The Great Game (26 page)

  "Who… are you?" Harry said. His lips felt numb. It was hard to speak, to see.

  "My name is Dombey," the voice said. The shadow behind the desk moved, then settled back. "Paul Dombey."

  "But who…
are
you?" Harry said, and the man laughed.

  "I am the general manager of Dombey and Son," he said.

  Harry shook his head, or tried to. This wasn't helping. Was the man toying with him? Flashes of memory – Harker's pale face, the black baruch-landau, Harker's broken body flying through the air–

  He swallowed bile, tried again. "Who… do you work for?"

  But it was not Harry's place to ask questions. It was his place to answer them. He was the captive. The privilege of knowledge was not his to take. The shadow stirred behind the desk.

  "You are far more interesting than you first appeared, Mr Houdini," it said. It chuckled good-naturedly. "Oh, you had us fooled, when you first showed up! A green, inexperienced agent of the Cabinet Noir, that was easy enough to establish. Blundering about, asking questions in all the wrong places… Vespuccians!" The voice chuckled again. "You have so little style, you are like half-civilised barbarians bumbling about! Do you know, I enjoyed watching your feeble efforts. Who do I work for? You will find out in due course, Mr Houdini. We are the guardians, if you like. We watch. We watch the Bureau, and the Quiet Council, and the Shaolin. We watch the world powers, and we try to stir the world onto the course it should have taken long ago. And you!" The shadow moved forward and, for just a moment, a vast, pasty face revealed itself in the half-light, and if he could Harry would have cried out. Half-machine it was, one eye mechanical while the other, a liquid blue, glared at him with benevolent amusement. Half the face, when it turned, was open, the skin missing, and inside it, rather than blood and bones, were tiny clockwork parts, moving silently. The man grinned, revealing teeth of metal and ivory. "When you became too much of a nuisance," he said, as pleasantly as before, "and found what you thought was a weak spot, our own Mr Harker, I had no choice. As much as it pained me, Mr Houdini, I had to… let you go."

  "You ordered me killed?"

  "We knew you were to meet an agent at the docks last night. What we did not know, could not know – was that the agent was
you
!"

  Harry said nothing. The truth was that he had not expected to encounter himself either.

  "So
now
," the voice said, settling back, that hideous face disappearing from view, "you have aroused our interest, Mr Houdini!"

  "Is that… Is that a good thing?" Harry said.

  "It depends," the voice allowed, generously, "on which side of this desk you sit on."

  "I… see."

  "Do not worry! This is a great opportunity, for us as well as for you. I assume you are an agent of that elusive Bookman? One hears so much, yet truly knows so little… Come, my dear, join me."

  The last was not, clearly, aimed at Harry. He turned his head as much as he could. Light footsteps sounded, and to Harry's amazement a beautiful young woman entered the circle of light cast from above.

  "Come, my dear. Say hello to our guest," Mr Dombey said.

  "Hello," the girl said. She smiled, revealing white teeth.

  "Who…?"

  "But my dear Mr Houdini!" Mr Dombey said. "This is Wilhelmina Murray."

  Harry tried to swallow, couldn't. "Harker's… fiancée?"

  "One of my best agents," Mr Dombey said, with evident pride. Mina Murray smiled pleasantly at Harry.

  Harry whispered: "Please… help me."

  Mina Murray laughed. "Why would I do that?" she said.

  And Harry knew he was doomed.

  "What will you do with me?" he said. Was the effect of the drug wearing off? He tried to move his hands – the tips of his fingers, he thought, had moved a little.

  "
He
wants to see you," Mr Dombey said. "Therefore…"

  "He who?"

  The shadowed figure behind the desk shook its head. "My dear," it said to Mina Murray. "Would you?"

  "My pleasure," Mina Murray said. She came to Harry and stood close to him; he could smell her perfume. She nodded to someone behind him; he couldn't see. The sound of a heavy object being dragged on the ground. Then she put her hands on him – they were warm – and she pushed. Harry fell back with a cry. Hands grabbed him, lowered him. He found himself inside a wooden crate. Mina Murray towered over him, and suddenly there was nothing pretty or kind in her face. Her smile was predatory.

  "It won't hurt a bit," she said. In her hand she held a syringe.

  "What… What is it?" Harry whispered. He couldn't move.

  "It will send you to sleep," she said, gently. The needle lowered. Mina pulled up Harry's sleeve. He couldn't resist her.

  "Where… Where am I going?"

  Mina Murray tested the syringe. A bubble of liquid and air formed at the top of the needle. Harry watched it, hypnotised.

  "Where?" Mina Murray said, as though surprised. She knelt over Harry and with a quick, efficient move pushed the needle into Harry's arm. He felt a pinprick of pain, then a spreading numbness.

  "Why, you are going to Transylvania," Mina Murray said.

  Then the lid of the crate was placed above him, and nails were driven into the wood to close it tight, and a darkness settled over Harry Houdini.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
 
 

"Tell me about Stoker," Lucy said.

  It was getting into the late afternoon. Beyond the windows the spray from the sea rose high into the air on the cliff. Seagulls dived, dark shapes against the weak sun. Miss Havisham had baked cinnamon buns.

  Lucy was still following Mycroft's tortured trail. Miss Havisham's memory was, in many ways, the Bureau's own. But what was Mycroft after? Closeted in his club, seeing no one, what did he see, what mystery was he trying to unravel?

  "Stoker, Abraham," Miss Havisham said, thoughtfully. "Yes, I remember dear little Abe. That's what I called him, you know. My darling little Abe. One of the theatre folks, naturally. And Irish." She sighed. "An unlikely agent for anyone," she said. "Which is why no one wanted to follow up on it. Not even Mycroft, at first…"

 

 

"Notes?" Lucy said.

  Miss Havisham rubbed the bridge of her nose. For the first time, she had placed a file folder on the table. A single sheet of white paper inside, and the
notes
section, Lucy saw, had been left blank. Miss Havisham smiled, wistfully. "As you can see, we had nothing on him. A theatrical manager, working for Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London. An unremarkable man, clean as this sheet of paper."

  "So what drew you to him?" Lucy said.

  Miss Havisham shook her head. "It was before the Orphan case, when we were busy monitoring the European side of things. Later there was a shift, Fogg wanted to watch Vespuccia, and the Chinese Desk was getting new funding, but by then I was out. It was… little things that kept coming up. And then there was First Night of Gilbert and Sullivan's
Pirates of the Carib Sea
…"

  Lucy waited. Miss Havisham moved at her own pace. Her eyes were clouded. She was going back in time, to a better time and place, before her forced retirement, when she was still a player of the Great Game…

 

  It had been a great coup for the Lyceum
(Miss Havisham told her)
. It had been one of the times when Gilbert and Sullivan were fighting again and, to make it worse, Gilbert had charged their manager, Richard D'Oyly Carte, of cheating them out of money – over a carpet, of all things.

  
So the Lyceum had managed to steal them away, if not for long, and had put on the opening night of their latest production, The Pirates of the Carib Sea, at the Lyceum rather than the Savoy.

  
There had been no indication of anything remarkable in the offing. As I said, little things…

  
Two weeks before the opening night, an extraction team had brought in a German defector. He had been a low-level employee of Krupp's, and our hopes of getting technical information regarding Krupp's latest monster cannon were in vain. They had put him in Ham, in the interrogation centre, and had been sweating him for three days without anything useful coming out, when I decided to pop in and see him. I had only routine questions to ask him, you see. I remember the interrogation room, the defector's bruised face, sweaty hands that left print marks on the metal desk between us. I had a cup of tea and offered him one, which he accepted, as well as a cigarette.

  
"You are Marcus Rauchfus?" I said. He confirmed his name.

  
"Engineer with Krupp Industries?"

  
Again, he nodded.

  
"What made you decide to defect?" I asked, with honest curiosity. Krupp looked after his people well. It was hard to get deep into his organisation, and what agents of ours had tried to infiltrate his organisation tended to… well, disappear. Loyalty and ruthlessness, as Mycroft liked to say, were powerful together.

  
Rauchfus shrugged. Perhaps he truly didn't know why. After three days of interrogation no one was very enthusiastic about him any more, he'd given us nothing we could use. "I was…" His voice was hoarse; they had sweated him hard those three days. He spread his arms in a helpless gesture. "Always I love the English."

  
"We are not at war with Germany."

  
"No." But he did not sound convinced, and for the first time my cu
riosity was aroused.

  
"What do you know of Alfred Krupp's plans?" I asked. Rauchfus looked uncomfortable. He leaned towards me across the desk. There was something in his eyes that wanted to come out. I nodded to the guard, and he left the room, leaving the two of us alone. "Well?" I said.

  
"Them I don't tell!" He hit the desk with his fist. "You I tell. You give me house in Surrey?"

  
"We look after our defectors," I said. "As long as they can offer us something substantial."

  
"I make statement," Rauchfus said. "To you I make statement."

  
"Well?"

  
"My name is Marcus Rauchfus, and I am an engineer for Krupp Industries, yes. Yes! But not general section. I was assistant to one man, four, five years ago. His name is Diesel, Rudolf Diesel. Great engineer. The best! Top secret project." Marcus Rauchfus smiled, shyly. "Top secret," he repeated, as if there was a magic in the words.

  
"What was the nature of the project?" I asked.

  
"To make new engine," he said. "New power source! Yes! But…"

  
"What sort of new power source?"

  
He waved his hand. This was not important. "Petroleum," he said. "Krupp has network, yes, to bring it in from the Arabian Peninsula. Also Vespuccia, we believe, has much."

  
"Petroleum?"

  
I knew what it was, of course. Moreover, I knew very well we had our own research facility dedicated to finding new, more efficient sources of power than coal. But Rauchfus shook his head. "Not important," he said, placidly.

  
"Why not?"

  
"Decoy! I find out, by accident. Yes, I know, you have research also. French, Chinese, same! But–"

  
There had been a girlfriend, he told me. Working in Krupp's private office. She told him, once. They had a fight. "You think you are special? You are Top Secret?" she had laughed at him. "Real work not done on Diesel project. Real work classified Ultra!"

  
"Ultra?" I said.

  
Rauchfus nodded.

  
"What's Ultra?" I said.

  
"Ultra is secret project," Rauchfus said.

  
"Of what nature?"

  
"I do not know."

  
I sighed. "This is all you have for me?"

  
"Yes. No! Ultra not Krupp project."

  
At that I sat up straighter. "Not Krupp? What do you mean?"

  
Here Rauchfus lowered his voice. "Not Krupp," he said. "International. Very dangerous to know. One, two months later, girlfriend not at work. Not at home. Gone." He clicked his fingers sadly. "Like this, gone."

  
"And you?"

  
"No one know I know!" But he looked fearful. "British," he whispered to me. His eyes were round. "British too. She tell me. British too."

  
"British? British who?"

  
He shook his head. "I do not know. I should not have said."

  
He wouldn't speak again, after that. I had left instructions for the interrogators not to touch him. I wanted him kept isolated, safe. When I got back to the Bureau I dug deeper into the files.

  
It was as I had thought. Rauchfus had lied to me. He had not come over voluntarily to our side. He had thought, rather, that he was dealing with an agent of the French's Quiet Council. He must have been horrified to realise he had been duped. If what he said was true, someone high up in the clandestine world was involved in a plot with Alfred Krupp. It was more likely Rauchfus was a plant, a false flag sent to us by Krupp's intelligence people. A decoy. But I couldn't take the chance.