But that in itself was not enough to get a job done that I considered to be, frankly, impossible. I tried to tell him so in words he might understand.
“Those are merely books,” I said. “It is only research and history. Practically, there is little there of use. Necromancy and demon summoning are only primitive methods of trying to understand the mysteries of the Outer Realms, and I have never encountered a single report that suggests any such attempts were ever successful. Let it go, Churchill. There is no foolproof way of summoning a thing from the Great Beyond, never mind getting one to do your bidding”
“I am not asking for it to be foolproof,” Churchill said. “I am only asking for it to be done. Your country needs you, man. Will you refuse it in its hour of need?”
He did not know me well enough to realize that appeals to base patriotism wouldn’t wash with me. My country was of little consequence compared to the immensity of the Beyond. But, still, it is my country, and Mr. Churchill is a most persuasive gentleman.
I also had a feeling that if I did refuse him, I might not be making a return journey home from this boat shed. I have seen the shark beneath his smile, and his ruthlessness would not allow his secret to be out and abroad and not under his control. I would have to brazen it out with a brass neck until I could get a clearer idea of how I would need to play it to satisfy his demands.
“What manner of spook do you require?” I asked calmly, as if I knew what I was about.
He laughed at that, and hid the shark away. He did not fool me though; I knew it still swam in the depths, waiting to surface when required.
“I knew you were a man of sense,” he said. “Come, let’s seal our deal over a drink and a smoke and we can discuss it further.”
He led me to a small office that was more like a foreman’s hut at the back of the shed beyond the submarine propellers. The space was crammed with carpentry tools, blueprints, cameras, and ledgers. And I was not in the least bit surprised to see my box of defenses on the floor amid the clutter, and two tall piles of my books on the table in a space that had obviously been cleared for them. It appeared that Churchill didn’t only know the contents of my library; he had the run of the whole bally house.
At least he hadn’t needed to have his chaps rifle my liquor cabinet or smokes drawer. He had a tall travelling valise at his side, one of those expensive leather and brass jobs I’ve had an eye on for myself. He opened it to expose, not books or clothes, but a well-stocked range of liquor in tall decanters, some expensive crystal glasses, and a long wooden cigar box.
He winked at me as he saw my astonishment.
“Perks of the job, old boy,” he replied. “One must travel in style, if one must travel at all.”
He poured me some rather fine single malt I hadn’t had before from Orkney, and passed me a Cuban cigar that was thicker than my thumb and twice as long, before clicking his glass against mine.
“To business,” he said after swallowing most of his scotch in a single gulp. I merely sipped at mine. I had a feeling I had a lot of work ahead of me, a feeling that was amplified considerably as he outlined his requirements.
“It has to be strange enough to spook the Huns,” he said, “yet not so bloody weird that it’ll frighten my men. I’m going to have to have some crew aboard when we take this thing out of here. They’ll be needed to get it back into waters where it can be found.”
“And what about the original German crewmen? How will their absence be explained?”
“Absence?” Churchill said, and again I saw the ruthless shark under the mask. “Oh, they won’t be absent. We have them on ice in a shed not a hundred yards from here. When we’re ready, we’ll get them back on board and send them off with their boat.”
I was less and less keen on this whole business by the second, but I was in too far now to back out.
“I will need to spend some time with my books,” I said. “This is not something I can undertake lightly.”
Churchill nodded. He poured another large measure of his scotch and topped up mine, although I had as yet scarcely touched it.
“I thought you might say that,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything. The chaps outside are at our beck and call at all hours.”
He went and sat in the chair across the table opposite me and was immediately lost in his thoughts, a fug of cigar smoke surrounding him like fake ectoplasm at a séance.
It was time for me to get to work.
I sipped at the scotch and smoked the cigar as I checked to see what Churchill had thought were the books I might require for the task at hand. Not for the first time, he surprised me with his perspicacity and breadth of knowledge. He had indeed thought of everything, from the Key of Solomon to De Vermis Mysteriis, from several medieval grimoires to my working copy of the Sigsand mss. Of course, as I have said, I considered the bulk of this material to be of historical curiosity value only. I had read them all before, but never with an eye to considering them as in any way practical.
I took the time it took me to smoke the cigar to clear my mind of my own preconceptions, and then set about looking for something I thought might have a chance of working, given my talent and expertise, and a large amount of good luck. I had a feeling that I was going to need it.
I ploughed through spell after spell, annoyed at myself for agreeing to a course that took me so far from my natural instincts to defend against the very things I was going to attempt to raise. Much of the kind of ritual spellbinding I was perusing is, of course, superstitious mumbo-jumbo; dead men’s hands, blood from a pregnant mare, the skull of a dog killed at a crossroads; all stuff and nonsense. And besides, procuring any such items in time for Churchill’s purposes was going to prove problematic, to say the least. I aimed for something that might be simple, but effective, which proved to be another problem; the old coves responsible for writing these things didn’t really go in for doing anything the easy way.
But finally I settled on something I found in ‘The Mysteries of the Worm,’ a binding spell for summoning a hellish entity that could cloud men’s minds and make them go mad at the sight of it. It sounded like the kind of thing that Churchill might be after, and even if it didn’t work, I had the passage right there in the book to point at, to show him that I’d at least tried.
I was, however, not quite stupid enough to walk directly into a dark place and start chanting a centuries-old demon summoning ritual. I would need some protection. I got up to check that nothing in my box of defenses had been damaged in its journey here.
Churchill looked up as I opened the box.
“Another snifter?” he said, and raised his empty glass.
“No,” I replied. ‘But I shall definitely need one when I return. I think I’ve found what you asked for.”
“And will it work?”
“We shall know one way or another in a couple of hours.”
It was mid-afternoon and already starting to get rather dim inside the big boat shed as I carried my box of defenses up the makeshift gangway that led to the flat, main deck of the submarine. My footsteps clanged on metal and echoed, hollow, like funeral bells, all around me. The chill I immediately felt in my spine did not bode well for my state of mind to deal with what was coming next.