The Devils of D-Day (21 page)

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
cleared
his throat, and neatly collated his files in front of him.

‘Did you find
anything.
’ I asked
him.

He pulled a face. ‘Not very much, I’m afraid. Not much more than
I was aware of already. The whole history of this particular operation was kept
under wraps, and there really isn’t a great deal of documentary evidence to go
on. It appears from the early approaches made by the Pentagon to the British
War Office that General Patton was largely responsible for thinking it up and
carrying it through, although Eisenhower certainly knew about it six or seven
months before D-Day. There are several references here to Operation Stripes,
and this paper here is the requisition order for preparing the tanks. Each tank
cost eighteen thousand dollars to refit, mainly because of the steering
mechanisms, which were partly remote-controlled.’

Madeleine said: ‘Does it mention
Adramelech
?
Does it say how they kept him under control?’

Thanet
slowly shook his head.
‘There’s only one reference here that might be relevant. It refers to the
transportation of German prisoners-of-war to England, including one French
woman, a Nazi collaborator. They were taken to the army camp at
Aldershot
under the direct authority of Colonel Sparks-
that’s your American friend – and Colonel T. K.
Aliingham
,
who was his British counterpart, and that means their movement order must have
had something to do with Operation Stripes.

It’s possible that these prisoners may have been used to
appease
Adramelech
.

Sacrifices, for want of a better word.’

‘A man for each of the thirteen devils, and a woman for
Adramelech
himself,’

Madeleine suggested quietly.

‘Quite possible,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
, smiling an uneasy smile. ‘Your theory is as valid
as anybody’s. That movement order is the only written evidence of those
prisoners that survives.’

I came away from the window and laid my thick-rimmed
government teacup back in its saucer. ‘Colonel
Thanet
,’
I told him, ‘we may have only a few hours, even a few minutes, before those
thirteen devils get together and call up their master. Then what are we going
to do?’

‘We’re not going to panic, and that’s for certain,’ said the
colonel. ‘First of all, we’re going to make quite sure that the devils’
religious seals are quite intact, because there isn’t much they can do while
they’re nothing more than exorcised bags of bones.’

‘Supposing
Elmek
can free them –
bring them back to life?’

‘It would have to be a pretty powerful kind of devil to do
that. Each one of those seals has been blessed by seven Roman Catholic priests
and kissed by a Roman Catholic cardinal. You may be cynical about religion, but
I can tell you from my own experience, that’s strong medicine.”

Madeleine lowered her eyes. ‘We have seen
Elmek
cutting up clerics like so much cheese,’ she said
softly.

‘Well, the best thing we can do is go downstairs and have a
look for ourselves,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
.
‘They should have brought your box in by now, so our ANPs are all together
again for the first time since the war.’

He stood up, and tugged his tunic straight. ‘You haven’t
finished your tea,’ he remarked, in obvious surprise.

I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I guess army refreshments are
pretty much the same all over the world,’ I told him He peered into my cup.
‘Funny. I thought our chaps made pretty good tea.’

At that moment, the door opened, and one of the sergeants
came in and saluted.

‘The box is down in the quarantine area now, sir,’ he
reported. His beret was glistening with snow. ‘Very weighty it was, too.’

‘Very good, sergeant,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
. ‘We’re on our way now.
Mile
Passerelle
?
Mr
McCook?
Would you care to follow me?’

We clattered down the uncarpeted stairs, past the hall where
we had first walked in, and along a corridor to the back of the house, where
there was a wide cellar door, built of solid oak and hinged with steel hinges.
To my right, out of the glass panes of the back door, I could see a sodden,
tangled garden, and the dingy houses in the next street. Somewhere deep beneath
our feet, a Tube train rattled on its way to Earl’s Court.

The sergeant unlocked the cellar door, and swung it open.
When I saw the back of it, I gave Madeleine a nudge, and pointed. Nailed on to
the wood was a cross identical to that silver crucifix welded over the hatch of
the tank at Pont
D’Ouilly
. Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
said: ‘That’s what you’d call our longstop, if you
played cricket. We have it re-blessed every year by Father
Mullaney
,
just to make sure.’

With his head bowed to avoid the low whitewashed ceiling,
Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
stepped through the cellar
door and down the wooden staircase. I followed, and Madeleine came behind.

At the bottom of the stairs, we found ourselves in a wide
white basement, lit by naked bulbs in wire cage holders. Along the walls of the
basement were twelve plain trestle tables, six each side, and on each table was
a black, dusty sack.
The twelve acolytes of
Adramelech
, nothing but bones right now, but each capable of
hideous and warlike life.
In the
centre
of the
floor, silent and still, lay the copper-and-lead trunk that we had brought over
from France.
Elmek
, or
Asmorod
, the devil of sharp knives.

We walked slowly up and down the room, looking at each of
the sacks in turn. Then Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
said: ‘Well? What do you propose we do?’

‘We have to identify them first, devil by devil,’ I told
him, looking around the basement. ‘Then we might be able to exorcise them. I
have the books upstairs.’

‘You can exorcise them? How?’ asked
Thanet
.
He looked
sceptical
.

Madeleine said: ‘By the invocation of angels. It’s the only
way.’

The Lieutenant-Colonel’s face went tight. ‘Angels?’ he said,
incredulous. ‘Did you say angels?’

Madeleine nodded. ‘You can believe in devils, colonel. Why
can’t you believe in angels?’

‘Because they’re – well, because they don’t exist, do they?
Or do they?’

I rubbed my eyes tiredly. ‘We don’t actually know, colonel.
But it seems to me that it’s the only alternative we have left. Father Anton
gave me a book about invoking angels, and so did the Reverend Taylor, and they
were both well versed in the techniques of exorcism. I guess it’s the only
way.’

There was another deep, rumbling noise; only this time I
wasn’t so sure it was the Tube. I looked quickly at Madeleine, and she said:
‘Please, Colonel. I think Dan is right. We don’t have much time.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
cast his
eyes around the basement, and then at our box, and sighed.
‘Very
well.
If you think you can do some good. But I warn you – if anything
looks as if it’s going to go wrong – or if you attempt to damage any of these
ANPs – then I shall have you out of here straight away. These things are
government property, and it’s worth my whole damned career if you break ‘
em
.’

Slowly, ominously, the lights in the basement began to dim;
as if some other enormous power source was feeding off the electricity. I
snapped to Madeleine: ‘Get those books – quick! They’re up on Colonel
Thanet’s
desk!’ and then I pulled the Lieutenant-Colonel
away from
Elmek’s
copper-and-lead trunk.

The lights dimmed and dimmed until all we could see was
their orange filaments, barely glowing in the darkness. Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
called: ‘Sergeant Boone!

Bring three men down here with
Sterlings
!’

The darker it grew, the quieter it became. We could hear
shouting and footsteps upstairs in the house; but down here in the cellar the
silence seemed
to
tall in on
us like soft tufted cotton. Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
touched my arm in the strange twilight and whispered: ‘What is it? Do you know
what it is? What’s happening?’ ‘It’s
Elmek
,’ I
whispered back. ‘Ten-to-one it’s
Elmek
.’ We hadn’t
seen or heard the lid of the trunk open, but when I looked down at it, the lid
had been thrown right back, and even in the faint light of the glowing electric
filaments, I could see the stained, centuries-old silk that lined the trunk’s
insides, and I could also see that it was empty.

I gripped Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet’s
shoulder in warning, and I slowly scanned the basement with straining eyes for
any sign of our thirteenth devil.

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
said:
‘This is all most odd. I don’t know what the damned things are trying to
achieve.’

‘I guess they want their freedom,’ I told him. ‘They’ve been
sewn up in these goddamned sacks since the eleventh century, apart from that
brief excursion during the war. And they also want to bring their master back
into the world.’

‘You really think they’re going to raise
Adramelech
?’
‘That’s what
Elmek
said. And
Elmek
should know.’ In the depths of that basement, we heard a long, slow breathing
noise, like the breathing of a man under heavy
anaesthetic
.
I looked down towards the far end, between the trestles, where it was darkest.
For a moment, I couldn’t see anything at all, but when I screwed up my eyes I
thought I could make out a darker shape.
A shape that I
dreaded more than any other.
The dwarf-like form of
the devil
Elmek
, with his nightmarish eyes and his
hideous rustling body.
‘
Elmek
,’ I said softly.
‘I command you.’ Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
turned to
me in incredulity.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked me, impatient and fretful.
‘Who are you talking to?’

I ignored him. There wasn’t time for explanations. The
basement was beginning to shake like the engine-room of a ship at sea, and I
could hear the wooden trestles rattling against the walls and the floor.

‘
Elmek
, listen. We have fulfilled
our bargain. What about yours? Here are your twelve brethren. Give us back our
priest, Father Anton, and give us back Antoinette.’

The devil stirred, and chuckled. Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
took a step backwards, and tried to tug me back as
well.

‘
Elmek
,’ I said again.

There was a moment’s silence, and then the devil said: ‘I
have told you before. Only
Adramelech
can breathe
back life into your departed friends. We must first summon
Adramelech
.’

Thanet
shouted: ‘Sergeant!’

A rush of heavy boots began to come down the cellar steps.
Sergeant Boone came first, a solid-looking soldier in light khaki fatigues and
a maroon beret, carrying a light machine-gun under his arm. Behind him
clattered three others, all with those bullet-like heads and young implacable
faces that British soldiers seem to have developed through unnatural selection.

‘Down the end there, sergeant,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
crisply. ‘Hold your fire for now.’

I pointed out, rather morbidly: ‘Do you really think that
guns are going to do us any good, sir?’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
gave me
a sour glance. ‘I’m sure they won’t,
Mr
McCook.

But we have to be prepared for every eventuality.’

We waited for a few minutes in the dark and silence of that
London basement, and I could see the soldiers looking apprehensively at the way
the light bulb filaments glowed and pulsed like electric worms. At the far end
of the basement, completely concealed in shadows,
Elmek
watched us and waited.

‘
Elmek
,’ I said at last, ‘what do
you want us to do?’

The devil shifted in the dark.

‘We can’t help you summon
Adramelech
unless you tell us what to do,’ I prompted it.

Elmek
said, in the voice of an old
woman: ‘Bring down the girl. We must have the girl here.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
said:
‘First of all, we have to know what you intend to do with her.’

Sergeant Boone and his men looked at their colonel in
bewilderment. To them, he was their superior officer, and nobody hiding in the
shadows down at the end of a basement would normally dare to speak to their
superior officer with such blatant disrespect.

Sergeant Boone said: ‘We could always go down there, sir,
and snatch him. Corporal Perry and
me
were both in
Ulster, sir. It’s our specialty.’

Lieutenant-Colonel
Thanet
didn’t
turn to look at his sergeant. He simply ordered:

‘Don’t move, sergeant. Not until I tell you,’ and kept
staring into the darkness.

‘The girl’s coming,’ I told the devil. ‘She went upstairs,
but she’s coming.’

Among the shadows, I could perceive how
Elmek
constantly stirred and altered shape. Madeleine had been right about it. It was
probably elated at joining its brethren, and it was churning through an endless
physical metamorphosis in sheer excitement. I saw suggestions of diseased and
slithering shapes in the darkness that made me feel nauseous, and when Sergeant
Boone’s men grew accustomed to the dim light, and could make out for themselves
some of the sickening and repulsive forms that glistened and slithered at the
end of the basement, they exchanged looks of mounting mystification and horror.