by Brian Lumley
Jake nodded. “Until the knot is pressing up tight against the back of his neck, yes,” he said.
So then, how do we proceed? What is today’s agenda?
“Today we find Castellano’s place in Bagheria and check it out,” said Jake. “And tonight we take it out, and him with it! But between times, this evening, we go back to San Remo, Millionaire’s Row.”
The last of his rat-holes?
“Exactly. Let him feel the noose tighten that extra inch.”
But by now be knows what you’ve done; indeed, you told him as much yourself! The total destruction of his villa in Marseilles, and likewise the fire at Frankie’s Franchise in Genoa. As for the wreckage of his machinery in the Madonie mountains: he will have seen that for himself.
“So?”
In San Remo … he may be waiting for you. Or if not Luigi Castellano in person, his paid men certainly.
“That’s a risk I have to take,” said Jake. “I have to, for it’s part of the plan. I want to be seen in San Remo.”
But why?
“Because he’ll know that if I’m there I can’t be in Sicily at the same time.”
Ah! I see! said Korath. Believing that you can’t strike at him on the same night, in the space of just a few hours, he’ll feel secure. You’ll take him by surprise!
“That’s the plan,” Jake nodded. “But I can’t take him if I don’t know where he is or how well he’s defended. So that’s my next task. Do you remember the address on that card?”
The address? said Korath. But of course I remember it. Oh, yesss! For thanks to Lord Malinari—called Malinari the Mind—I remember almost everything …
Just a few kilometres out of Bagheria toward Trabia—a little west of the Milicia where it ran to the sea, and frowning down from rough, gradually rising ground across the motorway toward the Tyrhennian coast—Castettano’s headquarters looked sombre even in broad daylight. But more important, the villa looked deserted.
“I don’t get it,” said Jake, from where he lay on a patch of stony ground behind a clump of small rocks, staring down on the place through his binoculars. “We’ve been here for over an hour and nothing has so much as twitched down there. But there are cars—what, six of them?—out front, and there’s smoke rising from two of the chimneys. So where is everybody?”
Inside, obviously, said Korath.
“And they never come out?”
But surely that’s their prerogative. (Korath’s incorporeal shrug.) Would you come out, if you knew someone was waiting to pick you off?
“They don’t know I’m here.”
But they do know you’re somewhere.
“You think they’re simply lying low?”
I think they are doing as I would do in the current situation, said Korath. They’re taking no chances.
Jake shook his head concernedly and said, ‘This is a waste of time. I don’t like this place; I feel exposed and I’d gladly move on, except I’m not satisfied with the coordinates. I mean, I can return here, to this location, any time I like—and I’m pretty sure I can put down in the middle of those olives within the grounds, too—but I know nothing at all about the interior layout of the house. So how am I to get inside?”
Must you get inside? said Korath. Can’t you simply bomb the place from outside, against its walls?
Again Jake shook his head, and growled, “No. I’m not going to blow it inwards, I’m going to blow it up and out and off the face of the map! Wrecking it isn’t sufficient. I want to remove it, permanently, as if it was never there.”
As if it were never there? I can’t see how that’s possible, said Korath. Surely there will be rubble?
“Not necessarily,” said Jake. “Not if I use thermite.”
Thermite? (This time Korath was at a loss; he had little or no knowledge of science, and all he had seen in Jake’s mind was fire, as used at Frankie’s Franchise.)
“A different kind of fire,” Jake told him. “And a different kind of heat. Thermite: it’s a mixture of oxidized metal—iron will do nicely—and powdered aluminium.”
Brown rust and white rust? (It was all beyond Korath.)
“Something like that,” said Jake. “We call it chemistry.”
I call it magic! said the other. Also, I saw some of Nathan Keogh’s handiwork on Starside, and that was just as devastating as yours! Malinari thought so, too, else I wouldn’t be here. So obviously Nathan has or had access to just such powders. Explosive powders, burning powders, and liquids that ignite into fireballs out of hell! Hah! Is it any wonder the Szgany called this world the Hell-lands?
“But from what I’ve heard and read of Starside,” said Jake, “you’ve got it backwards. Anyway, let’s get out of here. We can figure out later how to get better coordinates.”
As you wish, said Korath, conjuring the Möbius equations …
Jake had the addresses of friends in Australia, members of the elite Australian SAS, with whom he’d worked in the first phase of E-Branch’s assault on Malinari. And he also had the coordinates of a government safe house in Brisbane.
He “went” there and was surprised (but shouldn’t have been) to find the place dark. The safe house was dark both inside and out, and silent. The silence meant nothing (the house was quiet because it wasn’t in use), but the darkness was weird … until it dawned on Jake that while it had been midmorning in France, in the Australian tropics it was 8:30 P.M.! Something he would have to get used to: the fact that with the Möbius Continuum as his means of transport, the world was now a very small place.
Jake put the lights on in the central operations room, and checked one of the telephones. It was working, and he tapped in the home number of W. O. II “Red” Bygraves. Jake’s hopes weren’t too high that he would be able to contact him, but for once the static wasn’t too bad, and amazingly Red was at home.
“What yer doing over here, mate?” said Red, after Jake told him who he was.
“I’ve come to ask a favour,” said Jake. “Er, a big one.”
“Well, it can’t be too big, not after what you did for us,” said the other. “Where are yer?”
“I’m in the safe house in Brisbane,” Jake told him. “I only just got here. I have your telephone number but no address, and I realize we may be thousands of miles apart. But I was wondering if we could maybe get together and talk? Then I’ll tell you what I need.”
“Well, it’s true that we could have been thousands of miles apart,” said Red, “but the fact is I’m at home in Gympie, a few miles up the road.”
“Gympie?” Jake couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “What in hell’s a Gympie?”
“It’s a town some ninety miles north of you,” Red answered. “And don’t you go taking the piss out of my home town!” But he was chuckling, too. “Hey, stay where yer are and I’ll be there in an hour and a bit.”
“You’re on,” said Jake. “And pick up some beers and a bite to eat on the way.”
“Done,” said the other. “But hey—yer wouldn’t be in any kind of trouble, would yer?”
“Always,” said Jake. “But don’t sweat it, what I’m trying to do needs doing, even if it isn’t exactly on the right side of the law.”
“No sweat, Jake,” Red assured him. “With me and the other blokes who worked with yer, yer couldn’t ever be on the wrong side. I’ll be there in a tick.” And the phone went down …
Thinking to get a breath of fresh night air, Jake took the Möbius route out into the high-walled gardens. But if anything it was warmer than the last time he’d been here some few weeks ago. The stars were glorious, and the smell of eucalyptus came wafting from trees on the other side of the wall.
But up against his side of the wall, a pair of articulated, open-sided monorail cars lay keeled over where they had come to rest when he brought them through the Möbius Continuum from the mountain resort of Xanadu. He’d brought the cars, the SAS team, and a handful of E-Branch personnel, too. And in doing so he’d saved their lives.
&n
bsp; Er, we saved their lives, said Korath. Credit where credit is due, Jake. My numbers, your door.
“It feels like years ago,” said Jake.
Live fast, die young, and leave a handsome corpse, Korath answered.
“A Szgany saying?”
Indeed.
“We have it, too,” said Jake. “Also one that goes: doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?”
Are you having fun, Jake?
Jake shook his head. “Not a bit of it. Life’s too short for all this shit. But I know I won’t be able to live it right till all of this is behind me.”
Ah, life! said Korath. How wonderful it was to be alive and young, and to walk in the woods of Sunside with a young girl on my arm. Then his thoughts turned sour, as he continued, But all that was when I was a Szgany youth, and my feelings are different now. It’s being here with you that brings these memories to mind. You walked in this garden with Liz.
“I’ve told you not to talk about Liz!” Jake snapped.
And you held her in your arms in your room at E-Branch HQ when you were both near-naked. Ahhh! And Jake could almost feel the slow drip of his drool.
“Where but for you I might even have made love to her—you creepy, Peeping Tom bastard!”
But—
“—But I’m glad now that I didn’t,” Jake cut him short, his voice a snarl of loathing. “What, with a nightmarish thing like you in my mind? No way! But if she’ll still have me, it’ll keep until all this is over and you’re well and truly out of here!”
Korath’s patience was exhausted, too—and his own frustrations steadily mounting—so that he wasn’t quite in control of himself when he gurgled: Ungrateful dog! Did you say, “when I’m out of here?” Ah, but that might not be for a long, long time!
“What?” said Jake at once. “What’s that?”
I meant nothing! Korath was immediately on guard—guarding his own tongue, his thoughts, lest they should betray him again. But your constant carping … I have difficulty coping with it. When you need me, I answer your call—I have never once put a foot wrong—and what do I get in return?
“What do you get?” Jake railed at him then, bringing up his shields in full force to drive Korath from the rim of his mind. “You get sent the hell away from me, that’s what you get! Go on back to your sump in Romania, Korath. And if you choose to stay there, that’s up to you. I was doing just fine on my own, and I can do it again. So the hell with you!”
Don’t do it, Jake! Korath cried, but his cry rapidly fading. You’ll need me. I spoke in anger and meant nothing by it. Jake? Jaaaake! And then he was gone, and Jake stood alone in the garden.
But not for long. Korath was right and he did need him, and would in the near future for a certainty. So in a little while, when he’d cooled down, he relaxed his shields and said: “Very well, come on back. But let’s concentrate on the job, right? No more talk about Liz and no more veiled threats.”
And in a moment: As you will, said Korath, subdued now. I took our friendship a little too far, that’s all. But remember: I, too, am under duress. I do what you ask of my own free will, it’s true, but only to achieve my own agenda. Which is the destruction of Malinari and the others. And what is to stop you—when you’ve got what you want—reneging on our deal and going off without me?
“If only I could!” said Jake. “But I would know that you’re always there. I’d know that the moment I relaxed you’d be back, pestering as usual.”
And so it’s stalemate, said Korath. It seems we are obliged to trust each other.
“With me, that isn’t a problem,” Jake told him. “I’ve never broken a trust.” But:
You did with E-Branch, Korath reminded him.
And again he was right. “Because I had to,” said Jake. “You know me as well as anyone now, and you know I had to. The thing that’s driving me on isn’t letting up. I can feel the time ticking by second by second, the minutes, the hours. And Castellano is still alive. It’s not just him and me, and it’s more than an obsession. It’s necessary. It’s … it’s what I do.” (Now where had that idea come from? It wasn’t what Jake did at all … but maybe it was what Harry Keogh had used to do!)
However, before he could investigate that line of thought more closely: I understand, said Korath. I feel exactly the same about my enemies. And it is very necessary, yessss …
When W. O. II Red Bygraves, a slim, well-muscled, crewcut redhead in his early- to mid-thirties, arrived at the safe house in his open-topped, militarylooking four-wheel-drive, Jake opened the gates manually to let him in.
Then, after they had greeted each other: “What?” said Red. “No one else here? How did yer get inside to use the phone?” A simple slip of the tongue, for even having seen what Jake could do at firsthand, teleportation was hardly a common or easily acceptable concept.
Jake didn’t waste time but showed him—took Red’s arm and swung him through a Möbius door, and out again into the control room—then held him steady as his jaw fell open and his eyes stood out. “Jesus H. Christ!” the SAS man gasped, as he came close to dropping the six-pack and container of food that he’d brought with him.
“Don’t,” said Jake then. “I mean, try not to use terms like that.” For once again he felt guided by principles that weren’t necessarily his own.
Red didn’t understand the sudden change in Jake’s tone, but he didn’t argue either. He was too startled for that. “Like … I knew yer could do that,” he said, “but I wasn’t expecting yer to do it. Good grief, mate! Is that how yer arrived here? Like, all the way from Blighty? Good grief!”
“From Sicily, actually,” said Jake. And then, as they began to relax and to eat, he told Red what he wanted.
“Thermite?” The other shook his head. “That’s a tough one. I can’t get it for yer, but I know a man who can. Well, maybe.” And tapping a number into the telephone, he went on to explain, “This’ll get the barracks. They’ll check me out and put me onto the boss.”
“The boss?” Jake repeated him.
“You know him,” Red nodded. “You saved his neck—and mine—and quite a few others, too.”
“Major Tom?” said Jake. “Well, that’s what Ben Trask calls him, anyway.”
“The same,” said Red. Then he spoke into the phone, reeled off a number, gave a codeword, finally nodded his satisfaction, and passed the phone to Jake, saying, “Better yer should speak to him yerself. That way I won’t be telling any lies for yer.”
A number was ringing; when it was answered Jake recognized the authoritative voice at once.
“Major, this is Jake Cutter,” he said. “You might remember me. I’m in Australia to ask a favour of you.”
“Jake?” said the other. “You’re damn right I remember you! A favour, you say? On behalf of E-Branch? Any time, Jake. What can I do for you?”
Jake waited for a sudden burst of hissing, popping sunspot static to fade away, and then told him. “But,” he finished off quietly, “this isn’t for E-Branch. It’s for me.”
That gave the major a moment’s pause. “And you know how to use this stuff?”
“Yes,” Jake told him. “As you may recall, your men used it at the Old Mine petrol station in the Gibson Desert. And I’m what you could call a quick study.”
“You’re a quick something, for sure!” said the major. “But no guarantees what you’ll use it for, right?”
“For good,” said Jake. “Only for good. Or put it this way: the world won’t be the worse for it. In fact, it will be a lot better off.”
“And when do you want it?”
“Just as soon as possible,” said Jake.
A moment’s pause, and then, “You’ve called at an opportune time,” said Major Tom. “A couple of your boys, E-Branch people, I mean, are with some of my people at the Old Mine place right now. They’re blasting it open again, going inside, making sure that nothing was overlooked in there. When that’s done they’ll roast the place and seal it shut permanently, with
thermite.”
“Trask said that would be happening, yes,” said Jake.
“How’s your, er, mobility?” said the major then. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” said Jake. “That’s how I got here.”
And there was another moment’s pause. “Jake, I owe you. A lot of people owe you more than they can ever repay. So here’s what I propose. Our people will be finishing their work at the Old Mine any time now, probably tonight. So while there can’t be any ‘official’ handover of this stuff, I think we can, er, ‘lose’ a small cache somewhere in that location. Should we say, buried eighteen inches deep at the foot of the first warning signpost you come to as you climb the ramp from the road?”
“That would be just fine,” said Jake gratefully.
“But as for this conversation,” the major hurriedly continued, “well, obviously it never happened.”
“Roger that,” Jake answered. And indeed it was obvious that their conversation had never happened, for already he was talking to himself …
Jake and Red finished eating, then sat around for a while drinking Red’s beer.
“Most of us were given a couple of weeks off,” said Red. “I mean, we were told to forget everything that had happened. Just like the boss told you, it had never happened—if yer get the picture—and we should go home and get it out of our systems. Which is why I was home when yer called. And yer know, it’s not at all hard to forget? There was some weird shit going down. It was like a bad dream.”
“That’s right,” Jake nodded, “and there’s plenty more weird shit going down right now. I’ll be in on it eventually, but not until I’ve sorted out this other thing.”
“Which is personal, right?”
“I thought it was,” said Jake, “but now I’m not so sure. It was personal, but now it’s a lot more than that. Anyway, that’s where I’m at, and I’d better be on my way.”
“But not before yer get me back out into the garden, okay?”
Jake did it, and this time Red’s knees buckled as Jake took his arm and led him out into the night beside his vehicle. Then, leaning on the car to steady himself, he said, “Well, I’ve seen some stuff in my time, but this … I still don’t believe it!”
