‘The first time they switched the armour on—’ He shook his head. ‘You feel this fist squeezing your head and everything goes cold, a bit like those ice-cream headaches you get as a child, but all over your brain. Then … it comes. A door opens. You are … throwing up, but the stuff that spews out becomes a part of you, makes you bigger, taller. You feel like you can do anything. Some of the lads grew giant legs and the tendrils—well, you have seen them. Some were more like giant beasts made of ectoplasm, or spiders scuttering through the trenches.
‘As for me, I liked to make wings so I could fly. That was the only good part. If I had known what happened to our victims, the sources, I don’t think I would have done it. But they only told us that the Huns we killed would die and go to Summerland, as per usual. It wasn’t until our first proper scrap that we found out for ourselves how it really worked. And once we had a taste of it, it was too late to stop.’
Joe refilled his glass, drained it and took a deep breath. Rachel stared at him. She had seen the newsreels, of course, and had a vague notion of how ectoplasmic weapons worked, but had simply assumed they were powered by the energy released when a soul left a dying body. Horrific, but no more so than poison gas or artillery. Only it sounded like that was not the whole story.
Finally, Joe continued.
‘Those poor Hun kids. They died twice, first on the battlefield and then we fed on their souls until only the soul-stones were left.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Sometimes they even got us going with some of our own boys. Deserters, usually. That was the worst part.’
Rachel had heard rumours that ‘primers’ had been required for ectotanks before battle, soldiers sacrificed to power the weapons, but it was a different thing to hear it from Joe. And if they completely annihilated enemy souls—that went completely against the Dimensionists’ claims of humane warfare. She felt incandescent anger, suddenly. It would cause a scandal if it ever got out. Maybe it needed to get out.
‘That is one reason you never talked about it, isn’t it?’ she whispered. ‘You were told to keep quiet.’
Joe looked ashamed. ‘We all agreed that you could never understand it if you weren’t there. It was the only way out of that hell of mud and guts and worse—what else were we supposed to do?’
‘I am not judging you, Joe. Thank you for telling me. Please go on.’
‘The other reason I never talk about the war is I don’t remember that much. You get lost in the flood when the souls come. There is this rush, like the best rugby match I ever played times ten, running forward, getting in a scrum, wrestling away the ball. And the noise, the gunshots, this howl that fills you. Here, back home, it is always too quiet. And I feel so weak. This is probably what it’s like to be a ghost. Everything just passes through you.’
‘You never seemed like a ghost to me,’ Rachel said. ‘Stay here. You don’t have to go back to all that.’
‘Rachel, I do. Not for our boys, not for duty. But because I miss it. Because it’s too hard without it.’
Rachel stared at him. His eyes were red. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.
‘There you have it,’ he said.
She tried to feel sorry for him, tried to understand this had been done to him, he could not help it. But he was still choosing war over her.
The main course, braised veal, sat untouched between them, getting cold. The smell made Rachel nauseous.
She had thought herself so clever, so very modern, persuading him to open up, to talk about his emotions. Just because a traitor had tricked her into feeling better about herself. She had been a fool.
She stood up and flung her napkin to the floor.
‘No, I won’t have it,’ she shouted. ‘I will not have it. It’s not fair.’
A soft muttering spread across the tables as the other diners turned to look at her.
‘Rachel, please, sit down,’ Joe said in hushed tones.
She could barely look at him. But she could not bear to storm out, with everyone looking. Avoiding that had been the whole point.
She took a deep breath and sat back down.
‘This is what I was afraid of, Rachel,’ Joe said. ‘It’s why I didn’t want to tell you.’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘Wednesday next week. I can stay at the club until then.’
I don’t want you to, Rachel wanted to say, but the words did not come out. She picked at the edge of the tablecloth again.
‘It’s no trouble, really,’ Joe said. He was putting up a brave front now. ‘I’ll come by and say goodbye before I go.’
Joe spoke to the maître d’ quietly, apologising for the disturbance, slipped him a note, paid the bill and left. Rachel sat alone, surrounded by untouched food. In spite of the candlelight and conversation inside, the mosaic window looked dull and dark.
* * *
A drowsy, half-dressed Susi let Rachel into Max Chevalier’s flat half an hour later. Most of the animals were asleep and Rachel waited in the freezing conservatory while the girl sent an ectomail to Max, who was somewhere in the Summer City.
Finally, Susi wheeled in the Edison doll.
‘I met with Bloom today,’ Rachel said, without preamble. ‘The situation has changed. Tell me: if we give Bloom something, chickenfeed, whatever, how confident are you that we can track him to a meeting with his handler?’
‘In all honesty, it is difficult to say,’ Max replied. ‘He could be using dead drops. We will watch him, of course, but it will be hard to get evidence unless we actually catch him with a handler. It will have to be something big, something urgent, something that requires an in-person meeting. But you really should calm down, Mrs White. Has something happened?’
Rachel took a deep breath. She had not stopped to think and did not want to stop now. What mattered was preventing Bloom from doing anything that would prolong the situation in Spain.
She had never thought it possible to be jealous of war.
‘It’s Spain. We can’t wait any longer. The stakes are too high. Bloom asked me for a file from the Registry. What I want is a plan to collar him if he gets it.’
‘Mrs White, this is most unwise. You want him to trust you. If we act too quickly, all our work will be for nothing. You don’t want to short-circuit the process, believe me.’
‘Bloom is under pressure. You said it yourself. He is desperate for this file, I know it.’
‘Are you sure there isn’t something else affecting your judgement? I hate to suggest this and contradict myself, but if there is a Summer Court investigation going on, should we not consider working with them?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘As soon as there is even a hint that the target might be Bloom, the investigation will be shut down from above, just like what happened to me. No, we have to get evidence. Besides, I told you—I don’t trust Roger.’
The Edison doll’s eyes were unreadable.
‘Very well, Mrs White. There is a stage where the agent’s instincts must take over. I will get my teams ready to hunt.’ He made a small trilling sound. ‘One more thing, though. You must be ready to shield your emotions better this time. You will be hiding something, and it will be very obvious to him. Think thoughts that you feel guilty about. Do something naughty beforehand if your conscience is clean.’
There was a click and the voice was gone, but the room’s dim electric light twinkled in the doll’s nyctoscope eyes, like the ghost of amusement.
The Old Registry of the SIS was in St Albans, a quiet town known for its Roman ruins twenty miles north of London. That was where Rachel had started her Service career during the war, putting on a simple uniform and joining the ranks of female clerks and analysts who tried to make sense of radio intercepts and aetheric maps compiled by spirit scouts.