Ghosts of Empire Read online

  He leaned against the stone barrier, watching the dark swirl of the water, the twinkling, reflected lights of the city. Above, the clouds looked smoky and dull, the moon a vivid slash in an otherwise featureless sky. The only sounds were the slap of lapping water against the hull of a nearby boat, and the distant hiss of traffic.

  He pulled a crumpled cigarette from the crushed packet in his pocket and lit it with a match, flicking the burning fragment over the barrier, so that it tumbled down toward the water, winking out of existence as it kissed the cold surface.

  His wounds ached with a dull, throbbing pain. It would be some time before his strength fully returned, but until then, at least he was mobile. At least he wasn’t dead. He’d been in worse scrapes, and he’d see his way out of this one, too.

  He heard the scuff of a shoe from behind him, and resisted the urge to turn around. “You’re late,” he said, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth, before reluctantly adding, “sir.”

  “And you’re bloody well supposed to be laying off the smokes until you’re better,” said Major Absalom. “Doctor’s orders. I’ve seen the report.” Rutherford smiled as Absalom came to a stop beside him, resting one hand against the barrier. “But since you’re at it, lend me a match, will you? This pipe’s not going to light itself.”

  Rutherford tossed the book of matches over. Absalom struck one and turned his back on the river, sheltering himself against the wind as he slowly stirred the embers of tobacco back to life. Moments later he was wreathed in its pungent smoke.

  “He wasn’t best pleased about the mess your friend made in his basement, either. That’s all in there, too, along with a requisition order for a replacement automaton.” Absalom chuffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “I hear Hargreaves was rather taken with him, too. Especially when the blighter had his hands around his throat.” He chuckled, evidently enjoying the image.

  “You’ve talked to Regina, then?” said Rutherford. He turned to regard his superior officer. Absalom looked every part the aged establishment hero—close to retirement, with rheumy eyes, stiff white whiskers stained yellow with pipe smoke, a tangled white beard and a balding pate. He’d fortified himself against the weather with a black woollen overcoat, and wore a red scarf curled around his neck. The briar pipe dripped from the corner of his mouth, and smoke twisted lazily from his nostrils. He was a big man—almost as tall as Rutherford, and twice as broad.

  He’d been a boxer in the navy, by all accounts—or at least that was what Rutherford had been able to glean from the ladies in the typing pool; Absalom wasn’t known for being talkative, particularly when it came to the misdemeanors of his own youth. Ever since Rutherford had known him, the major had been quietly cultivating an air of mystery. The ladies in the typing pool, however, were a resource that no agent left untapped—with their keen ears and sharp wits, Rutherford was only surprised that Absalom hadn’t got them doing field work.

  He took the pipe from the corner of his mouth and stabbed at Rutherford with the end of the stem. “She was most perturbed that you failed to make the rendezvous this morning.”

  Rutherford sighed. He’d decided against going in, choosing to send a coded message to Absalom from the hotel instead, urging him to meet, here, now. Anything else seemed too risky. He still wasn’t clear exactly what was going on, or whom he could trust amongst his fellow agents. He’d spoken briefly to Gabriel on the telephone, and together they’d concocted a hasty plan to entrap Sabine Glogauer the following night. He’d already put out the necessary feelers. “You understand why.”

  Absalom frowned, revealing a series of deep-set lines in his brow. “I’m not certain that I do,” he said. His voice was a dry rumble, which threatened to crack at any moment. “But I know you, Peter, and I want you tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Rutherford finished his cigarette and pitched it into the water after the match. “Shall we walk?”

  “I’d rather we went somewhere for a ruddy stiff drink,” said Absalom, “but I suppose a walk will have to do.”

  The two men fell into step beside one another, strolling along the embankment in the near darkness, with only a glimmer of moonlight to guide their way.

  As they walked, Rutherford tried to gather his thoughts—about Gabriel; the incident at the Fixer’s house; the Russians, and the fact that someone must have tipped them off. It all spilled out in a long, not particularly eloquent, torrent.

  When he’d finished, Absalom remained unnervingly quiet as they continued along the embankment for another hundred yards, then, with a sigh, he approached a wooden bench and dropped onto it. His whiskers twitched, as he appeared to consider his next move. He took another match from Rutherford’s book—which he hadn’t yet returned—and relit his pipe. Then, his eyes searching the water, he said, “Have I ever told you about Stephen Malhorn?”

  Rutherford sat down on the bench beside him. “No. I don’t believe you have.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s not an experience I care to relive very often,” said Absalom.

  “Was he an agent?”

  “More than an agent,” said Absalom. “He was a friend. Back when I was first recruited, fresh out of the navy.” He chewed thoughtfully on the end of his pipe. “We saw things, he and I… things you wouldn’t believe; things that no man should ever see. We fought them, too. Made a name for ourselves in the Service. We were young, and arrogant, and together with Angelchrist we went delving into things we shouldn’t have.”

  “You’re talking about the occult,” said Rutherford. He’d heard stories about Professor Archibald Angelchrist, one of the founding members of the Secret Service, and his penchant for such matters. It was said that he’d operated a bureau of his own, a department within a department, chasing after spooks and ghouls and all the other monstrous things that lurked in the shadows. Given what Rutherford had seen himself during his short career in the Service, he considered it a darn good idea.

  Absalom nodded. “We knew we had to put a stop to it, you see? All those fools who thought they knew better, who thought they could harness that power, control things that couldn’t be controlled…” He trailed off, taking another draw on his pipe. “And then during the war, the enemy tried to turn them into weapons. They opened doors that should have remained shut, let things in…” He glanced at Rutherford. “Like the things you saw in New York.”

  “You mean they were conjuring those… creatures as weapons?” For a moment, Rutherford was back in New York, tumbling out of the sky while a massive, tentacled leviathan attacked a Ferris wheel at a fair on the docks.

  “That and more. Out on the Eastern Front, we thought we were never going to be able to contain them; twisted, gangly things that came in the night, raiding the trenches, others that burrowed into your dreams. There was a secret war being fought, you see, a war in the shadows, using weapons of a different kind. And it’s still going on today, only the combatants have changed.”

  “The Russians?” prompted Rutherford.

  “Aye, the Russians. Once, they were our ace in the hole, the only thing that could stop the Prussian assault. They had a secret division, trained in the ways of the arcane. While we primed our machine guns and mumbled our prayers, they were engaging in rituals of a different kind. When the Prussians attacked, they were ready. They called on whatever dark arts they’d uncovered to banish those foul things back to the depths of hell. People say it was the Leviathan Land Crawler that won us the war, but it wasn’t. It was them. The Koscheis.”

  “Koscheis?”

  Absalom nodded. “Named after the figure from Slavic folklore, ‘Koschei the Deathless’. They liked to put about the notion they were somehow immortal, impossible to kill; that they’d even mastered death itself. It wasn’t true, of course—I saw plenty of them fall—but it added to their mystique. It worked, too; their reputation was fierce, and no one—not even the Russian soldiers—wanted anything to do with them. They just stood aside while the Koscheis dealt with the monsters, and then
melted away again, using their strange magic to disappear into the night.”

  “Just like the attack last night,” said Rutherford. “They seemed to be opening glowing portals in the air, transporting themselves through them.”

  “My understanding is that they can only travel short distances, and only then to locations they can see. Any further and they need a fixed network of some kind. There were tales of them ending up partially melded with walls, or trapped inside inescapable hollows, when they tried to push their luck too far. But this was a long time ago. The world is a different place. God knows what they’re capable of now.”

  “What’s it all got to do with Stephen Malhorn?” said Rutherford.

  Absalom looked suddenly mournful. “After the war, we returned to our posts at the Service, more determined than ever to find a means to protect the nation from the things we’d seen. Angelchrist understood, of course—he always had. But no one else was willing to listen. The government had started to believe its own propaganda, and was funneling all its resources into developing new Land Crawlers, new guns, and new weapons of mass slaughter. They thought, if another war was coming, it would come from across the Atlantic, in fleets of airships and ironclads. The Americans were starting to get nervous by then, you see, and Alberta wouldn’t stop going on about “the old colonials”, and how we needed to reassert ourselves and reclaim the glory of the Empire.”

  He waved a hand, as if to indicate he considered all of this complete nonsense. “Whitehall allowed us to continue with our work, of course—a token compromise—but it wasn’t enough. We all knew it. Only, Malhorn decided to do something about it. Unbeknownst to us, he went to the Russians, made some kind of pact. He would feed them information, and in return, they promised him protection, a schooling in the very arts we sought to oppose.”

  “He went rogue?”

  “No. That’s just it. He never saw himself as a traitor. He was doing what he thought was right. He was trying to protect the country. People had their suspicions, of course—the meetings he didn’t log, the hours that went unaccounted for, but I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to believe my friend could undermine us like that, not after all those years.”

  Rutherford noticed Absalom’s pipe had gone out again, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. “What happened?”

  “We were out on an operation. We’d received word of a coven in Bristol with a penchant for human sacrifice. When we arrived, though, they were waiting for us.”

  “The Koscheis?”

  Absalom nodded. “They’d been using Malhorn all along. Of course they had. The fool should have realized it from the start. They’d mined him for all the useful information he had, and then they tossed him away like a used rag.”

  “They killed him?”

  “They killed us both. At least, that’s what they thought. I made it out of there wounded, but alive. Malhorn was branded a traitor, and for a while, my association with him nearly condemned me, too. If it hadn’t been for Angelchrist… He stepped in, spoke up for me. He saved my reputation.”

  “So you think the Koscheis are back?”

  “Perhaps,” said Absalom. “But more importantly, I’m saying that you could be right—about there being a traitor in our midst. It worked for them before, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that they could have turned someone’s head. The promise of power… it’s alluring. Last time I ignored it. I won’t let the same thing happen again.”

  Rutherford reached for another cigarette. After a moment, Absalom passed over the matches. “So what next?”

  Absalom shifted in his seat, fixing him with a hard stare. “You have a choice,” he said.

  “I do?”

  “You’ve made yourself a target. They know you’re on to them, and they know who you are. They’re going to come after you.”

  Rutherford nodded slowly. None of this was news to him. “And…?”

  “And we can either use that to our advantage, or we can get you the hell out of here and hole you up somewhere safe until this all blows over. But one thing’s for certain—you’re out in the cold. It’s too dangerous to bring you in. Especially if there is someone working against us from within.”

  Rutherford took a long draw on his cigarette. There was never any question of running away. “Alright. So I’m out in the cold. I’m going to need help, though. Resources.”

  “Your American friend,” said Absalom. “Can he be trusted?”

  “You read my report from New York,” said Rutherford. “I trust him with my life.”

  “This is bigger than your life,” said Absalom. “Or mine. Or any of ours. But I don’t see that we have much choice.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Just play your cards close to your chest, and keep him even closer.”

  “What about Regina and Hargreaves?” said Rutherford.

  “Leave them to me,” said Absalom. He glanced around, and then reached into his coat pocket. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a revolver. He passed it to Rutherford. “Here, take this.”

  The metal felt cold in Rutherford’s grip. He weighed it for a moment, and then slipped it inside his jacket.

  Absalom had taken out a scrap of paper and a pen, and was hastily scrawling an address. “This is the address of a safe house. It’s off the books. You’ll find ammunition, cash, and fresh clothes there. Spend the night, and then get out again. It’s best if you keep moving.”

  “Thank you,” said Rutherford.

  “And one more thing. There’s someone who might be able to help. Sir Maurice Newbury. He’s an old colleague. I’ve written his address on the reverse. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll do what he can.”

  TEN

  Regina hefted the wrench, and not for the first time wished she’d managed to hold onto her gun. She’d considered going back for it, feeling her way through the eerie and, as she was now convinced, unnatural darkness, but it could have been anywhere in there, and she’d be wasting precious time trying to find it. If there was anyone else in the house, there was every chance they’d heard the shots that Hargreaves had fired, and the longer they waited, the more chance the enemy had of getting away, or readying an ambush.

  She watched Hargreaves as he beckoned for her to move forward, edging open another door with the side of his boot. He disappeared through, and she followed after, glancing over her shoulder to ensure they weren’t being observed from behind.

  So far, the ground floor seemed abandoned. They’d emerged from the cellar beneath the staircase in the main hall, and having first secured the kitchen and back door, were now moving through the interconnected dining and sitting rooms.

  The kitchen had shown evidence of recent occupation—food remnants in the bin, dirty plates heaped by the sink, a half-drunk mug of coffee on the worktop—but it was days old, and beginning to smell.

  Similarly, the dining room had been used in the last few days, as evidenced by the position in which the chairs had been abandoned and the three-day-old newspaper left in situ on the tabletop.

  She moved further into the sitting room, while Hargreaves covered the door that led back into the hallway. The furnishing here was sparse and old—a cracked leather chesterfield, a writing bureau standing open and empty, an overturned side table. The once-vibrant wall cloths were faded too, save for three or four patches of bright green where pictures had once hung.

  Regina was beginning to build a picture of what had happened here. It was clear that nobody had lived in the house for months. The Russians hadn’t furnished the place, but had used it as a temporary base or meeting point, perhaps only in their dealings with Sabine Glogauer, or as a location for their attempted entrapment of Rutherford. She was beginning to think that Hargreaves was right—they’d cleared out the moment Rutherford’s cover was blown, leaving the dog behind in the darkened cellar to deal with any subsequent intruders. It was looking increasingly likely that she and Hargreaves were going to leave the place empty-handed.

  They moved out in
to the hallway. The light from the streetlamp outside was shining through the stained-glass panel above the door, forming bright pools of red and blue and yellow on the Minton tiles. A small heap of post lay on the mat—circulars, a newspaper, and something presumably addressed to the previous inhabitants or owners of the house. Nothing there that could help shed light on the Russians’ activities.

  She used the wrench to indicate the stairs to Hargreaves, who nodded his assent.

  Hargreaves went first, still clutching his weapon in both hands. As he climbed, Regina could see he was working his jaw back and forth, tense and alert, expecting danger at any moment.

  Slowly, they ascended the stairs to the small landing at the top. Here, a door opened into a large bathroom—which was clean but empty—and another small flight of stairs doubled back, leading to a long, thin landing from which a series of doors led to what she assumed to be bedrooms. At the end of this landing, another set of stairs led on to the floor above.

  Hargreaves approached the first door, but just as he was about to reach for the handle, cocked his head to one side, listening intently.

  “What?” mouthed Regina.

  Hargreaves touched the tip of his ear, indicating for her to listen. She paused, straining to make out what he’d heard. After a moment, she heard it too—a creak of floorboards from the landing directly above. Something—or someone—was moving up there.

  Hargreaves stepped away from the door. He took a deep breath, and then met her gaze. By way of answer, she hefted the wrench, and nodded. He turned and strode purposefully toward the other end of the landing. Then, pausing only to glance back and ensure she was following, he turned and hurried up the stairs.

  Regina broke into a run, taking them two at a time. If there was someone up there, they had him trapped—there was no other escape route from the third floor, and a leap from the window would either kill him, or shatter his legs. Perhaps this was the chance they’d been looking for; an opportunity to get some answers.