Necroscope II Vampyri

Chapter Fourteen
Inside the house, Layard and Jordan had carefully, systematically searched the ground floor and now approached the main staircase to the upper levels. They'd switched on dim lights as they went, compensating a little for the gloom. At the foot of the stairs they paused.

'Where the hell is Roberts?' Layard whispered. 'We could use some instructions.'

'Why?' Jordan glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. 'We know what we're up against mainly. And we know what to do.'

'But there should be four of us in here.'

Jordan gritted his teeth. 'There was something of a row out front. Trouble, obviously. Anyway, by now someone should be planting charges in the cellars. So let's not waste time. We can ask questions later.'

On a narrow landing where the stairs turned through a right angle, a large, built-in cupboard faced them squarely, its door a little ajar. Jordan kept his crossbow lined up on the large-panelled door, sidled past and continued up the stairs. He wasn't passing the buck; it was simply that if there was anything nasty in there, he knew Layard could stop it with a single burst of liquid fire.

Layard checked that the valve on his hose was open, rested his finger on the trigger, toed the door open. In there... darkness.

He waited until his eyes were growing accustomed to the dimness, then spotted a light switch on the wall just inside the door. He reached out his hand, then drew it back. He stepped forward a pace, used the nozzle of his hose to trip the switch. A light came on, throwing the interior of the cupboard into sharp relief. At the back a tall figure! Layard drew breath sharply; his jaw fell partly open and the corners of his mouth drew back in a half-rictus of fear. He was a breath from squeezing the trigger but then his eyes focussed and he saw only an old raincoat, hanging on a peg.

Layard gulped, filled his lungs, quietly closed the door. Jordan was up on the first floor landing. He saw two alcoves, arched over, with closed doors set centrally. There was also a passage, with two more doors that he could see before the corridor turned a corner. The closest door was maybe eight paces away, the furthest twelve. He turned back to the doors in the alcoves, approached the first of them, turned the doorknob and kicked it open: it was a toilet with a high window, letting in grey light.

Jordan turned to the second door, dealt with it as with the first. Inside was an extensive library, the whole room visible at a glance. Then, aware that Layard was coming up the stairs, he started down the corridor and at once paused. His ears pricked up. He heard... water? The hiss and gurgle of a tap?

A shower! The water sounds were coming from the second room - a bathroom? down the corridor. Jordan looked back. Layard was at the top of the stairs. Their eyes met. Jordan pointed to the first door, then at Layard. Layard was to deal with it. Then Jordan thumbed his own chest, pointed along the corridor to the second door.

He went on, but cautiously, crossbow held chest high and pointed dead ahead. The water sounds were louder, and a voice? A girl's voice singing? Humming, anyway. Some utterly tuneless melody . .

In this house at this time, a girl humming to herself in a shower? Or was it a trap? -

Jordan took a tighter grip on his crossbow, turned the knob and kicked in the door. No trap! Not that he could see. In fact the completely natural scene beyond the bathroom door left him at a complete loss. All of the tension went out of him in a moment, and he was left feeling... like some gross intruder!

The girl (Helen Lake, surely?) was beautiful, and quite naked. Water streamed down on her, setting her lovely body gleaming. She stood sideways on, picked out in clear definition against blue ceramic tiles, in the shower's shallow well. As the door slammed open she jerked her head round to stare at Jordan, her eyes opening wide in terror. Then she gasped, crumpled back against the shower's wall, looking as if she were about to faint. One hand flew to her breasts and her eyelids fluttered as her knees began to give way.

Jordan half-lowered his crossbow, said to himself: Sweet Jesus! But this is just a frightened girl! He began to reach out his free hand - to steady her - but then other thoughts, her thoughts, abruptly printed themselves on his telepathic mind.

Come on, my sweet! Come help me! Ah, just touch me, hold me! Just a little closer, my sweet... there! And now - Jordan jerked back as she turned more fully towards him. Her eyes were wide, triangular, demonic! Her face had been instantly transformed into that of a beast! And in her right hand, invisible until now, was a carving knife. The knife rose as she reached out and grasped Jordan's jacket. Her grip was iron! She drew him effortlessly towards her - and he fired his bolt into her breast point-blank.

Slammed back against the rear wall of the shower, pinned there by the bolt, she dropped her knife and began to issue peal after ringing peal of soul-searing screams. Blood gushed from where the bolt was bedded in her with little more than its flight protruding. She grasped it, and still screaming jerked her body this way and that. The bolt came loose from the wall in a crunching of tiles and plaster and she staggered to and fro in the shower, yanking on the bolt and screaming endlessly.

'God, God, oh God!' Jordan cried, riveted to the spot.

Layard shouldered him aside, squeezed the trigger on his flame-thrower, turned the entire shower unit into a blistering, steaming pressure-cooker. After several seconds he stopped hosing, and stared with Jordan at the result. Black smoke and steam cleared and the water continued to hiss, spurting from half-a-dozen places now in the molten plastic tubing of the shower's system. In the shallow well, Helen Lake's body slumped, features bubbling, hair like smouldering stubble, every inch of her skin peeling from her in great raw strips.

'God help us!' Jordan gasped, turned away to be sick.

'God?' the thing in the shower croaked, like a voice from the abyss. 'What god? You bloody black bastards!'

Impossibly she came erect, took a blind, stumbling, groping step forward.

Layard torched her again, but more out of mercy than from fear. He let his flame-thrower roar until fire belched out of the shower and threatened to burn him, too. Then he switched off, backed away down the corridor to where Jordan stood retching over the stair's balustrade.

From below, Roberts's voice reached anxiously up to them: 'Ken? Trevor? What is it?'

Layard wiped his forehead. 'We... we got the girl,' he whispered, then shouted, 'We got the girl!'

'We got her mother,' Roberts answered, 'and Bodescu's dog. That leaves Bodescu himself, and his mother.'

'There's a door up here, locked,' Layard called back. 'I thought I heard someone in there.'

'Can't you break it in?'

'No, it's oak, old and heavy. I could burn it. .

'No time for that. And if there is anyone in there, they're finished anyway. The cellars are mined by now.

You'd better come down - and quickly! We have to get out of here.'

Layard dragged Jordan after him down the stairs, calling ahead, 'Guy, where the hell have you been?'

'I'm on my own,' Roberts responded. 'Trask's out of it for now - but he's OK. Where've I been? I've been checking this place through downstairs.'

'A waste of time,' Jordan groaned, half to himself.

'What?' Roberts raised his voice more yet.

'I said, we'd already done it!' Jordan yelled, but needlessly for they were down the stairs, with Roberts propelling them towards the entrance hall and the open door...

Simon Gower and Harvey Newton had gone down into the cellars via the outbuilding with its narrow steps and central ramp. Loaded down with almost two hundred pounds of explosives between them, they had found the lights out of order, and so been obliged to use pocket torches. The vaults under the house were black and silent as a tomb, seemed extensive as a catacomb. They stuck close together, dumping thermite and plastic explosive packages wherever they found support walls or buttressed archways, and even though they went with something of caution, still they managed rapidly to fairly well saturate the place with their load. Newton carried a small can of petrol with which he left a trail from one dump to the next, until the whole place reeked of highly volatile fuel.

Finally they were satisfied that they'd explored and mined every part - and likewise pleased that they'd come across nothing dangerous - and so turned back and retraced their tracks to the exit. At a place they both agreed to be approximately central under the house, they set down the last of their load. Then Newton splashed what was left of his petrol all the way to the foot of the out building steps, while Gower double-checked the charges they'd planted, making sure they were all amply primed. - At the steps Newton tossed down his empty can, turned

and looked back into the gloom. From a little way back, round a corner, he could hear Gower's hoarse breathing and he knew that the other man worked furiously at his task. Gower's torch made flickering patches of light back there, its beam swinging this way and that as he worked.

Roberts appeared at the top of the steps, called down, 'Newton, Gower? You can come up out of there as quick as you like. We're all set if you are. The others are spread out round the house, just waiting. The mist has cleared. So if anything tries to break loose, we'll - '

'Harvey?' Gower's tremulous voice came out of the darkness, several notes higher up the scale than it should be. 'Harvey, was that you just then?'

Newton called back, 'No, it's Roberts. Hurry up, will you?'

'No, not Roberts,' Gower was breathless, almost whispering. 'Something else . .

Roberts and Newton looked at each other round-eyed. The ground gave itself a shake, a very definite tremor. From inside the cellars, Gower screamed.

Roberts came half-way down the steps, stumbling and yelling: 'Simon, get out of there! Hurry, man!'

Gower screamed again, the cry of a trapped animal. 'It's here, Guy! Oh, God - it's here! Under the ground!'

Newton made to go in after him but Roberts reached down and grabbed his collar. The ground was shaking now, dust billowing out of the yawning mouth of the old cellars. There were rending sounds, and other noises which might or might not be Gower choking his life out. Bricks started to slide loose from rotten mortar in the retaining walls, spilling down the sides of the ramp.

Newton started to back up the trembling steps, with Roberts dragging him from above. When they were almost at the top, they saw a cloud of dust and debris suddenly expelled forcefully from the entrance to the cellar - and then the door itself was lifted off its rusty hinges and hurled down at the foot of the ramp, a mass of splintered boards.

Something was framed in the dusty gap of the entrance. It was Gower, and it was more than Gower. He hung for a moment suspended in the otherwise empty doorway, swaying left and right. Then he emerged more fully and the watchers saw the huge, leprous trunk which propelled him. The thing - indeed 'the Other' - had entered his back in a solid shaft of matter, but inside Gower its massive pseudopod of vampire flesh had branched, following his pipes and conduits to several exits. Tentacles writhed from his gaping mouth and nostrils, the sockets of his dislocated eyes, his ruptured ears. And even as Roberts and Newton clambered in a frenzy of terror up the last few steps from the ramp, so Gower's entire front burst open, revealing a lashing nest of crimson, groping worms!

'Jesus!' Guy Roberts shouted then, his voice a sand-papered howl of horror and hatred. 'Sweet J-e-s-u-s!'

He aimed his hose down the ramp. 'Goodbye, Simon. God grant you peace!'

Liquid fire roared its rage, ran like a flood down the ramp, hurled itself in a fireball at the suspended man and the beast-thing holding him upright. The great pseudopod was instantly retracted - Gower with it, snatched back like a rag doll - and Roberts aimed his hose directly at the doorway at the foot of the steps. He turned the valve up full, and a shimmering jet of heat blasted its way into the cellar, fanning out inside the labyrinth of vaults into every niche and corner. For a count of five Roberts held it. Then came the first explosion.

Down went the entrance in a massive shuddering of earth. A shockwave of lashing heat hurled dirt and pebbles up the ramp, knocking Roberts and Newton off their feet. Roberts's finger automatically came off the trigger. His weapon smoked hot but silent in his hands. And crump! crump! crump! came evenly spaced, muffled concussions from deep in the earth, each one shaking the ground with pile-driver power.

Faster came the underground explosions, occurring in sporadic bursts, occasionally twinned, as the planted charges reacted to the heat and added to the unseen inferno. Newton got up and helped Roberts to his feet. They stumbled clear of the house, took up positions with Layard and Jordan, a man to each of the four corners but standing well back. The old barn, still blazing, began to vibrate as if itself alive and suffering its death agonies. Finally it shook itself to pieces and slid down into the suddenly seething earth. For a moment a lashing tentacle reached up from the shuddering foundations to a height of some twenty feet, then collapsed and was sucked back down into the quaking, liquefying quag of earth and fire.

Ken Layard was closest to that area. He ran raggedly away from the house, put distance between himself and the barn, too, before stumbling to a halt and staring with wide eyes and gaping mouth at the upstairs windows of the main building. Then he beckoned to Roberts to come and join him.

'Look!' Layard yelled, over the sound of subterranean thunder and the hiss and crackle of fire. They both stared at the house. Framed in a second-floor window, the figure of a mature woman stood with her arms held high, almost in an attitude of supplication. 'Bodescu's mother,' Roberts said. 'It can only be her: Georgina Bodescu - God help her!'

A corner of the house collapsed, sank into the earth in ruins. Where it went down, a geyser of fire spouted high as the roof, hurling broken bricks and mortar with it.

There were more explosions and the entire house shuddered. It was visibly settling on its foundations, cracks spreading across its walls, chimneys tottering. The four watchers backed off further yet, Layard dragging Ben Trask with him. Then Layard noticed the truck where it stood on the drive, jolting about on its own suspension.

He went to get it, but Guy Roberts stayed where he was, stood over Trask and continued to watch the figure of the woman at the window.

She hadn't changed her position. She stumbled a little now and then as the house settled, but always regained her pose, arms raised on high and head thrown back, so that it seemed to Roberts that indeed she talked to God. Telling Him what? Asking for what? Forgiveness for her son? A merciful release for herself?

Newton and Jordan left their positions at the rear of the house and came round to the front. It was clear that nothing was going to escape from that inferno now. They helped Layard get Trask into the truck; and while they busied themselves with preparations for their leaving, still Roberts watched the house burn, and so was witness to the end of it.

The thermite had done its job and the earth itself was on fire. The house no longer had foundations on which to stand. It slumped down, leaned first one way and then the other. Old brickwork groaned as timbers sheared, chimney stacks toppled and windows shivered into fragments in their twisting frames. And as the house sank in leaping flames and molten earth, so its substance became fuel for the fire.

Fire raced up walls inside and out; great red and yellow gouts of flame spurted from broken windows, bursting upward through a rent and sagging roof. For a single instant longer Georgina Bodescu was silhouetted against a background of crimson, searing heat, and then Harkley House gave up the ghost. It went down groaning into a scar of bubbling earth that resembled nothing so much as the mouth of a small volcano. For a little while longer the peaked gable ends and parts of the roof were visible, and then they too were consumed in vengeful fire and smoke.

Through all of this the reek had been terrible. Judging by the stench, it might well have been that fifty men had died and been burned in that house; but as Roberts climbed up into the passenger seat of the truck and Layard headed the vehicle down the drive towards the gates, all five survivors, including Trask who was now mainly conscious, knew that the stench came from nothing human. It was partly thermite, partly earth and timber and old brick, but mainly it was the death smell of that rendered down, gigantic monstrosity under the cellars, that 'Other' which had taken poor Gower.

The mist had almost completely cleared now, and cars were beginning to pull up along the verges of the road, their drivers attracted by the flames and smoke rising high into the air where Harkley House had stood. As the truck rolled out of the gates onto the road, a red-faced driver leaned out of his car's window, yelled, 'What is it? That's Harkley House, isn't it?'

'It was,' Roberts yelled back, offering what he hoped looked like a helpless shrug. 'Gone, I'm afraid. Burned down.'

'Good Lord!' The red-faced man was aghast. 'Has the fire service been informed?'

'We're off to do that now,' Roberts answered. 'Little good that'll do, though. We've been in to have a look, but there's nothing left to see, I'm afraid.' They drove on.

A mile towards Paignton, a clattering fire engine came tearing from the other direction. Layard drew dutifully in towards the side of the road to give the fire engine room. He grinned tiredly, without humour. 'Too late, my lads,' he commented under his breath. 'Much too late - thank all that's merciful.'

They dropped Trask off at the hospital in Torquay (with a story about an accident he'd suffered in a friends garden) and after seeing him comfortable went back to the hotel HQ in Paignton to debrief.

Roberts enumerated their successes. 'We got all three women, anyway. But as for Bodescu himself, I have my doubts about him. Serious doubts, and when we're finished here I'll pass them on to London, also to Darcy Clarke and our people up in Hartlepool. These will be simply precautionary measures, of course, for even if we did miss Bodescu we've no way of knowing what he'll do next or where he'll go. Anyway, Alec Kyle will be back in control shortly. In fact it's queer he hasn't shown up yet. Actually, I'm not looking forward to seeing him: he's going to be furious when he learns that Bodescu probably got out of that lot.'

'Bodescu and that other dog,' Harvey Newton put in, almost as an afterthought. He shrugged. 'Still, I reckon it was just a stray that got into... the grounds . somehow?' He stopped, looked from face to face. All were staring back at him in astonishment, almost disbelief. It was the first they'd heard of it.

Roberts couldn't restrain himself from grabbing Newton's jacket front. 'Tell it now!' he grated through clenched teeth. 'Exactly as it happened, Harvey.' Newton, dazed, told it, concluding:

'So while Gower was burning that... that bloody thing which wasn't a dog not all of it, anyway - this other dog went by in the mist. But I can't even swear that I saw it at all! I mean, there was so much going on. It could have been just the mist, or my imagination, or... anything! I thought it loped, but sort of upright in an impossible forward crouch. And its head wasn't just the right shape. It had to be my imagination, a curl of mist, something like that. Imagination, yes - especially with Gower standing there burning that godawful dog! Christ, I'll dream of dogs like that for the rest of my life!'

Roberts released him violently, almost tossed him across the room. The fat man wasn't just fat; he was

heavy, too, and very strong. He looked at Newton in disgust. 'Idiot!' he rumbled. He lit a cigarette, despite the fact that he already had one going.

'I couldn't have done anything anyway!' Newton protested. 'I'd shot my bolt, hadn't reloaded yet . .

'Shot your bloody bolt?' Roberts glared. Then he calmed himself. 'I'd like to say it's not your fault,' he told Newton then. 'And maybe it isn't your fault. Maybe he was just too damned clever for us.'

'What now?' said Layard. He felt a little sorry for Newton, tried to take attention away from him.

Roberts looked at Layard. 'Now? Well, when I've calmed down a little you and me will have to try and find the bastard, that's what now!'

'Find him?' Newton licked dry lips. How?' He was confused, wasn't thinking clearly.

Roberts at once tapped the side of his head with huge white knuckles. 'With this!' he shouted. 'It's what I do. I'm a "scryer", remember?' He glared again at Newton. 'So what's your f*cking talent? Other than screwing things up, I mean. .

Newton found a chair and fell into it. 'I... I saw him, and yet convinced myself that I hadn't seen him. What the hell's wrong with me? We went there to trap him - to trap anything coming out of that house - so why didn't I react more posit - ,

Jordan drew air sharply and made a conclusive, snapping sound with his fingers. He gave a sharp nod, said, 'Of course!'

They all looked at him.

'Of course!' he said again, spitting the words out. 'He's talented too, remember? Too bloody talented by a mile!

Harvey, he got to you. Telepathically, I mean. Hell, he got to me too! Convinced us he wasn't there, that we couldn't see him. And I really didn't see him, not a hair of him. I was there, too, remember, when Simon was burning that thing. But I saw nothing. So don't feel too bad about it, Harvey - at least you actually saw the bastard!'

'You're right,' Roberts nodded after a moment. 'You have to be. So now we know for sure: Bodescu is loose, angry and - God, dangerous! Yes, and he's more powerful, far more powerful, than anyone has yet given him credit for . .

Wednesday, 12.30 A.M. middle-European time, the border crossing-point near Siret in Moldavia.

Krakovitch and Gulharov had shared the driving between them, though Carl Quint would have been only too happy to drive if they had let him. At least that might have relieved some of his boredom. Quint hadn't found the Romanian countryside along their route - railway depots standing forlorn and desolate as scarecrows, dingy industrial sites, fouled rivers and the like - especially romantic. But even without him, and despite the often dilapidated condition of the roads, still the Russians had made fairly good time. Or at least they'd made good time until they arrived here; but 'here' was the middle of nowhere, and for some as yet unexplained reason they'd been held up 'here' for the last four hours.

Earlier their route out of Bucharest had taken them through Buzau, Focsani and Bacau along the banks of the Siretul, and so into Moldavia. In Roman they'd crossed the river, then continued up through Botosani where they'd paused to eat, and so into and through Siret. Now, on the northern extreme of the town, the border crossing-point blocked their way, with Chernovtsy and the Prut some twenty miles to the north. By now Krakovitch had planned on being through Chernovtsy and into Kolomyya under the old mountains the old Carpathians for the night, but.

'But!' he raged now in the paraffin lamplight glare of the border post. 'But, but, but!' He slammed his fist down on the counter-top which kept staff a little apart from travellers; he spoke, or shouted, in Russian so explosive that Quint and Gulharov winced and gritted their teeth where they sat in the car outside the wooden chalet-styled building. The border post sat centrally between the incoming and outgoing lanes, with barrier arms extending on both sides. Uniformed guards manned sentry boxes, a Romanian for incoming traffic, a Russian for outgoing. The senior officer was, of course, Russian. And right now he was under pressure from Felix Krakovitch.

'Four hours!' Krakovitch raved. 'Four bloody hours sitting here at the end of the world, waiting for you to make up your mind! I've told you who I am and proved it. Are my documents in order?'

The round-faced, overweight Russian official shrugged helplessly. 'Of course, comrade, but - '

'No, no, no!' Krakovitch shouted. 'No more buts, just yes or no. And Comrade Gulharov's documents, are they in order?'

The Russian customs man bobbed uncomfortably this way and that, shrugged again. 'Yes.'

Krakovitch leaned over the counter, shoved his face close to that of the other. 'And do you believe that I have the ear of the Party Leader himself? Are you sure that you're aware that if your bloody telephone was working, by now I'd be speaking to Brezhnev himself in Moscow, -and that next week you'd be manning a crossing-point into Manchuria?'

'If you say so, Comrade Krakovitch,' the other sighed. He struggled for words, a way to begin a sentence with something other than 'but'. 'Alas, I am also aware that the other gentleman in your car is not a Soviet citizen,

and that his documents are not in order! If I were to let you through without the proper authorisation, next week I could well be a lumberjack in Omsk! I don't have the build for it, Comrade.'

'What sort of a bloody control point is this, anyway?' Krakovitch was in full flood. 'No telephone, no electric light? I suppose we must thank God you have toilets! Now listen to me - '

' - I have listened, Comrade,' at least the officer's guts weren't all sagging inside his belly, 'to threats and vitriolic raving, for at least three-and-a-half hours, but - '

'BUT?' Krakovitch couldn't believe it; this couldn't be happening to him. He shook his fist at the other. 'Idiot! I've counted eleven cars and twenty-seven lorries through here towards Kolomyya since our arrival. Your man out there didn't even check the papers of half of them!'

'Because we know them. They travel through here regularly. Many of them live in or close to Kolomyya. I have explained this a hundred times.

'Think on this!' Krakovitch snapped. 'Tomorrow you could be explaining it to the KGB!'

'More threats.' The other gave another shrug. 'One stops worrying.'

'Total inefficiency!' Krakovitch snarled. 'Three hours ago you said that the telephones would be working in a few minutes. Likewise two hours ago, and one hour ago - and the time now is fast approaching one in the morning!'

'I know the time, Comrade. There is a fault in the electricity supply. It is being dealt with. What more can I say?' He sat down on a padded chair behind the counter.

Krakovitch almost leaped over the counter to get at him. 'Don't you dare sit down! Not while I am on my feet!'

The other wiped his forehead, stood up again, prepared himself for another tirade . .

Outside in the car, Sergei Gulharov had restlessly turned this way and that, peering first out of one window, then another. Carl Quint sensed problems, trouble, danger ahead. In fact he'd been on edge since seeing Kyle off at the airport in Bucharest. But worrying about it would get him nowhere, and anyway he felt too banged-about to pursue it. If anything, not being allowed to drive being obliged to simply sit there, with the drab countryside slipping endlessly by outside - had made him more weary yet. Now he felt that he could sleep for a week, and it might as well be here as anywhere.

Gulharov's attention had now fastened on something outside the car. He grew still, thoughtful. Quint looked at him: "silent Sergei', as he and Kyle had privately named him. It wasn't his fault he spoke no English; in fact he did speak it, but very little, and with many errors. Now he answered Quint's glance, nodded his short-cropped head, and pointed through the open window of the car at something. 'Look,' he softly said. Quint looked.

Silhouetted against a low, distant haze of blue light - the lights of Kolomyya, Quint supposed - black cables snaked between poles over the border check point, with one section of cable descending into the building itself. The power supply. Now Gulharov turned and pointed off to the west, where the cable ran back in the direction of Suet. A hundred yards away, the loop of cable between two of the poles dipped right down under the night horizon. It had been grounded.

'Excusing,' said Gulharov. He eased himself out of the car, walked back along the central reservation, and disappeared into darkness. Quint considered going after him, but decided against it. He felt very vulnerable, and outside the car would feel even more so. At least the car's interior was familiar to him. He tuned himself again to Krakovitch's raving, coming loud and clear through the night from the border post. Quint couldn't understand what was being said, but someone was getting a hard time . .

'An end to all foolishness!' Krakovitch shouted. 'Now I will tell you what I am going to do. I shall drive back into Siret to the police station and phone Moscow from there.'

'Good,' said the fat official. 'And providing that Moscow can send the correct documentation for the Englishman, down the telephone wire, then I shall let you through!'

'Dolt!' Krakovitch sneered. 'You, of course, shall come with me to Siret, where you'll receive your instructions direct from the Kremlin!'

How dearly the other would have loved to tell him that he had already received his instructions from Moscow, but... he'd been warned against that. Instead he slowly shook his head. 'Unfortunately, Comrade, I cannot leave my post. Dereliction of duty is a very serious matter. Nothing you or anyone else could say could force me from my place of duty.'

Krakovitch saw from the official's red face that he'd pushed him too far. Now he would probably be more stubborn than ever, even to the point of deliberate obstruction.

That was a thought which made Krakovitch frown. For what if all of this trouble had been 'deliberate obstruction' right from the start? Was that possible? 'Then the solution is simple,' he said. 'I assume that Siret does have a twenty-four hour police station - with telephones that work?'

His opponent chewed his lip. 'Of course,' he finally answered.

'Then I shall simply telephone ahead to Kolomyya and have a unit of the nearest military force here within the hour. How will it feel, Comrade, to be a Russian, commanded by some Russian army officer to stand aside, while I and my friends are escorted through your stupid little checkpoint? And to know that tomorrow all hell is

going to descend on you, because you will have been the focus of what could well be a serious international incident?'

At which precise moment, out in the field to the west of the road and back a little way towards Siret, Sergei Gulharov stooped and picked up the two uncoupled halves, male and female, of a heavy electrical connection. Taped to the main supply cable was a much thinner telephone wire. Its connection, also broken, was a simple, slender plug-and-socket affair. He connected the telephone cable first, then without pause screwed the heavier couplings together. There came a sputter and crackle of current, a flash of blue sparks, and - The lights came on in the border post. Krakovitch, on the point of leaving to carry out his threat, stopped at the door, turned back and saw the look of confusion on the official's face. 'I suppose,' Krakovitch said, 'this means your telephone is also working again?'

'I... I suppose so,' said the other.

Krakovitch came back to the counter. 'Which means,' his tone was icy, 'that from now on we might just start to get somewhere . .

1.00A.M. in Moscow.

At the Château Bronnitsy, some miles out of the city along the Serpukhov Road, Ivan Gerenko and Theo Dolgikh stood at an oval observation port of one-way glass and stared into the room beyond at a scene like something out of a science fiction nightmare.

Inside the 'operating theatre', Alec Kyle lay unconscious on his back, strapped to a padded table. His head was slightly elevated by means of a rubber cushion, and a bulky stainless-steel helmet covered his head and eyes in a half dome, leaving his nose and mouth free for breathing. Hundreds of hair-fine wires cased in coloured plastic sleeves shimmered like a rainbow from the helmet to a computer where three operators worked frantically, following thought sequences from beginning to end and erasing them at the point of resolution. Inside the helmet, many tiny sensor electrodes had been clamped to Kyle's skull; others, along with batteries of micro-monitors, were secured by tape to his chest, wrists, stomach and throat. Four more men, telepaths, sat paired on each side of Kyle on stainless-steel chairs, scribbling in notebooks in their laps, each with one hand resting lightly on Kyle's naked body. A master telepathist - Zek Foener, E-Branch's best

- sat alone in one corner of the room. Foener was a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties, an East German recruited by Gregor Borowitz during his last days as head of the branch. She sat with her elbows on her knees, one hand to her brow, utterly motionless, totally intent upon absorbing Kyle's thoughts as quickly as they were stimulated and generated.

Dolgikh was full of morbid fascination. He had arrived with Kyle at the château about 11.00 A.M. Their flight from Bucharest had been made in a military transport aircraft to an airbase in Smolensk, then to the Château in E-Branch's own helicopter. All of this had been achieved in absolute secrecy; KGB cover had been tight as a drum. Not even Brezhnev - especially Brezhnev - knew what was happening here.

At the Château Kyle had been injected with a truth serum - not to loosen his tongue but his mind - which had rendered him unconscious. And for the last twelve hours, with booster shots of the serum at regular intervals, he had been giving up all the secrets of INTESP to the Soviet espers. Theo Dolgikh, however, was a very mundane man. His ideas of interrogation, or 'truth gathering', were far removed from anything he saw here.

'What exactly are they doing to him? How does this work, Comrade?' he asked.

Without looking at Dolgikh, with his faded hazel eyes following every slightest movement in the room beyond

the screen, Gerenko answered, 'You, of all people, have surely heard of brainwashing, Theo? Well, that is what we are doing: washing Alec Kyle's brain. So thoroughly, in fact, that it will come out of the wash bleached!'

Ivan Gerenko was slight, and so small as to be almost childlike in stature; but his wrinkled skin, faded eyes and generally sallow appearance were those of an old man. And yet he was only thirty-seven. A rare disease had stunted him physically, aged him prematurely, and a contrary Nature had made up the deficiency by giving him a supplementary 'talent'. He was a 'deflector'.

Like Darcy Clarke in many ways, he was the opposite of accident-prone. But where Clarke's talent avoided danger, Gerenko actually deflected it. A well-aimed blow would not strike him; the shaft of an axe would break before the blade could touch his flesh. The advantage was enormous, immeasurable: he feared nothing and was almost scornful of physical danger. And it accounted for his totally disdainful manner where people such as Theo Dolgikh were concerned. Why should he afford them any sort of respect? They might dislike him, but they could never hurt him. No man was capable of bringing physical harm to Ivan Gerenko.

'Brainwashing?' Dolgikh repeated him. 'I had thought some sort of interrogation, surely?'

'Both,' Gerenko nodded, talking rather to himself than by way of answering Dolgikh. 'We use science, psychology, parapsychology. The three Ts: technology, terror, telepathy. The drug we've put in his blood stimulates memory. It works by making him feel alone - utterly alone. He feels that no one else exists in all the universe

- even his own existence is in doubt! He wants to 'talk' about all of his experiences, everything he ever did or saw or said, because that way he will know that he is real, that he has existence. But if he physically tried to do it at the speed his mind is working, he would rapidly dehydrate

and burn himself out; especially if he were awake, conscious. Also, we are not interested in the accumulation of all of that information, we do not wish to know 'everything'. His life in general holds little of interest to us, but of course we are completely fascinated with details of his work for INTESP.'

Dolgikh shook his head in bewilderment. 'You are stealing his thoughts?'

'Oh yes! It's an idea we borrowed from Boris Dragosani. He was a necromancer: he could steal the thoughts of the dead! We can only do it to the living, but when we're finished they're as good as dead...'

'But... I mean, how?' The concept was over Dolgikh's head.

Gerenko glanced at him, just a glance, a twitch of the eyes in his wizened head. 'I can't explain "how" - not to you - only "what". When he touches upon a mundane matter, the entire subject is drawn from him swiftly - and erased. This saves time, for he can't return to that subject again. But when we are interested in his subject, then the telepaths absorb the content of his thoughts as best they can. If what they learn is difficult to remember or understand, they make a note, a jotting which can be studied later. And as soon as that line of inquiry is exhausted, then that subject, too, is erased.'

Dolgikh had taken most of this in, but his interest now centred on Zek Föener. 'That girl, she is very beautiful.' His gaze was openly lecherous. 'Now if only she were a subject for interrogation. My sort of interrogation, of course.' He gave a coarse chuckle.

At that exact moment the girl looked up. Her bright blue eyes blazed with fury. She looked directly at the oneway glass, as if. .

'Ah!' said Dolgikh, the word a small gasp. 'Impossible! She looks through the glass at us!'

'No,' Gerenko shook his head. 'She thinks through it - at you, if I'm not mistaken!'

Foener stood up, strode purposefully to a side door and left the room, emerging into the rubber-floored corridor where the observers stood. She came straight up to them, glanced once at Dolgikh and showed him her perfect, sharp white teeth, then turned to Gerenko. 'Ivan, take this... this ape away from here. He's inside my radius, and his mind's like a sewer!'

'Of course, my dear,' Gerenko smiled and nodded his wrinkled walnut head. He turned away, taking Dolgikh's elbow. 'Come, Theo.'

Dolgikh shook himself loose, scowled at the girl. 'You are very free with your insults.'

'That is the correct way.' She spoke curtly. 'Face to face and out with it. But your insults crawl like worms, and you keep them in the slime in your head!' And to Gerenko she added: 'I can't work with him here.'

Gerenko looked at Dolgikh. 'Well?'

Dolgikh's expression was ugly, but slowly he relaxed, shrugged. 'Very well, my apologies, Fräulein Föener.' He deliberately avoided use of his customary 'Comrade'; and when he looked her up and down one last time, that too was quite deliberate. 'It's simply that I've always considered my thoughts private. And anyway, I'm only human.'

'Barely!' she snapped, and at once returned to her work.

As Dolgikh followed Gerenko to his office, the Second in Command of E-Branch said, 'That one's mind is very finely tuned, finely balanced. We must be careful not to -disturb it. However distasteful this may seem, Theo, you should never forget that any one of the espers here is worth ten of you.'

Dolgikh had pride. 'Oh?' he growled. 'Then why didn't Andropov ask you to send one of them to Italy, eh? Maybe you yourself, eh, Comrade?'

Gerenko smiled thinly. 'Muscle occasionally has its advantages. That's why you went to Genoa, and it's why you're here now. I expect to have more work for you very soon. Work to your liking. But, Theo, be warned: so far you've done very well, so don't spoil it now. Our mutual, er, shall we say "superior", will be well pleased with you. But he would not be pleased if he thought you'd tried to impose your matter over our mind. Here at the Château Bronnitsy, its always the other way around - mind over matter!'

They climbed spiralling stone stairs in one of the Château's towers, and arrived at Gerenko's office. Before Gerenko it had housed Gregor Borowitz, and it was now Felix Krakovitch's seat of control; but Krakovitch was temporarily absent, and both Ivan Gerenko and Yuri Andropov intended that his absence should become permanent. This, too, puzzled Dolgikh.

'In my time,' he said, taking a seat opposite Gerenko's desk, 'I've been quite close to Comrade Andropov - or as close as a man can get. I've watched him rise, followed his rising star, you might say. In my experience, since the early days of E-Branch, there has been friction between the KGB and you espers. Yet now, with you, things are changing. What has Andropov got on you, Ivan?'

Gerenko's grin was that of a weasel. 'He has nothing on me,' he answered. 'But he does have something for me. You see, I have been cheated, Theo. Nature has robbed me. I would like to be a man of heroic proportions

- perhaps a man like you. But I'm stuck in this feeble shell. Women are not interested in me; men, while they cannot hurt me, consider me a freak. Only my mind has value, and my talent. The first has been useful to Felix Krakovitch: I've taken a great deal of the branch's burden off his shoulders. And the second is a subject for intense study by the parapsychologists here - they would all like

to have my, shall we say, guardian angel? Why, an army of men with my talent would be quite invulnerable!

'So you see how important I am. And yet what am I but a shrunken little man, whose lifespan is destined to be short? And so while I live I want power. I want to be great, for however short a span. And because it will be short, I want it now.'

'And with Krakovitch gone, you'll be the boss here.' Dolgikh nodded.

Gerenko smiled his withered smile. 'That for a start. But then comes the integration of E-Branch and the KGB. Brezhnev would be against it, of course, but alas the Party Leader is rapidly becoming a mumbling, crumbling cretin. He can't last long. And Andropov, because he is strong, has many enemies. How long will he last, do you think? Which means that eventually, possibly, even probably - '

'You'll have it all!' Dolgikh could see the logic -of it. 'But by then, surely, you too will have made enemies. Leaders always climb to the top over the bodies of dead leaders.'

'Ah!' Gerenko's smile was sly, cold, and not entirely sane. 'But this time it will be different. What do I care for enemies? Sticks and stones will not break my bones! And I shall weed them out, one by one, until there are no more. And I shall die small and wrinkled, but also great and very powerful. So whatever you do, Theo Dolgikh, make sure you're my friend, not my enemy. .

Dolgikh said nothing for a moment but let all that Gerenko had said sink in. The man was obviously a megalomaniac! Tactfully, Dolgikh changed the subject. 'You said there'd likely be more work for me. What sort of work?'

'As soon as we are sure that we can learn everything we desire to know from Alec Kyle, then Krakovitch, his man Gulharov, and the other British agent, Quint, will become quite expendable. At the moment, when Krakovitch wants something done, he speaks to me and I in turn pass on his request to Brezhnev. Not directly to Brezhnev but through one of his men - a mere lackey, but a powerful lackey. The Party Leader is keen on E-Branch and so Krakovitch usually gets what he wants. Witness this unheard of liaison between British and Soviet espers!

'But of course I'm also working for Andropov. He, too, knows everything that is happening. And he has already instructed me that when the time comes you are the tool I shall throw-into Krakovitch's machinery. E-Branch has been soundly beaten, almost destroyed, by INTESP once before. Brezhnev wants to know how and why, and so does Andropov. We had a mighty weapon in Boris Dragosani, but their weapon, a youth called Harry Keogh, was mightier. What gave him his power? What were his powers? And right now: we know that with the aid of INTESP Krakovitch has destroyed something in Romania. I have been through Krakovitch's files and I think I know what he destroyed: the same thing which gave Dragosani his powers! Krakovitch sees it as a great evil, but I see it only as another tool. A powerful weapon. That is why the British are so eager to help Krakovitch:

the fool is systematically destroying a possible route for future Soviet supremacy!'

'Then he's a traitor?' Dolgikh's eyes narrowed. The Soviet Union was all. Power struggles within the structure were only to be expected, but treachery of this sort was something else. 'No.' Gerenko shook his head. 'He's a dupe. Now listen: At this very moment Krakovitch, Gulharov and Quint are stalled at a crossing-point on the Moldavian horder. I organised that through Andropov. I know where they want to go, and very shortly I'll be sending you to deal with them there. When exactly rather depends on how much we get from Kyle. But in any case we must stop them from doing any more damage. Which means

that time is of the essence; they can't be stalled forever, and soon must be allowed to proceed. Also, they know the location of whatever it is they're seeking, and we do not. Not yet. Tomorrow morning you will be there to follow them to their destination, their ultimate destination. At least I hope so. .

Dolgikh frowned. 'They've destroyed something, you say? And they'll do it again? What sort of something?'

'If you had been in time to follow them into the Romanian hills, you'd probably have seen for yourself. But don't worry about it. Let it suffice that this time they mustn't succeed.'

As Gerenko finished speaking his telephone rang. He lifted it to his ear - and his expression at once became wary, alert. 'Comrade Krakovitch!' he said. 'I was begin-fling to worry about you. I had expected to hear from you before now. Are you in Chernovtsy?' He looked pointedly across his desk at Dolgikh.

Even from where he sat, Dolgikh could hear the angry, tinny clatter of Krakovitch's distant voice. Gerenko began to blink rapidly and a nervous tic jerked the corner of his mouth.

Finally, when Krakovitch was finished, he said, 'Listen, Comrade. Ignore that stupid frontier guard. He isn't worth losing your temper over. Just stay exactly where you are and in a few minutes I shall have full authorisation phoned through. But first let me speak to that idiot.'

He waited a moment, until he heard the slightly tremulous, inquiring voice of the border official, and then very quietly said, 'Listen. Do you recognise my voice? Good! In approximately ten minutes I shall phone again and tell you I am the commissioner for Frontier Control in Moscow. Ensure that you and you alone answer the phone, and that you can't be overheard. I will order you to let comrade Krakovitch and his friends through, and you will do so. Do you understand?'

'Oh, yes, Comrade!'

'If Krakovitch should ask you what I have just said, tell him I was shouting at you and calling you a fool.'

'Yes, of course, Comrade.'

'Good!' Gerenko put the phone down. He looked at Dolgikh. 'As I was saying, I couldn't hold them up forever. Already this affair is growing clumsy, becoming embarrassing. But even though they'll now go through to Chernovtsy, they can do nothing tonight. And tomorrow you'll be there to stop them doing anything.'

Dolgikh nodded. 'Do you have any suggestions?'

'In what respect?'

'About how it should be done? If Krakovitch is a traitor, it seems to me that the easiest way of dealing with this would be - '

'No!' Gerenko cut him off. 'That would be hard to prove. And he has the ear of the Party Leader, remember? We must never leave ourselves open to question in this matter.' He tapped a finger on his desk, gave the problem a moment's thought. 'Ah! I think I may have it. I have called Krakovitch a dupe - so let it appear. Let Carl Quint be the guilty party! Arrange it so that he can be blamed. Let it be seen that the British espers came into Russia to discover what they could of E-Branch, and to kill its head. Why not? They've damaged the branch before, haven't they? But on this occasion Quint will err and become a fatality of his own strategy.'

'Good!' said Dolgikh. 'I'm sure I'll work something out along those lines. And -of course I'll be the only witness . .

Light footsteps sounded and Zek Foener appeared on the office threshold. She merely glanced coldly at Dolgikh, then fixed her gaze on Gerenko. 'Kyle is a goldmine - the sane part of him, anyway! There is nothing he doesn't know, and he's releasing it in a flood. He even knows a

good many - too many - things about us. Things I didn't know. Fantastic things...' Suddenly she looked tired.

Gerenko nodded. 'Fantastic things? I had supposed that they would be. Is that why you think he's partly insane? That his mind is playing him tricks? Believe me, it isn't! Do you know what they destroyed in Romania?'

She nodded. 'Yes, but... it's hard to believe. I - '

Gerenko held up a warning hand. She understood, felt caution emanating from him. Theo Dolgikh was not to know. Like most of the other espers at the Château, Foener hated the KGB. She nodded, and kept her silence.

Gerenko spoke again. 'And is it the same sort of thing that lies hidden in the mountains beyond Chernovtsy?'

Again she nodded.

'Very well.' Gerenko smiled without emotion. 'And now, my dear, you must return to your work. Give it total priority.'

'Of course,' she answered. 'I only came away while they were dosing him again. And because I need a break from...' She shook her head dazedly. Her eyes were wide, bright with strange new knowledge. 'Comrade, this thing is utterly - '

Again Gerenko held up his child's hand in warning. 'I know.'

She nodded, turned and left, her footsteps a little uncertain on the descending stone stairs.

'What was all that about?' Dolgikh was mystified.

'That was the joint death certificate of Krakovitch, Gulharov and Quint,' Gerenko answered. 'Actually, Quint was the only one who might have been useful - but no longer. Now you can get on your way. Is the branch helicopter ready for you?'

Dolgikh nodded. He began to stand up, then frowned and said, 'First tell me, what will happen to Kyle when you are finished with him? I mean, I'll take care of that

other pair of traitors, and the British esper, Quint, but what of Kyle? What will become of him?'

Gerenko raised his eyebrows. 'I thought that was obvious. When we have what we want, everything we want, then we'll dump him in the British zone in Berlin. There he'll simply die, and their best doctors won't know why.'

'But why will he die? And what of that drug you're pumping into him? Surely their doctors will pick up traces?'

Gerenko shook his walnut head. 'It leaves no trace. It completely voids itself in a few hours. That is why we have to keep dosing him. A clever lot, our Bulgarian friends. He's not the first one we've drained in this fashion, and the results have always been the same. As to why he will die: he will have no incentive for life. Less than a cabbage, he will not retain sufficient knowledge or instinct even to move his body. There will be no control - none! His vital organs will not function. He might survive longer on a life-support machine, but...' And he shrugged.

'Brain-death.' Dolgikh nodded and grinned.

'But there you have it in a nutshell.' Gerenko emotionlessly clapped his child's hands. 'Bravo! For what is an entirely empty brain if not dead, eh? And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a telephone call to make.'

Dolgikh stood up. 'I'll be on my way,' he said. Already he was looking forward to the task in hand.

'Theo,' said Gerenko. 'Krakovitch and his friends - they should be killed with despatch. Don't linger over it. And one last thing: do not be too curious about what they are trying to do up there in the mountains. Do not concern yourself with it. Believe me, too much curiosity could be very, very dangerous!'

In answer to which Dolgikh could only nod. Then he turned and left the room . .

As their car drew away from the checkpoint towards Chernovtsy, Quint might have expected Krakovitch to carry on raging. But he didn't. Instead the head of the Soviet E-Branch was quiet and thoughtful, and even more so after Gulharov quickly told him about the disconnected cable.

'There are several things I not liking here,' Krakovitch told Quint in a little while. 'At first I am thinking that fat man back there is simply stupid, but now not being so sure. And this business with the electricity - all very strange. Sergei finds and fixes that which they could not - and he does it quickly and without difficulty. Which would seem to make our fat friend at the checkpoint not only stupid but incompetent!'

'You think we were deliberately delayed?' Quint felt an uneasy, dark oppressiveness settling all around him, like a positive weight on his head and shoulders.

'That telephone call he got just now,' Krakovitch mused. 'The Commissioner for Frontier Control, in Moscow? I never heard of him! But I suppose he must exist. Or must he? One commissioner, controlling all of the thousands of crossing points into the Soviet Union? So, I assume he exists. Which is meaning that Ivan Gerenko got in touch with him, in the dead of night, and that he then personally called up this little fat official in his stupid sentry-box of a control hut - all in ten minutes!'

'Who knew we were coming through here tonight?' Quint, in his way of going to the root of things, asked the most obvious question.

'Eh?' Krakovitch scratched behind his ear. 'We knew it, of course, and - '

'And?'

'And my Second in Command at the Château Bronnitsy, Ivan Gerenko.' Krakovitch turned to Quint and stared hard at him.

'Then, while I dislike saying it,' said Quint, 'if there is something funny going on, Gerenko has to be your man.'

Krakovitch gave a disbelieving snort, shook his head. 'But why? What reason?'

Quint shrugged. 'You have to know him better than I do. Is he ambitious? Could he have been got at - and by whom? But remember, we did have that trouble in Genoa, and didn't you remark how surprised you were that the KGB were trailing you? Your explanation was that they'd probably had you under constant surveillance

- until we put a stop to it, anyway. But just let's suppose there is an enemy in your camp. Did Gerenko know you were meeting us in Italy?'

'Apart from Brezhnev himself - through an intermediary who cannot be brought into question - Gerenko is the only one who knew!' Krakovitch answered.

Quint said nothing, merely shrugged again and raised an eyebrow.

'I am thinking,' said Krakovitch slowly, 'that from now on I tell no one how I moving until after the move is completed!' He looked at Quint, saw his troubled frown. 'Is there something else?'

Quint pursed his lips. 'Let's just say this Gerenko fellow is a plant, a spy in your organisation. Am I right in thinking he can only be working for the KGB?'

'For Andropov, yes. Almost certainly.'

'Then Gerenko must think you're a complete fool!'

'Oh? Why do you say so? In fact he thinks most men are fools. He fears no one, Gerenko, and so can afford to think so. But I? No, I believe I am one of the few men who he respects - or used to.'

'Used to,' Quint nodded. 'But no more. Surely he must know you'll work all of this out for yourself given a little time? Theo Dolgikh in Genoa, and now this shambles at the Romano-Soviet border? Unless he himself is an idiot,

Gerenko must know he's for the high-jump as soon as you get back to Moscow!'

Sergei Gulharov had managed to understand most of this. Now he spoke to Krakovitch in a soft, rapid burst of Russian.

'Hah!' Krakovitch's shoulders jerked in a humourless chuckle. For a moment he was silent, then he said, 'Perhaps Sergei is smarter than all of us. And if he is, then we're in for trouble.'

'Oh?' said Quint. 'What did Sergei say?'

'He said, perhaps Comrade Gerenko feels that he can now afford to be a little slipshod. Perhaps he isn't expecting to see me again in Moscow! And as for you, Carl - we just crossed the border and you're in Russia.'

'I know,' Quint quietly answered. 'And I must say, I don't exactly feel at home.'

'Strangely,' Krakovitch nodded, 'neither do I!'

Nothing more was said until they reached Chernovtsy. .