The Devils of D-Day

FOUR

In winter, the valley of the Sussex Ouse is grey with mist, and you can hardly see the long backs of the Downs that surround it on both sides. At the head of the valley, you can make out the cluttered rooftops of Lewes, with its dark tumble-down castle, and from there the river Ouse flows indifferent and colourless between raised banks, sliding towards the sea. As we drove out of Newhaven and headed north along the west bank of the river, it was almost too dusky to see anything, but we could make out blotted clumps of trees, and patches of half-melted snow on the fields.

I kept the window of the car open. The English countryside in winter has a distinctive flat smell to it, mingled with the sharp aroma of woodsmoke from log fires; whereas French fields always smell of dung and frost. Madeleine strained her eyes to catch the road-sign for Strudhoe, and kept reminding me nervously to drive on the left. In the back, the copper-and-lead chest rattled softly and ominously against the side of the car as we bounced over the twisting roads.

“There!” said Madeleine. “That’s it! Next on the right!”

I saw the sign flash past in the light of my yellow French headlamps, and I put on the brakes. The turning was almost hidden by overhanging branches and narrow flint walls, and when I negotiated the Citröen across the main road and down towards the village, I felt as if we were disappearing down a rabbit-hole.

We drove slowly past whitewashed houses with ancient clay-tile roofs; tiny walled gardens and narrow brick pavements. The village was only twenty or thirty houses, all of them hundreds of years old, and I almost drove right through it and down to the fields before I realized that we’d arrived. I stopped the car, and pulled on the handbrake.

Madeleine said, “I wonder where the vicarage is.”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s going to be easier to get out and look for it on foot.”

She reached over and held my hand tightly. “Oh, God, Dan, I’m scared.”

I switched off the engine. It was only then that we heard the soft, subtle noises from the trunk at the back. We sat tense and silent in our seats, staring at each other in horror, and then we heard Elmek’s dreadful whispering voice again.

“We are near, aren’t we?”

I said nothing.

Elmek insisted: “We are near, aren’t we?”

Madeleine nodded at me, encouraging me to answer, and I said in a taut, strained voice: “Yes. Yes, we’re near.”

“You have done well. You have found the Reverend Taylor quickly. I will reward you, you know. I will give you the power to snap a man’s neck, if that is what you want. Or to thrust knives and razors into a girl’s sex. You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”

I closed my eyes in desperation, but Madeleine squeezed my hand and whispered, “Agree, Dan. All you have to do is agree.”

I said loudly: “Yes, Elmek. I’d enjoy that.”

Elmek laughed. Then it said, “Are you going to find the Reverend Taylor now? I can feel him! He’s close by!”

“Yes, we’re going to find him.”

“And you won’t do anything foolish, will you? I am sure that the Reverend Taylor’s house contains as many knives as Father Anton’s. Just remember Antoinette. Didn’t she scream! didn’t those knives and skewers hurt her!”

I swallowed, painfully. “Yes,” I said. “They did. They hurt her very much.”

The devil laughed with a soft, creaking noise that made me shudder. I said, “Come on, Madeleine. Let’s go and find the Reverend Taylor,” and I opened the door of the car.

As I stepped out, Elmek whispered from out of its locked trunk, “Remember—the sun has set. Your ring of hair no longer protects you. So tread wisely!”

I climbed out of the car into the cold night air. There was a single street lamp by the corner of an old weatherboard house, shining dimly through a halo of fog. You could tell we were close to a river by the bone-chilling cold, and an almost imperceptible movement in the air, as if ghosts were brushing past us, unseen and unheeded. I coughed.

Together, we walked up the sloping street. We looked right and left, but the village was deserted. Far away, across the other side of the river, we heard a train clattering towards Newhaven, and for a moment we saw the lights of its windows through the trees.

Madeleine said, “Dan—there’s a sign here.”

I peered through the fog. On one of the old flint walls, there was a white-painted notice reading: “St. Katherine’s Church & Vicarage”. It pointed uphill into the gloom. I turned back for a moment and looked at our Citröen, parked at an angle beside a low hedge, and then I said: “All right, then. We’d better see if the Reverend Taylor’s at home.”

My mouth felt as if I was chewing furry caterpillars. I reached out for Madeleine’s hand, and we walked as slowly as we could, but it only took a few steps before St. Katherine’s came into view around the houses—an ancient steepled church with a moss-covered lych-gate and a graveyard of leaning headstones. Close beside it, its windows warmly lit, was a Queen Anne vicarage, fronted with shiny blue-black bricks. There was a white porch trailed with leafless creeper, and an imposing black front door, as glossy as a coffin.

We walked across the street and approached the porch as quietly as we could. It somehow seemed sacrilegious to march around this silent fog-bound English village talking in strident voices. Madeleine leaned forward to read the engraved brass plaque on the door, and whispered, “There it is, Dan. The Reverend P. Woodfall Taylor.”

I pulled her closer, and kissed her cheek. She smelled of French perfume and soap. She said “Your nose is cold.” Then I lifted the weighty brass knocker and struck it twice. Across the road, someone switched on a bedroom light.

Inside the vicarage, I heard doors opening and closing. Then the sound of someone walking towards the door. A key was turned in the lock, and then a slice of light fell across the path, and an elderly face appeared at the crack in the doorway.

“Yes?”

I said, uncertainly: “Are you the Reverend Taylor, sir?”

“That’s correct. Did you want to see me?”

I coughed. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. But there’s something I have to discuss.”

The old man looked at me suspiciously. He had a crest of wiry white hair, and that ruddy, well-polished face that always makes me think of English clergy as a boxful of Carolina apples. He was wearing a clerical collar and carpet slippers, and a pair of shiny grey pants that looked as if he’d pressed them under the mattress. There were deep indentations at the side of his nose where he usually wore spectacles, and that was probably why his pale, bulging eyes were regarding me so fixedly.

“You’re American, aren’t you?” the vicar asked, in precise tones. He even pronounced “aren’t” as “ah-runt”. He said: “You’re not from the Mormons? Because I’m afraid I have nothing to say to the Mormons.”

“I’m not a Mormon, sir.”

“They’re a terrible pest, you know. And all this ridiculous nonsense about Moroni and Boroni.”

Madeleine said, “We’ve come about the tank.”

The vicar swivelled his jowly head in his stiff clerical collar and blinked at her. “The tank? How very odd.”

“Why is it odd?” I asked him. I wondered if he, like Eloise, had felt some kind of premonition or psychic wave.

“Well,” said the Reverend Woodfall Taylor, “they only came around to empty it on Tuesday.”

I stared at him uncomprehendingly and he stared back at me.

“The septic tank,” he explained. “Isn’t that what you meant?”

If I hadn’t felt so sick and serious about Elmek, I think I could have laughed. But all I could say was: “Not that tank, sir. The tank you once said prayers over in Normandy, during the war.”

His mouth slowly opened, as if some strong invisible hand was pulling his jaw down. He said, perplexed: “Normandy? The tank in Normandy?”

I nodded. “It’s been opened, Mr. Taylor. The devil’s got out.”

He stared at me in absolute slow-motion horror. Then he opened the door wide, and almost dragged us both into his cluttered little hall, among the crowded umbrella-stand and grandfather clock and coat-rack hung with ecclesiastical raincoats and hats. He slammed the door behind us, and locked it.

“You’d better come through,” he said worriedly, and ushered us into his sitting-room. “My wife is out tonight, organising a beadle drive for the women’s institute, and that’s probably just as well.”

The sitting-room smelled of pipe-smoke and logs. There was a wide open hearth, in front of which toasted a marmalade cat and three shabby armchairs. One wall of the room was lined with books like With Net And Specimen Jar In Lahore and The Way Of Christ Vol. IX, and on the chimney-breast was a muddy oil painting of the Sussex Downs at Fulking. The Reverend Taylor said: “Sit down, please, sit down. Perhaps I can get my woman to make you a cup of coffee. Or there’s whisky, if you prefer.”

“A whisky would be wonderful,” I told him. “We came all the way over from France this morning.”

The vicar went to an antique sideboard and took out three ill-matched glasses. He filled each with neat Vat 69, and brought them over to the fireside with trembling hands. He swallowed his where he stood, wiped his mouth with a crumpled handkerchief, and said, “Cheers.”

Madeleine said: “we’re looking for your help, Mr. Taylor. We know something about the devil, but not much. Ever since the war, it’s had a terrible effect on our village.”

“Oh, dear,” said the Reverend Taylor. “I told them this business would come to a bad end. I told them a hundred times. But oh no, they never listened. You do your part, they said, and we’ll take care of ours.”

“Who were they?” I asked him.

The Reverend Taylor looked at me in surprise. “My dear fellow, I couldn’t possibly tell you that. Quite out of the question. I was bound by the Official Secrets Act, and unless I hear to the contrary, I still am.”

“Mr. Taylor,” I told him, “I don’t like to sound offensive, but this young lady and I are both in serious danger because of that tank, and I’m afraid the Official Secrets Act is going to have to go where the monkey put his nuts.”

There was a silence. A log in the crackling fire shifted and dropped, and a shower of sparks flew up the chimney.

The Reverend Taylor said, “I’m afraid I’ve never really understood that expression.”

Madeleine leaned forward intently. “Mr. Taylor,” she said, “you have to help us. The devil is threatening to kill us both, unless we help it to find its brethren.”

“It’s name is Elmek,” I said quietly. “The devil of sharp knives and cuts. If we don’t bring all thirteen devils together again, it has promised us the worst death that anyone could think of.”

The vicar sat back in his chair. His eyes went from Madeleine to me and back again. Then he said, “You know about it, don’t you? You know about it already.”

“Only some of it. Just a few fragments of information we managed to get together in France, and some good guesswork by Father Anton.”

“Father Anton!” said the Reverend Taylor, brightening. “I had no idea that he was still alive! I’m amazed! How is he? He was so kind to me during the war, you know. A real gentleman of the cloth.”

“Father Anton died last night, Mr. Taylor. He was killed when Elmek got loose.”

The Reverend Taylor dropped his gaze. “Oh,” he said quietly. “I’m very sorry.”

I said: “Mr. Taylor, more people are going to get hurt unless you can tell us about these devils. Father Anton said they were probably the thirteen devils that terrorised Rouen in 1045. They were exorcised by Cornelius Prelati, and sewn into sacks, but that was all he could discover.”

The Reverend Taylor sadly blew his nose. “He was a clever man, Father Anton. Yes, he was absolutely right. They were the thirteen devils of Rouen. Les ireizn diables de Rouen.”

“But how did they get into American tanks?” asked Madeleine. “I don’t understand it at all.”

The vicar shrugged. “I understood very little of it myself. It all happened a long time ago, when I was a very enthusiastic young vicar, and I had just been appointed to my first church in Sussex.”

“Can you tell us about it?” I asked. “We’ll keep it to ourselves, you know, if you’re really worried about the Official Secrets Act.”

The Reverend Taylor looked up at me. “Well,” he said, “I suppose there’s no harm, since you already know so much about it. Would you care for some more whisky? No? Well, I’ll have one.”

We waited in silence while the vicar poured himself another drink. Then he came over and sat by the fire, and stared into the red-hot caverns of logs and branches, a man remembering hell.

“What you have to know about this part of Sussex,” he said, “was that it bore the brunt of the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066. All this valley was occupied, and Lewes became the seat of William de Warrenne, who was one of William the Conqueror’s most trusted officers. The castle at Lewes was built by de Warrenne, and on the southern slopes of the town an immense Priory was constructed, one of the largest ecclesiastical buildings ever erected in England. In its time, it was even greater than Canterbury Cathedral.”

The Reverend Taylor swallowed half a glass of whisky, and patted his lips with the back of his sleeve.

“Of course, when Henry the Eighth broke with Rome, the Priory was dissolved, and most of its stones were pilfered by local people to build houses. But the Priory kept some of its secrets for many centuries afterwards. It was only when Victorian railway engineers came to excavate the site where the Priory had stood, to build a line to Brighton, that they came across several remarkable things.”

I looked up at the clock on the Reverend Taylor’s mantelpiece. Eight o’clock. I wondered how long Elmek would stay patient in his medieval trunk. Madeleine touched my hand, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.

The Reverend Taylor said, “First of all, they found the tomb of William de Warrenne’s wife, Gundrada, whose burial place was unknown until then. This discovery was well-publicised. But there was another find, which wasn’t publicised at all. As they dug deeper, they found a sealed vault, chiselled deep into the chalk, and this contained thirteen ancient sacks of bones.”

Madeleine whispered, “The thirteen devils.”

“Precisely,” the vicar nodded. “The thirteen devils, the disciples of Adramelech. And according to words engraved on the lid of the vault, they had been brought across the Channel from Rouen by William de Warrenne as devils of war, concealed in strange suits of armour. He had unleashed them at Senlac, the field on which the Battle of Hastings was fought, and they had flown on Harold and his English soldiers with such ferocity that the battle was won in a matter of hours.”

The Reverend Taylor turned to me, his ruddy face made redder by the heat from the fire.

“I expect you know the story that William’s archers fired their arrows into the air, so that they landed amongst the English. Well, they were not arrows, but devils; and the thing that tore out Harold’s eyes was a beast from hell.”

I took out a cigarette, my first for a whole day, and lit it. I asked the Reverend Taylor: “That was nine hundred years ago, wasn’t it? How did you get involved?”

He looked up. “My oldest church records showed that William de Warrenne had somehow struck a bargain with the devils. If the devils helped the Normans conquer England, he would give them his wife Gundrada as a sacrifice to Adramelech. That’s why the devils came to Lewes, and that’s why Gundrada died when she did. But there were powerful French exorcists at the Priory, and they managed to quell the evil spirits, and sew them up again in sacks. It was only when the railway engineers opened up the vault that they saw the light of day once more.”

“What happened to them then?”

The Reverend Taylor finished his whisky. “They were taken to what are now the vaults of St. Thaddeus, by night, and sealed away by seven Roman Catholic priests. This, apparently, was what it took to keep them from breaking out.”

I whispered, “Father Anton tried to seal the devil away on his own. My God, if only we’d found this out earlier.”

“A single priest would not have sufficient power,” said the Reverend Taylor. “It had to be seven, and they had to invoke seraphim to help them. The thirteen devils of Adramelech were not to be played with.”

“And then what?” asked Madeleine. “How did the Americans find out about them?”

“I was never really sure, my dear,” answered the vicar. “I found out the story myself, and I wrote a short article about it in my parish magazine, in 1938. I can’t imagine that my little publication ever reached as far as Washington, but some very mysterious American gentlemen got in touch with me in 1943, and asked me a great many questions about the devils and the vaults and what could be done to control them.”

“And you told them?” I asked.

“I told them all I knew, which wasn’t very much. I didn’t think about it for a while, but in January, 1944, I received a letter from Bishop Angmering, saying that Allied forces had a patriotic interest in the devils of Rouen, and that I was to give them every co-operation possible.”

The Reverend Taylor was obviously disturbed by his memories. He got up from his chair, and began to walk up and down the worn carpet of his sitting-room, his hands clasped firmly behind his back.

“They came one day with Roman Catholic priests, and they took the thirteen sacks away. I didn’t know where they were taking them, but I begged them to be careful. I said the devils were not to be meddled with, but they said that they were quite aware of that, and that was why they wanted them.”

He sat down again, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.

“The next I knew, I was ordered to go to Southampton, and report to an American colonel called Sparks. He was a very brusque man, I remember. Very crisp. He said that my devils were to be used by the American forces for a secret mission. A special division. They had been brought back to life by the conjurations of the Kabbalah, and they had been promised great rewards if they fought on the side of the Allies against the Hun. I never found out what these great rewards were, but I suspect now that they may have involved… well, human sacrifices. I asked one of the American officers, but all he ever did was smile, and tell me that what they were doing was for western liberty and freedom.”

“So you went across to France with this division?” I asked the Reverend Taylor.

“I did, although I was kept in the rear most of the time. Since it was impracticable to take seven Roman Catholic priests along with us, it was my duty to make sure the devils stayed in their tanks, and I did this with silver crosses that had been blessed by seven priests, and with incantations from the holy exorcism. I was only required once, as you know, when one of the tanks broke a track, and they found it impossible to move.”

Madeleine slowly shook her head. “didn’t it ever occur to you, Mr. Taylor, that the devil you left in that tank would bring misery to all who lived near it?”

The Reverend Taylor frowned. “I sealed it away and they told me the tank would last for ever.”

“But, out of all the thirteen devils, this was the only devil who hadn’t been rewarded, right?” I asked him.

“I suppose so.”

“So it was bound to be troublesome, and dissatisfied?”

“Well, yes.”

I sat back, and wearily ran my fingers through my hair. “What you did, Mr. Taylor, left a thirty-year plague on that community. Milk went sour, eggs went rotten, and now the devil’s got out, and two people have died. Three, if you count this young lady’s mother.”

The vicar licked his lips in embarrassment. He said, in a low voice, “Is there anything I can do to help? Anything to protect you, or assist you?”

“You can tell us where the other twelve devils are.”

The Reverend Taylor blinked at me. “The other twelve? But I haven’t the faintest idea. They took them away after the war, and I never found out what happened to them. I suppose they sealed them away, once they had had their rewards, and took them off to America.”

“America? You have to be kidding! We have a devil out there who’s—”

The Reverend Taylor’s eyes bulged. “You have it out there? You have Elmek outside my house?”

I took a deep breath. I hadn’t really meant to tell him straight away. But I said, in the most controlled voice I could muster: “I have him locked in a lead trunk, in the back of my car. He forced us to bring him to England, on pain of death by cutting or slicing or whatever it is he does. He wants to join his brethren.”

The vicar was so flustered that he got out of his chair, and then sat down again straight away. “My dear man,” he said, breathlessly, “do you have any notion how dangerous that creature is?”

“I saw it kill Father Anton’s housekeeper, and I saw what it did to Father Anton.”

“My God,” said the Reverend Taylor, “that was why the Americans wanted them. They’re devils of war—devils of violence. Thirteen devils in army tanks were as vicious and terrible as three divisions of ordinary troops. They swept through the hills of the Suisse Normande in a matter of days. The Germans just couldn’t stop them. I wasn’t right up at the front line, so I never saw what they did first hand, but I heard dreadful stories from some of the German prisoners-of-war. Some of the Hun were dying of leprosy and beriberi. Tropical diseases, in northern France! Some were blazing like torches. And others were drowning in their own blood, without any apparent signs of external injury. It was a terrible business, and I was glad when Patton stopped it.”

“Why did he stop it?” asked Madeleine.

The Reverend Taylor pulled a face. “Once he’d broken through Normandy, I think he felt it would be more discreet, with regard to future war trials, if his tanks didn’t leave behind them the bodies of men who had died in unnatural and unholy ways.”

I took a deep drag on my cigarette. “What I can’t understand is why the church was so ready to go along with it. These devils are enemies of the church, aren’t they?”

“People’s standards are different in time of war,” said the vicar. “I believe that the Bishop felt he was doing the right thing. And after all, the Americans did agree to take the devils away after it was all over, and dispose of them. We were all glad of that.”

I sighed, tiredly. “But you’ve no idea where they were taken, or who took them?”

The vicar said: “I know that Colonel Sparks took care of them once they were shipped back to England. But where he took them, or how, I was never told. It was an extremely hush-hush operation. If any inkling had leaked out—well, there would have been a terrible flap.”

Madeleine asked: “They were brought back to England? They weren’t shipped direct to America from France?”

“No, they weren’t. The last time I saw them myself was at Southampton, when they were unloading them from ships. The usual dockers were told to keep well away.”

“So what makes you think they took them off to America? Couldn’t they still be here?”

The Reverend Taylor scratched his head. “I suppose so. There’s only one way to find out.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, you’d have to talk to Colonel Sparks himself. He always sends me a Christmas card, every year, although we never met after the war. I have his address somewhere.”

Madeleine and I exchanged anxious glances as the Reverend Taylor went across to his desk and started sorting through stacks of untidy papers in search of the American colonel’s greetings cards. It was now eight-twenty, and I began to have a fearful, restless feeling that Elmek wasn’t going to give us much more time. The Reverend Taylor said, “I was sure they were here, you know. I never throw anything away.”

I took out another cigarette, and I was just about to lift it to my lips when Madeleine cried, “Dan—look. Your hand.”

I couldn’t think what she was talking about at first, but then I looked down at the cigarette I was holding and saw that it was soaked pink with blood. I had a small deep cut on the end of my finger.

“It’s Elmek,” said Madeleine, in a tight, desperate voice. “Oh God, Dan, he’s warning us.”

Tugging out my handkerchief, I bound up the end of my finger as best I could, but it didn’t take long before the thin cotton was drenched. I said, “Mr. Taylor—I’d really appreciate it if you hurried.”

“Sorry—did you say something?” asked the vicar, looking up from his papers.

“Please hurry. I think Elmek’s getting impatient.”

The Reverend Taylor shuffled through some more papers, and then he said: “Ah—here we are! This is last year’s card, so I expect he’s still living there.”

He passed over the Christmas card, and Madeleine opened it up. Almost immediately, uncannily, my finger stopped bleeding, and the wound closed up. I was left with a crimson handkerchief and no visible scar at all.

The Reverend Taylor said, “My dear chap, have you cut yourself?”

The transatlantic line to Silver Spring, Maryland, was crackling and faint. It was just after lunch in the States, and Mr. Sparks, one-time colonel, was out mowing his lawn. His cleaning lad dithered and fussed, but eventually agreed to get him on the line. I was glad I wasn’t paying the Reverend Taylor’s telephone bill that quarter.

At last, a sharp voice said: “Hello? Who is this?”

Madeleine watched me as I answered: “I’m sorry to trouble you, sir. My name’s Dan McCook, and I’m standing right now in the home of the Reverend Woodfall Taylor.”

“Oh, really? Well, that’s a surprise! I haven’t seen Mr. Taylor since 1945. Is he well? You’re not calling to tell me he’s passed away, are you?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Mr. Taylor’s in fine shape. But I am ringing about that little business you and he were involved in on D-Day.”

There was a crackly silence.

“Can you hear me okay?” I asked him.

“Sure, I hear you. What do you know about that?”

“Well, sir, I guess I know almost everything.”

“I see. It’s a Pentagon secret, I hope you realize.”

“Yes, sir, I do. But right now we need some help.”

“Help? What kind of help?”

My hand suddenly began to feel sticky on the telephone receiver. I was bleeding again, from cuts all over my hands, and the blood was running down my sleeve. Madeleine said: “Oh Dan, tell him to hurry! Elmek will kill you!”

I whispered, “Okay, okay—the cuts aren’t bad. He’s just trying to needle me.”

Mr. Sparks said, “Are you there? Are you still there?”

“Yes, Mr. Sparks, sorry. Listen, I need to know where the twelve remaining sacks were taken. You left one behind in Normandy. Where are the rest? Were they shipped to the States? Or were they left in England?”

There was another silence. Then Mr. Sparks said: “Well… I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you that.”

“Mr. Sparks, please. It’s a matter of life or death. That devil you left behind in Normandy has got out of its tank. We have to find the rest of them.”

“Well, Mr. McCook, we called them ANPs, which was short for Assisting Non-Military Personnel. We certainly never knew them as, well, devils. They were ANPs.”

“All right, Mr. Sparks. ANPs. But where were they taken? Are they hidden in the States?”

“No, they aren’t,” said Mr. Sparks, reluctantly. “They were shipped back to England, and put into cold storage, militarily speaking. I believe that General Eisenhower wanted them taken back to the States, but the problems of carrying them over and keeping them under lock and key were too tricky right then. We knew very little about them, and so we left them where they were.”

“And where was that?”

“Well, we wanted to take them back to St. Thaddeus, where they originally came from. But we’d made a deal with the Bishop that we would take them off his hands. So we transported them to London, and they were sealed up in a house that belonged to the British War Office.”

“You mean they’re still there? Now?”

“As far as I know. I’ve never heard any news to the contrary.”

The blood was beginning to dry on the back of my hand. Madeleine was staring at me anxiously, and through the door I could see the Reverend Taylor, pouring himself another Scotch. I can’t say that I blamed him.

I said hoarsely, “Mr. Sparks, do you know where the house is? Even roughly?”

“Why sure. Eighteen Huntington Place, just off the Cromwell Road.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. I had to go there four or five times.”

I leaned back against the brown flowers of the Reverend Taylor’s wallpaper, and closed my eyes.

“Mr. Sparks,” I said, “I don’t know how to thank you.

“Don’t bother. I shouldn’t be telling you anyway.”

“If we get out of this alive,” I told him, “I’ll pay you a personal visit and bring you a bottle of brandy.”

There was a long pause. I could hear another faint voice on a crossed line. Then ex-Colonel Sparks said: “What do you mean—if you come out of this alive?”

I didn’t know what to answer. I just set down the telephone receiver and said to Madeleine, “He knew where they were. We’re going to have to drive to London.”

The Reverend Taylor came out to the hall and his face was even more flushed than ever. “Are you sure you won’t have another drink?” he asked us. “Or how about some sandwiches? My woman’s going home in a moment, but she could rustle up some tongue sandwiches.”

“Really,” I said, “that’s very kind of you, but we have to go right away.”

The vicar looked at me nervously. “Did Colonel Sparks know where they were? Did he tell you?”

I nodded. “He knew where they were sealed away after the war. Whether they’re still there or not is another matter. But we’re going to have to go to find out.”

“Oh, dear,” said the Reverend Taylor, “this is all very distressing. I told them it would come to a bad end.”

Madeleine said, “It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Taylor. You weren’t to know.”

“But I feel dreadfully responsible,” he told us worriedly. “I feel as if it was my negligence that killed poor Father Anton.”

“Well, maybe you can make up for it,” I suggested. “Maybe you can give us some idea of how to protect ourselves against these thirteen devils and against Adramelech.”

The Reverend Taylor’s face fell. “My dear fellow, I hardly know what to say. It was only because we had such a great number of priests during the war that we were able to keep the devils under control. But as for Adramelech himself—well, I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you. Adramelech is one of the greatest and most terrible of the evil Sephiroth. Perhaps only one of the divine Sephiroth would be able to help you, and according to what is written about them, the divine Sephiroth are almost as unmanageable as the evil ones. Adramelech’s counterpart among God’s ranks is Hod, the seraph of majesty and glory; but whether Hod could possibly be summoned to help you—well, I really couldn’t say. It’s all so infernally mythical.”

I lit a fresh cigarette. This time, my fingers stayed intact. Perhaps Elmek had realized that we had the information that we’d come for, and that he’d soon be rejoining his malevolent brethren.

I said, “Do you really believe in all this? In Adramelech and Hod? And all these devils. I never knew the Protestant church held with devils.”

The Reverend Taylor stuck his hands in his pockets and looked a little abashed.

“You will rarely find a Protestant cleric who admits to the actual physical existence of devils,” he said. “But every Anglican priest is told in strict confidence of the evidence that exists to support them. I couldn’t possibly divulge what the books say, but I assure you that the evidence I have personally seen for the existence of the divine and the evil Sephiroth is more than overwhelming. There are demons and devils, Mr. McCook, just as there are angels.”

Just then, I felt a low-frequency vibration tremble through the house. It was like a sinister train passing, a train that blew a deep dark whistle. I looked up at the ceiling, and I saw a hairline crack that ran all the way from one plaster moulding to the other.

The Reverend Taylor looked up, too. “What on earth’s that?” he blinked. “Did you feel it?”

“Yes. I tell it,” said Madeleine. “Maybe it was a supersonic plane passing.”

The Reverend Taylor frowned. “I don’t think Concorde flies this way, my dear. But I suppose it could—”

There was another rumble, louder this time. The floors shook and a fiery log dropped out of the grate and into the hearth. The Reverend Taylor hurriedly unhooked the tongs from the firedog, and stacked the log back on the fire.

I said, “It’s Elmek. I’m sure of it. He’s restless. Come on, Madeleine, I think we ought to get out of here before anything worse happens.”

The Reverend Taylor raised his hand. “You mustn’t leave on any account. I was just as responsible for what happened as anybody. And perhaps I can help.”

He went across to his bookshelves, and spent three or four minutes searching for what he wanted. He tugged it out at last—a small book as thin as a New Testament, with black leather covers and a frayed silk bookmark. Holding the book long sightedly at arm’s length, he licked his thumb and leafed through six or seven pages. Madeleine and I waited impatiently, while the clock struck nine.

“Ah, here it is. The invocation of angels.”

“I have a French book about that in my luggage,” I told him. “L’Invocation des Anges by Henri St. Ermin. The trouble is, I can hardly understand a word of it.”

Again, the house trembled. A china donkey with a dried-up cactus in its pannier was shaken off its shelf, and shattered on the floor. Two or three books dropped out, and the windows vibrated in their frames with a sound that set my teeth on edge.

“L’Invocation des Anges is just what you need,” said the Reverend Taylor, a little breathless. “But this book will help you identify each of the twelve other devils in turn and call an appropriate angel to dismiss it. Did Father Anton mention the seven tests to you?”

“You mean the seven tests of a devil’s identity? Yes, he did.”

The Reverend Taylor nodded gravely. “A brilliant man, Father Anton. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that he’s gone. Well, he was absolutely right. When you find the devils you must identify each in turn, and use your book L’Invocation des Anges to send them away. They are French devils, you see, and French dismissals will have a greater effect on them.”

Madeleine said, “If we dismiss them, will that prevent them from summoning Adramelech?”

The Reverend Taylor looked at her seriously. “One hopes so, my dear. But of course devils are devils, and one can never quite predict how they are going to behave, or what tricks they are going to use. Take this terrible beast Elmek, for example—”

The curtains covering the windows suddenly flapped, as if they were being blown by a wind that we couldn’t even feel. I turned towards the window in fright, and I was sure that for one second I glimpsed, in the darkness outside, the evil slanting eyes of the demon of knives. Above us, the lights went dim and sickly, until we could hardly see each other, and a sour smell of decay flowed through the room.

The Reverend Taylor shivered. Then he raised his hand and drew the sign of the cross in the air, and called, “Devil, begone! I adjure thee, O vile spirit, to go out! God the Father, in His name, leave our presence! God the Son, in His name, make thy departure! God the Holy Ghost, in His name, quit this place! Tremble and flee, O impious one, for it is—”

There was a howl so loud that I jumped in terror. It sounded as if a fearsome beast was actually devouring the whole room. The curtains lifted and flapped again, and a whole row of books toppled like dominoes and splayed across the carpet. Madeleine clutched my arm in fear, and the Reverend Taylor raised both his hands to protect himself from the rushing sound of demonic hate.

“It is God who commands thee!” shouted the Reverend Taylor. “It is I who command thee!”

The windows burst in a cloud of tumbling, spraying, razor-sharp glass. Fragments flew across the room and hit the Reverend Taylor in a glittering explosion that sliced into his upraised hands, ripped the ecclesiastical cloth from his arms and chest, and slashed his face and hands right down to the raw nerves. Before he collapsed, I saw the whiteness of his forearm bones, laid bare amidst the chopped meat of his flesh.

Miraculously, or devilishly, the glass passed Madeleine and me and left us almost unscratched. We watched in horror as the Reverend Taylor sank to the floor, ripped into bloody pieces, and Madeleine pressed her face into my shoulder, gagging with horror.

The last fragments of glass tinkled on to the floor, and a freezing wind blew in through the window. Holding Madeleine close, I said, “Elmek.”

There was no answer.

“Elmek!” I said, louder.

Outside, in the darkness, there was a dry, laughing sound. It could have been laughing or it could have been the swish of the trees as the wind moaned through their leafless branches.

The door of the sitting-room opened and I froze in fright. But then a red-faced woman in a turquoise overcoat and a turban hat peered around the door and said: “What a commotion! Is everything all right? I thought I heard glass.”

The Sussex Constabulary kept us at Lewes Police Station for almost three hours. Most of the time, we sat on hard wooden seats in a green-painted corridor and read the same crime-prevention posters over and over. An unsmiling superintendent with a clipped black moustache and shoes that were polished beyond human reason asked us questions and examined our passports, but we knew from the start that the Reverend Taylor’s hideous death could only look like an accident. A freak accident, of course. But an accident all the same.

Elmek, in his lead-and-copper trunk, was not going to be delayed or thwarted, especially by the procedures of the British police.

At five minutes to midnight, the superintendent came out of his office and handed us our passports.

“Does this mean we can go?” I asked him.

“For the moment, sir. But we’d like a forwarding address. You may have to give evidence at the inquest.”

“Well, okay. The Hilton Hotel.”

The superintendent took out a silver propelling-pencil and wrote that down. “All right, sir. Thanks for your help. we’re advising your embassy of what’s happened, just as a matter of courtesy.”

“That’s all right by me.”

The superintendent tucked away his pencil and regarded us for a moment with eyes that looked as if they’d been pickled in bleach. I knew that he didn’t really understand how the Reverend Taylor’s window had blown in with such devastating force, or how Madeleine and I had escaped with nothing but superficial cuts. But there was no sign of explosives, no sign of weapons, no motive, and no possibility that we could have cut him to shreds ourselves with thousands of fragments of glass. I had already heard one constable muttering to his sergeant about “peculiar vacuums” and “thousand-to-one chances”, and I guessed that they were going to put the Reverend Taylor’s death down to some wild peculiarity of the English weather.

“You won’t be leaving the country, sir?” asked the superintendent. “Not for a few days, anyway?”

“No, no. We’ll stick around.”

“Very well, sir. That’ll be all for now, sir. I’ll bid you goodnight.”

We left the police station and walked across the road to the sloping car park. The Citröen, silent and dark, was the only car there. We climbed into it warily, and sat back in the rigid little seats. Madeleine yawned, and pulled her fingers through her dark blonde hair. I glanced back at the devil’s chest, and said, “If Elmek’s going to let us, I think it’s time we had some rest. I didn’t sleep last night, and I don’t suppose we’re going to get ourselves a lot of relaxation tomorrow.”

There was no answer from the dull medieval box. Either the devil was sleeping itself (although I didn’t know if devils slept or not) or else it was silently granting me permission to rest. I started up the car, and we went in search of somewhere to stay.

We spent half an hour driving around the streets of Lewes in the dark before Madeleine spotted a bed-and-breakfast sign on the outskirts of town, on a gateway just opposite the forbidding flint walls of Lewes prison. Set back from the road in a driveway of laurel bushes was a red-brick Victorian mansion, and someone was watching a black-and-white television in the front downstairs room. I turned the Citröen into the driveway, parked it, and went to the front door to knock.

I was answered, after a long and frosty wait, by a small hunched old woman in a pink candlewick dressing-gown and paper curlers. She said: “It’s very late, you know. Did you want a room?”

I tried my best not to look like a dishevelled madman or an escaped convict from across the road. “If that’s possible. We’ve come from France today and we’re pretty well bushed.”

“Well, I can’t charge you the full rate. You’ve missed three hours’ sleep already.”

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment, and all I could say was, “That’s okay. That’s wonderful. But I’ll pay the full rate if you want me to.”

I called Madeleine, and the old woman let us into the house. She took us up a cold flight of stairs to a landing laid with green-and-cream linoleum, where a painting of ducks by Peter Scott hung under a frayed and dusty lampshade. She unlocked a door for us, and showed us into a typically freezing British bedroom, with a high double bed of cream-painted iron, a cheap varnished wardrobe, a cracked sink and a gas fire with half of its fireclay missing.

“We’ll take it,” I said wearily, and I sat down on the bed and took off my shoes before she could even answer. The mattress felt as if it was crowded with unravelled fencing wire, but right then it was heaven. The old lady left us alone together, and we undressed, washed in Arctic water, and fell into bed. I don’t remember falling asleep, but it must have been pretty quick, because I didn’t even have time to put my arm around Madeleine’s naked back.

I was wakened by a scuffling noise. For a second, I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not, but then I heard it again, and I lifted my head from the pillow and looked around. I held my breath, and tried to suppress the pump-pump-pump of my heart. The room was very dark, suffocatingly dark, and even though I strained my eyes, I couldn’t see if there was anything there. I lifted myself up on one elbow, and the bedsprings creaked and complained like a tired orchestra.

There was silence. I whispered, though I didn’t want to: “Elmek?”

No reply. Madeleine stirred in her sleep, and turned over.

I whispered again: “Elmek?”

There was another scuffle, then a rustling sound They seemed to come from down behind the foot of the bed. I sat up, my skin electric with fear, and I tried to see what was hiding there in the darkness.

Again, there was silence. But I was sure I heard a faint scratching and rustling on the worn linoleum, and I was sure that a darker shadow shifted and moved in the gloom.

I kept absolutely still. I could feel that Madeleine was awake now. She reached across the bed and squeezed my hand, too frightened to speak. But I bent my head towards her and said softly, “Don’t panic. It’s in here somewhere, but don’t panic.”

She nodded, and swallowed. In the hush of the night, we waited for the devil to stir again, our hands tightly clenched together, our breath held back into shallow gasps.

Suddenly, Madeleine said, “Dan. The window. Dan!”

I turned towards the window. I flinched in shock. There was someone silhouetted against the curtains, a tall figure of clotted shadows, unmoving and quiet. I took one look, and then my hand went scrambling in search of my bedside lamp, but I tangled my fingers in the flex by mistake, and the lamp tipped over and crashed on to the floor.

In the terrible silence that followed, a woman’s voice said, “Are you rested?”

It was a strange, throaty voice—too deep for a woman, really, but too vibrantly female for a man. The dim figure stirred, and moved silently across the room. I could just make out a pale face—a smudge of grey in the grainy blackness.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “Who are you?”

The figure didn’t reply for a while. It seemed to be grating its teeth together, with an edgy, squeaking sound. Then it said: “We take many forms you know. Many substances. Aren’t you afraid?”

I said, “Are you Elmek?”

“Elmek or Asmorod or Kaphis. We have more names than nights that have passed since the crucifixion. Don’t think that your book can identify us, because it won’t.”

“What do you know about that?”

The thing gave a hoarse, blowzy laugh. “I know that you. are wasting your time on religious folly. Angels! You must be demented. You have struck yourself a bargain with me, my friend, and with my master Adramelech, the Grand Chancellor of Hell, the peacock and the serpent. Don’t talk to me of angels!”

Madeleine said, “What are you going to do with us? You’re not going to keep your bargain, are you?”

There was a sound of crackling, as if the beast were tugging its knuckles, or biting into bones. Then it said, in a much deeper, more slurred and masculine voice, “Bargains are struck for good and evil. Bargains have always been struck for good and evil. The priests and the bishops have struck bargains before, and not been disappointed. We didn’t only fight at Senlac, you know. We were there with Charlemagne, and we were there with Jeanne d’Arc. No wonder the English burned her! The stones told of monstrous devils whirling around her head in battle, and they were true, mon ami. It is only now that the church has seen fit to rewrite its history, and deny the existence of all the unholy allies it used for its so-called holy wars!”

Madeleine was shivering in fright. I put my arm around her and held her close, but the devil wasn’t disturbed.

“Think of the Spanish Inquisition,” it whispered. “Think of the torture chambers of England and France. Each had its devil! In times gone by, devils walked the earth freely, and they still walk the earth! They made bargains with men, for mutual advantage, because man is an evil creature, thank the stars, as well as a good one.”

Over in the corner of the room, near the door, I saw a faint blueish light, like the phosphorescence in the ocean at night. Then, to my horror, something began to appear out of the darkness. I stared and stared, and, half-distinguishable in the shadows, its mouth stretched back in a wolfish grin, was a beast that could have been a devil, could have been a whoreish woman, could have been some hideous slimy subaqueous squid. There was a sour smell in the room, and the blue light crawled and nickered like the foul illumination from decaying fish.

I saw everything in that moment that disgusted and horrified me. I saw what looked like a woman’s hands seductively drawn back up a curving shining thigh, only to realize that the thigh wasn’t a thigh at all, but a desperately wriggling trunk of tentacles. I saw pouting lips that suddenly turned out to be festering cuts. I saw rats crowding into the mouth of a sleeping woman. I saw living flesh cut away from living bones, first in ribbons of skin and muscle, and then in a stomach-turning tangle of sodden flesh.

Madeleine, beside me, shrieked.

“Elmek!” I yelled, and rolled out of the bed towards the ghastly apparition.

There was a paralysing burst of white light, and I felt as if someone had cracked me over the head with a pickaxe handle. Dazed and dazzled, I fell sideways on the cold linoleum, bruising my shoulder against the leg of the bed. I tried to get up, but something hit me again, something heavy and soft.

Madeleine screamed, “Dan! It’s in the bed! It’s in the bed!”

Stunned, wiping blood away from a split lip, I gripped hold of the edge of the mattress and pulled myself upright. Madeleine was beating in terror at the blankets, as if something had scurried its way under them, and was crawling around her legs. For a half-second, in the eerie blue light of that failing phosphorescence, I saw something reach out from under the covers and touch her naked leg. It was black and claw-like and hairy, like a grossly overgrown spider. I hit at it, yelling in fear and anger, and then I seized Madeleine’s wrist and yanked her off the bed and halfway across the Moor.

There was a moment of sheer panic when I thought that whatever was under those blankets was going to come crawling after us. I heard something heavy drop off the bed, and the scratch of claws on the floor; but then the blue light suddenly began to flicker again; and go dim, like a torch with used-up batteries, and the sour odor of devil began to fade away. I heard a soft soughing noise, a wind where no wind could blow, and then there was silence. Both of us crouched on the floor, panting from fright. We listened and listened, but there was no sound in the room at all, and after a while we cautiously raised our heads.

“I think it must have gone,” I said quietly.

Madeleine whispered, “Oh God, that was terrible. Oh my God, I was so scared.”

I switched on the overhead light. Then I went over to the bed and prodded at the covers with the broken bedside lamp. In the end, I gathered up enough courage to lift the blankets and turn them over. There was nothing there. If it hadn’t been a terrifying illusion, then it had left us.

Madeleine came up behind me and touched my back. “I don’t think I could sleep any more,” she told me. “Not in that bed. Why don’t we start out for London?”

I found my wristwatch where it had been knocked on the floor. It was five-thirty in the morning. It would soon be dawn.

“All right,” I said, feeling very little better than I had when we first went to bed. “It looks like Elmek’s pushing us on, in any case. Remind me to remember that devils rarely sleep.”

Madeleine put on her blue jeans without panties, and combed out her hair in front of the dingy mirror. I said, “I can’t take much more of this. I don’t even know why it does these things.”

“Maybe it’s boasting,” suggested Madeleine. “They’re supposed to be vain creatures, aren’t they, devils:”

“It could be that. If you ask me, it’s just relishing how frightened we are. It intends to squeeze the last ounce of fear and agony out of us two and get its goddamned money’s worth.”

Madeleine tugged a grey ribbed sweater over her head. It was so cold in that bedroom I could see the outline of her nipples through the thick Shetland wool. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have the feeling it’s excited, as if it’s getting itself all worked up to join its brethren. All that boasting about what devils had done in the past. And that figure, whatever it was, with all those squids and snakes and things. That was like some horrible kind of showing-off.”

I brushed my hair, and did my best to shave with a blunt razor and no soap. There were dark smudges of tiredness under my eyes, and I looked about as healthy as a can of week-old tuna. In fact, I was so exhausted that I could hardly feel frightened any more. When we were ready, we tiptoed out on to the landing, and went downstairs through the dark, creaking house. There was no one around, so I left three pounds on the hall table, and we let ourselves out into the freezing early morning.

The sun came up over the Sussex Downs just as we were driving out of Brighton. On each side of us, the long frosted hills stretched into the haze; to Chanctonbury Ring in the west, and to Ditchling Beacon in the east. At that time of the morning, in winter, Sussex has a strangely prehistoric feel to it, and you become uncannily sensitive to the memory that Ancient Britons trod these downs, and Roman legions, and suspect that across the smokey plain of the Sussex Weald, the fires of Anglo-Saxon ironfounders could be seen glimmering in the depths of the forests. Beside me, Madeleine sat huddled in her coat, trying to doze as we turned northwards towards London.

We drove along roads white with ice, past old cottages and pubs and filling stations and roadside shops advertising home-made fudge and large red potatoes. Behind us, in the back of the car, the copper-and-lead box was silent as a tomb. The sun rose on my right, and flickered behind the spare trees as I sped on to the motorway. In another hour, we would reach the suburbs of London. By noon, we would probably discover whether Elmek was going to keep his bargain or not. I thought of the saying that he who sups with devils must needs use a long spoon, and it didn’t encourage me very much.

As we left the fields and the countryside behind, and came into the crowded grey streets of Croydon and Streatham, the sky grew ominously dark, and I had to drive with my headlamps on. On the wet sidewalks, shoppers and passers-by hurried with coat-collars turned up against the cold, and a few first flakes of snow settled on my windshield. The traffic was crowded and confused, and it took another hour of edging my way between red double-decker buses and black shiny taxis before I crossed the Thames over Chelsea Bridge, and made my way towards the Cromwell Road. The snow was falling heavily now, but it melted as soon as it touched the busy streets and pavements. I passed Sloane Square, with its fountains and bedraggled pigeons; turned left at Knights-bridge, and then juddered along in solid traffic past Harrods and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Today, London looked grimly Dickensian and as we drove by the Natural History Museum, with its twisted Gothic pillars and its gardens arranged with petrified trees, I felt as if bringing this medieval devil into the city was part of some dark and sinister Victorian plot. Only my tiredness and my fear reminded me that what was inside that locked trunk was hideously real, and that this morning in December in London was overshadowed with the vicious horror of mankind’s most ancient enemies. I lit up a cigarette, and coughed.

At last, we arrived outside 18 Huntington Place. It was a late-Victorian house of grimy yellow-and-grey bricks, in that gloomy hinterland between Cromwell Road and High Street Kensington, all shared flats and registry offices and unfashionable mews. I pulled the car into the curb, and nudged Madeleine awake. She blinked, and stretched, and said, “Are we here already? That was the best sleep I’ve had in days.”

There was no sign on the black spiked railings outside the house to show that it still belonged to the Ministry of Defence. But I climbed stiffly out of the car, and walked up to the front door to see if there was any kind of identification by the two rows of doorbells. There was nothing at all, not even the name of a tenant. The door itself was firmly locked, and by the condition of its cracked grey paint, looked as if it hadn’t been decorated for twenty years. I tried to peer through a dirty pane of spiderweb glass beside it, but inside the house it was completely dark.

Madeleine came across the sidewalk. “Any luck?” she asked me.

“I don’t know. It looks as if it’s empty. Maybe they just shut the devils up here and left it.”

“But that was thirty years ago.”

I shrugged. “We could always ring the bell and see.”

I looked back towards the Citröen, parked against the curb in the softly-falling snow. “We have to get in here somehow,” I told her. “Otherwise it’s going to be cold cuts for lunch.”

“Maybe the next-door neighbours know something,” she suggested. “Even if the house is empty, it must belong to somebody. If we could only get ourselves a key, and take a look round. We could always pretend we wanted to buy it.”

I stepped back and looked up at the second and third floors of the house, blinking against the snow that fell in my upturned face. “I can’t see any lights. I guess it must be empty.”

I went back up to the porch and pushed all the bells. I could hear some of them ringing in different parts of the house. Then I waited for a while, shuffling my feet to bring the circulation back to my toes. Madeleine looked at me tiredly, and I knew that both of us were pretty close to the end of our tether. A taxi drove by, blowing its horn.

We were just about to turn away when we heard a noise inside the house. I raised my eyes in surprise. Then there were sharp footsteps coming along the corridor, the rattle of security chains, and the door opened. A lean young man in a black jacket and grey business pants stood there, with a haughty and enquiring expression on his face.

“Did you want something?” he asked, in that clipped voice that immediately told you he’d been given a superior education and probably read Horse and Hound.

I gave him an uneasy kind of a smile. “I’m not sure,” I told him. “Does this building still belong to the War Office?”

“You mean the Ministry of Defence.”

“That’s right. I mean the Ministry of Defence.”

The young man looked sour. “Well, that depends who you are and why you wish to know.”

“Then it does?”

The young man looked even sourer.

I said, “The reason I want to know is because I have some property that belongs to the Ministry of Defence. Part of a set of wartime equipment. And what I’m doing is bringing it back.”

“I see,” said the young man. “And would you mind telling me what this piece of equipment might be?”

“Do you have a superior officer here?” I asked him.

He gave a patronising grimace. “I haven’t even said this is Ministry property yet.”

“Okay,” I told him. “If it is Ministry property, and you do have a superior officer, tell him we have Adramelech’s thirteenth friend. Right out here, in the back of the car.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just tell him. Adramelech’s thirteenth friend. We’ll wait here for five minutes.”

The young man pulled a very disconcerted face, and then he said, “I suppose you’d better wait inside. I won’t be a moment.”

He opened the door wider, and we stepped into a musty-smelling hall with an olive-green dado that was worn shiny with age. I lit another cigarette and passed one to Madeleine. She wasn’t an experienced smoker, and she puffed at it like a thirteen-year-old with her first Camel, but right now we needed anything that could steady our nerves. On the peeling wall just behind us was a mildew-spotted photograph of Earl Haig, and if that wasn’t an out-and-out admission that 18 Huntingdon Place belonged to the Ministry of Defence, I don’t know what could have been, apart from a tank parked outside.

I took out my handkerchief and blew my nose. What with losing two nights of sleep, and chasing around in the bitter winter weather, I was beginning to show all the symptoms of a head cold. Madeleine leaned tiredly against the wall beside me, and looked too drained to say anything.

After a few minutes, I heard voices on the upstairs landing, and then an immaculately-creased pair of khaki trousers came into view down the stairs, followed by a crisp khaki jacket with a Sam Browne belt and medal ribbons, and then a fit, square face with a bristling white moustache and the kind of eyes that were crows footed from peering across the horizons of the British Empire.

The officer came forward with a brisk, humourless smile. He said: “They didn’t give me your names, unfortunately. Remiss of them.”

I flipped my cigarette out into the snow. “I’m Dan McCook, this is Madeleine Passerelle.”

The officer gave a sharp, brief nod of his head, as if he were trying to shake his eyebrows loose. “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Thanet, Special Operations Branch.”

There was a silence. He was obviously expecting us to explain why we were here. I looked at Madeleine and Madeleine looked back at me.

Lieutenant Colonel Thanet said, “They tell me you have something interesting. Something that belongs to us.”

“I guess it does in a way,” I told him.

He gave a tight, puckered smiled. The kind of smile that my grandfather, who came from Madison, Wisconsin, used to describe as “a close view of a mule’s ass.” He said, “Something to do with D-Day, if I understand correctly.”

I nodded. “You can threaten us with the Official Secrets Act if you want to, but we know what happened anyway, so I don’t think there’s much point. We know about the thirteen ANPs that you British loaned to Patton, and we know what happened to them afterwards. Twelve of them came here, and were sealed up, and the thirteenth one was left in a tank in Normandy, and conveniently forgotten. What we have out here, in the back of our car, is your thirteenth ANP.”

The colonel looked at me with those clear, penetrating eyes. I could see that he was trying to work out what kind of a johnny I was, and what official category this particular problem fitted into, and what the correct follow-up procedure was going to be.

But what he said wasn’t army jargon, and he didn’t say it like a man whose decisions are usually taken by the letter of the military rulebook. He said: “Are you telling me the truth, Mr. McCook? Because if you are, then I’m very seriously worried.”

I pushed the door wider so that he could see the Citröen parked at the curb. “It’s in the trunk,” I told him. “And it’s the real thing. Its name is Elmck, or Asmorod. The devil of knives and sharpness.”

He bit his lip. He was silent for a while, and then he said: “Is it safe. I mean, is it sealed up, in any religious way?”

I shook my head.

The colonel asked, “Do you know anything about it.” Anything about it at all?”

“Yes. It told us it was a disciple of Adramelech, the Grand Chancellor of Hell. We took it out of the tank in France because it was disturbing the people who lived near it, and because Mile Passerelle believed it was responsible for killing her mother. But since then, it’s killed three other people, and it’s threatened to do the same to us.”

Madeleine said to the colonel: “Monsieur Le colonel, you don’t seem at all incredulous. I would even say that you believed us.”

The colonel managed a twisted little grin. “It’s hardly surprising, mademoiselle. It has been my particular brief for the last six years to look into that ANP business after D-Day. I probably know more about that special division of tanks than anybody alive.”

“Then it’s true?” I asked him. “The other devils are really here?”

“Who told you that?”

“An American gentleman named Sparks. He was one of the people involved in the special division during the war.”

Lieutenant Colonel Thanet sighed, as if he expected that kind of behaviour from Americans.

“Is it true?” I questioned him. “Are they really here?”

Thanet said, “Yes. They’re sealed in the cellars. All twelve of them. It’s been part of my job to work out a way of using them again.”

“Using them again? Wasn’t once enough?”

“Probably. But you know what departments of defence are like. Anything cheap and unusual and lethal always appeals to their sense of humour. And these days, they particularly like nasty alternatives to nuclear weaponry. So they dug out the file on the ANPs, and sent me here to see what I could do.”

“And have you done anything?” asked Madeleine.

“Not much so far. We’ve had a couple of beggars out of their sacks and had a look at their bones and their general physiology, and we know that as long as their seal is broken, they can take on flesh again, and live. That was how it was done in World War Two, and that’s why we haven’t broken any of the seals. But we’re planning on greater things, once we’re sure we can keep them under control.”

“Greater things?” I queried. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” said the colonel, with a furrowed frown, “we were going to try to conjure up their master, because he’s supposed to be several thousand times more powerful.”

“Adramelech?” breathed Madeleine, her eyes wide.

“That’s right. The great and terrible Samarian deity. Well, I wouldn’t have believed it back when I was at Sandhurst, but once they showed me what that special division had done under Patton…”

He looked at me with a meaningful inclination of his cropped and white-haired head.

“There were photographs taken after D-Day, you know,” he told us. “Photographs and even colour films. They were quite extraordinary. I should think that, apart from the H-Bomb, they’re unquestionably the most spectacular and most secret things that NATO have got.”

I said, “How can we control something like Adramelech, when we can hardly control these thirteen devils of his?”

Lieutenant Colonel Thanet rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, that’s a tricky one, and that’s why I’m rather worried that you’ve brought our friend Elmek over. We don’t know how to control these devils for certain, and we certainly have no idea what to do with Adramelech. We don’t even know what Adramelech could possibly look like, and that’s always supposing one could actually see such a thing with the human eye. One way we’ve kept the situation under control is by leaving the thirteenth devil where it was, in France. Oh yes, we knew it was there. But we wanted to leave it there—at least until we worked out a foolproof way to prevent these other twelve beggars from setting fire to us, or giving us leprosy, or strangling us with our own guts.”

I reached out for Madeleine’s hand. Her fingers were very cold when I touched them.

“Now they’re all back together, of course, there’s a definite risk that they’ll summon up their master,” said Thanet. “Patton’s men prevented such a thing from happening during the war because they promised Adramelech some human sacrifices, and plenty of blood. One could do such a thing in wartime. But now, well… the only blood that’s immediately available is ours.”

I took out another cigarette, and lit it. Outside the door, the snow had stopped falling, but the sky was still a grim metallic green. The Citröen stood silently by the curb, and through the reflecting glass of the rear window, we could just make out the side of the copper-and-lead trunk.

“I was afraid of that, too,” I said hoarsely, and Madeleine looked away with an expression of such sadness that even Lieutenant Colonel Thanet noticed it, and half-raised his hand to comfort her.