Cundall and his cronies had ventured out to watch Albright depart. The pilots took a professional look at the SE5a, examining the fuselage where bullet-holes had been darned. They agreed the aeroplane, a relative newcomer, was acceptable. Through Diogenes, Condor could get whatever machines it wanted, but each pilot had preferences.
Stamping to get feeling into dead toes, Winthrop was completely in the dark. The aeroplane was a large shadow skeleton. Vampires were as comfortable in the night as he was on Brighton pier at midday. With their adapted eyes, the undead were suited to night-flying, to night-fighting. Thanks to them, this was the first round-the-clock war in history.
Ginger spun the SE5a's propeller. The Hispano-Suiza engine did not catch first time.
'A bit more elbow-grease,' said one of the cronies, Bertie.
Of course, without vampires (specifically without the brute now calling himself the Graf von Dracula) the war would not have been fought at all. The Graf's latest attempt at European power had led to a conflict that seemed to involve every nation on the globe. Even the Americans were in now. The Kaiser said modern Germans must embody the spirit of the ancient Hun, but it was Dracula, proud of blood kinship with Attila, who most epitomised twentieth-century barbarism-
Ginger spun the prop again. The engine growled, prompting a ragged cheer. Albright gave a salute and said, 'See you at midnight.' The machine taxied along bumpy sod, plunged into the shadow of the trees and soared upwards, wobbling a little as wind caught under its wings.
'What's the business about midnight?' Winthrop asked.
'Red always gets back by then,' Bertie said. 'Does the job quickly and comes home. That's why we call him Captain Midnight.'
'Captain Midnight?'
'Silly, isn't it?' the pilot grinned. 'So far, it's brought him luck. Red's a good man. Flew with the Escadrille Lafayette until they disbanded. We got him because the Yanks rejected him for their show as medically unfit. The American Air Corps is exclusive to warm men.'
Albright's crate rushed up into the underside of a low-lying cloudbank and passed quickly from sight. The engine drone faded into the wind and drifting music from the farmhouse gramophone. 'Poor Butterfly' was waiting again. Sergeant Dravot's eyes were fixed on the night sky.
Major Cundall consulted his watch (one of the new wrist affairs they wore in the trenches) and noted time of departure in a log book. Winthrop checked his own pocket watch. Half-past ten on the evening of February the 14th, 1918. St Valentine's Day. At home, Catriona would be thinking of him, intelligently worried.
'Nothing for it now but to wait,' Cundall said. 'Come in and stay warm.'
Winthrop had not realised how chilled he was. Slipping his watch into its pocket, he followed the pilots back to the farmhouse.
2
The Old Man
Throughout the crossing, Beauregard was uncomfortably aware of the wounded man lying in a corner of the cabin. Given his condition, Captain Spenser was unnaturally quiet.
When an orderly had found him, Spenser was on the point of driving in a fifth nail. It seemed he intended to porcupine his entire skull. The inevitable diagnosis was a failure of nerve, but Beauregard thought it must take a steady hand to perform such an operation upon oneself.
Beauregard reproached himself for his failure to appreciate the strain put on Spenser by the demands of Diogenes. A man may know too many things. Sometimes, Beauregard wished his own skull would open and let his secrets escape. It would be pleasant to be innocent and ignorant.
After years of service to the Diogenes Club, Charles Beauregard sat with the venerable Mycroft and the eccentric Smith-Cumming on the Ruling Cabal, highest echelon of the Secret Service. His whole life had been lived in the dark.
The Channel was gentle. He chatted with the Quaker stretcher-bearer, Godfrey. He had chosen ambulance duty over prison and been decorated for bravery under fire at Vimy Ridge. Beauregard recognised as a better man one who would die for his country but not kill. He regretted each time he had killed; but he also regretted, in a single instance, not killing. At the sacrifice of his own life, he might have put an end to Count Dracula. Often, as he got older, he thought of those seconds.
At Newhaven quay, nurses awaited a small group of maddened officers. As a group, the men were quiet and pliable.
They were shepherded with kindly firmness by the nurses. Four years ago, the army had considered shell-shock deplorable cowardice. After seasons of gruelling war, breakdowns were almost de rigueur for the better sort of officer. The second son of the Duke of Denver was among the current crop of Dottyville cases.
No light showed on the dock. German submarines were rumoured to be in the Channel. Beauregard wished the uninterested Spenser good luck and gave Godfrey his card, then crossed the shadowed platform to board the fast train for London.
He was met at Victoria by Ashenden, a youth who had proved himself a cool hand in Switzerland, and driven through the dark city. Despite rain and unlit streets, purposeful night crowds were everywhere. Even in the heart of Empire, touched only by an odd air raid, it was impossible to forget the war. Theatres, restaurants and pubs (and, doubtless, vice dens and brothels) teemed with soldiers desperate for forgetfulness. Around every group of men in uniform swarmed crowds of hearty fellows eager to stand 'our boys' rounds of drinks and hero-worshipping young women intent on bestowing hot favours. Posters blazoned severe penalties for evading the call- up. Fire-eyed vampire girls scoured Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue with white feathers for presentation to any of their undead brothers not in the King's service. A model trench in Hyde Park impressed an idea of conditions in France upon non- combatants; its cleanliness and home comforts provoked bitter mirth among those on leave from the real thing. At the Queen's Hall, Thomas Beecham conducted a No German Concert: the selection of pieces from English, French and Belgian composers excluded any note of the diabolical kultur of Beethoven, Bach and Wagner. The Scala Cinema offered reels taken at the front (mostly staged in the shire counties) and Mary Pickford in The Little Bat Girl.
If motion pictures were taken in the streets, a million details would confirm this as a city at war, from women traffic police officers to armed guards in butcher shops. To a man of his advanced years, many specifics reminded him of the Terror, the period thirty years gone when Britain had struggled under the yoke of the then Prince Consort. Commentators like H. G. Wells and Edmund Gosse argued the world war was the consequence of a job left undone. The Revolutionists of the '90s merely drove Dracula from the country when they should have hoisted the demon prince on one of his own stakes. By the second coronation of King Victor in 1897, there had been enough blood. Another civil war was narrowly averted when Lord Ruthven, the Prime Minister, persuaded Parliament to confirm the succession, cutting off his former patron, Dracula, from any right to rule.
Young Ashenden was patient with the crowds obstructing the car's way. As they idled, waiting for a Salvation Army band to pass, a rap came at the window. The driver looked out, quietly tense in what Beauregard recognised was a habit of their profession. A white feather puffed through the open crack of window and fluttered down.