Vamphyri!

by Brian Lumley

  But it did have to do with the fact that Dolgikh had caught him out, trapped the British spider in his own web, right here in this safe house. Normally the flat would be occupied by a staff of two or three other secret service agents, but because Cornwell (or “Brown”) was busy with stuff beyond the scope of ordinary espionage—a specialist job, as it were—the regular occupiers had been “called away” on other work, leaving the premises suitably empty and accessible to Brown alone.

  Brown had taken Dolgikh on Saturday, but only a little more than twenty-four hours later the Russian had managed to turn the tables. Feigning sleep, Dolgikh had waited until Sunday noon when Brown went out for a glass of beer and a sandwich, then had worked frenziedly to free himself from the ropes that bound him. When Brown returned fifty minutes later, Dolgikh had taken him completely by surprise. Later … Brown had come to with a start, mind and flesh simultaneously assaulted by smelling salts squirted into his nostrils and sharp kicks in his sensitive places. He’d found their positions reversed, for now he was tied in the chair while Dolgikh was the one with the smile. Except that the Russian’s smile was that of a hyena.

  There had been one thing—really only one—that Dolgikh wanted to know: where were Krakovitch, Kyle and co. now? It was quite obvious to the Russian that he’d been taken out of the game deliberately, which might possibly mean that it was being played for high stakes. Now it was his intention to get back in.

  “I don’t know where they are,” Brown had told him. “I’m just a minder. I mind people and I mind my own business.”

  Dolgikh, whose English was good however guttural, wasn’t having any. If he couldn’t find out where the espers were, that was the end of his mission. His next job would likely be in Siberia! “How did they get on to me?”

  “I got on to you. Recognized your ugly face—details of which I’ve already passed on to London. As for them recognizing you: without me they wouldn’t have been able to spot you in a monkey-house at the zoo! Not that that would mean a lot …”

  “If you told them about me, they must have told you why they wanted me stopped. And they probably told you where they were going. Now you’ll tell me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  At that Dolgikh had come very close, no longer smiling. “Mr. Secret Agent, minder, or whatever you are, you are in a lot of trouble. The trouble is this: that unless you cooperate I will surely kill you. Krakovitch and his soldier friend are traitors, for they must at least have knowledge of this. You told them I was here; they gave you your orders, or at least went along with those orders. I am a field agent outside my country, working against my country’s enemies. I will not hesitate to kill you if you are obstinate, but things will get very unpleasant before you die. Do you understand me?”

  Brown had understood well enough. “All this talk of killing,” he tut-tutted. “I could have killed you many times over, but those weren’t my instructions. I was to delay you, that’s all. Why blow it up bigger than it is?”

  “Why are the British espers working with Krakovitch? What are they doing? The trouble with this psychic gang is this: both sides think they’re bigger than the rest of us. They think mind should rule the world and not muscle. But you and me and the others like us, we know that’s not the way it is. The strongest always wins. The great warrior triumphs while the great thinker is still thinking about it. Like you and me. You do what they tell you and I work from instinct. And I’m the one on top.”

  “Are you? Is that why you use the threat of death?”

  “Last chance, Mr. Minder. Where are they?’”

  Still Brown wasn’t saying anything. He merely smiled and gritted his teeth.

  Dolgikh had no more time to waste. He was an expert in interrogation, which on this occasion meant torture. Basically, there are two types of torture: mental and physical. Just looking at Brown, Dolgikh guessed that pain alone wouldn’t crack him. Not in the short term. Anyway, Dolgikh wasn’t carrying the rather special tools he’d require. He could always improvise but . . it wouldn’t be the same. Also, he didn’t wish to mark Brown; not initially, anyway. It must, therefore, be psychological—fear!

  And the Russian had discovered Brown’s weakness at the very first pass. “You’ll notice,” he told the British agent conversationally, “that while you are securely trussed, a far better job than you did on me, I have not in fact bound you to the chair.” Then he had opened tall louvre doors leading out onto a shallow rear balcony. “I assume you’ve been out here to admire the view?”

  Brown had gone pale in a moment.

  “Oh?” Dolgikh was onto him in a flash. “Something about heights, my friend?” He had dragged Brown’s chair out onto the balcony, then swung it sharply round so that Brown was thrown against the wall. Six inches of brick and mortar and a crumbling plaster finish saved him from space and gravity. And his face told the whole story.

  Dolgikh had left him there, hurried through the flat and checked out his suspicion. Sure enough, he found every window and balcony door shuttered, closing off not only the light but the height. Especially the height! Mr. Brown suffered from vertigo.

  And after that it had been a different game entirely.

  The Russian had dragged Brown back inside and positioned him in his chair six feet from the balcony. Then he’d taken a kitchen knife and started to loosen the masonry of the wall, in plain view of the helpless agent. As he’d worked, so he’d explained what he was about.

  “Now we’re going to start again and I will ask you certain questions. If you answer correctly—which is to say truthfully and without obstruction—then you stay right where you are. Better still, you stay alive. But every time you fail to answer or tell a lie I shall move you a little closer to the balcony and loosen more of the mortar. Naturally, I’ll become frustrated if you don’t play the game my way. Indeed, I shall probably lose my temper. In which case I may be tempted to throw you against the wall again. Except that the next time I do that, the wall will be so much weaker …”

  And so the game had begun.

  That had been about 7:00 P.M. and it was now 9:00 P.M.; the face of the balcony wall, which had become the focus of Brown’s entire being, was now thoroughly defaced and many of the bricks were visibly loose. Worse, Brown’s chair now stood with its front legs on the balcony itself, no more than three feet from the wall. Beyond that wall the city’s silhouette and the mountains behind it were sprinkled with twinkling lights.

  Dolgikh stood up from his handiwork, scuffed at the rubble with his feet, sadly shook his head. “Well, Mr. Minder, you have done quite well—but not quite well enough. Now, as I suspected might be the case, I am tired and a little frustrated. You have told me many things, some important and others unimportant, but you have not yet told me what I most want to know. My patience is at an end.”

  He moved to stand behind Brown, and pushed the chair gratingly forward, right up to the wall. Brown’s chin came level with the top, which faced him only eighteen inches away. “Do you want to live, Mr. Minder?” Dolgikh’s voice was soft and deadly.

  In fact the Russian fully intended to kill Brown, if only to pay him back for yesterday. From Brown’s point of view, Dolgikh had no need to kill him; it would be a pointless exercise and could only queer it for Dolgikh with British Intelligence, who would doubtless place him on their “long overdue” list. But from the Russian’s viewpoint … he was already on several lists. And in any case, murder was something he enjoyed. Brown couldn’t be absolutely sure of Dolgikh’s intentions, however, and where there’s life there’s always hope.

  The trussed agent looked across the top of the wall at Genoa’s myriad lights. “London will know who did it if you—” he started to say, then gave a small shriek as Dolgikh jerked the chair violently. Brown opened his eyes, drew breath raggedly, sat gulping, trembling, close to fainting. There was really only one thing in the world that he feared, and here it was right in front of him. The reason he’d become useless to the SAS. He could feel the empti
ness underneath him as if he were already falling.

  “Well,” said the Russian, sighing, “I can’t say it was a pleasure knowing you—but I’m sure it will be a great pleasure not knowing you! And so—”

  “Wait!” Brown gasped. “Promise me you’ll take me back inside if I tell you.”

  Dolgikh shrugged. “I shall only kill you if you make me. Not answering will be more suicide than murder.”

  Brown licked his lips. Hell, it was his life! Kyle and the others had their head start. He’d done enough. “Romania, Bucharest!” he blurted. “They took a plane last night, to get into Bucharest around midnight.”

  Dolgikh stepped beside him, cocked his head on one side and looked down at his sweating, upturned face. “You know that I only have to telephone the airport and check?”

  “Of course.” Brown sobbed. His tears were open and unashamed. His nerve had gone entirely. “Now get me inside.”

  The Russian smiled. “I shall be delighted.” He stepped out of Brown’s view. The agent felt him sawing with his knife at the ropes where they bound his wrists behind him. The ropes parted, and Brown groaned as he brought his arms around in front of him. Stiff with cramp, he could hardly move them. Dolgikh cut his feet free and collected up the short lengths of rope. Brown made an effort, started to rise unsteadily to his feet—

  —And without warning the Russian put both hands on his back and used all his strength to push him forward. Brown cried out, sprawled forward, went crashing over and through the wall into space. Fancy brickwork, fragments of plaster and mortar fell with him.

  Dolgikh hawked and spat after him, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. From far below there came a single heavy thud and the crashing of fallen masonry.

  Moments later the Russian put on Brown’s lightweight overcoat, left the flat and wiped the doorknob behind him. He took the lift to the ground floor and left the building, walking unhurriedly. Fifty yards down the road he stopped a taxi and asked to be taken to the airport. On the way he wound down the window, tossed out a few short lengths of rope. The driver, busy with the traffic, didn’t see him …

  By 11:00 that night, Theo Dolgikh had been in touch with his immediate superior in Moscow and was already on his way to Bucharest. If Dolgikh hadn’t been incapacitated for the past twenty-four hours—if he’d had the chance to contact his controller earlier—he would have discovered where Kyle, Krakovitch and the others had gone without killing Mr. Brown for that information. Not that it mattered greatly, for he knew he would have killed him anyway.

  Moreover, he could have learned something of what the espers were doing there in Romania, that in fact they were searching for … something in the ground? Dolgikh’s controller hadn’t waited to be more specific than that. Treasure, maybe? Dolgikh couldn’t imagine, and he wasn’t really interested. He put the question out of his mind. Whatever they were doing, it wasn’t good for Russia, and that was enough for him.

  Now, crammed in the tiny seat of the passenger aircraft as it sped across the northern Adriatic, he tilted himself backwards a little and relaxed, allowing his mind to drift with the hum of the engines …

  Romania. The region around Ionesti. Something in the ground. It was all very strange.

  Strangest of all, Dolgikh’s “controller” was one of them—one of these damned psychic spies, whom Andropov so heartily detested! The KGB man closed his eyes and chuckled. What would Krakovitch’s reaction be, he wondered, when he eventually discovered that the traitor in his precious E-Branch was his own Second in Command, a man called Ivan Gerenko?

  Yulian Bodescu had not spent a pleasant night. Even the presence of his beautiful cousin in his bed—her lovely body his to use in whichever way amused him—had not compensated for his nightmares and fantasies and frustrated half-memories out of a past not entirely his own.

  It was all down to the watchers, Yulian supposed, those damned busybodies whose spying (For what purpose? What did they know? What were they trying to find out?) over the last forty-eight hours had become an almost unbearable irritation. Oh, he no longer had any real cause to fear them—George Lake was fine ashes, and the three women would never dare go against Yulian—but still the men were there! Like an itch you can’t scratch. Or one you aren’t able to reach—for the moment. Yes, it was down to them.

  They had brought on Yulian’s nightmares, his dreams of wooden stakes, steel swords and bright, searing flames. As for those other dreams: of low hills in the shape of a cross, tall dark trees, and of a Thing in the ground that called and called to him, beckoning with fingers that dripped blood … Yulian was not quite sure what he should make of them.

  For he had been there—actually there, on the cruciform hills—the night his father died. He had been a mere foetus in his mother’s womb when it had happened, he knew that, but what else had happened that time? His roots were there, anyway, Yulian felt sure of that. But the fact remained that there was only one way he could ever be absolutely sure, and that would be to answer the call and go there. Indeed a trip to Romania might well be useful in solving two problems at once; for with the secret watchers out there in the fields and lanes around Harkley, now was probably as good a time as any to make himself scarce for a while.

  Except … first he would like to know what the real purpose of those watchers was. Were they merely suspicious, or did they actually know something? And if so, what did they intend to do about it? Yulian had already developed a plan to get those questions answered. It was just a matter of getting it right, that was all …

  The sky was cloudy and the morning dull that Monday when Yulian rose up from his bed. He told Helen to bathe, dress herself prettily, go about the house and grounds just as if her life were completely normal, unchanged. He dressed and went down to the cellars, where he gave the same instructions to Anne. Likewise his mother in her room. Just act naturally and let nothing appear suspicious; indeed, Helen could even drive him into Torquay for an hour or two.

  They were followed into Torquay but Yulian was not aware of it. He was distracted by the sun, which kept breaking through the clouds and reflecting off mirrors, windows and chrome. He still affected his broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses, but his hatred of the sun—and its effect on him—were much stronger now. The car’s mirrors irritated him; his reflection in the windows and other bright surfaces disturbed him; his vampire “awareness” was playing hell with his nerves. He felt closed in. Danger threatened and he knew it—but from which quarter? What sort of danger?

  While Helen waited in the car, three storeys up in a municipal car park, he went to a travel agency and made inquiries, then gave instructions. This took a little time, for the holiday he had chosen was outside the usual scope of the agency. He wanted to spend a week in Romania. Yulian might simply have phoned one of London’s airports and made a booking, but he preferred to let an authorized agency advise him on restrictions, visas, etc. This way there would be no errors, no last minute holdups. Also, Yulian couldn’t stay penned up in Harkley House forever; driving into town had at least given him a break from routine, from his watchers, and from the increasing pressures of being a creature alone. What was more, the drive had let him keep up appearances: Helen was his pretty cousin down from London, and he and she were simply out for a drive, enjoying what was left of the good weather. So it would appear.

  After making his travel arrangements (the agency would ring him within forty-eight hours and let him have all the details) Yulian took Helen for lunch. While she ate listlessly and tried desperately hard not to look fearful of him, he sipped a glass of red wine and smoked a cigarette. He might have tried a steak, rare, but food—ordinary food—no longer appealed. Instead he found himself watching Helen’s throat. He was aware of the danger in that, however, and so concentrated his mind on the details of his plan for tonight instead. Certainly he did not intend to stay hungry for very long.

  By 1:30 P.M. they had driven back to Harkley; and then, too, Yulian had briefly picked up the thoughts of another
watcher. He’d tried to infiltrate the stranger’s mind but it immediately shut him out. They were clever, these watchers! Furious, he raged inwardly through the afternoon and could scarcely contain himself until the fall of night.

  Peter Keen was a comparatively recent recruit to INTESP’s team of parapsychologists. A sporadic telepath, (his talent, as yet untrained, came in uncontrolled, unannounced bursts, and was wont to depart just as quickly and mysteriously) he’d been recruited after tipping off the police on a murder-to-be. He had accidentally scanned the mind—the dark intention—of the would-be rapist and murderer. When it happened just as he’d said it would, a high-ranking policeman, a friend of the branch, had passed details on to the INTESP. The job in Devon was Keen’s first field assignment, for until now all of his time had been spent with his instructors.

  Yulian Bodescu was under full twenty-four hour surveillance now, and Keen had the mid-morning shift, 8:00 A.M. till 2:00 P.M. At 1:30 when the girl had driven Bodescu back through Harkley’s gates and up to the house, Keen had been only two hundred yards behind in his red Capri. Driving straight past Harkley, he’d stopped at the first telephone kiosk and phoned headquarters, passing on details of Bodescu’s outing.

  At the hotel in Paignton, Darcy Clarke took Keen’s call and passed the telephone to the man in charge of the operation, a jolly, fat, middle-aged chain-smoking “scryer” called Guy Roberts. Normally Roberts would be in London, employing his scrying to track Russian submarines, terrorist bomb squads and the like, but now he was here as head of operations, keeping his mental eye on Yulian Bodescu.