Chapter 13 – Finding Mabel [Protecting Easterwich]

Will had brought a file with him and placed it on Arthur’s desk.

“I asked for some enquiries to be made about the man we met in Berlin.”

“The one who knew about Rosenfeld?” Arthur asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Arthur reached for the file, but Will kept his hand on it.

“I haven’t finished yet.”

Arthur withdrew his hand and settled back into his chair. Mabel caught the look he gave the young lieutenant and suppressed a smile. Berlin had evidently done something for Will’s confidence.

“Professor Dr Lorenz Hoffmann. Born in Kassel in 1892. Historian, specialising in early Germanic law. Apparently a rather good one.”

“How reassuring,” Mabel said.

Will ignored her and continued reading.

“Old High German, Old Norse and Latin. His academic work is respected outside Party circles. Several papers and…”

He turned the page, glanced down it and thought better of continuing.

“Rather a lot more of that.”

“Is he any good?” Mabel asked.

“Apparently.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Will looked back at the file.

“Yes. He is.”

Mabel nodded. That was what she had thought. There had been none of Wirth’s theatrical certainty about Hoffmann. He had watched and listened, and when he spoke, every question had been for a reason.

Will continued.

“He joined the SS early. His advancement since then has been unusually rapid and doesn’t appear to correspond with his actual service. Our people don’t think it has much to do with his abilities as an officer. Someone higher up wants him where he is.”

“Himmler,” Mabel said.

“Most likely.”

Arthur held out his hand.

“Not yet, sir.”

Arthur’s expression suggested that Will’s newly acquired confidence had limits.

“There is something else.”

Will turned further into the file, past the recent reports and into papers that had clearly come from somewhere else.

“It took some digging. His name appears in an older record.”

Mabel had been looking towards the window. She turned back.

“How old?”

“Before the war.”

Arthur’s hand, which had been reaching towards his pipe, stopped.

“Feld?”

Will looked at him.

“Yes, sir.”

Mabel came closer to the desk.

Will read directly from the page this time.

“An occult society operating in Germany before 1914. Dedrich Feld is identified as its leader. Hoffmann’s name appears amongst a number of younger members believed to have received personal instruction from him.”

Arthur held out his hand again. This time Will gave him the file.

He found the entry and read it for himself, then went back and read it again.

Mabel said nothing. Something in Arthur’s face told her that he had already understood the significance of the name.

“He was twenty-one,” Arthur said eventually.

“Old enough.”

Arthur turned the page, read something else, then returned to the previous one.

Will looked between them. Whatever was passing silently between Mabel and Arthur clearly wasn’t in the file.

“I take it this is significant.”

Mabel almost laughed.

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

Arthur was still reading.

“This says Hoffmann was one of Feld’s pupils.”

Mabel looked across at him. “Then he wasn’t simply a member of the cult.”

Will glanced up. “What’s the difference?”

“Feld kept most of them at a distance,” Mabel said. “If Hoffmann was his pupil, Feld considered him worth teaching.”

Arthur lowered the file.

“And you know what Feld could teach.”

“I know what I had to stop.”

Arthur looked again at Hoffmann’s name before closing the file.

“And so you did.”

Mabel returned to her chair.

For a moment she was back in the marble foyer in Berlin. Hoffmann standing there with his champagne, politely asking what she thought of Wirth. Those pale eyes watching her while she carefully said nothing at all.

Then the airport.

“Give my regards to Professor Rosenfeld.”

At the time it had been a warning. Now it was something rather more.

“That explains a few things,” she said.

Arthur looked up.

“Such as?”

“Why he wasn’t listening to Wirth.”

Will frowned.

“He was at the lecture.”

“He was in the room. That’s not the same thing.”

Arthur placed the file on his desk but kept one hand resting on it.

“What do you think he wanted?”

“From me?”

Arthur nodded.

“I don’t know.”

Mabel disliked the answer as soon as she gave it, but there was little point pretending otherwise. Hoffmann had known about Rosenfeld and had allowed her to leave Germany. Whether that had been amusement, curiosity or something else entirely was impossible to tell.

Her eyes settled on the file beneath Arthur’s hand.

“Feld spent years searching for these things, Arthur. Years. Books, archaeological sites, people who knew things they shouldn’t. Half the time he was following rubbish.”

“And the other half?” Will asked.

Mabel looked at him.

“We spent a war finding out.”

That silenced him.

Arthur pushed his chair back and stood.

“Mabel…”

“No. Think about it. Feld did all of that himself. Now Hoffmann has Himmler behind him. Universities, expeditions, money, people.”

She paused.

“They have an entire country doing it for him.”

Arthur walked to the window.

Mabel left him there. She knew Arthur well enough not to fill the silence simply because there was one. Will seemed less comfortable with it and busied himself putting the remaining papers in order.

Finally Arthur spoke.

“Easterwich.”

“It isn’t ready.”

He turned from the window.

“For what?”

“The next war.”

Arthur stared at her for a moment.

“You’ve been back in England less than two days.”

“And Germany is still there.”

Will lowered his eyes to the papers.

Arthur returned to his desk and sat down heavily.

“What do you want?”

“People, for a start.”

“Oh, good.”

“And money.”

“Of course.”

“Better access to intelligence. Military cooperation where we need it. Proper arrangements for anything recovered abroad.”

Arthur picked up his pipe, found it had gone out and abandoned it again.

“Would you like the Navy?”

“Parts of it.”

Will coughed.

Mabel looked at him.

“Something to add, Lieutenant?”

“No, your ladyship.”

Arthur rubbed his forehead.

“You do realise I’m going to have to get this past people who think Easterwich should have disappeared with King Edward?”

“Then don’t tell them about Easterwich.”

Arthur stared at her.

“Tell them about Germany.”

“Germany.”

“They’re funding this nonsense, aren’t they?”

Arthur looked towards Will.

Will had apparently realised that he was no longer merely taking notes.

“Increasingly, sir. From what we’ve seen.”

“There you are,” Mabel said.

Arthur wasn’t satisfied.

“And when somebody asks whether I personally believe the German government is going to win the next war with magic?”

Mabel considered it.

“Tell them you don’t know. Then ask why Germany is spending money finding out.”

Arthur sat quietly, tapping the dead pipe against the edge of the ashtray.

It was not agreement. Mabel had known him too long to mistake silence for that.

It was considerably better.

“I’ll put together what we need.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything.”

“No.”

“Mabel.”

She stood and collected her gloves.

“You will.”

Arthur looked towards Will, perhaps hoping to find someone else in the room prepared to be reasonable. The lieutenant suddenly found Hoffmann’s remaining papers worthy of his complete attention.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“Not particularly, sir.”

“Find somewhere.”

“Yes, sir.”

Will gathered his papers and made it as far as the door.

“Leave Hoffmann.”

He stopped, returned to the desk and placed the file in front of Arthur.

Arthur rested his hand on it.

“Find out everything you can about the others.”

Will hesitated.

“What others, sir?”

Arthur looked at Mabel.

This time she understood before he said anything.

“Feld’s pupils.”

──✿──

Commander Arthur Dunstan-Smythe did not look up when the door clicked shut. He remained bent over a sheaf of deciphered teleprinter slips, a fountain pen balanced between two nicotine-stained fingers.

“You’re late, William,” Arthur said, his voice as dry as tinder.

“Sorry, sir. I was waiting for the last of the information to come out of Berlin.”

Dunstan-Smythe held out his hand and the lieutenant passed him the file.

“Take a seat, Will.”

Lieutenant Caldwell waited while Arthur worked his way through the documents. It took some time.

When he finally looked up, he appeared the worse for the experience.

“So she was right.” He said tapping the papers with two fingers. “How the hell am I going to explain this to the Prime Minister? They’ve taught these cult members magic and planted the bloody lot of them throughout the Nazi regime.”

“That’s about the size of it, sir.”

“It won’t wash with the suits in Downing Street. I can’t walk in there and demand control of a village because we need to fight a psychic war.” Arthur sat back. “It was bad enough in the last war getting her ladyship permission to operate as a civilian. With this I’ll be laughed out of the room.”

“Perhaps you don’t need to ask them yet, sir.”

Arthur looked at him.

“I may have a solution. It won’t prove itself overnight, but give it a year and we may have something they can’t laugh at.”

Will took another folder from his portfolio and placed it on the desk.

Arthur opened it.

For a while there was only the sound of paper turning.

Then the corner of his mouth lifted.

“A toy shop.”

“Yes, sir.”

Arthur looked through another page and the glint in his eye grew.

“Mabel was right about you. You can think sideways when required.” He closed the folder. “Well done, boy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now go and fetch her ladyship. I think we’re going into the toy business.”

──✿──

The clock in Dunstan-Smythe’s office showed five minutes past eleven. He and Lieutenant Caldwell sat waiting for Mabel. She was late.

“Perhaps a train delay?” Caldwell offered.

“Nope. Mabel travels unconventionally,” Arthur said, filling his pipe from a tobacco pouch. “She’s just fashionably late.”

He tamped down the tobacco and lit his pipe.

At ten minutes past, the air in the room began to pull inwards. Papers shifted on Arthur’s desk and Caldwell felt the pressure change in his ears.

He looked towards Dunstan-Smythe, but before he could ask what was happening, two hands covered his eyes from behind.

“Sorry for being late.”

Mabel took her hands away from Caldwell’s face.

“I hear you have a solution to our problem, Will?”

She took the seat beside him and placed a gardening trug on the floor.

“I was gardening and forgot the time. Hence the rags I’ve arrived in.”

“I’m so glad you could spare the time,” Arthur said sarcastically.

“The pleasure is mine, Arthur. Now, what have you dragged me all the way up to London for?”

Arthur pushed a file across the desk towards her.

“Any shops in your village available to rent?”

──✿──

The intelligence game can be made hard, or it can be made simple. The former puts people’s lives at risk; the latter can often prove the most profitable.

Caldwell’s plan was simple, but brilliant. Information could flow into Easterwich with little or no interference from the Nazi regime. Even if they did interfere with its transit, there would be nothing for them to find.

Will had been watching Mabel’s methods. He had seen how she dealt with overwhelming opposition and realised that the path of least resistance was often the best one. He also had childhood experience of the supernatural and understood exactly how information could be left behind and recovered.

The plan was psychometry, the ability to sense the record left upon an object by those who had handled it.

And what better objects to begin with than German toys? Collectable, desirable and completely innocent.

A shop had been acquired in Easterwich High Street, with a small office space above. Three naval ratings had been recruited and trained to run the operation. One manned the shop while another sorted the stock as it arrived, identifying anything carrying information for the sensitives to read. The third liaised with Lieutenant Caldwell, who divided his time between Easterwich and London.

At first they advertised for toys in local German newspapers, sending money and receiving the goods by post. It allowed them to test something far more important than the toys themselves. An agent trained in the art could deliberately impress information upon an object before sending it to Easterwich, where a sensitive could recover what had been left behind.

Later they established an import company in Germany. To anyone examining its business, it bought and exported German toys. In reality the company provided cover for a growing network of agents, each trained to impress intelligence upon the objects passing through their hands. A search could reveal no hidden messages, codes or concealed documents because there were none.

The toys themselves carried nothing that an ordinary person could find.

By the outbreak of war the company was gone, but the method and the network it had created remained. Objects began arriving from the fighting itself: maps, binoculars, hats, radios, anything that could pass unnoticed from one pair of hands to another. What mattered was not the object, but the intelligence deliberately left upon it.

Much of it was read by sensitives drawn from across Europe, among them displaced people who, like Gabriel Rosenfeld, had been forced from their homes by war and by a regime determined to rule the world. Easterwich had given them sanctuary. Now some of them were helping to defeat the people who had driven them there.

In 1942, Mabel finally got her way.

Easterwich became the first village to be requisitioned by the British Government. Captain William Caldwell became its first base commander.