Against the Day (137 page)

Cyprian
had learned that Theign held a commission in the Navy as a senior lieutenant,
reporting to the Naval Intelligence Department at the Admiralty. His remit here
in Venice, at least officially, was to look into a reported theft of secret
engineering drawings from inside the menacing walls of the Arsenale
itself—so catastrophically had the Italian maritime fate been compromised
that he was finding it next to impossible even to learn what the drawings were
of.
“I can’t imagine what they’re all so mysterious about. Cruisers, frigates,
all the usual, submarines and submarine destroyers, torpedoes, torpedo boats,
torpedoboat chasers, miniature submarines that can be carried inside
battleships and launched from the bow as if they themselves were torpedoes.”

“I
thought all that undersea business went on over in Spezia, at the San
Bartolomeo works,” Cyprian said.

“Quite
the swot,” Theign glared. It was a sore point. Time and again he had been
referred to offices at La Spezia set up for the express purpose of misleading
foreigners, especially ones like Theign, who might as well have worn
sandwichboards fore and aft reading spy. “The boats everyone knows about,” he
muttered,
“
Glauco
class
and its successors, of course. But these others are somewhat specialized
. . . .
”

We
of the futurity know that the unit in question was the sinister Siluro
Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa or LowSpeed Steerable Torpedo. “What makes it
particularly malevolent,” Theign confided, perhaps indiscreet with pride when
at last, after exceptional effort, he did manage to acquire the elusive gen,
“is that it does not require of its crew any bravery at all, only that facility
for creeping about which one associates with the Italian character.”

“Oh
that’s just such a big myth,” Cyprian looking for an argument today, it seemed.
“They are as direct as children.”

“Indeed.
Most of the children of
your
acquaintance being, at best, corrupted, how ‘direct’ is that, exactly?”

   
“Get
about more and you’ll see.”

   
“One
thing that didn’t occur to the Royal Italian Navy,” Theign continued,

“was observation from overhead. We
know the Russians have had a program— Voznab, or
vozdushnyi
nablyudenie,
aerial surveillance—for years, their aerostats and
airships have been equipped with some advanced sort of masking device that
mimics open sky, so that one often can’t see them even when one knows they’re
up there. They keep forward bases in Serbia, which puts them less than an hour
from here, perhaps two from Spezia. Some of the photographic plates actually
show up on the Rialto from time to time.”

One day Theign came in
looking preoccupied. “Your friends Misha and Grisha have gone to ground
. . . .
”

   
“And
might I have any idea where. Actually no, not a clue, so sorry
. . . .
”

“Let’s think for a moment shall we.
Beginning with Vienna—would they have stayed on there?”

“Yes—and also, as you’d
imagine, no. Misha loved the place, Grisha hated it. If they had a kickup, one
of them could easily have gotten on a train.”

   
“Grisha,
you mean.”

“Misha was hardly a stranger to the
joys of the unpremeditated gesture
. . . .
But
I say Derrick, you people
have
been
watching the trains, haven’t you?”

“Except for one small though
bothersome gap in our
. . .
ehrm,
earlier information.”

   
“
Oh
dear.”

   
“Cyprian,
they may want you for a bit back at the Metternichgasse.”

Through his eyelashes Cyprian
bestowed a sidewise gaze known to produce reflexes of desire up to and
including, on at least one admittedly singular occasion in AshbydelaZouch,
Leics, a proposal of marriage. “And where do you want me, Derrick?”

It proved at last to be the one silly
question that Derrick Theign would find insupportable. What he intended then as
a humorous tap on the cheek became first, unmistakably, a caress, and then,
provoked by Cyprian’s venturesome laughter, a rather sharp slap. The next
either of them knew, Theign had taken him painfully by his hair and they were
kissing, not at all the way Englishmen would be expected to—if they
must—but like foreigners, heedlessly. Enough saliva to soak into
Cyprian’s shirt collar. Erect penises all round. The spell of Venice in those
days, it was said.

“I wouldn’t have preferred
this
scenario,”
Theign muttered not long after, while tending to various abrasions.

   
“Too
late for that now, isn’t it?”

   
“It
does put you in rather a different cubbyhole.”

   
Cyprian
already skeptical, “Oh of
course
I wouldn’t be the only one.”
“One does try to avoid it, you see, whenever
possible.”
 
“ ‘
It.’ Oh, Derrick . . .” All but tearful.

“Don’t go sodomitical on me now, when
you’ll be needing your wits about you, if
that’s
not asking too much.”

As the petals
of
unreflective desire, those narcotic days on the Lagoon, began to curl up, lose
aroma, and drop one by one to the unadorned tabletop of daily business, Theign
halfinvented a local operative, “Zanni,” to resolve whose fictional crises he
then found brief but always welcome opportunities to get out of the house, even
if it must be into the swarming
calli
of Venice. Somehow immersion in
the Italian mobility comforted him, clarified his mind like a welltimed
Partagas. His Naval Intelligence job, in this city of masks, actually concealed
a deeper project. “Zanni” was one of many code names for his contact with a
small bicycle factory over on the
Terraferma
that had just gone into
designing and building motorcycles. When forces did begin at last in Europe to
move in appreciable numbers, there would have to be a way to maintain the flow
of information. Telegraph and cable lines could be cut. Wireless was too
vulnerable to Ætheric influences. The only secure method, it seemed to Theign,
was a small international crew of motorcyclists, fast and nimble enough to stay
ahead of the game. “They’ll be designated R.U.S.H., that’s Rapid Unit for
Shadowing and Harassment.”

“ ‘
Shadowing.
’ ”
Cyprian, somewhat embarrassed, had not heard the term
before.

   
“Following
a subject, keeping as close as his own shadow,” Theign explained.

   
“Obliged
almost to be someone’s
. . .
projection.”

   
“If
you like.”

   
“So
close in fact as to begin
to lose oneself
.
. . .
”

   
“Just
what you people fancy isn’t it, surrender of the ego sort of thing.”

   
“Derrick,
I can’t even ride a horse.”

“Don’t you understand that we’re
trying to save your life? This way, whatever happens, wherever you’re assigned,
you’ll be only hours from neutral ground.”

   
“Given
fuel enough, who isn’t?”

“Depots are in place. You’ll have
maps. What do you imagine it is I do out here?”

“Wouldn’t think of
prying—though one has of course noticed, when you’re about, the
naphthal
fragrance
—have you considered wearing something a bit

less odorretentive than Scottish
tweed? for instance this new Italian ‘sharkskin,’ from which everything slips
away smoothly as a satin gown.”

“I keep forgetting the reason I don’t
have you transferred—it’s the fashion advice! Of course! Well. You’ll be
interested in this—here’s one of the nightuniforms, prototype model, more
leather here than
your sort
may be used to, but it does keep the wind
out.”

“Hmm
. . .
I do rather fancy these metal studs—each with a purpose of
its own I’m sure—though don’t they seem rather
. . .
conspicuous?”

   
“You’ll
be moving too fast for it to matter.”

   
“All
right if I just. . . slip into . . .”

“Not at all and mind you, these are
only the fatigues, wait till you see the dress uniform.”

   
“Derrick,
you do like me a little, I think
. . . .
”

Later that evening Theign summoned
Cyprian into his office. “See here, Latewood, in all the time we’ve known each
other, we’ve never yet had a serious talk about death.”

“Probably a good reason for that,”
Cyprian looking around the room nervously.

   
“I
assume it’s the usual sodomite sensibility?”

   
“How’s
that?”

“All you people with your repertoire
of avoidance techniques—denying the passage of time, seeking out
everyounger company, constructing your little airtight environments stuffed
with art undying
. . .
there isn’t
one of you with anything real to say on the subject. Yet in our business it’s
everywhere. We must tithe a certain number of lives yearly to the goddess Kali
in return for a European history more or less free of violence and safe for
investment, and very few are the wiser. Certainly not the homo brigade.”

   
“Yes,
well, was there anything else Derrick? And why won’t this door open?”

   
“No,
no, we simply
must chat.
A jolly little chat. Won’t take long, I
promise.”

It seemed Theign wanted to talk about
field skills. Not until later would Cyprian understand that this was a periodic
exercise—Theign’s way of evaluating the current negotiability of those
under his command he might wish one day to shop. But it struck Cyprian at the
time only as a theoretical conversation about predators and prey, with Cyprian
explaining the advantages of being the hunted.

“So you end up smarter, sneakier,
nastier than the competition,” Theign summarized. “Useful among professional
pouffes, I shouldn’t wonder, but these engagements out here are a bit more than
simple sodomitic rivalries. The consequences are rather more serious.”

   
“Are
they.”

“We
are talking about the fates of nations. The welfare, often the sheer survival,
of millions. The axial loads of History. How can you compare—”

   
“And
how,
vecchio fazool,
can you fail to see the connection?”

Theign had of course mastered in his
first year at Naval Intelligence that blank and slightly openmouthed expression
so useful to His Majesty’s agents abroad. It produced in Cyprian not the false
sense of superiority intended but a queasy despair. He had never cared before,
particularly, about being understood by an object of fascination. But somehow
when it became obvious that Theign didn’t
want
to understand, Cyprian
became guardedly terrified.

“I’ve heard from Vienna, by the way.
They have you scheduled in for next week. Here are your tickets.”

“Second
class.”

“Mm.
Yes.”

Though ordinarily he enjoyed doing as
he was told, and especially the contempt that went with that, Cyprian found
himself puzzled now at Theign’s assumption that of course he would take the
train back to Vienna unescorted, unsupervised, unquestioning, into the embrace
of what he had assumed was the known enemy, instead of running for cover, as
prey was expected to do.

“We
are cooperating fully with the Austrians in this matter,” Theign waited to let
him know till Cyprian was boarding the train at the Santa Lucia Station, in a
note delivered by an Italian urchin, who then disappeared into the swarm. “So
in your conversations I would suggest sticking to English, as the German
appropriate to your chosen métier may soon become exhausted.”

The
passage, especially from Venice to Graz, was not without moments of
jollification, though it helped for one to have developed, if not an active
taste for, at least the gift of concealing any revulsion from, local sausages,
small pets, not always of the indoor sort, concertina music, and the peculiar
whining accent of the region. Young Austrian cavalry Aspirants in that fatally
alluring shade of aniline blue kept coming through from amusements elsewhere in
the train and launching at him, as he imagined, glances of heated inquiry. As
luck would have it, desire was off to parts undisclosed, on a species of budget
holiday—with any number of sexual possibilities aboard, considered in
both a professional and a recreational way, for some strange and he hoped not
medical reason Cyprian spent the journey scowling, slouching, and brooding
unstirred and, likely for that same reason, unapproached. It might have had
something to do with Misha and Grisha, for it could not be easily imagined that
the inconvenienced duo had simply shrugged off his defection, nor that an
unknown number of parttime contract workers across this continent and the next
would not be seeking to