The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  —The travelling folk!

  And there they were, the real thing, just as they had been for a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years and more. Romany: pariahs and outcasts, suppressed, persecuted, chased from country to country for all that time. A race apart, yes, yet close and closer to their origins than any other race in the whole world; a party of Gypsies, their half-dozen painted caravans jolting and jingling far beyond the range of audibility, but clear as bells in Siggi’s mind as she tried to bring them into focus.

  No, she couldn’t; they were too far away, five or maybe six kilometres; running from the winter, heading south. Except … something the young corporal had said had stuck in Siggi’s memory. Being mobile, and with their knowledge of the seasons, why on earth were they still here? They were a secretive, even esoteric people, true enough, and wherever possible would keep clear of the world’s more heavily populated regions; but even so, by now they should be a thousand kilometres further south. Down on the shore of the Caspian, in Astrakhan or Baku. Or perhaps the Black Sea, Moldavia … Romania? Yet here they were, and only now fleeing the rigours of winter.

  Siggi looked around, her eyes tracing Tzonov’s tracks in the snow. He was nowhere in sight. And again she picked out the thin line of caravans on the fringe of a distant forest. Unlike Tzonov, her talent didn’t require eye-to-eye contact; she could cast her mind like an arrow, if she had a target.

  Good luck! she sent. Run far and fast, Nathan, and never come back. She didn’t for a moment believe he would answer, or even that he could. But …

  … A tendril of numbers touched her consciousness, and at once fastened to her thoughts! Siggi’s skin prickled as if she stood close to a giant dynamo. And in her mind:

  Good-bye, Siggi. I won’t forget you. Nathan’s voice, and his unique warmth. But so powerful! And Turkur Tzonov was receptive to strong telepathic signals.

  Nathan heard that, too; his carrier probe at once disintegrated; the mental ether was clear again. And just in time, for Tzonov’s voice came ringing:

  “What do you see? Anything interesting?” The tone of his voice signaled nothing special.

  Siggi sighed her relief and called back, “Smoke from the villages and camps. A flight of birds, geese, I think. And some furtive creature in the woods. A dog, perhaps, or a wolf. It’s all very cold out there, but it’s all very peaceful, too.”

  “Do you think so?” He went to the snowcat and started it up. “Well, my mind is full of vague premonitions. So enough of these sidetracks. Let’s get back to Perchorsk.”

  All the way back Siggi was sad, for now she must keep her mind caged behind bars of her own making. And thinking of Nathan (however much she tried not to think of him), she wondered if he was sad, too …

  When they arrived back at Perchorsk, Tzonov’s “vague premonitions” quickly assumed tangible form. At the crest of the pass his platoon commander was sitting in the half-track’s driving seat with the engine already ticking over, waiting patiently for the snowcat’s return.

  Staff Sergeant Bruno Krasin was dark-skinned, wiry, long-limbed. Thirtyish, square-jawed, and hard-eyed, the blood of his Cossack forefathers still ran strong in him. The son of an old hard-line Communist and KGB officer, Krasin was one of Tzonov’s most trusted men; indeed, he was the man who would one day lead Tzonov’s expeditionary force through the Perchorsk Gate into an alien world. On the way down to the complex he told Tzonov what had transpired in his absence.

  “First, our search teams have worked their way through the Projekt scrupulously. They’ve scoured it just as you ordered, and the visitor isn’t here. We’ve discovered nothing of his whereabouts. Second: it had been snowing in the pass, but not too heavily. So anyone on the run must leave tracks in the fresh snow. You would think so. Yet there was nothing. It’s as if he simply disappeared.”

  And again Tzonov remembered who was Nathan’s father. But Siggi had sworn he didn’t have his father’s powers. And Nathan had seemed cowed and even despondent in captivity. “I take it your men are still out searching?”

  Krasin nodded. “I’ve sent out search parties into all of the neighbouring villages and camps. Also, and despite that we cleared the trucks heading for Beresovo, I’ve sent a motorcyclist after them to double-check. But in my opinion it’s all a waste of time. Something that had to be done, but a waste all the same. I think he had help.”

  Tzonov shook his head. “From here, Perchorsk? Impossible! Who?”

  “The British?”

  “Oh? How, when they’ve been kept little short of prisoners themselves? Our agents in the embassies have reported increased esper activity in London, but not around here. And anyway, what could they do?”

  Krasin had worked frequently with Soviet E-Branch, providing the muscle behind some of Tzonov’s more covert schemes. He vastly admired his talented master, but knew that while Tzonov was a mindspy, he would never make an agent on the ground; that is to say, an espionage agent in the old sense of the word. His talent got in the way; he relied on it too heavily; he couldn’t see the wood for the trees. “The British have known about this place since its early days,” he answered. “From space, this has to be the most photographed place in the world. They know every track and trail from here north to Vorkuta and south to Sverdlovsk. If they could get a message, or a map, to the visitor …”

  “He can’t even read!” Tzonov exploded.

  “But he can see! He’s not unintelligent.”

  “You told me there are no tracks.” Tzonov’s frustrations were mounting.

  Siggi cut in: “He’s Szgany, from Sunside. He knows how to cover his tracks. He has avoided the Wamphyri! In the wild, it will be like hunting the Invisible Man.”

  “The British!” Tzonov growled. “This morning I sent a man to wake them up, but I didn’t tell them he’d escaped. What, so that they could look for ways to assist him on his way? Anyway, they weren’t fit for much of anything. Probably still feeling the effects of the drug … though by now it should have voided itself.” He frowned, shrugged, continued. “Apparently they were like zombies! And they didn’t appear to know anything. I left a message for them: I have been ‘called away,’ but I shall be at their disposal upon my return.”

  “But they are talented,” Krasin insisted. “And you yourself have frequently stated that their organization is second to none. Also, they have seen the visitor, spoken to him. And if they haven’t helped him in some way, then why were they so eager to leave?”

  “What?”

  “They’re out of here.” The other wasn’t cowed. “They came on the invitation of Gustav Turchin, and they invoked his name to get out. They saw Projekt Direktor Vanadze right after you left, and he arranged air transport to Moscow. By then the jet-copter had returned, and of course I had personally supervised the unloading of the machine. No—” he held up a hand—“the British didn’t see it.”

  “Vanadze let them go?” Tzonov couldn’t believe it.

  “How could he prevent it? He asked them to wait on your return, but they would have none of that. They threatened to speak to Gustav Turchin himself, which turned the trick most admirably. The Premier is like a puppet; his policies tie him inextricably to Western economics; his political survival is entirely dependent upon the USA, United Germany, and the UK. He would have ordered the immediate release of the British, and in the process would have given everyone else hell!”

  “They simply flew out of here?” It was getting worse.

  The other could only shrug. “Yes. There was a British Airways Hawk from Moscow to London at eleven forty-five. About now … it will be seeking a window into Heathrow. But even if you’d been here, what could you have done? They were guests, not prisoners.”

  They were three-quarters of the way to the bottom of the ravine. Two hundred feet below them, the man-made lake of pent water was a sullen, leaden grey. Tiny flyspeck figures in winter-white uniforms moved antlike where they searched icy scree slopes. As the half-track slewed onto the ramp to the stagin
g area in front of the Projekt’s massive security doors, Tzonov calmed down a little. “You’re absolutely sure they didn’t see the machine?”

  “I am positive, sir.”

  Tzonov took a deep breath. “Then we must brazen it out.”

  Siggi frowned. “Brazen what out?” In closing her mind to him so completely, she had also denied herself access to Tzonov’s thoughts.

  “The whole thing is a mess,” Tzonov snapped. “And we will be the ones who take the blame—unless we turn events to our own advantage. For example: the British espers have gone home in a hurry. Why? Because they’ve been up to no good here. That will be our story, anyway. So, what have they been up to? Well, we think they may have helped our alien visitor to escape, perhaps by acting upon him like a catalyst until he developed his father’s powers. And damn it all—” he slapped the flat of his hand against the half-track’s steel door “—that mightn’t be so very far from the truth!”

  The doors opened and they drove through. And as the half-track’s uproar faded into silence and they dismounted, Tzonov continued to paint his picture of deceit. Ushering Krasin and Siggi to one side, and talking in a lowered tone now, he said, “How then are we to react? But how would we act, if our story were entirely true? We would be outraged, furious! What? Having shown the British every courtesy, they repay us with this … this treachery? Then, as soon as my back is turned, they laugh like hyenas and flee to safety! Perchorsk’s staff will back us up; they have seen nothing extraordinary in my treatment of Trask and Goodly. Also, they wouldn’t dare go against me.”

  “But we did drug those two,” Siggi reminded. “Maybe that was a mistake.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I had to get them out of the way. I hoped to move my arsenal, hide it away. Also, we were bringing our visitor in through the Gate; I planned to interrogate him … oh, a good many things! And all without their interference. Huh! Anyway, it’s their word against ours. They have no proof. If they dare to bring charges, it will only be as an excuse for fleeing from us when in fact they’re running from their own treachery. Of course they are, for their mission is accomplished. They’ve unleashed an alien creature upon us with powers we don’t understand. Ah, but our response … will be to issue a warrant on this Nathan’s life. To all intelligence agents in the field: terminate on sight, and as the Americans are wont to say, ‘with extreme prejudice!’”

  Deep inside, Siggi Dam shuddered. For already it was as if Tzonov believed his own fictitious but very plausible scenario …

  A corporal came into the entrance bay from the direction of the duties and control room. He came to attention in front of Krasin, saluted Tzonov, and took out a slim notepad from a black leather briefcase. “Sergeant,” he said to Krasin, “you ordered me to search the rooms which the British occupied. I did so, and found this.”

  Krasin examined the pad. “Blank?”

  “It’s the light,” the corporal explained. “But there are impressions.”

  “Well done. You can leave it with me.” Krasin dismissed the man. In Tzonov’s rooms the three examined the notepad under a powerful lamp. The corporal was quite right; using a soft lead pencil, Tzonov crisscrossed the faint marks until they sprang into sharp relief. Then:

  “What?” he frowned. But in another moment his frown faded and was replaced by a look of partial understanding. The drawing was a sign, a sigil: a flat loop with a half twist, in the form of a figure eight. “Nathan’s earring?”

  “More than that,” Siggi breathed. “That’s a Möbius strip. And there’s a connection—” For a moment she could have bitten her tongue, but in the next she reconsidered. What, something as simple as this? A notepad, perhaps incriminating (at least in Turkur Tzonov’s eyes), left casually lying in Trask’s room where it was certain to be discovered?

  “—With Harry Keogh!” Tzonov had caught on to her line of reasoning. “I remember now. The first time Keogh is known to have used teleportation, he was visiting the tomb of August Ferdinand Möbius in Leipzig. The Grenz Polizei had trapped and surrounded him—but he disappeared! Only to turn up again at the Château Bronnitsy, the then E-Branch HQ, and to wreck it!” He turned to Krasin.

  “You were right, Bruno, and this doodle tells all. Trask has given himself away. He would employ exactly the same tactics that the British have used before, and send the alien to Leipzig in the hope that his Necroscope father’s greatest talent will be reborn there. Except it won’t be; on the contrary, it will die there!”

  Krasin nodded; he wasn’t au fait with the Keogh files and records, but Tzonov’s enthusiasm for this new clue, this promising development, was infectious. “And our next step?”

  “I’ll have to speak to Moscow, Turchin,” Tzonov answered. “And he will have to give me carte blanche in this matter. But I want this Nathan, who or whatever, dead. For after all—” he glanced at Siggi “—we’ve already extracted a good deal of information from him. We no longer have any use for him and so it’s the safest way to conclude the matter. Moreover, it will deny the British any possible use of his services.”

  Krasin nodded. “Meanwhile we’ll keep searching, and in an ever widening circle. Why wait until he gets to Leipzig?”

  “Exactly.” Tzonov slapped his shoulder. “Very well, then, let’s all of us now agree to act accordingly.”

  Siggi was last out of his room. Before leaving she took up the notepad and looked again at the simple telltale sketch. But in the privacy of her own room she smiled a secret smile, and thought, Well, then, Mr. Ben Trask, Mr. Human Lie Detector. But just because your talent is to discover lies, that doesn’t mean you can’t tell one from time to time, eh? Or sketch one? And so you would like to fuck my face, would you? Well, I can forgive you for that, for I know it was only your way of testing me. But if you’ll settle for a kiss … ?

  And smiling, she blew a kiss across the empty room …

  As they passed through customs at Heathrow, Trask and Goodly were met by the spotter Frank Robinson. In his early forties, still Robinson looked no more than twenty-eight or -nine. His freckles gave him a permanent schoolboy look and his hair was blond as ever; he would always seem a “young” sort of person. His presence at the airport served a dual purpose. One: he was meeting the head of E-Branch and a colleague off their plane, and two: he was keeping his eyes and mind open for other mindspies. During the last twenty-four hours there had been a lot of unaccustomed esper activity, most of it stemming from the Russian embassy. It had been quite a while since things were as hot as this.

  During the drive to HQ, Trask wasted no time asking how the Branch had known he and Goodly were coming home; he automatically assumed they’d know almost as much as he did. But he was interested in the state of play. “How are we dealing with the Opposition?”

  “Diplomatically,” Robinson answered.

  Trask knew what he meant: applying pressure to diplomatically immune persons could be difficult. But: “Would you like to be a little more specific?”

  “Well, one of their best telepaths was getting a bit too close for comfort by the time I spotted him. Cheeky sod! He’d booked himself into the hotel downstairs and was listening in from point-blank range! We told our friends in Special Branch about him; they picked him up on a moving traffic offense and planted—er, ‘found’—some very illegal substances hidden in his car. Tsk tsk! He’s been confined to the embassy while the Minister for Foreign Affairs looks into it. And two more of Tzonov’s people have been driving round throwing a screen of static at us morning, noon, and night, trying to scramble our probes. We haven’t bothered to counter them; it’s good to know where they are and what they’re up to, and their efforts have been pretty useless at best. Also, certain of our little yellow friends have been showing a lot of interest in us, but since Peking and Moscow aren’t in cahoots these days, we’ve simply let them get on with it. Meanwhile, we’re keeping our eyes peeled, so to speak.”

  “Huh!” Trask grunted. “Well, I know I should be reassured, but I’m
not. Things feel wrong. We could be under surveillance right now, by gadget if not by ghost.” It was a Branch in-joke. The espers talked of the two sides of espionage: the gadgets of modern-day technology and the ghosts of parapsychology. Except this time Trask wasn’t joking but stating a fact. For well over thirty years now, high-tech electronic surveillance had been one of the world’s fastest growing industries.

  “The car could be bugged, certainly.” Robinson shrugged. “But it’s something we live with. We can’t cover ourselves all of the time.”

  “We can try,” Trask told him. “And this time it’s important as never before. So tell me no more for now, and I’ll save what I’ve got until we’re home and dry.”

  “As you will,” Robinson nodded. “But at least let me tell you this much: there’s a surprise waiting for you at HQ.”

  “Good or bad?”

  Robinson was negotiating a bend and for a moment couldn’t answer. Ian Goodly, precog, was with Trask in the back of the car; he was looking out his window, saying nothing. Perhaps he was hiding his face, which wore a grin like a Cheshire cat. Finally Robinson answered Trask’s question. “Good or bad? You mean your surprise? Good, I think. Indeed, excellent!”

  “We shall see,” Trask grunted. Which was the end of their conversation—

  —Until the scanners hidden in the walls of the elevator at E-Branch HQ had cleared them for bugs, and they were on their way up. Then Trask said, “What’s the surprise?”

  Robinson grinned. “I think she’d prefer to speak for herself.”

  She? Trask wasn’t in the mood for games, and was on the point of saying so when the doors hissed open. As they stepped out into familiar surroundings, he heard voices from his office at the end of the corridor where the door stood ajar. One voice was soft and even a little sibilant for all that its owner was a Londoner born and bred: David Chung, who was the acting head of Branch in Trask’s absence. And the other was female and not quite … unfamiliar?