‘Bad night?’ Lucacz asked Hugo as he brought over a midnight cup of tea to his rattled lover.
‘That monster Tobias was at the White fucking Tree! I can never go there again.’
‘And it hit on Waclaw!’ Lucacz shot him a small grin. ‘That explains why poor old Waclaw is having a crisis upstairs with his Gottleib. Ah well. The good news is you’ve all survived, and on top of that Jonas has turned up … y’know I keep thinking I should tell the kid he should to go to bed, being how it’s the middle of the night. But he isn’t really a kid and he doesn’t sleep.’
‘So where is he?’
‘Talking Theo down from his encounter with incarnate evil. Well actually he’s distracting him by playing cards, vingt-et-un. Odd child. But he’s willing to play for money, so he’s got Theo’s attention.’
‘Money? Do angels have money?’
‘This one does. Apparently he earned something as an actor in England.’
‘As what?’
‘He’ll tell you about it. He’s fizzing about his time in front of film cameras. But I’m not sure Hollywood is quite ready for Jonas Niemand.’
They headed upstairs and found Theo and Jonas intent over a hand. Jonas was dressed in conventional boy clothes of the time: short grey trousers, knee socks with garters, polished boots, a white shirt and a blue knitted pullover. ‘I’ll twist,’ said Theo, and then ‘Fuck. Bust!’
‘Watch the swearing in front of young master Jonas,’ cautioned Hugo.
‘He’s cleaned me out. He’s got the devil’s luck.’
‘Literally,’ sniggered Lucacz.
‘I like cards. They’re fun.’ Jonas affirmed.
‘Until you start losing,’ Hugo commented. ‘Hey! You didn’t er … use your powers to help yourself along?’
‘What me?’ frowned the boy. ‘That was what Wilchin would do, until I told him off.’
‘What’s this about your starring in a film, Jonas?’ Hugo had to ask.
A grin as bright as a sunrise lit up the boy’s face. ‘You remember that film we saw in London: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp? Well it got me interested in cinemas and cameras and stuff. I made a note of the names of the directors, Mr Powell and Mr Pressburger, and I went for a chat with them.’
Hugo grinned in turn. ‘That must have been something. How does an eleven-year-old boy get an interview with two famous film directors?’
‘I had to be subtle, of course. I first haunted their dreams and sparked off the idea for a film I had, about angels and the World Beyond. Then I met them in person as they were looking at a location on a sandy beach in the place in England called Devon. They’re nice men, and were happy talking to a boy about what they were doing there. By the time they’d finished, they offered me a part in an opening sequence, when the hero — a downed bomber pilot — walks ashore and meets a naked lad in the dunes, playing on panpipes. You see, he thinks he’s dead because of his crash and that he’s in the World Beyond and that the boy’s an angel or spirit, but in fact he’s survived because no angel came to pick him up once he died. The lad is actually just a young human goat-herd sunbathing on the beach. So they got their famous film star to come down to Devon with their crew, and so I was an actor! There was a nice, happy dog too and an aeroplane flew low overhead. I got to whistle! Just like Karl Wollherz taught me’
Hugo congratulated the boy. ‘What’ll be your stage name?’
‘Oh yes, they explained that. So I used the name of a real Devon boy I met on the dunes, called Eric. And I got him to get his parents to sign a consent form for the film company. And look! They paid me in English money, fifty pounds. That’s a lot, Eric told me. I split it with him. Only fair. He’s bought a big model train set. We’re gonna play with it soon. And now ‘cos of Theo, I’ve got even more money.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ observed Theo, a little sourly.
***
To his surprise, Hugo found Jonas Niemand in the kitchen when he rose, somewhat late in the morning the next day. The boy was sitting next to a cup of tea, which Hugo realised the angelic boy himself wouldn’t drink.
‘That’s cos I made it for you, Count Hugo,’ the lad said when questioned.
‘Oh! That’s very kind, Jonas.’ He picked it up and found it stone cold. Nonetheless he sipped it, to honour the kindliness of the boy’s gesture.
‘Course, I could have made you coffee, but you don’t have any I can find.’
‘It’s the war.’ Hugo smiled at the magical child’s solicitude. ‘How come you’re so accomplished in the kitchen, Jonas?’
‘Oh, many years ago I was for a while a page in the household of your relative, Lord Serge von Tarlenheim, at the Sign of the Angel up on the Altstadt, and I learned a lot from watching the cook, Mistress Margrit. She was very kind to me, though she tried too hard to feed me up, and I can’t eat and drink in this body.’
‘You’re a very unusual supernatural entity,’ said Hugo, through a grin.
Jonas laughed. ‘Is there a usual one? How many of us have you met?’
They chuckled together, and then Jonas’s face straightened. ‘Your time is coming,’ he said abruptly.
‘Er … how soon?’
‘I’m not sure knowing would help you, even if I could actually provide the information. But it’s time to put your affairs in order, as you humans do when the end nears.’
Though Hugo knew that he was destined to suffer a premature death, and had fitfully contemplated its inevitability, that did not moderate the shock he felt when it was so baldly announced. Eventually he asked the boy, ‘What happens next?’
‘That I cannot say, just go about your usual business.’
So Hugo smiled and shrugged. He finished his breakfast and headed off to the park of Bila Palacz where he wandered the paths under the trees for an hour or two and tried to come to terms with his approaching fate. Eventually, with a smile, he decided that if his time on earth was limited, then he would take some care about his decisions in future. So he headed into the Fifth District for lunch at Berwinckels, where he’d loved to eat when he was a child on a day out in the city. Despite the war, he found the menu as good as ever. It was as he was sipping at his final coffee that a gentleman approached, bowed and asked him if he might take the empty seat opposite him.
‘Please may I introduce myself,’ he said. ‘We’ve not met, but I do know several members of your family.’
Hugo scrutinised the face before him. He estimated he was a man in his sixties, grey-haired and not particularly memorable in his features, indeed his face appeared designed to be anonymous. Hugo’s memory told him there was a man famous in the intelligence agency once run by his great-uncle Franz for his ability to move unmarked and unrecognised.
‘You’re Oliver Sachert,’ he ventured, the instinct the Dead called ‘clear sight’ pulsing in his head.
The man smiled and bobbed his head in acknowledgement. ‘The stories about you did not exaggerate, young man.’
‘There are stories about me?’
‘Enough to turn your head, Count Hugo, and sufficient to get me interested in meeting you.’
‘Excuse me, sir, but Martin Tofts said that you prefer to work on your own, and you chose not to join my cousin Henry’s resistance organisation at the outset of the occupation.’
‘Indeed yes. I had some cause to think that the general’s organisation would fail to measure up to the crisis, and to be honest I’m still not entirely sure that it has done. But that will be a question for the historians in the end.
‘You on the other hand seem to have made a breakthrough in finding some surprising allies in our struggle. I’ve talked to young Klaus Sterlinger, who had an unusual story to tell about what happened in the summer of 1942. I know his family very well, having worked with his grandfather over the years. Klaus was convinced that you raised the dead during the resistance strike against the SS summer camp, and that at one point he talked to boys who had died in the massacre at Brentheim, and met them in a place beyond the confines of this world. Now, in my experience, Klaus is a very truthful young man. I would not lightly discount what he said.’
Hugo gave Sachert a straight look and said, ‘He did not lie.’
Sachert leant back in his chair and gave a long sigh. ‘I have long known that this land has its mysteries and is home to powers other than human. Your cousin Welf also communed with the dead, so he claimed, when he masterminded the escape of young Leopold of Thuringia from Ernsthof in 1917, the same spirit that haunted King Maxim as he strove for the throne of Rothenia. It was your great-uncle, Oskar Maxim, risen from the grave. But that is not the spirit that holds you in his grip, is it?’
‘No. It is something much older and greater, an angelic spirit of enormous power.’
‘And what does it want, this angelic spirit?’
‘There is a prophecy that it is working to fulfil, one that a future Elphberg king will bring to fruition, which will crown Rothenia as queen above all nations and its king as sovereign and saviour of all mankind.’
‘And this prophecy, am I right in thinking it appeared in the works of the fifteeenth-century visionary, St Fenice of Medeln?’
Hugo was getting increasingly curious as to sources of Sachert’s knowledge. ‘How do you know all this, colonel?’
The man chuckled. ‘Intelligence agents need to be men of curiosity, and particularly curious about things and events that are at first sight unaccountable. What you’re hearing here is the result of a lifetime’s reflection on our country’s recent history. It has become clear to me that Rothenia is in the centre of a supernatural struggle greater even than the world war that has led to its occupation by the dark forces of Nazism. Would I be right in thinking that your angelic spirit has enemies as or more powerful than he is, enemies who are trying to thwart the Elphberg destiny?’
Hugo gave the colonel a long gaze. ‘Have you been talking to my sister, Euphemia?’
‘And if I have?’
‘Nothing. I’m just surprised that she’d have broken her order’s silence of centuries. But to answer your question, yes. There is a powerful and evil spirit at large in Rothenia, and it is currently masquerading as the Count Vasselot von Regne. ‘
‘So Vasselot’s not human?’
‘Not at all. And if you talk to him, it isn’t long before you realise that he has difficulty in relating to the human condition, for all his power. Now tell me, colonel, I now know what you know, but what do you intend to do, knowing the things you do?’
‘I don’t like working with others, but you are an exceptional opportunity, Count Hugo. Now had it occurred to you that knowing what he does, Vasselot will be aware that Prince Leopold is a key Allied asset in Rothenia?’
Hugo shrugged. ‘He’s also aware that Protektor Korngeibel looks on Prince Leo as a friend to the Reich, I’m willing to bet also that Vasselot and Korngeibel are anything but friends since Vasselot was promoted to the command of all military assets in Rothenia over the Protektor’s head. So moving against Leo may not be a wise move for Vasselot, relations being what they are.’
Sachert grinned. ‘Vasselot can look to Himmler for support, but Korngeibel has strong ties to the Führer himself. There’s great scope here to dislocate the Nazi leadership in Rothenia, wouldn’t you say?’
***
Hugo walked south down the Rudolfs Platz in deep meditation, not even taking umbrage, as his mind usually did, at the long red swastika banners hanging down the frontages of its buildings. If he had been walking the other direction his mind would have been inescapably affronted by the huge swastika flag flapping over the Residenz, such a contrast of values did it represent. He took some comfort these days from knowing most of his fellow citizens, old or young, Rothenian or German, would have felt the same, which was the death of any hopes of division Nazism had for his nation. One day Rothenia would rise again, he was now convinced, stronger than ever from its struggles, and eventually the Elphberg lion banner would once more fly over the Residenz.
Count Vasselot was a real threat to this dream of the Elphberg future, but how was that mighty entity to be defeated by any human means? The Wejg was busy that day, and in his abstraction Hugo was more than once jostled on that narrow lane. The final time was just as he was about to enter the lane that led to Martin’s HQ. He looked up at the tall man blocking his path. ‘Welf?’ he said, and then realised his mistake. For all his resemblance to his cousin, the man was younger in appearance and not stooped by years of academic study. ‘You!’ he eventually said.
The man gave a winsome and seductive grin. ‘Yes, me. Nice to be recognised once more by a handsome young man on the streets of Strelsau. Do you know, it’s a happy coincidence that resistance headquarters in the city is in this particular house. I once rented it, and it traded for a year or two as the “Club Junior Ganymede”. I’ll bet you can guess what sort of club it was. And I’ll bet that a lot of that sort of activity still goes on in the same house.’
‘Count Oskar Maxim,’ pronounced Hugo slowly. ‘This can only be ominous.’
‘Not happy to see me?’ the revenant said, with an impish grin. ‘I can imagine why, but you can hardly be surprised. The Council of the Dead thought you could do with more professional help at this point than your randy stable lad, for the crisis is now come. Shall we talk? I’d suggest a bar, but I don’t consume food and drink in this guise.’
Hugo suddenly had a thought. ‘Okay, your late excellency, let’s go round the corner to the St Anthony’s Men’s Baths. I imagine it’s the sort of institution you were very familiar with back in the day.’
‘You just want to see my dick, confess!’ laughed Oskar.
‘Why not?’
‘No reason. You might even get to more than see it.’
The baths were not busy at midday, though a couple of boys whom Hugo knew were larking in the main pool. He and Oskar took places on the stone benches in the steam room. The revenant looked around with obvious interest. ‘It hasn’t changed much. I believe I fucked young Marek Rustak on that very bench. He was so enthusiastic while being sodomised the managers eventually banned him from the premises. Myself, I appreciated the enthusiasm.’
‘You still fuck?’
‘I can, and I know for a fact that you and your horse-boy do. You’ll have observed therefore that revenants have more capacity in ejaculation than humans do, both in recovery time and quantity, though not necessarily in size of member.’
‘So … I have to ask, and remember my present circumstance … is there sex after death?’
Oskar chuckled. ‘In the circumstances, a natural inquisitiveness. Yes, there is an analogue to human congress as the summit of post mortem relationships, those which continue those begun in life, and others which occur truly post mortem. But it wouldn’t be possible for me to describe it, other than to say that it far surpasses the organic act. My interest in once more enjoying the act of sexual congress in human terms is perhaps more sentimental than salacious. But I can still appreciate the attractiveness of a young male human body such as yours, Hugo. If it is perverted sex, Hugo, it’s not necrophilia on your part, but biophilia on mine.’
So Hugo took the place and position occupied by Marek Rustak many decades previously, and, if less vociferous in his enjoyment, much appreciated the skills of his temporary partner. It appeared Victorians knew some things that more modern lovers had forgotten, he concluded. He felt oddly flattered at the coupling, for he could say that he had now enjoyed sex with one of history’s most notorious lovers.
Eventually he came down to earth once more. This man was also a legendary spymaster, who had on one famous occasion outfoxed Chancellor Bismarck. He looked at Count Oskar, and saw a celestially handsome man apparently in the vigour of his late twenties, who was looking back at him with what seemed to be kindliness. ‘You said we must talk,’ Hugo commenced, ‘and I’m interested in anything you can contribute.’
‘Very well, young Hugo. In terms of strategy, it seems to me that to frustrate the creature Tobias and his aims, we must take advantage of his weaknesses. Powerful he may be in many ways, but not in his ability to interact with humanity and understand its motives, not least human paranoia. His enemies can be made to fear him, and if they fear him they will move against him if he seems too threatening. Now, what might they fear he might do?’
Hugo spent some moments in thought, and then said, ‘Slovakia.’
‘Er … unpack that reference. I understand Slovakia is a former province of the Hapsburg empire of my day.’
‘Yes, Oskar. After the empire fell in 1918 Slovakia and Bohemia were united as the Czech-Slovak republic. The German Reich absorbed Bohemia in 1939 but not Slovakia, which Hitler chose to let become the Slovak republic, a fascist client state. It joined the Reich’s war against Soviet Russia and has adopted its antisemitic laws. Last year Himmler became interested in running the place as an SS colony, absorbing its paramilitaries and Germanising the population, ousting the Magyars living there. Whether the Slovak government will accept this colonisation seems unlikely, and Hitler may not understand what Himmler is up to, but Himmler has delegated Count Vasselot to carry out this plan, and Vasselot himself seems to have developed his own plot to bring the Ruritanian Protectorate into this developing SS state.’
Count Oskar sniffed. ‘Gangsters falling out over the spoils. I see. So you believe this Tobias-being is looking to create a kingdom for himself in this world, and extinguish Rothenia for good and all?’
Hugo shrugged, ‘It’s one construction you can put on his moves.’
‘Helpfully, it could easily be characterised as treason to the German Reich, for sure.’
Hugo began to grin. ‘Is that the strategy you suggest, Oskar? Frame Reichsführer Himmler, the SS and Major General the Count Vasselot in the eyes of Berlin as Nazi separatists? Damn. That’s devious. But how do we do it?’
‘With the help of Wittel Horvath I think’.
***
‘Fuck me!’ yelped Lucacz, ‘the great Count Oskar was here and you two committed incest? Lucky fucker.’
‘I don’t think what we did qualifies as incest, dead boy, since only one of us was alive. It might have been necrophilia, I guess, though I think a corpse has to be involved for that that to qualify.’
‘How was it?’
‘He’s quite a man, for sure. But you’re fishing for compliments. You’re just as good, if less skilled in the amatory arts.’
‘Er … what does that mean, posh boy?’
‘He had a way of angling his big cock when he fucked me so it directly punched into my prostate. I was leaking stuff out my dick like a broken faucet for most of it, and I came hands-free when he finished me off.’
‘I must try that,’ whistled Lucacz, ‘though I may not have the right shaped cock.’
‘You may not have the opportunity either, Lucacz my love. Things are racing to a conclusion. Did you say that Major Harries is back in Strelzen?’
‘He turned up a couple of days ago. Martin was asking about him. Why’s that man important?’
‘He’s Horvath’s conduit to London and also possibly to Moscow, since he’s probably a double agent for Stalin in MI6. The man’s deeply compromised and is playing his own game in Rothenia, trying to fuck it up the same way he fucked up the resistance in Yugoslavia for Stalin’s benefit.’
‘So why doesn’t Martin shoot the fucker dead?’
‘Things seem so simple when you’re a dead boy, don’t they Lucacz? They might have done that in Henry the Lion’s day, but modern people are more sophisticated.’
‘Give me “simple” any day.’
‘The advantage for Martin is that in knowing Harries is compromised we can use him to feed tainted intelligence to Moscow and also now use him to help control Horvath and Vasselot. For instance, we know from him that the Soviet NKVD cell Horvath hosts at his HQ in Rothenia is getting increasingly fractious about the POW camp in Kaleczyk. They want Horvath to help stage a breakout. The problem for Harries is that Horvath can’t afford to antagonise Vasselot at this point. Odds are good that the NKVD might choose to assassinate and replace Horvath, which might temporarily solve the problem of the communist resistance movement in Rothenia.’
‘So is that the scheme that’s going to get you killed?’
‘No, dead boy. Our concern now is chiefly with Vasselot and frustrating his attempt to erase Rothenia from the map and thwart its prophesied future by an SS-run Nazi kingdom of West Slavia, with himself as its Führer. We have to be more devious.’
‘Do you have a plan?’
‘Yes. Be at the White Tree by nine this evening. You’ll get to see Count Oskar at work, with luck.’
***
The Neueplatz was dark and empty that evening. Air raid sirens had sounded across Strelzen in anticipation of an Allied air raid earlier, which had in fact hit Eisendorf to the east, the RAF bomber wings droning high above the capital en route as anti-aircraft flak lit up the sky. Martin was busy coding and sending intelligence back to London as to what he had learned of the raid’s impact on the industrial city.
The White Tree was nonetheless open for business and fairly full behind the leather curtain at its door. The SS cadre was well-represented that evening. In the midst of them was Count Oskar, his Germanic aristocratic confidence and Aryan good looks clearly his entrée into the group that usually preferred the club’s boy whores. As Hugo observed Oskar’s interactions with the SS officers he began to suspect that the revenant’s supernatural powers were at work, judging by the open fascination with him they were all showing.
Eventually, Oskar stood up and looked over to Hugo and Lucacz with a wink. He walked over to join their table, and with him brought one of the soldiers, a big and burly man. ‘Hello fellows,’ he said with a grin, ‘I want to introduce you to a new friend, Sergeant Major Brückner.’
Hugo wondered how deeply the man had been placed under the revenant’s spell. Count Oskar was happy to demonstrate quite how deep. ‘The sergeant major is General Vasselot’s valet and the general is his fuck toy,’ he announced. ‘That right, fellow?’
‘Yes indeed, sir,’ Brückner agreed affably. ‘He really is a dream come true. Up for anything and he loves it, even the coprophagy, though it’s not my favourite fetish. It’s submission that excites him. His ass will take anything. I was just telling Oskar here that his latest thrill is for me to photograph him in very demeaning positions.’
‘And you’re going to give us copies, yes?’
The man looked surprised to be asked. ‘Of course, sir. I’m sure the general will not mind.’
‘Though of course you needn’t tell him you’re doing this,’ Oskar said with a smile.
‘I won’t, sir.’
‘Now, you were going to tell us about General Vasselot’s plans concerning Slovakia and Ruritania.’
‘He is such an inspiration, sir. Politicians always go on about Germanisation and the Drive to the East, but their plans have not yet worked. The general’s ideas of his new society are dramatic but practical: the forced castration of all Slavic and other non-German boys and mature men in the Rothenian and Slovakian lands; the compulsory impregnation of all girls with Aryan sperm in the new realm; the enslavement of all adult Slavs. He’ll divide up the new realm into fiefs to be awarded to deserving SS soldiers. He entertained me with a description of my future castle and lordship, peopled with pretty naked Slavic eunuch boys and breeding barns full of naked girls to be fucked continuously by a squad of prime SS stallion boys under my supervision.’
Hugo coughed and spluttered before coming out with, ‘That’s … er … quite an imagination. How has his scheme been received in Berlin and the Protektor’s office?’
‘No idea, sir. He doesn’t tell me that sort of thing.’
Hugo considered this. ‘How do you know about it, Herr Brückner?’
‘He gets excited when I fuck him hard, sir. He says it stimulates his imagination.’
‘I see. But it can never come to pass if he doesn’t get the support of his colleagues and superiors.’
Brückner considered this. ‘I suppose you’re right, sir. I did hear that he was at an SS leadership conference at Ernsthof a couple of months ago with the Reichsführer and Governor General Frank, who’ve already led the way in conscripting Eastern Slav women for brothels in labour camps, and for racial breeding. General Vasselot came back saying he was inspired. I filed some papers relating to it.’
‘Excellent,’ smiled Oskar, ‘then we’d love to share them. Can you organise it?’
The man didn’t seem hostile to the idea. ‘His private office is in the Kommandatur in Kaleczyk, that’s where the files are. He’s going to have his own castle and slave farm up in the mountains he says. He’s already castrated some Slavic boys from Hofbau whom I picked off the streets. They’re ready to be installed as his slaves once they’re healed up.’
Lucacz swore to himself, though Oskar merrily continued. ‘Well thank you, Herr Brückner. This is all very helpful. Are you still on the lookout for more pretty Slav boys to take to Kaleczyk? Could I suggest Hugo here would be perfect for his stable of eunuchs? Arrest him and his friend Lucacz. We could take them to him at Kaleczyk as presents.’
‘What the fuck!’ yelled Hugo so loud that the club went quiet momentarily.
Posted 5 February 2025