by Brian Lumley
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 …”
1:00 A.M. in Moscow. At the Chateau 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 Föener, E-Branch’s best—sat alone in one corner of the room. Föener 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 Chateau 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 Chateau 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 one-way 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!”
Föener 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, it’s 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 weapons, 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 border. I organized 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 beginning 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 authorization 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 recognize 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.”
