by Brian Lumley
“Well, to me dark is dark,” said Trask. “So whatever it was will probably happen at night. That’s how I have to reckon with it.”
“You’ll excuse me,” Goodly answered with an audible shudder in his voice, “if I don’t want to ‘reckon with it’ at all. Personally I’d like to forget it!”
“And you also said it would be soon,” Trask reminded him.
“But I can’t say how soon,” said the precog.
“It could easily be tonight,” said Garvey, without looking back. “Suggestion. Even if we can’t let Jake stay with us right now, it would be a good idea to weapon up ASAP.”
“That’s already agreed,” said Trask. “Also—assuming that Millie and Liz are right about the Wamphyri calling a halt somewhere in front—I think we should slow down and approach them with a bit more caution. They could be resting up for the night ahead. It’s possible that what Ian saw was their plan coming to fruition. So while I know the future’s immutable, that isn’t to say we should ignore it completely. Forewarned is forearmed.”
“So then,” said Liz, “if we’re also assuming they’re asleep right now—er, hitting the hay while the sun shines?—there’s no reason why we shouldn’t call on Jake to deliver our weapons at our very next opportunity—”
“—Like, in that copse that’s coming up on our side of the road,” Millie finished it for her.
And Trask leaned forward, tapped Garvey on the shoulder, and said, “Pull over, Paul. We’ll make camp here, finish those sandwiches we never got to start, and take a decent break. Frankly, I’m bone weary. I didn’t sleep much last night—I don’t think any of us did—and we’ve all been shaken about in this rattletrap until we’re numb from head to toe. An hour or two’s sleep will do us all the world of good.”
By which time Garvey had pulled off the road and driven on deep into the copse, finally drawing to a halt where a bank of dense brambles hid the minibus from view.
Climbing stiffly out of the vehicle, Trask said, “Boys and girls, take a break. As for me: Nature calls and I must answer. But before that—” He took Liz aside and told her, “Liz, I’ve had second thoughts about Jake delivering those weapons. Now I know how much you love him, but the time isn’t right. You know as well as I do that in daylight we have nothing to fear. That means we don’t need those guns just yet.”
“But—” she began to protest, only to have Trask wave her protests aside unspoken.
“No buts,” he told her. “Look at it this way: we’ve already aroused one policeman’s suspicions. What if we were stopped for some reason, or had a breakdown or something? What, and the minibus loaded down with guns? There’d be no explaining it. And if those three monsters are asleep, we don’t want to go disturbing their dreams with Jake’s psychic aura. It’s a bit of a paradox, I know, but on the one hand we’re too close to them to call him in, and on the other we’re too far away. We’ll need Jake in our darkest hour, and not before then. So love has to wait.”
Then, before going off into the trees, he called out to the others, “I’ll be back shortly. Meanwhile, I suggest you take it easy, make yourselves as comfortable as possible.”
And Liz walked off on her own a short distance, sat on the knotted stump of a felled Mediterranean pine, and despite knowing that Trask was right tried not to sulk…
An hour earlier at E-Branch HQ in London, Jake had taken charge of the canvas sackful of arms that John Grieve had put together for him. Then, while waiting for Liz to contact him again, he’d returned to Harry’s Room where he was reading through the final batch of Keogh files—including Ben Trask’s report on Harry’s departure from this world—when Gustav Turchin knocked on his door.
“What is it now?” he asked the Russian Premier after inviting him in.
Turchin was in a highly agitated state. “That message I was waiting for has arrived,” he said. “Time is running out. I need your decision now.”
“I can’t give you a decision,” said Jake, without admitting that he’d completely forgotten about Turchin’s problems in favour of his own. “It’s not my decision to give. But it’s likely I’ll be seeing Ben Trask in just a little while, and I promise you I’ll mention it to him then. The one thing I can tell you: there’s no need to worry about Perchorsk’s schematics. I…I believe I’ve sort of memorized them.”
“What?” Turchin frowned. “You’ve memorized them? Since you and I last spoke, and from those files? Is E-Branch’s intelligence really so good, then?”
Jake smiled a crooked smile and answered, “Yes, it really is. And I…well, I suppose I’m a quick study.”
Turchin had to accept it as the truth; there wasn’t a lot he could do about it if it wasn’t. And so he said, “Very well, then all that remains for me to do is show you where the bomb is and instruct you in arming the thing.”
“I take it the bomb is in Russia?” said Jake. “Just how do you plan to take me there?”
“What?” Now Turchin looked confused. “But surely you would be taking me! You are the Necroscope. You have the use of this…this Möbius Continuum thing.”
“You don’t know much about it, do you?” said Jake.
“I know nothing at all about it!” Turchin snapped. “I only know what I’ve seen: that when Nathan Kiklu came to see me, he emerged out of nowhere. And that when he left he simply disappeared. Him and a lean, slavering wolf out of Starside that he called his nephew! What should I know about Möbius Continuums, Gateways, and Necroscopes with wolves of the wild for kin? I’m a politician, not a bloody magician!”
“Coordinates,” said Jake, calmly. “I can’t go where I have never been, because I don’t know the coordinates. I’m not talking about map coordinates or grid references; they mean nothing to me. I’m talking about coordinates that I keep up here, in my head,” he reached up to tap his temple. “Which means that since I’ve never been to Russia, I’m afraid I can’t take you there. I suppose we could do it by trial and error—taking small Möbius jumps one at a time—but that could be dangerous and it would take time. And I’m expecting Ben Trask’s call, which could come in the next ten minutes. So…you’d better think again.”
“This is infuriating!” Turchin threw up his hands. “At this very moment my enemies could be on their way to Perchorsk—my one chance to settle with them for good, and the perfect opportunity to close the Gate at the same time—and Trask is unavailable to me. He promised his help; I kept my part of the deal and he has let me down. Is there no honour?”
“Maybe among thieves,” said Jake, “but apparently not among murderers.”
“Haven’t I told you it wouldn’t be murder?” Turchin snapped. “These are mad dogs I want rid of, not true and honest citizens. They are dogs, Jake, and they’re shitting all over our world. I gave Ben Trask the information that has sent your locator David Chung out on his mission to save the ocean deeps from pollution—to save your British fishing grounds, the American coastline, and all the waters in between. I have made myself an outcast, a defector, to come here and bring you people warnings and important information. I sent a man of mine out of Russia into Sicily to get himself killed seeking out Luigi Castellano so that you, personally, could take revenge. Have you forgotten these things? These are the sacrifices that I have made. So don’t you talk to me of personal revenge. For what of yourself and Ben Trask? Ah, but that is different, eh? Well, I think not. And why should I be excluded?”
Which gave Jake pause. Not only what Turchin had said about revenge, but more especially what he’d said about sending a man out of Russia into Sicily, and sending him to his death. Georgi Grusev had been his name, and he’d come out of his tomb to save Jake’s life in the cellars of Castellano’s stronghold. And Jake really had forgotten about all that in the light of more recent problems. Forgotten about it until now.
“Georgi Grusev,” he said.
“Yes.” Turchin nodded. “He was dead before you got to Castellano. You never met him, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he did t
ry to help you.”
“Oh, but I did get to meet him,” said Jake quietly. “He was dead—you’re quite right—but still he got to help me. And I owe him. Which I suppose means that I owe you.”
Turchin’s dark eyes lit up at once, and he said, “You’ll do it, then?”
“That’s something I can’t promise,” Jake answered. “I don’t know which way Trask will move on this. But we should certainly try to prepare for it. One thing’s for sure: a nuclear explosion in Perchorsk’s guts would very definitely close the Gate.”
Turchin threw his head back and drew a deep breath. “Common sense at last!” he sighed. “Good, so how do we go about it? How do we use this Möbius Continuum thing?”
Jake shook his head and said, “The Continuum isn’t a ‘thing’ as such but a place. In fact it’s not even a place. It’s every-place. Every-where and any-when.”
“Eh? What?”
“I can use the Möbius Continuum to go anywhere,” Jake tried to simplify it. “But I have to know where I’m going. So where’s the bomb? Until I know that I can’t do anything.”
Turchin licked his lips and said, “And so we get to it. The location of the bomb is of course a secret. If it gets out—if the wrong people should get to know what I’ve done, or even the right people—then I’m finished. But very well: the bomb is at my dacha in Zhukovka, not far out of Moscow.”
“Zhukovka?” Jake knew of the place; he’d been reading of it in the Keogh files. “There are several dachas on a pine-covered hillock overlooking the Moscow River. You’re not the first head of Russia’s E-Branch to have a dacha there. Gregor Borowitz had one, too. He died there, when Boris Dragosani murdered him…”
But there the Necroscope paused and frowned, because Turchin’s mouth had gradually fallen open while he was speaking. Now, snapping his mouth shut, the Russian Premier said, “But this is astonishing! And indeed Trask’s intelligence is amazing! Gregor Borowitz’s place stood deserted until I took it over and refurbished it. Yes, yes—I have the very same dacha!”
At which Jake’s head began to whirl, and as if suffering an attack of vertigo he swayed dizzily where he sat on his bed, as suddenly out of nowhere he remembered, remembered—
—Remembered…
23
Transitions
GREGOR BOROWITZ’S DACHA. OH, JAKE “REMEMBERED” it alright. But now that he had this thing in proper perspective—now that he knew definitely that these weren’t his memories at all but the original Necroscope’s—and despite that these paramnesialike attacks still brought about spells of temporary disassociation and giddiness in him—he was finally able to accept them for what they really were.
Which meant that he was no longer apprehensive about them, and so was able to learn from them.
Borowitz’s dacha (now Gustav Turchin’s) was fashioned in a style that gave it the looks of nothing so much as an Austrian or Swiss chalet. Approaching the timbered, single-storey structure along a winding pebble pathway, Jake occasionally glimpsed the sluggish swirl of the Moscow River down below, where Borowitz had delighted in fishing illegally for state-owned speckled trout. Leading off from the track, the path to the rustic, oak-panelled door was paved in stone. Pausing uncertainly under the projecting eaves—hesitating, because something had warned him that what waited inside wasn’t very pleasant—Jake sniffed at the fragrant blue wood smoke from nearby dachas. It hung in the bitter-cold air as if frozen there, and he could almost feel the hairs crackling in his nostrils. But of course, for it had been winter when Harry came here.
The door stood slightly ajar. Bracing himself, Jake entered, passed along a short, dark corridor, through bead curtains into a small, pine-panelled room. At one side of the room, under curtained windows that let in a little light, Natasha Borowitz lay silent in her shroud in a polished pine coffin on a low, padded bench. Gregor’s wife for many years, she had died naturally.
But at the other side of the room, seated upon a couch, the old General himself…had not died naturally.
Jake stared at him, and Gregor Borowitz stared back through unseeing, glassy, pus-dripping eyes. He sat there upright, dead as a doornail, showing all the signs of a massive heart attack. And indeed he had suffered one. But it hadn’t been natural. The Wallachian necromancer, Boris Dragosani, had done this to him—smote him with his evil eye—in order to learn all the secrets of the then Soviet Union’s E-Branch.
But Jake had seen more than enough; he hadn’t needed to see any of this, except to confirm what he had already known—that indeed he possessed the coordinates of the dacha at Zhukovka!
He came out of it—returned to the here and now—with a small cry, not of fear but amazement. For suddenly it was plain to him that whatever Harry had known he could know. All it required was that someone press the right button, stir the memories, and set the mechanism ticking. Harry’s legacy would do the rest, and Jake…Jake would know!
“What is it?” said Gustav Turchin, plainly concerned. “What happened just then? Your eyes, your face…you were somewhere else. Just for a moment, why, I thought you were someone else!” He was standing beside the Necroscope, staring down at him, his hand on Jake’s shoulder. And:
“Borowitz’s dacha,” said Jake, looking up at him. “You did say that it’s yours now?”
“Yes,” said Turchin. “That run-down old ruin, I had to have it refurbished. My niece is staying there now. What about it?”
“I know the coordinates,” said Jake.
“What?” The Premier gave his head a puzzled shake. “How can that be? You said you’d never been there.”
“But I know—I’ve known—someone who has,” Jake answered. “And I’ve only just remembered.”
“Ah, no!” said the Premier, wagging a finger. “No, Jake. I saw what you did just then. It could only have been telepathy. You were talking to someone else…someone who knows.”
“Well, something like that,” said Jake. “But in fact I was seeing through someone else’s eyes. Anyway, I know the coordinates.”
“So then,” Turchin was elated. “We can go there! But…can we do it now, this very minute?”
Jake shook his head. “No,” he said. “But when I go back to Trask and the team in Bulgaria, I’ll take you with me. Then you can plead your own case.”
“And you think that will be soon?”
“Before nightfall, I’m sure.”
“Nightfall in Bulgaria is two hours ahead of us,” said Turchin.
“Correct.”
“So then, in maybe four hours’ time?”
“Or whenever Trask calls,” said Jake, shrugging.
“And you can hear Trask when he calls?” Turchin was finding himself swamped in E-Branch talents. “I mean, is he a telepath, too? My God, no wonder you have left us behind!”
Jake saw no reason to deceive him, however, and said, “It’s Liz Merrick who calls to me. She and I, we have this thing.”
But Turchin held up his hands and said, “Say no more. I can only take so much! Very well, I’ll go back to my room and wait, but very impatiently. Don’t forget me when Liz Merrick…when she calls for you.”
“My word on it,” said Jake…
A little less than an hour later Jake finished reading the last of the Keogh files. Titled but unnumbered, he had read them out of order—or in whichever order they came to hand—and this final file was Ben Trask’s report on the Janos Ferenczy affair. That was when Harry had fallen foul of Faethor Ferenczy’s deadspawn; it was when he had been vampirized. But now, knowing the whole story, Jake also knew that Harry had never surrendered to it, hadn’t succumbed to its inevitability. He had been tempted, oh yes, but he hadn’t given in. And that was a fact that buoyed Jake up, gave him heart, strengthened his resolve.
If—just if—the same thing should happen to him (or if, God forbid, it had already happened to him), Jake vowed that he would take his cue from Harry. No way Jake Cutter was going out without a fight to the finish. As in life, so in death, he acc
epted that now. But what of undeath?
And what of Liz?
But these were morbid thoughts, and Jake wasn’t about to go venturing down these roads, either. Liz and Millie…they were his mainstays; they were sure enough of him—so why wasn’t he? But then, they didn’t feel the way he felt. The weird, alarming strength burgeoning in him. And the thirst…or was that just his imagination?
He put that thought aside, too, called for coffee, and five minutes later David Chung brought it on a tray.
“David?” Jake said, frowning as he stepped aside to let the locator in, then watching him put the tray down on the computer console and pour black coffee into two mugs. “But I thought you were out chasing Russian wreckers?”
“I was,” Chung answered. “Will be again, in about an hour’s time when they pick me up. Our chopper developed a fault on the way out to Tórshavn in the Faeroes, so we hobbled home to Stornoway. We were hoping to pick up our quarry coming down from the Norwegian Sea, sort of harass him from the air, let him know we were on to him, give him the chance to turn around and go home, and so avoid an international incident. But that’s out now. So, I got a lift down to Edinburgh airport and flew in from there. Tonight we’ll be back on the trail again, this time in a coastguard chopper out of Glasgow. We’ll be looking for our boy out near Rockall, if he’s got that far by then. But it’s a bit of a needle-in-a-haystack scenario…he has a load of antidetection devices on board. I’ll be picked up from the roof by an MOD chopper courtesy of the Minister Responsible.”
Jake was still frowning. “Slow down a minute, will you?” he said. “Let’s get this straight. Who are the ‘we’ you keep talking about, what kind of vessel is it that you’re tracking, and what’s this Rockall?”
Chung grinned. “‘We’ are the people who can bring the truth of the situation out into the open. We can photograph this ship or ships, providing incontrovertible evidence of what this lunatic in the Russian Navy is trying to do. We can put down divers into the sea, measure the radioactivity of this clapped-out sub, and ask what the hell it’s doing here when we were told it had been decommissioned and made safe ten years ago in the shipyards at Severomorsk in the Barents Sea.”
