Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  “But what do you mea—”

  “Now, Erich, we must observe the forms…the next question is mine, unless you want to end the exchange right now,” Seymour said, cutting him off. One cautionary eyebrow angled elegantly upwards.

  Hendriksen worked to master his confusion. The incessant clacking of the train wheels against the steel rails reminded him that he was on a timetable. Despite the pressure, he found an unexpected reservoir of calm and exhaled audibly. Then he motioned for Seymour to go on.

  She smiled in a self-satisfied way, as though he’d passed a test.

  “It should be obvious we’ve a great deal of insight into your mission. We also have considerable understanding into the relationship between your organization, the Abwehr, and its powerful competitors in the Schutzstaffel,” she said, using the full name for the group known to the rest of the world as the SS. “In fact, they’re increasingly influencing your operations, even as we speak.”

  “I don’t work for those—” Hendriksen almost said “pigs,” but his brother had migrated to the SS from the National Socialist party enforcement squads. Eduard was…well, he was Eduard. However, the friction between the Abwehr and Himmler’s personal goons was considerable, occasionally escalating to actual confrontations over their intelligence roles. The SS had no limits, it seemed.

  First came the Night of the Long Knives. Then darker rumors of their operations inside Germany had begun to spread.

  Meanwhile, Abwehr had been losing ground and influence. A few agents had even vanished where no English or French could’ve possibly been involved.

  Hendriksen’s companion leaned well forward.

  “Erich Hendriksen, you’re woefully and deliberately uninformed,” Seymour replied, poking his lapel before relaxing back into her seat. The motion changed the contours of her calf and one feminine shoe tapped impatiently. “You’ve been hastily manipulated for a mission that isn’t ultimately in your best interest by forces that you can’t even see, let alone understand. If you return with the objects in the case, you’ll not long survive your victory. So I ask plainly, to whom will you give your full measure of loyalty?”

  “I know who I work for,” the German agent growled. “Doesn’t matter whatever game you and that other dame are playing at. I know about keeping my word. What are you, and what’s this really about?”

  Hendriksen was rattled. The Steel City accent was in full effect now, and he didn’t care.

  “Give me a straight answer—or beat it, lady,” he said, gritting out the words from a clenched jaw.

  He was still absorbing the implications of her information about him, about his hierarchy. Her mention of the SS shook him. His own brother had denounced their father merely to curry favor and gain entrance. The SS had been merciful and merely stripped his father of everything he’d ever earned, even their home. Hendriksen would never transfer his allegiance to them, even if it cost his life. He’d taken the mission for Canaris and the value of his word was worth more than mere survival.

  “In plainest language then, little Knight.” Seymour sounded as though she was becoming as exasperated as Hendriksen felt.

  Good, I’m not the only one, Hendriksen thought, then did a mental double take. Wait, what?

  “There are naturally useful places where humans have gathered, built, and worshipped for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. Humans can vest a small piece of themselves in such a place and after a long enough time, that place develops a soul. A consciousness. Sometimes even a conscience.”

  “You mean like gods?” Hendriksen said skeptically. This woman was sounding more and more crazy. And yet, Hendriksen had seen the golems. Nothing he’d ever studied could explain them.

  “The Romans called them Genius Loci, or Spirits of the Place,” she answered. “And like the humans that birthed them, they are complicated as well as calculating. They can be dangerous. All these so-called modern countries refer to this dust-up as a World War, as though it is a discrete thing.”

  She snorted.

  “You’re all fighting in their war. And it has been going on since time immemorial.”

  Hendriksen didn’t know what to believe.

  “And what is Coventry to you?” he asked.

  “The cathedral that you called Coventry rests on a much older Christian monastery, many hundreds of years old. It rests in turn upon the foundations of a Roman temple. That edifice is sited above a Druidic henge which predates the Christians. And so on, to when men first strode across the land.”

  “And Bath? Stuttgart?”

  “Geniuses as well,” Seymour said decisively, one hand rising upwards from her lap, like a sword. “Stuttgart arranged for the murder of Coventry. It remains to be seen if he’s succeeded.”

  “So what does that make you? One of these Geniuses?”

  “I?” Seymour laughed, and then covered her mouth and continued. “Heavens, no. Haven’t you been paying attention?” Her silver choker flashed. “No, I and my sisters are the Ravens. As ever, alive or dead, we serve the White Keep.”

  “You’re dead?” Hendriksen blinked rapidly, feeling his head spin. He understood the individual words, but he simply couldn’t grasp the threads that Seymour wove with them. “That makes no sense.”

  “Aye,” Seymour tapped her heels, impatient. “We’re not from this age, but the Geniuses collect useful humans. Both living and deceased.”

  “But…”

  “You’ve to decide what you are, Erich,” she added. “You’ve a great deal of promise, and I’d as lief return with you and the case than the case alone.”

  A screeching steam whistle drowned out Hendriksen’s question, and the train suddenly lurched, braking hard.

  Seymour rose, one hand on the rail for balance, and looked outside the car.

  “Catterick,” she read, as the sign flashed by the slowing train. “This is not a scheduled stop,” she added, braced against the deceleration.

  “You must Choose!” She looked down at him, her gaze urgent. “Either way, that case over your head must not reach Germany. Your fate is your own to decide.”

  “The case goes where I go”—Hendriksen withdrew from his pocket not the Walther but Canaris’s gadget—“and I’m going home.”

  “Ahh,” Seymour sighed, looking first at the golem-killing gun and then back to Hendriksen. “We’d believed that Culpepper dispatched all the constructs. But it appears that your puppet master anticipated competition. Clever spider.”

  She didn’t seem angry or scared but she also held quite still.

  “Enough,” Hendriksen said, suddenly standing upright so that he was face to face with Seymour in the tiny floor space. The arcane pistol was pressed into the tweed, just below her chest, but the agent could feel firm muscle beneath the alluring softness of a grown woman. If she was intimidated, it didn’t show as she continued to thoroughly examine his face from an intimate distance, close as lovers.

  The spy knew that he had spent too long listening. The train was definitely stopping and if MI6 was searching for him, he needed to debark before he was fully in their net.

  “I’m legging it, and you’re staying here,” Hendriksen ordered. “Don’t try to follow me. Stay out of my way and you’ll be fine; they’ll be looking for me not you. This ain’t nothing personal—just business.”

  “Oh, little Knight,” Seymour said, her warm breath palpable on Hendriksen’s face. “They don’t search just for you. And you’re going to discover that it’s quite personal.”

  She stayed standing and merely watched as Hendriksen used one arm to pull the leather-strapped case from overhead and banged out of the compartment door.

  A few steps later, he glanced over his shoulder to confirm that she wasn’t following him.

  Through the glass, he could see that the compartment was empty.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  On the upside, at least no further unnerving women had appeared to hinder his progress. However, there was always a downside.

  N
ewcastle-on-Tyne was out. The goddamned Luftwaffe had restarted their raids there, forcing him to push towards his tertiary pickup point. He had but one night left before the E-boats waiting offshore would assume that he’d been compromised and no longer returned for pickup. The speedy motor craft had been playing hide and seek with the British MTBs, but they couldn’t do so forever.

  It was tonight or never.

  His black cassock had become blotched and smelly from the combination of overland travel needed to stay outside the net of waiting MI6 agents and the dirty bench of the coal wagon whose driver had taken pity on the walking priest. That morning, a sympathetic rector had allowed him a wash and laundered his outfit before he pressed towards his last chance at a rendezvous. It was with a somewhat more presentable appearance and a battered case, that Hendriksen limped into a cafe overlooking the Hartlepool waterfront late on the afternoon of the fourth day.

  Using his remaining pocket change, he’d ordered tea and ration biscuits from the short middle-aged proprietress. Wordlessly, she’d inspected his questionable outfit. An abbreviated, if haughty, sniff suggested that his spit bath has been only partially effective.

  The heavy mist condensed on his broad-brimmed cleric’s hat and dripped onto his cassock as Hendriksen surveyed the waterfront for a suitable pier. He’d need to find a boat small enough to slip outside the still-nascent harbor defenses before he signaled for pickup.

  He’d successfully left Seymour behind, but her words had dogged his steps all the way to this dingy cafe. How did he get to this?

  His retrieval window was still hours away, but he moved closer, dodging the odd bit of stone or pile of burned timbers before finding a convenient bench along the fishing quay. Finger piers extended into the bay, the details obscured by the profusion of different small craft. The gray winter day sullenly gave way to darkness, as the tall agent caught sight of a wherry for which a single pair of oars would suffice.

  Perfect.

  A single sentry paced slowly back and forth in front of the pier. The evening mist made the barrel of his slung rifle shine in the dim, yellow light of the pier lamp.

  “Pity a poor soldier on a night like this,” Hendriksen said aloud. “Could be worse.”

  He placed the case between his legs and opened a small bible as camouflage. Meanwhile, Hendriksen began to catalog the major elements of his mission which would be included in his report. How would he describe either woman? Canaris had to have known much more than he let on in order to have equipped his agent with the tools that had saved Hendriksen’s life.

  But why not tell him more? Was Hendriksen expendable? Of course, if Hendriksen failed, he couldn’t have divulged that which he didn’t know. Being kept deliberately uninformed rankled. The successful delivery of the case would be an understandable, forgivable point at which to stop working for the Abwehr.

  At least directly.

  He wasn’t certain where he belonged. It probably wasn’t there.

  “I’m not surprised, young man,” a firm, feminine alto caroled into his ear, but with an odd accent.

  He started and looked to see the cafe owner sitting next to him. Somehow she’d soundlessly approached the bench at the head of his target pier and sat down.

  “Every weapon knows its sheath.” She looked over at him. “If you can’t even find that, how will you ever find the target?”

  Even with them both seated, the woman’s head was well beneath his. A round face somehow still gave the impression of firmness, and bright red hair hinted at a temper.

  And a hint of silver shone at the open neck of her sturdy coat.

  “Oh, god,” Hendriksen sighed, burying his face in one hand. “Another one. What’s your name, then?”

  “That’s hardly courteous,” replied his latest unwelcome companion haughtily. “My name is Catherine of Lancaster. Of course, I already know who you are.”

  She pronounced the English words oddly, and Hendriksen recognized that she was no more a son of Albion than he was. Or daughter, rather. Bright blue eyes returned his examination, pausing at the case that he’d tucked between his knees.

  “This managed to pass as a priest?” Lancaster said, turning her palms upward above her aproned lap and holding them a handspan apart. The rhythm of her words finally betrayed her Castillian heritage to Hendriksen’s trained ear. “The blood of the Church of England always ran thin, courtesy of that whoreson Cromwell, but even he could have organized the hunt for a single false priest traveling on foot. Of course, Wolsey would’ve had you in a single day.”

  “Of course,” Hendriksen said with some asperity but no greater understanding. What new problems would this bring? He laid his hand on his magical pistol. “Let me save us both some time. My answer is no. The case is mine and you’ll leave immediately or I will take measures to protect myself.”

  “I rather don’t think so, young man,” replied Lancaster. “You’ll require my help before long.”

  Hendriksen rose angrily to his feet, but before he could refute her, the soldier he’d previously noted stepped into his field of view, the Lee-Enfield rifle still slung.

  “Wot’s this, then?” the guard asked. “Are a body seeking th’ punishment of th’ Old Testimint, then?”

  It wasn’t the slung rifle that totally arrested Hendriksen’s attention, nor was it the terrible parody of a Cockney accent pronouncing the recognition code.

  The German agent looked, really looked at the guardsman.

  It was the shockingly familiar features on the guardsman’s face. Hendriksen should know. He saw their facsimile in the mirror often enough.

  “Eduard, what the hell?” Hendriksen said, looking around the pier as three more men appeared from shadowed doors or climbed up from boats. “What’s this, what’s going on?”

  “Hello, brother,” the “soldier” replied. A tight smile from Eduard Hendriksen was the extent of his filial greeting. “You certainly don’t sound like an English priest, so I guess that it really is you. But who’s this?”

  Hendriksen’s brother turned to look at Lancaster, his head swiveling like a cannon slewing onto a new target. Lancaster sat quietly, a small smile playing across her mouth as she watched the family reunion.

  “She’s nobody, a cafe owner who was chatting with me,” answered the confused agent. “Where’s my pickup? The Abwehr was supposed to meet me beyond the breakwate—”

  “Change of plans, big brother.” Eduard didn’t sneer, but his oily, satisfied smile spoke volumes and something dark reflected in his gray eyes. “The SS is taking responsibility for that case you’re holding. You’re to come with me immediately. Your friend can come with us as well. If she behaves, we may even let her stay on the boat after we make the Channel.”

  Instinctively, Hendriksen turned his body to shield the case that bore the treasure.

  “I’m working for Canaris,” he said. “This case goes only to him.”

  Hendriksen’s mind churned. The relationship between the Abwehr and the SS hadn’t devolved into open violence. Or at least it hadn’t until there was something important enough at stake. His brother would’ve been sent to guarantee positive identification of Hendriksen himself. As a fervent believer, he could be relied upon to see the matter through.

  Regardless of cost.

  Hendriksen’s left hand slowly lowered the briefcase to sit on the ground.

  “Well, plans change,” Eduard said, raising a pistol in one hand. Hendriksen noted it was the new Steyr with a bulbous cylinder screwed onto the muzzle. Standard SS issue.

  “In addition to the boy who guarded this pier until a short time ago, your Abwehr friend on the E-boat also resisted, so now we have an additional space for a new passenger,” his brother went on, smiling thinly down at Lancaster.

  “Lucky you,” he added with a jerk of his weapon. “Now get up!”

  Lancaster didn’t budge. Her bright eyes flicked about the scene, calculating.

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Herr Master Race,” she ans
wered. Her strange accent visibly registered on Hendriksen’s brother, who looked briefly puzzled. “I rather think I’ll stay right here. I’m waiting, you see.”

  To Hendriksen’s left, an additional guard moved to flank him. This one held a Schmeisser in the shadow of a long overcoat. Hendriksen glanced at the man’s face. His features were unfinished, like unfired clay. Once again, two dark smears of eyes regarded Hendriksen steadily.

  “Have it your way.” Eduard sneered and began to raise the pistol.

  Hendriksen couldn’t have explained the compulsion. He didn’t know why he dove at his brother, leaving the case to fall over next to the bench. At least his brother was a man, unlike the golem that was raising the submachine gun. There wasn’t time enough to think, only react.

  All he could be sure of was the overwhelming impulse to keep Eduard from shooting Lancaster. At this distance, a miss was impossible.

  The seated woman raised one hand quite quickly, as though shooing a fly.

  The Steyr coughed once, twice, before Hendriksen’s shoulder drove through his brother’s midriff.

  The whine of two ricochets accompanied Eduard’s wheezing exhalation as his diaphragm made violent contact with his spine, courtesy of Hendriksen’s tackle. The little Steyr flew several feet across the slick cobblestones with a metallic clatter. It would be a few moments before the SS man could breathe, let alone fight.

  But the golem’s line of fire to both Lancaster and Hendriksen was now clear, and the Schmeisser chattered as the construct began to empty the thirty-two-round magazine in a long burst. Mercifully, its accuracy was atrocious, but three rounds stitched through Hendriksen’s cassock, driving spikes of frozen fire through his back and legs.