The Berchtesgaden Debriefing – Chapter 1
The music dies. For a few moments nothing more is heard. At last when the voices break the silence they carry a hollow quality, as of that of a magnetic recording.
Sound does not bring light. The darkness remains.
"For the record, state your name. Please speak clearly."
"Bradley Emmet Crawford."
"Rank?"
"Lieutenant."
"Affiliation within the Organization?"
"Schwarz-neunzehn offensive unit, coordinating officer."
"Describe your psi-classification under the Lowell-Sondeheim system."
"The Institut identifies me as a tactical precognitive. My post-course psi-rating was level alpha prime."
"Thank you; please be seated. Would you prefer that we conduct this session in English, Herr Crawford?"
"It is very kind of you. But I am quite at ease in German."
"Very well. Now. You have provided the Organization with memoranda detailing your discovery; I have them before me. Your technical observations are rigorous and to be commended. Our purpose today is to complete them with a transcript of the – accompanying chronology, as it were – in order that we may collate the statements of the subject with our knowledge of his past experience. In view of such I must ask you to be as complete as possible, and to respond to questions to the best of your ability."
"I understand."
"Please proceed then. From the beginning."
"My first contact with the subject occurred in October of 1988. My cover at the time was as junior attaché to former Deputy Ambassador Joseph Sutton. As such I had been assigned by the Organization to the investigation of a series of irregular monetary transactions. The corporations involved were – I believe still are – of strategic national importance, but I was given to understand that laundering was suspected beyond the endemic political bribery. I traced the middleman to the social circle of one Mara Eikener, an expensive call-girl and adventuress. I was able to arrange for Deputy Ambassador Sutton to be invited to one of her soirées; of course I attended as well."
"This was in Munich."
"Yes."
"Nearly two and a half years ago. You had only recently joined the Organization, had you not?"
"Yes."
In October of 1988, he was a slender, earnest-looking young man in glasses a bit wide for his face. His papers gave him out to be a few years older than he actually was, but not so much that he didn't look it. Nepotism being received in diplomatic circles as a matter of course, his credentials did not arouse much curiosity. He was capable in a sober, Ivy-League way, but never so keen that he trod on any toes. In a large social gathering he would stand somewhere out of the way, unnoticed, watchful. His eyes were an arresting gold behind the lenses, and sometimes they would go too far away to follow.
He stood by the bay window of Mara Eikener's glittering salon with a campari in his hand, unnoticed, watchful.
Listening.
"We have an agreement." Muffled footsteps on carpet, the sound of liquid gurgling from a crystal bottleneck. The voice was that of a senior board member of a recently-privatized energy corporation. "One that will not hold if the present import-control policy continues. You must understand that this has become a matter for concern to the entire governing body."
"The changes have been drafted – ratification is merely a formality." Crawford adjusted the tiny receptor in his ear, a gesture much like brushing hair from his face. It was another speaker now, one that he could not identify, but the accent was pure Bavaria. The sound quality was near-impeccable. "Oppenheim will lean on the caucus a little, and it will go through."
"However, the Italian angle..."
"Not problematical. Allow me to reassure you on that front."
Crawford smiled to himself faintly. "The Italian angle," he repeated under his breath. A flash of vision; he had forty-five seconds before the end of the impromptu conference. He drained his glass and slipped into the throng, making for the other side of the room.
A panning view of the party—
An expensively furnished salon, modelled on (or, perhaps, a relic of) those of the nineteenth century, lit warmly by chandeliers and antique lamps. Mirrors multiplied the ruby glow of wine, the glint of crystal and china from a barely-visible dining room. Unseen strings harmonized discreetly in the background. Men and women in evening dress clustered on the settees – smiles exchanged, snippets of business or flirtation half-heard in Crawford's wake – diamonds flashing with an elegant gesture of the hand, a coy tilt of the head. Occasionally there was a burst of merriment, and voices raised in appeal to the hostess of the soirée.
Crawford followed her with his eyes briefly. She was beautiful, this Fräulein Eikener: perfect long-limbed blondness in a gossamer-rose evening gown. She moved from guest to guest, letting witty words and playful glances drop in her path like pearls from a broken choker, making sure glasses stayed three-quarters filled. An exquisite hostess. Most of the men were prominent in the business world, some were writers or musicians to complete the party, and a great number – he could tell – were in love with her to some extent. Wistfully, flirtatiously, adoringly, hopelessly... By two in the morning they would be gently encouraged to take their leave, and the luckiest from among them would be allowed to pay for her undivided attention. Crawford had yet to see who she would choose that night.
It was entirely charming, in a purposefully old-fashioned way. Crawford thought of the Japanese and their geisha dolls. At least Sutton seemed to be enjoying himself: Crawford could hear him holding forth on his choyé Mahler from beside the mantelpiece, cigar no doubt in hand. The subject could last the ambassador hours.
He passed the two men at the door to the salon.
The energy corporation board member gave him a vague smile of greeting, acknowledging recognition. "Herr Crawford." Crawford inclined his head in return. As the second man brushed past him he shifted the watch on his left wrist, apparently as an adjustment. (One of the pins that held the strap was pressure-sensitive; a quick shutter gave him two three-quarter views and a profile for the SS database to collate.) Then he was in the dimness of the corridor, and away from the crowd.
The dining room lay across the corridor; kitty-corner from the stairs was a small study, furnished in Art Deco style. Crawford had been in this room not forty minutes ago, when his talent had informed him of the interest of the scene about to occur. He stepped around a lacquered Chinese folding screen, felt along the bottom edge of the desk that adjoined it – and his fingers encountered the minitape deck and microphone he had previously taped there, still recording soundlessly.
He smiled again as he detached the electronics set-up from the polished wood. The tape it contained would be enough for a criminal conviction. Of course, there would be no appeal made to common justice, unless one of the officials involved proved obdurate. Then the evidence in his hand might very well find its way into police custody. But SS's interest lay in subtle leverage and arcane influence, in power too diffuse to pinpoint and too pervasive to escape. The moves it made were riddles; the deaths it caused, enigma. Crawford carried a gun under SS's aegis even then, and did not question its use. No, there would be no police involved.
There might be assassinations, however.
He slipped from behind the screen, settled his dinner jacket on his shoulders, and stepped out of the study.
That was when—
A click, probably a Bic lighter. The darkness of the senses lifts somewhat. The soundtrack includes, now, the muted whirring of a tape deck; the scrape of a chair as its occupant straightens. The same voice says, "you mean it was a probe."
"Not exactly. Controlled contact, certainly, but in all other respects... a crude approximation. Primitive..."
"Untrained."
"Yes."
"You recognized it immediately."
"I was shielded. I did some work with empaths during my course of study at the Institut. I was specifically trained to differentiate—"
"Yes, I understand." Paper rustles. The wilful obscurity retreats further: there is a desk on which they are piled, an edgeless surface of polished gleaming wood. There is a taste of cigarettes to the air. "You shield yourself as a matter of course?"
"To a basic extent, yes. It serves to reinforce my training. The exercise of my talent is dependent upon rigorous control if it is to be of appreciable use."
"I see. But this still must have been unexpected."
"It was."
The wall at his back brought him up short. Crawford took a measured breath, centering himself, but did not lower his gun. His gaze flickered from side to side, searching for the intrusion's source: found nothing.
"Come out where I can see you," he said aloud. "I know you're there."
Laughter. Laughter without sound – and a vision flared in his mind, the image as bright and diffuse as fire.
Crawford lowered his gun slowly.
The corridor was dim, cluttered and shadowed by bric-á-brac from the last century: bibelot tables, statuary, rhododendron fronds overhanging the nacred lip of a Chinese vase. Mara Eikener was a connoisseur, or at the very least a collector. (An heiress? Many times over, perhaps.) The only illumination came from the chandeliers beyond the half-ajar doorway. Crawford could hear snatches of laughter from the salon, conversation... He waited, shuttering his sensorium within himself as he'd been taught, but the teasing touch did not return. There was only the low steady ticking of a clock from the study behind him, and a similarly nagging sensation of presence. Seconds passed.
Was he mistaken? Unless he'd startled off whomever it was. Crawford had a hair-trigger reaction to mental interference – he would have endangered his cover, he realised suddenly, had there been witnesses at hand. Perhaps he'd done so already. A non-psi would never have noticed the contact.
Yet the vision—
A glint of light.
Telltale, eye-catching in the penumbra, near the floor beneath one of the ubiquitous lacquer folding screens. Crawford stared, keeping his mind carefully empty, and the errant spark resolved itself-
Into spinning gold—
A heart-shaped charm. A chain about a slender white ankle, shadowed behind the panel's base.
Crawford took several rapid steps and reached into the darkness. There was laughter again, real sound this time, and warm hands caught him by the sleeve and pulled him behind the screen, against a warm slim body.
"You found me," the voice said close to his shoulder. It is a boy-voice, pitched unexpectedly low: mocking, Crawford thought. "Congratulations, mein Herr."
"Invasive telepathy," the man says. A hand pushes a stapled sheaf of papers across the desk. "Rarely encountered in the field, and never at such an advanced age."
"I had only a rough idea of the ramifications at the time." There is light; there had been light all along. Crawford is seated before the desk, posture alert and hands folded before him. He is careful to make eye contact. "I had been taught that it was a relatively rare talent, even within the sub-group of psi communicants."
"You didn't attempt Sondeheim's Number Test?"
"I wasn't aware there was a distinction to be made. I assumed that I was in the presence of a strong empathetic talent, naturally."
"You are conversant with the Dufort and Castegnella cases?"
"I've researched them, yes."
"At the time?"
"No."
"Please continue, then."
It was a moment before Crawford thought to struggle, and so of course he did not. Instead he brought his other arm up and rested the muzzle of the gun against the base of the other's throat, right over the soft dip between his collarbones. Pulse against cold steel – the top two buttons of his shirt were open.
"No sudden movements," he said, and stepped backward. The – boy, it was a boy – dropped his grip on Crawford's arm as soon as they were clear of the screen, but Crawford continued to retreat until his knees bumped the edge of a récamier pushed up against the opposite wall. His assailant leant back against the curving banister of the stairs, grinning in seeming delight.
"You won't shoot me," he said. "It'd make a mess for you, and I haven't done anything."
"Don't surprise me," Crawford said. "I don't take to it well." Twelve, he thought, and a moment later revised his estimate upward. He was slight, certainly, in the way of a boy who had not reached his growth spurt, but there was something in his face that appended a year or two. Fourteen. Very pale. Features that were – irregular, but striking. Triangular face, fine bones, wide mouth. Dressed in a dark, near-military-styled suit that made him look like a pre-war Gymnasium schoolboy, except for the open collar and the gold ankle-bracelet winking over bared feet. Mussy red hair, long enough in front to shadow his eyes. Crawford couldn't be sure in the half-light, but he thought they were green.
Talent said: not a danger. Not now.
Crawford holstered his weapon abruptly. His mind was working fast.
Only the strongest empaths were capable of conducting active probes. It was a talent that developed young, a world of power away from the proliferation of minor sensitivity during puberty, and the window of opportunity before permanent damage was incurred was short: a few months, a year at best. The Institut sifted through referrals from psychiatric specialists across Europe and North America, racing continuously against time. Crawford had been taken to see the new arrivals as part of his training, so he'd recognize the psi signature in the field. Little girls of eight or nine or ten, in several cases eleven, in one case twelve. That one had retreated into herself by the time she was found; she screamed for hours if a hand was laid on her shoulder.
He'd read up on the more extreme cases in private, after that, and found nothing of use or danger to himself. There were only two accounts of true invasive telepathy verified by the Institut in the twentieth century. Both individuals, it seemed, had been discovered by the age of five; both were severely autistic. The immature nervous system had protected itself as best it could. A breeding program had been contemplated, and abandoned.
A boy of fourteen—
"Thirteen," the boy said. Crawford's reaction must have shown, because he ducked his head with the same soundless laugh; Crawford had thrown up too heavy a shield in that moment to tell whether it carried psychically. "You're... interesting, Herr Bradley Crawford. Usually they think I'm too young, not the opposite."
His name. Crawford kept his breathing even. He'd picked up a number. There had been a diagnostic conducted in the Dufort case... "Usually?"
"When they see me," the boy said. He was still smiling. "A lot of boring people come through here. I don't like them, so I don't talk to them."
"I'm flattered," Crawford said, dry despite the redoubled hum of distrust in the back of his mind. Empaths can't probe for verbal patterns or deductive logic, only emotional status and occasional sensorium input – he adjusted his glasses. "You live here?"
The boy shrugged.
"Does anyone else know that you can—" Crawford paused. A thought had come to him: he hasn't asked me what I'm doing here.
As if in response, the boy held up a hand, palm forward. In it was Crawford's minitape deck. He'd shoved it in his outside jacket pocket as he'd exited the study.
Crawford dismissed a ridiculous urge to reach for his holster. He adjusted his glasses again instead, not taking his eyes off the boy.
"There's nothing on that you'd be interested in," he said. "It has nothing to do with you." The boy looked unperturbed.
"But you're interested," he said. "Isn't that the point?"
Pause. "What do you intend to do?"
"Give it back to you, I guess." But he did not move. After a moment Crawford took a step toward him – and stopped. The boy only watched him, resting his elbows on the carved wood. His eyes were bright and calculating.
"You want it back, right?" he said. "What do you intend to do?"
Crawford moved quickly. The boy didn't even try to escape: he laughed and half-twisted his body, shielding the tape behind his back. Crawford reached down and gripped his arm, pinning him against the banister.
"Now—" he said.
The boy caught him by the front of his shirt, pulled him close and kissed him.
The unexpected warmth of lips against his own startled Crawford out of his original purpose – and in that moment something instinctive took hold of him, and he responded, leaning into the kiss. The boy's mouth opened to him, moist and willing and unhurried: he tasted like sweet things, without the sweetness itself. Cinnamon, almonds, cardamom. Crawford fancied the scent would cling to the boy's skin as well. The faintest of aftertastes, elusive...
He was falling. It was untenable. His heartbeat was thundering in his ears. He clenched the arm under his fingers, hard, and broke the kiss. The boy's eyes flickered open at that; they were close enough still that his quickened breath feathered teasingly over Crawford's lips. His irises were a catlike blue-green, filling Crawford's unfocussed vision.
"Don't stop," he said.
Crawford opened his mouth and found no name to conjure with. "You—"
The boy turned his head abruptly toward the salon door. "Oh, fuck," he said, and before Crawford had time to react he'd slipped his grip and was darting up the stairs. Halfway to the top he stopped and tossed something at Crawford, who caught it by reflex: the minitape deck.
"I'll see you," he said, and disappeared into second-storey darkness. Crawford glimpsed a flash of gold and started forward unthinkingly, then stopped with his hand on the banister. A child, he told himself incredulously, a child. And following hard upon, the Organization would... Possibilities gripped at him, vertiginous.
"Herr Crawford?"
He turned.
In the statement that he would submit to his liaison officer later that week, Crawford would make no mention of what he saw next. It was his practice to omit all such visions from his reports. Mara Eikener stood in the rectangle of light cast by the salon door, one hand poised on the jamb. Blood matted her blond hair, pasting it to the crushed side of her skull, trickling in obscenely bright rivulets down the curve of her throat. The pink chiffon of her gown was soaked all down the front with it. Her eyes were unblinking glass; Crawford caught a glimpse of bone through the clotted mess as she tilted her head inquiringly at him.
He closed his eyes before he could see her smile.
"Botschafter Sutton is asking for you," he heard her say. And then, "are you quite all right, Herr Crawford? You—"
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm fine." He steadied himself before opening his eyes again, but the vision had passed. Fräulein Eikener stood pristine and breathing before him, solicitous curiosity in her eyes. "I just... wandered away from the crowd for a moment. I'm afraid I haven't been too sociable tonight..."
His voice sounded hoarse in his own ears. He stopped abruptly – and Mara Eikener's gaze flickered upward, toward the top of the stairs. Her smile did not falter, but Crawford saw tension enter her frame.
She knows.
No more doubt there. The boy was too old to be her son; a brother, perhaps? Crawford could not make out a resemblance. She'll speak to him. Perhaps now, in fact—
The pause was dragging on, unspoken admissions in its wake. He forced a smile to match hers.
"I'd best be getting back, then," he said.
He slipped past her through the door; she stood quite unmoving. Crawford saw without turning his head that the smile had died – would die – from her face, and her hands clench on the fabric of her skirt. It would be a minute or two more before her head would come up, and the train of her gown would sursurrate over the carpet as she started up the stairs.
Tomorrow morning, he thought. There was still his cover at the Embassy to consider tonight. And of what could she suspect him? Doomed as she was – it would not be long, he knew vaguely – what could she do?
Tomorrow.
The view pulls back. The man is not very old; nearing forty perhaps. He has a thin, dour face, and fine lines mesh the skin around his mouth from dragging on tens of thousands of cigarettes. The latest cancer stick in the continuing series is propped on the side of a ceramic ashtray before him, the filtered end resting on the tabletop and the other sending loops of heavy smoke into the air. He raises an eyebrow at Crawford.
"And your actions then?"
"I returned there the next morning." He has a headache, an unusual occurrence. A psychic attack? But his shields are solid. He represses the urge to glance into the corner of the room. "At the time my rank did not extend to having a team on standby, so I took all the measures available to me. I knew the Organization would wish to have the boy taken into custody for observation."
"But you were alone."
"Yes."
"And?"
"They were gone. The house was empty, and further investigation proved them financially untraceable. There were no clues in the building regarding their destination. It seemed to me as if they'd walked out on the spur of the moment and never returned."
"I see. Were they warned, do you believe?"
"No." It may be the fault of the smoke; he has left his own pack behind somewhere, and the scent of his debriefer's cheaper brand provokes in him an unsettling combination of nausea and craving. At the look on the man's face he adds, "I stated in my report at the time that they had been, but my understanding now is that I... underestimated the Eikener woman's knowledge of the Organization. It is obvious from the subject's own accounts that she had prepared extensively for such a contingency, although I believe he was kept ignorant of the bulk of her information."
"Indeed." The man makes a notation on the sheet in front of him – is it a facsimile of Crawford's 1988 report, or is it the original? He cannot tell – and lays it aside. "But we shall never know for sure, shall we." He picks up the cigarette between the knuckles of his index and middle finger and raises it to his lips.
"No." Decidedly it is the smoke. Perhaps he should quit; it is too much of a distraction this way. He has never realized.
But then, only in the absence of supply is addiction ever apparent.
The man exhales a blue cloud. "And your next encounter with the subject?"
"Two months ago. In Amsterdam."
