The Bloody Red Baron

Part Three: Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man Chapter 37

Master of the World
The Graf von Dracula, in consultation with Ludendorff and Hindenburg, under the direct patronage of Kaiser Wilhelm and King-Emperor Franz Ferdinand, had laid plans for the great victory of the Central Powers. Soon would begin the Kaiserschlacht, the all-or-nothing push of the German armies, backed by a million men freed from the Eastern Front, against the Allied lines and, once they were breached in a hundred spots, on to Paris. When Paris fell, France would be crushed, Great Britain cowed and America startled. The Allies would make what craven peace they could. Then Poe presumed the Graf would direct his attentions to the arriviste peasant masters of the new Russia and make ready for the next generation's war.
The newly named Schloss Adler would be Dracula's command post for this vital action. Flanked by his brood of flying demigods, the father of European vampirism would stand on the highest tower of the castle and watch his armies triumph.
Poe was possessed by the excitement of the moment. On the battlements as the sun set, he heard the din that rang throughout the castle as unused chambers were opened. A convoy of trucks had arrived, widening and flattening the road to the castle with their wheels. Efficient engineers were installing telephone and telegraph lines.
A group of men in uniform wrestled to erect a wireless aerial. A new steel structure already arose from the ancient pile, topped with a huge inverted hook.
The uniforms reminded him of other soldiers in grey, of another just cause. Poe had felt as excited before, marching at the head of his troop into Gettysburg over fifty years earlier.
earlier. That had been another all-or-nothing push, another turning point. Then, history had turned the wrong way. This time, that would not happen. Trains sped across Europe, packed with men and munitions. From his perch, he saw black segmented snakes winding across the sunset-bloodied land, heard the grinding of the wheels on the tracks. With every minute, Germany grew stronger.
In the last few days, he had been writing. Der rote Kampfflieger was not the ghosted autobiography Mabuse had commissioned (Edgar Poe could not shackle his voice to another, not even that of Manfred von Richthofen) but a biographical sketch which spun out of control, scattering ideas and philosophies, mixing the politics of nations with the nature of the universe. Not since Eureka had he had a subject so vast.
It took all his concentration to hold the matter of his book in his mind. As he wrote, he realised this was his last chance to redeem a reputation compromised by the wide-eyed wrong- headedness of The Battle of St Petersburg. His hands were permanently stained, fingers black with ink. His cuffs were spotted. By writing, by envisioning in minute detail a world as it should be, mankind as it should be, he could make it so. His mind, stretched near madness, must prove strong enough for the task.
'Eddy,' Theo appeared, collar turned up against the wind Poe had not noticed, 'if you have a moment, there are a few matters we must discuss.'
Since Orlok's arrival, Theo was burdened with a thousand duties. Through the smiling Hardt, the elder insisted on supervising in detail all matters pertaining to intelligence and security. There could not be enough checks and examinations. Tiny flaws in the records of a dozen men, from an adjutant on Karnstein's staff down to one of the castle's troop of cleaners, had been exposed and the personnel removed.
Theo, like everyone, was newly formal. Fliers wore full dress uniform, breasts heavy with medals, at all times. Huge ledgers of military etiquette were learned by rote. Theo wore a fur- collared greatcoat over his immaculate uniform. On his tunic hung an Iron Cross earned on active service in Belgium. He had a large, flat box under his arm.
'Firstly, your problem with Ewers is at an end. *
Since his display before Orlok, Ewers had sulked, chattering out 'reports' on a typewriter, plotting his own advancement.
'The Baron has settled the matter personally.'
Poe tried not to think what that might mean.
'Now, as you understand, our little nest is to make accommodation for a very high-flying bird. Because of JG1's record, we have been able to adopt a certain casual attitude which will no longer be applicable.'
Theo was coming around to something awkward.
'I understand you held the rank of full colonel in the army of the Southern Confederacy?'
'I rose to that position. Under the name of Perry.'
Theo presented his box like a tray. He opened it, and thin paper was disturbed by the breeze.
'Matters are complicated, you understand, by the absorption of the Confederacy into our enemy, the United States of America, but it seems you are entitled to wear this.'
In the box, neatly folded, was the uniform of an obersturmbahnfuhrer in the Uhlans. Poe picked up the Ulanka jacket. The quality was of the highest. A double row of buttons glittered. Theo saluted.
'We have equal rank, Oberst Poe.'
He tried to get used to the continual saluting. His reaffirmed rank demanded salute of almost everyone in Schloss Adler, and he was obliged smartly to return the gesture.
'When they opened up the west tower, they disturbed the filth of ages,' Goring was saying. 'They had to send Emmelman in. He ate everything half-alive, and most of the dirt.'
Emmelman was the kobold-flier who never reassumed human shape. A shambling heap, he was a writhing mass of wormy appendages, lumbering alarmingly through corridors he filled entirely. Even this creature was crammed into immaculate uniform.
The Great Hall was being rearranged. The trophy wall was inviolate, but electric lights were strung everywhere, banishing shadow from the vaulted space. Centuried cobwebs were ruthlessly burned away. Cleaners grew fat on the spiders that were a perk of the position.
'Did you see the monster in the courtyard?' Goring asked Poe. 'Barrel wider than a factory chimney. Engineers claim it can hit Paris.'
Gun emplacements had sprung up all around the castle. Mainly anti-aircraft positions. JG1 expected to do a deal of air fighting close to home. The Allies knew what they were up against now, thanks to Albert Ball's lucky observer, and serious assaults were expected.
'You must set everything down. This is the sharp end of history.'
Poe outranked Rittmeister von Richthofen. He was worried this would prompt the flier to close up. Over the past weeks, he had just begun to tease thoughts and feelings out of the hero. This could bring down a steel shutter. He supposed that, if it came to it, he could order the Baron to be forthcoming.
Richthofen had been flying full-strength dusk-till-dawn missions for several nights, leading his hunting pack, bringing up his score until he was within sight of an unprecedented hundred victories. The general order was that no Allied aircraft be allowed to return to the lines with intelligence of the gathering forces of the Kaiserschlacht. In addition, JG1 were destroying balloons by the half-dozen, ensuring the Allies were running short of trained observers. The Baron was not tired by such exertions. Rather, with the glut of foes' blood, he swelled sleekly and seemed almost fat. He thought faster and was more expansive.
'I do not care for balloons,' he said.
'Because they don't add to your score?'
At the outset of the collaboration, Poe would not have dared make the suggestion. Now he knew his man, he could afford to be facetious.
There's no sport in it. But it's dangerous. As you know.'
JG1 had suffered its first loss, to ground fire. Ernst Udet, swooping on a balloon, was transfixed by a lucky silver bullet and shape-shifted to human form, tumbling from the sky a broken wreck.
'Your father-in-darkness will be here soon.'
'I have met Dracula.'
A Sahnke card, sold by the million, commemorated the event, the Baron and the Graf together. Though Richthofen could be photographed, Dracula had no reflection and so appeared in photographs as an empty uniform. The card showed the Baron posed stiffly, shaking the hand of a figure whose head was drawn in, a magnificent coin profile.
'On my twenty-fifth birthday, shortly after my fiftieth victory, I was summoned to Berlin. I met Hindenburg, Ludendorff, the Kaiser, the Empress and Graf von Dracula. I found the Empress to be a pleasant lady, very grandmotherly.'
'And the others?'
Richthofen hesitated, knowing praise of his superiors was his duty.
'Our Kaiser gave me a birthday present, a life-sized bronze and marble bust of himself. A characteristic gesture, I think.'
Poe smiled at the understatement. He was surprised the Baron should express even such mild criticism.
'What did you do with it?'
'I sent it to my mother in Schweidnitz, to be placed with my boyhood hunting trophies. In transport, one moustache was snapped off. I dare not exhibit an imperfect thing.'
'What of the others?'
'Hindenburg and Ludendorff lectured and asked technical questions, many beyond my poor knowledge. Hindenburg was struck by a nostalgic impulse when he learned we had occupied the same cadet room at Wahlstatt. I gather it changed very little between his time and mine, and that he had happier memories of the place than I.'
Hindenburg must have been at Wahlstatt only shortly after Poe was suffering at West Point.
'My own memories of military school have not become fonder with age.'
'That does not surprise me.'
'And Dracula?'
Poe remembered his own brief encounter with the Graf. And how overwhelming it had been.
'He is a huge person. He has his own gravity. There is a mental pull, an invisible fist. Those of his line, he has made his slaves.'
'New-borns who have been turned by elders are often bound to them.'
'It was not so with 'Auntie' Perle. She is meek and knows her place. But with Dracula's blood in me, I am chained to him. To be in his presence is like being buffeted by strong winds which threaten to tear one's mind to fragments. This is not even his intention, it is what he is. I cannot best serve him by becoming like those creatures who have attended him down the centuries. His wives and his serfs.'
'Have any of the others ...'
'... been in his actual presence? I hope we are strong enough to survive him long enough to do his will.'
A warm woman, Marianne, was presented to him in the evening. A train brought a company of such to the Schloss Adler, to feed those vampires not on active combat duty and reward those who were. The woman's neck was not too scabby, though she was rouged to conceal, advancing years and so docile as to suggest she had been used by vampires for quite some time.
Her blood carried traces of the others who had tapped her. Poe sensed little of her own life. Her mind was almost drained, used up. Still, she took the edge off his red thirst.
She was lulled into sleep and he drank again from the dribbling wounds on her neck and breast. Her blood cleared the fog from his mind, the jitteriness that he had, like the rest of the castle's inhabitants, been feeling since the changes began.
The door was rudely opened. Poe raised a sheet over Marianne's face.
'West tower,'Theo said. 'Full dress uniform. A quarter of an hour.'
Pre-dawn haze and thick cloud made the landscape seem like the bottom of the sea. Poe and Theo stood with General Karnstein. The fliers were out killing Englishmen, but the rest of the castle's staff were assembled in ranks as if for a parade. Everyone was in uniform: Ten Brincken, Caligari, Rotwang and the other scientists had reactivated reserve ranks, even the Graf von Orlok wore a pickelhaube and braided tailcoat.
The fliers of JG1, a flock of giant bats, appeared from the west, in perfect formation. Richthofen was the arrowhead, wings spread wide. The sight of the creatures still awed Poe.
Through thin cloud which ripped as barbed wings sliced, the fliers approached Schloss Adler. The Baron landed on a stone platform, crouching slightly then standing erect. His men fell in smartly behind him.
Engineers fussed by the sky-hook set into the tower. A shadow fell on the castle and everyone looked up. A vast black whale-shape was descending through the clouds. A smartly assembled band struck up Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' from The Ring.
Hardt gave orders as cables tumbled from the sky. Engineers scrambled to catch the whiplike things. A dirigible loomed lower. The cable was fixed to the hook and an electric winch whirred. It was rare to see a Zeppelin so close to the lines. This was a magnificent specimen, painted black as night. On the nose of the gasbag, just in front of the gondola, the crest of Dracula was picked out in scarlet.
All necks locked at an angle. All eyes fixed on the wondrous craft, the dreadnought of the clouds. It was the Attila, flagship of the German aerial fleet.
A trap opened in the underside. A batwing-cloaked figure stepped into empty air and floated down. He wore a face- covering helmet crowned with horns. His body was encased in burnished armour. As Dracula alighted on the tower, everyone saluted.