pair of lieutenants, fresh from training, were converts to the captain's way of thinking. Winthrop doubted they would survive a week in the lines. The Hun might not have the stomach of the Tommy, but he certainly had entrenched machine-gun positions.
'It's the only cursed way,' Drummond said, as passionately thick-headed as a campaigning politician. 'One big push to Victory.'
The lieutenants agreed, swearing to be in the first wave. Drummond had just killed them, and probably all the men under their command.
'If the fathead politicians would let us out of the trenches, we'd give the swine of Saxony and the poltroons of Prussia the sound biffing they so richly deserve. With the Kaiser hoisted on a sturdy stake, we should shove on into the Russias and sort out the blasted Bolshies.'
Winthrop imagined the tide of war surging around the world, sweeping through continents like a dreadful winter.
'Mark my words, the real enemy is the clique of homicidal, alien Jews that has done for the weak-blooded Romanovs.'
Drummond concluded his editorial and got down to gory stories of Germans killed with bare hands and teeth. Winthrop pleaded urgent business and read on.
I am Dracula's get. I was one of his mistresses. When the Graf settled at the Kaiser's court, he turned several of us. In life, he was an Eastern potentate. Always, he must have a harem. He would fiercely deny it, but his habits are Ottoman. Fortunately, I was a passing diversion. He is uncomfortable with women of this century. We are difficult to bend to his will. He prefers the pliable, superstitious fools of his own time. The favourites, the ones he calls wives, have been with him for centuries. They have child minds and beast appetites, all 'I want' and 'give me' and 'now'. I am not of that breed, but I fear degeneration is inevitable. Now I shall never learn whether my bloodline harbours the taint.
When he turned me, I was his property. His slave to use as was his whim. Even now, Dracula owns me. Dawn will set me free. After a few eternal months in the summer of 1910, the Graf loosened the collar. First, he yielded exclusive rights. I was obliged to serve the pleasure of his Carpathian cronies. Many elders drink only the blood of new-borns. They regard the warm with disgust. I was the consort of Armand Tesla. Before his fall, Dr Tesla was chief of Dracula's secret police. A cruel elder, his amusement was to drip holy water on to the flesh of newborns. It doesn't work on every line, but for some this is disfiguring. There is no explanation in science. The admission is unfashionable, but we are not creatures of nature. Vampires are
When angered, Tesla would threaten my face. Even if I survived, my life as a courtesan would end. But the doctor came to value me, so I was spared.
Tesla schooled me as a spy and introduced me to diplomatic circles in Berlin, London and Paris. He became second only to the Graf in influence and power, which is why Dracula killed him. You knew that, too. I can tell by your face. A woman doesn't need to be able to read minds, though some vampires can. It is his weakness, Charles. Anyone about him who shows himself too able, he will become suspicious of. And he will destroy. He is a proud descendent of Attila but nations can no longer be ruled like barbarian tribes. Germany and Austria-Hungary
the capable men Dracula has assassinated. Only fools and the slyest of traitors survive. One man, even Dracula, cannot hold together such an empire. He failed in Britain and he will fail in Germany. Your responsibility is to ensure that enough of Europe survives his fall to start again.
Captain Drummond was still chuckling over his personal plans for 'Lenin, Trotsky and their unwashed shower'. Winthrop shivered. Dracula was hardly Europe's last monster.
'When Tesla fell, I became an inconvenience and was sent to Paris. I was set up in apartments and resumed my life as a dancer. Mabuse, Tesla's successor, ordered me to ensnare as many dignitaries as I could.'
The woman was accused of prising the plans for a French offensive out of General Mireau, another advocate of the Drummond way to mass suicide. This was the charge upon which she had been executed.
The truth is I was delayed and passed on the information only minutes before the attack. If my report reached the German High Command, I would think them too busy gloating over dead Frenchmen to take notice. Mireau's colossal plan was to attack at dawn. That was it. He ordered twenty minutes' bombardment to clear the barbed wire and wake the German gunners, then breakfasted on cognac, snug in his field headquarters while a hundred thousand brave
climbed from the trenches to be chopped up by concentrated mortar and machine-gun fire. I'm a whore with no more notion of military tactics than a goose, but even I saw the plan was astonishingly obvious. Attack at dawn, I ask you! Why not a token feint to draw fire, duping the enemy into signalling guns positions, then specific bombardments to eliminate defensive positions,
the big attack? Does it not seem strange
can come up with a sounder plan than the fabulous General Mireau? It is no wonder the ass is insistent I be executed (at dawn, of course), for fear Hindenburg might call upon my services as a strategist. Then again, I'm sure Germany has a surfeit of five-year-old schoolboys who could draw up battle plans that would baffle and overwhelm the good general.
Kate Reed had said as much in her articles on
'Hit 'em hard,' Drummond said, 'at dawn! Wake the blighters up with cold silver.' This was a war fought by ferocious idiots.
Charles, you want to hear about the Chateau du Malinbois. Very well. It is the current headquarters of
the group commanded by Baron von Richthofen. The press is full of their daring deeds. The expression 'Flying Circus' arose because of the unit's manoeuvrability. They have the knack of packing everything on to a train and moving to new positions. Early in the war, the Baron defied orders that his aircraft be painted
and insisted the machine be bright scarlet. Actually, as anyone who has tried to find a red ball in green grass will tell you, a red aeroplane blends surprisingly with the landscape. And by night, even to vampire eyes, red is black. It may be a surprise to you, but Germany's sky-high heroes are not universally beloved by their muddier comrades. The press blathers about the aerial feats of Richthofen's Flying Circus, but ground troops, and even fliers not assigned to JG1, call the squadron 'the Flying Freak Show'. The term is not inappropriate.
Malinbois is also a centre for research, under the directorship of Professor Ten Brincken. From my nights as a bride of Dracula, I recall this scientist as a supplicant at the court. The palace was always full of crackpots of one stripe or another. The Graf is a fiend for modernity, as bedazzled by trains and flying machines as a small boy. The professor, one of a parade of geniuses, was granted a private audience with the Graf. I saw him then, a broad- shouldered warm brute, glowering as he paced outside Dracula's office. I understood he was not an inventor but a biological researcher. My instant judgement was that I did not like the man. His face was storm-clouded and about him was a creepy aura. At that time, there was a craze among some of the living for injecting themselves with extremely dilute doses of silver salts. Having thus polluted their blood, they felt safe from the thirsty undead. Even had Ten Brincken not taken such precautions, I doubt I should have cared to taste his greasy blood.
When ordered to pay a visit to Malinbois, I assumed I was to be an ornament. Fliers are notorious for their parties. Germany indulges its heroes, and what greater indulgence could there be than Mata Hari?
