by Brian Lumley
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 now it was 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 he 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 emptiness 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 round 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 wanted 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 lonesti. 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 EBranch 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 la
nes 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 authorised agency advise him on restrictions, visas, etc. This way there would be no errors, no last minute hold-ups. 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 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.
Roberts had found the task not at all to his liking and far from easy. The vampire is a solitary creature whose nature it is to be secretive. There is that in a vampire’s mental makeup which shields him as effectively as the night screens his physical being. Roberts could see Harkley House only as a vague, shadowy place, as a scene viewed through dense, weaving mist. When Bodescu was there this mental miasma rolled that much more densely, making it difficult for Roberts to pinpoint any specific person or object.
Practice makes perfect, however, and the longer Roberts stayed with it the clearer his pictures were coming. He could now state for certain, for instance, that Harkley House was occupied by only four people:
Bodescu, his mother, his aunt and her daughter. But there was something else there, too. Two somethings, in fact. One of them was Bodescu’s dog, but obscured by the same aura, which was very strange. And the other was — simply ‘the Other’. Like Yulian himself, Roberts thought of it only that way. But whatever it was — in all likelihood the thing in the cellars which Alec Kyle had warned about — it was certainly there and it was alive.
‘Roberts here,’ the scryer spoke into the telephone. ‘What is it, Peter?’
Keen passed his message.
‘Travel agency?’ Roberts frowned. ‘Yes, we’ll get on to it at once. Your relief? He’s on his way right now. Trevor Jordan, yes. See you later, Peter.’ Roberts put down the telephone and picked up a directory. Moments later he was phoning the travel agency in Torquay, whose name and address Keen had given him.
When he got an answer, Roberts held a handkerchief to his mouth, contrived a young voice. ‘Hello? Er, hello?’
‘Hello?’ came back the answer. ‘Sunsea Travel, here — who’s calling, please?’ It was a male voice, deep and smooth.
‘Seem to have a bad line,’ Roberts replied, keeping his voice to a medium pitch. ‘Can you hear me? I was in, oh, an hour ago. Mr Bodescu?’
‘Ah, yes, sir!’ The booking agent raised his voice. ‘Your Romanian inquiry. Bucharest, any time in the next two weeks. Right?’ Roberts gave a start, made an effort to keep his muffled voice even. ‘Er, Romania, yes, that’s right.’ He thought fast — furiously fast. ‘Er, look, I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but —‘
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I’ve decided I can’t make it after all. Maybe next year, eh?’
‘Ah!’ There was some disappointment in the other’s tone. ‘Well, that’s the way it goes. Thanks for
calling, sir. So you’re definitely cancelling, right?’
‘Yes.’ Roberts jiggled the phone a bit. ‘I’m afraid I have to… Damn bad line, this! Anyway, something’s come up, and —,
‘Well, don’t worry about it, Mr Bodescu,’ the travel agent cut him off. ‘It happens all the time. And anyway, I haven’t yet found the time to make any real inquiries. So no harm done. But do let me know if you change your mind again, won’t you?’
‘Oh, indeed! I will, I will. Most helpful of you. Sorry to have been such a nuisance.’
‘Not at all, sir. Bye now.’
‘Er, goodbye!’ Roberts put the phone down.
Darcy Clarke, who had been party to this exchange, said, ‘Sheer genius! Well done, Chief!’
Roberts looked up but didn’t smile. ‘Romania!’ he repeated, ominously. ‘Things are hotting up, Darcy. I’ll be glad when Kyle gets his call through. He’s two hours overdue.’
At that very moment the phone rang again.
Clarke inclined his head knowingly. ‘Now that’s what I call a talent. If it doesn’t
happen — make it!’
Roberts pictured Romania in his mind’s eye — his own interpretation, for he’d never been there — then superimposed an image of Alec Kyle over a rugged Romanian countryside. He closed his eyes and Kyle’s picture came up in photographic — no, live — detail.
‘Roberts here.’
‘Guy?’ Kyle’s voice came back, crisp with static. ‘Listen, I intended to route this through London, John Grieve, but I couldn’t get him.’ Roberts knew what he meant: obviously he would have liked the call to be one hundred per cent secure.
‘I can’t help you there,’ he answered. ‘There’s no one that special around right now. Are there problems, then?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’ In the eye of Roberts’s mind, Kyle was frowning. ‘We lacked a bit of privacy in Genoa, but that cleared up. As for why I’m late: it’s like contacting Mars getting through from here! Talk about antiquated systems. If I didn’t have local help… anyway, have you got anything for me?’
‘Can we talk straight?’
‘We’ll have to.’
Roberts quickly brought him up to date, finishing with Bodescu’s thwarted trip to Romania. In his mind’s eye he saw, as well as physically hearing, Kyle’s gasp of horror. Then the head of INTESP got hold of his emotions; even if Bodescu’s plans to come over here hadn’t been foiled, still it would have been too late for him.
‘By the time we’ve finished over here,’ he grimly told Roberts, ‘there’ll be nothing left for him anyway. And by the time you’ve finished over there… he won’t be able to go anywhere.’ Then he told Roberts in detail exactly what he wanted done. It took him a good fifteen minutes to make sure he covered everything.
‘When?’ Roberts asked him when he was finished.
Kyle was cautious. ‘Are you part of the surveillance team? I mean, do you physically go out to the house and watch him?’
‘No. I co-ordinate. I’m always here at the HO. But I do want to be in on the kill.’
‘Very well, I’ll tell you when it’s to be,’ said Kyle. ‘But you’re not to pass it on to the others! Not until as close as possible to zero hour itself. I don’t want Bodescu picking it out of someone’s mind.’
