Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  Hendriksen stepped a little bit to the right, keeping a clear line of sight to the pair. He casually slid his right hand into his overcoat and withdrew his piece, holding it at his side.

  The two men, if men they were, didn’t reply. One turned its parody of a face towards the second, as if exchanging an idea. The figure holding the hot tangle of metal used one hand to fish about in a trouser pocket before tossing a fist-sized bit of stone towards the newcomers. It crossed the floor, rolling all the way to Hendriksen’s feet.

  The face of Hendriksen’s wristwatch came alive with a lambent glow.

  He spared a glance for the fire-scorched chunk of marble as it came to a full stop against his boot. It was the head of a small, white and otherwise unremarkable cherub, which had till that evening been a decoration on the Cathedral’s frieze. He looked back up, leaving the marble where it lay.

  “All or nothing, beasts!” Culpepper raised both hands, palms out. Her coat flared dramatically outwards with the motion. Something in the set of her shoulders tipped Hendriksen that this was only going to go one way.

  “Ah, Miss Kate, just who are these…people?” Hendriksen inquired much more mildly than he felt.

  “Not people,” she replied, her voice taught with anger. “Golems. Tools of the Adversary.”

  Considering that he was a German intelligence agent inside wartime Britain, he was unmistakably an enemy. If her statement differentiated between what he clearly was and whatever these two were, then the figures were bad news of the worst sort.

  The figure with the revolver first looked at her, then towards Hendriksen, as if asking the question.

  “Yeah, that’s how it’s going to be, lads,” Hendriksen answered, unbidden. “Like the lady sa—”

  Before he could finish, the first golem fired. His old-style revolver spat a cloud of glowing smoke a fraction of a second after a silver curtain of light blew outwards from Culpepper’s outstretched hands, staggering the two men and spoiling the gunman’s aim. Hendriksen was actually as good as he thought he was, and the little Walther barely jumped in his fist as a pair of slugs hit each “man” right over their respective hearts.

  While each twitched slightly at the impact of the bullets, there was no other result, aside from the rippling of the fabric around the fresh bullet holes as the suit jackets appeared to heal themselves.

  Which was a bad sign, obvious even to the woefully underinformed Abwher agent.

  “Shit!” Hendriksen exclaimed, discarding his useless pistol. He reached for his last weapon as the furthest golem spun away, leaping upward towards a pile of tumbled stone. The shooter crouched and aimed his gun directly at the slip of a girl and fired again, even as Culpepper moved her palms in a complex pattern before thrusting them outwards as fists.

  This time her attack and the bullets from the golem’s revolver passed each other before striking their targets, with dramatic, if different results.

  The golem simply slumped to the ground, the man shape and his weapon collapsing into a mound of what appeared to be wet concrete. Culpepper staggered backwards, her hands clutching her midsection as she tried to keep to her feet.

  “You must stop it!” she gasped as Hendriksen caught her, preventing her from falling backwards. “It cannot escape with even a single Splinter!”

  Hendriksen heard the unmistakable capitalization in her words. Keeping his left arm around Culpepper, he withdrew a different tool from his cassock vest pocket. The Abwehr chief had cautioned him to employ it only in the most dire circumstance and hadn’t offered any instructions on its use, other than the need to aim it approximately but hold onto it most firmly.

  The device resembled a cigarette lighter which had been grafted onto a small black pistol grip. The brass artifact was easily concealable and the action was obvious from the trigger, placed just as that of a normal gun.

  One-handed, he aimed and “fired” in a single motion, twisting his torso towards the escapee.

  The device vibrated fiercely in his hand, the sensation intense and uncomfortable. The snap of discharge was accompanied by a single golden spear of visible light which lanced into the back of the escaping figure, which still clutched the bit of twisted iron against its chest. Struck by the discharge, the golem instantly froze at the top of the very last heap of rubble, poised to leap down into the gray dawn and away from the cathedral.

  And then it, too, slumped into a mound of glowing wet sludge that flowed across the jumble of bricks beneath it before congealing into a solid mass.

  Hendriksen scanned the immediate area for further threats, keeping his arcane weapon poised. He didn’t even know if it could fire again, but his Walther was clearly no use against these things…golems. His surroundings clear, he turned to Culpepper, cradled in his left arm.

  “Retrieve the Splinter,” she gasped, her face tight with pain. “Get to the train.”

  This woman knew too much. She was clearly a dangerous figure in her own right. She even had information about his extraction plan, knowledge that threatened Hendriksen personally.

  Hendriksen’s instinct was to collect the Splinters, whatever they were, and strike for his rendezvous. He tucked the little pistol-gripped lighter back into his jacket as Culpepper slumped in his arms, obviously severely injured, though there was no sign of blood.

  Hendriksen told himself that he wasn’t going to be a sucker for an enemy agent just because she happened to be injured and looked like a pretty fifteen-year-old.

  Right.

  Her fine, long lashes fluttered as she fought to stay in the moment, before her eyes firmly closed. Her body sank softly into his chest and her face relaxed again into that of a young girl. If that wasn’t enough, her head turned as her body went limp, once more exposing that damned raven.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  Hendriksen sat with his head braced against the motion of the swaying train car. The preceding twenty-four hours had been fraught with tension, if not further outright danger. However, he’d exhausted his creativity explaining the condition of his traveling companion and justifying train seats for them towards Leicester, then Lincoln and finally Newcastle-on-Tyne.

  After he had collected the twisted iron nails from the mound of slag that his weapon had made of the golem, he’d used his “watch” to look for other bits which caused the dial to glow. The cherub was the heaviest, but there were a few others, including a twisted disc of metal that might have been a paten and a crushed pyx of silver that also showed damage from the intense blaze. All were safely packed in the luggage stowed over his head.

  Their itinerary had been shaped as much by his desire to avoid the need to change trains as it had been by their choice of destination.

  The northernmost ports were much further from occupied France, but were patrolled less intensely as a result, so he’d accepted tickets that took them directly to Newcastle. Conveniently, his forged papers included an order of ordination from a seminary in nearby Sunderland, so it became a matter of convincing the Coventry stationmaster that he was escorting the young lady, prone to “fits” and suffering from a “poor constitution,” to the sanitarium that shared the village with his home seminary.

  After their encounter with the golems, Culpepper had roused enough to walk with assistance, but remained logy. He’d pushed her to keep moving, despite her mumbled if heartfelt protests. It had been with relief that he’d finally sat her next to him in a private compartment. Once placed into a sitting position she’d immediately fallen asleep, as though deprived of rest for weeks.

  Hendriksen had rapidly examined her for gunshot wounds in the ruins of Coventry, as soon as he’d made sure of their opponents, but although he’d seen her stagger, her clothing and skin were unmarked by bullets. He’d discreetly examined her again in their compartment. Shielded by the ubiquitous blackout curtains, Hendriksen used the electric lamp to discover a peculiar bruising. It spread across her abdomen in an uncanny, fine net pattern. He also found a fin
e white scar that wrapped completely around her neck, hidden beneath the silver choker. However, apart from her intense fatigue, there were no other symptoms, so he’d kept one arm around her shoulders, holding her upright until the rocking motion of the train took him and sleep closed his eyes.

  He woke with a start, one hand instinctively seeking the reassurance of the weapon in his coat pocket. Bright daylight was leaking around the edges of their compartment window.

  Hendriksen jerked involuntarily in surprise, his arm grasping around the expected form to his right.

  He nearly overbalanced and fell when he encountered only empty air.

  Culpepper was gone.

  Instead, across from him sat another beautiful woman, her hands folded in her lap. She was perfectly composed in a fashionable gray tweed suit, and swayed ever so slightly as the train continued its journey. Dark, dark blond hair was styled long but pulled back from an expressive, intelligent face. Her beauty was refined, unlike Culpepper’s raw sexuality.

  She might have been a leading lady from Hollywood, only Hendriksen didn’t think that they made actresses quite this beautiful.

  Beside her, an expensive camel coat lay draped across the remainder of the bench, dissuading potential joiners from their compartment.

  “Good afternoon, sirrah. Thank you for assisting my colleague,” the woman said in perfect High German. She raised one gloved hand to pull back one half of the curtain. Bright light filled the compartment, stinging Hendriksen’s eyes. Motes of dust became visible, floating through the sunbeam that divided the space between them. “She’s been relocated to a safe place to recover and you may trust that she is in capable hands.”

  Hendriksen only barely kept himself from gaping. At her throat shone the same sigil that Culpepper had worn.

  How many of these women were there? Damn the Abwehr and double damn Canaris for sending him into the cold completely ignorant of what he was up against. These two definitely weren’t Scotland Yard or MI6.

  His new fellow traveler continued speaking.

  “We appreciate that you accepted substantial risks in order to ensure she did not remain behind to face other…competitors, or the mortal authorities,” she said, her hazel eyes twinkling, perhaps as she enjoyed his discomfiture. “If we can agree on the disposition of Coventry, our employer may grant you a boon.”

  Hendriksen shook his head to clear away the last muzziness that inevitably accompanied waking in a strange place. He darted a surreptitious glance upwards.

  Above him, the case containing the hard-won fragments still rested in the luggage rack.

  “You have me at a disadvantage, madam,” he said, once again employing the clipped English of his assumed nationality. Then her use of German fully registered. He barely hesitated before sitting up straighter and smoothing the front of his cassock. “I’m the Reverend Willi…”

  “We know who you are,” interrupted the woman, switching languages and matching his own southern accent with the plummy, round tones usually found in the House of Lords. A calm gaze sought his own but she made no other movement. “Even if you do not. I can call you Reverend or Herr Hauptman or by your birthname if you prefer. I might even share your True Name. In return, you may call me Mrs. Seymour.”

  Hendriksen paused before answering and found himself relaxing despite the obviously high stakes. The name meant nothing to him, but the tone that she used suggested that she’d imparted useful information.

  He spent another moment carefully appraising his new companion and his new situation.

  Despite her apparent civility, the woman across from him was obviously as dangerous as anyone he’d ever encountered in the line of duty. She knew what he was and was showing not the least bit concern for bracing a German spy within the borders of wartime England. Either she had ample help nearby or she was absolutely confident that she could manage any force that Hendriksen could bring to bear.

  Her perfect calm suggested that she was relying on herself alone against a much larger man. And she liked the odds.

  On the other hand, she had information, and she seemed to know much more about him than he knew of her or Culpepper. As long as he had the proof of Coventry’s destruction and the train was heading towards his coastal rendezvous, he had nothing to lose from simple conversation. Though he took only moments to consider her words, the delay freighted the air between them with tension.

  Without speaking, she abruptly shifted her head to one side, regarding him from a slightly different angle. The motion might have been meant to highlight her perfect, feminine throat but instead reminded Hendriksen of nothing so much as a hunting falcon considering a potentially toothsome morsel.

  There was no point in provoking a predator, no matter how elegantly she was dressed. Hell, he might even learn something. Insisting that he was truly a priest seemed pointless.

  “Alright, ma’am.” His voice relaxed into the flattened vowels of his childhood language, distinct from anything an English vicar might employ. “Seems smart to stick with a name from my cover, all things considered, and English is safer than German,” he said, bowing very slightly from the waist. “Maybe you feel like a game of twenty questions, just so’s we can pass the time.”

  “Of course, Reverend,” Seymour replied, relaxing backwards a trifle. “That seems equitable. Let us exchange answers as well, until one of us reaches the boundary of permissible truth.”

  That was a damned odd way to say it, Hendriksen thought. Still, he nodded his acceptance of her terms.

  “If I can start?” he asked. She smiled her answer and he went on. “Your friend, Miss Culpepper, looked like she got shot by those whatevers back in Coventry. I looked for a wound but she was fine…mostly. But even without a bullet from that big Russian gun, she still got hit by something—she was weaker than a kitten.”

  “Katherine Culpepper, as you know her, was struck by a foul device called a soul weapon,” Seymour replied decisively. “It was fired by a construct, a golem, manufactured and controlled by our enemy, Stuttgart. The projectile damaged her ability to sustain a Focus, so distant from her own Seat. Her remaining strength was insufficient to handle even one Splinter.”

  Which told Hendriksen both a very great deal and nearly nothing at all. Before he could fully digest her answer, she immediately continued.

  “Would you say that you are a German, a Briton or an American?” Seymour posed the question quite matter-of-factly.

  “What the hell do you mean?” Hendriksen said, allowing some heat to enter his tone. “You know who I work for and you seem to know where I’m going. In case you haven’t noticed, Germany is at war with England, and pretty soon with Roosevelt too.”

  “I didn’t ask who you work for, Erich,” Seymour replied, smiling.

  Hendriksen saw that although she was clearly older than Culpepper, she had the same perfect complexion.

  She paused, noting his perusal. Purely for his benefit, she took a deep breath and held it, straining her blouse and jacket. He noted that her tailor could have safely added a centimeter or two here and there.

  Damn his trained eye anyhow.

  “I asked what you were,” she continued. “A man born in Germany but raised in Pittsburgh, of all places. Then university at Eton, despite the cost. I rather think that a man of so many parts understands exactly what I’m asking. You’ve walked between masters for a while without choosing a side. Your current arrangement is convenience, not conviction. Whom. Do. You. Serve?”

  Her beauty was immediately forgotten as Seymour’s question struck Hendriksen like a punch to the gut.

  He’d never felt perfectly at home anywhere, preferring out-of-the-way dig sites, foreign museums and travel. The Hendriksen brothers had caught the bug the moment they’d found their first stone arrowhead on a camping trip. The Carnegie Museum’s Native American collection had poured accelerant onto their interest, and from then on they’d dragged their parents through every museum and library within reach.

  The brot
hers had drifted apart, but five years in England had only cemented Hendriksen’s passion. In the U.S., an antique was something dating to the American Civil War. In England, regular houses and churches were hundreds of years old. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Roman hill fort or a medieval castle.

  Moving into intelligence had happened almost by accident.

  The history degree and his thesis on reliquaries made him a natural for the antiquities collection arm of the Abwehr. It had also kept him out of the meat grinder of regular conscription. Then, just after the Olympics, Canaris had needed an aide for his trip to Spain and Hendriksen’s Spanish was as good as his Latin and American English. They’d returned with an ancient Ottoman sword and Franco’s promise to help attack Gibraltar when the time came.

  The Spanish got the planes and pilots needed to crush the Reds. Hendriksen preferred the sword.

  The prewar years had been more than sufficient to scratch his itch. Egypt, Palestine, Sumer, even one trip back to Central America.

  Where did he belong? Canaris’s service had been a means to an end, not a passion. Was it mere habit at this point, or just stubbornness?

  It didn’t matter. It wasn’t any of this broad’s business.

  “My parents were German,” Hendriksen said, speaking slowly to conceal the anger and apprehension that surged through him. She knew too much. It placed him at an impossible disadvantage. Hendriksen might not have been one of Heydrich’s true believers, but he understood loyalty and professionalism, and he owed a debt.

  “The Abwehr pays me. That’s all you need to know. So let’s flip this around. Who’re you working for, sister?”

  “Working is such an interesting human notion,” Seymour answered. “But I suppose that in this, you could say that Bath borrowed us.”

  “Who?” Hendriksen’s confusion was total. Who the hell was Bath?

  “We’re both trying to recover fragments of that arrogant snot, Coventry”—the elegant woman glanced upward, before resuming her direct gaze towards Hendriksen—“but your ultimate master would turn those Splinters into weapons that lead to the enslavement of your race. Bath will conserve any viable fragments and will continue her path of benevolent neglect. Believe you me, that’s a better path than what Stuttgart and his gathering of fools have planned for all of you.”