‘Vile stars,’ Denton muttered as he leafed through the pages.
If this text was to be believed, everything from smallpox to the common cold could have come from space. The silk stories certainly explained his father’s obsession with the Spanish flu and good old Encke.
He reached the final pages and noticed the word Fenghuang and, next to it, Phönix.
The last leaf had pictures of three comets under the title Di-Xing, the long-tailed pheasant star. The three comets connected by three drawn lines. A single character labeled each. He checked the German translations.
The Detector
The Recognizer
The Scryer
The character in the center of the comets was not for any comet but rather the group, or the combination of all three. He peered at the dark ink. It was older than those with which he was familiar, an ancient seal script. It was less rectangular, more decorative in appearance. The character looked like a man with a sharp spike emerging from his head. It translated to The Controller.
Below the illustrations were streams of Chinese characters. The translations described three Phoenix comets as rare, and made of otherworldly metals.
Denton turned the final page to discover more German translations.
The Detector — a shaman with high sensitivity to the aroma of people; a fragrance or smoke that betrays words, mood, health and humanity.
Denton smirked. ‘That’s loony-town.’
He swilled the last of his wine and planted the bottle on top of the plastic cover. He checked his watch. It was still early, half ten, so he decided for another visit to the wine cellar, re-opened by his disgusted father. Just half a bottle tonight: he’d save the rest for the morning.
Lantern in hand, he walked the open grounds of the terrace to the cellar. The stark, primal drawings of the meteors were imprinted in his vision as he looked at the stars. The night’s air was chilled, silent. He stopped walking. The calls of the owls he’d grown used to were absent. He looked over his shoulder at the machine-gun sentry on the parapet walk. The machine gun sat on its tripod, glimmering in the moonlight. The sentry was missing from his post.
There was always a snugly dressed soldier on the machine gun.
Denton’s heart kicked.
He broke into a run. Back for the hall, one hand gripping the lantern, the other reaching for his Polish Vis pistol. An explosion rang from the terrace, the sound rippling and bouncing off the castle walls. The hall windows shattered from the pressure of the explosion. He ducked inside. It took a moment to figure out where the explosion had come from. It was surely the southern wall, which faced the terrace. But there was a precipice below the southern wall, just as there was a precipice on the western wall and a steep drop on the north. How could someone even attempt to access the castle from such a steep angle?
Gunfire cracked across the terrace.
‘OK, so definitely the southern wall,’ he muttered.
Snuffing the lantern, he crouched and moved for the nearest window. He hoped to catch a glimpse of the attacking force and their strength. He knew his Polish pistol wasn’t quite up to the task. He watched seven soldiers move whisper-silent across the snow-coated terrace grounds. They moved for the senior officers’ quarters — right where he kept his rare MP 41 submachine gun and magazines taped in pairs.
The soldiers hadn’t spotted him at least. They wore dark wool jackets, small packs over their shoulders. They were carrying belt kits with holstered pistols, but no webbing. The soldiers were traveling light with mixed weapons, mostly M1 carbines.
Maroon berets.
Paratroopers, he thought. British.
They were supposed to be in France. So much for retrieving the submachine gun then. There was only one way out and that was through the gatehouse and over the moat.
He crawled across the floor, reached the long table and snatched the silk text. The bottle fell from the table. He lunged for it. The bottle landed in his palm. His fingers clamped over it. He breathed for the first time in a minute.
He could hear distant shouts in German, some faint scuffling and single pops from a pistol. Leaving the bottle on the ground, he clenched the silk text under one arm — the plastic too rigid to roll or fold — and moved for the keep.
He aimed his Viz pistol at the figure in the dungeon. Yiri’s cell was already unlocked but he was still hunkered inside.
‘What are you doing?’ Denton hissed.
His father turned to face him, his own Colt .45 pistol in his hands. ‘You’ve been drinking. Lower your weapon.’
‘Someone blew my cover in Norway,’ Denton said, pistol still aimed. ‘Was it you?’
‘You’ve been drinking,’ Alastair said. ‘I needed Victor, why would I endanger that?’
‘Then why isn’t Victor here with you?’ Denton said. ‘Not valuable enough to save?’
‘Sometimes we make sacrifices.’
Denton lowered his Viz to his father’s legs, but no lower.
‘What are you doing here?’ Alastair said.
‘Same as you, it seems,’ Denton said. ‘Taking our Phoenix virus with us.’
His father had a small leather bag slung over one shoulder. Denton knew the meteorite fragments would be inside.
‘Looks like you finally got what you asked for,’ Alastair said. ‘A little bit of excitement.’
Denton ran through the snow, pushing Yiri ahead of him.
The sharp breaths of his father from behind helped measure how far away he was. Twenty feet.
‘Keep Yiri back!’ his father hissed.
Denton ignored him. If any paratroopers were ahead of them, he hoped they’d see the prisoner and hold their fire. If they saw a German soldier they were unlikely to take prisoners even if he surrendered.
A jeep roared to life, headlights splashing them.
‘Halt!’ a British voice yelled.
Denton held Yiri in front of him, turned back and fired from his hip. The rounds caught his father somewhere across his midsection — he couldn’t be sure in the dark. But his father slowed, then stumbled. The snow was dotted scarlet.
Denton held his Viz to the moon. ‘American!’ he shouted, ‘American!’
He tore at his collar with his free hand. ‘OSS agent!’ he yelled again.
Silhouetted in the moonlight, two pairs of British soldiers moved around him. He dropped his Viz in the snow so they could see it. One pair stayed on him, carbines aimed at his face. The other pair disarmed his father, who now lay in the snow.
Denton gestured to Yiri. ‘This man is very important to the Allies,’ he said. ‘He must be kept alive.’
The pair of paratroopers helped Yiri up and into the jeep.
Before Denton could follow, someone kneeled before him, a scarf wrapped across his neck. The barrel of his carbine glinted in the moonlight. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘Lieutenant Sidney Denton, Office of Strategic Services,’ Denton said. ‘Special Operations.’
The barrel lowered. ‘Trained by the best.’
Denton recognized his own British Security Coordination instructor.
The BSC was a covert organization set up in New York by the British Secret Intelligence Service. A couple of years earlier, the OSS had sent Denton to Camp X in Ontario, Canada. At the camp Denton had learned assassination, sabotage, managing partisan support, recruitment methods and demolition. Sir William Stephenson was his chief instructor.
Denton pulled himself to his feet. ‘Sir.’
Stephenson escorted Denton to the jeep. ‘Captain will do. I’m attached to the Special Raiding Squadron, 1st SAS.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Denton said.
‘We moved heaven and earth to find this place,’ Stephenson said.