And as slick as that she whisked herself out the door and was gone. I sprang after her, but stopped. The cloak wouldn’t give me that much advantage after dark. Anyway, I wouldn’t have just whipped it back off her – and you can bet the little bitch was counting on
that. Well, probably I wouldn’t. Besides, she was bigger than me.
I eased open the door and peered out. The cold streets bustled much as before. The row had died down, and of Dee and Kelley there was no sign. I belted my coat tight to look as much as possible like the usual tunic, and stepped back out on to the cobbles. Nobody gave me a second glance, except maybe because I wasn’t wearing a hat;
I solved that by swiping a greasy leather cap from behind a stall. Probably its owner would go off and pinch someone else’s, and so on, spreading thefts out across the city like ripples in a pond.
A bad
deed goes round the world, and generally ends up socking me in the back of the neck. One more reason I’m not in the insurance business, where the respectable crooks go.
I knew I had to cross
town and that damn bridge before it got really dark, and time for curfew. I didn’t need any incentive to keep moving. The wind dug into my ribs like a blunt knife, the slimy cobbles froze my feet, and I shook with terror every time somebody came up behind me. Are you or have you ever been a practising paranoid? Why not turn pro – in one easy lesson.
It wasn’t that difficult, though. A lot of
people had the same idea. The rush-hour isn’t a modern invention. I was swept along in a torrent of lower-class types, hurrying back to their hovels, God knows why. A lot of them were streetsellers who’d evidently lingered in search of one last sale, and I managed to pick up a few quick snacks from passing baskets, black bread, sausage-ends and so on – well, it would only have gone bad. Or rather
worse, so it served them right. Besides, I nearly bust a tooth on the bread.
From the bridge on it was plain sailing. I took the odd wrong turn, but I had the river to orient myself by, and when I got nearer my destination, the smell as well, which was pretty outstanding even by sixteenth-century standards. No wonder nobody lived here. Yet after my first little excursion I’d greeted it as clean
air. That said something about what was down there; and it was waiting for me again. For some unknown reason I hesitated a moment.
Almost one
too many. A horse whinnied, and so did old Dee, clambering across the rubble and waving. Of course he hadn’t bothered to follow; he’d just gone to the only place I could be going. And so, of course, would Kelley. I swore, and bolted, down into the cracked
floor of the cistern, down towards the drain and the dark.
It only occurred to me a moment later, as I slipped and scrambled down the rubble-filled slope, landing heavily on my backside, that Kelley might be in here already. A moment after that, as water splashed around my ankles – at least I hoped it was water – it dawned on me that I didn’t have Dee’s staff to light the place, either. Nor was
there any of that nice convenient luminous lichen they always find in books. Not even any phosphorescent fish-heads, which you might reasonably expect. They probably couldn’t stand the competition.
It was blackness complete and absolute. I blundered valiantly for about thirty feet, hit a wall quite hard, and narrowly avoided sitting down in the awfulness below. Somewhere not too far away echoed
Dee’s distracted wittering, and the darkness bloomed. Not too near me; that was good. Near enough to see by, though; that was better. I skipped lightly off towards what looked like an opening I remembered. But as night closed around me again, and something slithered out from under my feet, I realised there was something else of Dee’s I definitely didn’t have – his sense of direction.
I was fairly
sure there were two channels forking ahead. I was a lot more sure I didn’t remember any such thing. And here came the light. I could take the old twit easily enough, snaffle his staff. For some reason I didn’t want to. Maybe if I just ducked down the left-hand fork for a few yards …
About twenty
minutes later, totally disoriented, I went blundering towards the first grey glimmer of light. Dee
or no Dee, anything visible looked like a picture of Heaven. But it wasn’t Dee, it was something better, a tall shaft with iron rungs set in solid masonry, and a blessed draught of clean air filtering down through a grille. Blue sky, even! All the same, I climbed up warily, and peered up through the bars before heaving them impatiently out of the way. I scrambled frantically up on to –
yes
! –
a modern tarred road, cool in morning sunlight. Tall buildings, Victorian stone frontages, flagged pavements, streetlights, white lines – the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. A bike clattered by in the next street, strangely loud. Flowerbeds and fat glossy shrubs glowed through shinning railings that stretched around the corner – Paradise.
I giggled deliriously. This was my own time. Wherever
the hell this was, it was home.
After a moment, though, it looked a little less familiar. There were streetcar rails and cables, which we didn’t have; but no streetcars. No traffic at all, in sight, and the barest background hum, far less than you’d expect. No pedestrians either; nobody. Well, Sunday morning early, maybe. But the buildings looked odd, and the road signs. All consonants, and enough
Zs to give a Scrabble player nightmares—
Sod it, I was still in Prague. Oh well, there were worse places, even without a passport. At least they wouldn’t point out the lack with rubber hoses and battery terminals in sensitive orifices, as they did back in Communist days. I could fake amnesia, plead the headaches or something; sooner or later they’d send me home. Hell, I could tell them the truth.
Instant breakdown.
Unless of
course …
Back
in Communist days …
There was just a hint of that coal-smoke in the air. Everything looked just a bit old-fashioned, old-style. No TV aerials. And the road signs weren’t Euro-standard … I began to whimper a little.
And then there was the most godawful bang.
Another, and the whistle of flying debris that clanged against the railings. And voices screaming,
and a loud popping chatter I didn’t realise was automatic gunfire, punctuated with deeper pops, like heavier weapons. The air zinged like bees, the shrubbery shook and tore, the flowerbeds disintegrated in sprays of petals. Three men came charging round the corner, men in rough, shabby clothes and caps pulled down over their faces. For an instant I was looking down the barrels of the guns
they held, big revolvers and maybe Stenguns, still smoking. I was staring at distorted faces, wide-eyed, snarl-mouthed, unshaven and streaked with sweat and smutches and one great streak of blood. Then they were running past, around the corner, their footsteps clattering into a sidestreet where the rails didn’t go.
More footsteps, and suddenly the world was full of gun muzzle again, black and
nasty, but not half as bad as the sweat-shining grimace behind it. Framed in a black steel helmet, it could have modelled for Mr Squarehead 1939. Mind you, it was the twin white zigzag S-runes on the shield badge that really burned in the comic-book icon.
Luckily years of study had programmed in the right reaction. I cowered, screamed and pointed wildly.
‘Nein, mir nicht! Dahin, drei Tschechischer
mit Pistolen! Dahin!’
The
complete
Untermensch,
that’s Maxie.
The SS guard hesitated angrily. I wasn’t one of the men he’d been chasing. Worse, I might be a Sudeten German he wasn’t allowed to shoot out of hand. Suddenly a black Mercedes roared around the corner, its flanks scorched and dented and spattered with red to match the ragged bonnet pennant, limp arms dangling over the doors. It figured.
I could guess who one of them was, now. Other black uniforms came clattering along the pavement.
‘He da!’
screamed the guard.
‘Halten Sie mir dieser! Im Strengarret! Ihr andere, folgen!’
He went pounding off, and I was suddenly submerged in black uniforms and shiny leather overcoats.
‘Hey!’ said a high, breathy voice. ‘Don’t
you
get yourself into some real hot shit, huh?’
‘Ar! Ever in broils,
that’s a bold Maxie!’
‘But like to suffer de questioning—’
A coiled whip tilted my chin. ‘And who can aid you,
señor
, but we?’
I initiated emergency strategy, which was to close my eyes and wail.
When I opened them again the all too familiar faces were crowded even closer round me, cutting off the light with their peaked caps, so close I could have felt their hot breath on my cheeks. Only
I didn’t. Eyes glittered, teeth shone – closer still, suffocatingly close. The rat had left the sewer, and the hounds were on it.
I never
did like blood sports.
‘Cease!’
The voice was high and querulous, but it carried a startling authority. ‘
Stand back!
Whatever your purpose, this man is but a weak sinner. Why should such as you seek to have your way through fear? I abjure you in brotherly
love, stand back!’
And astonishingly, they did – or rather the crush parted like a curtain. There, still in his swirling robes, stood Dee, staff outstretched, lined face anxious but firm. One of the women laughed. Somehow it sounded hollower than before.
I’m not the one to waste a good exit. I heard Dee shout my name, but I was across that road in two leaps. May 27th, 1943, was not a time to
hang around most places. Least of all Prague, where the Czech resistance had just sold one Reinhard Heydrich, aka the Blond Beast or the Butcher to his friends, if any, some internal air-conditioning. Triggering off still more butchery, including the whole village of Lidice. That would cast a shadow, if anything would. But how the hell did my little bandit friends fit in? The grating lay open before
me; and I damn near jumped.
Splash, splish, splup, unpleasantly back the way I’d come. It had to be – didn’t it? There was just that one channel, the flow went the same way, eventually, after about an hour, the floor began to slope up again. All of which didn’t explain the inconvenient door I ran into. Maybe I’d just gone past it or something; maybe it hadn’t been closed then. Maybe the Pope
would have triplets.
Tentatively
I tried it. The latch was rusted stiff, creaked like a bastard but it turned. There were no angry shouts from the other side, just faint, peculiar gurgles and there were enough of those back here anyhow. Light seamed the crack. Eagerly I pushed it wider, poked my head around and stared into a long, low vault lined with …
Barrels, great fat things gurgling cheerfully
in their bellies and letting loose some pretty sewery stinks themselves. I resisted the temptation to just accidentally tap the odd bung, and tiptoed through. They might keep bottles further on.
They didn’t; but there were a couple of windows of a sort, narrow, dirty slots at gutter level, their tiny bubble panes barred with iron bars. There were voices out there, what sounded like massed voices
singing, harsh and monotonous, and the tramp of feet. Beyond them was a wooden stair and a solid trapdoor, with a bolt I had to coax back. I clambered nervously into light, pretty dim but after sewer and cellar it was blinding. Another long, low vaulted room, empty, this time with tables and bottles and jugs, and all sorts of sausages and things hanging from the rafters by the big fireplace. A
tavern of some kind; things were improving. Above the fireplace was some kind of inscription painted on the smoke-stained breast, big German letters –
fraktur
– but all those consonants again. Back in Prague, about the time I’d left, by the look of things. Well, too bad. I’d just have to start again. At least I could pick up a couple of candles this time.
I rummaged around
as quietly as I could,
but all I could find were small earthenware pot lamps smeared with puddles of burnt-out suet, maybe, and nothing to light them with. I sidled to the big door and listened. It sounded like the open air out there, with all those voices chanting some kind of hymn or psalm. I rubbed my hands. Nice, gentle God-fearing types, always that bit more ready to give you the benefit of the doubt. I waited
till it slackened a bit, then tugged the door open. A street all right, creaky old Prague-type rooftops, but fuller than Trafalgar Square at New Year or Times Square in the convention season. It looked like a thousand people, mostly on their knees in the clag, gazing raptly up at some bozo in black robe and tatty ruffle haranguing them. Others were just kibitzing, bunches of soldiers hanging about,
scratching under their breastplates, and commanders on horseback under bright banners, looking bored. Come to that, a lot of the worshippers were carrying weapons, and some of them lethal-looking flails and scythes that made me think of Willum. A young fellow, leaning against the wall watching, turned to me in surprise. I smiled sickeningly and switched on the German again.
‘Entschuldigen Sie
mir, bitte, aber haben Sie—’
I didn’t expect the killing glare I got.
‘Nemecku? Jsi speher Zikmundov? ’
Hands came from everywhere, hauled me bodily out, and this time I was looking down a dagger blade. The conventicle or whatever it was ran down, and just about everybody and his wife came pressing in around me, pointing and muttering darkly,
‘Speher! Speher! ’
Of course,
you can’t rely on the
way words sound between languages. Ask any Frenchman confronted with the word ‘con-trick’, or any Anglo with the German road signs
Einfahrt
and
Ausfahrt.
Or anyone who heard the howl that went up when they paged some poor Austrian at the airport – ‘Will Herr Prick please go to Gate 26?’ There’re some words that do sound a lot alike, though. Like for example
speher – espion – spione.
Spy.
‘Hej!’
screamed the young twerp.
‘Hejtmany! Speher Zikmundov, uz je to jiste!’
The crowd all started shouting, then fell back as orders were bellowed and a knot of soldiers came through, pushing them back with their pike staves. Plated leather gauntlets clamped round my arms and hauled me roughly along. A hard-faced bunch, with great greasy beards like moulting yaks; unlikely they’d be the charitable
type. Soldiers meant questions, and questions, since they hadn’t discovered electricity or rubber hoses yet, meant toenails, or teeth. Or worse. And I didn’t even know who the hell Zigmund was.