The Policeman of Secrets

Chapter 14 Part 4

He raised the device to Solomon’s face. “Or you can tell me everything you know about the Workshop of Light, and I mean everything. I often find just when you think somebody has told you enough, they always remember that little scrap of detail that makes an examination so much more worthwhile. It only takes a final push. Sometimes fatal, sometimes not.”

Solomon showed no reaction, but only stared at the floor before him.

“Elizabeta will find them all eventually, of course,” said Flair. “We both know that. As much as I dislike her haphazard methods, she certainly has a determined streak that cannot be denied. She will discover your devious friends’ hidey-hole, if she hasn’t already. But if you would be kind enough to open up then at least you could live.

“No?” Flair strolled across the room to tend to his machines. “Well, if truth be told, I am pleased you decide to be brave.” He sneered. “It is rare that I have to use more than one of my friends here, and I am always curious to discover just how much agony a body can stand before it snaps.”

Solomon was not listening. Instead, he was trying to overcome the horrors that had coming rushing forth with the pain of torture. His mind swam with memories long hidden, of snowy steppes coated in the bodies of men and horses thrown around like so many rag dolls. Of blood, so much blood, turning white hills and ditches red and black. Of the endless cries and moans of the dying, men holding in their entrails with shaking hands as they cried for their mother, for God, for anybody. The smell of rotting flesh, frostbitten limbs, gunpowder, oils, waste.

Above all the fragmented pictures washing through his head came the faces. His comrades lost to bullet, shell, or bayonet, to the kick of a horse or a fall from an icy ledge. The poor fellows he had killed. Fifteen that he knew of, enemies he had seen close enough to watch them fall from his pistol or sword, close enough to feel their final confused breaths or their cries of rage on his face. His wounds had healed, but his guilt at surviving the battlefield and the massacre at the peasants’ village was always there. No matter how much absinthe he drank, hoping for distracting visions, he could not wipe away the images of the Crimea.

But now with the memories came a powerful anger. It coursed through his body, pushed on by floods of adrenalin. His head rose, and his eye focused. His vision and his thoughts were suddenly clear.

Flair had activated the black boxes on another of his machines: the frames connected by a belt. Carefully, keeping his fingers away from the inner edges, the doctor slowly pulled the squares apart until they were spread along the length of the rubber belt. Cogs and runners were visible beneath, and once again Solomon could hear that maddening hum of whatever power source Flair had discovered and was now able to control.

“I think we shall try this next,” said Flair. “I call it the Conveyor, and you should be proud: you will be its first subject.”

He pulled at a bell cord, and while he waited for his servants to return, he said: “I find this constant defiance by you and your friends quite confusing, you know. We wish only the best for this country. Only the best. Lord Stone has seen what has become of this empire. The American colonies we once owned are becoming stronger all the time, and as for the German states, or the French? Not that long ago, we crushed France’s armies, but they have forgotten their rightful place and recovered already. Our empire has rivals, which cannot be allowed. But Stone, in his wisdom, has found the means to save it: first the Subjugation Assembly, and now the Black Pages. Why do you insist on not seeing this?”

He adjusted his gloves and said, “Yes, I imagine some people had plans for their lives and some of the more intelligent might have been disappointed if they knew they were to be turned into our slaves. But, on the whole, everybody will be better off once our plans come to fruition. We shall be a strong, united force. All of us will be pulling together under a leader with vision, rather than a queen happy to let other countries grow until they are more powerful than the empire that should be ruling the entire world. Why not join us, hmm?”