"It doesn't matter," Asher said tiredly, "if he's calling himself Albert of Saxe- Coburg-Gotha. And I know all about the reorganization and the budget. Have him followed. This was the address on his luggage. It's just a transit point, but your man can trace him through the local carting company. He'll be hauling a large trunk somewhere today, possibly to the Gare de l'Est to go on to Vienna, more probably to some house here in the city where they can set up operations. Find out who his connections are..."
"And what?" Streatham chuckled juicily. "Drive a stake through his heart?"
"If necessary."
Streatham's eyes-too close together in flaccid pouches the color of fish belly- narrowed again, studying him. Asher had washed and shaved in one of the public washrooms at the Gare du Nord after dispatching a telegram to Lydia, but he was well aware that at the moment he looked less like an Oxford don than he did some down-on-his-luck clerk at the end of the night on the tiles.
The Paris chief opened his mouth to speak again, but Asher cut him off. "If necessary I'll telegraph Colonel Gleichen at Whitehall. This is a matter on which we can't afford to take chances. I spent my last few shillings to follow them here, to warn you of a threat greater, in my years of experience, than anything currently facing our department. Believe me, I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought that Ernchester was just a stage hypnotist with a good act, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought there was any alternative to the danger we'll face if he does start working for the Kundschafts Stelle. Anything Vienna learns is going to end up in Berlin. You know that. Gleichen knows it, too."
At the mention of the head of MO-2's D Section, Streatham's face had slowly begun to redden; now he fetched an exaggerated sigh. "It'll put the entire Records Section days behind, but I'll pull Cramer off Information and assign him. Will that satisfy you?"
Asher fished his memory and came up empty.
"After your time," said Streatham, with a kind of breezy viciousness. "A good man at his work."
"Which is?"
"Information."
"You mean cutting articles out of newspapers?" Asher stood and picked up his hat. Outside the tall windows it had begun to rain again. The thought of the three- quarter-mile walk to Barclay's Bank on the Boulevard Haussmann gave him a sensation akin to the grinding of unoiled gears deep in his chest.
"Everyone in the Department has had to cover several areas of work these days."
The enmity in Streatham's voice was plain now. I in very sorry about the inconvenience to you, and about the fact that the budget doesn't permit us to stand you your train fare home. Of course, you're welcome to a bed in one of the duty rooms..."
"Thank you," Asher said. "I'm just on my way to my bank." This Cramer is cutting
articles out of newspapers, he thought. "Don't let me keep you."
There had been a time, thought Asher as he descended the shallow sandstone steps, when he loved Paris.
And indeed, he loved it still. Against the cinder-colored street, the gravid sky, the white and yellow shapes of the bare sycamores, and the pale gold stone of the buildings seemed queerly bright. Windows were shuttered behind iron balconies; red and blue shop awnings seemed to blossom like flowers. Traffic was thick on the boulevard: cabs with their roofs shining with moisture; bright- colored electric tramways, hooting for right-of-way; stylish landaus, the horses puffing steam from their nostrils like dragons in the damp cold; men and women in daytime clothing the color of eggplant and wet stone.
A magic city, thought Asher. Even in his days with the Department, when he had made himself familiar with its thugs-for-hire, its safe breakers, forgers, and fences, he had still found it a magic place.
But he knew that he was hastening to accomplish his errands because he wanted very badly not to be in this city when the sun went down.
There was an ancient hotel particulier somewhere in the Marais district, owned by a woman named Elysee. Since the night he had been taken there, blindfolded, and seen the white-faced, strange-eyed, beautiful creatures who played cards in its brilliantly lit salon, he had not felt safe in this city. He was not sure he would ever willingly spend a night here again.
At Barclay's Bank he established his credentials and withdrew twenty pounds-five hundred francs, far more than he'd need for a prix-jixe lunch in the Palais Royale and his return journey, but the discomforts of last night had rendered him unwilling to trust Fate again. It was well after noon, but the Vefory was still serving luncheon. He settled in a corner with an omelette, fresh spinach, bread and butter that had nothing in common with the English travesty of the same name, coffee, and a copy of the Le Petit Journal. The next boat-train left at four. He had not quite time to visit the Louvre-only the booksellers on the quais, he thought, and a little while spent in the restful silence of Notre Dame.
It would be just getting dark as the train pulled out of the Gare du Nord, but that would be sufficient.
As he turned over the pages of the Journal, the top of his mind sifted and sorted the mishmash of Serbian demands for independence from Austria, Russian demands for justice in the Serbian cause, another massacre of Armenians by the new Turkish government, plots by the Sultan to regain his power, and the Kaiser's pursuit of ever faster battleships and ever more powerful artillery, while some other part of his thoughts seemed to see through those reports to the uses the Austrian Emperor-or the Czar or the Kaiser, for that matter-would have for a vampire.
In any direction he looked, the possibilities were terrifying.
Europe skated the rim of cataclysm, that much he knew. The German Kaiser was praying, literally and publicly, for an excuse to use his armies; the French were burning with pride, rage, and the old wounds of the Alsace. The Empire of Austria was trying to hold on to its Slavic minorities, while the Russians trumpeted their intention of backing up those minorities' "pan-Slav" rights. Asher had seen firsthand the weapons everyone was rushing to buy, the railway lines being constructed to carry men to battles, and in Africa he'd already seen what those weapons could do.
Would men who contemplated sending other men into machine-gun fire-or contemplated turning machine guns on soldiers with only rifles in their hands- shrink from handing over a political prisoner or two per week to someone who could slip into consulates, workshops, departments of navy and army utterly unseen?
He turned the page and, for a moment, saw their faces again in the dark of his mind. The coarse and powerful Grippen. Ysidro's enigmatic disdain. Bully Joe Davies. The beautiful Celeste.
The Earl of Ernchester.
Why Ernchester? he wondered again.
The weakest of them, strangely fragile, Grippen's fledgling and slave to the domination of the master vampire's mind. Did Grippen know the little nobleman had left London? Had made a pact with a foreign power? Had Grippen been approached first and refused?
No vampire, Elysee de Montadour had said, the gaslight gleaming queerly in her green eyes, will do that which endangers other vampires by giving away their haunts, their habits, or the very fact of their existence to humankind. A handsome woman, with nodding ostrich plumes in her hair, her green-black silk gown as stylish as if she had not been born in an era of panniers and three-foot coiffures. He remembered the cold strength of her hands, clawlike nails ripping open the veins in his arm to drink.