Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

CAT O'NINE TAILS

Mildly distracted, Genevieve pressed the button for her landing and looked through her purse for her keys. Though not of a sun-shunning bloodline, she'd run late throughout the day and missed the bank. However the world might change, bankers were not about to alter their opening hours for the benefit of the nocturnal.

She was living off investments which yielded enough to cover her expenses. She was supposed to be getting familiar with Charles's estate on the assumption that she'd soon be its trustee. She'd made him swear not to leave it all to her. A particularly distasteful species of vampire gold-digging involved ensnaring hapless mortals to the point where they bequeathed you all their worldly goods, waiting for the inevitable, then cashing in and looking around for the next prospect. She didn't want the world to remember Charles Beauregard as her dupe.

The lift ascended with its usual clanks and rattles. She found her keys. Something in the air caught her attention.

Spilled blood. Spent energy. A hint of cordite.

Damn. It was starting all over again. Couldn't she leave Charles alone for an afternoon?

Just before her floor, the lift shrieked to a stop. Then, chains hauling, it rose again, by inches. Metal and something else screamed.

Through the cage door, she saw a dangling dress. A broken white mannequin leg kicked.

People were on the landing. Hamish Bond, and a flat-headed goon she didn't recognise.

A panic hand took her heart.

Was Charles hurt? Worse?

She wasn't ready. Despite his gentle drifting away, she wasn't ready to lose him. Just a few more weeks. Days, even. Things had to be settled first. If this was love, it was horrible.

A crushed body writhed in front of the cage doors, jammed between the slightly parted outer doors and the pull-across screen of the lift itself. It was pinned at the neck between the edge of the doorway and the top of the lift, head stuck out into the shaft.

The scream was musical.

The neck came apart and the thing in the dress fell, spewing clockwork.

Bond coughed up blood. His once-immaculate dinner jacket was sliced to ribbons across his sides.

Flattop stood over the British spy, harrowing hands reaching down.

She'd put a stop to this.

Tearing the cage door open, she stepped onto the landing and fixed Flattop with her eyes. The creature was brutish, but had a brain. He could be willed to stand down. The automaton would have been different. Genevieve made tiny fists and reached out with her mind.

Flattop staggered. He snarled, mouth showing metal.

The apartment door was smashed. She saw ruins in the passage. This was going to be expensive.

She was coldly furious. 'Commander Bond, explain this.'

Bond couldn't stop coughing. Holes in his throat healed.

'I'd best take that initiative,' said an unfamiliar voice.

She hadn't sensed any presence, so it must be someone old, with powers.

'I am Brastov.'

She'd heard of him. A tall, wide man stood in shadows, forked beard giving his head a distinctive shape. In his hands was a large white cat which shone in a shaft of moonlight from a high window. The cat's slit eyes were scarlet. The man wore a Chinese-style mauve cotton jacket and muzhik pantaloons.

'I wish only an interview, for the moment,' said Brastov.

Genevieve realised she had made a too-easy assumption about this creature. She wondered if Bond had been misled too. She remembered Charles mentioning this Brastov, the Cat Man. He was supposed to be a Soviet spymaster.

'You are Genevieve Dieudonne, an elder,' said the Cat Man. 'An innocent party, perhaps, but involved. I shall have to ask you to accompany Mr Bond.'

She extruded claws.

'If you put up no fight, we shall leave Charles Beauregard as he is and not put him to the trouble of coming along with you.'

She drew in her nails.

'He is overexcited, but unhurt. You have the word of Brastov that no harm was intended to him. He has a reputation in our profession. One would not wish to show disrespect.'

Brastov's voice was snake-like, hypnotic. Thick fingers kneaded the fur of the cat's throat.

'That old man saw off three of your best,' Bond spat.

'Indeed he did,' Brastov purred, suavely unruffled. 'Lessons have been learned. A car waits downstairs. You will come with us.'

Genevieve stiffened.

'You may look in on Mr Beauregard, Mademoiselle. I am not without feeling. But only for a moment.'

She nodded gratefully.

Flattop blocked the smashed doorway.

'If you would recover Olympia's head,' Brastov ordered his underling. 'It would be a shame to lose such an ingenious and pleasing device. She can be rebuilt.'

Flattop grunted and got out of the way. He reached into the lift shaft and wrestled free the object he found there. The automaton's eyes blinked.

Genevieve stepped into the flat. The hallway was littered with wet clay.

Charles was in his study, propped in his chair, breathing heavily. He seemed stunned. There was a weal on his cheek, a rising bruise.

She smoothed the crumpled carpet  -  she knew it sometimes trapped his wheelchair  -  and checked Charles's pulse. His eyes opened fractionally, telling her he was awake.

'You are satisfied as to his health?' asked Brastov. He was in the flat now, eyes on them.

'To strike a man his age,' she protested.

'My associate will be punished. He doesn't like fire.'

Charles smiled, too tiny an expression to register across the room. Genevieve adjusted the blanket over his knees and felt under it for his hands. Her fingers closed on something cold. Bond's gun. Charles pressed it on her. She manipulated it out from under the blanket and into her armpit, hidden under her shawl.

Charles patted her hand. She kissed his forehead.

'Very touching,' Brastov commented. 'Now, if you will be so kind as to come along. Mr Bond has had a trying evening.'

By the time they were out of the apartment, the pistol was in her handbag.

Genevieve and Bond were blindfolded and hustled into a Daimler. They were driven a short way and assisted out of the vehicle and through an iron gate which scraped on gravel.

'You'll have been memorising tiny sounds and scents, to fix the journey,' said Brastov. 'I too have played that game. It is no matter. If your Diogenes Club isn't up on our addresses, I should be very surprised.'

The blindfolds were removed. They were in a large garden, with nondescript ruins. The man with the cat stood by an entrance to a tunnel sloping down into the earth. He led the way inside. Genevieve and Bond followed. Flattop brought up the rear.

The passage was narrow and low. They were taken through catacombs. Flattop kept banging his forehead against the rock roof. Alcoves in the walls contained hunched-over corpses, preserved bags of bones. Some faces were twisted in death, as if they had been walled up alive.

'"For the love of God, Montresor,"' Genevieve quoted.

'Yes indeed,' said Brastov, amused. 'Do you know Mr Poe? He is in Rome at the moment. One sees him at social gatherings, glooming about in the corner. De Laurentiis has him under contract. He has been working on the script for one of those Cinecitta epics, Gli Argonauti.'

The passage widened into a chamber. Its walls were made from jawless skulls, layered like macabre bricks. Flattop reached for a particular relic, sliding thick fingers into empty eye-sockets. He pulled the skull and the wall parted, sliding out of the way.

'Come through, into our lair,' said Brastov.

The man with the cat stepped into the dark beyond the wall of skulls. Lights automatically came on. Without needing to be prodded, Genevieve and Bond followed. They stood on a platform which descended like a miner's lift, into a huge underground space. The cavern was hewn out of naked rock, shored up with modernist steel struts.

Banks of equipment stood among broken classical columns and armless, headless statues. Large television screens hung from stalactites. Symbols crawled across animated maps of various continents. Devices the size and shape of refrigerators, huge whirring spools of tape on their fronts, stood in ranks between rock-pools  -  up-to-date computers.

Pretty girls in tailored white jumpsuits were busy with the equipment, receiving and sending messages, tabulating information. Swarthy men in orange boiler suits watched over them, sub-machine guns casually slung over their shoulders.

They walked through the operations centre and were shown into changing rooms. Bond was allowed a shower and given a fresh suit of clothes. Genevieve considered the evening gown she was offered, but decided to stick with her current practical outfit. She didn't want to put down her handbag for fear of losing the gun.

While Bond sang a calypso in the shower, Genevieve looked at the hard-faced matron assigned to watch over them. She was a new-born, with typically slavic features. Few of the people in Brastov's lair were obvious Russians or even Eastern Europeans, though his operation was strictly Soviet, often at odds with the Italian Communist Party and even the local criminal organisations.

Bond emerged from the changing room, perfectly groomed. He wore a lightweight suit, charcoal grey, with a double-knit blue tie. He expected her to compliment him on how he looked, but she disappointed him. She was too concerned with Charles, back at the flat alone, perhaps hurt.

The matron ushered them into a luxuriously appointed office. The famously stolen Basil Hallward portrait of Lord Ruthven hung behind a desk the size of an aircraft carrier. A clump of life-sized mannequins dangled from a wooden frame, posed in a strange array. Genevieve saw a gap and guessed that was where Olympia had been. The most impressive of the remaining dolls was an eight-armed dancing Kali.

The man with the cat was behind the desk, face again in deep shadows. A spotlight fell on the cat's white fur. The animal luxuriated, as if sunbathing.

'May I offer you something to drink?' said Brastov. 'We have a well-stocked cellar. There are always expendable warmfellows. You may kill one if you wish, Mr Bond. After your exertion, you must have a touch of the red thirst.'

Genevieve wouldn't trust Brastov not to palm off a hopeless drug addict or tertiary syphilitic. She declined his offer. So, after a moment's thought, did Bond.

'Very well. To business.'

The cat stretched on the desk, rolling over. He was the size of an Alsatian, and doubly fanged. Pampered, but obviously a terror to his prey.

'We were most saddened by the loss of Anibas Vajda.'

There was steel in the conventional sentiment.

'So were we,' said Bond.

'I doubt that. Her loyalties wavered. At the time of her decease, they were wavering in our direction. Frankly, we wondered if you mightn't have eliminated her yourself.'

'As it happens, I didn't. Not for want of trying.'

'That is as we thought, Mr Bond. This business between us, between East and West, may seem impenetrable to outsiders like Mademoiselle Dieudonne, but we understand the game, we know its rules. In this instance, we were playing for a very small prize, the possibility of exerting influence on the House of Vajda and, through that, getting close to Prince Dracula. He still has a certain following in our sphere of influence, and is capricious regarding the use to which he puts it. He could be useful or a nuisance to either of us. Since the war, he has sat in his palazzo, withdrawn from the world. He has had such moods before. They do not last.'

Despite herself, Genevieve was interested.

She gathered the Russians were as in the dark as anyone else about il principe's intentions.

'This Crimson Executioner is the tool of a third force,' said the Cat Man. 'A major player, perhaps. But not one who has stepped into the field honestly. We speak of a hider in the shadows.'

Genevieve almost laughed.

'One might think some Chinese mastermind from an earlier era were reviving his enterprises in the present day.'

She knew whom he meant.

'Or one of the others  -  Herr Doktor Mabuse, Monsieur Anthony Zenith, even the astronomy professor. We thought them all retired or dead, but those conditions are seldom permanent with such men. In the second half of this century, the nature of shadow kings has changed. Secret societies abound, but they have become like corporations. You saw the wonderful boxes outside, adding machines and thinking machines and killing machines. Where are the robes and rites and curses of yesteryear? Do you know, Mr Bond, I miss all that. In my network, I have as many accountants as assassins.'

'One hopes they are of better quality,' Bond said, resting his hand on one of Kali's upper arms. 'Or I should fear even for the Kremlin's deep pockets.'

'We're not quite at that stage, old fellow.'

Kali's eyes sprung open. Bond wasn't startled.

'She is more than a machine,' Brastov commented. 'Kali is a work of art, plaything of an ancient despot. You have to admire the artificer who could bring such a beauty to life. Her embrace is final but her victims die in unspeakable ecstasy. Really. Spirit mediums have sought them out in the afterlife to confirm it.'

'I've had too many final embraces these last few days.'

The cat's mouth opened in a mocking yawn.

'That you have, Mr Bond. You sought out Charles Beauregard to quiz him about the Crimson Executioner?'

Genevieve had guessed as much. She felt a knot of useless anger. Later, if they survived, she'd settle with the British spy. He had pointlessly endangered a dying man. Like Brastov, he was so intent on his game that he never gave a thought to the breakable human pieces.

'I imagine he thinks along the same lines as myself. He is a man of quality.'

'He mentioned the possibility that friends of yours might be involved,' ventured Bond. 'Mario Balato's shower.'

Brastov hissed a laugh. 'He might have mentioned the possibility, but he would not subscribe to it. Our unruly children are a bother, I admit. They believe in too much, don't know the rules of the game. Another unwelcome twentieth century trait. But this isn't their sort of business. No, we've to look a little deeper, under the stones. The answer to this question is old, as old perhaps as Rome.'

Bond shrugged.

'Mademoiselle,' Brastov addressed her, 'have you heard of Mater Lachrymarum?'

'She's supposed to be one of Three Mothers,' Genevieve said. 'Witches or Goddesses or Patron Demons  -  Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs; Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness; and Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears. Guardians of the Sick Soul of Europe, or some such. Thomas De Quincey wrote an essay about them.'

'You impress me. I had expected that. Officially, I have little time for such arcane nonsense. It smacks of alchemy and pointed hats. Moscow deplores such things as un-socialist. But I have many sources. Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, is the oldest of the three, and her legend is inextricably bound up with the history of Rome. She was here before Romulus and Remus, they say. She has presided over her invisible court throughout the city's history. Caligula sacrificed to her and Rodrigo Borgia was her lover before he became Holy Father. Myths and rumours and fairy tales, but at their heart is a truth that affects us all. There's a whisper that the Mother of Tears is more than an ur-legend and that this Crimson Executioner is in her thrall.'

Genevieve realised they'd been brought here not to be questioned, but to be given an answer.

This was all about dropping a name.

Mater Lachrymarum.

The interview was ended. Brastov had concluded his business. One of them would be let free, to do with the information as they would. The other would be killed, to underline the seriousness of the matter.

'Perhaps you'd care to dance with Kali,' Brastov said.

The automaton's spider-arms closed, just missing Bond's chest.

The Cat Man laughed.

Genevieve took the Walther out of her bag and tossed it to Bond. He was the one who knew how to use the wretched thing.

He stepped forward, drew perfect aim, and shot the man behind the desk. In the chest, twice. The cat-minder snapped into his swivel chair, then pitched slowly onto his face.

She couldn't believe Bond had made such a mistake.

'That was hardly gracious,' said Brastov. 'Russians are so hard to train.'

Bond was astonished. Genevieve was exasperated.

'Not the man, you idiot,' Genevieve shouted. 'The cat!'

Brastov flowed across the desk like furred lightning, padding on swelling paws. He assumed a slightly more human shape, back legs longer, forepaws fingered.

Bond shot again, but barely brushed Brastov's shrinking tail.

A flap opened in the wall and Brastov slipped through it.

Bond was at a complete loss. Genevieve shook her head.

'I'll get you out of here alive,' Genevieve said to him, feeling her talons and teeth coming, gathering the fighting strength she was about to need. 'But that's it. You'll be on your own. My patience with this silly game is exhausted.'