out of the stairwell onto a wide blue-carpeted corridor with a gentle incline, bells began to chime. I?d been here before, some time in the long-ago. I experienced a flash of dejr vu that included the insanely staring eyes of Nosferatu, and I almost had it. A cinema? Had the Anathemata found one of London?s decommissioned dream houses and moved in, as Nicky had done over in Walthamstow? That would be a pretty sick irony.
But no. As it turned out, they?d gone one better than that. Gwillam threw a door open and flicked a light switch. Striplights flickered in sequence along a wall as long as a football field. A black wall, black floor, too, scarred with the scuff marks of innumerable feet. Up ahead of me, something that looked a little like a
?Son of a bitch!? I said, impressed in spite of myself as the penny dropped.
?That?s the sort of language Po doesn?t appreciate all that much,? Gwillam murmured, raising the disturbing possibility that he might actually have a sense of humor.
He walked around the Zeiss projector, and I followed: or rather, I was herded. The vast expanse of floor on the far side was mostly empty, except for a ghost pattern of unbleached areas on the carpet where other objects had once stood: display stands, partition walls, ancient cine cameras, life-size dioramas from great movies. The Anathemata had colonized one small area; there were a couple of guys working on laptop terminals at desks that were surrounded by thick, overlaid loops of electric cable like barbed wire entanglements. Another couple of guys were talking on cellphones, one of them tracing a line with his finger on an ops board?a huge map of London pinned to the wall, like I?d only ever seen in seventies cop shows. That was pretty much it: that, and a whole lot of empty space stretching away into the middle distance.
?You should move somewhere smaller, now that the kids have grown up,? I commented, trying for a nonchalant tone that I think I missed by a mile or so. ?You?re probably paying more rent than you need to.?
Gwillam smiled thinly. He was watching my face, taking a clinical interest in my reaction. ?Who mentioned rent? They left the key under the mat, and we let ourselves in. I?m assuming you know what this used to be, before it died??
?Sure,? I said. ?I know.?
But Gwillam wanted to give me the punch line, and he wasn?t going to be deterred. ?It was the Museum of the Moving Image.?
Just the words conjured up a little squall of memories. The museum was part of the South Bank complex, like the National Theatre and the Festival Hall?but it was added on after all the rest were built, because film was the scruffy little Johnny-come-lately of the art world and had to make space for itself at the table with its elbows. I?d only been here once before in my life?on a school outing when I was thirteen. All the way up from Liverpool on the train, with four stuffed pork roll sandwiches and a can of Vimto to see me through the day. I?d pretended to think it was shit, because that was what all my mates were saying, but secretly I reckoned the low-tech horror of the magic lantern shows was the dog?s bollocks, and I sneaked back to watch the X-wings versus TIE fighters battle sequence from
Now it was just an empty warehouse.
?They closed the place down some time in the late nineties,? said Gwillam, absently. ?Took the exhibition on the road. It?s meant to be opening again in three years or so. In the meantime . . . it?s really handy for the West End. Sit down, Castor.?
I hadn?t even seen the chair. It was sitting in a patch of shadow just on the hither side of the ops board where two of the strip lights had failed to come on. A coil of rope and a doctor?s little black bag lay on the floor beside it. There was a table, too: a small, round coffee table with a stained Formica top that looked as though it had wandered in here from somewhere else. Gwillam swiveled the chair around to face me.
?Please,? he said, in the same deadpan tone.
?I?d rather stand.?
Gwillam sighed, pursed his lips in a way that suggested he got a lot of this selfish and hurtful behavior, but never quite got used to it.
?If you?re standing,? he pointed out patiently, ?Zucker and Sallis can?t tie you to the chair.?
?My point exactly,? I agreed.
?And I want you to be tied to the chair because it makes some of the things I?m about to do to you that much easier.?
?Look,? I began, ?as a concerned citizen, I?m really happy to cooperate with any?? But Gwillam must have given some kind of signal to his team that I didn?t catch. Po?s massive, clawed hand closed around my throat and he hauled me unceremoniously over to the chair, slammed me down, and held me in position. Zucker and Sallis made busy with the ropes. They were enthusiastic amateurs where knots were concerned, but they made up in quantity what they lacked in real finesse.
While they worked, Gwillam brought up another chair and placed it opposite me. Then, when they stood back respectfully from the finished job, he nodded them a curt acknowledgment. ?Sallis,? he said, ?you?re with me. Mr. Zucker, after your recent exertions you and Mr. Po might wish to avail yourselves of the chapel.?
?Thank you, father,? Zucker said, and the two of them turned on their heel and walked away into the darkness. Po looked over his shoulder at me: bared way, way too many teeth. Sallis went over to the wall and sat down with his back to it, the gun not exactly pointed at me but still ready in his hand.
?Is that a euphemism of some kind?? I asked Gwillam.
He shot me a look of genuine surprise.
?No,? he said. ?We have a field chapel wherever we set up, Castor. Our faith is very important to us.?
?Your former faith.?
Gwillam quirked one eyebrow. He didn?t look upset, though; the barb didn?t have quite as much sting as I?d expected it to.
?Do you know how many Catholics there are in the world, Castor?? he asked me.
?Before you and your pals got their marching orders, or afterwards??
?There are more than a billion. Seventeen percent of the world?s population. Five hundred million in the Americas alone.
?So the Holy Father must of necessity be a statesman as well as a religious leader. He has to play the games of men, and of nations. And sometimes that means he has to balance small injustices against larger gains.?
?Meaning??
?The Anathemata Curialis was given a massive appropriation of funds just before the death of John Paul II. Then his successor, Benedict XVI, ordered us to disband or face excommunication. The two actions are best seen as the diastolic and systolic beats of a heart. The church has disowned us, but it has not ceased to wish us well.?
?Even though you use werewolves as field agents? How broad
He knelt down, picked up the black bag and put it up on the coffee table. He snapped it open and rummaged inside. I hadn?t forgotten the bag: in fact, it was fair to say that it was preying on my mind a little.
?Our brief,? Gwillam said, ?is narrow and exact. We fight the last war. We?re heaven?s skirmishers, sent into the enemy?s heartlands to gauge his strength and harry his forces as he attempts to deploy them.?
?The enemy being . . .??
?Hell, of course.?
He took from the bag, one by one, a disposable hypodermic, a bubble pack with a small vial of some straw-yellow substance, a larger bottle of clear liquid, and an unopened pack of surgical swabs. ?The rising of the dead,? he said, looking me full in the eyes with the deadly calm of the fanatic, ?was the opening of hostilities. Hell is on the move against heaven, in every sphere, in every nation of earth. It was foretold, and it was foreseen. We were not taken by surprise. But there were those in the church who wouldn?t accept the evidence of their own eyes.?
He smiled bleakly. I got the impression that he was remembering specific conversations; specific clashes of will and words. ?They forgot their duty of stewardship,? he said gently. ?They became too ensconced in the comforts of the world, and forgot that the world must always and ever be a forge. You do not sit comfortably by God?s fire: you are plunged into it, and shaped and made by it.
?You seem to think, Castor, that there?s some contradiction between the battle we wage and the tools we use. There isn?t. We fight against the demons who are Satan?s generals in the field?and we avail ourselves of whatever weapons God places in our hands. If faithful Catholics return from the dead not because they conspired with the Adversary but because the rules of engagement have changed, then we will not turn our backs on them. Po and Zucker have suffered much, and they have turned their suffering to good account. I number them among my most trusted officers.?
He counted off the items on the chair, pointing at each with his index finger, as if to satisfy himself that he had everything he needed. Then he nodded, satisfied, and stared at me again.
?Where is Abbie Torrington?? he asked me.
?In a police morgue in Hendon.?
Gwillam blinked, once, twice. ?I don?t mean her shell,? he said, with the closest thing to heat I?d ever seen from him. ?I mean her true self. Her spirit. As you of all people must appreciate.?
Me of
