‘I needed to wake you up. It should wear off in a moment. Keep talking.’
‘Rachel, there is something you have to know. The information I was trying to get to the Presence. CAMLANN was a research project that found out where the Old Dead went. There are things called Cullers that rise from kata when there are enough souls to harvest and consume everything in Summerland. Any major war could be a trigger to wake them. What is about to happen in Spain might do it. I have seen the evidence. It’s all in that file. West gave me the key.
‘The Stalinists don’t want the Presence to know about the Cullers. If He is consumed, too, they will win. When I was extracted, I was supposed to undergo the Termin Procedure—be made one with the Presence—but they could not allow that to happen. He would have known everything I know.
‘You may not agree with what the Presence stands for, but He is better than the total oblivion the Cullers bring. And He is the only thing in Summerland powerful enough to have even a chance of stopping them. The Old Dead did not have anything like Him. Please. You have to believe me.’
He grabbed Rachel’s sleeve with a skeletal hand.
‘Take your hands off my wife.’
Joe pushed him back with the barrel of his rifle.
‘It is all right, Joe. I can handle him.’ She looked at Bloom. His face twitched and there were tears in his medium-blank eyes. ‘You killed Max Chevalier,’ she said quietly. ‘A spirit death. He Faded fully.’
‘I’m sorry. I was desperate. He would not give up.’ His teeth chattered and he hugged himself. ‘I never lied to you, Rachel. At least not about anything important. Everything I did was in order to serve something greater. The proof is in the CAMLANN file. You can’t tell the Service, you know. You can take it to the press, but the Dimensionists will try to kill the story, you are better off—’
Rachel’s head buzzed. The fatigue of the sleepless night and all the madness felt like the spirit armour, locking her in, suffocating her. She looked at Bloom’s face, remembered the night at the Blue Dog, how he had taken her hand. She remembered Max Chevalier’s voice, fading away.
And yet …
She had spent a good part of her two decades in the Service in small rooms with desperate, angry men, ready to say anything to win their freedom or to protect their comrades. She knew what lies sounded like, and her gut told her Bloom was not lying.
But what he was saying was too big to take in.
She pulled a set of handcuffs from her purse.
‘Enough, Peter. We are going to Wormwood Scrubs, and you can tell me all about it there. Not even your father can protect you now.’
‘No, you don’t understand, he is the one who wants the information out, the Cullers could come any moment if the war starts in Spain, everybody in Summerland is in danger, your mother—’
‘I said enough!’
‘Rachel, please—’
‘She said enough.’
Joe struck Bloom in the solar plexus with the butt of the rifle. He fell back, coughing.
The lights in the ceiling flashed to full daylight luminescence accompanied by the soft thunderclaps of high-voltage circuits closing. The ward became a white landscape of sheets and emaciated bodies.
Footsteps rang on the polished floor. Half a dozen burly men in rough-spun clothes and felt caps ran in, holding revolvers, truncheons and shotguns. For an instant, Rachel thought it was Special Branch, but no—two of them were dragging Joan between them. She raised her automatic as Joe whipped his rifle to his shoulder. The newcomers stopped instantly and took aim at them.
Fear was a glass knife in Rachel’s gut.
A smiling, round-bodied woman with cherubic curls and a dour-faced man in a black coat entered.
‘Please keep it down, ladies and gentlemen,’ the woman said with a faint foreign accent. ‘This is a hospital, after all.’
Rachel sought her eyes—this had to be Nora. She raised her voice.
‘We have reinforcements on the way! Put down your weapons now.’
Her words echoed from the cathedral-like ceiling.
‘Really? I think we will be gone before they arrive. If you put down your weapons, they may find you still alive.’
‘We both have Tickets,’ Rachel said. ‘We are not afraid.’
She clicked off the gun’s safety. One of the gunmen to her left reacted to the sound and immediately aimed a revolver at her, both hands around the grip, feet spread, clearly a marksman.
Joe swung his rifle towards the gunman in response. Clicks followed as five more safeties came off nearly in unison.
‘This room is a Faraday cage,’ the dour-faced man—Otto, presumably—said in a thin voice. ‘Your spirits will be trapped here, and the only way out is through the bodies we provide. But there is no need for unpleasantness. We are on the same side, Mrs White. And I believe that is Captain White with you?’
Joe grunted. A bead of sweat shimmered on his forehead.
‘Yes, this is Captain White of the One Hundred and Eighty-Seventh Aetheric Armoured Cavalry, and he is aiming between your eyes, sir,’ he said. ‘And gentleman though I am, I have no compunctions against taking out your lady friend as well.’
‘Whoever you are, you have an interesting definition of sides,’ Rachel said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘If you surrender and cooperate, you will be treated well and compensated for any information you provide. That is the best offer you are going to get.’
‘Mrs White, your government is days away from starting a war in Spain. Iosif Dzhugashvili is the only man who can stop it,’ Otto said. ‘Our comrades have been hunted down all over Europe like animals by the NKVD. We desire nothing more than peace and an end to the abomination called the Presence that has swallowed millions of souls for nothing.
‘We are very grateful to you for providing us with our first weapon against it. You can change the world, Mrs White: just take Bloom in and keep him quiet.
‘Imagine if death meant something again, Mrs White. Imagine a world where war was something to be feared once more, where human well-being and health were cherished, where each citizen had to make the most of their allotted time. Where generational change and learning could be reinstated, instead of eternal rule by ossified queens and tyrants. Where everyone would understand what it is to feel true loss, as you once did.’
Rachel took a deep breath. Blood pounded in her temples.
‘We can make that world together, Mrs White, and all you have to do is nothing.’
Bloom spoke in a barely audible whisper.
‘They are lying,’ he said. ‘They will do anything to stop the Presence from learning about the Cullers. You can’t give up now. Imagine your Edmund Angelo. What kind of world would you have wanted him to grow up in?’
Joe threw a sidelong glance at Rachel. There was a question in his eyes.
Rachel’s heartbeat slowed until each thump in her chest was like a church bell tolling. A world with death, or without?
It was not her decision. She’d had enough of empires and dreams, and of the small men behind them. Bloom was right. She and Joe would end up in the crime hospital’s beds.
She looked at Joe. There might be a mad, terrible way out, she suddenly knew. Could she ask such a thing of him? He held her gaze, then closed his eyes in assent, briefly, like a tiny bird’s wingbeat.
She knew he had already made his decision.
‘You make some interesting points,’ Rachel shouted. ‘We are considering them. Why don’t you put your weapons down first, as a demonstration of good faith?’
Without looking towards the bed, she hissed between her teeth, ‘How much do you care about your mission, Peter? What are you willing to sacrifice to deliver your message?’