The Suicide Exhibition: The Never War (Never War 1) (29 page)

‘Penelope – can we talk?’

‘Of course, Jane.’

The woman, Jane, gestured for them to follow her into a side street. She looked round again, obviously afraid they were being watched.

Miss Manners introduced Guy. ‘You can trust him,’ she added.

Jane smiled nervously. ‘Thank you.’

‘Why don’t you tell us how we can help,’ Guy said. ‘Jane, was it?’

‘Jane Roylston. Penelope and I know each other from… a while ago. Only she managed to escape.’

‘Oh?’

‘I left,’ Miss Manners said. ‘You can leave too, Jane. Just go.’

‘Oh no.’ She shook her head rapidly. ‘No, I could never do that.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘To warn you. He’s getting worse, Pen. I didn’t think it was possible, but he is. That’s why I can’t leave. He’d never let me, and that brute Ralph…’ She pronounced it ‘Rafe’.

‘Ralph Rutherford,’ Miss Manners told Guy. ‘I told you he was a bad sort.’

‘I have to get back,’ Jane said. ‘But, be careful. I don’t know if it helps, but Crowley is in touch with something, some force. It takes over the séances, and he claims it speaks to him. Today a glass…’ She shook her head again. ‘Never mind. I just thought you should know.’

‘What force?’ Guy asked. ‘What can you tell us about it?’

‘I don’t know, not really. He tells me nothing. But he calls it the Vril. You know, like in that book.’

‘
The Coming Race
?’ Miss Manners said, glancing at Guy.

‘Yes. It was fun at first, all this…’ She sighed, glancing round again. ‘You were right to get out of it, Pen.’

‘Call me,’ Miss Manners said. ‘It’s been too long, Jane. Far too long. Call me if you discover anything, anything at all.’

Jane was shaking her head. ‘I… I can’t. If he found out.’

‘He didn’t before. You helped me last year. That was important, it really did help – more than you can ever know.’

Jane frowned. She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Don’t take any risks,’ Miss Manners warned. ‘But anything you can tell us about the Vril, about what they’re up to – it
will
help.’

‘I have to go.’ Jane hurried out of the side street and disappeared among the people making their way down Tottenham Court Road towards the tube station.

‘You think she’ll tell us anything?’ Guy asked.

‘She did before. It was Jane who warned us about Shingle Bay.’

Brinkman summoned Guy, Sarah and Davenport to a meeting in the Conference Room the next afternoon.

‘Miss Manners has told me all about your run-in with Crowley,’ he told Guy.

Guy had already recounted the event to the others. ‘He did seem rather concerned about our work,’ Guy said. ‘Though how he knows about it…’

‘A lot of it is bluff, I imagine,’ Davenport said. ‘He has many friends in important places. And he may also have some genuine mystical or occult ability.’

‘Miss Manners is convinced he does,’ Brinkman said. ‘And he knew about Shingle Bay before it happened.’

‘Could he be a German spy?’ Sarah asked.

‘Unlikely,’ Brinkman told them. ‘He seems dedicated to the war effort. He’s offered to help the intelligence services, which is partly why MI5 told me I was wasting my time and theirs when I suggested they keep tabs on him last year after Shingle Bay.’

‘Didn’t he organise a group of witches to go down to Beachy Head and put a curse on the Luftwaffe or something?’ Davenport said. ‘For all the good it did.’

‘You say that, but we did beat them,’ Guy pointed out.

‘I think we can agree that Crowley knows something of the Vril, and may even be in communication with them somehow,’ Brinkman said. ‘Although it doesn’t sound as if he was terribly forthcoming, he may know more about them
than we do. He’s warned us not to interfere, and not to study their artefacts. I take that as an indication that we should do both. We’re clearly making some progress, perhaps even on the brink of a breakthrough, or he’d not be warning us off.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ Davenport asked. ‘Keep buggering on, as the great man says? I gather from Guy that Mrs Archer has made some interesting progress with that bracelet Miss Diamond found.’

‘I’ll try to get Crowley under surveillance,’ Brinkman told them. ‘I’ll ask Special Branch rather than MI5 – Alban’s still angling to get us closed down. Witch-hunting might give him more ammo.’

‘And the rest of us?’ Sarah asked.

‘It sounds like the artefacts could be key. There’s nothing more to be learned from Suffolk. But Streicher’s team might still be excavating the French site, don’t you think?’

Davenport nodded. ‘It’s on a bigger scale. Streicher seemed to be a stickler for procedure. They shipped out everything they’ve recovered so far, as we know. But even if they’re not still working there themselves, I would think there’s more to be found.’

‘Good.’ Brinkman stood up. ‘Then you’d better get back there. At the very least you can take a look at the layout and construction of the place, even if they’ve cleared everything out. Miss Diamond can drop you off.’

‘Drop me off?’ Davenport was aghast. ‘Are you seriously suggesting I parachute into occupied France?’

‘You’ll be fine. Major Pentecross will be with you.’

This was news to Guy.

‘You speak French, don’t you?’ Brinkman said. ‘And German?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘I’ve never made a parachute jump, though,’ Guy protested.

Brinkman was unimpressed. ‘You’d better hope Miss Diamond can find somewhere safe and convenient to land.’

They flew through the night. Guy found himself volunteered to sit in the cramped, cold dorsal turret and man the rear machine gun. The only other armament in the Avro Anson was the front machine gun, another .303 which Sarah promised she could manage herself.

‘I guess you’ve been trained to defend yourself against an enemy attack when delivering planes for the ATA,’ Guy said.

She laughed. ‘There’s a very real possibility of attack, but if it happens you just get the hell out of there. If it’s one of the girls flying, then they don’t arm the guns.’

‘You’re joking,’ Davenport said. But she wasn’t.

‘Don’t worry,’ she assured them. ‘Part of the act in the flying circus was shooting at a target. I was quite good at it. That and dropping flour bombs into a circle painted on the grass. But you shouldn’t be so surprised I know how to shoot,’ Sarah added. ‘I’m half American, remember?’

‘But which half?’ Davenport murmured to Guy as they boarded.

Davenport made himself comfortable in the cargo bay. He’d brought a book on Greek mythology and a torch together with several blankets.

‘You’ve done this sort of thing before,’ Guy realised.

‘Several times. Still makes me feel sick though.’

‘I didn’t mean flying.’

‘Neither did I.’

They had an escort of two Hurricanes to see them over the channel. But as the dark mass of France appeared on the horizon, the fighters banked away and headed for home. Guy twisted in his tiny seat to watch them go. They were on their own now.

The plane seemed incredibly slow, incredibly noisy, and incredibly cold. Guy kept his hand nervously on the gun housing, and after several hours he began to wonder if he would ever be able to remove it. He was wearing gloves, but even so his fingers were so cold they might have frozen in place. He wasn’t sure he could even press the firing button.

‘All right up there?’ Davenport yelled from below.

‘No,’ Guy called back. ‘I’m cold and cramped and desperate for a piss.’

‘Well see if you can hang on a bit longer. The pilot says to tell you we’ll be over the landing zone in about ten minutes. So let’s hope we can find a big field.’

‘They usually send me over in a Lysander,’ Davenport said. ‘It can land on a sixpence. Well, not actually on a sixpence, but it needs rather less space than that old thing.’

‘I wasn’t given the option,’ Sarah told him. ‘Now I’ve got to turn this thing round and get airborne again before anyone comes to see what the noise is.’

‘You got enough fuel to make it back?’ Guy asked.

‘It’s a bit late now if I haven’t.’

She left the engine running and went back with them to the cargo door. Davenport jumped out first, landing with practised ease on the grass below. Before Guy could follow, Sarah pulled him into a sudden unexpected but welcome hug.

‘Be safe,’ she said.

‘You too.’

Guy wanted to stay like this, feeling the heat of her warm his own chilled body. But almost at once she let go and stepped back.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ Guy said.

Sarah gave a quick nod. ‘Go on. Leo’s waiting. And I need to close the door.’

Guy watched as the Anson turned awkwardly in front of them. Sarah waved from the cockpit, then the engine roared and the plane started across the field, gathering speed until at what seemed like the last possible moment it lifted ponderously into the air. They could still hear the engine long after it disappeared into the darkness.

‘I hope she’ll be all right,’ Guy said.

‘She’s good,’ Davenport assured him. ‘The way she handles that thing she could give a one-oh-nine a run for its money.’

‘Let’s pray she doesn’t have to. So, what now?’

‘We find somewhere to hide until morning. Even with
decent identity papers we don’t want to get stopped.’

‘Are they decent papers?’ Guy asked. He had memorised the French name he’d been given together with some basic background information. He was Maurice Renan, an academic who was accompanying the American professor Carlton Smith.

‘Only one way to find out, and that’s to put them to the test,’ Davenport said. ‘Which is a bit drastic. Especially if they’re not much cop after all.’

‘Great. And what do we do tomorrow? Look for your German?’

‘Not sure how pleased he’ll be to see me, but yes we’ll head for the dig and see if Standartenfuhrer Streicher is still in evidence.’

They found a barn and settled down inside for what was left of the night. Guy didn’t think he’d get much sleep.

‘Are we far from the excavation site?’

Davenport sighed. ‘My dear boy, I have no idea where we are. I’m hoping the lights we saw as we came in to land are Ouvon, but we could be almost anywhere in France. Let’s wait till daylight then go and ask someone.’

‘Isn’t that a bit risky?’

‘Depends who you ask. Good night.’

The next day was windy and wet. Guy wished he had a thicker coat, but he was stuck with the one Sergeant Green had managed to persuade SOE to provide. All his clothes had to be French, or at least not discernibly British. The weather and the undulating rural landscape conspired to make it seem they could still be in Britain.

Davenport’s strategy was just to walk down the road until he saw something he recognised or someone they felt they could ask for directions. It sounded haphazard and doomed to failure to Guy. But he’d reckoned without Davenport’s impressive memory which seemed to extend to places as well as text.

‘Those trees,’ Davenport announced after about half a
mile, pointing to a smudge of green on the horizon. ‘They border the field next to where Streicher’s men were digging. We should reach a gate in about a mile, and there’s a farm track we can take.’

He was right. The track brought them round the trees, along a hedge, and to a point where they could look down on the burial mound. Except, it wasn’t there. The whole area was a sunken mass of churned up mud.

‘What the hell have they done?’ Davenport said.

‘You’re sure this is the right place?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘They’ve levelled it,’ Guy said. The whole area reminded him of the descriptions he’d seen in his father’s letters of the hellish devastated no-man’s-land of the last war. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘I know a good bar not too far from here,’ Davenport said. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I could do with a drink.’

They took a small table at the back of the bar, in a curved brick alcove. On Davenport’s instructions, Guy asked the barman for two strong coffees. The man wiped down the table with a flick of a napkin, then tucked it back into his belt.

‘And we’re looking for someone called Jacques,’ Guy said.

The barman pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘No one called Jacques in these parts.’

Guy was surprised. ‘No one at all? I find that hard to believe in a place this size. It’s not an uncommon name.’

‘It’s not a name I have ever heard, monsieur.’

The coffee was the consistency of syrup and the strength of tar. The barman placed three small cups on the table and left. A few moments later, Jacques joined them.

‘It is good to see you again, my friend,’ he said to Davenport, shaking his hand.

Guy introduced himself, and Jacques smiled.

‘Two things you need to know. First, my name is not Jacques.’

‘And second?’

‘Your French is a lot better than his.’

By the time Jacques had finished his coffee, he had given them a full description of events after Davenport left. Streicher’s men had cleared everything from the dig, filling another train with boxed-up artefacts to follow the one that Davenport and Jacques had robbed.

‘After that, they mined the whole excavation with explosive charges. Blew it to Kingdom Come.’ Jacques clapped his hands together and then pulled them rapidly apart again by way of demonstration. ‘Boom! You could hear it in here.’

‘So what do you think?’ Guy asked after Jacques had gone. ‘Get your friend to send a message to London asking for Sarah to come and pick us up again?’

Davenport turned his cup slowly on its saucer as he considered. ‘It’s the artefacts we need. That’s why we came here.’

‘But they’re gone. You heard him.’

‘Then we follow them.’

Guy leaned across the table. ‘You’re joking. They’ll have been sent to Germany.’

‘To Wewelsburg. Himmler’s castle of darkness.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘You speak German, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Guy admitted. ‘Like a native. But that doesn’t mean I can pretend to be one.’

‘I’m sure you can. Jacques can organise appropriate papers.’

‘No, no – this is madness.’ He struggled to find some argument that would convince Davenport it was a rash and impulsive idea doomed to failure. ‘Do
you
speak German?’