Page 53 of No Man's Land

“Absolutely not.” Alex had lost all colour, his reflection ghostlike in the window. “Under no circumstances are you to do that.”

Josef’s hackles rose as they always did when he met with closed doors. “You can’t stop me, you know.”

Alex’s expression turned baleful. “Do you truly believe that?”

“Yes. Unless you’re planning to do me in. We still have something like a free press in this country, despite DORA.”

Alex turned from the window, holding Josef’s gaze with an expression impossible to decipher. “Then let me be absolutely clear,” he said. “It would very muchnotbe in your interest to attempt to publish a story about the situation with the ghoul.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It is a threat.” Taken aback, Josef retreated a step, and Alex’s mouth tightened. “Not from me. Others…are less tolerant.”

“You mean your boss, Saint.”

Alex jerked his head in a nod. “Secrecy has kept The Society safe for close to a millennium. It won’t change now.Hewon’t change.”

“And I’m a loose end,” Josef said, quoting Saint’s words. “To be dealt with.”

Alex didn’t answer, turning back to the window, and for a while they both stared out over the city.

“So, what’s the plan?” Josef said. “Knock me over the head and dump me in the Thames? Or shoot me with that gun of yours—the one you keep in the bathroom?”

“If you truly thought I’d do any of that, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Wouldn’t I? I went to the front to report the truth, and this isn't half so risky. Besides, you can’t kill me; you want that photograph, and only I know where it is.”

Alex turned his head, half his face in shadow cast by the flickering light of the gas lamps. He looked stern, and unfairly beautiful. Josef had to clench his teeth against a betraying twistof want. Alex said, “Destroy it, both the print and the negative. It puts you in danger, and not only from the ghoul.” His expression darkened further. “The Society goes to great lengths to keep its secrets.”

Josef thought of the photograph, and of the pamphlet May had agreed to publish. “I can’t destroy it. I need it. I’m trying to tell people the truth.”

“No one will believe you about the ghoul—"

“About the war,” Josef interrupted. “About working men like Sykes being forced to kill each other to satisfy the greed of their bourgeois, imperial masters. Your lot can’t have a problem withthattruth, can they?”

“They will if you publish a photograph of a man clearly infected by a ghoul.”

Josef lifted his chin. “It’s my best one.”

“For God’s sake!” Alex grabbed his shoulder, turning Josef to face him. “I’m not joking. They will doanythingto protect their secrets. Do you understand?”

“Of course I understand,” Josef said, shaking free. “That’s what your lot always do: protect their secrets. Why do you think they’ve gagged all the war correspondents?”

Jaw clenched, Alex said, “This is different.”

“Is it? How?”

“Because some truths are too dangerous to tell.” His eyes met Josef’s with a look he couldn’t misinterpret. “As you well know.”

That, he supposed was true, but what Alex was talking about was a private matter that hurt nobody. “Inthatcase,” he said, “secrecy protects a man's right to live as he chooses. In the case of your Society, it keeps the people in ignorance of their own danger.”

“And, in both cases, it preserves the peace.”

“Until ghouls start infecting people in London.”

Alex lifted a brow. “And you think provoking mass panic would help?”

“I think, if people knew the truth about that, about the war, they wouldn’t keep taking it. Not when they’re being slaughtered in the millions. Mustard gas or fucking ghouls, what difference does it make in the end? They’re still bloody dead. And for what? To keep their bourgeois masters in champagne and caviar. That’s the real reason for all this bloody secrecy.”

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