The Great Game (30 page)

  At this nameless station waited coaches and carts – the peasants and local people to the carts, the soldiers and more well-to-do visitors to the coaches. I stood there in some bewilderment, when I was taken aside by the military officer who seemed to be in charge of that platoon. "You are going – there?" he said, and motioned with his head towards the distance, where I assumed this city of Brasov lay.

  "Yes," I said.

  "To visit… him?"

  I nodded at that, feeling a pang of apprehension at the thought.

  The officer nodded as if that had settled matters, and shouted orders in the barbarous tongue of his people. Almost immediately a coach had been found for me, its passengers emptied out, and I was placed with all due reverence into the empty compartment. "You will go to Bu teni this night," the officer said, "it is too late now to go further." Again he spoke to the driver, who gave me a sour look but didn't dare refuse, and so we took off in a hurry, the horses running down a narrow mountain path that led upwards, and at last to a small village, or what passes for a town in these parts, which was indeed called Bu teni, or something like it, and had beautiful wooden houses, a church, and a small inn, where I had alighted and where I am currently sat, writing this to you, while dining on a rather acceptable
goulash
.

  I do not wish to labour details of what took place following that scoundrel Karl May's visit to my office at the Lyceum. You know as well as I what had happened, you had suspected long before you had approached me, three months ago, in order to recruit me to this desperate mission.

  The facts are as they stand. To an outside eye, nothing had happened but that
Herr
Krupp, on a rare visit to England, went, one night, to the theatre – and so did any number of other personages, including, if I remember rightly, yourself, Mr Holmes.

  The Queen herself was there, in the Royal Box, stately as ever, with her forked tongue hissing out every so often, to snap a stray fly out of the air. I remember the prince regent did not come but Victoria's favourite, that dashing Harry Flashman, the popular Hero of Jalalabad, was beside her. So were many foreign dignitaries and many of the city's leading figures, from our now-Prime-Minister Mrs Beeton, my friend and former rival Oscar Wilde, the famed scientists Jekyll and Moreau (before the one's suspicious death and the other's exile to the South Seas), the Lord Byron automaton (always a gentleman), Rudolph Rassendyll of Zenda, and many, many others. Your brother, the consulting detective, was there, if I recall rightly, Mr Holmes.

  It was a packed night – sold out, in fact, and I had been kept off my feet, running hither and yon, trying to ensure our success, and all the while…

  All the while, behind the scenes, things were afoot.

  I was aware of movement, of strangers coming and going in silence, of that German villain Karl May (I had found out much later the man was not only a convicted criminal but worse, a dime novel hack) following me like a shadow, of a tense anticipation that had nothing to do with the play.

  There are secret passageways inside every theatre, and the Lyceum is no exception. It has basements and sub-basements, a crypt (from the time it had been a church, naturally), narrow passageways, false doors, shifting scenery – it is a
theatre
, Mr Holmes!

  It was a game of boxes, Mr Holmes. As I told you when you found me, three months ago, listening to me as if you already knew. How
Herr
Krupp appeared to be in the box when in fact it was a cut-out in the shadows; how he went through the false wall and into the passageway between the walls, and down, to the crypt, now our props room.

  And the others.

  For I had been unfortunate enough to see them.

 

A letter had arrived for me in the morning. A dark baruchlandau had stopped outside the inn, a great hulking machine, steam-driven, the stoker standing behind while the driver sat in front, in between their respective positions a wide carriage for the transport of passengers or cargo.

  The driver had disembarked – I watched him from my window – and what a curious being he was!

  I had seen his like before. Just the once, and that had been enough. Like the vehicle he was driving, he was huge, a mountain of a man, and a shiver of apprehension ran down my spine.

  He would have been human, once upon a time.

• • • •

"What
are
they?" I had asked Karl May. The play was going on above our heads, but I could not concentrate, I was filled with a terrible tension as we prepared for the summit – as May called it – down below, in the bowels of the theatre. The
they
I was referring to were beings of a similar size and disposition to the driver now sitting in the inn's dining room, awaiting my pleasure.

  "Soldiers," Karl May told me. "Of the future."

  "What has been done to them?"

  "Have you heard of the Jekyll–Frankenstein serum?"

  I confessed I had not.

  "It is the culmination of many years of research," he told me, with a smirk. "We had stolen the formula from the French some time back. They have Viktor von Frankenstein working for them and he, in his turn, improved upon the work done by your Englishman, Dr Jekyll. This–" and here his hand swept theatrically, enfolding the huge hulking beings that were guarding, like mountain trolls, the dark corridors – "is the result."

  "Can they ever… go back?" I said, whispering. May shook his head. "And their life-span is short," he said. "But they do make such excellent soldiers…"

  It was then that
Herr
Krupp appeared, an old, fragile-looking man, yet with a steely determination in his eyes that I found frightening. "You did well," he said, curtly, and I was not sure if he was speaking to May or myself. He disappeared behind his monsters, and into the crypt.

  "Who else are we expecting?" I said.

  When, at that moment, the sound of motors sounded and a small, hunched figure came towards us in the darkness, halfhuman, half-machine…

 

My landlady has been fussing over me ever since seeing the arrival of the carriage. "You must not go!" she whispered to me, fiercely, finding reason to come up to my room. "He is a devil, a monster!"

  "You know of him?" I said.

  "Who does not? They had closed the valley, Brasov had been emptied. They are doing unspeakable things there, in the shadow of the mountains." She shivered. "But
he
does not reside in Brasov."

  "Where does he reside?" I said, infected by her fear.

  "Castle Bran," she said, whispering. "Where once Vlad epe made his home…"

  "Vlad epe ?" I said. I was not familiar with the local history and the name was unfamiliar to me.

  "Vlad the Third, Prince of Wallachia," she said, impatiently. "Vlad epe – how you say epe in your English?"

  "I don't know," I said, quite bewildered.

  "Impaler," she said. "Prince Vlad of the Order of the Dragon, whom they called Impaler."

  I shook my head impatiently. Local history sounded colourful indeed, but irrelevant to my journey. "The man I am going to see is an Englishman," I said, trying to reassure her. "Englishmen do not impale."

  "He is no man!" she said, and made a curious gesture with her fingers, which I took to be some Romanian superstition for the warding of evil. "He had ceased being human long ago."

  At last I got rid of her, so I could return to my journal. Time is running out, and soon I shall be inside that baruch-landau, travelling towards my final destination.

  Have mercy on my soul, Mycroft!

 

For I saw him, too, you see. I saw him come towards us, Karl May and I, in the subterranean depths of the Lyceum, that fateful night.

  An old, old man, in a motorised chair on wheels, a steam engine at his back, and withered hands lying on the supports, controlling brass keys. His face was a ruined shell, his body that of a corpse, yet his eyes were bright, like moons, and they looked at me, and his mouth moved and he said, "Today, Mr Stoker, we are making history. Your part in it will not be quickly forgotten."

  I may have stumbled upon my words. He had not been seen in public for five years or more. His very presence at my theatre was an honour, and yet I was terrified. When the small get entangled in the games of the great, they may easily suffer.

  "My lord," I said. "It is an honour."

  He nodded then that withered head, just once, acknowledging this. Then he, too, disappeared towards the crypt.

 

Yes, you suspected, did you not, Mycroft? You suspected this summit, your people were there that night, in the audience, trying to sniff scent of what was happening. Yet you never did.

  For they did not meet, just the two of them, My Herr Krupp and he, my summoner, the lord of the automatons.

  Another was there.

  A monster…

  For I had gone down into the dark passages, I had gone to check all was secure, and I saw it. I saw the ancient sewer open up and something come crawling out of it, a monstrous being like a giant invertebrate, with feelers as long as a human arm, slithering towards that secret meeting… A vile, alien thing.

  Which, three months ago, when we first met, you finally gave a name to.

  
The Bookman,
you told me.

  So that was that shadowy assassin.

  A thing made by the lizardine race, long ago.

  Those beings which came to us from Caliban's Island, in the Carib Sea, and yet were not of a terrestrial origin at all.

  An ancient race, of scientifically advanced beings… crashlanded with their ship of space, thousands of years ago, millions perhaps, on that island.

  And awakened by Vespucci, on his ill-fated journey of exploration…

  And the Bookman, that shadowy assassin, one of their machines?

  I do not know, Mycroft, but I remember the fear I felt when I saw that… that
thing
, slither towards the crypt.

  A summit indeed.

  And now, I must leave.

 

The driver says we are going through something called the Borgo Pass, though it appears on no map of the area. I am the sole passenger of this baruch-landau, the driver ahead, the stoker behind, and I in the middle, staring out over a rugged terrain.

  This is the letter I had received at the inn:

 

  My friend.

  
Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. I trust that you slept well. My driver has instructions to carry you in safety to my quarters and bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay. I look forward to seeing you.

  
Yours – Charles Babbage.

  What awaits me beyond these mountains, is it to glory, or to death, that I ride?

 
 

 
 
 

Outside the night was still, an anticipatory silence as Lucy's men waited for the attack they knew would come. The Isabella Plantation was as good a place as any to wait–

  They would be there soon, Lucy knew.

  She continued reading the journal.

  It described Stoker's arrival in Transylvania, his visit to Castle Bran, his meeting with Babbage… It described, in detail, what he had found there, that remote and wild region, away from prying eyes, away from the laws of empires.

  A chill stole over Lucy as she read.

  For now she knew the truth.

 

She read the journal, almost to the end.

  One last addendum – it must have been written with Stoker in flight, after he had stolen the airship and fled. He had climbed onto the ledge beyond his window, at Castle Bran climbing the airship's mooring line like a spider or a monkey. They had found out, shot at him. He had been wounded, but had survived to bring the document back, only to die then. She had failed to save him.

  Lucy did not allow herself to feel guilt. She couldn't. But her failure lay heavy on her, and Stoker's last words were like the scratches made by a sharp pen, and each stabbed at her, a little, all adding up.

 

  
There had been rumours in the London papers, during that time, as to the mysterious demise of the Bookman, though none could vouch as to their veracity. In any case, my life continued as before, at the Lyceum, and I had all but forgotten that terrible, night-time summit deep below my beloved theatre, when there came a knock at the door.

  
"Enter," I said, preoccupied with paperwork on my desk, and heard him come in, and shut the door behind him. When I raised my head and looked I started back, for there, before me, stood that same German conman and hack writer, the source of all my troubles – Karl May.

  
"You!" I said.

  
The fellow grinned at me, quite at ease. "Master Stoker," he said, doffing his hat to me. "It has been a while."

  
"Not long enough!" I said, with feeling, and with shaking hands reached to the second drawer for the bottle I kept there – for emergencies, you see.