Hannu Rajaniemi
Summerland
Rachel White flung the cab door open, tossed the driver a banknote and dived into the rain.
She ran across the gloom of Portland Place towards the gilded mountain of light that was the Langham Hotel. The downpour tore at her hat. Her heels slipped and twisted on the wet pavement. The raindrops tasted like fear.
Fifteen minutes earlier, her ectophone had rattled out a message: KULAGIN IN A DUEL COME AT ONCE. She had imagined a .22 hole in Yakov Mikhailovich Kulagin’s forehead, all the dark secrets in his brain leaking out and washing away, dragging her twenty-year career in the Secret Intelligence Service with them.
She took the stairs to the arched entranceway of the hotel two steps at a time.
Stairs, marble floors, thick carpets, Renaissance pillars, ladies in ermine and pearls, spirit-armoured mediums channelling New Dead visiting from Summerland. She collided with a waiter and toppled a tray of champagne glasses. Curses and laughter followed her. Then she was through a set of French doors at the top of a broad staircase and outside once again. She stopped and breathed in the heady smell of roses in the rain.
A small crowd in evening wear huddled beneath umbrellas in the garden, watching two men. Both were in their shirtsleeves and completely drenched, holding silver pistols. One of them, a fair-haired youth, inspected his weapon with the calm detachment of a marksman.
The other was Kulagin. His shirt was open at the collar and stained with deep, dark red along his ribs. His pistol hung limply from one hand as if forgotten. He saw Rachel and performed a mock salute, a mad broad grin on his face.
She hurried down. The duellists were getting ready again. Kulagin’s second, a thickset man in a trilby hat, was talking to him, gesturing, pleading: Major Allen, the Service officer on Watch detail tonight. The Russian defector brushed him away and walked back to the centre of the garden, swaying slightly.
Allen touched the brim of his hat when he saw Rachel. There was a look of desperation on his ruddy face.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’
‘I tried my best, Mrs White, but it was too late. He insulted Mr Shaw-Asquith’s poetry and then assaulted him. It is a matter of honour now.’
‘It is much worse than that. If he gets himself killed and Hill’s boys in the Summer Court pick him up, Sir Stewart will have our heads!’
‘We might still have a chance. Mr Kulagin’s injury is not severe, it is the third shot coming up already, and Mr Shaw-Asquith may declare satisfaction afterwards.’
The young man had to be Julian, the eldest son of Sir Patrick Shaw-Asquith, the managing director of Baring Bank. He wore an expensive, fashionable waistcoat that imitated the coppery weave of spirit armour. A dark purple bruise marred one cherubic cheekbone. The way he stared at Kulagin suggested that no satisfaction would be granted before death.
‘Major, I take it you will explain to Sir Stewart how either the son of his club associate or our best NKVD source in years ended up with a bullet in the brain?’
Allen raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘I did not wish to attract attention. You see, we don’t want the whole world to know that the Crown has something to do with this—’
‘I understand the need for discretion, Major,’ Rachel interrupted. There were a lot of ex-colonials like Allen in the Service, infuriatingly dense regarding aspects of intelligence work that did not involve torpedo boats or sword canes. ‘You were right to call me. I will talk to him.’
But it was too late. A red-faced maître d’ stepped up and lifted a handkerchief. Kulagin and Shaw-Asquith tightened their grips on their weapons, eyes fixed on the wet white cloth. Allen rocked back and forth on his heels as if he was watching a cricket match.
‘We will just have to see what happens this round. Fair play and all that, eh?’
Rachel swore under her breath. Her mouth was dry and her stomach tingled. This must be how the field operatives whose reports she pored over felt when they had to make lightning decisions. She grabbed Allen’s arm.
‘Fair play can wait. Delay them. I need a few minutes.’
‘But what shall I say?’
‘Anything! Inspect his wound, make sure his weapon is loaded, whatever it takes. And make sure you tell me before they start again, no matter what. Move, man!’
She used her sharpest tone. It triggered some military reflex in Allen, who nodded stiffly and waved at the maître d’, making a show about inspecting Kulagin’s wound. In his thick brown coat and hat, he looked like a sparrow amongst hawks. Groans and boos sounded from Shaw-Asquith’s side of the audience.
In the commotion, Rachel stepped behind a large rosebush and took her ectophone from her purse. She shook out the headphone wire and screwed a black rubber bud tight into her left ear. Then she pressed one of the four preset buttons on the Bakelite device. It hummed in her hands as it heated up. She bent over to shield it from the rain and hoped the temperamental machine had stayed dry. A hissing noise was followed by the high-pitched, familiar wailing of the newly dead—sure to gather around any transmitter—and then she had a connection.
‘Registry clerk on duty,’ a thin male voice said in her ear.
Beyond the rosebush, there was more booing and jeering.
‘Authorisation F three six one.’
‘Go ahead, Mrs White,’ said the spirit clerk.
‘I need whatever we have on Julian Shaw-Asquith, right now.’ She spelled the name out carefully. ‘Any leverage? It’s urgent. And what kind of poetry does he write?’
‘Searching now. Please wait.’
It would take the spirit only instants to thought-travel to the Registry in Summerland and locate the information in the aetheric stacks—something that would have taken her hours when she joined the Secret Intelligence Service as a junior clerk at the end of the war, when everything was still on paper. Even so, the wait felt like an eternity. Her gut clenched every time a raindrop bounced off a rosebush leaf.
It was a relief when the ghostly voice returned.
‘We do not have much. Mr Shaw-Asquith belongs to what the magazines colourfully call the Cursed Coterie, a group of high-born and glamorous young men and ladies. He has engaged in some indiscretions, including an affair with Lady Julianna Manners—’
‘That’s no use. What about the poetry?’
Suddenly, she heard the voice of the maître d’ again.
‘Gentlemen, take your positions, please!’
What was that idiot Allen doing?
‘Fashionable, Russian-influenced, depressing, traces of Pushkin, although I’m no expert. “Oh Hell of ships and cities/Hell of men like me/Fatal second Helen/Why must I follow thee?”’
Pushkin. Russian tragic romance. That would have to do. Rachel yanked the earbud out, stuffed the ectophone in her purse and ran back towards the duelling field. Kulagin and Shaw-Asquith stood ready, eyes fixed once again on the white cloth in the maître d’s hand.
She elbowed her way through the crowd, tore off her coat, tossed her drenched hat away and shook out her dark hair.
The handkerchief fell. The two pistols rose in unison. Rachel screamed and lunged forwards, into the line of fire.
The gunshots echoed in quick succession, rapid and metallic, like two keystrokes of a giant typewriter. A bullet buzzed past her cheek. Another struck a flagstone near her feet, leaving a smell of crushed rock in the air. She slipped on the wet surface and nearly fell.
‘Madam! Please get out of the way!’ Shaw-Asquith’s voice was shrill. Rachel ignored him and ran towards Kulagin, who stared at her, eyes wide.