Lammas Night (5 page)

“Listen, Coll, are you going to be on duty for a while?” Graham asked, looking up at his friend again.

“Through the morning, unless the boss pulls me for something else.”

“Good. Could you ring me at the Constable's Tower as soon as you have anything firm on the
Grafton
?”

“Will do.”

“Thank you. Also, if any calls should come through for me, can you patch them through as well?” he added, thinking of Audrey and the rest at Oakwood.

“Of course. I'll brief the operators at once.”

Graham made his way back through the maze of Naval Headquarters and into the open air without further incident, but he was still uneasy as he collected Denton and walked briskly along the pedestrian path toward the tower, collar upturned against the mist.

The significance of his dream was clearer now, though he still could not recapture any details. His instincts had been right all along; something
had
gone wrong. While he slept, he must have picked up something of the confusion and turmoil surrounding the attack on the
Grafton
and perhaps some of Michael's fear, the brief touch triggered by the earlier psychic contact. Now he longed to go back on the Second Road and try for a more solid contact. Audrey would still be monitoring, of course, but Graham was not certain she could hold onto something this chaotic.

He knew he was foolish even to be considering such a thing. But despite the danger, he found himself examining the terrain in the shadows ahead and looking for a place that was sufficiently sheltered for him to make a quick foray. The matter was becoming urgent, and he dared not do anything of this sort once he reached the tower. The last thing he needed was William asking awkward questions. He did not want to even think about what he would do if Michael were dead or had lost what he had been sent for.

“I need a few minutes of privacy, Denny,” he murmured, touching the man's sleeve lightly and nodding toward the shadows beneath a small footbridge to their left. “See that I'm not disturbed, all right?”

As Denton grunted agreement, Graham headed off into the darkness, singling out a particularly dense patch of shadow next to one of the timber bridge supports. He leaned his back against it and stood there listening for several seconds, hands slipped inside the pockets of his mac for warmth, then locked his knees and closed his eyes, consciously drawing a slow, steadying breath. As he settled into a comfortable level of trance, he began to visualize himself within a ring of darkly flickering light.

He knew he should not be doing this. Alix would be furious if she found out. If the slightest thing went wrong, alone and outside the bounds of a formal protecting circle, he knew that the best he could hope for was a blinding headache. He might also endanger his thus-far meticulous cover if, despite Denton's efforts, someone came upon him like this—and those were the more pleasant alternatives. At worst—

He did not even want to think about the worst. The Second Road was neutral; it did not lead only toward the light. There were others just as adept as he, and even more adept, who walked other paths altogether. Hitler himself was said to be an initiate of one such black tradition that had spawned much of the racist aspect of Nazi doctrine. Furthermore, Graham's research had uncovered hints that a very powerful black adept might be actively supporting Hitler—which was one of the reasons Michael had been sent into Germany a week before.

Michael.… He fastened on the image of Alix and David's younger son and let his Sight go out along the Second Road again, questing now for the
Grafton
and her six hundred souls, seeking some hint of their fate.

Michael—slender and sandy-haired and just about the same age as his own son. Michael—cold and hurting, numbed limbs flailing in the icy waters of the Channel, chilled in heart as well as body by the company of corpses floating near him, though some stirred feebly.… Michael—

Squinting in the glare of a searchlight, Michael raised an arm yet again and prayed that they had spotted him—and that an E-boat or submarine would not. His voice was hoarse from earlier screaming, but he managed a few harsh croaks as he let go of the spar to which he had been clinging and waved his arms again, splashing for all he was worth. This time he was sure they had seen.

His leg throbbed even more than his arm as they hauled him aboard; he had nearly crushed it against a capsized lifeboat earlier when he tried to free a man who was tangled in debris. The man had drowned, anyway. He did not think the leg was broken, but it hurt incredibly as they brought him aboard and wrapped him in blankets and the cold began to recede. Hours seemed to pass before someone came to look at his injuries.

They rebandaged his arm and pronounced his leg probably unbroken, but the pain of both had him almost gasping by now, all the worse for having been held at bay by sheer force of will during the hours in the water. Though he had begun shaking so badly that he nearly bit his tongue, he tried to refuse the painkiller they offered, for he feared to sleep and perhaps have them take away the precious pouch on his belt. He hoped the water had not ruined the contents.

He never felt the needle in his arm—only the slow, drowsy, blessed warmth of morphine creeping over the pain and muffling everything. He dreamed just before he went under, and the dream momentarily shifted into nightmare.

Dark shapes robed in black—masks covering eyes—a black-clothed arm descending, bright blade flashing—and blood welling up, spurting, spraying, spattering—

The nightmare caught Graham by surprise, for he had not even been certain it was Michael he was brushing with his Sight. Just as he tried to pull back from what had been a hazy connection at best, he found himself hurtling along the Second Road and, with a jolt, being dropped into awareness of an altogether different place. It had been triggered by Michael's nightmare, but no trace of Michael intruded here.

Suddenly, he seemed to be hovering outside a dark semicircle of men in cowled black robes—though he sensed instinctively that these were no benign monks or even white magicians. Beyond an oddly shifting shimmer of not-quite-light, he could barely make out high ceilings, and red, black, and white banners, the folds stirring in unfelt breezes by the light of torches set along the walls. Fat black candles guttered to either side of where he seemed to be.

All at once, a black-robed figure pushed between the others to peer in his direction, the scarred face masked across the eyes. A hand emerged from a voluminous sleeve, pointing a double-edged blade directly at him.

Graham snapped back into his body with a speed that left him queasy and weak-kneed. Clutching at the bridge support to keep from collapsing into the mud, he still caught a backlash that left him gasping. For what seemed like several lifetimes, he could only concentrate on breathing, on slowing his pounding heart, on keeping his mind wiped clean of any telltale ripple that might identify him to the entity that still searched, very near on the Second Road—though physically he knew it was miles away.

Eventually, he became aware that he had shaken off whatever had threatened him and began to breathe a little easier. Other than having reassured himself that Michael himself was still alive, he had no idea just what he had touched. By the time he stood away from the bridge and began making his careful way back to Denton, only memory and the vague throbbing behind his eyes reminded him that something had, indeed, happened. He did not want to think about what it was. Something very horrifying.

And far across the Channel, in a chamber dug deep beneath a castle in the Rhineland, a masked man in cowled robes eased back into the midst of his colleagues and scanned the torch-lit stillness yet again, his gaze narrowing as he searched each taut, apprehensive face turned to his.

“Zeigen Sie mir die Gesichten!”
he ordered, though he hardly raised his voice above a whisper.

Instantly, the others removed their masks, standing stonily while he scanned each face anew.

“Was war das?”
he murmured then.
“Hatte jemand etwas neben dem Kreis gesehen?”

No one spoke. No one moved. After another moment's further reflection and more suspicious scrutiny of the men around him, the man in the mask nodded slowly and then gestured with a curt wave of his blade for the others to replace their masks.

A few moments he allowed for everyone to settle again, to gravitate a little closer. Only then did he return his attention to the center of the circle.

Nordic runes flashed in the candlelight as he laid his blade against the upturned throat of a man tied naked and spread-eagled across a rough black altar stone.

C
HAPTER
3

Constable's Tower, Dover Castle, 0530 hours, 29 May 1940

Graham gave his name to an orderly on duty downstairs, with instructions to forward any calls, then left his mac and sidearm with Denton and headed up to the royal quarters. Wells, the perpetually intense young naval lieutenant who served as William's secretary and aide, met him at the door. The man sitting with the grey dawn at his back turned and rose as Graham and Wells entered the room, his face a blur against the rain-smeared windowpanes.

“Sir,” Wells said, “Colonel Sir John Graham is here.”

“Why, Gray, what a welcome surprise,” said the familiar voice. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, sir.”

Graham paused to incline his head with proper formality before continuing on toward the light, for Wells was still in earshot. But as soon as the door closed behind him, Graham was met by the always-unexpected warmth of the royal handshake and the bright Windsor smile.

“Good gracious, you look like you could use a cup of tea,” his host observed, leading him back toward the table in casual fashion and gesturing toward a chair. “Had a rough night, have you? Not that I look a great deal better, I suppose, but—sit down, sit down. I'll be mother, and you can tell me all about it when you're ready.”

As they sat and the fine, agile hands splashed milk into a china cup and added sugar, pouring strong black tea from a pot engraved with the arms of a former constable of the castle, Graham sighed and let himself slump a little in the chair, appreciating William's discretion. He shaded his eyes against the oddly glaring greyness of the window beyond as cup and saucer were passed across the table, but only as the first cautious swallow trickled down his throat, hot and soothing, did he realize how shaken he still was. He wondered whether it really showed that much or if William had simply been making conversation.

Nor, on closer inspection, did the prince himself look much better for wear, though that fact might have escaped anyone who knew him less well than Graham. Prince William Victor Charles Arthur, Duke of Clarence, K.G., K.C.M.G., and a host of other suitable alphabet soup, was ordinarily a man bursting with vibrant life—perhaps the most energetic of all the royal brothers in a family known for its love of physical activity. An even six feet tall, slender like his brothers but fairer, bright far beyond the necessity of his royal station, this youngest living son of King George V had long ago mastered the royal art of masking his true emotions. Despite that, he looked tired this morning.

At least the cause was likely of an honest sort, Graham reflected, unlike the occasional hints of dissipation in his youth. William had been somewhat frail as a child. An epileptic twin brother had died before their fourteenth birthday, and the resultant coddling of the surviving boy by family, nannies, and tutors had produced a somewhat spoiled young man. Improved health enabled him to enter the Royal Naval College at the expected age, like several of his elder brothers, but Graham knew that the prince's pranks might have gotten a man of less exalted rank quietly written out of the service. Graham had seen the records when William was posted to his section on graduation.

That posting—not entirely a chance occurrence, Graham often suspected—had begun a wary and often exasperating first year for both of them, tempered only by the fact that the two men had taken an instant liking to one another. Graham, only seven years William's senior and by then a rising young major of army intelligence, was ordered to treat his new agent exactly like all the others—so William began by performing all the routine and often boring tasks expected of any young naval lieutenant on his first assignment: copying and filing countless reports for more senior agents; processing mountains of paperwork that made little sense to his inexperienced eyes; occasionally acting as a courier; and, very rarely, working as part of a surveillance team or helping collect an operative from some rendezvous point—so long as it was not too dangerous. Officially, the only impact of his presence felt by MI.6 was that as a member of the Royal Family, he must be sheltered from excessive physical danger and, of course, scandal—even if he was fifth in line for the throne and very unlikely ever to inherit. Unofficially, it is probable that Graham's superiors expected little more of their royal intelligence officer than to serve his time in rank as innocuously as possible until duty called him to more conventional royal obligations.

Such an attitude very shortly began to trouble Graham, however, though he knew better than to defy department policy directly. The more he came to know the prince, the more he became convinced that William was a rare commodity and far too intelligent to waste merely occupying desk space. After an initial breaking-in period during which both of them did a certain amount of testing, Graham began to bear down with increasing pressure, pulling military rank unmercifully and sometimes even bullying to get William to apply himself to his full potential. Over the next few years, an increasingly interested and competent “Lieutenant Victor” took part in a variety of specialized missions with Graham—each one more challenging than the last and some of them far more dangerous than his father or elder brothers would have approved, had they known. William shrugged off the dangers at first, reminding Graham that he was a fifth prince and therefore expendable, but the underlying bitterness in that remark gradually decreased as his faith in himself grew.