There was a French staff car parked in the road outside, just visible through a failing hedge. Its windows were dark. Had one of Mata Hari's conquests come to pay a secret farewell? Or to be sure she was truly dead?
Corporal Jacques Lantier was waiting for her in his pokey office. His face was an angry tangle of scar. After two days in which the enemy inflicted an 80 per cent casualty rate on exposed Frenchmen, the remnant of General Mireau's command had defied his 'to the last man' order and retreated across the hundred yards of dirt they had taken but been unable to hold. Lantier, alive and maimed, was one of the fortunate. In one piece, he might have been among the dozen men Mireau had had shot for cowardice. He was eligible for a place in the unofficial veterans' club of the disfigured, the Union des Gueules Cassees, the Brotherhood of Broken Mugs.
Lantier opened a hole in his lower face with the end of his little finger and stuck a cigarette into it. Kate accepted his offer of a cigarette and they both lit up off a single match-flame.
The corporal coughed and smoke clouded around him. He was, of course, grateful to one of the few journalists to condemn General Mireau but there were other considerations. Before the war, twenty francs might have purchased a horse. Now it might stretch to a slice of horse meat.
'They spoke softly, mademoiselle,' Lantier said, excusing himself, 'and my hearing is not so good ...'
One of his ears was sheared off entirely, the other an inflamed lump.
'But you heard something.'
She added more notes to the sheaf in his fist.
'Scraps here and there ... a few names ... Château du Malinbois, Professor Ten Brincken, Baron von Richthofen, General Karnstein ...'
Each name unloosed another ten francs.
'Enough,' she said. 'Just tell me what you heard.'
Lantier shrugged and began ...
It was nearly midday when Corporal Lantier finished. Kate had filled a notebook but was not sure what to make of it. There were gaps. Some she could fill in with her own intelligence but most were true blanks.
She had expected new light on the perfidy of General Mireau but this was entirely fresh. She would have to read up on the Richthofen Freak Show. If Charles was interested enough to hear Mata Hari out, there was certainly a story in it.
Lantier escorted her outside. Without its sole prisoner, the barracks was dead. The firing squad were on leave in Paris and would be back in the trenches by tomorrow's dawn.
They walked across the parade ground. She paused to examine the pole where Mata Hari had died.
'After the beheading,' Lantier said, 'young men pressed around and dipped handkerchiefs in the blood. For souvenirs.'
'Or to taste. It must be heady stuff. The blood of Mata Hari.'
Lantier spat and missed the pole.
'Vampire blood could help ...' she began, indicating Lantier's face.
He shook his head and spat again. 'Curse you all, you bloodsuckers. What good have you ever done?'
She had no answer. Many Frenchmen, especially outside Paris, felt as he did. Vampirism had not taken hold quite as it had in Britain, Germany and Austria-Hungary. France had its elders - Genevieve, for one - and a growing swell of newborns, often self-styled 'modems' and 'decadents', but vampires were still not entirely welcome in the best circles. Alfred Dreyfus had been a scapegoat because he was at once a Jew and a vampire.
She bade Lantier goodbye and left the parade ground. Her trusty Hoopdriver bicycle was against an old cavalry hitching post by the main entrance. The staff car was still in the road outside.
Kate knew there was danger. During the Terror, she had developed the sense. Her nails slid out like cat's claws.
She stepped past the hedge into the road and looked at the car. There was a chauffeur in the front seat and the rear door was slightly open. Someone looked out at her with piggy eyes.
'Ego te exorcisat,' a voice shrieked. 'Suffer, foul harlot, suffer the torments of the damned!'
A black-robed man vaulted a low fence and rushed at her. A wild-eyed, white-haired priest had been crouching out of sight. She recognised him but had no time to summon a name from memory. Berating her in bad Latin and gutter French, the priest sloshed liquid in her face. Her glasses spattered with blurry blobs.
Her thought was that the lunatic had thrown oil of vitriol. Acid ate vampire flesh to the bone. She would recover, but look like Lantier for the next fifty years. There was no burning, no hissing.
The priest waved with his flask. Another splash struck her forehead and dribbled down. She tasted plain water. No, not plain water, she realised. Holy water.
She laughed in surprise. Some Catholic vampires were sensitive to such things, but she was an Anglican of long standing. Her family were Prod to the marrow; when told Kate had turned, her father commented, 'At least the fool girl hasn't embraced the foul Antichrist of Rome.'
The priest stood back smugly, prepared to enjoy the dissolution of a corrupt creature of hell. He pressed a large, crudely detailed crucifix to his breast and held up a fistful of Communion wafers.
Her cap had come off and her hair flew loose. She picked her headgear up and patted her face with it.
'I'm all wet, you idjit,' she said.
The priest tossed the Communion wafer at her. He seemed to expect it to bite into her skull like a Japanese shuriken. The biscuit stuck to her damp forehead.
Annoyed, she crunched the wafer in her mouth and spat out the fragments.
'Where's the wine? I've the red thirst on me, now. Transubstantiate a bottle and I'll have blood to drink.'
This attack had spurred her bloodlust. She must feed soon.
The priest shook his cross and poured the curses of heaven on her. She saw a face dart back into the interior of the car. It had worn a French officer's kepi with a great deal of scrambled egg.
'You are Father Pitaval. You were at the trial of Mata Hari.'
Pitaval, some kind of renegade Jesuit, was Mireau's confessor. Also, it seemed, his tame vampire-killer.
'You'll have to do better than this poor showing, Father.'
He shoved his crucifix at her face and she pushed it away.
'Look to your own conscience,' she shouted, at Mireau as much as the priest.
He raised his crucifix like a dagger and stabbed at her chest. The end was jagged enough to serve as the proverbial stake, but she deflected the blow. Her tinted glasses fell off and she was in a world of blur. She saw a black shape coming for her and stepped aside. She pushed hard, catching the priest and tossing him towards the car.
Scrambling in the grit, she found her glasses and replaced them. Pitaval crawled for the car. The door slammed shut before he could get there. The dark window rolled up, fast. Moving with vampire swiftness, she overleaped the priest and exerted an iron grip on the car door-handle. She wrenched the lock open, enjoying the popping of the mechanism.
In the dark inside. General Mireau sat stiffly, staring hatred. He had a companion, a little new-born in a froth of white shroud. The minx had rouged her wrists where Mireau bound her with a rosary, misleading him about the effect of religious artefacts on vampire flesh. The general's taste for undead girls was predictable. Kate hoped this one was cunning enough to rob him blind and drain him dry.
She shook her head. Mireau shoved behind his companion.
'Sister,' Kate said, 'you have very poor taste in blood.'
The new-born wriggled. She was probably a dancer or an actress. Even more probably another spy.
Kate bent to get her head into the car. Mireau's cold eyes held flames of fear. He pushed the new-born forward, encouraging a reluctant dog to fight. The vampire poodle opened her mouth to show tentative fangs. She attempted a hiss.