Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy (15 page)

“About these ‘Talents’ you keep referring to...?” Donovan asked, his voice hoarse.

“Ah. Yes, the Talents. I forget sometimes. I have interacted with their skills for so many years that I often fail to realize much of the world refuses to believe such...ahem...methods for intelligence gathering exist.” Cornwall stood and turned to look out the windows, and the shadow of a memory crossed his features like a shadow of a cloud passing over a summer field.

“I have found in my journeys an extremely small number of people who possess some sort of gift which truly sets them apart from the common man. The man you saw in the library, Martin, has successfully guessed the dates of significant troop movements in North Africa with a ninety percent accuracy, using nothing but astrology. We have many others like him, but they are... difficult to handle. They tend to be...trying. In many different ways, really.”

“So you’re telling me these people are involved in some kind of psychic mumbo-jumbo?” Donovan seemed taken aback, and Arnold noted the sudden concern evident in the old man’s voice.

Cornwall turned with a knowing smile on his lips. “That ‘psychic mumbo-jumbo,’ as you so quaintly put it, is precisely why PISCES is here today, sir.”

Donovan simply stared, politely blank faced, hands folded in his lap.

“The Hun’s move on the continent in the summer of ‘40. Only two people in this country knew about that beforehand. Me, and the source of the revelation, a rather happy, older woman named Amanda Chalmers, whose only concerns at the time were her four cats and a grandson. And her ‘spells.’” Cornwall turned around and considered his reflection on the surface of the desk.

Donovan smirked. “Witchcraft?”

“No. Her fainting ‘spells.’ I know it sounds unusual, but somehow during these seizures she suffered from, Amanda could see...ahead. She saw it all before it happened. The German’s push on Belgium, the Netherlands, and then into France. The evacuation at Dunkirk, even the date and time of the initial mobilization. But no one in the BEF command would listen to me. You see, I had learned years before that Amanda’s ‘spells’ were rarely wrong.”

A shiver ran down Arnold’s back, and suddenly the room seemed cold. Once again, unimpeachable sources were telling him unbelievable things. Looking over, Arnold saw Donovan’s expression had changed from incredulity to one of interest. Cornwall looked physically pained as he continued, as if he himself were responsible for the rout of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940.

“Many, many boys died on the beaches who did not have to, to prove my point. After the miracle, Churchill opened the sealed letter from Amanda I had left with his office. And so at the cost of three thousand, four hundred and seventy-five men, PISCES was created. The prime minister, of course, is now our greatest supporter. The clarity of hindsight, as they say...” Cornwall sat down again as the mist outside turned to rain. In the shadows, with his face downcast, he looked much, much older. “One of my mates from the Great War died there, on the beach, covering the retreat. Good Old Jim Lowell.” He pronounced ‘Old’ and ‘Lowell’ as if they rhymed.

Cornwall looked up and locked eyes with Donovan. “It is my supreme conviction that people like Amanda Chalmers were put on this Earth to prevent events like the retreat at Dunkirk from happening. So I gather them, here...”

“I am more than willing to remain open-minded to new intelligence-gathering technique,” Donovan stated in a careful tone.

“And you, Lieutenant Arnold?”

“It’s much easier to wrap my mind around some lady predicting the push on France than what I’ve seen in France itself, sir,” Arnold said, glancing down at his shoes.

“Hear, hear,” Cornwall said, standing up. “Would you both care to stay for dinner? We have much to discuss.”

Downstairs Miss Greer had gathered about twenty people into the parlor, in preparation for dinner. Arnold was immediately overwhelmed by hospitality. While General Donovan and Major Cornwall spoke quietly at one side of the parlor, Arnold was passed from person to person on a chain of friendly banter. Abhirati introduced him around, holding his hand as if he were a lost child. Arnold had to continuously remind himself why they were there as he was bombarded with the pleasantly bizarre.

In the midst of his conversation with a man who could read auras, Arnold noticed Lieutenant Barnsby quietly enter the parlor, freshly out of the rain by the look of his uniform. Barnsby removed his officer’s cap and scanned the crowd eagerly. Miss Greer’s arm encircled the young officer’s knowingly. She stood on tip-toe and kissed him briefly, and Barnsby blushed a deep red just as he had several days before in Cook’s office. The two exchanged quiet, smiling words as Barnsby kissed the young girl’s hands, one of which wore an engagement ring. Arnold watched this while something gathered uncomfortably in the back of his throat and Abhiriti and the aura man talked about the theory of predetermination. He thought maybe what he was feeling was jealousy. Maybe he should ask the aura man?

After Miss Greer pointed him out, Barnsby walked up to their little group briskly. He removed one of his black gloves with a careful gesture.

“Lieutenant Arnold?” After rapid hellos and good-byes, Abhiriti and the aura man drifted away.

“Call me Thomas.”

“I am Alan. I understand we will be working together.” Barnsby’s gawky hand reached out to shake.

“Yeah.” Arnold locked hands with the thin man.

“Tomorrow, th—” Barnsby began and then froze, eyes unfocusing, and suddenly his grip intensified until it became almost too much for Arnold to bear. Arnold looked about uncomfortably as he tried to remove his hand from the tiny man’s now-iron grip. As suddenly as it had begun, the fugue ceased, and Barnsby let go, apologizing and wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“Are you all right?” Arnold placed a hand on the little man’s shoulder.

“Yes. I’m terribly sorry. Tomorrow, then, eh?” Barnsby walked off and he and Miss Greer left the parlor together. Her face was overcome with concern, and she took Barnsby’s temperature with her wrist as they departed.

“Dinner,” Abhirati announced, opening a door into a room which smelt of rich foods and wine, and the knots of people slowly filed through. Alone in the parlor, he could hear Miss Greer and Barnsby talk in heated tones from the foyer beyond the closed door. Why did he care what was said between the two?

“Lieutenant Arnold?” Abhirati called from the dining room.

Arnold went to dinner.

Barnsby and Arnold arrived in Whitby Station on the train from Scarborough, bleary-eyed and exhausted from transfers—Hull, Nottingham, Leicester, endless others—tracing a convoluted and choppy route across the country all the way from London command. They still had more than two hours of travel before them, out on the North York Moors, to the ruins of Jermyn House.

The Karotechia file Parsifal indicated that the ape-like specimen found in Antwerp by the Gestapo, which was the impetus for the huge Nazi investigation, was meant to be shipped to England’s Jermyn House before the lord’s unfortunate suicide in 1913. The files went on to state that German spies in the U.K. had been instructed to look into the history of Jermyn House in early November 1942 and, more specifically, into the history of its last resident, Sir Arthur Jermyn. This apparently had been carried out by the German network, as detailed information about the history of the house was provided in the German file along with a brief biography of the Jermyn family. If these Abwehr agents had openly questioned locals about such an obscure site as Jermyn House, Cornwall, Cook and Donovan all agreed, they had made a fundamental error. A spy remains a spy only through anonymity, and questions about Jermyn House would be necessarily conspicuous.

Lieutenants Arnold and Barnsby were to proceed to the town closest to Jermyn House, a little hamlet called Helmsley, which lay on the very edge of the North York Moors. They were to quietly poke around in the hopes of scaring the Abwehr agents into revealing their presence if they were still there, or to pick up their trail through questioning the locals if they were not. It sounded good in theory, until you had ten hours on a train to think about it. Then it began to feel like the tried and true method of smoking out a sniper by sending someone out into the open to see if he got shot.

Even after almost two days of forced interaction with Barnsby, Arnold had no idea what to think of the little man. His emotions ran deep, that much was certain, but they remained behind an opaque wall of civility which Arnold could not breach with his American camaraderie. Barnsby’s odd habits, however, revealed themselves immediately. The most obvious was that Barnsby was never without his gloves. Reading, smoking, eating, the gloves remained on his hands at all times. Arnold didn’t ask and frankly didn’t want to know. A burn, perhaps? Disfigurement? Barnsby had shaken hands with Arnold bare-handed once, and that hand seemed normal enough, but who could tell what his left hand was like? It just seemed odd.

As they stepped off the train in Whitby station, Arnold let Barnsby make the play. It was his country, after all. Barnsby maneuvered deftly around the small crowds of commuters, leading Arnold out on to the flagstone street into a chilly sea wind. The town was made up of ivy-covered wood-framed houses which hung forward with age, crowding in on the narrow streets. Past a knot of people gathered in front of a building, smoking, he could make out the distant ocean. A wind whipped up, rich with salt, so cold it brought tears instantly to his eyes. Barnsby trotted across the street towards a run-down inn with the unfortunate name of Jobling’s Private Hotel. Out front the two came to a stop. They looked out of place here, in their twenty dollar hats and Saville Row coats. Arnold glanced around at the locals.

“You been here before, Al?”

“It’s Alan, if you please, and yes.” Barnsby scrutinized the group of men on the hotel’s steps, who returned his gaze with ire. Shiftless and scruffy, the locals all looked rough around the edges to Arnold. Dock workers, probably, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He found himself wishing Barnsby wouldn’t stare at the dock men anymore. He stepped to the side to force Barnsby to turn away from them.

“So what’s the play?”

“It’s off to Helmsley, I suppose. Let’s see if the local lorries are running.” To Arnold’s dismay, Barnsby turned and walked up to a huge dock worker in front of the hotel. He was wearing clothes stained with sweat and time but no coat, although it was well below freezing out, and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, clenching it in yellow-black teeth. The group with the dock worker stopped talking the second Barnsby stepped towards them. They eyed him with a mixture of hate and incredulity. Arnold rubbed his eyes in disbelief and followed the little man’s lead. Well, at least he’s no coward, Arnold thought to himself. It seemed little consolation for a fist-fight in the making. Arnold spun his class ring around his finger in preparation.

“Excuse me, chaps, do you know where we can find the bus to Helmsley?” Barnsby asked in a polite voice.

The man straightened up and squinted down through the smoke of his cigarette at Barnsby. “Di’ you ‘ear something, Pete?” He grunted, looking at his companions.

Pete, a man who was lucky enough to have a nice pair of teeth, probably fake, squinted in a comic expression of wonderment.

“Nope, Henry, heard nothin’.”

Henry then proceeded to put out his cigarette on Barnsby’s overcoat, slowly, and obviously with great pleasure. Arnold stepped forward.

“Makin’ new friends, Al?” Arnold asked happily. The three thugs automatically shifted into a loose circle.

“It’s Alan, and yes, these gentlemen and I were just discussing—”

“A fookin’ Yank,” Pete said gaily, looking Arnold up and down like he would some exotic but harmless animal. The others began laughing, drowning out the last bit of Barnsby’s declaration. Henry cracked his huge knuckles in anticipation.

“Correction,” Arnold said and held a finger up as if to illustrate a point.

“A Yank,” he continued, smirking, and flipped his jacket open to reveal his Colt .45 automatic in a shoulder rig,”... with a gun. Where’s the fuckin’ bus stop, you fuckin’ slob?”

As Arnold and Barnsby walked away towards the bus stop, nothing was said. The thugs had long since scattered, after politely directing Arnold to the nearest bus stop, their eyes fixed open like they would never shut them again. The street they followed wound down towards the ocean, occasionally opening on fantastic views of cliffs which looked much like their French counterparts on the far side of the Channel. A group of old women and children had gathered at the yellow and black sign which marked the bus stop, clustered in a tight circle to avoid the chill of the sea air. Arnold and Barnsby drifted into the crowd, ignored and silent. Forty-five minutes later a dilapidated bus marked “Helmsley” pulled up from the seaside and everyone piled on.