburne felt a coldness travel across his neck and shoulders as he looked at them, and as they tried to reach him.
“GOOD WORK,” WAS the general consensus of Fairburne’s superiors. A fishing boat crewed by Royal Navy sailors in mufti had extracted him and his team the same evening, along with a steamer trunk containing the unfortunate Malvolio. The two Abwehr men would be found in the dock in the morning, victims of some criminal vendetta as far as the local police were concerned. Fairburne carried a suitcase containing the recovered documents and anything incriminating from Malvolio’s apartment. The box containing the jars was inside another box, which Fairburne sealed tightly with wax and string. He kept thinking of how the creature had flexed and moved, seeming very at home in a dead man’s blood.
Good work indeed. He had recovered the documents, seen off two enemy agents, and humiliated the Belgians, all while exposing a traitor. The latter perplexed his superiors; Malvolio had never been regarded as anything but reliable and resourceful. There were no indications whatsoever in his background of the usual reasons a man might try treason. Why he suddenly decided to sell the Belgians documents dealing with British covert activities in Uganda, up to and including sorties across the border into the Belgian Congo to destabilise the place, baffled all. The money he had been paid was a decent sum, but not substantial, and Malvolio had far more than that in the bank anyway. It seemed an unlikely motive.
Fairburne, however, had a theory, and included it in his report.
As to the creatures, Fairburne did not mention in his report that one had emerged from Malvolio’s mouth—some things are beyond easy credibility. He handed the corpse over to the medical officer with a mention that an investigation of the mouth might prove interesting based on the blood that poured forth, and he handed over the creatures to his commanding officer, a major nominally of the Guards but now a spook handler for Military Intelligence.
The major’s reaction was interesting to Fairburne; he had frowned thunderously at the sight of one of the vile little beasts scrabbling around in its jar, and instantly made a note. That meant it was being kicked upstairs. Fairburne was relieved; it was somebody else’s problem.
His relief, in the event, proved premature.
A day later, the medical officer—a Dr. Goole, a name whose comic possibilities had evaded no one—sought out Fairburne in the mess, looking serious. He took Fairburne to one side.
“What in blazes did you do to him, Fairburne?”
“Do?”
“There is a dreadful wound through the man’s soft palate. Was that your doing?”
“He was shot.”
“Good Lord, man, I know he was shot. I drew the bullet myself; a .38, or more likely a 9mm, is what killed him. But somebody dug through this man’s mouth into his brain. As to his brain, well...” He signalled a white-jacketed waiter to bring him a drink and remained silent until it had arrived. After the waiter had gone, he said, “There are lesions on the frontal lobes. Small things, and I doubt they were sufficient to cause a change in the behaviour of the deceased, but I’ve never seen the like. They’re in a neat pattern, very nearly circular, half on the left lobe, half on the right. Nature is rarely that tidy in these matters. They were caused artificially.”
“Have they anything to do with...” Fairburne signalled vaguely but evocatively at his own mouth.
“No. Or, at least, not directly. But the track of damage from the soft palate goes along the underside of the brain and stops right at the lesions.”
Fairburne took up his whisky and soda for a moment to give him time to think. Beyond the open door he could see the blue sky and the light fracturing from the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar. He was suddenly and unpleasantly reminded of Marseille. “Write it up and send it to me, old man. I’ll pass it on to the interested parties.”
Goole grimaced. “I hardly know what I’m going to write.”
“You’re not alone in that, I assure you. One thing; you said multiple lesions. How many?”
“Twelve,” said Goole. “As regular as the numbers on a clock.”
USUALLY, THE GEARS grind slowly in a governmental bureaucracy. It was therefore a shock when, a mere eight days after Marseille had been kicked up the ladder to the faceless paper-wallahs of Whitehall, Captain Fairburne found himself in receipt of a small bundle of files brought directly from London by personal courier, a taciturn young man in a linen suit with, noted Fairburne, a shoulder holster and pistol beneath the jacket. Definitely not common issue to civil servants. Hardly had the man left with assorted signed receipts when Fairburne’s CO swept in with a sheet of paper in his hand and an expression of purest astonishment on his face.
“Fairburne! What’s all this? You’ve been reassigned!”
Fairburne eyed the files he’d just signed for with deepening suspicion. “I have, sir? Where to?”
The major frowned at him, his astonishment diminishing not a whit. “You mean you didn’t request it?”
“I did not, sir. It’s as big a surprise to me as it is to you.”
The major consulted the piece of paper. “Says here you’re removed from my command and seconded to a special investigations group. DA-01.” He looked at Fairburne as if he was party to a conspiracy intended to make a fool of him. “Never heard of it.”
“For what it’s worth, sir, neither have I. What do they do?”
The major examined his printed orders again, but it apparently imparted no great wisdom to him. He sighed, folded the sheet and put it in his pocket. “Something to do with antiquities? Never had you down as an antiques sort of fella, Fairburne.”
Now Fairburne suspected that he was the butt of a joke. “I don’t know a Ming vase from a spittoon, sir. There must be some mistake.”
“I’ll query it, but until confirmation or otherwise comes through, orders are to be obeyed. I can’t assign you to anything until this matter’s cleared up. It looks like you’re in the antiques trade in the interim.”
After the major had left, Fairburne turned his attention to the files. They were bound with a sealed ribbon marked TOP SECRET—Capt.F.Fairburne EYES ONLY, a designation he did not find reassuring or flattering. Cutting the ribbon with his pocketknife, he examined the individual files briefly to get their measure. It was a curious mix: two case files and a folder containing an unfamiliar cypher and its associated codebook, along with his orders from the mysterious ‘DA-01’ group. The mystery was only deepened by the brevity and specificity of the orders; he was to examine the files and then communicate his report to the group, suitably encyphered.
Now convinced that his orders had been issued in error—who would ask a field agent to do analyst work?—he opened the first case file and started reading.
An hour later, he called for coffee, and told them to leave the pot.
Five hours later, he sent a coded report to London.
THE LYONS CORNER House on Oxford Street, hard by the junction with Tottenham Court Road, was generally accepted to see intrigue every day, albeit of the more mundane sort: illicit meetings between married people who were not married to one another, the occasional planning of a felony, the very occasional planning of murder. What was less well-known was that it was also the preferred venue for meetings upon whose outcomes rested the survival of Britain and, with increasing frequency, that of the world.
One such meeting was taking place now. A man in a nondescript building near St. James Park had studied an incoming decrypted message, frowned, put on his bowler, and caught the Tube for Tottenham Court Road Station with dispatch. He had found his superior ensconced in her habitual place in the corner of the most genteel of the tearooms within Corner House, sipping Darjeeling and making notes in a precise hand in a pocketbook. One might have thought her a dowager duchess making notes ab
out her favourite charities—but one would have been quite wrong.
“Why, Mr. Busby,” she said, smiling as a nippy brought him to her table, “an unexpected pleasure.” As soon as the waitress left, her smile disappeared. “What brings you here?” she asked quietly as he seated himself.
“A message from our new friend in Gibraltar, Lady Webster,” said Busby, and passed over the decrypt. She read it quickly, her clinical eye quickly extracting the salient details, the smile returning somewhat. “Your analysis?” she asked finally.
“I think it’s very promising, my lady,” said Busby. He waved away the returning nippy with her open order pad. “He’s got to the nub of it in record time, spotted the commonality in all the cases.”
Lady Webster nodded. “One had hopes after the Marseille business. Always pleasant to be proved right. I agree with his view that Malvolio’s treachery was intended to destabilise the African situation, probably as a distraction. Ah, and his recommendations. A man after my own heart.”
“His wanting to go to India himself?” Busby raised an elegant eyebrow. “You approve?”
“Our Captain Fairburne is a man of action and wishes to see the matter through. That is exactly the sort of man we need. Release the necessary monies and authorities, Mr. Busby. I want him there as soon as is possible.”
“Is that wise? It may well be more dangerous than we think.”
Lady Webster tested the outside of the teapot with the backs of her fingers, then refilled her cup. “If he fails, then we shall know that for a certainty. But, I have faith in Fairburne. He’s a thoughtful killer; a rare enough breed, and ideal for us. Send him on his way, and we shall see what he stirs up.”
CURIOUSER AND YET curiouser. Fairburne’s report and request to go to India were both accepted and acted upon within eight hours of receipt.
“What is going on, Fairburne?” demanded his former CO when he was summoned to the office. “I’ve been ordered to provide you with full tropical kit, and have you ready to depart at 0600. I’m told they’re sending a ship for you. A ship!” He looked around the room in disbelief as if he might find an explanation written on a wall or a lampshade.
“Once again, sir, I have no idea. Things seem to be hotting up, whatever is going on.”
This turned out to be a sad understatement, when the ship arrived the following morning. All eyes were on the Atlantic approach into the strait, and so the deep thrumming from the morning sky in the darkness of the west took everyone by surprise. Fairburne’s batman, terribly underused since his officer had been called into the spying game, was the first to spot it.
“Bloody hell, sir,” he said, and pointed. “They’ve only gone and sent an airship for you!”
And so they had. Fairburne, who prided himself on staying abreast of technical matters both civilian and military, was disconcerted to realise the design of the dirigible was entirely unknown to him. How could anyone have built an experimental airship—a huge undertaking—without him even hearing a whisper?
Fairburne’s perplexity deepened on boarding. The crew were not entirely military, nor even entirely British. He noted a senior black officer—Kenyan, from his accent—and the navigator seemed to be a native Canadian of some sort. He also recognised the taciturn man in the linen suit who had brought him the files, now in the uniform of a petty officer.
As the airship left Gibraltar heading east, no one aboard seemed keen to speak to Fairburne. For his part, the silence suited him; he had much to think on.
APART FROM A slight deviation to avoid flying over Italy, the airship travelled as straight as anything can, favouring open sea, or nations in thrall to Britannia, or that lacked the wherewithal to challenge a high-flying vessel. Greece, Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan passed beneath the silver grey hull, and they arrived over the Aravalli mountain range in Rajputana before the end of the third day. Fairburne had advised swiftness in his report, but he had never anticipated anything like this.
He was put down by rope ladder in the lee of a mountainside witnessed only by goats, instructed as to the direction of the local railhead, wished luck in a perfunctory sort of manner, and then left to his own devices as the airship turned ponderously to the west. Picking up his kitbag and wishing he had been allowed his batman, Fairburne started walking.
At least the walk was downhill, and no more than three or four miles. As he walked, he took in the landscape. The mountain tops were arid and brown, devoid of ice, but the slopes and valleys below them were green and filled with dense tree growth—he spotted mahua, kaim, and even jhinjeri—while above him a lone shikra circled, looking for prey.
Presently he arrived at the railhead, finding it deserted but for an ageing but plainly well-maintained Austin 12, parked in the shade of the platform shelter. That it had been necessary to drive onto the platform seemed not to concern the driver at all. He was sitting sideways in the driver’s seat, feet on the running board, reading a battered novel. He looked up when he saw Fairburne coming, got out, tossed the novel back onto the seat, and walked towards him, smiling broadly. In truth, he was faintly terrifying—6’2” if he was an inch, with a full beard and hands that looked powerful enough to crush a coconut. At the same time, there was an air of good humour about him, from the base of his boots to the top of his turban, that reassured Fairburne.
“It’s been a long trek from Sariska,” said Fairburne.
“The rains would have made it worse,” replied the man.
“True, but the rains are in God’s hands.”
“That must be very uncomfortable for Him.” He saw Fairburne’s expression and sighed. “Yet the season will surely turn.”
“Your English is excellent.”
The man frowned. “Are we still speaking in code phrases? If so, nobody told me about that one.” Fairburne laughed, and the man smiled again. He bowed slightly and put out a hand. “I am Jagmeet Singh Janda. I hope you are Captain Fairburne, or I shall probably have to kill you.”
Fairburne shook his hand. “That won’t be necessary.” He lowered his voice. “You’re acting for the SSB?”
Janda looked at him with mild distaste. “No, captain, my orders come from DA-01, as do yours. I was asked to come here and observe until they could find an executive agent to deal with matters at first hand.” He nodded at Fairburne. “And that is you.”
“Observe?” Now it was Fairburne’s turn to frown. “How long have you been here?”
“Three months. The lie I was told to tell the villagers and the garrison was that I am a humble driver who has had to leave Chittorgarh for a little while, due to a ‘misunderstanding’. They are happy to have me here; they use my poor Austin as a beast of burden, and never ask where I get my petrol from.” He leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, “They are mainly Jains here. Good people. I like them. Although”—he nodded at the station wall where the Jain Prateek Chihna had been carefully painted, an open hand below a swastika—“they are very unhappy with that European fellow with the little moustache defaming their symbol.”
“I can’t say I blame them. But, look here, Janda, I’ve only just been assigned. Are you telling me that DA-01 have been aware of possible trouble at Fort Chippenham for three months?”
“Oh, no,” Janda said, shaking his head, “much longer than that. It has only recently become an operational concern, however. Alas, captain, I have little to report. The occupants of the fort keep themselves very much to themselves. This may be the policy of the current commander.”
“Colonel Aspern.” Fairburne had assiduously memorised the files he had been given.
“Indeed, although... he has done a strange thing. You know of the high regard in which the Jains hold their holy people? Well, the colonel has decided to put the local sadhu under arrest.”
“Really? Has he said why?”
“The story changes. At first it was because the sadhu was inciting insurrection, wanting to bring down the Empire, being rude about the King, and other such nonsense. The vi
llage was astonished! Their sadhu? Never! And... the story changed. Now he’s being held in protective custody because mysterious Mussulmans want him dead. Why? And where from? It makes less sense than the first story, but it does not paint the sadhu as an evildoer, and it did placate some.”
“But still a lie?”
Janda nodded sagely. “Oh, yes.”
THE DRIVE TO the fort was filled with conversation, some useful, some less so. Fairburne found himself sitting on Janda’s book, and picked it up to examine it.
“Rudyard Kipling?”
Janda nodded. “An officer left it in my car when I was delivering him from the station.”
“What do you think?”
There was a pause. “Could be worse,” said Janda finally.
After twenty minutes, Fort Chippenham hove into view on the mountain slope. Like many British garrisons, its design was an uneasy combination of the militarily practical and the economically viable. Nor was it a Victorian building, like many of its brethren. Chippenham had been built just before the Great War as a base for mountain patrols, in an attempt to control the intermittent banditry in the area. As such it was not a massive fortress, for shrugging off artillery, but a checkpoint to control entry and exit, and keep the occupants safe from rifle bullets. Indeed, despite the title, it was quite small.
Janda halted the car and said, “Fort Chippenham. It is... underwhelming, but I like the name. Listen: Chip. En. Ham. Chippenham. Chippenham.” He nodded to the valley. “The village is just beyond the curve in the road. I shall deliver you to the fort and then go on.”
“What is that?” Fairburne asked, pointing to a bungalow some hundred yards from the fort, partially obscured by an ill-kept garden with far too many magnolias.
The True History of the Strange Brigade Page 5
