He closed the door, sat down at his desk and leaned back. Notes and diagrams for the Spanish operation, written in aether itself with a thought, floated everywhere like cobwebs. Inez’s picture from BRIAR was at the centre of it all, and if possible, her gaze looked even fiercer than he remembered. In frustration, Peter waved a hand. The rows of neat white writing, lines and boxes wavered and evaporated like smoke.
In theory, he should have been delighted. He would have unprecedented access to the highest levels of power in the Empire at a critical time when he could be extremely valuable to the Presence’s cause. George would be overjoyed.
So why was he utterly and completely terrified?
Peter took the tin soldier from his pocket and set it on his desk. It looked at him expectantly, rough, fingerless hands gripping the rifle. He remembered a game played on his parents’ living room floor a long time ago, a round-bellied man setting up armies of tiny troops, crawling on all fours, a red-faced Gulliver hovering over a Lilliputian nation.
The prime minister.
Suddenly, he felt the tight luz grip of the Summer Court’s walls all around him like a vice. He was supposed to work—C had told him to prepare an overview for the PM in two days’ time—but it was impossible to concentrate.
George. He had to see George. His handler must be told about Djugashvili and the opportunity. It was more than enough grounds for a face-to-face meeting in the world of the living.
For a moment, he even managed to convince himself that was the real reason he wanted to see George.
Peter took his coat and hat and headed back out.
* * *
Once he was safely outside the Court and on the wide walking avenue through the resplendent green of Albert Park, amber-tinted in the unchanging Unseen light, he considered his options. It was nearly a month before their next meeting was due. He would have to use the protocol for an emergency meeting, something he had never done before. George had emphasised that it was to be employed only for the gravest of reasons.
Peter concentrated, pictured a statue of a lion at the end of Fortress Road and thought-travelled.
Albert Park blurred into an orange haze as the image of the lion pulled him through the aether. Or perhaps he stayed still and the aether flowed around him and through him like cold water, taking vim with it until the distinction between the vision and reality disappeared.
Peter stood between the forepaws of a marble lion statue. He turned around, and in front of him loomed the enormous black half-pearl of the Fortress, the oldest structure in the city. The Fortress dwarfed all the fanciful aethertect creations near Albert Park. Its dark, hemispherical mass was present in all the levels of the city. There had been proposals to dismantle the ancient structure and use its uncountable luz stones elsewhere, but so far the Empire’s scientists had been unable to unravel the lost aetheric arts used to build it millennia ago.
A small crowd was gathered in the square. The Fortress attracted visitors, especially the newly dead taking in the sights of the city. Peter passed groups of deceased children whose undisciplined soul-sparks blazed with wonder and terror, and raucous soldiers whose aetheric bodies openly flaunted the horrific injuries that had ended their lives. He followed the rim of the Fortress until he found the Listener.
The Listener was a pale man who had Faded to the point where his luz was a bright star in his chest and his face was barely visible. He ran grey, smokelike fingers along the black tiles of the curving wall and whispered faintly to himself, echoing the inaudible whispers of the ancient soul-stones. His hat lay on the ground. A handful of luz shillings and pence gleamed inside it.
Peter gave him a look of genuine pity. Although in theory the National Death Service guaranteed a minimum supply of vim and accommodation in the ever-expanding Summer City to anyone with a Ticket, occasionally premature Fading meant that a spirit simply forgot to be a part of the system any longer. It was an unpredictable process. Many Faded retained a single memory or an obsession that defined their entire existence.
‘The old soul-stones speak,’ the Listener said in a reed-thin voice. ‘They tell your past and your future. One vim shilling to find out.’
Peter smiled and shook his head. ‘No, thank you. I prefer to find out the old-fashioned way.’
Peter wondered if the man truly served the Presence, or if he was an intermediary for another agent. Was the Listening simply an act, or had he sacrificed his memories, his very self, for the cause? Yet there was something familiar in the Listener’s utter dedication to things others could not see or hear.
Using a simple code agreed with George, Peter measured out the desired date of their meeting—tomorrow—in luz coins. As the bright discs clinked into the hat, the weight on his shoulders vanished.
His handler would know what to do.
The Listener ignored him and returned to his work. Peter walked on until he found a section of the wall with no one nearby. Then he pressed his ear against the smooth, cold surface, closed his eyes and listened.
On Saturday, Rachel White was on her way to meet the dead spymaster when she realised she was being followed.
It was little more than instinct at first, a glimpse of a familiar gait, face or hat. The crowd in Charing Cross was thick, drawn out by the sunny autumn afternoon. She stopped at a booth that sold old records, pretended to study the cover of a Schubert music sheet, and watched the passers-by.
Newsboys carried advert placards on their backs: THE TRUTH HURTS—THIS AWFUL TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU SCREAM. Workmen pasted down steaming, pungent asphalt. Sleek electric cars and tottering old buses huddled shoulder to shoulder in a traffic jam and blared their horns. A young man in a sweater gave her an appreciative look. Ectofactory workers wearing dishevelled coats and pasty complexions shuffled past. A cabbie union man offered her a leaflet on the evils of spirit cabs and unemployment.
Nothing. No familiar faces, hats or gaits. Her street tradecraft—a spy’s art of clandestine encounters and surveillance evasion—was rusty but she still knew how to execute a surveillance-detection route: a logical path through the city that was designed to force any observers to reveal themselves. In the past three hours, she had criss-crossed the city on the Tube, taken several cabs and wandered through Harrods. Foyles bookstore was going to serve as her final choke point.
Of course, it was possible for a team of agents to shadow a suspect without being spotted. More than four were practically undetectable. In addition, she had no way of sensing aetheric surveillance, although spirit Watchers were nearly useless in the daytime.
Was she being overcautious? As far as anyone in the Winter Court knew, she was now happily working as a clerk in the Finance Section, doing exactly what Roger had advised. She shuffled dull paperwork any office girl could have handled, except for the high clearance required, approved bank wires to fund overseas operations and reconciled accounts with deliberately obscure line items. She lunched with the junior staff in the canteen, away from her former colleagues. On the rare occasions when she interacted with Liddell, Vee-Vee or other senior personnel, she gracefully accepted empty promises of support and hinted that she might want to retire early, as soon as her pension and Ticket were secure.
Rachel might almost have believed it herself if not for the contents of the Manila folder she had taken from Wormwood Scrubs, and the response to the anonymous ectomail she had sent to the folder’s subject two days earlier.