Blood Red City (15 page)

‘We can't just release her,' Leo said.

‘Why not?' the Abbot demanded.

‘She's in no fit state to escape, and they'd just drag her back again. We have to hope that when they're done with her they'll let her go.'

‘You think that's likely?' Pierre asked. He coughed violently with the effort of speaking. He suppressed it quickly as a figure entered the cell corridor through a door further along – one of the guards.

‘The Abbot is right,' Guy murmured to Leo. ‘Let's worry about sorting it out later.' He didn't wait for a response, but walked briskly up to the approaching guard.

‘The woman is to be released at once,' he said. ‘She obviously has nothing to tell us. She can go.'

‘Go?' the guard laughed. He tried to turn it into a cough as he saw Guy's expression. ‘I doubt she can even stand, sir.'

‘The Abbot and brothers are here to take care of her.'

The guard nodded. ‘Of course, sir.'

The Abbot and Guy had to almost carry her through to the library. Leaving the Abbot looking after the girl as she sat on one of the benches, leaning heavily against him, Guy and Leo helped Pierre up to the gallery. The volume they had been inspecting was still out on the reading table.

‘I can't let you take it,' Pierre said weakly.

‘We can't risk the Germans discovering what we were looking for,' Guy said. ‘We know what it says now. If you copy it down for us, that will suffice. But can we risk the book staying here?'

‘They can't know that it is this book you were interested in,' Pierre pointed out. ‘But I can hide it. Replace it with another volume, in case they come looking.'

‘There is another problem,' Leo said. He glanced down at the Abbot below, the woman still leaning weakly against him. ‘Fleisch will know there was no order for her release. And the guard knows she is in the monastery.'

‘We just have to hope he'll have other things to worry about,' Guy said. It wasn't a perfect solution, and they all knew it. ‘Maybe when news of this gets out Fleisch will be replaced before he can do anything. Or if it doesn't, he'll need to keep things hushed up and won't dare to act.'

‘You hope,' Pierre said.

‘I hope,' Guy agreed.

But when they returned to the lower floor, the Abbot had a different idea.

‘Find a room for her. Let her rest,' he said, helping the girl to her feet. ‘Brother Francois can tend to her injuries. And yours, my friend,' he added, gripping Pierre's shoulder.

‘What about you?' Pierre asked.

‘I'm going back to Fleisch.'

‘What?' Guy said.

The Abbot nodded. ‘I shall give you a few minutes to get away, then I shall go and tell him I escaped from you. I shall also tell him that in return for my silence about his incompetence, I want safety for the girl. I will tell him she is innocent, and that we will look after her until she has recovered.'

‘You really think that will work?' Guy asked.

In answer the Abbot pulled him into a sudden embrace. ‘I pray that it will.'

Leo nodded. ‘I think your plan is probably the only one with a chance of success,' he said. ‘You are a brave man, sir.'

‘I'm merely putting right what I helped to make wrong.'

‘I hope you find peace,' Leo told him. Guy thought it was an odd thing to say.

They helped Pierre get the girl to a room and settle her on the plain, hard bed. It would be luxury compared with her earlier predicament. Leo had Guy's own clothes bundled under his robes.

‘Best wait until we're clear of this place before you change back into civvies,' he suggested. ‘Just in case we need to bluff our way out again.'

They left Pierre and Brother Francois with the girl and let themselves out through the door they'd arrived by just a few hours before. Guy had folded in his pocket the sheets on which Pierre had transcribed the relevant section of the manuscript.

Only when they were well clear of the monastery and leaving the village of St Jean-Baptiste de Seine behind them did Guy realise that he no longer had the Luger he had taken from Fleisch.

‘I must have put it down in the library,' he said. ‘Unless I dropped it in the cell when we were helping that poor woman.'

‘No,' Leo said, a tinge of sadness in his voice. ‘When the Abbot embraced you, he took it from the holster.'

‘But – why?'

‘Because, like I said, his plan is the only one that will guarantee no one ever discovers that Fleisch didn't order the release of the girl.'

*   *   *

The Abbot closed the door behind him. The relief in Fleisch's eyes was apparent from across the room. The Abbot walked slowly over. He turned the chair away from the desk, and leaned down so he was staring into Fleisch's eyes.

‘I have sinned,' he said quietly. ‘I have stood by and allowed terrible things to happen. And today, I was confronted with those things. Today I saw for myself what I have ignored. I saw
your
sins. I am horribly afraid,' he said, ‘that despite a lifetime of devotion, so many prayers that I cannot count them, so much love for my brothers … I am horribly afraid that today I am going to Hell.'

He reached for the bloodied handkerchief stuffed into Fleisch's mouth, and gently pulled at it.

‘But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing,' he went on, ‘that you are coming with me.'

Fleisch's eyes were wide with horror. The handkerchief fell from his mouth, but before he could cry out, the cold barrel of his own Luger replaced it.

The Abbot was surprised how loud the sound of the shot was in the confined space, echoing off the stone walls. He did not hear the second shot.

 

CHAPTER 12

Fritz Weingarten saw more time-wasters than anyone else at the embassy. There were usually several every week who wandered in off the streets with something to sell. Or, mostly, nothing at all to sell. He was sympathetic, a good listener. But his patience wore thin when local down-and-outs who spoke not a word of English and barely any German turned up and suggested they could somehow become the best spy Germany had ever sent to Britain.

Occasionally – just occasionally – he found gold. That was why he was here, and it was what kept him going. With his ample frame squeezed into the chair behind his large desk, blowing cigar smoke across the room, he reflected that today he just might have hit gold again.

The man sitting opposite him in Weingarten's office at the German embassy in Lisbon was also smoking. He held a cigarette between his fingers, unconsciously making a V sign. Ironic really, as he was British. It was rare for a real Brit to turn up and offer information.

That said, what he was offering seemed rather arcane. Weingarten's interest was in what the man could discover on his return to England rather than what he was offering right now.

‘A stone axe,' Weingarten said, wanting to be sure he had it right. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Rutherford, but I cannot see the significance of an archaeological artefact to the British war effort.'

‘Neither can I,' Rutherford admitted. ‘I just know that it's important. I thought you should be told.'

‘Thank you. I will pass on the information, along with your written description. And, of course, we will be grateful for any further information you can provide. Either on this same subject, or about other things.'

Rutherford frowned. ‘What other things?'

Weingarten made a show of shrugging, his enormous shoulders lurching with the effort. ‘Oh, I don't know. There may be things you see or hear that we might find useful. Troop movements, ships at the docks in London. Supplies being moved or loaded. We may send you specific questions from time to time. And money, of course. We can't expect you to work for nothing, and I'm sure there will be expenses.'

‘How will I pass this information on, assuming I can get it?' Rutherford asked. ‘I can't keep coming to Lisbon.'

‘That might raise suspicions,' Weingarten agreed. ‘Although between you and me, the British seem rather incompetent in the area of counter-espionage. We have a significant network of agents already working across Britain. You will be joining a team.'

‘Really?' It was gratifying that Rutherford seemed surprised at this. The British really had no clue, Weingarten thought with satisfaction.

‘I shall give you the name and address of an agent you can contact. We refer to her as Magda, but in London she uses a different name of course.'

‘Of course.' Rutherford leaned forward to stub out his cigarette.

‘I will write down the details. You will memorise them, then destroy them. Understood?'

‘Understood.'

There it was, in his voice. Weingarten could hear the thrill, the excitement, the hint of nerves. Rutherford was trapped now – involved, intrigued, ensnared. Yes, he could prove a most valuable agent. Weingarten wrote out the details of how and where to contact Magda, and her assumed name. He stood up and handed them to Rutherford before seeing the man out.

Easing himself back into his chair, Weingarten thought about what the man had told him. He doubted that any of it was of any interest to anyone in Berlin. But he had nothing else to do this afternoon, so he might as well include it in his report. Along with details of his latest agent. He smiled at the codename he had selected for Ralph Rutherford – ‘Thor'. Well, the man seemed to be interested in axes.

*   *   *

‘Progress meeting' was a misnomer, Miss Manners thought as she listened to the others talking round and round the same subjects. She glanced down at her shorthand minutes of the discussions so far.

The axe-head that J.D. Sumner had in his possession was gone – taken by the Vril before Sarah or Sergeant Green could even examine it properly. They had photographs and notes from Sumner, but so far Elizabeth Archer at the British Museum had made little of them. The cat that Jane had been able to connect to, which gave them an insight into what the Vril were doing, was also gone, probably dead.

Leo Davenport and Guy Pentecross had not brought back the manuscript from France. But they had at least escaped with their lives, and they had a transcript. It suggested there might (or might not) be two other axe-heads, but so far no one knew where.

Colonel Brinkman was getting frustrated, but hiding it fairly well. With the Y Stations reporting an increase in UDTs over mainland Europe, he was under increasing pressure from the Prime Minister to offer some advice and insight. But all he could suggest was that this increase might merely mean more enemy aircraft were being deployed but not being identified.

The most positive suggestion of the meeting came from David Alban. Although he worked for MI5, Alban had been caught up in the affairs of Station Z, tracking down an Ubermensch and saving Sarah from it. Initially cynical about the team's usefulness, he was now a convert – and a useful ally within the intelligence services.

‘This transcript,' he said, ‘is it in English? Or is it the original medieval Latin or whatever it is?'

‘We have both,' Davenport told him.

‘Do you understand Latin?' Sarah asked. The marks on her face where the cat had attacked her were almost gone, but one stubborn scratch persisted down the side of her face.

‘Precious little,' Alban said. ‘But I was just wondering if we shouldn't treat it like any other data we've recovered.'

‘Mrs Archer is examining both the translation and the Latin,' Guy told him. ‘Is that what you mean?'

‘Not exactly. If we see it as data rather than prose, as some sort of cipher…' He shrugged. They had got the point. ‘I deal with coded text and hidden messages all the time. Sometimes one set of symbols is jumbled up, other times they stand in for a completely different set of symbols or language. Numbers instead of letters, that sort of thing. Just a thought, but what it says and what it means may be very different things.'

Brinkman nodded. ‘A good thought. Yes. Leo – you and Elizabeth know as much about these legends as anyone, take the transcripts up to Wiles at Bletchley and see if he can make anything of them.'

Guy waited for Sarah as the meeting broke up. ‘Feeling left out again?' he asked.

‘Not yet,' she told him. ‘To be honest I'm glad of the rest. And there's not a lot for you and me to do right now. Best to leave it to the experts.'

Guy agreed. ‘I don't think there's a training course for how to understand Wiles and his team.'

‘I did have one idea,' Sarah told him as they followed the others out of the room. ‘Someone it might be useful to talk to. If I can set it up, will you come with me?'

‘Of course. Who are you thinking of? Just so long as it's not Adolf Hitler.'

*   *   *

One whole wall of the wooden hut was covered with a map of Britain. It was a composite picture, made from a tessellation of several maps, overlapping and fixed to the wall with drawing pins. Coloured threads criss-crossed the map, some red and some blue, held in place by round-headed map pins.

Elizabeth Archer had not been to Bletchley before, and examined the map with interest. To Leo Davenport, it was old news. He watched the two of them absorbed in their studies – Elizabeth intent on the map; Professor Wiles poring over the transcript of the ancient text they had brought with them.

‘These lines in red…' Elizabeth said thoughtfully after a while.

Wiles glanced up, peering over the top of his spectacles. ‘What of them?'

‘They're Ley lines, aren't they?'

Wiles took off his glasses and dropped them on his desk. ‘You know about Ley lines? I mean, yes, yes, they are. And you can see there's a good correlation between the UDT tracks, the blue lines, and the Ley lines.'

Elizabeth nodded. ‘Someone did mention your theory, but it's only when you see it laid out like this that it's so obvious. I assume these numbers –' she pointed to a label at the end of one of the blue lines – ‘tell us how many UDTs have been tracked along this route.'