Lammas night

  "He's good—too bloody good, if you ask me," Grumbaugh confided in the privacy of Graham's office, pushing his glasses on top of his balding head as he spread an array of texts before his boss. "What especially worries me is that I'm not certain he's only an astrologer."

  "Oh?"

  Grumbaugh shook his head, scowling. "Something in the back of my mind connects him with those satanist lodges we've been hearing about. If he's that gc>od an astrologer, what if he's also a first-rate black magician? This is just sheerest speculation on my part, but suppose he turned out to be the same masked chap who's been showing up at secret meetings of the Vril and the Thule Gesellschaft, fanning up support? Several items in the Section VII material suggest such a connection. Take a look at these passages I've marked."

  While Grumbaugh perched on the comer of the desk and paged through the references, pointing out specific items, Graham skimmed them with growing suspicion. The Vril Society and the Thule Gesellschaft —German occult orders spawned at the time of the Great War from roots of the old Germanen-orden —were violently racist and anti-Semitic. The Thule Group had provided all forty of the original members of the New German Workers' Party, which eventually brought Hitler to power, and had been financed in turn by the high command. Hitler was believed to be an initiate of the Thule Group's inner core, whose orientation was markedly satanic. No one knew how far the Thulist web extended.

  But as Grumbaugh guided Graham through the evidence, the overwhelming image that kept coming to Graham's mind was the mysterious Sturm. When they had finished, Graham tilted back in his chair thoughtfully.

  He had come to trust Gnimbaugh's intuitions. The English-bom Jew was his most brilliant analyst: a resourceful if little-known Cambridge scholar who spoke half a dozen European languages fluently as well as reading a handful of dead tongues. He was also one of the most brilliant Qabalists Graham had ever met. If Sam Gnimbaugh thought that Rote Adler might be tied in with a German satanic lodge, then the possibility certainly should be explored further. He wondered whether he should show Gnimbaugh at least a few of the Dieter photographs to get his reaction.

  "This Rote Adler—yoi think he's Hitler's pet Thulist, then?" Graham asked. "The one who's working a black lodge on his behalf?"

  *The name would fit," Gnimbaugh replied. He twitched his eyebrows in a characteristic expression that was pure Gnimbaugh, letting his glasses slip back into place as he pulled another page out of his stack.

  "Listen to this passage. It occurs in one of last month's intercepts and also in the new material: Our God is the father of battle and his rune is that of the eagle. That's a Thulist slogan, pure and simple. In the old German solar mythology, the eagle is the symbol of the Aryan race. The Thulists use it as a secondary insignia, along with the swastika traversed by the two lances. It all fits. Gray. I think he's Hitler's black adept."

  Graham opened his desk drawer and pulled out just a few of the Dieter photographs, which he tossed on the desk in front of Gnimbaugh.

  "I wonder if this might be the same man," he said quietly, watching Gnimbaugh's expression shift from surprise through shock to grim endurance as he shuffled through the photos. "He goes by the name of Sturm. He operates out of Vogelsang and draws most of the members of his group from its faculty. The photos come from a private source," he added as Gnimbaugh glanced up and started to make bitter comment.

  Silenced, Grumbaugh leafed through the photographs a second time very slowly, then dropped the stack on Graham's desk and wiped his palms against his thighs in distaste.

  "I don't suppose those could have been staged for our benefit?" he asked quietly.

  Graham shook his head, remembering his own vision on the Second Road. "I have no reason to doubt their authenticity. The purpose of the photographs apparently was to incriminate the other participants so that there could be no backing out later on. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep the knowledge of these to yourself."

  With a shudder, Grumbaugh looked away. "The Thulists' famous * astrological' magic," he whispered harshly, "which is neither astrological nor magical in any decent sense but an excuse for depraved tortures and murder. And I'd be willing to bet a month's pay that the victims in those pictures were Jews."

  "Some were." Briskly, Graham gathered up the photographs and returned them to his desk drawer. "I think we should put out some feelers on this Sturm. Have Basilby get on it right away. In the meantime, I want you to correlate anything that fits linking Sturm, Rote Adler, Vogelsang, the Thulists, the Vril—any black-magical connections whatever that may tell us more about this chap. How soon do you think you can have it on my desk?"

  Grumbaugh had it for him the next morning before the rest of the team had even finished their tea. His conclusions sent Graham straight to Dover with a copy for the recuperating Michael, though not before he rang Alix to request a meeting at Oakwood the following evening. Michael was devastated.

  "I had no idea he was this involved," Michael whispered when he had read both Grumbaugh's and Dieter's reports and stared at the photographs. "When he said he'd infiltrated a black lodge, it never occurred to me that he would have to go along with—with everything."

  He had been reading the reports from a wheelchair on one of the rooftops of Royal Victoria Hospital, while Denton turned away unwelcome company at the stairwell door, and now he let Graham take the pages and photos from his lap without resistance.

  "I'm sorry, Michael. I thought you were prepared," Graham said apologetically. "You told me he'd shown you pictures."

  "A few, yes—and those were bad enough. But these—"

  As Michael ducked his head and covered his eyes with his good hand, Graham saw in his own memory the particular photograph that undoubtedly was haunting Michael: Dieter, unmasked, nordically pale and aristocratic in his long black robe, coolly drawing an SS dagger across the throat of a terrified victim lashed to a great black stone; the spurting blood frozen in midspray; the masked Sturm looking on in obvious approval with several other men whose eyes betrayed unbridled evil. Dieter, Michael's favorite uncle, who had been Michael's playmate and battle charger almost before he could walk, who had played hide-and-seek with him and his older brother on sunmier holidays in Bavaria. Dieter, whom Michael had adored.

  Shaking his head to clear the image from his own mind, Graham put the documents away in his attache case and gave Michael a few minutes to collect himself. From a purely intellectual standpoint, he supposed he understood why Dieter had undertaken the task he had. Dieter would have said that the end justified the means; that it was permissible, under certain circumstances, to do the wrong deed for the right reason; that to battle something monstrous, one must sometimes employ monstrous measures, regardless of the personal cost.

  But Graham had never yet met an acceptable justification for cold-blooded murder by torture.

  "How do you feel about a possible Sturm-Rote Adler connection, then?" he asked after a little while, trying to gendy ease Michael away from the horror. "Do you think they could be the same man?"

  Michael drew slow, steadying breath, still looking far younger and more vulnerable than his twenty-two years, and managed a brisk nod.

  "It's possible. Grumbaugh certainly seems to think so. Did you show him the pictures?"

  "A few. Tell me more about Dieter, though. Did he ever mention anything about Sturm having a background in astrol-ogy?"

  "I don't remember—no. I don't think so." Michael sighed. "Fm sorry if I seem like a basket case. Gray. I guess I'm just— very disappointed. I know he says he hasn't gone over to the other side, but I never thought Uncle Dieter would—would—"

  "No one did, son," Graham murmured, watching helplessly as Michael turned his chair and awkwardly wheeled himself a little ways away.

  It was time to get Michael out of here, Graham finally decided; time to put him to work at something that would turn his mind away from his disillusionment. He could finish mending at Oakwood better than in any hospital. Graham would take him there tomorrow w
hen he drove down for the meeting with Alix and the others; besides, they should hear some of this directly from Michael's own lips. For tonight, he would take him back to his own flat.

  "Michael, I think it's time I sprung you from this place," he said.

  Within an hour, Denton was driving both of them back to London. Graham spent the evening coaxing Michael to write up his official report and occasionally picking up the pieces when Michael would succumb to grieving reminiscences about the flawed Uncle Dieter. Neither of them got much sleep. The next morning, Graham reviewed Michael's mission report with Grumbaugh and his other two senior analysts while Michael slept in and by mid afternoon had reassigned agents to deal with the new thrust of their investigations. Before picking up Michael for the drive to Oakwood, he spent a last bleak hour in the wire service room watching the latest news bulletins clatter off the keys.

  The news was less than encouraging. Operation Dynamo had ended two days before, with more than a quarter of a million men evacuated—ten times the number expected or even dreamed possible—but the Battle of France was essentially over. Though the French government had not yet formally capitulated, the end clearly was but days away. Churchill had flown back and forth across the Channel at least three times in the past two weeks, trying to inject heart back into Premier Reynaud's tottering regime, but even he was forced to concede reluctantly that this phase of the war was coming to a close.

  The phase to come gave cause for even greater concern to the British. For once France fell, the way was clear for Hitler to step up invasion activities. The plan was known as Seelowe — Operation Sealion. Occupied French ports would provide staging areas for the ships and barges necessary to carry out such an enterprise; captured French airfields would become havens for the bombers, fighters, and paratroop support needed to back it up.

  The Royal Navy and RAF were strong deterrents to an invasion, for each could support the other to a point. But the British naval presence gradually would be forced from the narrow Channel straits as the Germans shifted their ships southward into their newly captured ports, and the RAF was still pitifully below strength despite the Herculean output of Lord Beaverbrook's aircraft factories.

  If Hitler pressed his advantage, eluding British naval and RAF defenders, and struck while the remnants of the BEF were still scattered weaponless all around the countryside, the invasion would have to be repelled by aged Home Guard volunteers and untrained civilians—old men, boys, and women and children battling in the fields and streets of England, where no invader had set foot successfully since 1066. Against such a threat, Graham began to wonder whether he was mad even to dream of stopping it through any of his own puny efforts.

  "I'm sure that Dieter undoubtedly has his reasons, difficult as those may be for us to understand," Graham told the rest of them that evening when they had gathered around the library table at Oakwood with after-dinner coffee. "Unfortunately, his actions put us all in a very uncomfortable position. Aside from the question of whether he can do what he's done without absorbing any of the Nazi taint, there's the fact that a continued association with him on our parts could be construed as tacit approval. I certainly hadn't counted on this, and I know Michael hadn't."

  Besides Alix and the brigadier, only two others had been able to join Graham and Michael for the impromptu meeting: Richard, who was Graham's son, and Geoffrey, the brigadier's other grandson and Audrey's older brother, both on emergency leave from their flying-boat base near Southampton. All five men wore uniform. Dieter's pictures and copies of the pertinent reports lay strewn across the table.

  "The question of taint is a very important one," Alix replied, flipping listlessly through a few of the photographs again. "Dieter is one of the finest ceremonial magicians I've ever met, but he is also one of the most unstable. I was alarmed when he first announced his intentions, and I'm especially alarmed now that he has actually gained entrance and accepted initiation into a black lodge—especially this particular black lodge. Once one has killed in this manner, few barriers remain. Where is the line one has to cross before one actually becomes a satanist, as opposed to playing a role? And how much do stated principles count when one is constantly playing such a role, in every outward manner?"

  "It isn't like that," Michael murmured, biting at his lower lip. "He isn't really a satanist. I know he isn't."

  "Perhaps not, but he's certainly made some powerful connections with people who are," the brigadier said, gesturing at the photographs with his pipe. "Nor am I terribly reassured that Gray was drawn to their working. If that could happen, what's to prevent the reverse?"

  Graham shivered. That fear had already crossed his mind more than once.

  "I don't like it any better than you do, Wesley, but I do think it was probably Dieter who drew me—not Sturm," he said carefully. "Granted, I was vulnerable when I shouldn't have been, but I think it was Michael's nightmare that triggered it. When I touched him, he was probably touching on Dieter because of his concern—and since I've worked with Dieter before and Michael was totally out of control and unfocused, I was drawn toward what Dieter was doing. Remember, I never touched Sturm. I merely saw him."

  Geoffrey, redheaded and pale in his RAF blue, balanced his chair on its back legs and scowled.

  "And it's pretty clear that he saw you," he remarked. "How can you be sure that he won't use you to trace back to the rest of us? I certainly don't fancy the likes of him lurking outside one of our circles."

  Graham shook his head. "If he had been able to follow me back, don't you think he would have done it at the time, Geoff? The longer he waits, the more chance there is that I'll tell someone else, as I'm doing now, and get reinforcements. In any case, I haven't given him the opportunity to try again. I haven't been on the Second Road since, and I don't4ntend to go on it again for at least a few weeks. If things still look shaky by Midsummer, I'll bow out. In any case, my abstinence won't interfere with the Drake working. The next major thing after that is Lanmias—and if things aren't resolved by then, I suspect it will be too late, anyway."

  Richard, in appearance more like Graham's brother than his son, sullenly rolled a pencil back and forth under his fingers.

  "I think we're stupid to have continued our associations with Dieter in the first place. How can you possibly stay clean when you infiltrate a group that demands that of its initiates?" He gestured angrily at one of the photographs. "And how the bloody hell did you even get together with him this trip, Michael? 1 don't recall that we even talked about him last time we all met."

  "Well, how else was I supposed to get out of Germany?" Michael replied a little defensively. "Uncle Dieter was the first person who came to mind."

  "And he just happened to have these lovely pictures and a report for you to bring back?"

  Michael bristled. "Father told me he'd had word that Dieter had some important information for us and asked me to collect it if I got the chance."

  "Without telling Gray?"

  "Christ, Richard, you'd think I planned for the pickup plane to crash! What was I supposed to do?"

  "I think that's enough," Graham interjected. "Both of you. It's done."

  "But don't you even care that David went over your head?" Richard insisted. "If he's going to make you acting chief, the least he can do is tell you when he's done something that could affect us all!"

  "Richard, let it go. This isn't your affair."

  "It isn't my affair when my own father is put into even greater danger because his chief didn't back him? You didn't know he'd asked Michael to see Dieter, did you?"

  Graham sighed and shook his head. "No, but that's between David and me," he said softly. "Let's please not belabor it any further, son. It certainly isn't worth bickering among ourselves. Can't we leave that to other groups?"

  At Richard's sullen nod, Graham continued.

  "Thank you. Speaking of which, Alix, I suppose the time has come when I can no longer avoid approaching some of the leaders of those groups. Before I leave ton
ight, can you give me a list of the ones you've talked to so far?"

  "Of course."

  "You mean you haven't even started yet?" Geoffrey asked.

  Graham sighed and leaned his head against the back of his chair, closing his eyes. The impatience and irritability of all three young men were beginning to get on his nerves.

  "I'm doing the best I can, Geoffrey. Please remember that I'm having to deal with setbacks I was never trained to handle. I never asked to be your man in black."

  "But David said—"

  "David said that Gray must use his own best judgment," Alix interrupted smoothly, laying a hand lightly on the young man's arm as Graham looked up at both of them. "Other than the lone excursion onto the Second Road, I have no quarrel with that judgment. Gray knows what he must do."

  It was the first direct reference Alix had made to the bridge incident. Her tone was mild, but Graham detected the edge of steel beneath, catching her minute nod when she glanced in his direction. Chastened far more by that than by any verbal reprimand she might have given, he lowered his gaze again. The problem was that he knew precisely what was expected of him. The weight of the responsibility grew heavier with each passing day.

  "We've all allowed ourselves to get a little tense about this," Alix said after a moment, jolting him from his self-recriminations. "Why don't we take five minutes for everyone to relax? After that, we'll talk more. Any objections?"

  There were none, of course, for Alix's word was final when it came to arbitration among them. The old clock on the mantel ticked off the seconds. That and the crackle of the fire on the hearth were the only sounds besides the occasional tap of the brigadier's pipe tool and the hiss of pencil on paper as Richard doodled. Geoffrey smoked a cigarette and studied the glowing ash; Michael stared at his hands. Graham closed his eyes and, with a conscious effort, tried to make his mind a clean slate, seeking to regain a little perspective.