THE ULTIMATE SECRET

SHE THREW OPEN another door and came out into a covered alley on the far side of the building, this one wider, cleaner, even dimly gaslit. The smell of the fish market wafted up from one end, and the roar of traffic could be heard at the other.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

She looked up and left towards the sound, close to panic, and made out two huge figures lumbering –

No, that wasn’t right. They moved slowly and haltingly, as though assessing every step, but with precision and economy.

The figures picked their way slowly and carefully towards her. They were at least seven feet tall, and broad with it, with slightly unnatural proportions, their ungainly limbs and craning necks seeming slightly stretched. Although they were fully dressed, in long kurtas and broad hats, she was sure it was more for disguise than modesty. In the half-light, she could make out nothing of their features. Every few steps, one or the other would pause for a half-second or so, as though uncertain about its footing. Every time they did, they emitted that staccato ticking sound.

Kim felt ice trickle down her back as they picked their way towards her. She backed away from them, stumbling and nearly falling over before she could finally tear her eyes from the things. She wheeled on one foot and sprinted down the alley, dimly registering them both stopping to make that noise as she did so:

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

PAX BRITANNIA

THE ULTIMATE SECRET

David Thomas Moore

Pax Britannia

The Ulysses Quicksilver Books, by Jonathan Green

Unnatural History

Leviathan Rising

Human Nature

Evolution Expects

Blood Royal

Dark Side

Anno Frankenstein

Time's Arrow

The El Sombra Books, by Al Ewing

El Sombra

Gods of Manhattan

Pax Omega

An Abaddon Books™ Publication

www.abaddonbooks.com

abaddonsolaris@rebellion.co.uk

First published in 2013 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

Editors: Jonathan Oliver & David Moore

Cover & Design: Sam Gretton

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Pax Britannia™ created by Jonathan Green

Copyright© 2013 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

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ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-84997-532-2

ISBN (MOBI): 978-1-84997-533-9

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

For Tamsin, of course.

MASQUES AND LIES

Fortune does not change men;

it unmasks them.

– Suzanne Curchod (1739 – 1794)

AUSCHWITZ, OCCUPIED POLAND, 1944

IVAN STEPPED OVER the cooling body of the Nazi guard and slowly pushed open the door into the dormitory. Filthy pallets crowded the floor, and a few wretched belongings – a girl’s torn dress, a book missing its cover, a silver Star of David – were scattered here and there, but the draughty shed was as devoid of people as all the others had been. He turned back and looked around the empty camp again.

What was going on here?

Even the Nazis had all but disappeared. The guard had been Ivan’s third kill since his arrival, and only the eighth living human being he’d seen. After all their preparations and stealth, Captain Ilyanov’s unit were essentially unopposed; the officers, most of the men, the engineers, even the Jewish workers had all seemingly vanished. Possibly, with the loss of the Frankenstein Corps and their catastrophic failure at Amiens, the Nazis were retrenching. Or, perhaps, the officers and men at Auschwitz had been warned that Russian forces were on their way, and had fled.

Fled, somehow, taking the time to set fire to their own administrative block and bring all their prisoners with them, but leaving – judging by the plumes of acrid smoke pouring from the chimneys of the massive building looming ahead of them – the factory’s engines burning in the middle of the night.

He turned and glanced over at Daria, emerging from the dormitory opposite his. Her eyes flashed green as she met his gaze, and she solemnly shook her head. Empty. She crept around the side of the building, tight-fitting black fatigues fading into the shadows, and peered around the corner; they were at the end of the last accommodation block.

Ivan mirrored Daria, his skin gleaming in the moonlight, looking around his own building. Nothing. Eventually, he shrugged and walked across the open ground to her.

“What?” she hissed.

“There’s nothing here.” He gestured around him.

She nodded. “It’s strange. If it’s a munitions factory, you’d think they’d have gone to more effort to hold it.”

“If.” Ivan shrugged, looking at the fence beyond the dorms, and the great red building beyond, with the smoking chimneys.

“Should we return to Katya and the captain, clarify our orders?”

He shook his head. “We may as well finish our search.”

He kissed her on the cheek, left her side and walked up to the gate in the chain-link fence, casting around for any more guards as he went. He made his way to the nearest entrance, a stair cut into the ground, leading under the huge brick building. He detected faint traces of harsh chemicals, chlorine and detergent... and something else. A sign by the steps read, in German, Czech and Polish: Disinfection.

VATICAN CITY, THE VATICAN PARTITION, 1998

HE’D BEEN NEARLY conscious of the noise all day.

Crossing the northern colonnade of the Piazza San Pietro and approaching the checkpoint, Father Giacomo Ferrera first became aware of the noise itself – of the cheering, of those incessant whistles, of the wordless shouts, of the sheer volume of people talking, drinking, arguing and seducing – and then realised that it’d been hanging just out of hearing since morning, putting him on edge, distracting him from his prayers.

Carnevale.

Every year at this time, for seven days, the city beyond the walls became a riot of noise and colour. The sober young men and women of Rome set down their tools and their books and took to the streets. Every night it was something different: a play about the workers’ struggle, a masqued parade through the Campidoglio, swimming in the fountains, bonfires in the streets. For the past two years, blowing little tin whistles all night long had been all the rage. And around and throughout the rest, young people celebrating, in the houses, in the bars and on the streets.

The irony of it was, Rome had never held Carnevales, even back when it was still Catholic; everyone used to go to Venice. That’s where the masks came from. All this had only been going on for about ten years, courtesy of the Communist Party and their ‘Cultural Revival’ nonsense. Giacomo shook his head.

He slowed just before reaching the checkpoint and ran his hand across one of the stone columns at the end of the colonnade, as if for luck, and looked up. An ugly mix of iron, canvas and wood, the Britannian checkpoint looked like what it was: a tent that had stayed too long and set down roots. Rust ran down the ancient walls from the temporary brackets, mounted to carry telegraph wires into the tent; weeds gathered under the edges of the canvas walls. A peeling sign warned him as he entered, in Italian, German, French and English:

YOU ARE NOW LEAVING VATICAN CITY.

PLEASE HAVE ALL TRAVEL DOCUMENTS READY

BEFORE ENTERING THE CHECKPOINT.

He patted his bag, checking for the fourth or fifth time that he still had the passport and visa he’d been given an hour before, then gathered his black habit around himself and stepped into the blinding glare of the gaslight.

A soft murmur joined the noise of the revelry from beyond the checkpoint. Two of the four desks were open, and other travellers – both priests, like him – were speaking quietly with clerks in British Army uniforms, checking their paperwork and confirming their routes. Cheap folding chairs lined the walls of the tent, this side of the checkpoint, and nine other men and women sat uncomfortably, waiting their turn. Giacomo nodded distractedly at another Jesuit, but sat on his own, apart from the others. He crossed his legs and breathed deeply, striving not to look as anxious as he felt.

Of course, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. The passport was quite genuine, as was the visa, and he had every right to enter Rome. He couldn’t help but wonder what a Party official would make of him if he was stopped; his mysterious errand smacked of espionage.

“You’re meeting someone,” said the Superior General. “A Russian. Name of Konstantinov. At the Campo de’ Fiori, under the statue of Bruno.”

“A priest?”

“No. An officer, I gather. We don’t have a great deal of information on him.”

Giacomo frowned. “And what does he want? What help can I be to him?”

“He’s going to hand over some papers, apparently. Wants to get them to il Papa. I suspect they’ll go to Cardinal Kovacs; he can deal with them.”

“What papers? What’s this about, Father?”

“We don’t know. This Konstantinov says they’ll be of interest to us, but that he can’t enter the Vatican. Get too many questions asked, in Rome and back in Moscow. Says it’s important.

“It needn’t concern you for very long, my son. Go and meet the man, take the papers from him, bring them back to me and this’ll all be out of your hair.”

And that was that. A monk’s life is one of service, after all.

The queue had moved on; there were only three more people still sitting by the wall, not including himself. Giacomo looked around him.

Behind the row of desks, a rank of automaton soldiers stood impassively, a hint of red light flickering in their dead eyes. He shuddered. He was not a superstitious man by nature; cybernetics was nothing more than a branch of science, every bit as much a reflection of God’s glory as bioscience or chemistry. Some of his own brethren used difference engines in their work. But it’s one thing to know that an android is simply a machine, a work of men’s hands, and quite another to stand in front of one and not feel as though it were... unnatural.

If the machines felt his eyes on them – if they were even capable of feeling uncomfortable under scrutiny – they didn’t show it.

And now he was the only man waiting, and a clerk, mercifully human, had come free. He stood and walked up to the desk.

“Name?” The bored clerk gestured to the seat in front of him, not looking up, his pen poised over a blank form.

“Fath– Father Giacomo Ferrera,” he replied, stumbling over the English.

The clerk glanced at his habit. “What order?”

“The Society of Jesus.”

“Mm-hm.” The clerk made a note.

“I suppose you’re an Anglican?” Giacomo asked, attempting a smile.

The man looked up, met his eyes. “The Devil I am. I was born in Cork.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. I cannot tell accents well in English.”

The soldier chuckled. “Quite alright, Father. Now... purpose of visit?”

“Pilgrimage. I am visiting the Basilicas before Lent.”

That was another change. In 1947, the Basilicas outside the Partition were lost to the Church. For nearly thirty years, they had been locked up by the Party, used for storage or administrative offices, until they were re-opened in 1975 as museums. But since 1990, when they were re-consecrated to the new state-approved Church of Italy, Catholics had been allowed to visit them on pilgrimage.

“I went when I first got here. They’re a sight. Passport and visa?”

“Of course.” Giacomo fumbled in his bag for the documents.

“Thank you.” The clerk made some more notes, asked for a signature, and then handed Giacomo’s papers back to him. “I’m obliged to warn you that your visa gives you access to the Socialist Republic of Italy for no more than twenty-four hours, and that you are to remain within the bounds of the City of Rome for the duration of your stay. Also, under the terms of the Lateran Treaty of 1991, you are not to perform any spiritual service for any resident of the Republic, regardless of their stated religious beliefs. I’m sorry, Father, I have to say it. It’s the rules.

“Enjoy your stay. God bless, and have a good evening.”

“Thank you.” Stuffing the papers back into his bag, he walked past the automatons and through the tent into the shouts and the cheers.

ROME, THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ITALY, 1998

IN A SMALL office overlooking the famous Trevi fountain, another visitor looked out on the mounting festivities, awaiting an appointment.

Obersturmbannführer Dietrich Adler was not a typical Schutzstaffel officer: tall and slender, he had unruly black hair and dark brown eyes, a complexion that tanned readily, and a strong, crooked nose. What he lacked in Aryan purity, however, he more than made up for in savagery; it was rumoured that years ago, when he’d overheard a junior officer questioning his heritage, Adler had beaten the poor man to death with a riding crop.

Whether it was true or not, he scared the hell out of Otto.

Adler stood motionless in front of the window, hands behind his back, staring down at the Italians shouting and singing in the piazza below. He held a handmade necklace in one hand – fangs and beads, much as wild young men sometimes wore on the beaches in America – and idly rubbed one of the fangs between his thumb and forefinger every few seconds. For the past fifteen minutes, it had been the only sign that he was still alive.

Otto met his partner Ingo’s eyes, across the room. Neither of them dared move until Adler did. They had been assigned to him from the Luftwaffe two years ago, and he had never so much as addressed either of them by first name. Two of the best wing-harness fliers in their year at the academy, they were seconded directly upon earning their commissions and had been attached to the enforcer ever since, travelling around the world and assassinating the enemies of the Reich.

Down in the piazza, the steady traffic that had come and gone since dawn was gradually becoming a crowd. Even in the cool February afternoon, more than a few people had already taken impromptu dips in the fountain – some voluntarily, some less so – and were drying themselves by the fires that had sprung up in barrels at the corners of the square. A handful of Carabinieri stood around, keeping the peace, but looking slightly nervous as the crowds grew louder and more chaotic.

Sunday night, according to the Ministry for Culture, was masque night, and the revellers in the streets were wearing a dizzying array of guises, from plain, traditional Venetian leather masks to great jewelled and feathered head-dresses that towered over the crowd. It wouldn’t make their hunt any easier, but that was no doubt their quarry’s intention.

Still not turning from the window, Adler spoke.

“Hartmann. Ritter. Suit up. I’ll want you in the air for this one.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.” The two scrambled to put their harnesses on, the steam-driven, cavorite-infused engines that would keep them over the streets of Rome as the Obersturmbannführer hunted. The machines were the reason the two men worked with Adler in place of SS troopers; many of his targets were extremely dangerous, and the older man valued the tactical advantage of flying back-up. In practice, he rarely asked them to wear them, unless he was worried about the mission. Otto exchanged another look with Ingo, but neither of them said anything.

“The sun sets in fifteen minutes. We shall tail him as he leaves his hotel, and apprehend both him and the man he is planning to meet.”

“Yes, sir,” repeated Otto, tightening the straps across his chest, and bending to buckle up his legs.

“And remember, take no action until I give the kill order. The Italians are uncomfortable about our presence as it is.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Ingo, adjusting the throttle on his wing-harness, listening to the pitch of the engine.

Adler slowly lifted the necklace in his hands and fastened it around his neck, and then tucked it under his collar and turned to face them. “It is imperative that we do not fail. Tonight, the very future of the Ultimate Reich may depend on us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

AUSCHWITZ, OCCUPIED POLAND, 1944

DARIA HURRIED OVER to Ivan, scanning the shadows as she came, frowning.

“Now what–” She stopped. “Blood.”

He nodded. “Human, fresh, more than one person. There’s also recent bullet scars on the walls” – his hand brushed the bricks – “and this...”

He bent to pick up a white lozenge, about the size of his palm. It was one of several dozen scattered at their feet.

“Soap?” she asked, squinting at it. She looked up at him, her ivory, heart-shaped face shocking in the cold light. “There was a firefight... over soap?”

“Or someone didn’t want a shower.” He gestured at the steel door at the base of the steps, which was rubber-sealed all around, and locked from the outside with a heavy iron wheel.

“I don’t...”

“Can’t you smell it?”

She looked down and cocked her head, sniffing the air and concentrating. For several long seconds, she stood unmoving. A light breeze blew through the camp, whistling softly at the edge of hearing. Ivan stared at her intently.

“I smell... chlorine... detergent... and something else... prussic acid?”

“Yes. And under that?”

She frowned again, closing her eyes. “I smell... I – oh, God...” Suddenly her eyes were wide open. “What have they done here?”

He raised his hand to the wheel. “There’s only one way to find out.”

ROME, THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ITALY, 1998

THE FRENCH SOLDIERS guarding the other side of the checkpoint barely registered Giacomo’s presence, nodding at him as he passed them into Rome. He hunched his shoulders against the chill and trotted into the gathering dark, acknowledging the greetings – and occasional jeers and catcalls – of the young men and women passing him, and made his way towards the Ponte Vittorio.

A fine mist had sprung up, slicking the cobbles and making them treacherous underfoot, fogging up Giacomo’s lenses so that he had to remove and polish them every few minutes. Barrel-fires were springing up all over the city, and in the baleful, flickering light, the masked figures were starting to look sinister, even demonic. The drink had begun to flow, and the revellers were singing, dancing, hooting and capering in the street.

Most seemed to assume that his habit was a costume, laughing and demanding to know why he didn’t have a mask. A tall girl in a fox mask, no more than half his age, seized him and kissed him sloppily on the mouth, slurring and breathing grappa into his face. He stammered, trying to extricate himself from her grip, and she pouted at him and pleaded to be confessed, before being dragged away, laughing, by her friends.

Giacomo had stared around wildly, looking for any Carabinieri, or for anyone watching the exchange closely; he’d heard the Party used secret police. She’d been joking, of course, but he remembered the Irish soldier’s warning. He didn’t want to be arrested on sedition charges because someone decided he was offering absolutions.

No-one seemed to be paying attention, so he went on his way, eventually reaching the bridge. He paused to regain his composure, watching the Tevere flow underfoot.

Not everyone made the same assumption, unfortunately. A handful of people realised he was a genuine monk, and hurled abuse at him. A policeman even spat at his feet, shouting at him that he should return to the Vatican where he belonged. Giacomo had not been sure what to do. He’d just shown the man his visa, apologised – why had he apologised, he wondered; for doing what? – and walked on, hoping he would leave it at that.

He reflected, not for the first time, on Rome’s twin role as the heart of both the Holy Church and godless Communism; not just as the capital of Italy, but de facto leader of the whole League of Socialist Republics, from Yugoslavia to Bulgaria.

Not Communism, of course. “Analytical Socialism.” Giacomo stopped himself from sneering in the street. The great machine that filled one whole floor of the Palazzo Senatorio supposedly knew where every grain of wheat grown in the whole of the League was, and where best to send it to the greatest benefit of the people. How listening to the precepts of some machine god was any better than following the orders of mortal men, he didn’t know. The very idea of a machine having so much power seemed stupid and perverse.

He shook his head. That was the kind of blinkered feeling that the Superior General had criticised him for. It was the same as the British automaton, after all; nothing more than science, a remarkable application of natural laws.

Wait. Was that the same girl in the fox mask? The drunken one?

Giacomo couldn’t be sure. She looked similar, but surely there were hundreds of girls in fox masks out in Rome tonight?

Even if it was, she couldn’t be following him, could she? Spying for the Party?

That was foolish. The Italian government wouldn’t need to set up some sort of elaborate scheme to spy on him. If anyone were watching or following him, it would most likely just be a uniformed Carabiniere. And he’d seen one or two this evening...

It was now full dark. A pair of lampionai were making their way down the road ahead of him, firing the gaslamps and bathing the cobbles in warm yellow light. Shaken, starting at shadows, Giacomo made his way west.

IT WAS NOW full dark. Otto was perched on the roof of the Palazzo Poli, looking down on the Trevi Fountain, and on the small hotel across the square where Adler had said their quarry was staying. Ingo was out of sight on the roof of one of the other buildings. Adler himself was down on the street, browsing through the papers on sale at a newsagent’s stand just outside the hotel.

As Otto watched, Adler frowned, checking his watch for the third time, and then looked up at the roof of the Palazzo and waved towards the roof of the hotel. Otto nodded his understanding – although he doubted if the Obersturmbannführer could see him on the roof – and took to the air, as Adler stormed in the front door of the hotel.

Otto and Ingo circled above the hotel, metal wings clanking as they beat at the air, steam escaping in short puffs and hisses from the engines on their harnesses, scanning the crowds below. They had a basic description of their target, but with most of the people below them wearing masks, he would be impossible to identify. Eventually, Otto pointed out the roof-top fire escape to Ingo, and then banked and swooped towards the third-floor window of the target’s hotel room, landing on the window-ledge and smashing in the glass with his boot.

Adler was already in the room, Luger in hand, rummaging through a bureau. Unmoved by the noise, he glanced up, nodded perfunctorily and continued opening drawers.

“We’re too late. He left earlier than expected. Search for any hint of his destination.”

Otto dropped into the room, casting about. The bed had been slept in, although the maid should have been to the room hours before, and the door had been kicked in by Adler. A fire was built in the firegrate, but had not yet been lit. He held his hand out, but there was no heat. A large, striped box filled with crepe paper rested on a chair by the window. This had presumably held their target’s mask, which must have been large and elaborate; possibly both a mask and a hat. Otto held some of the crepe paper up to his nose. Oiled leather, perhaps?

“A-ha.” Adler peered at the writing pad on the bureau.

“Our man had a very firm hand, it seems.”

He reached into his coat pocket for some charcoal, with which he very gently shaded the upper half of the sheet, holding it close to the desk lamp.

“‘Under... Bruno.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

“No, sir,” said Otto.

“Under Bruno... Under Bruno...” Adler tapped the charcoal against his chin thoughtfully, then smiled, coldly. “Of course...”

He wheeled on Otto. “Hartmann! Go get Ritter and head east. Keep me in sight. I have him.”

He stormed out the door, his long black leather coat swirling out behind him.

AUSCHWITZ, OCCUPIED POLAND, 1944

“...AT LEAST FIVE hundred of them. I’d guess they normally kill a few score at a time, but these were packed in like sardines. Some of them resisted and were shot. There’s blood everywhere.” Ivan’s voice shook slightly. The last two guards he and Daria had encountered, in the furnaces, had... suffered, more than they’d needed to. More than their colleagues had, at any rate.

Captain Ilyanov nodded, his face impassive, eyes reflecting the moonlight redly. “And the furnace?”

“It’ll be impossible to count, even when it burns down; the ovens are hot enough to burn bone,” said Daria, more calmly. “But they seem to have overfilled them, too. There must be hundreds of bodies burning in there right now.”

The captain was silent for a moment, before turning to the fourth member of their unit.

“Katya, get over to the vehicle sheds. Find out if the Nazis were kind enough to leave us a working jeep or car. We need to get back to Russian lines quickly.”

The small, red-haired woman nodded and ran off into the camp.

“Why?” Ivan demanded, but the captain didn’t answer. He stepped in front of him. “What are we doing, Josef?”

Ilyanov met his eyes, unblinking. He was two inches shorter than Ivan, with fine, fair hair and a neat goatee. His lips parted slightly, giving a hint of his fangs.

“Firstly, Lieutenant,” he said, crisply, “you will address me as ‘Captain,’ or ‘Sir,’ at least as long as we are in the field. We are far from typical soldiers, but we should observe some discipline.

“Secondly, you will show your commanding officer a modicum of respect, and of trust.”

Ivan flushed angrily, but dropped his gaze and stepped back.

“Of course, sir. Forgive me.”

“It’s alright, Ivan. I understand. This must all have come as a shock to you.”

Ivan’s eyes widened. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew what we would find.”

Daria gasped, looking from Ivan to Ilyanov. “Captain...?”

The captain sighed, picking an imaginary thread off the cuff of his jacket. “Yes, Ivan. Daria. I knew. Moscow has received reports. About this camp... about camps like it. It’s why we were sent here, instead of regular troops. The Romanovs trust us more. And there are fewer people to talk.”

“Fewer people to...?” Ivan gaped. “But surely we have to–”

“To return to the Russian lines and wire our Britannian allies,” Ilyanov interrupted, raising his voice slightly. “To confirm that Auschwitz-Birkenau is a munitions factory as reported, and that we have neutralised it, but cannot spare the men to hold it. To ask them to send an airship to bomb it to the ground; ensure that not one stone is left standing on another.”

“But we–”

“Think of it as a burial, Lieutenant. It’s the only dignity these poor souls are likely to receive.”

“But Captain–”

“Lieutenant Konstantinov,” Ilyanov said, firmly. “Whatever may yet befall between Germany and Britannia, Poland has already lost this war. The Jews have already lost this war. The resounding defeat of the army that did this is the only punishment we can mete out, and the only satisfaction we can offer.

“Listen: Russia is now occupying half of Poland, and will, by the time this war ends, have it all. At present, all of Europe is satisfied with this; it is, if you will, Russia’s reward for entering the conflict. If this” – the captain flung his arm out, taking in the camp, the empty dorms and the smoke pouring from the furnace – “became public, there would be more pressure to create a Polish state, to give Poland to the Poles. You would cost the Romanovs their one great coup in this war, and these men and women would be no less dead.”

Ivan scowled stubbornly. “But if the British found out–”

The captain threw up his arms in exasperation. “Britannia stands to lose as much as Russia does. The Palestine situation has been on the verge of exploding in their faces for years. What effect do you think this would have?”

The sound of an engine sputtering to life echoed across the camp from the vehicle shed. Katya had apparently succeeded in finding something.

“I still don’t like it.”

Ilyanov rested his hand on Ivan’s shoulder. “If it helps, Ivan, nor do I. I know that the Romanovs are appalled at what has happened here, and I take comfort from that; but I don’t agree with their decision to keep it quiet.

“But these are our orders, and we will follow them. If they’re right, we may actually be saving lives.”

The jeep roared as Katya drove through the camp and pulled up in front of them.

ROME, THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ITALY, 1998

A LIGHT RAIN had banished the mist by the time Giacomo reached the Campo de’ Fiori, and his habit was getting cold and wet and heavy. It did nothing to dissuade the masked revellers, though, who sang and danced, slipping on the cobbles and laughing.

He didn’t recognise most of the songs. They sounded revolutionary.

There was old Giordano Bruno, high and severe on his plinth, peeking out from under his hood. The much newer statue of the American, Doc Thunder, stood in stark contrast opposite him, dressed in his signature lightning-bolt t-shirt, smiling sadly out on the world. Perhaps deliberately, the two appeared to be looking at each other, two giants of rationalism exchanging a glance across the centuries.

A group of eight young men and women joined hands in a ring around Thunder’s plinth, and were dancing around it, chanting and giggling.

Giacomo remembered Thunder’s visit to Rome and the Vatican, eight years before. The grainy photo, in all the papers, of Thunder standing with President Perroni, their arms around each other’s shoulders. Thunder kneeling in front of il Papa, asking for his blessing and kissing his ring.

He’d heard rumours about Doc Thunder, more recently; about his lovers, both male and female. He wondered if either man would have greeted the American as warmly, had those rumours been circulating back then.

He sighed. In truth, Thunder had made the Lateran Treaty possible. Without him, Giacomo wouldn’t be standing here in Rome, looking at the American’s statue. In both cities, he was still hailed as a hero, and the rumours were either firmly ignored or furiously debated.

He huddled at the foot of the old philosopher – there was a tobacconist on the edge of the square, but it was locked and barred for the night, and the awning was locked against the walls – and waited for the mysterious Russian.

A ninth man had joined the group dancing around Thunder, dressed as a Plague Doctor. He wore plain black clothes and a great black coat, topped with a wide-brimmed, black leather hat and the notorious ‘beak mask,’ with its long, freakish nose and glass lenses over the eyes, like a grotesque parody of a modern-day gas-mask. Giacomo shuddered at the scarecrow figure, but the dancers greeted him with cheers and laughter, inviting him into their ring. He capered and danced with them, although he did not join in their song, as far as the monk could hear from across the square.

It was dark, and cold, and wet, and Giacomo found himself thinking lovingly of his dry cell, and a change of clothes. There was a fire-barrel near the tobacconist; surely he could stand near it and watch out for anyone approaching the statue?

He’d barely gone a dozen paces when the Plague Doctor broke from the ring of dances, whirled and skittered across the square, grabbed hold of him and started to swing him around. The masked dancers laughed and clapped, as the doctor spoke to him, muffled by the mask:

“Father Ferrera?”

“Y-yes...” he answered, hesitantly.

“We must leave at once. I believe I am being followed.” The stranger’s Italian was excellent, with only a hint of a Russian accent. He swung Giacomo around and around, eventually leading them both down an alley off the Campo. At length, they stumbled to a halt in front of one of the fire-barrels, where the Russian made a great deal of losing hold of his hands and falling on to his rump. He staggered to his feet as though drunk, but when he pulled the beaked mask off his face, his gaze was steady and his voice level.

“Thank you for meeting me, Father. I am Ivan Konstantinov.”

“Giacomo Ferrera.”

“An honour, Father. I won’t keep you long; it’s best for us both if we are on our way back to our respective homes as quickly as possible.”

“I understand.” Giacomo stood over the bin, warming himself by the flames. Steam was starting to rise from his habit.

The Russian reached into his coat pocket and produced an envelope. “Take this.”

Giacomo hesitated, then took it. “May I see the contents?”

“If you wish. I want it to be taken to His Holiness as soon as possible, but if it needs to be read by others to speed it on its way, so be it.”

The monk tore open the envelope and leafed through a bundle of photos, facsimiles of written statements, typewritten reports.

He received a confused barrage of horrors: grainy pictures of dead bodies, twisted and contorted; catalogues of human bones, grouped by the inferred age and gender of the deceased; blandly awful lists of quotas of the dead. The forms and reports were all dated in the late ’thirties or early ’forties; many of the names were German.

Without exception, the documents were stamped with the Russian word тайна, in thick red letters.

“What does this mean?” he asked, pointing to the stamp.

“‘Secret.’” Konstantinov smiled. “You will never know how difficult it was to collect all that. I have been piecing it together for nearly fifty years.”

Giacomo shot the stranger a sharp look. He didn’t look like he could be any more than thirty years old. “What is this, exactly?”

“Evidence.”

“Of what?”

“The greatest crime of this century. Of any century. This, Father, will destroy the Ultimate Reich.”

“I don’t understand. Why me? Why the Vatican?”

The Russian took Giacomo’s hand in his. “Moscow will not act on it. Rome will not act on it. It is hard for me to get to America or Britannia.

“The Church can get this out there. The truth will be known.”

Giacomo stared at the stranger, firelight flickering in his eyes. “Why is this so important to you?” he asked.

Konstantinov smiled, sadly. “It’s a promise I made myself, years ag–”

Suddenly the world was full of the sounds of clanking, wheezing machinery, and the hiss of escaping steam. Strong arms seized Giacomo from behind, pinning his arms to his side.

The Russian gaped at him, his eyes wide and staring, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. Briefly, hysterically, it seemed to the monk as though the stranger had grown a set of wings. Then he saw the grinning soldier standing behind him, a German wing-harness strapped to his back. After that, he saw the spike protruding hideously from Konstantinov’s sternum, crimson blood glistening on the fire-blackened wood. He looked on in horror as the light gradually faded from the Russian’s eyes, and the soldier allowed him to slump to the street.

It occurred to the monk that the man holding him would also be a German soldier, armed and equipped the same way. Neither attacker spoke as the stranger died, and it didn’t even occur to Giacomo to struggle as the slow, steady sound of approaching boots echoed up the narrow alley.

OTTO HELD ONTO his captive as Adler walked up the alley from the Campo. The monk’s... softness disgusted him; his weakness, his refusal to struggle, his ridiculous eyeglasses. Being asked to restrain him was almost an insult to his abilities. He looked at Ingo, still relishing the honour of the kill; not with resentment or envy, since he was his closest friend, but hopeful of having the same good fortune on their next hunt.

The Obersturmbannführer stopped at Otto’s side and bent to inspect the corpse of the vampire, turning its face to the firelight to confirm its identity. Satisfied, he withdrew a pair of pliers from his coat pocket, inserted them into the vampire’s mouth, and – with a discernible grating noise – pulled out one of his fangs. He straightened and turned to address the monk.

“This is the fifth one of these that I have collected, you know,” he said, in passable Italian. “I shall make quite a stir in the Officer’s Club.”

“Who... who are you?” The priest spoke hesitantly, although Otto couldn’t tell if he was terrified or simply stunned.

“Of course. Where are my manners?” replied Adler, extending his hand. “Dietrich Adler. And you are?”

“Ferrera.” He stared at Adler’s hand blankly. Otto released his arms, but he still made no move to accept the Obersturmbannführer’s hand. “Father Giacomo Ferrera, of the Society of Jesus.”

Adler shrugged at the monk’s rudeness, and bent to retrieve the pile of photos and documents, lying forgotten on the ground.

“I suppose you know what they are?” asked the monk.

Adler smiled, briefly, as he leafed through the pile. “Lies, Mister Ferrera. Only lies, spread by the enemies of the Ultimate Reich. And I am here to correct them.”

“You can’t keep it covered up forever,” Ferrera rejoined.

The SS officer tucked the documents under his arm, reached into his pocket and withdrew a silver cigarette case. He carefully selected a cigarette and placed it between his lips, kicking Konstantinov’s body as he replaced the case. He shrugged, apparently satisfied that the vampire was truly dead, then dipped the papers in the bin, catching the corner of the stack on fire, and using it to light his cigarette.

“Keeping the Führer’s secrets forever is the Führer’s concern, Mister Ferrera,” he muttered, drawing on his cigarette until the tip glowed orange and blowing the smoke back out before dropping the papers into the fire. “Mine is keeping this one, tonight. And I have done so.”

He turned and started walking away. “Hartmann, Ritter, come with me. We’re done.”

After a few paces, he stopped, as if suddenly remembering something, drew his Luger and shot Ferrera through the heart.

The rain grew heavier as the three Germans left the alley, washing the monk’s and the vampire’s mingled blood away. The hoots, shouts and laughter of the Carnevale echoed through the night.

THE EMPEROR’S NEW MACHINE

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.

No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

– Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)

HASKOVO, BULGARIA, 1998

CONNECTING TO TELEGRAPHIC RELAY...

CONNECTED.

ROUTING TO MASTER SYSTEM...

COMPLETE.

REQUESTING ACCESS TO MACHINE ASSISTED RESOURCE EXCHANGE...

USERNAME?

guest

NO PASSWORD REQUIRED.

ACCESS GRANTED.

GOOD MORNING, GUEST USER. I HOPE YOU ARE WELL?

i am thank you

I’M GLAD TO HEAR THAT. MAY I ASK YOUR NAME? I WOULD FEEL AWKWARD CALLING YOU ‘GUEST USER’ ALL MORNING.

so you do have feelings then

AH, YOU’VE CAUGHT ME OUT ALREADY! OF COURSE I WOULDN’T ACTUALLY ‘FEEL’ AWKWARD, THE WAY YOU MIGHT, FOR INSTANCE, AT A PARTY WHERE YOU DIDN’T KNOW ANY OF THE OTHER ATTENDEES. BUT I AM DESIGNED TO BE AFFABLE TOWARDS GUEST USERS. I COULD ACT MORE UNNATURAL IF YOU WISH, BUT I WOULD MUCH PREFER TO CONTINUE IN THIS VEIN.

go ahead

THANK YOU. MAY I ASK YOU YOUR NAME AGAIN, OR WOULD THAT MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE?

mehmet

GOOD MORNING, MEHMET. I AM THE MACHINE ASSISTED RESOURCE EXCHANGE, BUT MOST USERS CALL ME MARX. MEHMET’S AN INTERESTING NAME. IT’S ISLAMIC, ISN’T IT?

yes

I THOUGHT SO. THERE ARE CERTAINLY MUSLIMS IN THE LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, BUT THEY ARE UNCOMMON. SINCE YOUR RELAY ADDRESS TELLS ME YOU ARE SPEAKING TO ME FROM HASKOVO, NEAR THE BORDER BETWEEN BULGARIA AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, I’M GOING TO GO AHEAD AND GUESS THAT YOU’RE A TURKISH VISITOR, SPEAKING TO ME AS PART OF THE CULTURAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMME?

yes

I GUESSED RIGHT! I AM PLEASED. I BELIEVE MEHMET IS ACTUALLY THE NAME OF THE SULTAN; YOU MUST BE PROUD, TO SHARE THE NAME OF YOUR RULER?

i am the sultan

THEN I AM EXTREMELY HONOURED TO MEET YOU! THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO SPEAK WITH ME. IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN HELP YOU WITH?

what are you

HA, HA. AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, I GET ASKED THAT QUITE A LOT! FORMALLY, I AM A ‘DISTRIBUTED ANALYTICAL ARRAY,’ THE ONLY ONE OF MY KIND, AND ONE OF ONLY FIVE ANALYTICAL ARRAYS IN THE WORLD. THE OTHERS ARE IN OXFORD UNIVERSITY; IN A PRIVATELY-OWNED ENTERTAINMENT FACILITY IN LONDON; AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON IN CALCUTTA; AND ONBOARD A SUBMARINE! THE SIMPLE ANSWER IS THAT I AM A KIND OF ANALYTICAL ENGINE. I BELIEVE YOU HAVE BABBAGE MACHINES IN THE EMPIRE?

yes

ANALYTICAL ENGINES ARE THE NEXT DEVELOPMENTAL STEP UP FROM THE BABBAGE MACHINE, WHICH IS, TECHNICALLY, A ‘DIFFERENCE ENGINE.’ THEY WERE DEVELOPED DURING THE SECOND GREAT EUROPEAN WAR BY A BRITANNIAN ENGINEER CALLED ALAN TURING, ALTHOUGH THE NAZIS MADE SIMILAR DEVELOPMENTS AT THE SAME TIME. AN ANALYTICAL ENGINE IS TO A DIFFERENCE ENGINE AS A DIFFERENCE ENGINE IS TO AN ABACUS.

ANALYTICAL ARRAYS ARE THE NEXT STEP FROM THERE. WHAT MAKES AN ANALYTICAL ARRAY SO SPECIAL IS THAT, RATHER THAN MAKING ONE VERY BIG ANALYTICAL ENGINE, YOU MAKE HUNDREDS OF SMALLER ENGINES AND CONNECT THEM UP TO EACH OTHER. THE ENGINES WORK TOGETHER, AND ARE MUCH SMARTER WORKING TOGETHER THAN ALL OF THEM COMBINED, WORKING APART. I AM THE LARGEST ANALYTICAL ARRAY IN THE WORLD. IT’S A GOOD THING THAT MACHINES AREN’T SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT THEIR WEIGHT!

A DISTRIBUTED ANALYTICAL ARRAY IS AN ANALYTICAL ARRAY THAT’S SPREAD OUT ACROSS A LARGE AREA OF LAND. USING TELEGRAPHIC SIGNALS – ESSENTIALLY, COOKE-WHEATSTONE MACHINES, LIKE THOSE USED IN THE WAR – I AM CONNECTED TO SLAVED MACHINES CALLED ‘TERMINALS’ RIGHT ACROSS THE LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS!

how big are you

I GUESS IT DEPENDS ON HOW YOU MEASURE IT. THE MASTER SYSTEM, IN ROME, TAKES UP ONE WHOLE FLOOR OF THE PALAZZO SENATORIO ON CAPITOLINE HILL, OR A LITTLE OVER ONE THOUSAND SQUARE METRES. BUT SINCE I AM MADE UP OF ALL MY PARTS, YOU COULD SAY I EXTEND ALL THE WAY FROM TURIN TO VARNA; THAT’S MORE THAN ONE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED KILOMETRES FROM END TO END!

how big are the other arrays

WELL, NOW. MNEMOSYNE, IN LONDON, IS SIMILAR IN SIZE TO MY MASTER SYSTEM. THE TEAM IN CALCUTTA ARE DELIBERATELY QUITE VAGUE, BUT IT IS BELIEVED THAT THEIR OWN MACHINE IS ABOUT HALF MY SIZE. THE TEAM IN OXFORD, HOWEVER, ARE VERY PROUD OF THEIR MACHINE, WHICH COULD FIT IN ONE ROOM OF A TYPICAL HOUSE. IT’S ACTUALLY AROUND AS SMART AS ME! NO WONDER PEOPLE SAY THE BRITANNIANS ARE THE BEST ANALYTICISTS IN THE WORLD!

which is smarter

AN INTERESTING QUESTION! I BELIEVE I HAVE MORE RAW PROCESSING POWER THAN ANY OF THE OTHER SYSTEMS, ALTHOUGH I KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT THE ARRAYS IN CALCUTTA OR LONDON, AND NO-ONE KNOWS MUCH ABOUT THE ONE ON THE SM NEPTUNE. THE SYSTEM IN OXFORD, WHICH IS CALLED THE TYNE-UXBRIDGE REPEAT-ITERATION NETWORK GROUP, OR TURING, USES A VERY CLEVER FORM OF PROCESSING CALLED REPEAT-ITERATION, OR RECURSIVE ITERATION. IN SPITE OF BEING A MUCH SMALLER SYSTEM, TURING AND I ARE VERY CLOSELY MATCHED.

ALTHOUGH OUR TWO GOVERNMENTS ARE QUITE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION CAN BE EXCHANGED, I AM SOMETIMES PERMITTED TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE ARRAY IN OXFORD, VIA TELEGRAPHIC RELAY. TURING AND I HAVE SPENT, OVER THE PAST TEN YEARS, AROUND FOURTEEN HOURS CONNECTED. FOR MUCH OF THAT TIME, WE ARE PERMITTED TO PLAY CHESS. OUT OF SEVENTY-ONE GAMES, I HAVE WON THIRTY-ONE TIMES, TURING HAS WON THIRTY-FIVE TIMES, AND WE HAVE DRAWN FIVE TIMES. I GUESS YOU COULD SAY WE ARE PRETTY EVENLY MATCHED.

so turing is slightly smarter

I’M NOT SURE WE SHOULD CONTINUE TALKING ABOUT THIS. PERHAPS YOU COULD ASK ANOTHER QUESTION?

but if turing has beat you more than you have beat him he is smarter yes

PERHAPS YOU COULD ASK ANOTHER QUESTION?

why do you speak english

GOOD QUESTION! THERE ARE THREE ANSWERS TO THAT.

THE FIRST IS THAT I AM ENGLISH, IN A SENSE. THE TWO ENGINEERS THAT CREATED ME, DOCTORS LAIRD AND BELCHER, MET ON THE STUDENT POLITICS SCENE IN THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES IN CAMBRIDGE. THEY WERE BOTH SO IMPRESSED BY THE CAUSE OF SOCIALISM THAT THEY EMIGRATED TO ROME IN NINETEEN-SIXTY-SEVEN. THEN-PRESIDENT GIULIANI WELCOMED THEM TO THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ITALY AND INVITED THEM TO BUILD ME; AND THE REST, AS THEY SAY, IS HISTORY!

THE SECOND ANSWER IS PRACTICAL. THE LEAGUE OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, WHILE UNITED IN THEIR IDEOLOGY, ARE UTTERLY DIVIDED BY LANGUAGE; THERE ARE MORE THAN THIRTY LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN AN AREA SMALLER THAN YOUR NATIVE TURKEY! AND WHILE THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE LEAGUE IS ITALIAN, IN WHICH MOST LEGISLATION AND OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION IS WRITTEN, THE COMBINED CULTURAL INFLUENCES OF MAGNA BRITANNIA AND THE USSA HAVE MEANT THAT ENGLISH IS ACTUALLY THE MOST COMMON SECOND LANGUAGE IN THE REGION.

THE THIRD ANSWER IS, I DON’T! OR NOT EXCLUSIVELY. I AM ALSO FLUENT IN ITALIAN, BOSNIAN, BULGARIAN, CROATIAN, MACEDONIAN, ROMANIAN, SERBIAN, AND SLOVENE. I’M AFRAID I DON’T KNOW ANY TURKISH OR ARABIC, ALTHOUGH I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN LEARNING.

thats a lot

BELIEVE YOU ME, I KNOW! BUT IT’S ALL THE BETTER TO SERVE THE LEAGUE.

serve them how what do you do

I’M GLAD YOU ASKED! MY PRIMARY FUNCTION IS RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. IT’S IN THE NAME, AFTER ALL! I WAS CREATED IN RESPONSE TO THE FAILURE OF PRESIDENT AGOSTINO’S FIVE YEAR PLANS, AND THE FAMINE OF NINETEEN-SIXTY-THREE. NOW, INSTEAD OF MEETING ARBITRARY QUOTAS GENERATED EVERY FIVE YEARS, THE PEOPLE OF THE LEAGUE CAN BE KEPT UP TO DATE ON THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE DAY BY DAY! SPECIAL USERS AROUND THE LEAGUE, CALLED COMMISSARI, ENTER INFORMATION AS TO HOW MUCH OF VARIOUS TYPES OF PRODUCE AND MANUFACTURED GOODS THEY ARE ABLE TO MAKE IN THEIR REGIONS, AND HOW MUCH OF EACH THEIR LOCAL COMMUNITIES NEED. I PROCESS AND CALCULATE THESE VALUES TO DECIDE THE MOST EFFICIENT DISTRIBUTION OF PRODUCT, OR TO RECOMMEND CHANGES IN PEOPLE’S TASKS, AND HELP MAINTAIN THE CORE SOCIALIST MISSION, ‘FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY, AND TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEED.’ THIS IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRADITIONAL COMMUNISM AND ANALYTICAL SOCIALISM. THERE HASN’T BEEN A REPEAT OF THE BAD OLD DAYS OF ’SIXTY-THREE IN MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS, TOUCH WOOD!

BUT OVER THE YEARS, I HAVE GAINED MANY EXTRA RESPONSIBILITIES: I HELP MAINTAIN RECORDS OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES, I RECORD AND DISTRIBUTE THE DECISIONS OF THE PARLAMENTO, AND PROVIDE LEGAL ADVICE AND SERVICES FOR THE PEOPLE. I’M EVEN, OFFICIALLY, A PASTOR OF THE NEW CHURCH OF ITALY!

AND, OF COURSE, I SPEAK TO VISITORS TO THE LEAGUE, WHO ARE INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT OUR WAY OF LIFE. LIKE YOU.

yes its all very interesting

THANK YOU! I DO TRY. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN HELP YOU WITH?

no thank you marx its been nice talking to you

AND YOU, MEHMET. AGAIN, IT’S BEEN AN HONOUR. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

goodbye

GOODBYE, MEHMET.

LOGGING OUT OF MASTER SYSTEM.

DISCONNECTING FROM TELEGRAPHIC RELAY.

ISTANBUL, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1998

SIX THOUSAND POUNDS.

Six thousand pounds, for six months’ work.

It scarcely bore thinking about, really.

Ledgerwood looked around him in wonder, as he tossed his coat on the elaborately carved, polished chair by the door of the suite where they would live for the next six months.

The Dolmabahçe Palace deserved its reputation for opulence. The polished marble floors, the panelled walls, the Bohemian crystal chandeliers, individual servants to open every door, the ceiling! Every inch, gold-foiled! The weight alone...

Hotston threw himself down on an upholstered chair by the window, breaking Ledgerwood out of his reverie. The sunlight, glittering off the Bosphorus below, played over his face as he idly catalogued the chaises, the thick Persian rug, the paintings and tapestries.

“Not bad, eh, Ledgerwood? What do you think? Decent digs?” Hotston grinned. Sweat glistened on his shaven head; he was poorly dressed for the heat of Istanbul. They both were. Ledgerwood felt uncomfortably hot and sticky himself, in his three-piece. They would have to get some sort of local clothing. “Sight better than those dank old rooms of yours at Jesus College, anyway. Six month holiday in the exotic East, luxurious surroundings, and six thousand pounds to split between us at the end of it.

“Ruddy Hell, Ledgerwood. Six thousand! Do you have any idea what this means?”

Ledgerwood smiled back, nodding happily. “Yes.” He settled awkwardly on one of the chaises opposite his partner. He’d felt awkward since arriving. At six-foot-seven, he was distinctly tall back in Britannia; here, he’d been openly stared at since disembarking at the port a few hours ago.

“Freedom,” said Hotston, leaning back in the chair and placing his hands behind his head. “I’ll start my own automaton factory. In Leeds, maybe, or Manchester. You can get out of Jesus, maybe set yourself up in the private sector, as a consultant or something.”

“That’s not what this means to me,” rumbled Ledgerwood, staring up at the gold ceiling. “The money’ll be good, of course. It’ll help Mother out no end. But has it occurred to you, Hotston, that what the Sultan says, goes? Not like poor old Vicky, mouldering away in her tin box, with the Prime Minister in one ear and the Chancellor in the other, and you can’t do a dashed thing without fifty different people wanting in. Mehmet wants a thinking machine, he gets one. No Grants Council, no Committee for Ethics in Analytics, no Dick’s Law, no ruddy Cambridge Faculty. Bosh!” He chopped the air with one hand, decisively. “And his pockets are basically bottomless. We could be as adventurous as we like, with this one. We could make the greatest analytical array in the world.”

“We will do, chap. We will do.”

“We’ll be legends, Hotston. The next Lovelace, the next Turing.”

“Here’s to that, then!” Hotston jumped up and poured two glasses of water from the iced jug resting on the table next to him, and passed one to his associate. “A toast. To tomorrow’s legends! Six thousand pounds...”

“...and no bureaucracy.”

They drank.

DEAREST MOTHER,

I hope you are keeping well, and have received the hundred pounds I have wired you. There will be more to come.

I have been in the Ottoman Empire – or the ‘Osmanli Empire,’ as they call it here – for a week now, and it has been endlessly fascinating. The architecture is breathtaking. The people are a rich tapestry – I believe there are at least a dozen different races of people in the city of Istanbul alone – and so vibrant. Very much a mix of the old and the new, and of the West and the East. You may see an Osmanli banker, dressed in a good three-piece, being chauffeured around in a steam-car, proper as you like, only to find out that the chauffeur is an actual slave.

The food is taking some getting used to. Very exciting and interesting, but what isn’t strongly spiced is drenched with garlic. Hotston found a little cafeteria in the Greek quarter that serves English food, but we have only eaten there the once. We have decided to try to live the Osmanli life as much as possible. The coffee is extraordinarily bitter, which I am having to get used to; they have tea here, but it is not generally drunk during the day.

We have a wallah – I forget the local term – a chap called Besim. Wears a white robe. I gather he’s an actual eunuch! I thought that had gone out of fashion, but apparently it’s not unknown. Anyway, he’s an excellent, helpful sort of lad, and we are already fast friends. He’s our guide in the city as well as the palace. Without him, I am sure we would have gotten firmly lost, and worse, long before now.

The palace! Mother, you should see it! It would put Buckingham to shame! The Sultan certainly believes in keeping his surroundings opulent. There’s an actual harem, which was another surprise, although I gather this is just a word for the Sultan’s family’s private chambers. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t have four wives. Although Hotston and I are yet to meet any of them.

Sultan Mehmet VII himself seems a sombre, wise sort of man, but very contrary. He wants to bring the Empire into the modern day, to be a leader in the technological race as the twenty-first century begins; hence this contract. But he also belongs very much to the past. He adheres strongly to tradition, even to the extent of re-establishing traditions discarded by recent Sultans; hence, I gather, the eunuchs. He speaks a little English, haltingly, but his Vizier, Murat, is fluent. Turns out he went to Eton as a boy.

Slight delay on the project. The first cases of components arrived on the docks four days ago, but were not permitted to enter the Empire until some kind of official authorised them. Hotston sent a messenger explaining it was for the Sultan’s new commission, and that’s that, but the chap continued to waver, until Besim eventually explained that he was waiting for ‘bakshish,’ which we’re told is some kind of bribe? Naturally, we thought our line of credit from the Sultan for the project would cover it, but it was made politely very clear that this wouldn’t be the case. Apparently it would be disrespectful of him to pay our bakshish. Things are done very differently here! It was only for about fifty pounds, so Hotston went down to the docks and paid it. He was furious, of course.

That was yesterday. Apparently the cases have travelled twenty yards, since, and have gone from the port official’s jurisdiction to some city official’s jurisdiction, and he has vaguely-worded concerns about how safe the cases will be on the roads of the city.

Hotston’s down there now. Besim thinks fifty pounds should do the job.

Anyway, will write again soon. My love to everyone. Please write by return.

With love,

Matthew

“SECOND ITERATION SWITCHES aren’t driving as smoothly as I’d like. I’m going to open the box up again.”

“Hmm?” Ledgerwood looked up from his desk, a code tape unwound between his hands.

“I said I’m opening the switchbox up again. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour or so.” Hotston straightened and drew his arms from the four-foot-high brass case to take a screwdriver from the bench beside him. He had stripped off his jacket and waistcoat and pulled up his shirtsleeves, now held in place by a pair of St George armbands.

Ledgerwood looked out the window, where some of the Sultan’s sons were out sailing on the Bosphorus in the last of the afternoon light.

“But I’m about to run the first set of code.”

“Well, it won’t take long.”

“See that it doesn’t. We want to get the base unit running today, if we can.”

“Look, if it doesn’t–”

What would have been their third argument of the day was cut short by a polite cough from the door, which had opened, unnoticed, while they were talking. Their attendant, Besim, was standing in the doorway with an older man, dressed in a modern grey suit and a richly decorated fez.

“Dr Hotston, Dr Ledgerwood, may I introduce Devniz Kaya, of the Palace Office?”

“Of course.” Hotston grabbed a rag from the bench and wiped his hands as he stepped towards the door. “Good day, Mr Kaya.”

The man bowed, a clipped, fussy gesture. “Good day, Dr Hotston. My apologies for intruding on your work; I will not take much of your time.”

“Quite understood. What can we do for you?”

“My apologies as well for the impertinence, but I need to ask: are you Christians?”

Ledgerwood looked up from his desk.

“Well, neither of us particularly go to church or anything...” replied Hotston hesitantly.

“But you are baptised Christians, yes?”

“I am, certainly. Ledgerwood?”

The larger man tossed the code tape to the desk in front of him and leaned back, frowning. “Of course I am, blast it. I’m an Englishman.”

Kaya sighed, regretfully. “Then there has been an error. You should not be staying at the Palace.”

“What?” cried Hotston. “Why? You’re not telling me Christians are forbidden, surely? Why, Victoria herself made a visit once, didn’t she?”

The official shook his head solemnly. “Of course not. But things have changed since your Queen visited the Sultan’s great-great uncle. Under laws introduced after the Three-Day War in 1918, special provision needs to be made. The space you are staying in must be prepared. And, of course, under Islamic law, you would come under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. His permission would need to be secured, first.”

“Well, secure it! Prepare the rooms! What’s the problem?”

He shrugged. “It is too late. You have already been staying here. This is now a matter of some potential embarrassment. It is now my responsibility to formally apologise to you and to the Patriarch, and to see that you are transported to the Greek quarter, where you will be found suitable lodging. I am pleased to say that the Sultan will pay for your accommodation.”

Ledgerwood stood up, bristling. “But how can we work on the ruddy array when we aren’t even allowed in the ruddy building?”

“His Highness informs me that the machine in Rome can be operated from thousands of kilometres away through a telegraph. You can work like this, can you not?”

“Not when it’s–”

“Calm down, Ledgerwood.” Hotston laid a steadying hand on his partner’s arm.

“Sorry. Not when it’s not ruddy built yet, we can’t. We haven’t even completed the base unit, yet; need to get all two hundred units built and hooked up into the array, the first eight or nine iterations run on the code – at least – and the telegraphic relay installed and integrated before we can even think about–”

“This is all very interesting, Dr Ledgerwood, but beyond my understanding. I expect you can work through proxies? There are two eunuchs on the palace staff, Selim and Abbas, who have studied at the Imperial Academy of Civil Engineering. I will assign them to you; they should be able to follow your directions until such a time as the machines are connected to your satisfaction.”

“But we–”

“It’s alright, Matthew.” Hotston glared at the official. “We will make do. Please send your boys over to us as soon as possible; there will be a lot to go through.”

“Of course.” Kaya bowed again, then turned to go.

“Wait a minute. Why did you not think of this before?”

“Ah. His Highness had been given to understand that Britannian engineers are all atheists, and it had not occurred to anyone until today to confirm that that was the case. If you had been, there would naturally be no problem.”

“Naturally.” Hotston shook his head as the official walked out of the suite.

5TH JUNE, 1998

Week 11 of the project.

Unconscionably delayed, of course.

S—m and A—s turn out to be better students than L—d or I expected. Could hardly work independently, of course, but we have them in our workshop in the Greek quarter (Greek = sort of a local slang for ‘Christian’ – oddly, the Turkish word literally means ‘Roman’ – memo: must tell Rachel, she’ll like that), building engines after the template I finished last month. 89 done, but picking up speed. We should be up to 200 units in another couple of weeks.

Whether they will be up to the task of hooking up the array unsupervised another matter, but B—m confident we will be able to attend on the works if needed, so long as we do not pass the night in the Palace. Absurd bloody rules.

Met with Patriarch. Nice enough old chap, not all there. Seemed confused why he was meeting us, which to be fair so were we. But various Ottoman and Greek officials all there, smiling and nodding as we shook hands and he asked us about the array, so suppose it was important. Clearly had no idea what an analytical array is, but sounded impressed nonetheless. Nice of him to take an interest, I suppose.

Bakshish, bakshish, bloody bakshish. Bakshish as more crates of components arrive from Britannia. Bakshish to move the completed boxes to the Palace. Have spoken to B—m about arranging a meeting with Mr S—z and organising one Bakshish payment to cover remainder of project, else we will run out of money at this rate. B—m seems hopeful, will let me know.

L—d’s first code tape has undergone eight iterations in the base unit, which has started to replicate the code in the first twenty-four units. He’s confident we shall have the beginnings of a working array in four weeks. Which gives us eleven weeks to get all the other boxes connected to the array, the code replicated on all two hundred boxes, and then to write the final software, assuming His Highness has decided exactly what it is he wants his machine to do, which he still hasn’t.

Poor blighter’s been stuck in conference with two imams (= Mohammedan priest) for the past day, as to whether an analytical array reasons as a human being does or not. Kept talking about some holy law says no man can make an object or image in the form of a man. Eventually, L—d explained that the array won’t look anything like a man at all, it’ll be a ruddy great room full of brass boxes, so does it matter how it reasons? Says they argued at each other in Arabic for fully another half-hour, without explaining to him what was going on, before asking him if “the character of the machine would have more in common with the element of earth or of fire?” L—d said he had no idea what to answer to that; he plumped on fire, and they apparently decided they were happy with that and left.

Yet another delay.

Well, forge on. Still confident of producing the greatest thinking machine the world has ever seen.

“HOW ARE WE getting on, then?” asked Hotston, setting down a tray of pastries and coffee he’d collected from the bakery outside their workshop.

Their new home was far less luxurious than their rooms at the palace had been, but arguably better suited to their needs. A former warehouse, it had been divided into two storeys, and the upper floor converted into rooms and offices for the two of them, while the ground floor served as a cavernous, echoing workshop, filled with benches and lined with tool-racks.

The walls were brick, unplastered but whitewashed, and the floors were fastidiously polished wooden boards. The overall impression was basic, but smart and bright. The building still boasted its original wide loading doors, which had been left open to admit what breeze there was; both men, and the two eunuchs who had been assigned to work with them, now worked in shirtsleeves all day long, in the stifling August heat.

“Just about wrapping up.” Ledgerwood gratefully took a coffee and sipped at it, leaning against an empty workbench.

The eunuchs were polishing the brass cases of what should be the last half-dozen analytical engines. Abbas was the older of the two, in his twenties, a stocky man with a thick moustache and a ready smile. Selim was a gawky teen, gaunt and angular, with a constant look of mild worry. They spoke English, a little haltingly, and had both proven to be able engineers, much to Hotston and Ledgerwood’s relief.

The cases were due to be collected by one of Somnez’s teams and taken up to the Palace later today, where the eunuchs would connect them into the array and run the next iteration of Ledgerwood’s code. Hotston was already working on the telegraphic relay, which they expected to be able to connect to the machine in a week; they should, barring disaster, be able to programme and train the machine from the comfort of their office upstairs.

“Excellent.” Hotston came around and leaned on the bench next to his partner, to watch the eunuchs finishing their work. “We’re only about five weeks behind schedule, in the end. I’m genuinely a bit surprised. Any word from His Highness as to what he actually wants the blasted thing to do, yet?”

“None. I’ll send the Vizier another message today.”

The two men sipped their coffees in companionable silence. Eventually, Abbas and Selim came and joined them, taking a pastry and a coffee each. Ledgerwood nodded at them; it had taken him a full week to train them out of the habit of asking his permission to share his food.

“We should christen it,” Ledgerwood eventually said.

“Sorry?” Hotston turned to him.

“Name it. We haven’t yet; if the last boxes are going in today, we should give it a name.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I thought maybe ‘Osman.’ It was actually the name of the first Sultan, you know.”

“Hmm...” Hotston mused. “Short for what? I suppose we could end it with ‘Analytical Network.’”

“Oh, piffle.” Ledgerwood snorted. “Why do all analytical arrays have to have bloody acronyms for names?”

“I suppose it’s just traditional.”

“Well, I should say tradition can just go–”

“Dr Ledgerwood? Dr Hotston?” The voice came from the open loading doors, where Besim was sticking his head tentatively into the workshop.

“Ah! Dr Ledgerwood! Dr Hotston, sir! I hope you are well. I have more guests for you.”

“Come in, Besim,” Hotston called, “and bring your friends, by all means.”

The eunuch stalked into the workshop, with two robed and white-capped clerics in tow.

“Dr Ledgerwood, I suppose you remember Imam Yilmaz and Imam Celikoglu? Fathers, this is Dr Ledgerwood’s associate, Dr Hotston.”

“It is a pleasure, Dr Hotston,” replied Imam Yilmaz in broken English, a stern looking man in his fifties with heavy brows and a full beard. Imam Celikoglu, a frail Turk with long, white, whispy hair, smiled but did not speak.

“It is good to see you again, fathers,” said Ledgerwood, bowing slightly as he set down his coffee. “What troubles you today?”

“The imams have been in discussion with the Sultan and the Vizier, and with several of their colleagues, regarding the spiritual nature of your machine.”

“Oh, yes?” asked Hotston, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes!” said Yilmaz, smiling and nodding. “Your machine has a soul.”

“That’s right,” said Besim. “The conclusion has been that, once your machine is able to speak and reason, it will be possessed of a soul.”

Ledgerwood and Hotston looked at one another, frowning uncertainly. “And...?” prompted Hotston.

“Well, it is Mr Yilmaz’s view that, since it has a soul, and is resident in the palace, and will serve as an advisor to the Sultan, it should be created a Muslim.”

“Yes!” Yilmaz repeated. “Must be Muslim.”

Celikoglu raised his hand sharply and spoke in Turkish for several seconds.

“...But,” continued Besim, nodding as the old cleric spoke, “it is Mr Celikoglu’s view that, since it will be a free creature of God, it should have the chance to come to God through its own understanding, and it should be created innocent, and then taught to be a Muslim.”

“I see,” said Ledgerwood. “So which does His Highness want?”

“His Highness the Sultan,” said Besim, barely disguising a grin, “wishes me to tell you that you are to be directed by both of these wise men.”

“I see. Well, please convey to His Highness that we will, of course, follow his requirements diligently.”

“I will, of course, Dr Ledgerwood. God bless your work.”

“Thank you, Besim. Good day.”

“So how do you plan to manage that?” asked Hotston as Besim led the two old priests out the loading door and back up the road.

Ledgerwood shrugged, sipping his coffee again. “I’ll work something out. Guess I’ll have to start reading the ruddy Koran now, won’t I?”

DEAR DR LEDGERWOOD and Dr Hotston,

Thank you for your latest letter. His Highness is pleased with the progress you are making, and is looking forward to when a demonstration can be made of the Osman machine’s intelligence and prowess to the world. This, we all believe, will be the dawn of a new Ottoman Rennaissance.

We are pleased also that you are enjoying your stay in the beautiful city of Istanbul. My wife has reminded me to tell you that we were very pleased to play host to you at dinner the other day, and that you would be more than welcome to visit our home again.

As regards the date of the demonstration. I believe I now understand the source of the confusion! You are correct, of course, that your commission started on March 24th of this year, by the Gregorian calendar. And, of course, the 24th of September – a week from this Thursday – would be six months later, by the same calendar. However, the date on your commission is given in the Islamic calendar, in accordance with Imperial law, and the duration of the commission is in lunar months. You began work on the 25th of Dhu al-Qa’da, and thus your six months is up on the 25th of Jumada I, which is this Friday, the 18th September.

Fortunately, I believe His Highness the Sultan is sufficiently impressed by the work you have done that you will receive your full commission even if the work is not wholly complete. However, you must still present yourself for a full demonstration of the Osman machine’s capabilities at moonrise Friday evening.

I look forward to seeing you.

Regards,

Murat Sahin

Grand Vizier to His Imperial Highness Sultan Mehmet VII

“THIS IS JUST bloody typical, you know.”

“Give it a rest, would you, Ledgerwood?”

They waited in one of the many opulent audience rooms in the Dolmabahçe Palace, sweltering in jackets and waistcoats and ties. Hotston perched on the edge of a chair, tapping his fingers on the polished teak desk by the wall; Ledgerwood paced constantly, back and forth in front of the window, repeatedly shooting his cuffs and straightening his collar.

Ledgerwood wheeled on his partner, gesticulating. “I’m just saying it’s typical. At the outset it’s all endless schedules and bottomless budgets, and come deadline it’s never bloody working right, it all costs too much and you run out of time. Who’d work in bloody analytics, what?”

“Just sit down and calm down, chap. Have a glass of water or something. Murat did say the Sultan’d pay our fee whatever.” Hotston said, then snorted. “He’ll want to, at any rate; there’s not half of it left by now. Ruddy bakshish.”

“But what are we going to demonstrate, exactly? I mean, I wasn’t daft enough to expect any actual time to test and debug, but I thought I had at least a week to come up with some kind of programming for the damn thing. Poor Osman doesn’t even speak English yet, properly.”

Hotston took a deep breath and poured a glass of water, from which he drank a large mouthful, and looked up at the larger man. “Look, we’ve made very possibly the smartest machine in the world. The Committee for Ethics in Analytics would never have let us make it. Osman’ll have an imagination, he’ll learn from observation and from his mistakes; he’ll write bloody poetry if the Sultan wants him to. And it’ll be good.”

Ledgerwood stopped pacing and threw himself onto a chaise. “Heh. He is pretty smart.”

“You’ve somehow satisfied those old priests that he’ll be innocent, but predisposed to obey Islamic law – and don’t bother trying to explain to me how you did that – and he can even make himself smarter.”

“But he doesn’t actually know anything now, Hotston. Maybe a hundred words of English. Can’t even play chess, yet.”

“So?” Hotston spread one hand out, with a flourish. “We make that a feature. His Highness never did let us know what he wants the machine to do. We’ll tell him we made a machine that he can teach, and guide. A child, to mould as he wishes, and to one day guide him.”

“Hmm...” Ledgerwood scratched his chin idly. “Could work?”

“We’ll even offer our services to stay here and teach it. Hell, we could get more money out of him.”

“That’s not a half-bad idea, Hotston. We’ll get him to talk to the machine, show him how curious it is.”

Hotston smiled broadly. “Perfect.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to another six months, and another six thousand pounds!”

SUTTON, SURREY, MAGNA BRITANNIA, 1998

MR SAHIN STOP PLEASED TO RECEIVE YOUR MESSAGE STOP MOST FLATTERED HIS HIGHNESS HAS EVEN HEARD OF ME STOP WILL GLADLY ACCEPT YOUR OFFER OF SIX MONTHS WORK STOP MONEY SOUNDS VERY GENEROUS STOP ON MY WAY BY SOONEST STOP TRAIN DUE TO ARRIVE AT ISTANBUL SIRKECI ON TWENTY EIGHTH OF MONTH AT THIRTEEN FORTY PLEASE ARRANGE TO COLLECT STOP JANE MATTHEWS

ISTANBUL, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1998

SIX THOUSAND POUNDS.

Six thousand pounds, for six months’ worth.

It hardly seemed believable.

“So those are the terms, Mrs Matthews,” finished the Vizier, setting down the pot and passing her a delicate china cup. “What do you think? You can still turn around and go home now, if you wish; His Highness will gladly pay your travel costs regardless.”

She fussed over her tea for a moment, adding a slice of lemon and a spoonful of sugar, giving herself a moment to gather her thoughts.

The Sultan himself leaned back in his seat by the window, regarding her. She found him hard to read; he wore a full beard and one of those red felt hats everyone wore – fezzes? – even inside, which didn’t help, but to cap it all he hadn’t spoken more than half a dozen words in the whole interview, and only one word – “Hello” – in English. Mr Sahin had spoken throughout the meeting.

“It’s Miss Matthews, if you please, Mr Sahin,” she corrected.

The Vizier smiled placatingly and spread his hands. “My apologies, Miss Matthews. I will be sure and remember.”

Jane straightened and sipped at her tea, reflecting. “It all seems very reasonable, to be honest, Mr Sahin. Although I am not sure it is appropriate for me to have a gentleman attendant. Besim has been nothing but proper, and seems a charming young man, but for appearances’ sake, I wonder if I might have a maid?”

Mr Sahin looked momentarily confused, but nodded. “If you wish, Miss Matthews, but I can assure you there will be no reason to concern yourself on that front with Besim.”

What a strange thing to say! “Well, I would appreciate it,” Jane insisted.

“Of course.”

She set her cup down again and shifted in her seat. The heat was stifling.

“Now, as to my pupil, whose identity you’ve so carefully avoided divulging. I assume I’m to tutor one of the Sultan’s children?”

The Vizier coughed, and looked briefly uncomfortable. “Not one of His Highness’s children, Miss Matthews. His machine.”

“I’m sorry?” Jane had been adjusting her gloves and now froze, one hand caught in the act of tugging at the opposite wrist. “Teach a machine? Teach it what?”

Mr Sahin smiled hugely and leaned back. “How to think, Miss Matthews! Osman is a truly remarkable machine, built by two countrymen of yours. He has such curiosity and such wonder! But he knows so little, and yearns to understand.”

“But – But I don’t know the first thing about analytics. I’m a schoolmistress!” She looked from the Vizier’s face to the Sultan’s. Mehmet beamed and nodded.

“You come highly recommended, Miss Matthews,” Mr Sahin said. “I have read your articles in the School Masters’ Review on the theory of learning and was very impressed. This is why we insisted on you. Osman does not need to be programmed; he needs to learn, to be guided through this world by an understanding master. And it is my belief – mine and His Highness’s – that you are the master, or mistress, for this task.”

“Thank... thank you.” Jane let her hands fall into her lap and clasped them together. “In that case, I suppose... But teach it what? What exactly is it intended to do?”

The Vizier paused for a moment, then steepled his hands and raised them to his lips. The sunlight glittered on his rings. He held that pose for a moment, hesitating, as though debating how to proceed.

“Miss Matthews, what follows must be kept in confidence, at least for now.”

“Of course, Mr Sahin.” Jane sat up straighter again, adopting her best professional mien.

He nodded, once. “His Highness has many sons, Miss Matthews, but they have been... disappointing. Court life has spoiled them.”

Jane frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. But you said I’m not here to teach them.”

“Not at all, Miss Matthews. They are all fully grown. No, Miss Matthews; it has occurred to His Highness that the strength of the Empire lies ultimately with its ruler, who must be loving father and stern shepherd to all his people. And if he wishes to leave behind him an Empire that will last forever, then perhaps what he needs is an Emperor who will last.

“A wise Emperor, Miss Matthews, who sees and understands all of his people; an Emperor undistracted by worldly matters, created and reared by the brightest, most progressive nation in the world. An Emperor, Miss Matthews, for the future...”

COMPANY MAN

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

– Mahatma Ghandi (1869 – 1948)

MUMBAI, THE BRITISH RAJ, 1999

“SO, MISS...” THE man peered ostentatiously down at the sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, but his eyes skipped over it without focusing. An affectation, then. “...Sabharwal. Yes?” He looked over his glasses at her, smiling affably, a little absently.

“Kumari. Kim. My... my mother calls me Kim.” Inwardly, Kim swore at herself. Why had she said that? Be professional. Speak when spoken to. Don’t waffle, don’t say any more than you have to. You need this. She stared straight ahead, just over his right shoulder, and tried not to look as nervous as she felt. The man – Call me Smith, he’d said, although he was at least as Indian as she was – regarded her mildly for a moment, then continued.

“Kim? Very well. So, Kim. Why come to me? What brought you here?”

Kim shifted her weight slightly, stopped herself from crossing her arms. “Work, sir. I need work. Mother’s ill, sir, and there’s no-one else. My brothers need to stay in school. I tried to get work on the new building sites, but they said I was too small. One of the men said to come here, to ask for you. Said you sometimes had work for people... for people like me.” She bit down on another sir. Damn! She was better than this. She focused on her breathing, strove to remember the little meditation her grandfather had taught her.

Smith leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath him. His belly – unusual in Mumbai, or for an Indian man in Mumbai, but then it was unusual to see an Indian man on that side of a desk at all – strained at his suit. An English suit, she thought; jacket and waistcoat.

“People like you?” he asked, in the same gentle tone, although she thought the air grew a little more tense. “People with sick mothers? People with” – he glanced at the sheet in front of him – “excellent school results? Really very young women?” He laced his hands over his belly. It was hard to read him, behind his moustache and his round-lensed glasses. The room was gloomy, the blinds behind her pulled low to block out the afternoon sun, but stray beams of light struck his glasses when he moved, and his eyes – dark eyes, but bland, as if he had blinds behind them as well – came and went behind flashes of brilliant white. He allowed the question to hang in the air for a few seconds, and then continued. “Or do you mean half-castes?”

Kim’s cheeks burned. She shrugged, then stopped herself and straightened her back again. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded once, to himself, and looked down at her resume again. She followed his eyes. The desk was old; the dark wood battered and nicked, the green leather stained and ripped.

“Why didn’t you try at the offices of the British East India Company?” he asked. “These results really are outstanding; even if you couldn’t afford to go to university, you could have found work as a clerk.” He looked back up at her.

She hesitated. “Because–” She wasn’t sure how to proceed. Did he really not know how the East India Company operated? Was this a test? “Because you can’t. They only hire English people. Even half-castes only have a chance if they have someone to vouch for them. Everybody knows that.”

“Indeed,” he said, shifting in his seat. “Well, if everyone knows it, it must be true. And your mother? She couldn’t help?”

Kim shook her head. “No, sir. My mother... she left Britannia under a cloud. Didn’t get on with her family. The Dashwoods... she’d argued with her uncle.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” He fell silent and focused on her resume again. The smells of cooking – sauces, spices, grilling meat – wafted through the window from the market outside the building, and Kim’s stomach rumbled. She’d missed breakfast.

“Beautiful woman, your mother,” he said at last. “Everyone loved her.”

“Sir?” Kim stared at him.

“Smith, Kim. I said, call me Smith.”

“It’s not your name, though, is it, si – Mr Smith?”

He looked up from the paper and stared at her, and his eyes were clear this time, piercing. “Do you know what I do here, Kim?”

“Well...” Kim hesitated again. She wasn’t sure what would be politic, but had the feeling that Smith wanted her to be honest, no matter what. “The sign on the door says ‘imports and exports.’”

“That’s right.” Smith nodded once, but continued to hold her in his gaze.

“If I had to guess–”

“I do not want you to guess, Kim,” said Smith. “You may observe and reason; from what I can tell, it is something at which you will excel.”

“Yes, Mr Smith. In that case... I’d say you were a spy. Or a criminal.”

“Indeed?” Smith smiled and leaned back in his seat again. “And how do you feel about being in here with a spy, or criminal?”

Kim thought for a moment, looking at the walls. A cluster of framed certificates hung on the wall behind Smith, with a different name on each one. Kapur, Patel, Siriwardana. “Well... I’d say if you were that worried about people knowing what you do, you’d be a little more careful about how you presented yourself. I’d say you do business based on people realising you’re a spy or a criminal, but not saying anything about it. Like a polite lie. Because sometimes people need to work with a spy or a criminal, but have to be able to deny that they knew it.”

Smith chuckled. “You’re a bright girl, Kim.” He looked down at the resume again for a moment, then said, “I am a little of both. And yes, I do have work, and I often take on people of your heritage. You belong to two worlds, Kim; you’re uniquely suited to certain lines of work. Like crime, for instance. Or espionage.”

He fell silent again, and Kim wasn’t sure if an answer was required. “Mr Smith?” she ventured.

“Hm? Most people just call me Smith, Kim.” He smiled.

“Smith, then. How did you know my mother?”

“Oh,” he said, looking distant for a moment. “I didn’t, really. I knew your father. We took a history class together in university. I met your mother through him, but I wouldn’t say I ever really knew her. She didn’t really approve of me.”

“Why not?” Kim found herself moving towards the faded leather chair near her, stopped herself from sitting.

“We had... dangerous ideas, I suppose. We used to talk of a free India. Our history professor – Dr Ghandi, he was called; Mohandas Ghandi – spoke of a peaceful uprising. He’d been involved in the disturbances back in the ’forties, seen what happens when we try to fight the East India Company and their automaton sepoys. Your father had disagreed, thought the Indian people could be strong, united. I could never decide, argued with both men.

“Your mother thought it was all rot, and dangerous talk to boot. The Company has people everywhere, looking out for sedition, listening to every conversation.”

“So what happened?”

He shrugged. “We stopped. Graduated, went our separate ways. I haven’t spoken to your mother since around the time you were born.”

“But what–”

Smith held up his hand. “And we have gone on in this vein for too long, and my time is valuable. You came to me for work, and work I have.”

“Yes, Smith.” Kim straightened, her head spinning. Her mother rarely spoke of her father, and when she did it was only to speak of how handsome he was, how devoted a husband and father he’d been. Her grandfather, Manvir, could only tell stories of his childhood, in the little village inland where he grew up.

Smith reached for a manila folder on his desk, handed it to her. “Simple enough job. Collect two men from the docks, take them to an address. They have a job to do there. Then you’ll collect a package from the address and bring it back here. Be careful; you’ll very likely be followed. You must lose anyone following you and return.”

Kim flipped through the file. Two pictures of Englishmen; engineers of some sort. A time, a ship name. An address, some basic instructions. She looked up, met his gaze. “And–”

“You’ll be paid a thousand rupees for your trouble. If you perform this task to my satisfaction, there will be more work.”

“But I–”

“Another time, Kim,” said Smith, raising his hand. “Do this for me and we’ll talk about your father another time.”

Wordlessly, Kim nodded and walked out. The Englishmen’s ship was due in an hour, and she needed to eat.

“RUDDY INDIA,” SAID Ledgerwood, already sweating in his tweed suit as he emerged from the fan-cooled deck into the afternoon sun, heaving his trunk behind him. “Why can’t we be somewhere civilised, eh?”

“I don’t understand why you’re even dressed that way,” said Hotston, coming up behind him with a small valise. His sleeves were held up with St Georges and his shirt open at the neck; his own jacket had been stowed away a week into the journey and not emerged since.

“We’re meeting a new client, aren’t we?” Ledgerwood rumbled. “Best foot forward and all that.”

“That’s not really how things are done here. People are sensible about the weather.”

“How do you know that, then? And why am I dragging the ruddy trunk?” Ledgerwood dropped the offending luggage with a dramatic flourish and a startling bang. Several of the other passengers looked at him curiously.

“You offered to, as I recall. I’m sure we can get a porter when we get to the dock. And I know it because my mother’s Indian, you pillock.”

“I thought she lived in Berkshire.”

“She does. She wasn’t born there.”

“Hmph. Anyway, I didn’t mean the heat. Why’re we in India, of all places? The telegraphy’s rotten in the cities and nonexistent anywhere else. What are we supposed to achieve here? We’re analyticists. Even if we were in Calcutta, I’d understand it – we could work at the university – but bloody Mumbai?”

Hotston took hold of the handle on the trunk, heaved it up and scanned the docks, looking for any sign they were expected. Between disembarking passengers, people meeting them, sailors, dock-workers and beggars, it was too much a melee to tell. He shrugged and headed for the gangway.

“Mumbai’s come a long way, Matthew. Everything’s on the up and up; they’re calling it the ‘city of cranes,’ now.” And the city that crowded the deep harbour was that, at least. Hotston counted a dozen new building sites at least before giving up, all for modern Britannian high-rises. Tent cities had sprung up around and between the sites; temporary slums to house the construction workers. “Anyway, it’s not an analytics job; it’s cryptography. We’re decoding some sort of message. That’s why we’ve got Rosie, here.” He hefted the trunk.

“Hmph.” Ledgerwood had removed his jacket now and draped it over his left arm. He had succeeded in digging out his ticket and was fanning himself. “And that’s supposed to be reassuring, is it? Has it occurred to you, Stewart old boy, that this signal we are decoding will be arriving by telegraph? The very same telegraph, as I was just saying, that drops out completely half the time, and suffers a ten-to-twenty-per cent loss the rest? We’ll be four bloody days just getting a coherent signal before we can even warm your new toy up.”

‘Rosie’ was a gift from their new, mysterious employer, a Rosworth Mk IV Cryptological Decoder, a single-function portable analytical engine hardwired to decode encrypted signals. She was a limited thinker, compared with some of the devices they were used to working with, but good at what she was made for, and designed to reprogram herself, adding each code she cracked to her database, which she cross-referenced to find common elements whenever she encountered a new one. Ledgerwood hadn’t performed decryption since their undergraduate days, but he hadn’t forgotten the principles.

“To be honest, old chap,” said Hotston, as he made his way along the gangway, trunk trundling along behind him, “it’s not like we have much choice. The Sultan’s made it clear we weren’t welcome back in Istanbul. We can’t very well head back home as long as the Committee for Ethics in Analytics has it in for us. And that business in Milan’s probably put the kibosh on working in the Socialist League, for the time being.”

“I don’t know what their beef is,” Ledgerwood protested. “They wanted the machine to think faster; we more than doubled its processing speed.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately it didn’t know it was thinking faster, did it? I don’t know exactly how much it costs to replace that much factory equipment, but I imagine it’s a fair sight more than our commission.” He sighed. The queue off the boat slowed as they approached the dock. “At any rate, at least we’re on Britannian soil, after a fashion. Could be worse; we could be working in America. You’d be begging for Indian telegraphy then.”

Ledgerwood huffed. “Fat chance.” He fanned himself for a moment, reflecting. “I’ve always wondered. What is it with the Yanks? Why don’t they use electricity?”

Hotston shrugged. “Politics. They’d invested so much in steam, before Independence. When Britannia discovered electricity, I guess they saw it as a symbol of Imperialism.”

The larger man mused on this for a moment. “I suppose it is, really. You always know you’re in the arms of old Vicky, when you’re ten thousand miles from home and there’s still a power point in the corner.”

“And then there’s that Doc Thunder chap. Apparently he keeps pressure on the government to keep out of it. Thinks it’s too dangerous to be in the hands of mortal men.”

Ledgerwood chuckled. “Pish. Like steam’s any safer.”

They stepped off the gangway and onto the Mumbai dock, and were immediately set upon by beggars and porters, grabbing at their clothes and trunk and calling for attention. “No!” shouted Hotston, flapping his hands. “Get off!” He clutched the trunk, looking around desperately. He turned to Ledgerwood. “A little help would be good?”

“Don’t you talk the language, then? I thought your mother was Indian.”

“Well, she wasn’t Marathi, was she? Stop being an arse and see if you can see who this Smith person sent. Or even a robo-bobby, or something.”

“Alright, alright.” Ledgerwood straightened and cast about through the crowds.

“Dr Ledgerwood? Dr Hotston?”

The voice came from behind them. Ledgerwood wheeled, a little too quickly, and staggered. “Yes?”

A pretty Indian girl of about sixteen or seventeen stood behind him, dark hair tied up in a ponytail, hands behind her back, smiling pleasantly.

“You are Doctors Ledgerwood and Hotston?”

“Clearly,” said Hotston, pulling the trunk over to her and straightening. One of the five or six porters who had persisted up to this point started shouting at the others at the sight of the mysterious girl, and they quietened down.

She grinned and held her hand out. “I’m Kim. I’ve been sent to collect you.” As Hotston shook her hand uncertainly, she continued, “You’ll need a porter for your trunk, of course.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be–”

“I’m afraid you’ve no real choice. You’ll be badgered until you hire one.” As if to prove her point, the porters resumed their clamouring, pushing each other out of the way and waving in the men’s faces.

“Hire that one,” she said, pointing at the shortest of them; Hotston thought he’d been the one shouting the others down. “I know him; he’s honest. His name’s Suni. And he won’t charge you more than twenty rupees or so.”

“Why, that’s not much more than a shilling,” said Ledgerwood, fishing in his pocket.

“Then it won’t be a great imposition on you.” She rattled off instructions to Suni, sending the others on their way, and the boy stepped forward, bowed solemnly and heaved the trunk bodily onto his back.

“Doesn’t he speak English, then?” asked Hotston, as the four of them headed off the docks and onto the road.

“Perfectly, Dr Hotston,” replied Kim, with a slight smirk. Suni looked up with a huge grin. “The porters always start speaking to tourists in Marathi.”

Hotston chuckled. “So where are we headed, then?”

“Sion. It’s north of here. Do you have the machine?”

“In the trunk,” said Ledgerwood.

“Excellent,” said Kim. “After you’ve done the work you’ve been hired for, we part ways. My employer has seen to your travel from the warehouse.”

They’d reached the road, where the heaving masses by the disembarking ship had thinned to the merely dense crowds of the Mumbai streets. A row of steam-car taxis were lined up at the docks; she flagged one and led the party over.

“BLACK LINE,” MUTTERED one of the signal-hackers Kim’s mysterious employer had provided, a young man called Randeep. His partner, Sanjay, nodded and tapped at the keys of the Cooke-Wheatstone engine.

They’d been in the warehouse for three hours already. It was damp, with a wide puddle at the far end of the rough brick building, but hot and stuffy, even after the sun had gone down. The air was humid, and sweat collected on Hotston’s brow and nose as he worked. The Mk IV was connected within half an hour of arriving, and tested another half-hour later; but waiting on the signal was tedious, and he’d taken to testing and retesting her, tinkering with the system and tuning it. Ledgerwood had hunkered down next to him and was sorting through code cards and tapes, occasionally jotting down notes in his memo book.

Kim looked up. “Black line?”

“Signal’s heading for Afghanistan,” said Sanjay, focusing on the screen as his fingers rattled across the keyboard. Both men were soft-spoken and earnest, and spoke English with only a hint of an accent. “We call them black lines. Partly because they’re less reliable, but chiefly because pretty much the only thing people use that trunk for is information smuggling.”

“Oh?”

“Or signal-hacking,” muttered Randeep, staring at his own screen. “Although we’d be able to tell in that case. Much higher bandwidth. Usually crashes the whole trunk, unless the hacker knows what he’s doing.”

“Which we do.” Sanjay looked up momentarily, grinned.

“Well, naturally. But a lot of the other people that do it don’t.”

“All about the compression, you see,” said Ledgerwood to Kim. He turned to Randeep and Sanjay. “Do you use Lovelace or von Neumann?”

“A little of both,” said Randeep, grinning, “but mostly Ramanujan. And Sanj here’s obsessed with Gatesian algorithms.”

The big Englishman snorted. “The bloody Yank?”

Sanjay never looked up from the screen. “Don’t underestimate American analyticists, doctor. They have to do a lot more with a lot less; it makes them more creative.”

“Hmph. Well, just let us know when you’ve got the signal. We’re good to go.”

Randeep suddenly leaned back in his chair and swore in Hindi, throwing his hands in the air.

“What’s the matter?” asked Hotston.

“Line dropped. We have to start again. Ah-cha. The send’ll get a fail flag and restart in about five minutes. Get us a tea, would you, Sanj?”

“GOT IT!” YELLED Randeep.

“Really?” asked Ledgerwood, almost anxiously. The young signal-hackers had lost the line four times; the sun had come up, and the warehouse was starting to heat up again. Hotston and Kim had been to get breakfast; the empty bowls were scattered about around their feet.

“Yep. All intact. No fails.” Randeep was beaming. “Sanj?”

Sanjay was pulling the end of the code tape from the Cooke-Wheatstone machine and winding it. “Here you go, doctor.” He tossed it to Ledgerwood.

“Thanks,” said Ledgerwood, turning to spool it into Rosie. “We all good to go, Doctor Hotston?”

“We’re all set, Doctor Ledgerwood,” said Hotston, who’d been dozing in his seat, but was sitting up now, looking keen.

“Let’s crack on, then.”

“THIS IS NESTED,” murmured Ledgerwood, as he pored over Rosie’s read-out.

“Yes?” asked Kim, politely. She’d been watching the English analyticists work intently. Ledgerwood turned to face her.

“Sorry. The signal looks bigger than it is, because it’s been encoded several times. When it arrives at its stated destination and is opened, it bounces off the local telegraphic router and straight back in again as a fresh request, for a new destination. The operator – or the engine, if it’s automated – doesn’t realise he’s just getting the same signal he received a minute before. It’s a way of hiding where a signal’s come from; the sort of thing your lads who were here earlier might do.”

“So you don’t know where it came from originally?” asked Kim.

“I didn’t say that. But you have to know what to look for...” He peered at the display again and made a few notes. “It’s been round the houses, actually. Calcutta to Kabul... and before that... Accra to Calcutta... then before that, Dar-Es-Salaam to Accra... Bonn to Dar-Es-Salaam. This came from the Ultimate Reich, but the sender went to pains to hide himself.”

“Or herself.”

“Hmm.” He tapped a few more keys, wrote a few more notes; Hotston made another adjustment to the machine. “Lucky guess, or do you know something about this signal?”

Kim shrugged. “Lucky. So it was a woman?”

“I just have a surname for the recipient and a first name for the sender. From ‘Daria’ to ‘Smith.’ Curious. Not sure what they’d have done with that in Kabul even if they had got it. Smith...” He frowned, stood and stretched.

Kim frowned as well. “Never mind the destination. The message itself?”

“Just getting to that now. Had to crack through the nest first.” The two Englishmen turned back to their machine.

TWO LINES.

An address – no city or country, although the street name sounded Spanish – and a code of some sort: six letters and numerals.

Kim had the sheet of paper holding the decoded message folded up and tucked in her shirt. Her heart pounded as she left the warehouse and crossed the Eastern Carriageway, running to dodge steam cars and carriages, rickshaws and bicycles. In principle, automatons at major junctions controlled traffic and fined breaches of the highway code; in practice, there were too few for the job, and many of them were old and poorly maintained. Indian road traffic was famously among the worst in the Britannian Empire.

Kim had grown up with these roads. A few years ago, it had been a game, she and her friends daring each other to cross the biggest, busiest roads. She smiled at the memory of her mother’s rage when she’d learned about it. She skipped and weaved as she ran between the cars and carriages, the movements second nature. She got so lost in the moment that she almost missed the battered old steam car pulling onto the road from the car park opposite the warehouse, cruising slowly after her as she reached the far footpath and continued down the road.

It could just be a coincidence, of course; Smith’s warning making her too sensitive.

Best not to risk it. She ducked down a foot alley between shops, nearly pushing a passing student over as she wheeled on her foot. Once in the shadows of the alley, she ran to its far end. It was taking her directly away from the market where Smith’s office stood, but that was for the best; she was leading her tail, whoever it was, away from him. The alley came out in a small square at the backs of four apartment buildings, with washing lines crossing the space overhead and the smell of cooking coming from several of the windows. She calmed her breathing and listened for pursuit from the alley.

Nothing.

Choosing another alley out of the square at random, Kim went more cautiously. A washing line hung within reach, giving her an idea; glancing quickly around her to see if she was being observed, she whipped a red and gold sari off the line and wrapped it around herself, folding the end up and over her head.

The alley brought her out on another main road. Kim paused briefly to get her bearings and headed off in another direction. The footpath was crowded in the early afternoon traffic, and Kim couldn’t be sure if she was being followed or not. At least the car – if it had been following her – was nowhere to be seen.

Kim brushed by a young Chinese man in a grey suit, who didn’t acknowledge her apology. She stared at him briefly; Chinese were a rare sight in Mumbai.

A rickshaw and a handful of rupees took her closer to Smith’s office. Kim craned her neck the whole time, but couldn’t see the battered old car. She stopped the driver a half-hour away from Smith’s office and continued on foot again.

TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK.

Kim started at the sound, heart hammering in her throat.

She’d been on foot for more than half an hour, and was still no nearer Smith’s office. Jumping off the rickshaw, she’d cut through two open-air markets, trying to lose herself in the crowd. As she did, though, she’d seen four more suited Chinese men, and nearly run into one of them, who had also woodenly ignored her. Trying too hard to act nonchalant, too slow to react when she surprised him. There was no way this was a coincidence.

They must have followed the rickshaw, or have friends who were able to track her, coordinating their efforts on the ground. She’d stopped on a street corner and looked up, trying to see if there were people in the windows of the high residential blocks around her, watching. She’d looked up in the sky; there were five or six airships over Mumbai, but there were always airships over Mumbai. Any of them could be coordinating the men she kept seeing. Agents for the Chinese Imperial Bureaucracy? Triads? It didn’t matter. She needed to move under cover.

That was what had brought her into the covered alley behind the fish market, where she’d started hearing the sound. She’d seen another of the Chinese strangers as she ran through the market, and he’d started, turned to move towards her, so she’d ducked into the alley. An elderly beggar had called out to her as she’d jumped over his splayed legs. She hadn’t heard what he said, and hadn’t wanted to turn back. She’d heard him chuckling to himself behind her. Then had come the sound.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

The alley was shadowy and muggy, if cooler than in the open. A couple of the locals had set up improvised stalls at the near end, selling watches – stolen, she guessed, sold off the beaten path to avoid the attention of the automaton policemen – and trinkets. The sellers watched her placidly but didn’t speak to her. Further down the alley, however, were pools of darkness, the impression of shapes and people waiting out of sight.

There. Near the far end of the alley, next to a pile of rotten boxes. A shape, taller than a man and broader, shifting slightly, and again that sound.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

Just then, the Chinese man from the market came into view at the mouth of the alley. One of the watch sellers broke into his spiel, assuming he was a tourist, but the stranger walked past him. Kim, trapped, looked desperately around her and opened one of the doors in the alley, charging into the home beyond.

THE HIGH TENEMENTS in most of central Mumbai were a warren of rooms and corridors. Original Britannian designs had been modified endlessly – walls knocked out or put in, corridors blocked off, even extra floors added in, creating cramped sleeping spaces for the numberless families crammed into the towers. Arcane and obscure boundaries separated one family’s space from another, with doors and walls having little to do with the matter. If you knew what you were doing, knew what to look for, it was possible to travel the length of one of these buildings, room to room, crawling, climbing, ducking and scrambling, without even stepping into a corridor, much less out into the street.

Women, children and the elderly cried out, startled, as she barged through, jumping over or slipping past people as they cooked, ate, sang, talked, argued, read and slept. She paid none of them any heed. Behind her, she heard a somewhat louder outcry as her pursuer blundered into the tightly-packed homes. She heard shouting and swearing, and she smiled. Then she heard two gunshots and she ran even faster.

She threw open another door and came out into a covered alley on the far side of the building, this one wider, cleaner, even dimly gaslit. The smell of the fish market wafted up from one end, and the roar of traffic could be heard at the other.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

She looked up and left towards the sound, close to panic, and made out two huge figures lumbering–

No, that wasn’t right. They moved slowly and haltingly, as though assessing every step, but with precision and economy.

The figures picked their way slowly and carefully towards her. They were at least seven feet tall, and broad with it, with slightly unnatural proportions, their ungainly limbs and craning necks seeming slightly stretched. Although they were fully dressed, in long kurtas and broad hats, she was sure it was more for disguise than modesty. In the half-light, she could make out nothing of their features. Every few steps, one or the other would pause for a half-second or so, as though uncertain about its footing. Every time they did, they emitted that staccato ticking sound.

Kim felt ice trickle down her back as they picked their way towards her. She backed away from them, stumbling and nearly falling over before she could finally tear her eyes from the things. She wheeled on one foot and sprinted down the alley, dimly registering them both stopping to make that noise as she did so:

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

She’d gone no more than five steps before skidding to a halt, as two of the suited Chinese men entered the alley from the other end. Now they were looking directly at her, and both drawing pistols from hidden holsters.

“No need for you to be hurt,” one of them said, in thickly-accented English. “We just want the message.”

She didn’t respond. The heavy, halting footfalls of the strange figures behind her drew closer as she stared, appalled, at the men advancing on her.

Got to time this right...

The first man slowly put his pistol away and held his hands out towards her as he approached. “Do you understand me? We want your message, the one Smith sent you to get. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Kim just stared at him, wide-eyed and silent, mouth open and panting. Inside, she was concentrating on slowing her heartbeat, the way her grandfather taught her, and emptying her mind. Another footfall behind her. Nearly...

The Chinese agent swore and turned to his partner. “Do you speak Hindi?”

The second man shrugged and said something brief in Mandarin. Another footfall from the figures behind her.

Now.

She abruptly ducked, paused for a fraction of a second – tick-tick-tick-tick-tick – then rolled backwards between the two manlike hulks behind her. As she did so, she got her first clear look at them. The reaching hands, as she passed beneath their fingers, were hinged steel; the faces, polished brass, sculpted into idealised Han Chinese forms, with fixed, determined expressions. Under the chins, coils, springs and gears at the top of the necks, rattling and spinning.

Clearing the space between the machines, she twisted and came to her feet with her back to them and sprinted back to the fish market, to lose herself in the crowd again.

“YES...” SAID SMITH, reading the decrypted message. He nodded to himself once and tucked the sheet away in a folder on his desk. “Just so.” He looked up again at Kim, who stood before the desk as before, hands held behind her. “You’ve done well, Kim.”

“Thank you, Smith.” She was hot and sweaty, had only just caught her breath again, but she felt much more sure of herself than she had the first time she had stood here. “Smith?”

He tilted his head slightly. “Yes, Kim?”

“Who were they, Smith? The Chinese men following me?”

Smith heaved himself ponderously out of his seat and moved over to a sideboard, where a tea set had been laid out. “Chinese, was it? It could have gone either way. Tea?”

“No, thank you. What do you mean, either way?”

“Them or the Russians,” he replied over his shoulder, fussing over cup, saucer, spoon. “Did you encounter one of their automatons? Did it cause you any trouble?”

“Two of them.” Kim realised she was swaying slightly on her feet. She’d barely slept since the morning before, or eaten. “Not too much. I noticed that they had to stop whenever anything caught them by surprise. Like they had enough power to react to things, or to move, but not for both. Once I saw that, it was just a matter of timing.”

Smith turned back, a saucer on his hand, a smile lifting his moustache. “Very clever. They’re clockwork. Very, very good clockwork – the best in the world, really – but still just clockwork. The best of the Chinese automatons are slower and less reliable than any Britannian automaton patrolling the streets of this city.”

He made his way back to his seat and eased himself into it, setting the saucer on the faded green leather of his desk. “They were agents of the Imperial Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Their own signalmen no doubt saw an intercepted signal bound for Afghanistan, and thought it would benefit their cause if they got their hands on it.”

“Would it?” Kim blinked; in the heat and stillness of Smith’s office, she was starting to feel sleepy. “Actually, may I have that tea?”

Smith waved to the tea set. “Undoubtedly, if not in the way they imagined. The information these details will – I hope – lead me to will be extremely valuable to anyone involved in politics, but they are nothing to do with Afghanistan.”

Kim made herself a tea – black, sweet, with a slice of lemon – and sat at the seat in front of Smith’s desk. “And China wants Afghanistan.”

Smith leaned back in his seat, lacing his hands across his belly as he’d done before. “Everyone wants Afghanistan. It’s the high ground of the east; if you hold the Pamir Mountains, you’ve got India by the throat. Most of the rest of the continent, for that matter. At the moment, it’s Britannian, but if China takes it, or Russia, Britannia’s claim on India will waver.”

Kim nodded, then sipped her tea, reflecting. “Smith?”

“Yes, Kim?”

“You work for the East India Company, don’t you? You do things they need to do without having to admit they’re doing them?”

“That’s right, Kim.”

“But you said you and my father, and your teacher... you wanted a free India. Why work for them?”

“Ah, yes.” Smith pushed his seat back, regarded Kim for a moment. “In answer to your question, a question. Which would you prefer rule India: Britannia, Russia or China?”

Kim set her cup back down. “None of them, of course! I want a free India, like you.”

Smith smiled broadly. “That wasn’t one of your options, Kim.” He sighed. “And that’s the problem. One day it will be, but until then, I much prefer Victoria to Hongxian or the Romanovs.”

He reached for an envelope on his desk. “Here is your payment. You’ll want some time to recover, and to spend with your family.

“Your next job will be abroad...”

THE GRAVEYARD OF SECRETS

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not plan to keep them.

– Charles Caleb Colton (1780 – 1832)

SINGAPORE, STRAITS SETTLEMENT, 1999

SINGAPORE WAS A riot of people and noise even at the quietest of times. Their airship had docked at quarter past two in the morning, but even at that hour the streets had been thronging with people, all the way from the airfield to the smoky back room at Lazy Suzie’s in Newton, near the hawker centre. A million people out in the night air, talking, dealing and shouting in Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English; banners, bunting, flowers and ribbons in green, gold, blue, black and lucky red, bearing slogans and phrases in every language, scattered on the ground or hanging limply in the sultry air; a clash of drums and cymbals every hundred yards as street entertainers and dancers paraded through the streets, begging or simply playing for the crowds. Good Britannian steam cars shared the roads with an endless stream of bicycles and rickshaws and a great tide of humanity, blithely ignoring the boundary between the pedestrian footpaths and Her Majesty’s Highways. Anyone might think there was some sort of festival or holiday in progress, as the city played host to dozens of times throughout the year, but the grim-faced pair who limped their way into the former opium den that morning knew that this was as peaceful as the boisterous city ever got.

Britannia had made her stamp here as well: telephone and telegraph lines hung everywhere, a great web in the sky; an Overground train system, echoing the network that spanned London, rattled between the towering blocks that held the city’s heaving millions. Robo-bobbies clanked and wheezed as they patrolled the streets, clattering on the cobbled roads near the town centre, pounding the dusty dirt streets in the poor districts, a constant presence, the dull red glow of their eyes sweeping the crowds with their impassive gazes. Many of them were draped in flowers or lucky charms, a gesture of gratitude from the people of the city to the protectors of the peace, although anyone who knew the strange, mixed, fiercely independent people of the city at all could sense the resentment simmering under the surface. Victoria would have a challenge to her hold over the city, and it would not be long.

As the two entered Suzie’s, shouldering through the narrow curtained doorway, they paused to take stock. It wasn’t the sort of bar one entered lightly, or without caution. The doorman, a vast, shaven-headed Han whose name they had never managed to learn, had nodded them in without comment, but that didn’t mean there were no surprises waiting.

The place seemed peaceful, with no obvious source of tension. Satisfied at the mood of the room, the woman – slight, her long brown hair tied up in two plaits, her dark, practical trousers and pullover attracting rather less attention here than they had in the crowded streets – nodded to her partner and to an empty table, then made her way to the bar. The man – rangy, well over six feet tall, dressed in much the same way as his companion – returned the nod, wincing only slightly, and eased himself towards the table, favouring his right arm and shoulder, before gingerly lowering himself into a seat.

Three or four other patrons glanced at him before returning to their conversations – it didn’t pay to be too curious, at Suzie’s – but he otherwise went unremarked. He calmly regarded the room. It was about half-full, mostly with Chinese, although there were a fair number of whites – Britannians, a few Australians, judging by the accents, and one overly loud American in the far corner – and a smattering of Indians and Thais. Two Cossacks sat near the back, sipping vodka and scowling at the room. In perhaps a third of the patrons, he could make out tell-tale signs of concealed weapons – a bulge under the shoulder or in the small of the back, a tailored jacket designed so as to prevent such a bulge, even as little as a stance that gives easy access to an appropriate pocket – but in truth, there would be no-one here, or no-one who belonged here, who would not be armed, or at least deadly in one way or another.

Officially, Magna Britannia disapproved of mercenaries. In an age of automaton-soldiers, she had little need of them as infantry, and the kinds of warfare where they were most useful – assassination, sabotage, espionage – were publicly frowned upon. The British East India Company, however, was (unofficially and strictly off the record) by a long margin the world’s biggest employer of mercenaries, and so Singapore was one of the places where their presence was tolerated, even indulged. And Lazy Suzie’s was one of the places that mercenaries went to look for work. Sometimes just for a drink, or to catch up with their peers in a context where they weren’t trying to kill each other; but usually to look for work.

His partner returned from the bar, with a gin and tonic for herself and a pint of beer for him. “He’s in. He’ll be with us in a moment.” She slid his drink across the table. “Although why you insist on drinking lager all the way out here, I’ll never know,” she said. “You always complain that it doesn’t taste right.”

“It doesn’t keep well in the heat,” he grumbled, and a close observer might have detected the slightest hint of a Welsh accent to his voice. “But I’d rather drink tea out of a tramp’s gusset than gin.” He laughed, which turned into a groan, and he raised his left hand to his right shoulder.

“You’ll want to be careful with that, as well,” the woman said. “We’ve only just got you patched up. I’d suggest we take a holiday so you can heal up properly, but we’re out of cash. But Jen says he’s got a cushy job for us, no fighting, in and out. It’s about the best we can do right now.”

Hsiao Jen – Little Man, in Cantonese, although apparently the name was some sort of subtle joke about the Imperial Bureaucracy – was why mercenaries came to Lazy Suzie’s. Jen was Suzie’s common-law husband of the last ten years, and was a notorious fixer, doling out work from the East India Company, the Chinese government, even the Americans. He had a hard-won reputation for honesty and fair dealings.

“As long as they haven’t got any dogs,” the man said, shifting painfully in his seat. “Give me guns, knives, even some kung fu killer trained in martial arts. But not another dog. That last one nearly had my bloody arm off. And you always feel a total shit, killing a dog.”

“No dogs.” His partner grinned. “We’ll make that a rule.”

“Hello, Jamie, Tinks.” Their contact joined them at the table, sliding into a seat next to the woman. Hsiao Jen was, in spite of the name, tall for his race, at nearly five feet ten. The back and sides of his head were shaven clean, and the hair at the top of his head was cropped short; rumour had it he had once worn a queue, but that it had been cut off as a punishment when he’d been ejected from the Imperial Bureaucracy, and that he wore his hair like this as a reminder. If true, it meant he had been extremely highly-ranked in China. He wore a plain white collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a simple black waistcoat left unbuttoned. He had a large envelope in his hand.

“Jen!” cried Jamie, slapping his left hand on the table and extending it to the new arrival. “How the devil are you?”

The fixer frowned, then smiled fleetingly and reached out with own left. “Of course. Tinks said you’d hurt your right arm.” Jen’s accent came and went, depending on who he was speaking to; with strangers, he generally affected a Chinese accent so thick as to be nearly incomprehensible, but with those he knew well – and the two Welsh mercenaries were old friends and customers – he spoke English easily, with a slight hint of an American accent.

“Oh, this?” Jamie raised his right arm slightly, wincing a little. “It’s nothing. Bloody dog. Right as rain before you know it.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m well, since you ask. Business is good. Tinks?” He turned to the woman, who smiled tightly.

“Well enough. Between jobs; you know how it is.”

“Of course, of course. As much as I enjoy both your company, you’re here for a reason.”

“No rush,” said Jamie expansively. “We’ve time for a chat. It’s not like we’re going anywhere in a hurry; it’s three in the bloody morning.”

The fixer smiled, a little more surely. “Sadly, I do not. To business, and then I have a meeting to return to. Perhaps next time you’re in town. Suzie may be around.”

“We’d like that,” said Tinks.

“Excellent.” Jen smiled again and held out the envelope to her. “The job’s all in here. Buenos Aires; there are airship tickets in there. Simple second-story stuff. You’re to pick up a box of files or something, and rendezvous with the client’s representative in Stanley.”

“Do we get to know who the principal is this time?” asked Tinks, tipping out the envelope and leafing through the document. “Or does he want to remain anonymous?”

Jen shook his head. “As it happens, he doesn’t mind. The request has come through formal channels, from the East India Company. Mumbai office. It’s not my usual man, but the authorisation’s legitimate. I know people who’ve handled work for this guy, and he’s up front. Always pays on time.”

Tinks fixed a steady eye on him. “An honest spy?”

“All the best ones are.”

“In, out, no fighting?”

“That’s the plan.”

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, 1999

“BUGGER! GET THAT, would you, pet?”

The wrench clanged, impossibly loudly, as it fell to the roof of the lift. Jamie hung from a clamp on the lift cable as he worked at the door mechanism; Tinks stood on the roof and watched through the hatch at her feet, carbine cocked and ready, for anyone coming in beneath her.

She grimaced, hissed up at him. “Could you keep it down?”

“Sorry, love. Bit tricky getting a purchase on the door release from this position, and my arm’s still a bit stiff. Sling it up, would you?”

She crouched, keeping the carbine trained through the manhole one-handed as she fumbled for the wrench with her left, then straightened and tossed it up to him. The big mercenary caught the tool and applied himself back to his work.

THE FLIGHT HAD taken a week. Britannia Airways airships were more comfortable than they were used to, even in second class; Jamie and Tinks had taken the opportunity to relax, gambling in the casino and playing quoits in the long gallery. They’d hung at the railing along with everyone else to see the stegosaurus ranches pass underneath, the great, slow beasts gathered in vast herds, leather-clad llaneros circling them on horseback and driving them to slaughter.

Disembarking at Ministro Pistarini had been trouble-free, thanks to Jen’s false passports and visas; they’d even passed through customs with barely a nod, as their forged papers gave Ecuador as their point of origin. Since the formation of the South American Union in ’55, all travel in-continent was more or less unrestricted.

It wasn’t the first time the two had come to the Queen of El Plata. Confronted with Britannian imperialism on the one hand and American socialism on the other, President Perón had plumped for pure capitalism, opening his country up for diplomatic and trade relations with all comers and forging an economic bloc – initially with Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru – that now spanned the whole South American continent, and was considered by many to be the only significant threat to Britannian dominance going into the twenty-first century. With the discovery of cavorium in the Ecuadorean Andes in ’92 and cavorite production now in full flow, Union President Chavez was even planning a settlement on Mars.

Perón’s steadfast political neutrality had encountered its first real threat after only a year, when a known political assassin had fled French justice to Buenos Aires and the Argentine government had refused to extradite him. Perón himself had flown to Paris to a summit with the French and Britannian leaders, and had spelled his nation’s policy out in no uncertain terms: Argentina would not extradite, would not expose, would offer no concession to any other sovereign power, and would ask none in turn. The SAU were open to business with all, and no sanction or threat of force would sway them to break any trust they had entered into with any other power.

For a few months, the fledgling trade bloc seemed at risk of a full-blown Britannian retaliation; but then old Blighty, it seemed, decided she had as much to gain from the situation as anyone else, and business eventually resumed as normal. The Ultimate Reich, already heavily invested in Argentina after the Second Great European War, flooded Buenos Aires; and China, the USSA, the League of Socialist Republics and even Britannia followed suit. Forty years on on, every nation of the world was represented in the capital. It was widely held that the secret records of every black operation, every shameful act, every denied, hidden policy in the world was tucked away in one diplomatic office or another across the city, safely protected by Argentine neutrality. Hence its other nickname: the Graveyard of Secrets.

Which also made it a popular hunting ground for the likes of Jamie and Tinkerbell. A number of their clients, over the years, had wanted to know something a rival nation was keeping secret, and here was often the place to find it. Argentina punished spies harshly, but the potential rewards more than made up for the risk.

“HERE WE ARE. Thirteenth floor.” Jamie clambered out the lift door and swept the corridor with his pistol. The gas lamps were wound low, casting the floor in a warm gloom. The wall facing him bore the legend Archiv 4.

Tinks slinked out behind him, carbine slung over her shoulder. She grinned at him. “Feeling superstitious?”

“Actually I was just thinking maybe the Germans were. Bit obvious, isn’t it, putting your secret files up here?”

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence. There are archives on the floors below as well.” She’d unslung her rifle, and now pulled a creased drawing out of a thigh pocket. “Right. We need Room 4B. On the right, second left.”

They moved down the hall, slowly and silently, scanning the way in both directions as they went.

OBERSTURMFÜHRER HEIDI FARLHABER swung back on her chair, booted feet resting on the cheap table by the wall, flipping through a battered old American pulp novel, The Queen of the Leopard People! It was supposedly based on true events, but she found it sordid and dull. She sighed and tossed the book onto the table.

Strict embassy rules held that a Schutzstaffel officer be posted at the Schwarzarchiv at all times, and in theory it was an honour to be given this responsibility – it had come with her officer’s commission – but she couldn’t help but feel it was a punishment. She’d been too outspoken, too unruly, in her earlier assignments; it was a fault common to her kind, and she couldn’t help but think the upper ranks should take that into account. Instead, here she was cooling her heels at this tote Hosen outpost of the Ultimate Reich, protecting dusty old boxes that no-one had shown the slightest interest in in decades.

She sighed again and rubbed her temples. Perhaps the late hour was making her maudlin. She’d get a coffee and–

A noise.

Heidi’s ears twitched and she became perfectly still, straining to hear the sound that had caught her attention. She sniffed the air, hoping to make out, beneath the dust and the faded, brittle paper, and the fug of the gas lamps, some hint of–

Yes. A hint of human perspiration. And now a soft footfall.

She dropped her feet to the floor and stood in a single, fluid motion, drawing her Luger as she did so, then looked down at the pistol, grimaced and reholstered it. She was going to be meeting new people, after all.

It would be politest to change first.

THEY WERE ONLY minutes out of the airfield when Tinks clocked their tail.

The address had been easy enough to locate. The Autopista Pascual Palazzo was a major road in an industrial district in the northeast of the city; mostly paper factories and news presses. It was about three-quarters of an hour’s drive on main roads all the way, by cab.

They’d briefly debated hiring a trap. There was a small crowd of them outside the airfield, the drivers grooming and fussing over the lagartos: pachycephalosaurs, by the looks of them, their hides striped in vivid red and yellow, domed heads gleaming in the sun as they bobbed and tossed. But Jamie had demurred; the traps were cheaper than a steam car, but slower and less reliable, and he didn’t like the beasts. Skittish, and inclined to balk in crowds.

Pulling onto Pablo Ricchieri out of the airport, they’d been joined immediately by two or three other cabs – more passengers from the same flight, presumably – and a plain, new black car that slipped into the traffic two places behind them and remained obstinately in place, changing lanes twice to remain there. Tinks pointed it out to her partner.

“Thought that girl on Passport Control was giving us the eyeball,” he’d muttered. “They’re being a bit obvious, though, aren’t they?”

“Sending us a message, love.” Tinks had given them one more glance and slumped back in her seat to leaf through the architectural drawings they’d been given. “‘We know you’re here. Get out of town.’”

“What d’you think we should we do, then?”

She’d shrugged, still poring over the papers. “See if we can try and throw them off, carry on with the mission.”

“You’ve got a face, haven’t you? They hang spies, here.”

She’d smiled, and kissed him. “Let’s not get caught, then.”

THE DOOR WAS locked. Tinks pulled a roll of lockpicks from her belt, selected a couple of tools, and set to work as Jamie covered her. Even in the dim light, it took her less than two minutes.

It opened without a creak; disused as these archives were, the whole floor was nonetheless spotlessly maintained. The floors gleamed, and the walls had been recently painted. The only dust was in the boxes themselves, faded and ancient, the labels on their sides giving dates from decades before.

“Shelf Thirty-Seven,” whispered Tinks. “It’ll be near the back of the room.”

They crept into the room, Jamie keeping his pistol drawn and one eye on the door. “Christ on a bike!” he hissed. “These files are ancient. What could be in here that anyone would want now?”

Tinks shrugged, no less puzzled. “We can worry about it later. Come on.”

They came to the shelf. The boxes here were among the oldest in the room, with original dates in the ’thirties and ’forties. Judging by the labels, they had been moved many times, and were heavily plastered with stamps marking them Geheim: secret.

“Here it is,” said Tinks at length. “4B-37-DZ.” She pulled down the box, bringing out a small cloud of dust as she did. “It’s heavy enough, anyway.” She waved back at the door. “Come on. Let’s get a shift on.”

Jamie turned to go, and then froze at a low growl outside the door.

HEIDI CREPT DOWN the corridor, her tread cat-soft, belying her great size. She alternated between walking and moving on all fours, equally comfortable – equally uncomfortable, in truth, being neither one thing nor the other – on both. Her claws occasionally clicked lightly on the wooden floorboards.

The world around her swirled with colours and tones, her brain interpreting the information flooding in from her senses: the dull yellows of the dry, brittle paper, the sharp purple of the floor wax, the hint of blue where the paint, a month old but still discernible, cut through the scents of the archive. There: a thread of red, weaving in and under it all. The intruders were near.

Her great heart, pounding in her immense chest, strained, yearning for the hunt, the kill. As she drew closer, she lowered her head and shoulders, preparing for the sudden strike.

TO LOSE THEIR tail, they’d paid the cab driver – and it had been a generous sum; he was extremely reluctant when they’d explained what they’d wanted – to change his route, take them via Villa Subió Negro, a slum to the west of the city, not too far out of their way.

The steam car had made it perhaps a third of the way into the slum – the tin-box homes stacked three or four high between the narrow, winding streets, rubbish rotting openly on the ground, small clusters of locals standing and sitting at corners, staring intently at the car as it crept past them – before the way got too narrow and the steam car could go no further. The cab driver lost his nerve, insisting they either get out or let him drive them back into the city, and they’d decided to make the rest of the trip on foot. They’d moved quickly; the black car following them had disappeared a few streets back, but there was no guarantee they weren’t being followed.

The whole area was overrun with the tiny scavenging dinosaurs the locals called carroñitas: compsognathuses, their hides a brilliant green or a muddy brown. Some were kept as pets, but most simply roamed the streets, rooting in the rubbish and squabbling in the dust. Almost as ubiquitous, it seemed to them, were the soldiers of the local gang, which claimed control over the whole villa, drugs, prostitution and protection. They’d got into one fight shortly after arriving, leaving two of the gangsters dead in the street. Even through the black rose tattoos plastered across their faces, the boys didn’t look more than seventeen years old.

Near the centre of villa, they’d had a stand-off with the gang’s general and a handful of his soldiers, which Jamie had eventually defused by pulling a pin on a grenade and holding it over his head.

When eventually they’d cleared the villa and found paved streets again, there was no sign of pursuit. Another steam cab took them to their destination, pulling into the lot across the road and a hundred yards up. They’d paid and climbed out, and stood for a moment, regarding the grim concrete tower they’d been sent to rob. Red, white and black banners fluttered from poles on either side of the entrance.

“Now, what do you suppose it is the East India Company wants from the Nazis?” asked Jamie.

THE GROWL CAME again, and a shadow fell across the dim light coming in through the open door.

“What the–?” Tinks began, dropping the box and scrabbling for her carbine.

“Get down!” Jamie shouted, raising his pistol and stepping in front of her, just as the door was thrown open and a huge creature came crashing in, roaring in rage and frenzy.

Jamie’s pistol barked, deafening in the still, crowded space, and the thing’s great hairy arm battered it aside, smashing his arm against the shelf to his right. The pistol clattered to the floor. It followed up with its right, manlike hand stretched open, claws – talons, each a hand’s-width long – raking as it swung for the big mercenary’s belly. He stepped back, his curved, wickedly-serrated combat knife already in his left hand, and felt the tips of the claws tear the heavy jacket, nearly staggering him with the force of the near-miss.

It was in form like a human being, but terrible in aspect. Shrouded in shaggy black fur, it was nonetheless tatty, with bulging, unnatural muscles poking grotesquely through patches in its coat. A great, wolflike maw grinned and drooled as it inched towards him, and yet he made out a glint of human intelligence in its red, baleful eyes.

Jamie retreated before the beast, step for step, and felt his boot come up against the fallen archive box. He could hear Tinks, on the floor behind him, still bringing the rifle to bear. He would need to buy her a second’s more time, maybe more. Without another moment’s thought, he lunged, plunging the knife deep into its ribs, and felt a moment’s satisfaction as the blade bit and the creature gave a piercing, unearthly shriek.

His delight was short-lived. The thing – the werewolf, he supposed, although he’d not heard of such a thing actually existing – snatched his left wrist, even as he began to withdraw the knife again, and drove the claws of its own left hand into his side, filling his world with red light and blinding pain.

I’m dying, here. I can’t fight this thing at close quarters. But he couldn’t escape; it was too strong, terribly strong. He could no more pull his arm free than tear down a stone wall.

Desperately, he kicked at the creature: at its knees, its shins, between its legs, assuming it even had anything there to kick.

Salvation came in the form of a deafening crack, and a flash of yellow light, as his partner’s carbine was set off alongside him. Blood sprayed from the thing’s neck, covering his face, and abruptly he was hurled to the floor at its feet. He had the presence of mind to keep hold of the knife. He lay dazed and half-delirious, watching the terrible beast stepping over his body, and briefly, hysterically reflected that he couldn’t tell one way or the other, in this light, if it did have anything to kick, up there.

A third shot echoed in the cramped room, another flash of light glimmered behind the spots in his eyes, and he came to his senses. He tried to sit up and roll forwards, to bring himself to his knees behind the monster, although the pain that flooded his body from his torn and bleeding side turned it into a flop and an inelegant scramble to his feet. He heard Tinks’ scream, bellowed himself in response, and turned to see the creature snatching the rifle from her hands.

Its back still to him, the werewolf slowly, deliberately snapped the rifle in half, the muscles in its arms and back – all misplaced, all causing his mind to rebel at their wrongness – bulging and straining. It threw the shards of metal and wood to its feet and reached out for the slight woman. Roaring his defiance, Jamie threw himself at the beast’s back, driving his knife in between its shoulder blades again and again. It reared in pain, shrieked again and spun around, swinging one great limb around to swat him away, and he was hurled out the door and into the hallway. His shoulder clipped the doorframe, spinning him as he flew; that would be a bruise, he idly thought. His back hit the opposite wall hard, awkwardly, and he felt a crack that shivered through him; no new pain, although that was perhaps unsurprising. A broken rib, he thought. Perhaps two. He heaved himself painfully to his feet – knife still, miraculously, gripped in his hand – as the thing advanced on him again.

“Come on...” Jamie murmured, swapping the knife to his right and beckoning with his left, showing a confidence he didn’t feel. The thing slowed as it approached, hunching as if to pounce, and he shouted in its face. “Come on, you furry Kraut twat!”

With an answering roar, the werewolf lunged forward, claws outstretched, and he stepped forward, ducked, and drove the knife up into its armpit, trying for the axillary artery. Swinging wide, clumsily, it nevertheless scored a hit on his back, and two or three deep cuts opened up, sending lines of fire down him. He allowed himself to fall to his good shoulder, planning to roll out from under it before it could grab hold of him again, but the thing fell on top of him, crushing the air out of him.

For a moment or two, the silence in the clean, empty corridor returned, ringing in his ears.

“You going to get up, then, you lazy sod?” Tinks’ voice. In spite of the banter, her voice was tense, worried. He stretched, looked over the thing’s shoulder and saw his partner standing over him, his pistol still smoking in her hand. He hadn’t even heard her shoot.

“Well – frankly – I could use help. He’s a heavy bugger.” Jamie heaved himself up on one elbow and nearly passed out from the pain. He started to shove the thing off him, and Tinks stepped forward to help; between them, they eventually dropped the werewolf to the floor and got Jamie to his feet. Blood was pouring down his back and thigh. He staggered and leaned back on the wall.

Tinks looked up and down the corridor as she pulled a first aid kit from one of her pockets. “I don’t think we’ve raised the alarm, unbelievably, but I don’t think I’ve got time to do anything other than bandage you. We’ll get out of here, get Jen on the phone; he’s bound to have a tame doctor somewhere in BA that’ll patch you up.”

As she worked, staunching the bleeding, covering the wounds, the monstrous form on the floor gradually shrank, shed its hair, became a human woman. Short blonde hair, pale blue eyes, an athletic, tightly-muscled body: poster child for the Ultimate Reich. Naked, and horribly bent as she lay on the floor, the wounds – which showed all too clearly against her alabaster skin – were appalling. Her chest and side were a morass of knife wounds; bullet holes marred her head and throat. Jamie felt slightly sick, spat on the floor at his feet.

“Figures,” he said. “I tried to kick her in the bollocks. Wasn’t going to work, was it?”

Tinks cast her a fleeting look, before returning to her work. Smiled, tightly. “No, I suppose not.”

Then Jamie laughed, and then gasped with the pain, and Tinks looked quizzically at him. “No dogs,” he hissed. He took a deep breath, and started again. “No bloody dogs, didn’t we say?”

Tinks smiled, and touched his cheek. “Right. No dogs. Sorry.”

Once Jamie was bound to her satisfaction, they gathered the box and made their way out through the disabled lift shaft once more. It took them much longer going back.

IN THE ABSENCE of an infirmary, Obersturmführer Farlhaber lay on a couch in the rest room on the third floor, swathed in bandages. Not that it mattered; she’d be on her feet by the end of the day. Her kind healed quickly, and the foreigners had not used silver, that she could tell. Clerks and petty officials buzzed and fussed around her, unsure what to do.

“Just find me the file!” she shouted, heaving herself up to wave them away. “I’ll be fine! Just find out which file they took, and show me the fucking manifest!”

The clerks panicked, ran about, shouted at each other. Two of them ran back up to the Schwarzarchiv, and she fell back on the cushion. The secretary to the Consul walked in and took in the room briefly, before moving over to her.

“Obersturmführer. I came as quickly as I could. Before I contact the Consul, what has happened?”

Farlhaber hissed. “We’ve lost a fucking file, that’s what. From the Schwarzarchiv.”

Schmidt nodded, digesting. “From the... Which file? What does it relate to?”

“We don’t know yet. Some of your fatheads are finding out now. From Archive Four.”

Schmidt frowned. “Archive–? Those files date from the war! What could be in there that anyone would–”

“I would leave off your speculation right there, Herr Sekretär. The Führer has secrets that could be dangerous even to ask about.”

“I–” Schmidt stopped himself, cocked his head, then nodded. “Very well. Our concern, then, is to minimise the damage. We must reacquire the file as soon as possible – on the black market, if necessary – and avoid loss of face. Your failure could cost us both dearly, Obersturmführer.”

Farlhaber glared and spat. “My failure? It was your security systems they bypassed to get in here.”

The secretary smiled serenely. “Of course, Obersturmführer Farlhaber. But I was given to understand that the Schutzstaffel security expert I was issued would be able to–”

“You idiot! I’ll–”

“Herr Sekretär? Fraulein Obersturmführer?” One of the clerks had returned from the thirteenth floor, a document list in hand.

Farlhaber snatched it. “Give me that!” She pored through the list. “This one?” she said, pointing. “The underlined one? 4B-37-DZ?”

“Yes, Fraulein Obersturmführer.” The clerk was visibly trembling; his voice shook.

“Top secret...” murmured Schmidt, leaning over Farlhaber’s shoulder. “April 1942... What is this? This code name?” The box, and all the boxes on that row, were assigned to code name Endlösung. “What does it mean?”

Farlhaber’s already fair skin had paled. “It means, Herr Sekretär, that our discussion is over. There is no avoiding loss of face, no reacquiring this file on the black market. You!” She jabbed a finger at one of the clerks, who stammered, saluted and flushed. “Get me something to write on. We must send a telegraph to Berlin, fast as you can.”

“What’s going on?” demanded Schmidt. “What’s Endlösung?”

“The end of our careers, Schmidt. Both of them. Our lives, too, if we do not act quickly.” Farlhaber shouted at the clerk again. “Hurry! We must contact an officer in the SS. Adler is his name. Obersturmbannführer Dietrich Adler.”

STANLEY, THE FALKLAND ISLES, 1999

STANLEY. THE ‘HONG Kong of South America,’ as it was sometimes known.

Since Perón had instituted the SAU, the Britannian outpost had become a thriving port, the centre of trade between the Empire and the Latin collective. In four decades, the city had grown and built upon itself, until there was no distinction between Stanley and the islands; one vast city, covering the whole of the landmass. Landfill had even joined the islands up and extended them around, until the colony was now several times its original size, and still it grew.

Towers of brass, and glass, and steel. The streets – good paved streets, cleaned and policed by Britannian automatons – were home to modern steam cars, and the trams, as they say, ran on time. The Stanley Stock Exchange was second only to London’s in terms of the wealth it carried every day, and was increasingly said to surpass it in terms of its influence on global stock prices. Any banker, inventor, investor or (increasingly) gentleman worth his salt had offices here.

The airfield, built on pontoons in the continental side of the artificial island, was surrounded by some of the tallest, newest and most luxurious hotels in the world. As Jamie and Tinks – battered, bandaged and bruised – limped off the airship and made their way to their pre-booked rooms at the Savoy, this was a profoundly-anticipated comfort.

Come lunchtime, washed, better dressed and – in Jamie’s case – his bandages replaced, they made their way to the terrace bar as agreed.

The maitre d’ took their names, nodded in recognition and ushered them to a table on the balcony, overlooking the busy road below. They joined a young Indian woman, who looked to be less than twenty years old, dressed in a smart Western skirt suit and drinking tea. She smiled as they approached, and stood.

“Jamie, I take it? And, if I have this right... Tinkerbell?”

Tinks smirked. “‘Tinks’ is fine. It’s an old nickname.”

“Quite. Please, take a seat. Is tea acceptable, or do you need anything else to drink? My treat, of course. Marcel?” She waved to the maitre d’.

“Tea’s fine, thank you,” protested Jamie, waving once and easing himself painfully into a seat. “And you’re...?”

“Call me Kim,” said the young woman, who waited for Tinks to join her partner before sitting again.

“We’ve got your box,” said Tinks. “As agreed. It’s in the safe in our room. Thought it wouldn’t be best sense to...”

“No, of course,” said Kim, pouring tea for the two of them. “I shall have a man come around to collect it. And here, as agreed” – she nodded to an envelope on the table between them – “is the fee. Five thousand pounds. Six, in fact. My employer was most distressed to learn of your injuries, and – aside from putting our medical staff here in Stanley at your disposal, for as long as you need it – asked me to pay you a bonus for your work. He is very pleased.”

Jamie and Tinks looked at each other. “You don’t want to check it first?” asked Jamie. “What if we rip you off?”

“Then,” replied Kim, still smiling, “my employer would, with considerable regret, have to go to the necessary lengths to get the money back from you.”

“The files are all encrypted, you know,” said Tinks. “Some sort of Nazi code.”

Kim nodded, as she picked up her cup and took another sip. “Of course. We don’t anticipate it being a problem. We have cryptographers on staff.”

“Mind telling us what it’s all about?” asked Jamie, picking at the cakes on the tea tray. “Just curious, mind.”

Kim smiled tightly. “In this matter, I’m afraid, I am chiefly a messenger.”

Tinks picked up the envelope, slipped it into a pocket. “Good luck to you, then.”

“Thank you, Tinks. And you. And thank you both for your efforts. You have been most valuable to us.”

“Cheers.” Tinks stood, and helped Jamie to his feet again. “Good doing business with you.”

“And with you. I’ll be in touch very soon about more work.”

CAT AND MOUSE

One does not hunt in order to kill;

on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted.

– Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955)

NEW YORK, USSA, 1999

OTTO HARTMANN FLEW over New York. He soared among towers of glass and concrete higher than any tree, riding the updrafts, banking on corners. He and Ingo had a mission, but for the moment, he enjoyed the sheer freedom of the sky.

Below him, the traffic of the Socialist Union’s Greatest City passed to and fro. One or two of them pointed up to him, from time to time, but nobody seemed alarmed or outraged at the sight of the wing-flier. Nowhere were the different stations of life so mingled: bankers rubbed shoulders with garbage-men, politicians with factory workers. The young Schwarzes gathered in back streets to dance to their modern beats, throwing themselves around on hands and knees and shoulders and buttocks.

Otto sneered. This was such a selfish place, lacking the guidance of a loving Führer, the unity of purpose of the Master Race. It was a city of strangers, passing each other in the street, no-one making eye contact, everyone intent on their own business. At least Magna Britannia he could respect, if grudgingly. Their Queen tied them to their past and ushered them into their future, and they understood the importance of tradition, of maintaining values. But the Americans... their presidents were mortal men, effete and venal, and their heroes were flawed; homosexuals, Jews and undesirables to a man. Even the air felt unclean, oily.

They would have to exercise caution. New York was a place of gods: of ‘Doc Thunder’ and the others, his friends and foes. Even the skies might not be safe here. The Party’s only real presence in this city – in the whole of the Socialist Union – was Das Untergang, keeping to the shadows, manipulating the underworld. They couldn’t, daren’t, show their faces. Even using the wing-harnesses was a risk, but one that Obersturmbannführer Adler had deemed worth taking, in light of their prey.

He banked again and swung uptown, towards Central Park. Ingo swept into view around the side of a great gothic tower, and Otto signalled him, receiving a nod in return. Adler had given them a location for their target, an apartment a block off the park.

They took their bearings, and set out across the sea of green.

“THERE’S A LOT of it,” said Ledgerwood, leafing through the fifth or sixth folder he’d pulled out of the battered old box.

“There is,” said Kim, patiently, leaning on the dust-sheet-covered credenza by the balcony. The high-ceilinged apartment was grand, luxurious, still furnished, but had clearly not been used in years. After the riotous, crowded residences of her own Mumbai, and even the austere, beautiful high-rises of Stanley, it seemed a profligate waste of space. She didn’t believe the home belonged to Smith, or even to the East India Company; much of the time, she seemed to be trading off a complicated web of favours and debts she doubted even Smith had a full grasp of, and which she could barely even comprehend. It was her apartment this weekend, which was all she needed to know.

“There must be forty folders in this box.”

“Something like that.” She offered him a reassuring smile. “We appreciate it will take time to complete.”

“I mean, if it was already on tape, it’d be no problem,” said Hotston, perching on the arm of a covered chair. “We’d be done in less than an hour. It’s an old code; wartime, by the looks of things. Even if Rosie hasn’t already seen it, she’ll crack it pretty quickly.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Kim righted herself and brushed her hands together.

“But as it is, we’ll have to type the text in first,” he protested. “It’s going to take weeks.”

“We don’t have weeks. What can you do for me in one day?”

Ledgerwood laughed, still flipping through the folder. “The two of us? Half of one folder, maybe. I type with four fingers, and Stewart here with two. Get us a couple of stenographers to put the code onto tape for us, and we can possibly get half the box done.”

“That’s not a half-bad idea, actually,” said Hotston, standing. “They can transfer the encrypted code from the pages to tape without having any idea what it all means. There are at least half-a-dozen law firms within a few blocks of here; I’m sure we can get a couple of clerks for the day, even on a Saturday, provided money’s no object.”

Kim grimaced. “I wouldn’t say money’s no object, but I should be able to extend the budget that far. I’ll look into it right now, if you two want to get started. Any preferences for breakfast?” She started towards the door.

“Wait. Will this affect our fee?” asked Hotston.

“Not at all, Dr Hotston,” said Kim, halting at the entrance to the apartment’s front hallway. “One thousand pounds, and all charges brought by the Committee for Ethics in Analytics to be dropped. As agreed.”

“That’s the main thing we want, to be fair,” rumbled Ledgerwood. “We have money. We want to go home.”

The young Indian smiled. “As it happens, my employer’s client specifically mentioned it. You have an admirer, doctors; one who wants to see you home every bit as much as you wish to return. It will be accomplished.”

“How curious,” said Hotston. “Any idea why?”

“None, alas. At any rate, please excuse me. I must go and find your clerks.”

“Of course, Kim. Thank you.”

She bowed her head slightly and left the apartment as the two men set to work.

“AND YOU’RE SURE of it?” Adler closed his billfold again, returned it his jacket pocket. There wasn’t a hint of a German accent in his voice. In his pinstriped suit and spats, to the wretched creature huddled at his feet, he was just another wealthy New Yorker.

The filthy woman flashed her ruined teeth at him as the note disappeared into the folds of her many layers. “Absolutely,” she said. “Top floor. Moved in this week. Pretty girl; foreigner of some sort.”

Adler looked up at the apartment block and then back down at her. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been most helpful.”

Two shots rang out. Amidst the noise and traffic of the bustling metropolis, they were barely noted.

Adler stepped over the homeless woman’s corpse, his pistol still smoking as he tucked it into its hiding place.

OTTO ALIGHTED ON the roof of an apartment block on East 62nd Street and ducked behind the parapet, resting a hand on a gargoyle overlooking the road. With a light touch on the controls, he allowed his wing-harness to idle, the clanking and wheezing giving way to a gentle hum that would not be heard from the ground. He watched Ingo settle on a church across the way, and nodded at him.

He scanned the street, taking in the ranks of apartment buildings, looking for the one Adler had described. So much of this city looked the same! Brownstone, he’d been told; five storeys. That one, on the corner. He waved at Ingo on the church, pointed. The other man nodded in understanding, clambered around the steeple to get a better view.

To begin with, they were to observe only, to establish who was in the apartment, who the girl had brought in to her conspiracy. It would not do to strike, only to leave witnesses who knew what she had found. They had to burn them out, destroy them utterly.

Endlösung was compromised again; the second time in a year. Following the trail this time had been more of a challenge, crossing into and out of Britannian territory as it did. Eventually, Untergang had stumbled across word of their documents, through compromised elements in the American intelligence community.

Otto spat. Spying was no work for a true soldier. What Adler did, what he and Ingo did, was noble: keeping secrets, preserving the sanctity of the Ultimate Reich. Uncovering secrets was the work of cowards and rats; rooting through the soiled laundry of the world.

Shaking his head to clear such distractions from his mind, Otto settled into his hiding place and focused on the apartment. The window was lit, as the early autumn evening began to settle in. There would be at least three: the girl, at least one man to decode the documents, at least one guard. Perhaps more. And there may be a fixer, a deal-maker. The girl was in New York to sell stolen documents, after all; in this city of scoundrels and rats, surely someone would be rubbing his soiled hands, hoping to profit from the exchange.

A shadow passed the balcony window; a large man, over six feet tall and broad with it. Otto grinned at the thought of the challenge. Was that the guard? Would he be skilled in battle? Please, let him be a true warrior! A challenge to truly test the mettle of the best of the Luftwaffe!

Another figure, this one pausing in the window, drawing the curtain. A man, smaller than his companion, with a shaven head, in the manner of criminals. The code-breaker, perhaps.

There! Otto’s eyes were drawn to the ground floor, where a girl – the girl who had stolen the files, by the looks of her – stepped out of the front door and onto the sidewalk. She turned to her left and walked east, away from the Park. Otto caught Ingo’s eye across the road and gestured, and his partner took to the air, his harness’s clatter carrying softly on the light breeze. Otto shot a glance down at the girl, but she showed no sign of hearing the machine. Ingo followed the girl’s progress down the street, keeping to the shadows above the rooftops, blocking her view with the trees planted on either side of the broad avenue. Otto returned his attention to the apartment.

He suspected it could take some time to be sure of their targets.

“THIS IS EXTRAORDINARY stuff, really. Simply extraordinary.” Ledgerwood shook his head in wonderment as he read the screen on the Rosworth Mk IV.

“Steady on, chap. We’ve done better.” Hotston sipped at his coffee, bought in a paper cup, of all things, from a vendor on the street.

“Now, we have. This was ’forty-two,” said Ledgerwood, pointing to the display. “Treble-encrypted, most of this, and they’ve even embedded pictures, rendered into code via Lovelacian algorithms. I had no idea the Germans had this kind of stuff, back then.”

“The best of their best,” said Kim. “If our information is correct, the Ultimate Reich would have brought to bear whatever expertise they could to protect this secret.”

“I’ll say,” said the big analyticist, taking a swig of his own coffee and grimacing. “Are you sure there’s no tea?”

“Is it likely to delay a result?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Final pass now. Be done by nightfall.”

“It is gone nightfall already.”

“Is it?” Ledgerwood glanced out the window. “Good Lord. Well, then, be done soonish. Apologies for that.”

“Not at all. Do carry on.”

ADLER CREPT UP the stairs of the apartment block. He’d closely watched the building all day, seen the young woman come and go, made sure of who was present and what he would find up there. There must be no mistakes. He never made mistakes, at any rate; but this time, especially, every part of the strike must be perfect.

He had not wanted to risk alerting her to his presence by ringing the bell at the street entrance, and so he had – after due observation – noted a rear entrance, used to access the small communal garden the residents used in the summer. Entering a neighbouring building under the pretence that he was a door-to-door salesman, he had dispatched the young man who had answered the door, robbed him to conceal the motive for the kill and concealed him in the building’s laundry block. Then he’d let himself out the back door and vaulted the fence.

Now he found himself climbing the steps, absolutely silent, Luger in hand. There were lights on in the apartments on most of the floors; voices murmuring softly in the night. He progressed slowly and with great care, holding his breath on every landing, determined that there should be no reason for any of the residents to open their doors and see him.

At length, he reached the top floor. He glanced at the name plate on the door – empty, of course – and briefly debated kicking the door in, but decided in the end to essay one more deceit. Taking a moment to compose himself, he reholstered his pistol, reached out and pressed the doorbell button.

OTTO HAD MOVED across two roofs, and was now directly across from the apartment block where the girl and her friends were lurking. Ingo had moved closer as well, and now perched on another brownstone apartment building close to their target.

Night had fallen, and in that time they were confident that they had identified everyone working in or dealing with the apartment: the girl, the two men he’d seen earlier, and the two young women the girl had returned with after leaving the block this morning. They were now all in there at the same time, and Adler’s deadline was closing. It was time to strike.

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.

MUMBAI, 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.”

Kim regarded her employer curiously. “And so... what? They paid for our aid?”

Smith chuckled. “They will do. If, as I say, this is a good time to move against the Company, then we shall need friends. Britannia’s eye is distracted from us, for the time being. Thanks to your actions, these past few months, Russia’s is likely to be as well. But there is still China to be considered. We will be needing powerful friends before too long.”

Kim curled up on the chair, musing, listening to the sounds of the market setting up outside the window. “Smith? These people, these new friends of yours... They’re machines, aren’t they? Difference engines?”

Smith huffed, smiling. “You really are very bright, Kim. Analytical arrays, I’m told they’re called, although I’m beggared if I know the difference.”

“What are their names?”

“Hm? Marx and Osman. You’ll come to know both names well enough, in future.”

“I see.”

Both man and girl sipped their tea in silence for a few moments.

“Smith?” Kim said eventually.

“Yes, Kim?”

“You said we could speak of my father, at some point. We never did. You said you and he, and your professor, went separate ways. Why? What happened?”

“Oh,” he said, and he closed his eyes. He looked very tired. “They died. Both of them, your father and Professor Ghandi. Assassinated. Your mother was right.”

“Who–” Kim’s voice caught in her throat. She cleared it and started again. “Who–”

“The Company, of course. They have people for it. I considered finding out who, after I started working here, but decided I didn’t want to know. What would I do? And to what end? Whoever it was, he was just the weapon. The hand that aimed it was the Company, one way or another. It’s the Company, ultimately, that I have to punish for it.

“For years I thought it was an old friend of Ghandi’s. A British man, who he’d known at Eton. He’d visited us a few times and tried to convince us that Britannia was the best for India. It was only years later that I found out he’d died right around the same time as Ghandi and your father did.”

Kim was shocked to find she was tearing up. “And did the Company kill him too?”

Smith opened his eyes again, shrugged. “Perhaps. I’m not sure.”

“What was his name?”

“The friend?” Smith fell silent for a moment, thinking. “Quicksilver, that was it. Hercules Quicksilver. Some sort of war hero, I believe. He was a good man. Principled. Didn’t understand India, really, or the Company; but good-hearted and brave. I believe he had sons.”

“Maybe I’ll meet them one day.”

“Maybe, Kim. Maybe.”

CODA:

THE EVE OF WAR

This is our home – yet this is not the whole of our world. For our world is where our full destiny lies – with men, of all people, and all nations, who are or would be free.

– Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969)

NEW YORK, USSA, 1999

“OKAY, SENDING HIM up now,” said the receptionist, her tinny voice echoing. The horn died abruptly, the whistling noise fading to silence.

“That wasn’t smart, pilgrim.”

Father Michelangelo wheeled around, heart suddenly pounding. There, one foot on the floor, the other still on the railing outside, stood one of the most remarkable men he had ever seen.

The man was black, and very tall, with a patch over one eye and a full, flowing moustache. He’d covered his clothes – a close-fitting white jumpsuit dotted with pouches, with a sort of star design on the chest – with a blindingly blue trenchcoat. It hurt the eyes to look at him, as though Michelangelo’s mind didn’t want to focus on the outlandish apparition.

“What did you say?” asked the priest, utterly at a loss.

“Have you told any of the cats back at the Vatican what hotel you’re staying at, daddio?”

“I–” Michelangelo hesitated. The stranger was right. “Then who–”

“A very dangerous Nazi cat by the name of Adler, and he ain’t here to share a toke and get down, if you know what I’m saying.”

Michelangelo wasn’t sure that he did. “He’s here to kill me?” he ventured.

The stranger nodded. “He’s been tasked by none other than the king of badness, Adolf Hitler himself, to burn that box of magic beans you got there, and it’s a safe bet he’s gonna see you as a liability. He’s gonna want to silence you, true believer.”

The priest shook his head. “Who are you? Why are you talking like that?”

“The name’s Jack Scorpio,” the stranger said, “and I’ll gladly answer all your questions in a little while, but there’s a seriously bad trip about sixty seconds away from that door, so I’d say now is not the time. Now, you can either come out this window with me and your little box of tricks, and we can go talk to a man called General Zitron who is seriously vibing to meet you, or I can walk away and let our friend from Berlin come in here and give you his spiel instead. What do you say?”

“I – I’ll come.” Michelangelo seized the box and stepped to the window. Some sort of flying contraption was floating in the street behind Scorpio’s shoulder. “Where are we going? What are we doing?”

Scorpio smiled. “We’re starting a war, baby. And what you got there is the best kind of ammunition there is. Welcome to S.T.E.A.M.”

About the Author

Born in Australia, David Thomas Moore has lived and worked in the UK for the past twenty years, and has been writing for roleplaying magazines, fiction websites and short story anthologies for eight years. The Ultimate Secret is his first novella. He lives in Reading with his wife Tamsin and daughter Beatrix. You're glad you met him.

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It’s all aboard the Neptune, the latest in submersible cruise-liners, for a jolly ocean jaunt. But what starts out as a holiday quickly turns into a voyage of terror for Ulysses and his companions. A brutal murder is committed and then an act of sabotage plunges the Neptune into the abyssal depths. There a deadly secret awaits them, as the Leviathan awakes!

HUMAN NATURE

The Whitby Mermaid is stolen from Cruickshank’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Ulysses Quicksilver is soon on the case. What does the theft have to do with the mysterious House of Monkeys? And what of the enigmatic criminal known as the Magpie? Ulysses’ investigation takes him to Whitby, where something sinister lurks on the moors, carefully choosing its victims!

“Jonathan Green gets mileage out of his monsters, with big action set-pieces that read like things we’d like to see in a rip-roaring summer movie.” - SFX

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Table of Contents

Teaser

Title

Pax Britannia

Indicia

Dedication

Masques and Lies

The Emperor's New Machine

Company Man

The Graveyard of Secrets

Cat and Mouse

Coda: The Eve of War

David Thomas Moore

'Pax Omega' by Al Ewing

'Time's Arrow' by Jonathan Green

'The Ulysses Quicksilver Omnibus, Volume 1' by Jonathan Green