by Brian Lumley
But on the other hand — Dolgikh congratulated himself that at least half of his mission had been accomplished successfully. And very satisfactorily.
8.00 P.M. at the Château Bronnitsy.
Ivan Gerenko lay in a shallow sleep on a cot in his inner office. Down below, in the sterility of the brainwashing laboratory, Alec Kyle also lay asleep. His body, anyway. But since there was no longer a mind in there, it was hardly Kyle any longer. Mentally, he had been drained to less than a husk. The information this had released to Zek Foener had been staggering. This Harry Keogh, if he had still lived, would have been an awesome enemy. But trapped in the brain of his own child, he was no longer a problem. Later, maybe, when (and if) the child had grown into a man.
As for INTESP: Foener was now privy to that entire organisation’s machinery. Nothing remained secret. Kyle had been the controller, and what he had known Zek Föener was heir to. Which was why, as the technicians dismantled their instruments and left Kyle’s body naked and drained even of instinct, she hurried to report something of her findings — and one thing in particular — to Ivan Gerenko.
Zekintha Föener’s father was East German. Her mother had been Greek, from Zakinthos in the Ionian Sea. When her mother died, Zek had gone to her father in Posen, to the university where he worked in parapsychology. Her psychic ability, which he had always suspected in her when she was a child, had become immediately apparent to him. He had reported the fact of her telepathic talent to the College of Parapsychological Studies on Brasov Prospekt in Moscow, and had been summoned to attend with Zek so that she could be tested. That was how she had come to EBranch, where she had rapidly made herself invaluable.
Föener was five-nine, slim, blonde and blue-eyed. Her hair shone and bounced on her shoulders when she walked. Her Château uniform fitted her like a glove, accentuating the delicate curves of her figure. She climbed the stone stairs to Krakovitch’s (no, she corrected herself, to Gerenko’s) office, entered the anteroom and knocked firmly on the closed inner door.
Gerenko heard her knock, forced himself awake and struggled to sit up. In his shrivelled frame he tired easily, slept often but poorly. Sleep was one way of prolonging a life which doctors had told him would be short. It was the ultimate irony: men could not kill him, but his own frailty surely would. At only thirty-seven he already looked sixty, a shrunken monkey of a man. But still a man.
‘Come in,’ he wheezed, as he sucked air into his fragile lungs.
Outside the door, while Gerenko had come more surely awake, Zek Föener had broken a trust. It was an unwritten rule at the Château that telepaths would not deliberately spy on the minds of their colleagues. That was all very well and only decent in normal conditions, normal circumstances. But on this occasion there were gross abnormalities, things which Föener must track down to her satisfaction.
For one, the way Gerenko had literally taken over Krakovitch’s job. It wasn’t as if he stood in for him at all, but had in fact replaced him — permanently! Föener had liked Krakovitch; from Kyle she had learned about Theo Dolgikh’s surveillance activities in Genoa; Kyle and Krakovitch had been working together on —‘Come in!’ Gerenko repeated, breaking her chain of thought, but not before everything had fallen together. Gerenko’s ambition burned bright in her mind, bright and ugly. And his intention, to use those… those Things which Krakovitch was quite rightly bent on destroying.
She drew air deeply and entered the office, staring at Gerenko where he lay in the dark on his cot, propped up on one elbow.
He put on a bedside lamp and blinked as his weak eyes accustomed themselves. ‘Yes? What is it, Zek?’
‘Where’s Theo Dolgikh?’ she waded straight in. No preliminaries, no formalities.
‘What?’ He blinked at her. ‘Is something wrong, Zek?’
‘Many things, perhaps. I said —‘
‘I heard what you said,’ he snapped. ‘And what has it to do with you where Dolgikh is?’
‘I saw him for the first time, with you, on the morning that Felix Krakovitch left for Italy — after he left,’ she answered. ‘Following which he was absent until he brought Alec Kyle back here. But Kyle wasn’t working against us. He was working with Krakovitch. For the good of the world.’
Gerenko swung his brittle legs carefully off the cot onto the floor. ‘He should only have been working for the good of the USSR,’ he said.
‘Like you?’ she came back at once, her voice sharp as broken glass. ‘I know now what they were doing, Comrade. Something that had to be done, for safety and sanity. Not for themselves, but for mankind.’
Gerenko eased himself to his feet. He wore child’s pyjamas, looked frail as a twig as he made for his great desk. ‘Are you accusing me, Zek?’
‘Yes!’ She was relentless, furious. ‘Kyle was our opponent, but he personally had not declared war on us. We aren’t at war, Comrade. And we’ve murdered him. No, you have murdered him — to foster your own ambitions!’
Gerenko climbed into his chair, put on a desk lamp and aimed its light at her. He steepled his hands in front of him, shook his head almost sadly. ‘You accuse me? And yet you were party to it. You drained his mind.’
‘I did not!’ She came forward. Her face was working, full of anger. ‘I merely read his thoughts as they flooded out of him. Your technicians drained him.’
Unbelievably, Gerenko chuckled. ‘Mechanical necromancy, yes.’
She slammed her hand flat down on the desk top. ‘But he wasn’t dead!’
Gerenko’s shrivelled lips curled into a sneer. ‘He is now, or as good as.
‘Krakovitch is loyal, and he’s Russian.’ She wouldn’t be stopped. ‘And yet you’ll murder him too. And that really would be murder! You must be mad!’ And in that she had hit upon the truth. For Gerenko’s warps weren’t only in his body.
‘That — is — enough!’ he snarled. ‘Now you listen to me, Comrade. You speak of my ambition. But if I grow strong, Russia herself grows that much stronger. Yes, for we are one and the same. You? You’ve not been Russian long enough to know that. This country’s strength lies in its people! Krakovitch was weak, and —,
‘Was?’ Her arms trembled where she leaned forward, knuckles white on the edge of his desk.
He suddenly felt that she had grown very dangerous.
He would make one last effort. ‘Listen, Zek. The Party Leader is a weak old man. He can’t go on much longer.
The next leader, however —‘
‘Andropov?’ Her eyes went wide. ‘I can read it in your mind, Comrade. Is that how it will be? That KGB thug? The man you already call your master!’
Gerenko’s faded eyes suddenly narrowed, their slits blazing with his own anger. ‘When Brezhnev is gone —‘
‘But he isn’t, not yet!’ She was shouting now. ‘And when he learns of this.
That was an error, a bad one. Even Brezhnev couldn’t harm Gerenko, not personally, not physically. But he could have it done for him — at a distance. He could have Gerenko’s state flat in Moscow booby-trapped. Once a booby-trap is set, no man’s hand is involved. From then on the thing is entirely automatic. Or Gerenko could wake up one morning and find himself behind bars — and then they could forget to feed him! His talent did have certain limitations.
He stood up. In his child’s hand was an automatic, taken from a drawer in the desk. His voice was a whisper. ‘Now you will listen to me,’ he said, ‘and I will tell you exactly how it is going to be. First, you won’t speak of this matter or even mention it again, not to anyone. You’ve been sworn to secrecy here at the Château. Break your trust and I’ll break you! Second: you say we are not at war. But you have a short memory. The British espers declared war against EBranch nine months ago. And they came close to destroying the organisation utterly! You were new here then; you were away somewhere, holidaying with your father. You saw nothing of it. But let me tell you that if this Harry Keogh of theirs were still alive…‘ He paused for breath, and Föener bit her tongue to keep from telling h
im the truth: that indeed Harry Keogh was still alive, however helpless.
‘Third,’ he finally continued, ‘I could kill you now — on the spot, shoot you dead — and no one would even question me about it. If they did, I would say that I had had my suspicions about you for a long time. I would tell them that your work had driven you mad, and that you threatened me, threatened EBranch. You are quite correct, Zek, the Party Leader puts a deal of faith in the branch. He is fond of it. Under old Gregor Borowitz it served him well. What, a woman, mad, running around loose here, threatening irreparable damage? Of course I should shoot her! And I will — if you don’t mark each word I say most carefully. Do you think anyone would believe your accusation? Where’s the proof? In your head? In your addled head! Oh, they just might believe, I’ll grant you that — but what if they didn’t? And would I sit still and simply let you have it all your own way? Would Theo Dolgikh sit still for that? You have any easy time here, Zek. Ah, but there are other jobs in other places for a strong young woman in the USSR. After your — rehabilitation? — doubtless they’d find you one.
Again he paused, put away the gun. He saw that he had made his point.
‘Now get out of here, but don’t leave the Château. I want a report on everything you learned from Kyle. Everything. The initial report may be brief, an outline. I’ll have that by midday tomorrow. The final report will be detailed down to the last minutia. Do you understand?’
She stood looking at him, bit her lip.
‘Well?’
Finally she nodded, blinked away tears of frustration, turned on her heel. On her way out, he softly said, ‘Zek,’ and she paused. But she didn’t face him. ‘Zek, you have a great future. Remember that. And really, that’s the only choice you have. A great future — or none at all.’
Then she left and closed the door behind her.
She went to her own small suite of rooms, the austere quarters she used when she was not on duty, and threw herself down on her bed. To hell with his report. She’d do it in her own time, if she did it at all. For what use would she be to Gerenko once he knew what she knew?
After a little while she managed to compose herself and tried to sleep. But though she was weary to death, she tried in vain.
Chapter Sixteen
Wednesday, 11.45 P.M. — fifteen minutes to midnight in Hartlepool on England’s north-east coast — and a thin drizzling rain turning the empty streets shiny black. The last bus for the colliery villages along the coast had left the town half an hour ago; the pubs and cinemas had all turned out; grey cats slinked in the alleys and a last handful of people headed for their homes on a night when it simply wasn’t worth being out.
But in a certain house on the Blackhall Road there was a muted measure of activity. In the garret flat, Brenda Keogh had fed her baby son and put him down for the night and was now preparing herself for bed. In the hitherto empty first floor flat, Darcy Clarke and Guy Roberts sat in near-darkness, Roberts nodding off to sleep and Clarke listening with an anxious awareness to the timbers of the old house creaking as they settled for the night. Downstairs in the ground floor flat, its permanent ‘residents’, two Special Branch men, were playing cards while a uniformed policeman made coffee and looked on. In the entrance hail a second uniformed officer kept his vigil just inside the door, smoking a slightly damp and ill-made cigarette while he sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair and wondered for the tenth time just what he was doing here.
To the Special Branch men it was old hat: they were here for the protection of the girl in the garret flat. She didn’t know it, but they weren’t just good neighbours, they were her minders. Hers and little Harry’s. They’d looked after her for the better part of a year, and in all of that time no one had so much as blinked at her; theirs must be the cushiest, best paid number in the entire length and breadth of the security business! As for the two uniformed men: they were on overtime, kept over from the middle shift to do ‘special’ duties. They should have gone off home at 10.00 P.M., but it appeared there was this bloody maniac on the loose, and the girl upstairs was thought to be one of his targets. That was all they’d been told. All very mysterious.
On the other hand, in the flat above, Clarke and Roberts knew exactly why they were here — and also what they were up against. Roberts uttered a quiet snort and his head lolled where he sat close to the curtained window in the living-room. He gave a grunt and straightened himself up a little, and in the next moment began to nod again. Clarke scowled at him without malice, turned up his collar and rubbed his hands for warmth. The room felt damp and cold.
Clarke would have liked to put on a light but didn’t dare; this flat was supposed to be empty and that was the way it must appear. No fires, no lights, as little movement as possible. All they’d allowed themselves by way of comfort was an electric kettle and a jar of instant coffee. Well, a little more than that. Comforting too was the fact that earlier in the day a flame thrower had been delivered to Roberts, and both men had crossbows.
Clarke picked up his crossbow now and looked at it. It was loaded, with the safety on. How dearly he would love to sight it on Yulian Bodescu’s black heart. He scowled again and put the weapon down, lit up and drew deeply on one of his rare cigarettes. He was feeling tired and miserable, and not a little nervous. That was probably to be expected, but he put it down to the fact that he’d been taking his coffee blacker and blacker, until he felt sure his blood must now be at least seventy-five per cent pure caffeine! He’d been here since the early hours of the morning, and so far — nothing. At least he had that much to be thankful for.
Down in the entrance hall, Constable Dave Collins quietly opened the door of the flat, looked into the living-room. ‘Stand in for me, Joe,’ he said to his colleague. ‘Five minutes for a breath of fresh air. I’m going to stretch my legs down the road a bit.’
The other glanced once more at the Special Branch men at their game, stood up and began buttoning his jacket. He picked up his helmet and followed his friend out into the hall, then unlocked the door and let him out into the street. ‘Fresh air?’ he called after him. ‘You’re joking. Looks like there’s a fog coming up to me!’
Joe Baker watched his colleague stride off down the road, went back inside and closed the door. He should by rights lock it but was satisfied to throw home the single, small stainless steel bolt. He took his seat beside an occasional table bearing a heap of junk mail and some old newspapers — and a tin of cigarette tobacco and papers! Joe grinned, rolled himself a ‘free’ one. He’d just smoked the cigarette down when he heard footsteps at the door and a single, quiet knock.
He got up, unbolted the door, opened it and looked out. His colleague stood with his back to the door, rubbing his hands and glancing up and down the road. A fine film of moisture gleamed black on his raincoat and helmet. Joe flipped the stub of his cigarette out into the night and said, ‘That was a long five —‘
But that was all he said. For in the next moment the figure on the threshold had turned and grabbed him in hands huge and powerful as iron bands — and he’d taken one look at the face under the helmet and knew that it wasn’t Dave Collins! It wasn’t anybody human at all!
These were his last thoughts as Yulian Bodescu effortlessly bent Joe’s head back and sank his incredible teeth into his throat. They closed like a mantrap on his pounding jugular and severed it. He was dead in a moment, throat torn out and neck broken.
Yulian lowered him to the floor, turned and closed the door to the street. He pushed home the light bolt; that would suffice. It had been the work of mere seconds, a most efficient murder. Blood stained Bodescu’s mouth as he snarled silently at the door of the ground floor flat, He reached out his vampire senses and sent them beyond the closed door. Two men in there, close together, busy with whatever they were doing and totally unaware of their danger. But not for long.
Yulian opened the door and without pause strode into the room. He saw the Special Branch officers seated at their card table. They looked up
smiling, saw him, his helmet and raincoat, and casually returned to their game
— then looked again! But too late. Yulian was in the room, pacing forward, reaching a taloned hand to pick up a service automatic with its silencer already screwed in position. He would have preferred to kill in his own way, but he supposed that this was as good as any. The officers had barely drawn breath, were scarcely risen to their feet, before he’d fired at them point-blank, half-emptying the weapon’s magazine into their cringing, shuddering bodies.
Darcy Clarke had been on the point of falling asleep; perhaps for a little while he had been asleep, but then something had woken him up. He lifted his head, all of his senses at once alert. Something downstairs in the hall? A door closing? Furtive footsteps on the stairs? It could have been any of these things. But how long ago — seconds or minutes?
The telephone rang and shocked him upright, rigid as a pillar in his chair. Heart pounding, he reached for the phone, but Guy Roberts’s hand closed on it first. ‘I woke up a minute before you,’ Roberts whispered, his voice hoarse in the darkness. ‘Darcy, I think something’s up!’
He put the handset to his ear, said: ‘Roberts?’
Clarke heard a tinny voice from the telephone, but couldn’t make out what it said. But he saw Roberts give a massive start and heard his whooshing intake of breath.
‘Jesus!’ Roberts exploded into life. He slammed the phone down, came rearing unsteadily to his feet. ‘That was Layard,’ he panted. ‘He’s found the bastard again — and guess where he is!’
Clarke didn’t have to guess, for his talent had taken over. It was telling him to get the hell out of this house; it was even propelling him towards the door. But only for a moment, for his talent ‘knew’ that there was danger out there on the landing, and now it was heading Darcy towards the window!
