The Devil in Amber Read online

A curiously mad grin suddenly lit up his features. ‘Ha! More than you know, sir. More than you know.’

  ‘You’re doing it again! Are we going to come to some accommodation or am I wasting my time? These Froggy shoes are awful uncomfortable, don’t you know, and I’m hankering for my bed.’

  He swung back in my direction and suddenly lifted up his mask.

  I took a step backwards. It was the curly-haired chap who’d shadowed me outside the Moscow Tea Rooms! His cheeks looked even more pitted in the curiously lurid light but his whole face blazed with a fierce intelligence. ‘If I’m being careful, sir, it’s because I’m playing a very dangerous game. I’m going to tell you everything. I swear. About the Lamb. About the Prayer. But first you need to see what you’re up against. Come with me.’

  ‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘What lamb? What prayer?’

  For answer, he led me through the thrashing, giddy throng to a little anteroom, much chillier than the main chamber and constructed from corrugated iron.

  I hung back, suspecting a trap, but he beckoned urgently to me and something about his manner (or his smashing legs) made me throw caution to the wind and step inside.

  He reached across me to close the door and I caught a strong whiff of cologne with an undercurrent of sweat. The racket from the costume party was instantly shut off, lingering only as a throbbing background beat. Without a moment’s hesitation, Volatile began to strip, shrugging off his tunic, revealing the curve of muscular shoulders as big as over-ripe oranges. Was this what I was to be, well, up against? I felt a lovely rush in my gut as though someone were roasting chestnuts inside me.

  Somewhat to my chagrin, he peeled off his tights, bent down into the darkened corner and then threw a bundle of clothes at me. ‘Get these on,’ he said smoothly, unfolding a silk shirt for himself.

  As I changed out of my finery, I thought what a damned shame that matters were clearly too pressing for any extracurricular fun. But was this Lost Boy of my persuasion? Hard to tell. He was so aggressively masculine, though, that I had very grave suspicions.

  In a few minutes we were both dressed alike in jodhpur-like black trousers, boots that glistened wetly like chewed liquorice and tailored silk shirts of a rather gorgeous amber hue. I began to get the picture.

  ‘Another costume party?’ I said.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said my new friend, smiling thinly. ‘You got a car?’

  The Cadillac roared back towards Manhattan, a freezing wind, peppered with snowflakes, whipping over the bonnet. Sal Volatile was almost completely silent throughout the journey, muttering occasional directions as we crossed silent bridges or swung past another block of looming apartments.

  He stiffened as we cruised down a broad avenue somewhere off Fourteenth Street then nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘We’re here.’

  A spectacular kinema in the Art Deco style blazed, floodlit, from the darkness, a vast votive angel spreading its stony wings over the entranceway. The gangster talkie normally showing five times a day had been temporarily replaced by another spectacle, and as we drove past the entrance we watched hundreds of over-coated figures streaming into the lobby.

  Parking around the back of the picture palace, we stepped into a landscape of filthy snow and dustbins, great spouts of steam issuing from the indented drains. Volatile reached into his trouser pocket and produced something that looked like a library card. He handed it to me and I strained to make out the tiny print. ‘F.O.I.F.?’

  This case was a study in acronyms.

  ‘Friends of International Fascism,’ muttered my new ally. ‘That’s who you represent tonight. We’re going to a F.A.U.S.T. rally.’

  I shuddered as the wind whistled down the alley, setting the lids of the bins rattling. ‘How thrilling. I shall fix a suitably manic gleam into my baby blues.’

  Volatile grunted. I didn’t honestly anticipate any awkward questions as these rallies, like New Year sales, tend to lean more towards fevered screeching and hysteria than closely reasoned argument.

  We joined the crush of delegates streaming into the cinema and divested ourselves of our steaming outdoor wear. The cloakroom attendants were kept as busy as coolies.

  Stripped of their fedoras and long coats, I now saw the assembly in all their glory. As a breed they were predominantly men and women of healthy aspect; fine boned and lustrous of hair (scraped back from the forehead for the boys, set in finger waves for the girls). Each and every one of them was dressed as were we in the F.A.U.S.T. uniform.

  We queued dutifully and followed the others through into the main auditorium, the smell of damp wool immediately overwhelmed by the charged odour of a thousand light bulbs. The place glowed like a grotto, the interior done out in shades of Italian ice cream, galleries and seats in patterns of repeated ovals. A safety curtain had been drawn down over the kinema screen and an elaborate lectern installed before it. Dominating the whole thing was a vast black flag, draped from ceiling to stage. In its centre, a design in blazing orange showed two flashes of arrow-headed lightning–the symbol of the movement.

  We took our seats in a row of excited amber-shirts, faces aglow with anticipation, gossiping as though they’d come to see the hit show of the season.

  ‘All right, Mr Volatile,’ I said quietly. ‘Now we’re snug. What was all that about back at the party? What’s the lamb?’

  Volatile glanced quickly over his shoulder, then put a finger to his lips.

  On cue, a muffled drumbeat began to sound and the audience hissed themselves into silence. The drumbeat slowed into a self-consciously momentous thrum-thrum-thrum and unseen cornets shrieked out in fanfare. As one mass, the crowd’s heads turned back as dazzling spotlights crackled into life.

  ‘Here he comes,’ whispered Volatile.

  The spotlights snapped off and then back on again, revealing, with almost magical timing, a phalanx of amber-shirts in a V-formation. The crowd gasped in excitement.

  The newcomers were indistinguishable in dress from the rest of the adoring mob but they had the indefinable whiff of glamour about them. They were not the tallest, most muscular, not even the blondest of these Übermenschen but they were the stars of the show and they knew it.

  One was a pudgy, balding chap with wispy moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles, another a great horsy woman with her ginger hair in cartoonish Valkyrie braids. I scanned the elite, hoping to catch my first glimpse of Olympus Mons, the great leader. As the spotlights shut off once again, I got a quick impression of a tall, muscular figure with luxuriant black moustaches. Then, as the music rose in a shattering crescendo, the phalanx began to march towards the platform.

  Seats banged up like Tommy-gun fire as the assembled crowd rose to its feet, raising their arms in that damn-fool salute we’ve all seen on the newsreels when the Eyeties slobber over their Duce.

  Now more spotlights burst into life as the top dogs of F.A.U.S.T. took their places on the platform and, cheered to the rafters, Olympus Mons made his way to the podium.

  Somewhere in the early forties, he was under six feet but carried himself with an athlete’s easy grace. There was a great scar running from his broken nose to his chin, so that his lip curled up in a most unpleasant fashion, permanently exposing the right dog tooth. He was handsome–in a thuggish way–but his dark eyes were hooded like those of some reptile. Hooded, that is, until, smoothing back brilliantined hair, Mons smiled his million-watt smile. Then the eyes seemed to grow huge, like ink spreading on a blotter, taking in the whole audience in their hypnotic range. It was as though a powerful searchlight was scanning the auditorium, and each amber-shirt must have felt, as I suddenly did, that the Leader was looking directly at them.

  Mons stood in silence for a long moment, bathed in white light like a heavenly messenger, the silken folds of his shirt clinging to his impressive physique. Then, with a tiny gesture of his hands, he bade them be seated.

  The multitude sat down in a chorus of coughs and whispers as Mons took up his stance before his adoring
public, one hand clenched behind his back, the other at his side. The microphone in front of him whistled briefly and then he spoke.

  ‘My friends,’ he whispered. ‘What a thrill it is for me to stand before you, knowing that, at the close of the year, efforts to strengthen our movement internationally have met with such resounding success.’

  The voice was curiously light and had a Yankee twang of no definable origin. ‘For the old order is passing away,’ he continued, volume increasing. ‘The ancient fault lines of party politics replaced by a new model.’ Louder now. ‘Mankind reborn: vigorous!’ Louder yet. ‘Forward-looking!’ Yelling. ‘In step with a new world order!’ Positively screaming.

  The crowd roared their approval. I shuddered at the ecstatic glitter in their wide eyes.

  ‘The misnamed system known as…democracy,’ continued Mons, his voice dripping with contempt, ‘based on antediluvian parliamentary systems, is on its way out! The People want a new system of government. The People have spoken. The People can no longer be IGNORED!’

  The People, or the thousand or so amber-shirts buffoons who imagined themselves to be their representatives, set up a deafening cheer that rang back at Volatile and me from the stuccoed roof of the kinema.

  For himself, Volatile seemed to shrink from the great man’s presence, his face a picture of disgust, as though he’d smelled something that’d been knocked down in the road.

  Mons seemed to feed off the throng’s energy, his eyes, momentarily closed, now blazing blackly again like the lamp of some mythical lighthouse.

  International Jewry, of course, was next on the agenda. ‘We in F.A.U.S.T. do not seek to persecute the Jew on account of his religion–for our credo is complete religious toleration. We do not persecute him on account of his race. For do we not seek to conjoin with the British Empire? An empire that counts a dozen races amongst its citizens? No. Our quarrel with the Jews is that they have set themselves up as a nation within our great nations. Now we offer a solution! A final solution. They have always sought a promised land. We shall give it to them. A separate country where they can all live in peace–and cease to bother us!’

  This got a shrill, hysterical laugh. The Jew, it seemed, was at the back of almost every bit of mischief from Whitechapel to Wisconsin.

  I glanced behind me again, more than a little frightened by the sight of all those flushed faces turned towards their leader like seals awaiting supper.

  There was more such simplistic tosh from Mons, laying into the Bolsheviks and the capitalists, larding praise on Mussolini, that Austrian fellah, old Uncle Tom Mosley and all. I found it positively vulgar.

  Nevertheless, I yelled appreciation and shouted huzzahs with the rest, marvelling at the strength of Mons’s rhetoric. The man was utterly hypnotic, isolated in that burning circle of white light. But was he a real threat, as my superiors at the RA seemed to fear, or simply another third-rate crackpot dreaming of power?

  He was speaking now in ever shorter bursts, each ending with a brilliantly judged appeal to the basest instincts of his slavering audience. I was very aware of the throbbing of my injured hand, and its steady beat, along with Mons’s voice, the staccato hollering of the crowd, and the stuffy atmosphere of the hall, began to make my head spin. I sought refuge in focusing on the amber-shirted figures in the shadows behind the leader.

  Then one face leapt out at me, my head grew suddenly clear and I caught my breath in absolute astonishment.

  It was a woman near my own age with neatly bobbed black hair. Despite the fine angularity of her features there was something hatchet-like and cold about them, rather as though a skilled draughtsman, having designed a great beauty, had forgotten to rub out his working.

  It was her eyes that drew me, though. Of a peculiar, piercing blue, they were every bit as gorgeous as my own. Not surprising in the least when you consider that the woman sitting there in her neat amber-coloured shirt, gazing up at Mons with unfeigned adoration, was my sister.

  5

  Sibling Devilry

  You may picture me in an ice-shrouded Central Park next morning, lost in remembrance, contemplating sluggish pond water surrounded by wind-ravaged trees that clattered together like sticks of charcoal in a pot.

  Pandora! My sister! After all these years.

  Fact is, the old sis and I had never got on. Like all the best family spats, its origins were humble enough, stretching back to the dark days when Mama had announced, in solemn yet excited tones, that the three-year-old me was to be blessed with a little friend.

  I was a serious child, coddled somewhat by my parents and ever so pale and Victorian, with my neatly brushed cow-lick hair and knickerbocker suit.

  I had set my heart on a brother (what boy would not?) and so, when dear Pandora arrived in her swaddling clothes, trailing the scent of my Mama’s lavender water, I fixed her with a resentful stare over my wooden fort and made a secret vow. She had to go.

  All manner of plans were hatched, mostly involving the stoving in of baby’s head with an alphabet block or the pitching of baby’s perambulator into the Serpentine with Nanny getting the blame. A career in homicide, do you see, was already beckoning.

  As time went by, though, and we grew up together within the dreary boundaries of the olive-walled nursery, I got used to the brat. Sadly, as my murderous instincts lessened, Pandora’s seemed to grow. Despite also being a looker, she seemed to feel herself to be in my shadow. I couldn’t see it myself. As far as I was concerned, my parents meted out their love in equal proportion. That is, they gave us none of it. Each.

  For myself I took this as licence to blossom on my own terms, working my way through chemistry sets and the dissection of frogs, learning to scribble, growing faint when glancing at a postcard of the Michelangelo pietà and, later, getting into scandals with the wife of Mr Bleasdale the grocer.

  Pandora, by contrast, grew into a very queer fish. Outwardly prim, her hair excessively neat, her dolls stacked in order of height, her bedroom as sterile as a hospital ward; there was always about her something rather frighteningly detached, as though she was waiting, with infinite patience, for the opportunity to strike.

  She had remained unmarried and began throwing herself, with bewildering intensity, behind one lunatic cause or another, ranging from the abolition of Christmas to the compulsory introduction of a fruit-only diet.

  We had drifted ever further apart as the years rolled by, not helped by my inheriting the family home at Number Nine, Downing Street (one is only disturbed when the hustings are on). There was a brief reunion after a bizarre tragedy engulfed our family (that’s another story), but otherwise we remained strangers. These days, I knew little of Pan’s life save that she lived by the sea, eking out her meagre inheritance and writing pamphlets on the importance of a thrice-daily bowel movement.

  Seeing her again in such unexpected circumstances had left me in a state of shock and I’d half-stumbled from the F.A.U.S.T. rally, numbly arranging to meet Volatile the next evening and, at length, prising my sister’s address from a party lackey.

  I glanced up now from the bench as over-coated figures slipped by, bent over against the snow that fell as heavy and as thick as blossom onto their bowed shoulders.

  And now, suddenly, there was Pandora, looking rather smart in black, her long legs scissoring through the drifts.

  I stood, raising a quizzical eyebrow. Pandora stopped dead, and for a long moment there was only the shushing patter of snowflakes.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ came the well-remembered drawl.

  ‘Pan!’ I cried heartily. ‘You look awfully well, dear heart.’ I kissed her twice on the cheeks. ‘This fascist brotherhood of yours obviously agrees with you more than a fruitarian diet.’

  She seemed astonished at this. ‘How do you—?’

  ‘I saw you,’ I said. ‘At the rally last night. I say, it’s freezing out here, fancy a spot of Java?’

  ‘What do you want, Lucifer?’ Her accusatory blue eyes–a mite larger than mine–sw
ivelled in my direction over the powdered curve of her cheek.

  ‘Can’t I pay a call on my own sister?’

  A faint smile puckered her heavily rouged lips. ‘No.’ She pressed her shiny black shoe into a drift and contemplated the print it left. ‘Don’t pretend you’re getting sentimental.’

  ‘Perhaps a little,’ I lied. ‘I find myself thinking with some longing about the old days. We were all so happy then…’

  ‘I was never happy,’ she snapped. ‘I had a wretched childhood, as well you know. Principally due to your tormenting.’

  ‘Was I really so rotten? Well, that was ages ago. Listen, since we’re both in town, why don’t we have some lunch—?’

  ‘Too busy,’ she cut across me. ‘The business of F.A.U.S.T. occupies me constantly.’

  ‘Yes! I’m sure it does. Rather a surprise, eh, you being interested in the old movement too?’

  ‘I’m party secretary. It’s rather more than an interest,’ she withered. ‘What were you doing at the rally? You want to join?’

  ‘Sympathizer, shall we say? I must say that chap Mons is an interesting cove. I’d love to have a chin-wag with him.’

  Pandora looked me directly in the eye. ‘Listen. If you’re genuinely interested in the Tribune, brother mine, then I may be prepared to forget about the past.’ She looked suddenly worried. ‘You’re not working for a newspaper now or anything like that?’

  ‘The wolves of Fleet Street have never found a welcome at Number Nine.’

  She glanced down and gave a little shiver. ‘Olympus…that is, Mr Mons…he’s, well, he’s had some little bother with the press.’

  ‘Poor fellow. I know what they’re like. Build you up only to knock you down. I dare say they hate the fact that he’s a success.’

  ‘No!’ cried Pandora with unsettling ferocity. ‘Material wealth doesn’t concern him! They’re frightened because he speaks the truth. He knows that the old order has had its day. All across Europe, capitalism is failing. And the only bulwark we have against the Bolshevik tide is World Fascism!’