“Tom told me his father was director,” said Jamie, remembering the conversation in the Fallen Gallery. “He said it wasn’t for very long though.”
“Too long,” spit Frankenstein, and Jamie recoiled. “Dan Morris wasn’t a bad man,” he continued, after a pause. “Far from it, really. He was impulsive, and he was aggressive, and that made him a great operator, but a terrible director. It was difficult for him, to take over in the circumstances he did. It would have been difficult for anyone; Stephen cast such a long shadow. But that doesn’t excuse the risks he took, and the people who got hurt.”
Frankenstein got up from the table and poured himself water from the dispenser. He sat back down heavily in front of Jamie. “We should have seen it coming; I should have seen it coming. But it took a long time for Blacklight to recover after Stephen died, and so for at least a year, no one was paying much attention to what Dan was doing. A night mission here, an overseas operation without proper clearance there. Small things, at least to start with. But some people did notice them and began to keep a closer eye. Your father was one of them, Henry Seward was another. And so was I.”
The monster sipped his water. “In March of 1993, Dan ordered an operation into Romania—modern-day Transylvania—where all this started in 1891. That part of the world is under the jurisdiction of the SPC, the Russian Supernatural Protection Commissariat, and they have never taken kindly to foreign Departments operating in their sphere of influence. Under the Soviets, it was almost impossible even to enter their territory, and the penalties for doing so were severe. But then the USSR collapsed and the SPC started slowly to extend its hand toward the other Departments. Your father led a delegation to Moscow in late 1992, the first of its kind in almost fifty years, and he came home excited about having Russia back in the fold. Then Dan ordered Operation Nightingale, and we nearly lost them forever.”
“What was Operation Nightingale?” asked Jamie.
“It was a mission to destroy a blood factory near Craiova. A vampire gang was kidnapping people, mostly drug addicts and the homeless, from all across central Europe, and bleeding them in an old slaughterhouse. Hundreds of men and women a year for God knows how long, then selling the blood on the black market. We’d known about it for a couple of years and had reported it to the SPC on a number of occasions. We got nothing back, not even an acknowledgment that the message had arrived. That’s what it was like when the Iron Curtain still stood; information disappeared into a black hole. Then when the Curtain came down, we reported it again, and this time we got a reply, saying that the factory was a priority SPC target. Six months later, still nothing had happened, so Dan sent a team in.”
Frankenstein looked at Jamie. “When I think back to that day—”
“You were there?” interrupted Jamie. “You went on the mission?”
“Of course,” replied Frankenstein. “Me, your father, Paul Turner, and seventeen other Blacklight men. We flew in on the 18th of March 1993, and we reached the factory in the late morning of the following day.”
“What happened?”
“They were waiting for us. More than seventy vampires, all well fed and rested, wide awake and waiting when we went through the door. I noticed that the black paint covering the windows was still wet, and I told your father, who ordered everyone to retreat. But it was too late. They came down from the rafters. We never stood a chance.”
“But you made it out. And so did my dad and Major Turner.”
“We were lucky. That’s all there is to it. Maybe we were a little more experienced; some of the team were just boys, no more than a year or two under their belts. When we saw them coming, we turned and ran. I was the last one to make it out of the building.”
“How many of you made it?” asked Jamie, his voice taut with horror.
“Six of us,” replied Frankenstein. “Six of us made it into the sunlight, and fourteen men died in a dark building full of blood and death.”
Frankenstein reached for his mug, saw that it was empty, and pushed it aside. “Dan could never prove the Russians let them know we were coming. The operation was an unauthorized run into another Department’s territory, so there were no permissions, no call logs to check. But that didn’t matter to him. Your father defended the SPC, told Dan he didn’t believe they would let Blacklight men die to make a point. But the director was convinced. He ordered Department 19 to sever all ties with the SPC and drew up a letter asking the prime minister to expel Russian diplomatic staff from London. The letter claimed that the SPC had committed an act of war, and it should be treated as such.”
“But if it was an unauthorized mission . . .” protested Jamie.
Frankenstein smiled at him. “You can see the problem, fourteen years later. And your father and I could see it then. We weren’t alone, either. At that point, the mission was the biggest disaster in Blacklight history, and losing fourteen men in one day had a terrible impact on the Department. Just about every operator knew one of the men who had died, and there was a lot of anger about what had happened. A lot of it aimed at Dan Morris. So your father took control of the situation.”
“What did he do?”
“He and a number of senior operators—Henry Seward, Paul Turner, and myself among them—made a formal motion to the chief of the general staff that Dan Morris be removed as director. We explained the mistake he had made in ordering the mission, and the huge overreaction he was planning in response to its failure, and we asked that he be relieved of duty, for the good of Blacklight. Thankfully, the general agreed with us and did as we asked.”
“No wonder you and Tom don’t get along,” said Jamie, softly. “He must hate you for doing that to his dad.”
“He can hate me all he wants,” said Frankenstein, sharply. “I don’t give a damn what he thinks. We did what we did because it needed doing, because more men would have died needlessly if we hadn’t. I don’t regret it for a moment.”
“What happened to Tom’s dad? Did he stay in Blacklight?”
“He could have,” said Frankenstein. “He was removed as director, not from the Department. And there were plenty of people who tried to persuade him to do so, including your father. But his pride would not allow it. He left the day after he was removed from office.” The monster looked at Jamie. “He put his pistol in his mouth six months later.”
“Jesus,” whispered Jamie.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, the sad tale of Thomas Morris’s father hanging in the air between them.
Eventually Jamie spoke. “So that was when Admiral Seward took charge?” he asked.
Frankenstein nodded. “He was Commander Seward then. But, yes. He steadied the ship, with your father’s help. And the Department recovered. Everything was fine for more than a decade. Henry and Julian were a great team, and Blacklight prospered. And then Budapest happened, and nothing was ever really the same again.”
Jamie sat forward, his eyes full of dreadful inevitability.
“What happened in Budapest?” he asked.
26
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Molnár estate near Budapest, Hungary
February 12, 2005
Julian Carpenter fired his T-Bone at point-blank range, turning his head away as the vampire exploded in a shower of blood, soaking his Blacklight uniform. He turned to the four men standing behind him.
“Be careful from here on,” he said.
Four faces looked back at him. The huge mottled face of Frankenstein gave him a quick grin, and Paul Turner stared at him without expression, his gray eyes cold and calm. The two young operators, Connor and Miller, looked at him with queasy uncertainty, their training just about masking their obvious fear. Carpenter felt for them; neither should have been on a mission with such a high-value target, and all five men knew it. The two young privates had less than a year’s experience between them, and it was Connor’s first live operation.