The Demi-Monde: Summer (5 page)

‘Get aboard, you Blank bastard!’ he shouted as he ducked away from the flying lead. ‘Don’t yo dig dat dem cats is trying to drill yo?’

Unmoved by the man’s entreaties, Vanka waded across the rain-flooded street to the pedicab, climbed aboard and then slumped back into its rickety passenger seat. Even before he’d settled, the driver was standing on his pedals, desperately trying to get the pedicab moving away from their pursuers.

It was as well he did. The chasing Signori di Notte agents emerged at the top of the staircase leading from the river and let loose a flurry of rifle fire. There was a loud bang and a bullet ricocheted off the side of the pedicab.

‘An’ now ah’m gonna be stiffed fo’ a new paint job.’ The driver looked into his mirror. ‘Ah, fuck, dem cats has only gone and commandeered a steamer.’

The driver pedalled harder, redoubling his efforts to outrun the pursuing agents, but Vanka hardly noticed. He just sat back and listened to the rain rat-tat-tatting on the tin roof over his head.

Fuck, he was fed up.

The carapace of despair that had been insulating Vanka from the danger he was in was finally shattered when the frantic driver swung the pedicab around a corner on only two of the vehicle’s three wheels forcing an oncoming steamer to make an emergency stop. As the steamer’s head-lanterns washed over the wall of a nearby tenement, Vanka found himself looking at … himself.

VANKA MAYKOV
FOUL ASSASSIN OF DOGE CATHERINE-SOPHIA
REWARD OF ONE THOUSAND GUINEAS
MAY BE TAKEN DEAD OR ALIVE.

Fuck
,
fuck and triple fuck
.

To have got the posters printed and pasted so quickly meant that the Lady IMmanual wanted him caught very, very badly. The survival instincts honed by evading numerous enraged husbands finally kicked in: he pulled his top hat further forward over his face and hoicked his collar up higher, hoping as he did so that the black hair dye, imitation cheek scars and the sacrificing of his precious moustache would render him passably NoirVillian. There were, after all, a lot of Blanks living in NoirVille, a lot of Blanks who espoused HimPerialism.

The problem was that, in his experience, a reward of one thousand Guineas had a magical effect on the ability of people to see through disguises.

He tried to shake his negative thinking. He had to keep positive, to keep reminding himself that he had a couple of things going for him: he had Josie and her Code Noir comrades on his side and he had a small fortune sitting in his bank account. If he could get to the JAD safely these in combination should be enough to keep him out of the clutches of the bad guys.

Should be
…

He had to stay alive! Only by doing this would he have a chance of reclaiming his lost love.
That
was the thought that rekindled the fire in Vanka’s spirit. Despite everything, he refused to give up the hope that one day the Ella he knew and loved would be returned to him.

For almost an hour they pedalled through the backstreets of Cairo, always keeping the ominous Sphinx – the most sacred religious shrine of the Shades
and
the nuJus – to their left, twisting this way and that until the driver was satisfied that they had lost their pursuers. Finally the driver brought the pedicab to a slithering halt at the edge of a large and very crowded plaza. ‘De crossing into de JAD is on de obber side of
de square, man. So yo’ jump out real quick, before dem cryptos come an’ start using ma dick as a target.’

Now came the
really
dangerous part of Vanka’s escape, the bit when he had to get through CheckPoint Charlie, through the JAD Wall and into the safety of the JAD.

After disembarking from the pedicab – which took off in a rush – Vanka spent a moment getting his bearings, finally opting to occupy a stairwell looking out over the square leading to the CheckPoint. It was a square packed with a couple of thousand dispirited nuJu refugees who were huddled there waiting for the morning and their chance to enter their HomeLand. These were the flotsam and jetsam of the wars that were ravaging the Demi-Monde, fleeing the death, the turmoil and the persecution that had gripped the world. Forlorn men and women sat around in makeshift camps, guarding their carts and their donkeys piled high with boxes of food, pots and pans, blankets and bedding, and bewildered children. Vanka was surprised: he had read that the NoirVillians were trying to stem this tide, refusing passage across their Sector to nuJus, afraid that they had too many of them settling in the JAD.

Vanka waited for an hour in the pouring rain, waited until he was sure that there were no HimPeril agents lurking in the shadows that surrounded the square, waited until the Border Guard the Code Noir had put the bite on arrived for his shift.

Just as he was on the point of despairing, the bastard finally showed up. But still Vanka chose to remain concealed in the darkness of the doorway, reluctant to leave his hiding place, watching as the sod spent ten minutes smoking a fag and chatting with the guard he was relieving. It was only when he was alone in the booth and had settled down to read his newspaper that Vanka made his move.

*

Life, decided Border Guard Sorro Anwoo, was mucho de good. He had a great gig scrutinising all the cats who wanted to enter the JAD, a gig that didn’t involve too much heavy lifting and allowed him to invest a lot of time running the numbers in the tenement block he called home. Sure, Border Guards weren’t paid enough to keep a mouse in molasses, but the possibilities for milking a little action on the side were, like, beaucoup de excellent. Sorro hadn’t been in the job more than a month before he realised that whilst most of the nuJu cats trying to haul ass to the JAD didn’t have the correct papers, what they usually did have was pocketfuls of long bread. And as the most desperate of these nuJu runners made their move in the late, late black when Sorro was on duty it was a lean night that didn’t see him heading back to his crib with at least two hundred Guineas of tax-free income warming his wallet. But that, he decided, was chump change compared with what he would make tonight.

He had been offered a grand – a grand! – to turneth a blind eye when a cat named Jim Tyler showed up at his booth. But that was just chicken feed. That the Code Noir had gone to the trouble to smooth this cat’s road in advance told Sorro two things: the first was that the guy taking the promenade powder was important to the max and the second was that if his friends were willing to pay a grand to get this Tyler item into the JAD then they would be willing to pay
two
grand.

So here he was in his booth at three thirty in the morning, idly studying the form guide for the runners in the Istanbul Derby, wrapping himself around a bumper of Solution and just glad to be sitting somewhere cosy and snug outta the rain most grievous, when this real sad sack of a Blank started hammering on his window. He looked real damped out. The only way he could’ve got wetter was if he’d gone swimming in his clothes.

Sorro eased open the window of his booth a couple of
centimetres to allow him to converse with the merman. ‘Sure looks like rain,’ he said in a conversational tone.

The man didn’t answer, instead he pushed his papers through the slot.

With agonising deliberation Sorro examined said documents. ‘Yo’ dis “Jim Tyler” item?’

‘Yeah,’ said the Blank. ‘That’s what it says on the visa. I was told you’d be expecting me.’

‘Ah’m expecting a cat ‘bout one eighty-four tall.’ He looked up and examined the Blank. ‘Check. Black hair. Check, though dey didn’t say nuffin’ ‘bout the hair dye that would be running down de side ob yo’ face. Blue eyes. Check. Seventy kilos …’

‘Look, can we get on with this? I’m drowning out here.’

‘Gotta make sure yous de right cat now ain’t ah? Cain’t have no badniks skedaddling to the JAD wivout de proper authorisation now can we?’ Sorro took another long slurping guzzle of his Solution and then slowly –
very
fucking slowly, he didn’t dig this Blank cat’s attitude – lit a cigarette. After a few languid puffs he gave the Blank a smile. ‘Well, ah guess yo’ is de cat dem buddies ov yo’s bin talkin’ to me ‘bout, dem cats who want me to turn a blind eye.’

‘And?’ the Blank prompted.

‘Trouble is, mah man, they’s paid me to turn
wun
eye and ah’s got two of dem. So which wun yo’s want me to turn: left or right?’

‘How much to turn both?’

‘Price is a grand an eye.’

It was very early, just shy of two o’clock in the morning, and His Holiness the Very Reverend Aleister Crowley’s body yearned for sleep. The weeks since the assassination of Beria and the failure of the ForthRight to invade Venice had been very taxing, and the pressure placed by Great Leader Heydrich on his subordinates ‘to do something about the Lady IMmanual’ had been enormous. But try as Crowley might – and he had been trying mightily hard – there seemed to be no spell, incantation or ritual that had any effect on the witch. Her powers, it seemed, were beyond those possessed by mortal man. And that was why he had sought help from the Spirit World.

He looked up from where he was seated at his desk to check the time by the grandfather clock ticking so ponderously on the other side of his shadow-bedecked study. There were only five minutes remaining before the appointed time of the meeting, and Crowley was confident that his guest would appear precisely as arranged. Septimus Bole was famously exact in his habits.

Crowley took a sip from his glass of Solution, his hand trembling as he did so. It was one of a whole series of glasses of Solution he had been communing with over the past hour as he sought to imbibe a little extra courage, and courage, whatever its provenance, he knew he would be needing in abundance. Bole was, by reputation, a terrifying individual, so much so that Crowley suspected that Heydrich was feigning illness simply to avoid having to meet the bastard. Not that Crowley was terribly surprised: since he had so narrowly missed death by Awful Tower, Heydrich hadn’t been the same man, it was as though something had broken inside him. The Heydrich of old wouldn’t have been so cowardly as to order a subordinate to take his place at such an important meeting and it was a piece of delegation that Crowley wasn’t particularly happy about. Rumour had it that Bole was a man sprung from a nightmare, that he was somehow
inhuman
. Crowley gave a wry chuckle: as Bole was a Daemon, he couldn’t be anything other than inhuman.

But …

But Daemon though Bole was, there was no denying that he was an ardent and effective supporter of the ForthRight. It was he who had given it the priceless gift of galvanicEnergy and who had made it possible for Heydrich’s daughter, Aaliz, to journey to the Spirit World. And with his help the ultimate triumph of UnFunDaMentalism – in both worlds – was assured. Crowley just wished the securing of this assistance didn’t necessitate him
having to meet with the man. The Faustian bargain Heydrich had struck – that Bole manipulated the Demi-Monde to further the ambitions of the ForthRight and Heydrich, in exchange, had his scientists perfect the V3 plague weapon – was one that Crowley suspected the Great Leader was coming to regret.

The minutes dragged by and then, almost reluctantly, the clock struck two. As the chimes faded into silence, Crowley looked up to find Bole standing staring at him from across the room, having materialised out of nowhere. It had to be Bole; although Crowley had never met him before, that the room had become raw cold was a sure sign of the manifestation of a Daemon. It was as though Bole had sucked all the warmth and goodness out of the room.

Crowley shivered, took a long swallow of Solution and attempted to smile a greeting, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Bole wasn’t the sort of man who encouraged smiles. He was an uncommonly tall and very, very thin individual, and clad as he was in a tight-fitting black suit he gave the impression of being nothing less than some huge spider. More, with his black top hat perched atop his head and his shaded spectacles resting on his hook of a nose there was a funereal cast to the man, this emphasised by his unnaturally pale complexion and his jet-black hair. Crowley wondered for a moment if Bole was an albino.

Making a determined effort to still his jangling nerves, Crowley stammered a greeting. ‘Good morning, Professor Bole. I am grateful you were able to spare the time to visit the Demi-Monde. Please, won’t you take a seat?’ He gestured to the chair stationed in front of his desk.

Without a word Bole crossed the room, wiped the seat of the chair with a handkerchief he conjured from his sleeve and then, after ensuring the creases in his trousers weren’t compromised, settled himself.

As he did so, Crowley had an opportunity to study his sour-faced visitor more closely. The man was younger than he had thought, perhaps only fifty or so, but he looked prematurely aged. His skin had the boiled-owlish pallor possessed by those who spent their life indoors and there were deep shadows under his unblinking eyes suggesting that this peculiar man never slept. In sum, he had a face that might more properly belong to a week-old corpse.

‘The Great Leader sends his apologies—’

Bole waved Crowley into silence, finished the arranging of his long legs, flicked a non-existent piece of fluff from his jacket and then let his gaze settle on the mage. ‘Let us dispense with platitudes and get to business. I am here, Crowley, at your behest; it was you, was it not, who placed the notice in
The Stormer
requesting that I attend this meeting?’ Bole spoke excessively quietly, so much so that Crowley had to lean across his desk to better hear what the man said. His intonation was strange too – clipped and emotionless. As he listened to him, he came to the disturbing conclusion that if engines could be contrived to speak, they would sound like Septimus Bole.