Ghost Talkers (3 page)

She coughed, her face pressed against the dry earth of the yard. It had only been someone else's memory. Shuddering, she pushed herself up, with Ben guiding her. His hat was upside down in the dirt. Hands shaking, Ginger picked it up and brushed the dust away. “I am so sorry.”

“Darling, sh … don't worry about that.” Ben took the hat from her and set it aside. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. With tender care, he dabbed the tears from her cheeks. “It was just a truck. The Huns won't be able to get close enough to Le Havre to bomb it.”

“I didn't—” Ginger took the cloth from him so she could wipe her own cheeks. “I thought I was … one of the reports today was a boy who died in the trenches.”

“Ah…” He pulled her into an embrace, and she leaned into the warm circle of his arms. For the moment, Ginger let Ben rock her in his arms and closed her eyes, concentrating on the solid physical sensation of his firm chest and the tickle of his mustache against her forehead. Surrounding her like a shield, his aura spread in the amber and rose of his love.

*   *   *

Before the war, if anyone had told Ginger that she would find paperwork and filing reports the most pleasant part of her day, she would have laughed, directed them to her social secretary, and then gone off to a soiree. Now, though, the monotony of going through reports and merely
reading
about deaths seemed a welcome respite. During the shifts, aides ran reports immediately to central intelligence, who then telephoned the chiefs of staff so they could adjust their strategy. All Ginger had to do was present a weekly report on the efficacy of the Spirit Corps program, with lists of the mediums in active service and those lost to burnout or a circle failing to hold.

By the time she had left Ben to get her papers in order, Ginger was tolerably calm. Her legs, at least, were no longer shaking. Ben met her outside the meeting room and held the door for her. His aura had swirls of steel blue concern and a faint tinge of brick red guilt.

She laid a hand on his arm and leaned in to whisper. “Why are you guilty?”

“I have my reasons.” He opened the door. “And no fair peeking.”

“Thank you, Captain.” She narrowed her gaze at Ben, but he only gave her one of his winning grins, dimples and all.

As she entered, the men in the room rose to their feet, nodding in greeting. Captains Keatley and Lethbridge-Stewart each had a sheaf of papers as usual. Captain Axtell had dried mud on his uniform as though he had come straight from the field. Even his blond hair was dimmed by the layer of mud.

From behind his desk, Brigadier-General Davies peered over his glasses at her. His aura was tinged brown with annoyance. “No Lady Penfold today?”

“She sent me in her stead, sir.” As her aunt had done with almost every general staff meeting. Lady Penfold was the titular head of the Spirit Corps, only because of the dratted British insistence upon a title. Not, of course, that they would give a woman a rank in the army proper. Not even if they were doctors, or ambulance drivers, or mediums. In any event, if they wanted the person who understood the spiritual mechanics of the corps best, they should have had Helen here.

“Mm.” He turned to the papers on his desk. “Well then, might I prevail upon you to make us some tea? My man is terrible at it, and I would kill for a decent cup.”

Ben cleared his throat before Ginger could respond. “I can have Merrow do that, sir.”

His soldier-servant, Pvt. Merrow, had not yet left the room with the other aides. He jumped as Ben spoke. The wiry young man's aura was quite shot through with pinks of embarrassment. The poor thing's shoulders were perpetually hunched, as if he were constantly afraid of coming to notice. But he immediately went to the door with a murmured, “Very good, sir.”

Trying and failing to catch his eye, Ginger said, “Thank you, Private Merrow. That would be very kind.”

“Damned if I don't envy you, Harford.” Captain Axtell slapped his hand against his leg, raising a cloud of dust. “My fellow can't make a decent cup to save his life. Or mine.”

“It seems my books are what save your life.”

“Right! Ho! You have that true enough.” Axtell boomed with laughter at odds with the dark reds of his constant anger.

Ginger stepped a little away from him. While he'd been away at the front, she'd forgotten how easily Axtell laughed and how viciously bleak his aura was. The combination of laughter and rage made him seem more dangerous than Keatley, whose dour expression was at least matched by mossy browns of disappointment.

Brigadier-General Davies rapped his papers against the desk, straightening them with a series of sharp taps. “Shall we get down to business, gentlemen? And Miss Stuyvesant.”

Ben pulled out a chair for Ginger and nodded to it to ask her to sit. The other men settled into their usual spots around the table, putting reports down in front of them.

“Let's get right to it.” Davies peered at one of the papers. “The Spirit Corps passed us a report today that confirms what we've been suspecting for some time now. The Germans definitely know about the program. Blinded one of ours and said, ‘Another ghost spy.' Now, my first question is: Why did they blind him? Will that have any effect on the men's reports?”

Ginger shook her head. “No, sir. If soldiers carried their wounds with them into the spirit realm, most of them would be unable to report at all.”

He grunted. “So why blind them?”

“I would expect because they don't know any better. Perhaps a sign of their desperation?” She shifted in her chair so that she faced the brigadier-general more directly. “I mean, the Germans have less experience with spiritualism, so they may misunderstand the capabilities of ghosts.”

“I thought a German invented it.”

Ginger clasped her hands together in her lap to hide her annoyance, grateful that Davies could not read her aura. “A German? No. Or do you mean Emanuel Swedenborg?”

“That's the fellow.” Davies pointed his pen at her.

“Ah. He was Swedish. And—and, though mediums have occurred naturally throughout history, there were enough charlatans that it wasn't considered scientifically provable. So, really, we count the beginning of the formal study of spiritualism as 1847, which is when the American Andrew Jackson Davis wrote his seminal book. The movement spread to England, but it's been slow to take hold on the Continent.” Ginger tapped her nose, thinking. “In fact, Germany likely has a dearth of trained mediums, given their history of burning witches.”

Lethbridge-Stewart grimaced. “The mustard gas they introduced last September … I wonder if they actually created it specifically to blind our Tommies, and the lung damage was a side effect.”

Ben said, “I had the same thought. It would explain why they're increasing the frequency of gas attacks.”

“Right. Our boys can't report on things they can't see.” Davies turned to Ginger. “Or can they?”

“No, sir. Or … more properly, while it is
possible
for a ghost to linger in an area and observe things after death, the dead have no sense of time passing. That's why our soldiers are conditioned to report in
directly
upon their death, else they might linger for days or weeks with no awareness that time had passed.”

“Any way to mitigate that?” Lethbridge-Stewart leaned forward in his chair.

“Even if there were, the longer a spirit remains on this side of the veil, the more likely it is to lose coherence.” At his look of incomprehension, Ginger simplified her explanation. “Ghosts shed their memories without a body to anchor them. The hauntings you've seen have diminished to a single point of trauma.”

“Still—”

“Please. Consider what you are asking.” Ginger looked around the room at the men. All of them, save the brigadier-general, were in their prime, with the lean, fit physique of soldiers. “Would any intelligence be worth trapping our boys in the memory of their death?”

Axtell swore and shuddered visibly. The dried mud on his clothes was a grim reminder that he'd seen the horrors of the war more recently than any of them, save Ginger.

In that silence, Merrow opened the door with the rattle of a tray full of cups and saucers. The company turned as one at the welcome aroma of strong tea. Flinching, Merrow blanched visibly at the scrutiny.

Young men like him, full of fear, were braver to Ginger than brash fools like Axtell. Surely Merrow had lied about his age to join up; he couldn't have been more than seventeen, but neither his age nor his fear kept him from doing his duty. Nor would Ginger allow the simple fact of her sex to give her reason to shirk. If Merrow could fight, then by God, so could she.

Brigadier-General Davies took his tea from Merrow and waited until the young man had left the room again before returning to business. “Axtell, is there any indication that the Huns know where the mediums are located?”

“Nothing from my usual sources. Calling the mediums ‘the London Branch' seems to be effective misdirection. The decoy hospitality huts here are working, so people continue to believe that the Spirit Corps are just a part of the WAC.”

“By contrast to Axtell…” Ben took a cup from the tray Merrow had left. “I'm hearing murmurs in my network, sir. I'd say it's only a matter of time before they guess where Potter's Field is located.”

Sighing, Davies nodded. “I am afraid you have the right of it. And have they figured out how the conditioning ritual itself works?”

“Hell if I know.” Axtell wadded up a piece of paper and tossed it at Ben. “It'd be easier if I knew what the ritual entailed.”

“Not my department.” Ben held up his hands with a grimace, but his aura went yellow-green with caution.

There were a handful of people who knew how the soldiers were primed to report in. Ben was not one of them. However, he had been instrumental in getting the program up and running, and the other men were aware of that much. It wasn't surprising that, as intelligence officers, they might try to prompt him for more information, even while knowing that he was unlikely to give it.

“Still…” Axtell shifted in his seat. “It's deuced hard looking for signs that people know how something is done when I don't even know what I'm looking for.”

The brigadier-general snorted. “The classification level is high enough that I don't know either.”

“How the hell they can keep it a secret when they condition the entire bleeding army is beyond me.” Axtell shuddered and then chuckled. “It gives me the creeps, knowing that the Spirit Corps mucked about with our minds like that and not a one of us remembers it.”

“Let us count our blessings that the conditioning is holding, rather than being frustrated that we don't know the process.” Davies made a mark on his paper, and his aura filled with orange frustration. “Meanwhile, we shall have to make plans for the evacuation of the corps. Perhaps relocate them preemptively.”

Ginger managed not to roll her eyes at that suggestion. “That is not a possibility, I am afraid. The soldiers are primed to report to the nexus at this location, rather than to a specific medium.”

“That seems stupidly shortsighted.” Keatley, who to this point had not spoken, looked up from his ever-present papers.

“We had no way of knowing who would be on duty. And given the rate of attrition among the corps, if we
had
primed men to return to mediums, a goodly number would find their way across the channel to haunt some poor woman who could do nothing with the information.”

He snorted. “Ah yes … the attrition. How unfortunate that the poor women are overcome by sitting quietly all day.”

Lifting her chin, Ginger opened her mouth to retort—

“Here now—” Ben sat forward, back stiff as he glared at Keatley. “None of that. The mediums suffer more from this war than you can possibly know.”

“Please, spare me.”

“They live through the deaths of every soldier who reports in.” He rose to his feet and leaned over the table. “Every soldier. So I will thank you not to mock them.”

Ginger compressed her lips. Ben was overstating the case a little. The only deaths she experienced were ones for which it was necessary to enter the soldier's memories. A simple report could be taken verbally and, sad to say, most soldiers saw nothing of use.

“Sit down, Captain Harford.” Brigadier-General Davies shifted in his chair. He rubbed the back of his neck, scowling at his cup of tea. “Though his point was not made politically, Keatley is correct in that we
were
shortsighted. When we implemented the Spirit Corps, we thought the war would be over by now. Keeping it a secret for a few months: difficult, but possible. For a year … well. We were pushing our luck, and, as Harford notes, it's only a matter of time before the Huns find the corps. So—what can we do?”

Ginger offered, “We could prime new recruits to report to a different location and gradually relocate.”

“What of the Tommies currently in the field?” Davies asked.

“They will continue to report here.”

“It might be wise to decentralize the department.” Ben's aura turned a self-satisfied amber. “If we set up several branches of the Spirit Corps in different locations, it would slow the Huns' ability to find any of them since they'd get conflicting reports. Since Miss Stuyvesant established this location, she would be admirably suited to setting up additional ones.”

Ginger narrowed her eyes at him, knowing full well what he was attempting. “Lady Penfold depends upon having me here as her liaison. I am afraid it would be too disruptive to send me away.”

“Perhaps we can appeal to Lady Penfold.” Ben turned from Ginger to the brigadier-general. “I really think Miss Stuyvesant would be best suited for the task.”

“I can draw up a list of mediums who would be appropriate.” Besides, being at the Le Havre offices was her only opportunity to see Ben. “The challenge is that we're short staffed as it is. Everyone is already pulling double shifts just to keep up with the deaths. Some mediums will be required to stay here, regardless, and since this is where HQ is, I think one can hardly argue that it makes sense to send your Spirit Corps liaison away.”