The Somme, late August
Another few days and they'd have been inching through the mud, Nigel mused as they crawled on their bellies, avoiding giant pot holes of dry, clay soil. There wasn't a star in the sky, and barely a moon to see by – perfect really, for a night patrol, less chance of getting sniped at by the Fritz, or your own.
Lieutenant Appleby paused immediately ahead and Griffin stopped dead, holding his breath at the rustling sounds somewhere to their left; another patrol, no doubt, from the other side. Nigel glowered through the darkness at them, wishing, and not for the first time, that he had Druitt's powers to surprise them with. Funny, what crops up in the mind at times like these – he'd not thought about John for a goodly long while before the crack of war. Now, it seemed, he couldn't quite escape being reminded of the bastard at every turn.
They waited with bated breath, clutching their guns, or in Appleby's case one of the grenades on his side – a fact which Griffin had long since lost all surprise for in this hell hole. To their relief, the whispering trail of bodies across the ground grew distant, and at the Lieutenant's signal they started off again. Private Cooper drew level with him as they reached the German wire, hands steady as it gripped the vicious stuff and cut through. Nigel looked to his commanding officer for his cue, a nod of the head, a hand signalling how many minutes he had. Time to go in.
He stripped off the anonymous boiler suit they'd been given, leaving behind everything, even his weapons, as he slipped into nothingness. His invisibility was nothing new to his platoon, and it seemed forever now since the last rookie to join them had gasped at the sight, bringing down all hell around them. The chill air was not unpleasant against his skin; it helped, in fact, to keep his nerves. A violent urge to stay precisely where he was, flat against the earth, threatened to fix him to the spot, just like it always did. No matter how many times he was called upon to do it, the Sergeant felt like he might vomit every time.
Gritting his teeth, he fought every life-preserving instinct, and stood up. If it wasn't bloody suicide he'd have stood there, hands on his hips, and laughed – laughed at them all, with the madness of someone beyond all help. It was ridiculous, gut-wrenchingly stupid; that he should be able to stand upright on this treacherous stretch of no-man's land, where men had died in their hundreds, and draw not even one single bullet. God it made him sick to his stomach.
He breathed, as if he hadn't been doing so before, holding it in again as if it might give his position away. Like some bright-eyed Geri would put such small signs together and reach such a startling conclusion.
He had a job to do.
Step by careful step he crossed the last few feet in less time than any man could under fire, like a child investigating the river bank, as he clambered down cautiously into the enemy trench. The sentry was barely three yards away, machine gun waiting, staring out into the sparse landscape with a weary look about him. Either side of where Nigel had come down men were scattered, some sleeping, others on watch and struggling to keep their eyes open. Luckily the trenches they'd built were wider than the British lines, and he could pass their outstretched legs with ease. He was an old hand at creeping about – probably been doing it since before these lads were born, and his practiced step was so quiet it was only ever mistaken for a rat scurrying about for a nocturnal snack.
It had been some time, before they'd recognised his unique talents here on the front. Before they'd been shipped off to France he was just Sergeant Griff, same as any other non-commissioned officer: beholden with the same respect, fear and derision as any of them. Then came the shelling, and the battle, and the returns he'd made into the nightscape to haul back as many of the wounded as he could, when no one else would. The Captain would've threatened him with court martial, had he not died five seconds after they'd entered the German line. A bullet straight between the eyes had tipped him backwards against their entry point, so that Private White had made his bones crack above the gunfire as he followed him in.
The lieutenant had been more sympathetic, quizzing him relentlessly on why he'd done it, and how, until he'd finally relented. Now he was set apart from his comrades, held aloft like a mascot, and put to the same old dirty work he always ended up with… not that he didn't get a kick out of it and all, but it had been nearly thirty years. Nigel was really regretting ever asking Watson to help him improve his German all those years ago – even if it was to insult Tesla with more variety and prove himself capable of reading more than just a Chemistry book. Speaking of which, would it really have killed the son of a bitch to give them a hand over here? Tesla hadn't even replied to his letter – and Jesus that was almost two years ago now.
Griffin paused at the thought, momentarily; time had snuck up on him again.
Of course, he could hardly blame Blount for putting him to it. There wasn't a single battalion on the line which could provide as accurate information as him, alone, in the darkness. To the north and south of them men were throwing bombs haphazardly, fighting off Geris with knuckledusters and grabbing Privates who knew next to nothing, shooting them in the arm and dragging them over no man's land. Or creeping close enough just to overhear sentries complain about the rain, and the rats, and everything else they all had to deal with. Meanwhile Sergeant Griffin, absolutely starkers, could get into officer's bunkers without a shot fired, and occasionally threaten one into taking himself over the top… or else find a blade lodged deep inside his back.
He almost passed them this time. It was so dark he couldn't find the entrance; that was until he'd heard the posh Prussian dialect peeling out of the alcove on his right and a less specific accent making some response.
"…a very special weapon."
Christ, had he just hit jackpot or were they talking about getting seen to by the ladies on leave? Griffin assessed how tight the space was inside, whether they were moving about before making his move.
The other officer snorted in disbelief, "Of course."
"Of course you don't believe me, why would you?" He sounded drunk – not, incapable-of-firing-straight drunk, but certainly the liberal-with-his-words variety.
As he snuck in against the reinforced walls Nigel could see that the Captain was leaning back in his chair, notebook across his lap, sketching in charcoal as the junior officer – still fresh as a daisy – eyed him sceptically. The Captain, in comparison, had the jaded confidence of a career soldier. As if he lived and breathed for the sweat and dust, the bloody terror of battle, and the silence of the last few days had been driving him mad. His blonde hair stuck up on ends, hazel eyes reflecting the dark pinch of a knowing smugness.
"It is from a… very ancient culture," he explained as the younger man sat opposite him, eyes flicking momentarily to his colleague trying to sleep on one of the beds, "older even than Rome. And it's going to end the war."
Nigel got the impression that he wasn't entirely happy about the possibility, either. His voice thickened with an un-Prussian-like inflection he couldn't quite place.
"How exactly?" the scepticism was moderated out of fear for the officer's rank, but candid nonetheless, "It looks like a spear, last I looked into my hist-"
"By controlling. people's. minds," he intoned morosely, cutting him off. The second lieutenant chuffed, but his captain interrupted once again, before he could voice his derision, "Oh no Faber, you should believe it…" he pointed a charcoaled finger at him with a squint, "a friend of mine, from my old university told me all about it…" Griffin listened closer, feeling his heartbeat quicken as the Captain lowered his voice against the ears outside their door, "how they plan on using it to end the war… it's curious really," he spat derisively, "apparently it was a Jew who figured it all out."
Nigel raised an eyebrow at that – he hadn't heard that much vitriol for a Hebrew since he was traipsing around the East End with Watson, trying to figure out the Ripper case. It seemed the younger officer also shared Griffin's reservations, distaste creeping into his face. Who knew, maybe he even was one! That would be bloody ironic.
"He's having you on!" he sipped out of the chipped cup in his dirtied hands.
"Oh ho, my friend does not joke Faber – terribly dry fellow Neurath, like most statisticians." He smiled bitterly at the memory, eyes cast on his depiction again, "You'll see, in nine months' time this war will be all over, the dawn of a new age – and we shall be obsolete, left to rot in the gutter."
"Sure, right," the tremble in the Lieutenant's voice was no doubt an echo of the same distant foreboding Nigel had felt at the Captain's sincerity, only Griffin had the misfortune of knowing as a fact that crazier things had happened. "Even if that could control our minds, how do they expect to control the minds of all of our enemies? They fight us from one end of Europe to the other!"
The elder officer barked a laugh, "There are more things between Heaven and Earth."
Realising what he'd said, Griffin felt a shiver at the all-too-familiar misquotation. A corrupted Shakespearean passage which Gregory had always been fond of breaking out on occasions such as this, particularly when there was some young buck like, say, HG Wells thoughtlessly stumbling into what was now the Sanctuary. It had, until this moment, always resonated positively with Nigel, but to hear it from this snake's mouth, in this place, was ominous to say the least.
Eying his comrade conspiratorially, the Captain continued to elaborate for his ensnared audience of one, "They say that the kings in possession of this artefact stayed young on the blood of men," his eyes glimmered with a mixture of hate and awe, and lust for power, "their talons cut like rapiers, and their armies could wander the Black Forest in the dead of night without encumbrance. Can you imagine? An enemy who could survive the most heinous wounds, heal them, in moments? A Tommy that could get back up once you'd put a bullet in his lung, and savage you like a dog whilst all your friends tried to put him down?"
Every one of Griffin's muscle tensed, his stomach turning to water – reminded of Nikola's final violent outburst after Helen's test medication hadn't quite gone as planned. Sanguine Vampiris. He was definitely alluding to the vampires… and so far he hadn't gotten a thing wrong. This was bad... very bad.
"Sounds like they would've put old Dracula to shame, no?" the younger officer laughed.
The Captain grumbled sulkily, sinking into the alcohol more fully than before so that all he could manage was a simple shrug of his shoulders. "Believe what you will, but I'd shoot that man if I could, that Jew… nothing, no one, should have that kind of power, not even if it gets us out of this rotting cesspit calling itself a war…"
The sentiment did little to comfort Griffin, especially as the Captain's ear pricked at the sudden commotion raised outside. Shit, here come the cavalry, thought Nigel – wondering how it had already gotten to ten minutes.
"Sir! Sir!" a private barged in and Nigel just had time to work out where he might stand without causing a physical barrier, "A patrol."
The two officers glanced at each other and stood in a swift, communal movement, grabbing for their hats and weapons, doing up their uniform buttons as they did so, before hurrying out to the disturbance. The drawing paper was left on the table, abandoned, the sketch lain on top. Nigel grabbed it, scrunching it up so it was hidden in his hand, before hurriedly searching the beds and packs for diaries and letters yet to be censored. Outside he could hear gunfire and shouts, in German and English, bombs and grenades, and the mechanical clack, clack, clack of machine gun fire. He'd be heading back through the flames alright.
Shoving the precious documents into a bag, or some fabric he soon turned into such, he ducked out into the fray. They were so caught up in the fight, that it was a while before he heard the shocked gasp of some Geri Private, as he noticed the floating bag.
"Hey, Wilheim…"
Nigel span around, seeing the guy who looked about ready to piss himself, whilst his companion's eyes bulged in realisation.
"What the hell is tha-"
"Ghost?!"
Chuckling Nigel dropped the bag for a moment and grabbed both their heads, smacking their helmets together so hard their vision blurred. "Boo!" he teased, reclaiming his booty with an impish grin, before high-tailing it and overtaking his retreating colleagues at a full blown run. The air flooded his lungs, feet threading their way across uneven soil, all the while praying he didn't impale them on the twisted remains of shells, or slide over a dud. A flare shot out in an attempt to catch his brothers at arms and Nigel threw himself into a shell hole, protecting himself from the inevitable rounds fired off.
He stayed there, pressed down by the bullets like he had been on the first attack, only this time he had no helmet, no rifle, no shoes. A cry from the distance he had already run across rang against the quietened guns, followed by the sharp snipe of a German rifle silencing the groans of pain. Another man lost. Griffin found he didn't have it in him to be sorry anymore. It was simply a matter of fact.
Eventually he decided they'd given up taking pot-shots at the dead, and shimmied his way out of the hole. It wasn't pleasant, the earth scraping and scratching the most inconvenient of places, but with the bag in tow, and the Boche on alert, he wasn't quite as invisible as he would have liked. He was almost there, at the wire, when a bullet whistled past his rear end and managed to graze him.
"Bloody hell!" he wheezed, grappling over the edge of the trench and letting himself fall heavily.
His fellow Tommies parted ways at the sound, trying to work out where their invisible friend had landed. The odd pattern of mud and blood was the only sign – the bag having rolled onto the feet of Lieutenant Appleby himself.
Griffin rubbed a hand over his bum before he could even remember that with what he probably had on his hands Magnus would've been screaming at him not to infect the wound. "Jesus, bloody, fucking-" he hissed.
"Quite done Sergeant?"
Nigel managed to bite his lip as he hopped on the spot, trying to find a way to rest which didn't involve sitting. He growled in pain, waiting for the officer to throw a rug in the direction of his voice before allowing himself back into the visible spectrum.
"Just about sir."
There was a relieved laugh from the entire section, the Privates looking on with a pride and admiration Nigel didn't really feel he deserved, but enjoyed nonetheless. It was some reparation, at least, for the occasional bullet scrape and running around naked in the cold.
"Bit close though - think the Boche got round my rear."
Another round of chuckles and guffaws filled the whole place with a momentary upward feeling. As if they were just enjoying a night in the pub on the corner, and not stuck in some God-forsaken field on the edge of France.
"You watch out Serge, I heard they got a likin' for all that buggery!"
They laughed, and Nigel joined them, lying in the dirt and dreaming of the nurse that almost certainly wasn't going to be putting her delicate hands on his backside to stitch him up.
"Good job, Griffin," Appleby actually sounded impressed as he rifled through the luggage, though Nigel realised, he was still carrying the drawing scrunched up in his hand, "Private Lawrence-"
"Yes sir?"
"Help him up man; we can get him fixed in the dugout."
Boy was he looking forward to the two or three hours of restless shut-eye coming his way.
Two weeks later…
Of course he had told Captain Mayhew almost as soon as the officers were alone together, about the severity of what he had heard… omitting a few key facts of course. They trusted him, however, and couldn't deny the very real possibility of Griffin's concerns becoming reality, so they had notified the authorities of the encounter, urging them to seek assistance from the Sanctuary in London. He'd shown them the sketch too, to convince them, but thought it best not to let it get sent off with the rest of the papers, and slipped it into his own things just before the intelligence package was sent. Like he was going to let some idiot general decide how important that was, oh no, he wanted Watson and Magnus to see this before it got buried in some bureaucratic crypt.
So when Mayhew asked him, quite pointedly, to take a seat that evening he half wondered whether the game was up. The man did, after all, have a letter in his hand and a weary, hollow look about his eyes.
"Rum, Griffin?" he asked, plucking out the bottle and twisting off the cap to offer a measure.
Still beholding his commanding officer with suspicion Nigel gave a brief nod in acceptance, and received a draught.
"What's this all about Captain?"
He was starting to worry him, the depressed set of Mayhew's shoulders, the slouch. "I'm rather sorry old man," his murky gaze held, "we'll be losing you shortly –" Nigel held his nerve and didn't flinch, though he feared the worst, and his jowl hardened with it, "to an intelligence division."
His surprise was evident, as was the sudden pang of sadness at being taken away, "Oh. I see…" did he dare to hope, perhaps… "it's that weapon, isn't it?"
The Captain nodded, watching his friend and colleague with sympathy, and more than a little regret.
"Well," Griffin sighed in resignation – he wasn't one to pretend that he could change things which were clearly out of his hands. These days, acceptance was his forte. "At least they're taking my instincts seriously."
As he sipped his drink he missed Mayhew's flash of disbelief, "No, they're taking your abilities seriously."
Nigel's head snapped back, mind whirring, realising that they had told them everything they knew. He fought against the feeling of betrayal but it was still there.
"I'm sorry Griff but what choice did I have? How else do I explain just how much they should take heed of your instincts unless I impress upon them just how different, special, you are? Look I don't blame you for hating me-"
"I never said I did," He interrupted, taking another draught of the alcohol and working out what he might expect in the lion's den. God, it was exactly what he had feared when he'd signed up.
"I reckon they've suspected for some time Sergeant…" Nigel paused and tried not to look at him, "your name seems to have rung a few bells, in the heads of some rather high-up bods."
He eyed his Captain with more coldness than he ever had, the cynical jade of rather too many years in and out of trouble finally making his appearance from behind the façade. There was a story there, several in fact, and all rather long.
Certainly none he wanted to share with the man who had – through no fault of his own – effectively sold him out. Oh Magnus was always trying to make him stop thinking of the government as the enemy, but he couldn't, he just couldn't. Maybe he was a communist after all, but the day he stopped questioning the motives of the great and not-so-good was the day he became an empty shell.
In the meantime, here he was, about to become their agent: a patsy to their madness, and the most dangerous of his gut-feelings just would not relent in repeating the German Captain's words in his head…
"…this war will be over, the dawn of a new age – and we shall be obsolete…"
The Battle of the Somme, (1st July – 18th November 1916) was, on its first day, the worst day in British Military history.
A joint allied offensive of French and British troops, the aim was to relieve the French at Verdun and make substantial gains from the Germans which would force them out of France. In the end, the Germans withdrew to the Hindenberg Line – an even more heavily fortified position 40 miles to the east.
On the first day alone more than 19,000 British soldiers were killed in action.
Over the four months there were more than 1,000,000 casualties,
146,431 allied soldiers, and 164,055 Germans lost their lives.
Author's Note: The only thing I wanted to say is that I really think the reason Clara and her mother lived in fear is because Griffin's skills were noticed by the espionage community and intermittently in his life, he was sought out and dragged into using those skills – running was the only way his daughter could escape that life for herself, whereas Griffin had never run away from it per se, but played the game. Just my two cents anyway. :)
So what is this mysterious weapon?! Care to find out? Follow Vienna in Springtime, coming soon!
Edited: 25/01/15 – minor touch ups and a little time adjustment. I realised that 6 months for the weapon to be ready was not only a little short but made Vienna a bit ridiculous. So I've changed it to 9.