During the occupation, Teapot set his sixteen men to stand guard with bayonets fixed outside the great hall where the treasures and gifts of five hundred lamaseries are kept. It is a remarkable place, a museum of wonders unknown in all of Europe. There is a library with shelves devoted to manuscripts in a myriad of languages, and there are chests full of amber from the shores of the Northern Sea, carved walrus and ivory tusks, rings with sapphires and rubies from China and India, rough diamonds the size of your fingertip, bags of golden thread filled with pearls, and side-rooms filled with cases containing statues of the Living Buddha made from every precious material under the sun.
Now Teapot is among the most obedient of my officers, but in the course of restoring order to the city and chasing the remaining enemy rabble out into the wilderness it was some days before I could return with the Bogd Khan to inspect his treasures. In that time I am afraid to say that he disgraced himself. Teapot did not steal the Buddha’s treasures, else I would have hanged him as high as any other wretch; but he idly looked through the library, and I fear what he did may turn out for the worse in the long run.
There are, as you can imagine, scrolls and books unnumbered in there, and they include the most remarkable works of sorcery and prophecy imaginable. All the numerous punishments of hell that are reserved for souls who indulge in the sins of the flesh are documented and indeed illustrated in the finest, one might almost say pornographic, detail. It was to these works that Teapot allowed his salacious imagination to draw him.
It is not clear exactly when Teapot found the scroll, but two days after the fall of the palace his sergeant was dismayed to come upon him lying on the floor of the library, crying inarticulately and clutching a crumpled fragment of scripture in his chubby hands. According to the other witnesses, who I have questioned diligently, Teapot showed other signs of distress: bleeding from the eyes, moaning, and clutching his belly.
They put him to bed in the hospital supervised by Dr. Klingenberg, who was minded to euthanize Teapot to spare him from this misery, but wiser counsel prevailed and my cossacks continued to care for him until he began to recover the following day, babbling in tongues and occasionally ululating: “Ieyah! Ieyah!”
On the third day, just as I was on my way back to the palace, Teapot is said to have sat up in bed, whereupon he asked, “What year is it?” Upon being told it was 1920, he collapsed in a dead faint. And although he is now back at his duties, he is not the same. There is a cold intellect in him that was hitherto absent. Before, he was a loyal brute, but limited: he gave no thought to the morrow. Now he anticipates my orders with eerie efficiency, organizes the men under his command to meet any contingency, shows an unerring ability to sniff out spies—indeed, he has begun to unnerve me, the more so since I discovered he has other qualities. It is commonplace for war to degrade a good man to the level of a brute, but unique in my experience for it to elevate one such as Ensign Burdokovskii.
Consequently, I would like to ask a favor of you, dear mother.
Enclosed with this letter I send a copy of the Buddhist scripture that so turned Teapot’s mind. It is written in an archaic dialect of Barghu-Buryat. I have heard that Professor Sartorius of the Schule des Toten Sprachen in Berlin has some expertise in material of this nature, and I would deeply appreciate it if you could forward the document to him and commission a translation, at my expense! This is a matter that I am extremely reluctant to entrust to any of my political associates, for they scheme and plot incessantly, and I am sure there are many who believe that I dabble in the blackest sorcery; I would not like to place such incendiary ammunition in their hands. I implore you not to soil your precious eyes with the contents of this scroll, for it is illustrated with such vile and obscene diagrams that I would be tempted to burn it, were it not for the effect it seems to have on those who read it! But it is for that very reason that I urgently need to obtain the advice of a savant who might tell me what those who read the fragment become. And so, I commit it to your gentle hands.
8.
CLUB ZERO
I GET HOME AN HOUR AND A HALF LATE, BONE-TIRED, BAMBOOZLED, and bothered. I haven’t had a good day at the office, all things considered: a confusing briefing on Russian OCCINT activities in Western Europe, an old acquaintance who doesn’t recognize me anymore, the discovery that the Fuller Memorandum is missing, and now Panin’s evident patronizing contempt for my lack of insight. I’ve got a feeling that all the pieces of the jigsaw are within my grasp, if only I could figure out where they lie—probably dragged under the sofa by an invisible cat, knowing my luck.
It’s after eight as I turn my key in the lock, pass my left hand over the ward, and slope into the front hall. The lights are on in the kitchen, and there’s a pleasant smell—Mo is roasting a chicken, I think. “Hello?” I call.
“Up here!” She’s upstairs and she doesn’t sound pissed off, which is a relief.
I dump my jacket and take the stairs two at a time. The bathroom door’s open and she’s stewing herself in the tub in an inordinate amount of green foam and some kind of mud mask, so that she looks a little like the creature from the black lagoon. “Did you get my text?” I ask.
“Yes. Who was the Addams Family reference about?”
I do a double take: “What—Oh shit.” I shake my head. “Never mind.” Obviously she can’t read my mind, otherwise there’d have been an Artist Rifles’ brick staking out the pub before I’d taken my first mouthful of beer. I’m losing my touch. “I’m screwing up,” I admit.
“You’re . . . ? Huh. Bet you I’ve had a more boring day.”
“Boring, maybe; unproductive, hardly.”
She snorts and blows a handful of bubbles my way. “I spent most of the morning and afternoon sitting on a wooden stool, watching a burned-out sixty-something expert mumble into a dictaphone. Then I had to run for a meeting. After that I looked in on the office but Mike wasn’t there, so I came home. Picked up a free-range bird at Waitrose; it’s in the oven now. I was hoping you might want to fix some side helpings?”
“I can do that.” I glance at the bath. “You going to be long?”
“Half an hour at least. I put the chicken in before I came up here; you want to look in on it in fifteen minutes or so.”
I’d rather spend my time here with her, but I can tell the difference between an order and a request: I sketch a salute. “By the way,” I say, trying to sound casual about it, “I’ve been stuck with Angleton’s work on BLOODY BARON, and I’m finding it a bit confusing. And nobody’s sent me the briefing papers on the other job yet, the one—you know. Last week.”