The Violent Century Read online

  Leave me alone! Henry says. The others laugh. Weird one, aren’t you? Roberts says. He’s the leader. That word. Weird. Already it has a new connotation. One Henry doesn’t want to be applied to him. Just leave me alone, he says, I didn’t do anything.

  I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything. Roberts imitates him like an echo. The others laugh, their voices cruel. Shrill, they surround him. He feels the fog wanting to emerge, it is hiding in the roots of the trees, it is sending grey-white fingers out, questing. Henry says, Stay back. Doesn’t know if it’s the other boys or himself that he talks to.

  – Give us your money, Roberts says. We know you have some.

  – That’s right! Thornton says. Roberts’ second-in-command. Face twisted in excitement. That’s right!

  They come closer, pressing in on him. Fogg says, My father will beat you up.

  – Your father’s a drunk.

  Haze rises. Fog clouds his mind. Small fists, landing on Roberts’ face, his stomach, Thornton and the others trying to pull him away, drop him on the ground, a kick in his ribs sends sudden pain flaming across his body, the fog rises, it comes from everywhere at once, it reaches grasping fingers, the boys – What is that!

  Land another kick, Henry closes himself into a ball, hands covering his head, but he can feel the fog, all around, it twists around the boys, someone cries, someone says, quietly, Please, please, no.

  The boys run away. Their feet make little sound in the fog. Somebody cries, I can’t see! But their voices lose their shrillness, become soft whispers, disappear in the fog that rises, covering the trees, the ground, blocking the sun, blocking escape. Henry lies there, hands covering his head. Scared of moving.

  Waiting for the others to come back.

  36. THE FARM 1936

  – Do you understand, Oblivion says, again. And Fogg says: Yes.

  Oblivion seems embarrassed at his earlier outburst. Fogg gets the sense, looking at him, of an intensely private world locked up inside him. Of a self-contained universe, letting very little in or out. Why do they call you Oblivion, he says.

  Oblivion bends down, picks up a stone. It is a pebble, of the sort you’d find on a riverbank, made smooth and round by water and time. You might wonder what it’s doing in the middle of a Devon field. It sits in Oblivion’s palm. He has long, graceful fingers: a pianist’s, as they used to say. Oblivion touches the stone, gently, with one tip of a long, tapering finger. The stone doesn’t shimmer, doesn’t melt, or turn to dust, or crumble gently in Oblivion’s hand. It simply disappears, gone, as though it has never existed: one moment it’s in his palm and the other, it has never been there at all.

  It is surprisingly unimpressive. Like the magic tricks one sees as a child, an adult using the French Drop or palming a coin. There is nothing flash about it. Simply, Fogg thinks, it is a negation.

  – Before I could control it, Oblivion says, and stops. Starts again. Before I realised, he says. Fogg nods. There are other things in the world, other than stones.

  – How does it work? Fogg says. Oblivion only shrugs. It just happens, he says. Rubs his fingers together as though the absence of the stone had hurt them. Lets his hand drop to his side.

  – Well, I guess I’ll see you around, Oblivion says. Fogg says, Hey …

  – Yes?

  – Thanks.

  Oblivion smiles. The expression is unexpected, it changes his face, lights it up from inside. Fogg awkwardly reaches out his hand. Something between them. Perhaps it is, simply, that they are both alone. Oblivion hesitates. Then he reaches across the space between them and takes Fogg’s hand. They shake.

  – Everybody needs a friend, sometimes, Oblivion says.

  37. THE FARM 1936

  And so on a lazy sunny afternoon, the Lost Boys and Girls of Never Never Land. Oblivion, Fogg, Spit, Tank, Mr Blur and Mrs Tinkle. Some we know well, some, less well. It is only the nature of things. There are others, too, though many will die in the coming war and other wars and others still are vanished, missing, location unknown: perhaps gone to their own implausible palaces of ice or bat-filled caves, hidden volcanic peaks on jungle-covered South Seas islands, forbidding chrome-and-metal skyscrapers or remote Gothic castles. Or perhaps more prosaically a cottage in Wales. The records are sealed and obscured.

  Mr Blur sits under a tree, writing a letter. The notebook on his knees. He blinks in the sun, writes deliberately, a sweetheart back home, he fashions words like a man not used to grappling with diction, for whom punctuation lines up like soldiers in a trench. Tank lies on his back in the grass, nearby in the shade. He reads a book from the Farm’s small library, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. His massive chest rises and falls, falls and rises steadily, his lips are pursed in concentration.

  Some distance away, Spit teaches Mrs Tinkle to throw knives. Mrs Tinkle cackles in unholy glee, where is she from, this little old lady caught in the change, she is rare in that like the Old Man himself. For people like them, the extraordinary few who the change remade, ageing was slowing down, was halting. No doubt, Fogg thinks, Dr Turing has a theory to explain it. But sometimes one does not need reason, so much as a touch of magic, a sprinkle of fairy dust.

  Mrs Tinkle’s fingers wrap around the handle of a blade, manipulating it deftly, she hefts it in her hand, she throws and the blade thwacks clean into the centre of the target. Spit looks on, chewing a blade of black hair, for a moment the sunlight illuminates her face and she is lovely. Fogg glancing her way for a moment startled, she looks at him and he looks away, the fierceness is back in Spit’s face. She hawks phlegm and spits at the target, which bursts open like a chest. The knife falls to the ground. Mrs Tinkle, with a tsk of disapproval, bends to retrieve it. Where are you from, dear? she asks. Spit shrugs, Up north and that, she says, vaguely. Oblivion sits cross-legged on the grass, contemplating a stone in his palm. Fogg paces, that restless energy, that discomfort of being in the open, exposed in the sun. Bees hum, birds sing, leaves rustle, gently. He glances at Oblivion and Oblivion looks up, and smiles, and the sun illuminates his pale, bleak face.

  Perhaps it is always summer, in the place where we are young.

  That day suspended in memory: a rare moment of peace.

  FIVE:

  SHADOWS IN THE SNOW

  MINSK

  1941

  38. MINSK, BELARUS 1941

  The city falls. It becomes obvious to them in the early morning, a sudden, eerie silence, which only lasts a moment. But long enough. They creep out of the mansion they had occupied. Fog covers them. German tanks are already evident on the streets. This is the start of Operation Barbarossa, we know: the German invasion of the USSR. But the speed at which the Wehrmacht enters Minsk is astonishing. The city falls sooner than Fogg and Oblivion had expected, and now they have to somehow make their way out.

  Not that that’s a problem. Not for Fogg and Oblivion, or is it Oblivion and Fogg? There’s chaos in the street. Gunfire erupts nearby and a man stumbles into their fog, blood streaming out of his chest. He collapses at their feet, looks up at them, for a moment, before his eyes become glass and are still.

  Oblivion steps over him, says, We need to get to a vantage point.

  – You have any suggestions?

  They pass a burning synagogue. Stained-glass windows showing a Star of David are still, somehow, whole. They should have sent fliers, Oblivion complains. Instead of us. I can’t see anything in this fog.

  – Neither can the Germans, Fogg points out. Or the Reds.

  – Bolshevism has its moments, Oblivion says, without irony. And: Come on.

  A German tank caterpillars by, too close. Oblivion reaches out, flexes his fingers. Does not quite touch it, just extends fingers like weaving a spider’s web. The tank groans. The sound of metal twisting. Bending. Breaking. What the hell are you doing, Fogg says. We can’t draw attention to ourselves.

  – Who’s drawing attention, Oblivion says, twisting, screams from inside the tank, the turret twists impossibly, Oblivion reaches a
nd touches the metal, it falls away at his touch, opening a hole into the tank which grows, German soldiers inside like sardines in a tin, gaping at them, Well, do your thing, Oblivion says, irritably – quoting Emerson. Fogg forms a fist of grey fog. It reaches into the tank. Tactile fog, stroking, touching, feeling. The grey hand quests. Oblivion turns his hand, over and over, nothingness grows over the tank, one of the soldiers stares in bewilderment at a suddenly missing arm. Somehow, it’s just not there any more.

  – Why are we doing this again? Fogg says.

  – To observe, Oblivion says. The Old Man said to observe.

  Fogg follows his logic. They are not here to watch the Wehrmacht take over Minsk. No one in England gives a blast about Minsk. No one even knows where it is.

  What they do care about, care about deeply, is Nazi and/or Soviet deployment of Bureau-equivalent personnel.

  Übermenschen, to use another word.

  – Your brief is simple, the Old Man had said. Observing them in his office, Fogg and Oblivion standing to attention. The Bureau had changed in the past couple of years. Expanded quarters. New personnel. Everyone in uniform. Or almost everyone. Not the Old Man. Who said, the Nazis are planning to invade Russia. Corrected himself. The USSR.

  Nazis already control Poland. France. Treaty with Italy. Nazi expansion like ripples in a pond. Concentric circles expanding outwards. The Old Man: Your brief is simple. To observe.

  – And if we can’t?

  – Then make them come to you.

  Oblivion and Fogg make them come to them. Minsk at sunrise and the sun through the smoke like a prism. The tank groans. The soldiers cry out inside. Fogg makes the man appear, then. The Fog Man. Shapes him out of water droplets and ice crystals. Shapes him out of the smoke from burning cars and homes and people. Shapes him out of the nightmare that is Minsk.

  Makes him tall. Makes him like Oblivion. Makes him tower over buildings, stand out like a beacon, makes him reach out grasping grey fingers over the smoke and the haze. Oblivion twists, the tank groans, a burst of radio communication, Fogg says, It’s time to find that vantage point while we still can.

  They shift. They move through haze and fog, running, and find shelter behind an intact Daimler. Watching. The Fog Man dissipates slowly in the breeze, returns to its constituent parts, smoke and water. The tank … Oblivion turns his hand, one last time, a frown of effort on that ivory face, glistening sweat, the more power you use the more it takes it out of you. Oblivion twists … erases the tank. Fogg can only stare. Does not understand Oblivion any better now than before. More tanks roll down the street. A sniper fires from a rooftop. Fogg sees a child, a boy, running down the street, towards the tanks. A woman runs after him, screaming. Fogg doesn’t understand the words but understands their meaning. Come back!

  Gunshots.

  Smoke.

  The boy rolls like a football. The woman flies after him, like a wounded bird, but she is not flying, she is falling, the tanks roll on and over them both, the sound they make is swallowed by the fog.

  – Hold it together, damn it! Oblivion says. Fogg raises his head from the ground, wipes his lips.

  – Watch.

  A jeep arrives and a man climbs down from it. He is a short, wiry man, with close-cropped silver hair, a tanned face, as if he had spent time a long way from here, in one of the Mediterranean countries. He sniffs the air.

  – What the …? Fogg says.

  – Shut up, Oblivion says. Tense, beside him. The man in the street stiffens. Turns his head, this way and that. Sniffs. Turns, slowly, in their direction. Fogg reaches his hand out. Finds Oblivion’s. Cold. Presses it, hard, between thumb and forefinger. Oblivion shakes his head. Minutely. They crouch, frozen. The man reminds Fogg of a wolf. The silver hair, the way he stands. Like he could be galvanised into motion without you even noticing. The way he smells the air. The way he seems to sense them. The man smiles. Slowly. Revealing teeth. His tongue snakes out. He licks his lips.

  Fogg panics.

  Later, he couldn’t explain it. Irrational fear. Came from nowhere. Came on him like a physical blow, from outside. Seared him. Panicking, he runs. Behind him the wolf man grins, follows.

  – Fogg! Fogg, you—

  Oblivion grunting. Fogg turns, sees Oblivion and the wolf man facing each other, frozen, the wolf man’s face in a fixed grin, Oblivion’s hand raised before him, his face colder and harder than Fogg had ever seen it before.

  – Kill him, Oblivion!

  The fear is gone as quickly as it has come.

  – I … can’t. Oblivion’s voice strained. Breathing harder now. The wolf man presses forward, one step. Oblivion takes a step back.

  The scene seems frozen. Motes of ash suspended in mid-air. Flames on the horizon, not moving, smudges of red against grey. Then the horror comes back, worse than before, overwhelming Fogg, making him drop to his knees. His heartbeat escalates, it feels as though his heart is trying to escape his chest. His bare hands on the ice. He whimpers, like a wounded dog. The wolf man grins wider, presses forward again. Oblivion, sweat on that ivory skin, takes a second step back. Fogg thinks of Roberts, at school. The bullies. Fogg rises. Fury burns the fear. What makes a man. What makes a hero. Cries out as he runs, runs at the German, catching both him and Oblivion by surprise. Smashes into the wolf man, who grunts, in pain or surprise, and goes down on his behind. The fear is lifted as completely as it has come. The man on the ice growls, his face animalistic, strangely beautiful. Oblivion says, Run!

  They run.

  They run through the city of Minsk, the fog wrapped around them, gathering, as if Fogg by will alone could fill up the entire city with it, could hide this obscene invasion from view, the bodies in the street, the burning homes, the advancing tanks. They run and the fear reaches after them but it is weaker now, growing fainter in the distance. At last they reach the outskirts of town. Panting. Hot now. Sweating inside their winter clothes. I hate the goddamned cold, Fogg says. Still not used to swearing. Makes Oblivion smile. We need to get out of here, he says.

  – Seen enough, then?

  Oblivion drops the smile. Looks grim. I think we’ve seen enough, yes, he says. Quietly.

  But they are not yet out of the city.

  39. THE BUREAU 1941

  – You did well, the Old Man says.

  Fogg with a dirty grey beard, Oblivion somehow never needing a shave but his eyes look haggard, his face withdrawn. Their clothes stink. They stink.

  Through Belarus to the Baltic Sea and a waiting fishing boat with signals flashing, through a nighttime journey to Uppsala county in Sweden and there a makeshift runway and a plane—

  Hurried over to the Bureau from the military airfield, then made to wait as the Old Man was busy in the War Rooms. Were given tea. Fogg holds it now, his fingers wrapped around the mug. Shivering despite the warmth of this underground lair.

  – Tell me about this wolf man, the Old Man says.

  Makes notes in a folder. Pen with blue ink. Looks up. A spotter? he says.

  Like himself.

  – Yes, Oblivion says.

  – But more than that?

  – Yes, Oblivion says. Laconically.

  – Do, please, elaborate, the Old Man says.

  – A negator, Oblivion says. The Old Man raises eyebrows. Oh?

  – Somehow he was able to stop my own … Oblivion hesitates.

  – Your forces of disentanglement? the Old Man suggests. Oblivion shrugs. The Old Man licks a finger, turns a page.

  – SS? he asks.

  Fogg frowns. No, he says. The man did not wear uniform. Black leather, no insignia. A gun in a holster but he hadn’t used it. Wore it casually, like decoration.

  – Gestapo, the Old Man says, flatly.

  Across the ice, they saw things they were not meant to see and survive.

  The Old Man pushes the folder at them. A face looks out. Their wolf man. Fogg shudders again. The cold.

  – Brigadeführer Hans von Wolkenstein, the Old Man says. A
dreamy look in his eyes. The grey-haired man stares at them from the photograph. Honorary SS rank, the Old Man says. Attached to the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. Department F.

  – Department F? Fogg says.

  The Gestapo has five departments. A for Enemies, B for Sects and Churches (primary amongst them department B4, dealing exclusively with the Jews), C for Administration and Party Affairs, D for the Occupied Territories (under which Brigadeführer Hans von Wolkenstein would otherwise be assumed to be working, per his appearance in Belarus), and finally E, the department of Counter Intelligence.

  – Department F, the Old Man says.

  – Übermenschen, Oblivion says.

  – Aye, the Old Man says, some poor imitation of a regional accent. Nazi equivalent of our own dear Bureau for Superannuated Affairs.

  – I thought the Nazis show off their Übermenschen, Fogg says.

  The Old Man smiles. They show off some of them, certainly, he agrees. The presentable ones, at least. The most suitably Aryan. For propaganda purposes they have a high value indeed.

  – You really don’t understand, do you, Oblivion says. Fogg says, What. The Old Man watches, that same tolerant smile on his face.

  – The Gestapo is not the SS, Oblivion says. Fogg knows the SS have their own special Übermenschen unit. Their uniform is white, the twin lightning bolts of the SS on their chests within a giant umlauted U. The SS – Schutzstaffel, or Defence Corps – are a military entity. The Gestapo is police …

  – They’re the ones in charge of hunting Übermenschen, Fogg says, whispers, realisation sinking in. The Old Man’s smile is grim. He nods.

  – Brigadeführer Hans von Wolkenstein, he says. Austrian. Early supporter of the National-Socialist Party. A favourite of Adolf Hitler, advanced rapidly through the ranks of the Party before disappearing from view about a year ago. We can get very little information on Department F. We didn’t even know von Wolkenstein was a spotter, until this moment, though we surmised as much …