An Occupation of Angels Part 8

I said, "Mengele."

He almost beamed. Instead, the smile remained, like a malignant tumour. All I needed to remove it was a knife. "Always a pleasure to be recognised."

He was known as the Butcher of Auschwitz; his medical experiments on prisoners in the death camp had been bloodied, grotesque, inhuman; he had specialised in experiments on twins, on midgets, but he had picked anyone he liked from the long queues leading up to the gas chambers. He had selected them by pointing his whip, idly.

ODESSA had helped him disappear after the war; there were rumours, never proven, that he had lived in Argentina, though similar claims had been made for Egypt, Korea and one even placed him for a time in Borneo, where they'd captured Eichmann in '59.

Apparently, however, they were all equally wrong.

"Where do they come from?" I said. "The angels."

He laughed, a short, unpleasant sound as cold as the walls and as ugly as his smile. "Isn't that the million-dollar question?" He looked pleased with himself for using the expression; it sounded odd in German. And, "You'll find out."

I let my muscles relax and got ready to make a move; I could take out the guy on my left and use his gun. It would be risky, but it might just work and what alternative did I have?

I was about to swing. Then, before I'd even begun to turn, something heavy connected with the back of my head without warning, and I fell into a darkness as solid and as hard as ice.

Chapter Twenty.

There was something cold against my back and my head hurt; I tried to move, but my arms and feet were restrained and it was useless to fight. I opened my eyes to see a face above me like an ill, inconstant moon, watching me with calculated interest: Herr Doktor, putting on surgical gloves by the light of a lamp that was pointing directly at my face. His hands cast shadows over me. He flexed his fingers, cast fleeting dark spiders over me, and seemed satisfied.

Which wasn't exactly how I felt.

The light hurt, but the light also served to focus my mind and I remembered.

Falling into a darkness as solid and as hard as ice....

I'd awoken in a world ruled by darkness; shapes s.h.i.+fted in the absence of light, the sound of wings beating against impossible winds. The smell of sterility.

I could see despite the darkness, see in a strange inversion of light and dark in which the darkness was palpable and formed its own vision. There was no up or down, only the sound of the winds like a beating heart, and all around me silent, majestic angels flew, free and inhuman, through a world of nothingness.

Killarney. The voice reached through my ears and into my brain; the same voice I had heard before. In the world of ice which was, I was beginning to see, the same world, though perhaps viewed differently.

Killarney.

"What do you want?" I said. And, "This is only a dream."

In dreams you sometimes find truth.

"Are you incapable of talking straight? Because I am getting sick of the sphinx routine."

Careful, human, the voice said, and I felt myself lifted into the winds and held as they blew about me; angels swarmed and flew away from me.

I was held in a giant hand, obsidian-dark and craggy like a rock. "Point taken," I said, but my voice seemed to be carried away by the winds and disappeared before it reached my ears.

You have not long before you return to your world, the voice said. When you wake up you will be in danger.

"Really."

I felt giant fingers tighten on me; the sound of the winds was heightened.

You have only a short s.p.a.ce of time left.

"Who are you?" It was a question I was rapidly getting used to asking.

When you wake up, the voice said, ignoring me, you must locate the key. Locate and destroy it.

"You mean Eldershott." It was a statement, not a question. I remembered my last dream--if it was a dream, which I was no longer sure of--and remembered the words. The giant had called Eldershott the cipher and the key. I wish I knew what in h.e.l.l it was talking about.

I will be near you when the time comes. Be ready.

I felt myself lifted, higher and higher into the winds, and then the giant fingers opened and I was hurled down, down, down into a darkness as solid and as hard as ice....

"I see the patient is awake. Good." His voice was as emotionless as before, but the horsewhip was missing; I couldn't decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

His face loomed above mine. "You know, you are an incredibly resourceful woman. Really one of the most remarkable I have ever met. It will be an honour to study you."

"Where is Eldershott?" I had to keep him talking, anything to keep away the array of s.h.i.+ning, utilitarian knives on the rack. Injecting a note of indignation into it: "What have you done with him?"

"Done? Done?" He beamed at me from above, a human angel of death. "We have done nothing to Dr Eldershott. I would thank you to remember his t.i.tle. The man was undervalued by your people. Vastly undervalued. Dr Eldershott is a genius, and I certainly don't say that easily."

"Genius in what?" I demanded. "He's only a cryptographer, for G.o.d's sake! What did you need him for, a more secure code for your radios?"

It seemed to be working. Mengele seemed almost eager to talk, and I knew then that he wasn't planning to keep me alive.

"Only? Do you have any idea--" He broke off suddenly. "I can tell you really don't know. It would suggest that either your Control found it more useful not to brief you or, and this is remarkable, that your masters in London themselves have no idea of the work we do! How extraordinary!"

"What," I said calmly, "are you talking about?"

Instead of answering, Mengele turned and barked an order beyond my field of vision. Then he turned back to me. "Don't think that you can save yourself by drawing me to talk," he said. "All you would do is lengthen, however little, the wait for that which is inevitable." He sighed theatrically. "It would be a shame to kill you. As you can see, I am surrounded by very loyal servants, but servants are all they are."

"A big family of them."

"You noticed? I guess it is hard to miss." The eyes, searching my face. "The product of a breeding programme I have been running since the late thirties. Strong and, as I said, loyal. Unfortunately their intelligence isn't the highest--but where we are going they will have little need for that. Loyalty will suffice."

"Where you are going?" I said, and he was about to answer when I heard the shuffle of feet and Eldershott's worried, red face gazed down at me, his head floating like a disembodied balloon right next to Mengele's.

Chapter Twenty One.

"What is she doing here?" His voice was petulant. He had dark rings round his eyes. "She took my book."

"But we got you another one," Mengele said soothingly. "As you can see--" this to me "--he feels very much at home here."

I couldn't see what he had based that observation on. Eldershott looked at me for a while longer, a mixture of confusion and discomfort in his eyes. Then he'd seemingly had enough, and his head disappeared from my field of vision.

"What was so important about his book?" I said. "It was a textbook on military history of the world since the Coming. I had one at school."

Mengele's smile seemed to expand, the growth breathing on its own. "So appropriate, wouldn't you say?"

I needed time to think. Something big was going down, and I couldn't keep him talking forever. I needed a diversion, an opportunity to free myself before the crazy n.a.z.i doctor took me apart for his amus.e.m.e.nt. Keep him talking, and pray.

I'd not prayed in years. I wondered if I still remembered how.

"As above, so below, Killarney," Mengele said, and I remembered the last time I had heard that expression, my first dream about the angels. "Tell her, Dr Eldershott. Tell her about your discovery."

Eldershott's face appeared again above mine. He blinked red eyes. "Why don't you just kill her?"

Mengele looked amused, then his expression changed. Hunger? Impatience? I couldn't quite tell. His head disappeared and I was left, for a moment, staring alone at Eldershott. He was my only chance.

"Sophie." I formed the word on my lips, whispered it at him like the whisper of an angel's wing. "Sophie wants you to help me."

He blinked at me rapidly. His expression changed from puzzled to eager to concerned, and he blinked again and tried to whisper something, and I shook my head, a tiny movement, and then Mengele's face returned to hover above mine. It looked worried. The smile pulsed on his face like a cancer at the approach of a surgeon's knife.

I threw a guess at him and said, "Are you expecting someone?"

"Enough." That smile was clinging on, but it was losing. I wondered what had cauterised it and hoped it had been me. He turned his head. "Please turn on the electricity, Dr Eldershott."

"The electricity, Dr Mengele? Are you sure?"

I did not like the direction their conversation was taking, did not like mention of electricity, did not like the look in Mengele's eyes when he looked at me. That smile of his wasn't gone, it was merely in remission.

"I'm not the only one who's been looking for you...." I said very softly, and his head whipped back and I could only pray, pray that me mentioning Sophie to Eldershott had worked, would work, that Eldershott might try and do something, perhaps sabotage the equipment.

But it wasn't necessary.

From somewhere far away I could hear a monstrous sound, like the cry of some vast shambling beast. It howled through the ice like a wind of frost, shaking the foundations.

Mengele shouted orders; soldiers ran, Eldershott blinked nervously, and I thought, Miracles don't happen every day.

I thought I was safe then.

I was wrong.

As the ground shuddered beneath, Mengele took one last look at me, put his smile back into place and pushed Eldershott aside. His hand reached beyond my field of vision. I heard the sound of a switch being pulled-- Then pain, more pain than I had ever felt before, tore through my skin and my brain and my nerves and I screamed until my screams drowned away that other sound, any other sound, until I was lost in an ocean of dark liquid pain and I drowned.

Chapter Twenty Two.

When I opened my eyes, Eldershott's worried face hovered above mine. His hands fumbled at the restraints that held me bound.

"You have to be quick," he said. He said that listlessly. He looked like I felt.

After he'd freed me, I sat forward and wished I hadn't. My head throbbed with the sounds of a world war. My body felt as if it had been hit by a truck carrying nuclear waste.

"How do you feel?"

"I've been better."

It felt good not to be tied up. It felt good to not be dead.

There was still time for both those things to change.

When I glanced around the empty room, I saw there was a pool of vomit in the corner. Eldershott followed my glance and winced. "I do not approve of their methods," he said, primly. Now that I looked closely I could see traces of vomit caked at the corners of his mouth.

"Weak stomach?"

"I'm a scientist, not a...." He didn't seem to know how to finish that sentence.

I tried to smile at him. I should have been grateful. By being sick he had found the excuse to stay behind whilst I was being electrocuted to death and, like it or not, he had saved my life. I hoped it was worth saving.

I stood up. My legs supported me. Good legs. From somewhere far away a roar sounded.

"What's been happening?" I said--demanded. My legs still kept me upright. I took that as a good sign. The distant roar again, and the sound of gunshots, and I took a deep breath, trying to reach a far distant calm, all the while the organism feeling like a cat let out of a cage where it had been tortured, wanting to lash out and hurt, and kill.

Breathe, Killarney.

Breathe.

"You said Sophie wanted me to help you. So you should know. Some of it at least. Where is she?" He was like a child with his cryptic comments and sudden demands; I controlled the urge to smack him.

That sound again, in the distance. It seemed to climb through my feet and into my bones. "I can't wait. You'll have to stop it," he said. "I have to go before they become suspicious. I have to help them open the gate."

"Eldershott, wait--"

But with that he was gone, nervous gait leading him out of the torture chamber and away. The door closed softly behind him like an unanswered prayer.