Dead Men Stalking 1: High Jinks (MI7 Assassin origins)
The lock was a simple affair and he had it picked in under a minute. He pulled out the book. Every page was was marked This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government, Most Secret.
We’re back with the third MI7 Assassin origins story! My plan had been to start posting the full length novel this week, but something incredible is going on with this story. It keeps expanding and developing. Remarkably similar to what happened to the way Nemesis the Warlock and Sláine expanded. My Muse is compelling me to follow this creative path. And I know the MI7 Assassin series is the stronger for it. So now, this is the third origins story, and there will actually be a fourth origins story before the novel (Devil’s Breath) starts!
If you’re just jumping onboard now, you can read part 1 of His Master’s Voice here:
And here’s part 1 of Scent of a Killer:
My paying subs get the hot thrill of reading MI7 Assassin the Sunday before it goes out to everyone else on Wednesday, but whenever you get your hands on it, I would really appreciate your feedback on this story! Eventually we’ll publish these origins stories as novellas and I want them to be as good as they possibly can be when we do! So if you have any suggestions, something you particularly like or don’t like, want to see more or less of, let me know in the comments below!
DEAD MEN STALKING 1: HIGH JINKS
Now you know what you’ve gotta do, son. It’s an easy pannie for someone like you. Three floors up. Room 38, Ministry of Munitions. I’d do it meself if I was still alive. And you’ll discover who all the bleeding traitors are. Them who need sending to join us in No Man’s Land.
It was 9.30pm on a dry and overcast night on January 20th 1917 as Stone, a dark figure with a balaclava concealing his face, slipped out the window of his first floor office and began climbing up towards the top floor of Adelphi Terrace in the Strand. MI7 – the propaganda branch of the Directorate of Military Intelligence – had the ground and first floors of the building, while the three floors above were occupied by the Ministry of Munitions.
The voice of his dead Sergeant, killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, along with his other three comrades, encouraged him as he searched for his first foothold.
The front of the neoclassical building boasted ornate architectural flourishes, pilasters, friezes and suchlike, as befitting a grand edifice on The Strand. But his office was at the back, on a narrower and quieter street. Here the building had a plainer façade. At close inspection the crumbling brickwork didn’t appear to have been repaired since the Adam Brothers built the terrace in the late eighteenth century. Its irregular texture and areas of missing mortar provided plenty of places for him to gain purchase with his hands and feet.
He moved upwards, seeking out fingerholds and toeholds and reached a tall second floor window. It was barred: a solid wrought iron lattice that he used as a ladder. Above it was a blank brick façade between him and the third floor window. He climbed higher, using grips that mountaineers would have been proud of. He was reaching for the third floor window ledge when an unmortared crumbling brick gave way under his right foot and fell to the ground. He almost followed it. Taking a shaky breath, he pressed his forehead against the dusty bricks, then continued his climb.
Above the third window was a stone cornice that ran the length of the building, indicating he was nearly at journey’s end. The cornice tilted outwards, forming an overhang of some eighteen inches. It forced him to lean out, creating an uncomfortable gap between his body and the brickwork that he had been pressing himself against.
He felt a sudden jolt of terror, a reminder that he once had a fear of heights. He paused for a moment, his hands gripping the stone lip. Breathe it out. Focus on the job. The cornice reminded him of the place where he had first felt that fear as a boy. He had lost it from working in the music halls as an aerialist. A retiring trapezist, Joe Riley, had patiently taught him all he knew, including how to overcome his fear, and Stone had relished the chance to defeat it. He reminded himself that this was actually his third visit to Room 38 in the Ministry of Munitions in the space of a month.
With a final effort he was up onto the flat roof, finding his way past the chimneys to the front of the building and the windows of the fourth storey that had been added some twenty years earlier. He didn’t use the torch he’d stashed in a pocket, preferring to slowly feel his way forwards. The odds of anyone seeing a beam of light up here were slim, but not impossible. There were other offices and government buildings around Adelphi Terrace of a similar height and it would only take a stray glance from a night porter or a clerk burning the midnight oil to raise the alarm. You couldn’t be too careful in wartime.
Set back behind elegant balustrading, Room 38 occupied the entire additional modern floor, like the top tier of a wedding cake. Stone glanced down at the bustling theatreland below to reassure himself no-one was looking up and taking an interest in his activities. Following the government’s Beauty Sleep order, some shows were already over and theatre-goers were thronging out into the streets. High Jinks was on at the Adelphi Theatre. Some of the audience were still singing the hit songs from the show. He could hear snatches of Something Seems Tingle-inging and Love’s Own Kiss as they happily made their way home by cab or omnibus.
Now it was time for his own high jinks. He focused his attention on the nearest window. He knew they were all wired with magnetic contacts, thanks to the Rely-a-Bell Burglar and Fire Alarm Company.
He pulled out his torch and switched it on to confirm the layout. Turning it off again, he then took out a small but powerful magnet the size of a box of matches, and placed it on the bottom left corner of the wooden frame, securing it with putty.
Then he slid his pocket knife into the gap between the top and bottom windows and pushed open the fastener. Sliding the window up he climbed in. His soft leather trapeze shoes had no treads. Nevertheless he meticulously checked that he had left no incriminating marks on the sill or the floor.
He'd entered the room in the southwest corner and he quickly swept his torch from left to right. The room was about sixty feet long and forty wide. Running down the centre of the room was a formidable double line of tall steel filing cabinets, standing back to back.
There was a gap every twelve cabinets so clerks could cross to the other side of the room. On the far wall were free standing wooden shelves loaded with bundles of neatly tied documents labelled 00, 01, 02, through to 090. Tables flanked each side of the cabinets. There documents could be inspected, aided by the light of green lampshades suspended from the ceiling. There was also a line of six firmly locked, roll-top bureaus and four wooden cabinets with card indexes to the entire system.
At the far end of Room 38 was a barred wall with a door set into it. A reception area and visitor's reading room was visible beyond with a door leading to the exit. A high counter stood guard between the reading room and the barred wall, with a counter flap at one end that could be raised for access to the records room. The reading room had three desks where papers that had been signed out from the records office could be perused by visitors. The bars effectively caged off the entire records office, but if it weren't quite clear enough, a sign on the wall in black army stencils warned ‘No entry to unauthorised personnel.’
The first time Stone had illicitly entered the records office, the effect had been so mesmerising and overwhelming that he had barely taken in the whole vast enterprise. He had to return a second time to find the forbidden knowledge he was looking for. When he tracked it down, it was worth it, so wonderfully worth it. It proved beyond any doubt that the British naval blockade of Germany was, in fact, a sham. Munitions and food in vast quantities were getting through to Germany with the full knowledge and approval of the Contraband Committee of the Foreign Office. Those responsible were part of a secret group within the government that was deliberately prolonging the war for power and profit.
What Stone had suspected was there in black and white. Britain could have easily defeated Germany in 1915. In that year alone, 50,000 British and Empire soldiers had died. Instead, the conflict was dragging on, perhaps to 1919 or beyond. For Stone, that discovery of the sham naval blockade had justified his assassination of the head of the Contraband Committee, Wichart Crowe. And it had made a difference. Because shortly after the assassination, ships bound for Germany that were seized in the North Sea by the British Navy remained seized and were not released to continue their journey.
Now he was familiar with Room 38, Stone knew exactly where he was going and what to look for: cabinet 10A. It was marked ‘Appointments’. He pulled out his tool kit and went to work on the lock. He had learnt his lock-picking skills as the assistant to the Great Zadini, ‘The Viceroy of Versatility’, who specialised in breaking out of padlocks, chains, handcuffs and straitjackets.
The lock was a simple affair and he had it picked in under a minute. A drawer in the cabinet held several large leather-bound appointment books. Stone pulled out the one in current use. Every page was was marked ‘This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government, Most Secret’. A further instruction, ink stamped in black capitals, was also on every page: TO BE KEPT UNDER LOCK AND KEY.
And there it was.
A meeting on January 31st between Colonel Calder and Herr Röpell, a Swiss businessman, at the Farringdon Hotel. In eleven days time. Just as the French magazine L'homme enchaîné: The Chained-up Man had predicted. Stone had come across the illegal publication during the two weeks he had spent working for MI7d, the foreign censorship department, as part of his training as an MI7b intelligence agent. The magazine article, headlined TRADING WITH THE ENEMY, had suggested a meeting would take place soon between representatives of the British and German governments for the purpose of carrying out a commercial transaction. And that a German Imperial officer sent to London would be disguised as a Swiss businessman.
He was about to put the book away and make ready to leave but noticed a faint pencilled note next to the appointment: 6B.
He hesitated. He'd got what he came for, it was best to go out while he was winning. But he was here now, and no one was due in the records office until tomorrow at 8am. He slid the book back into the drawer and locked it. Just a quick look.
He walked across to cabinet 6B, unlocked it, and pulled open one of the drawers. The names ran from Nesbith through to Rockford. He closed it and pulled out the drawer above it. Röpell was the first name, at the front. He pulled out the fat manilla foolscap folder and scanned the documents.
What he read about Herr Röpell shocked him. Not just the letters, but the attachments.
He had heard rumours of trading with the enemy, but it had always been just that: hearsay. It was usually dismissed as the crazed theories of ‘peace prattlers’. But not this time.
It was all there in black and white, it was beyond debate. There was a letter from the Ministry of Munitions to the German War Office, confirming the renewal of the existing contract of supplying Germany with rubber in exchange for binoculars and gunsights from Carl Zeiss AG.
Stone knew that Germany was desperate for rubber for tyres and communication cables and Britain was similarly desperate for optical glass. The new contract would provide treble the existing arrangement of fifteen thousand each of two types of binoculars, one for infantry officers and the other for artillery officers. Plus a further twelve thousand binoculars of a lower grade for non-commissioned officers. Thereafter delivered at a rate of five thousand binoculars per month. A similar arrangement applied to gunsights and rangefinders. With the shortage of rubber, the Germans were having to run their army trucks on iron tires, which were ruining their roads. Without proper tyres, the trucks couldn’t function properly in the mud of the Western Front and this brought the prospect of German surrender so much closer. The British enjoyed no such scarcity, given their imports from Malaya, and they were happy to provide Germany with all the rubber it required to stay mobile.
The attachments indicated that the Swiss businessman Herr Röpell was in fact Major Röpell of the German Imperial Army’s Sektion 111b. The Sektion was the equivalent of MI7b and was responsible for counterintelligence and propaganda.
Stone began to memorise the details of the correspondence.
The room was quiet save for his breathing and the dry rasp of documents as he rifled through them.
Suddenly he heard distant conversation. He froze and then switched off his torch. It was getting nearer. Someone was approaching Room 38. The door to the reading room was flung open, light switches were flicked on and the records office was flooded with light.
He was trapped.