It was chilly and dark, wherever Jonas Niemand had sent them to. Hugo gripped Lucacz’s hand hard. ‘You can see in the dark, dead boy,’ he hissed. ‘Where the fuck are we?’
‘I think it’s Rothenia.’ his boyfriend responded, ironically.
‘Helpful,’ Hugo replied, with equal irony.
A chuckle followed. ‘Since Jonas sent us here, it’ll be to a place he knows well. I can sense trees around us, their leaves are rustling a bit though there’s no wind. And hey! Is that water off to the side. Right! I know where we are. Jonas has a place near Strelzen in a heathland dell west of the city. It’s on the Wenzlerwald, over a league from the city.’
‘A league? What’s that in kilometres, Dead Boy?’
‘Dunno. Kilometres are after my time. But I think a league is around three miles.’
‘Three miles, that’s getting on for five kilometres. We’d better sit the rest of the night out then. It’ll be over an hour’s walk to the city when the sun comes up, providing we find the right direction.’
The two youths sat down on the damp ground. For a while they sat silent apart from Hugo’s complaints when a fine drizzle began to fall from the night sky. They shifted up against a tree trunk hoping for more shelter, but it was coming on for winter and the leaves were few now on the branches above them.
‘So this Tobias-thing,’ Hugo eventually began, ‘what can we do about him?’
‘Keep out of his way … if he’s in Rothenia at all.’
‘But Jonas says he’s working to undermine all we’re doing. We want that Elphberg future the Tobias-thing is trying to prevent.’
Lucacz scowled. ‘You can’t set yourself against a spirit of that sort of power, Posh Boy. Pissing into the wind ain’t in it.’
Hugo shrugged. ‘That’s where the honour lies, dead boy. Aristocrats really like hopeless struggles. The quest is the thing, as my ancestors would say.’
‘How do we explain this to Martin Tofts, Posh Boy?’
‘We can discuss that on our walk to Strelzen, I guess.’
***
Hugo counted the bells from the cathedral as they came over the river bluffs in sight of the Staramesten of Strelzen. ‘Nine o’clock, Dead Boy,’ he concluded.
‘You can say, “good piece of navigation, Lucacz” if you like.’
‘It was, though it was a bit obvious that we had to head towards sunrise to reach the city.’
‘Maybe, but I still claim credit. You must be hungry, Hugo. There’s that nice workers’ café in the Altmarkt where we can get you some food. Got any money to pay for it, or is it down to me again?’
‘Despite everything, I still have my wallet in my pocket, so I’m good.’
Half an hour later, the two settled at a formica-topped table in a cheery little Rothenian café within the Gothic arcades of the medieval market house of the Old City, otherwise patronised by market traders and street sweepers. A plate of bacon, eggs and sausage was placed in front of each boy. Lucacz raised his eyebrows, but Hugo simply emptied the contents of his plate on to his own. ‘I really need this,’ he grunted.
‘Stealing food out of the mouths of the peasants, my lord, as always,’ Lucacz rolled his eyes. ‘Thanks for leaving me the tea at least.’
Some time later, sipping from his own mug of tea, Hugo sketched out a strategy. ‘We’ve only been away from Rothenia for three days, so there’s no possible scenario we could come up with that we did that anyway other than supernaturally. So maybe we’re going to have to lie creatively as to our sources of intelligence about what’s been happening in London.’
‘Not going to be easy to be convincing. So who could be our imaginary source?’
Hugo tapped his teeth meditatively. ‘There’s that English lieutenant, Mackenna. We could set him up to spill some significant facts. Or rather you could do your magical hypnotism thing. We could then feed him what really happened to us in London with Crowley and Sir Eric, and also what we learned about Mammon and Tobias the Seraph, and let his mind loose to rationalise it.’
‘That’s sophisticated,’ Lucacz mused. ‘We wouldn’t be giving him a script to learn, we’d be leaving his sense of duty and concern for his mission to mould a reality from what we tell him that he would feel he has to confess to his commander in the field. His mind would want it to be credible, so he’d leave out the supernatural stuff.’ ‘Would it work, dead boy?’
‘I think it might. It might leave Mr Mackenna with some glitches in his memory, but minds are plastic things and it’ll heal over.’
‘Right, then we need to find out where Mackenna is.’
‘That’s easy. He should be with your sister out at Medeln. Martin didn’t want him wandering around Strelzen where he might be caught out by Gestapo street searches.’
‘Then we’d better check in with Martin, and head out west to Terlenehem.’
***
Martin raised an eyebrow. ‘You want to go out to Medeln? Why? I’ve got more important things that need doing, and I’ve not seen hide nor hair of either of you for the best part of a week.’
‘Oh! Uh! My sister was expecting me, sir.’
‘Really? I had the impression that the less she saw of you the happier she was. The print shop is ticking over nicely, and her forgery workshop is churning out high quality documentation for all our needs.’ Martin growled to himself for a moment. ‘Very well, if you must, but first I need you to accompany me to Piotreshrad. Prince Leo has moved his family to Rothenia. At the moment he’s organising the reburial of his grandfather at Zenda from the lakeside tomb at the Murranburgerhof. He could do with some help.’ For some reason, Martin shot a glance at Lucacz as he made that last observation, which made Hugo suspect that Feemy had been bending Martin’s ear about his unsuitable boyfriend.
Unsuitable or not, Lucacz drove the Wendel saloon up to Piotreshrad and the Murranbergerhof, with Martin’s quiet approval at his driving skills. Hugo woke from a doze as they approached their destination, largely because of a sudden startled exclamation from the back seat.
‘Good heavens!’ cried Martin. ‘What in God’s name is that!’
Hugo blearily came round, and it took a moment to realise what had taken Martin so far aback. A tall white flagpost stood against the front of old Gus Underwood’s house, which in the old man’s day usually flew the Rothenian tricolour, though during Prince Leo’s residences, Gus had ensured the royal standard of the house of Thuringia was flown from it. But that afternoon a garrison-sized swastika flag of the Reich was belling in the breeze from the lake while under it flew a smaller red and gold-trimmed square banner, also featuring a swastika. He did not recognise it but Martin did. ‘It’s Korngeibel, the Protektor of Ruritania. He’s here. So it follows I shouldn’t be. Lucacz, be a good boy and drive casually on past the house and take the lane up to Ceresczhalch, where I expect Leo will have left us a message.’
Ceresczhalch was a modern house Leo had constructed when his cousin Pip Underwood had inherited Gus’s old home. Unlike the Arts and Crafts quaintness of Gus’s old house, Ceresczhalch was a long and low white concrete modernist slab in the International Style, designed by Walter Gropius no less. Martin nonetheless approved of it, especially the drama of its long picture window running the length of the upper floor which opened on sensational views across Lake Maresku. And it was in that long glazed gallery that Martin found Colonel Philip Underwood staring gloomily down the hill at the roofs of the Murranbergerhof, his former home in Rothenia.
‘Pip! I didn’t know you were here.’ The two old friends embraced.
‘I arrived yesterday, expecting to pass some days in my old house down below, but Leo warned me to stay up here under cover with Princess Helena and the twins. That officious twerp Korngeibel has decided there was some good press to be gained from helping Leo out with the exhumation and honouring of old Gus, who was after all a Rothenian national hero. Gah! Korngeibel has brought an SS detail to fire salutes over the coffin and escort the hearse to Zenda. It’s a desecration of all that grandfather stood for. He would be so pissed off.’
‘Is your boy Mackenna here too?’
‘He is, and he’s been decoding some very strange messages from London.’
‘Tell me more,’ Martin asked.
‘It was a Code Double-X.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means London Centre is itself compromised, and any instructions from there must be treated as tainted by a hostile actor. So station heads must go autonomous and for the present regard instructions from London as inherently suspect.’
‘Anything else?’
‘MI6 seems to have been the centre of the infection. The Americans are clear of it, so we’ll be getting a trustworthy OSS captain dropped in Husbrau in a couple of days to come here and fully brief us.’
Hugo and Lucacz listened quietly to the exchange. Lucacz cocked an eyebrow and whispered. ‘Looks like Jonas has done his work, and my Cousin Marek is being sent over to help clear things up.’
‘Then we’d better clear out before he turns up,’ Hugo replied. ‘We could never explain how we got from 24 Connaught Gardens to Strelzen by any mortal means.’
***
It turned out that Prince Leo had looked on the visit of the Protektor as an opportunity for some covert intelligence gathering. That evening, they all sat around in the lounge of the Murranbergerhof and perused a collection of colour photographs that Leo had commissioned of the event at the lakeside, to which the Protektor had not objected and which focussed on his entourage and advisers.
‘Who’s this?’ Hugo asked the prince, pointing at a portrait shot of a senior SS officer. There was something about the man’s face that he thought he recognised but couldn’t account for.
‘Ah,’ Leo said, raising his eyebrows. ‘He was an interesting character. He’s the Standartenführer the Protektor has just acquired from Berlin to lead his personal guard.
‘A colonel?’ commented Pip. ‘He looks young for that sort of job. He looks like he’s still in his teens.’
‘Quite a looker in a blond Aryan sort of way and the uniform suits him, he makes it look glamorous,’ Martin laughed. ‘If Herr Korngeibel was my way inclined — which I don’t think he is — I’d say the young man’s looks were his fortune. Do you know anything about him?’
Leo frowned. ‘He was pretty evasive when we talked, but I got the impression he had previously been with the occupying forces in Bohemia. His knowledge of England and English politics was notable, and he was well clued up too on Rothenian history and underground activities in the Protektorat. Do you know anything about him, Hugo?’
Hugo muttered that he seemed to remember the man’s face from somewhere, but couldn’t pin it down. Then he asked for the SS Officer’s name.
‘Ahah!’ Leo smiled. ‘He’s certainly from your sort of circle, Hugo. He goes by the impressive name of Tobias the Graf Vasselot von Regne. I believe he’s a member of a German family of Alsace whose title was created by Bismarck’s regime for a family of local collaborators. Rabid Nazis all now, needless to say.’
‘Tobias!’ Hugo caught Lucacz’s eyes. ‘He looks like someone I might know to whom he’s related.’
‘Jonas?’ Lucacz commented, eyes wide. Then he hissed ‘Fuck’ under his breath.
Hugo leaned into Lucacz and whispered into his ear. ‘That’s why he looks familiar, though he’s a blond his face resembles a little that of the angel boy, Jonas Niemand. He could be his elder brother.’
‘The rogue seraph himself!’ Lucacz muttered and shook his head. ‘He’s learned to blend in pretty quickly. What’s he up to?’
***
The next day Hugo and Lucacz drove Martin’s car westwards to Medeln, and in the back was a bright and chipper Lieutenant Mackenna, sent to arrange for the reception of the OSS officer sent from London. ‘He’ll drop from a B-24 Liberator tomorrow, along with a scheduled cargo in the usual drop zone in the Upper Taveln valley,’ said Mackenna.
‘Do you have any information as to who he is?’ Hugo asked
‘He’s OSS, so he’s American. He’ll have the identifying codes, so that’s all.’
‘Can we be sure he’s … safe?’
Mackenna shrugged. ‘He shouldn’t have been in contact with the problematical elements in MI6 and he’ll be answering to the US Joint Chiefs, so he’ll be a reliable source for what’s been going on back in Blighty.’
Lucacz hissed in Hugo’s ear. ‘Cousin Marek was certainly not proof against Crowley and Tobias, any more than MI6 was, so I wouldn’t be too sure. We’ll just have to hope Jonas managed to purge him of the infection. We’ll soon find out.’
Medeln abbey was these days mostly empty, and though it was in good repair it had the forlorn and abandoned air that lingered around even a well-preserved historical site. It just needed a ticket office with its stack of guide books. The gatehouse now opened on to a small and mostly empty car park. Awaiting them was no tour guide but a young man in the uniform of an officer of the army of the republic of Rothenia, Oskar Franz von Tarlenheim. They embraced, Hugo whispering in his friend and cousin’s ear, ‘You twat, Osku. She’s never going to succumb to your charms. You’ve got a better chance with me.’ He got quite a hefty punch for his trouble.
A smirking Lucacz apologised to Neville Mackenna for Hugo’s childishness, and introduced him to Oskar Franz, and then with an even broader smirk he asked Osku if his good friend “Feemy” was in residence.
‘You mean Euphemia, the former prioress?’ came the rather formal response.
‘Yeah, we’re really, really good friends,’ Lucacz grinned.
‘Ignore him, Osku,’ snarled Hugo. ‘He’s winding you up.’
Oskar Franz’s face lightened. ‘Oh! This is the unsuitable boy she complains about?’
‘That’s me!’ Lucacz laughed. ‘I recognise the description. Though I prefer the word “impossible”.’
Hugo decided that Lucacz’s presence was going to be counterproductive that day; Euphemia brought out the worst in him. So he sent him off to park the car outside the abbey precinct, along the lane to Medelnbrücke village, with instructions to take a walk down to the river and find a place in the village serving the sweet tea that was the revenant’s only dietary intake.
Tea was not on offer in Euphemia’s quarters, a former barn on the north side of the precinct, adjacent to her workshops. She apologised, but said that Mackenna had only a half hour to join Osku’s small convoy of trucks if it was to be in place up the river to meet the plane drop.
This gave Hugo just enough time to share what he knew about the problems in London Centre. ‘It’s like this, Feemy. MI6 has been compromised by exposure to tainted sources linked to the Soviet Union. It’s been taking active measures against General von Tarlenheim’s resistance and promoting Horvath’s faction, going so far we think as to leak vital intelligence to the Protektorat. The new SS commander, Count Vasselot, may even have been briefed as to your activities here in the old abbey. The General is moving an entire brigade to the Upper Taveln valley so any assault on the abbey precinct will be opposed long enough for you to shift our assets here elsewhere. And Martin believes that the assault is as likely to come from the communist brigades as from the SS.’
‘Very like the Nazi playbook in Yugoslavia,’ commented Osku. ‘The Chechniks there are fighting on two fronts, against both the communists and the Nazis.’
Euphemia shook her head. ‘I don’t expect much of the secular world, but this is hard to take. Horvath would secretly ally himself with Rothenia’s enemies to murder his rivals and clear the way for a Communist takeover.’
‘It’s worse than that, Feemy,’ said Hugo in a low voice. ‘Other powers are in play which want to make sure no Elphberg ever again sits on the throne. It won’t just be Rothenia which will lose its future if they have their way, but all humanity.’
She caught his eye. ‘St Fenice’s prophecy? The Golden Elphberg?’
‘Precisely,’ he confirmed. ‘And Jonas Niemand is working for us. He unmasked the London traitors.’
‘Jonas Niemand?’ Mackenna asked, confused. ‘Who’s he?’
‘He’s the reason I don’t trust your Lucacz Marcovic,’ snarled Euphemia at her brother. ‘Jonas was the … person … responsible for the closure of this abbey and Lucacz is his creature. I cannot understand why you have such faith in him.’
Hugo shrugged. ‘If you can’t have faith in that magical boy, who can you trust?’
His sister clearly wasn’t going to pursue the dispute any further in present company. She asked Osku if the convoy was ready to depart and he took the cue, tugging in his wake Lieutenant Mackenna, Hugo and Lucacz. The late autumn afternoon was already fading into dusk. The three trucks burst into life and Hugo and Lucacz found places in the back of the lead vehicle amongst an armed detachment of resistance fighters, who gave them a subdued welcome, and then subsided into silence.
***
The upper Taveln valley cut through a jumbled and hilly country adjacent to the Saxon frontier. The convoy had to take to a maze of country lanes and tracks in order to avoid the town of Modenehem, and so it was fully dark by the time they reached the drop site, a natural wide and grassy arena remote from any settlement. There was a gibbous moon in a cloudless sky above them, silvering the grass. It was perfect conditions for a successful drop. The well-drilled resistance group under Osku’s direction set signal fires, and awaited the drone of the arriving night bombers carrying their payload of weapons and munitions and the promised OSS agent.
As the men awaited the drop, Lucacz speculated whether indeed ‘Cousin Marek’ would be the OSS agent that night. ‘Of course, if he is we’ll have the problem of explaining how we’re here in Rothenia, when less than a week ago we were in London.’
Hugo shrugged. ‘He was in that meeting at Connaught Gardens. His mind has been forced to recognise the supernatural. Besides, you thought your mental powers could be used on Mackenna. If necessary you might do the same to Cousin Marek.’
‘I suppose, though it doesn’t seem right. We’ll keep out of his way for a while, yes?’
‘What an ethical revenant you are.’
‘He’s family, Hugo. He deserves respect.’
‘Is he family? He has to be descended from one of your Marcovic cousins living at Terlenehem back in the day. You had no siblings. So he’s likely to be something like a first or second cousin eight times removed. Not a close relative in any way.’
‘Hmph! If you were cast adrift in time like I am, Hugo, even a cousin fifty times removed would deserve a hug. Eight-times-removed Marek deserves a blow job.’
Hugo laughed and hugged his lover round the shoulders. Not long afterwards the first faint rumblings of aircraft engines came from the west, and the signal fires were lit. Lucacz stood and peered upwards. ‘I can see ten, no twelve, of them. They’re flying low.’
The flight separated into two groups of six, one staying low, the other rising and circling. The first group dropped their containers, and the night sky was suddenly full of parachutes. Then the planes rose and circled in their turn as the second group made their drops. Lucacz whooped as a single parachutist jumped from the last aircraft. ‘Cousin Marek!’
The littered drop zone was now teeming with resistance fighters, folding parachute silk, breaking open containers and hurrying the packed sten guns, ammunition clips and assorted munitions to the trucks. The drop completed, the Liberators gunned their engines and rose to reform the wing and turn eastwards.
In the meantime, Lucacz had raced across the field, untangled the OSS agent from his parachute webbing and was crying out, ‘Told you, Posh Boy! It is Cousin Marek!’
Hugo took charge of the confused Captain Marek Marcovic and ushered him to the rear truck. Other than a few routine communications, the journey back to Medeln abbey was passed in silence, though Hugo could just tell by his fidgeting that Lucacz was barely suppressing his curiosity.
The convoy was unexpectedly flagged down a couple of kilometres from the abbey, by a man waving a torch. Oskar Franz in the lead truck got down to talk to him. Looking concerned he hastened to Hugo’s truck and called him into the road.
‘That was Herr Simon Geldwasser, one of the Jewish refugees settled in Medelnbrücke. He had some worrying news. A communist brigade moved into Medelnbrücke at sunset, and has sealed the village off, though not before he was able to slip out the back of his house and warn the Lady Euphemia. She thinks that your convoy is their main target, and they’re aiming to deprive us of the contents of these trucks. But she thinks they may also want to destroy our print shop. So they might have seized the abbey by now.’
‘Fuck it,’ snarled Hugo. ‘It looks like Horvath’s ready to declare war on the Tarlenheim brigades. And in doing that he’ll be carrying out Tobias’s aims: the undermining of the resistance movement and ultimately the weakening of the Elphberg cause.’
‘How do we stop this?’ asked Osku.
‘In the short term, we defend the abbey,’ Hugo said. ‘But in the long term we have to discredit Horvath. And I think that maybe he’s giving us the means to do it.’
Posted 29 January 2025