THURSDAY MORNING341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcFgUx8qZn9
Molly went back to the river, back to the place where her mother lay once more locked in mud and weed. Except that there were two of them there now, and she had not gone to talk to her but to Sergei Lerner. She took a cushion from the car and carried it down to the riverbank, putting it down in snow six inches deep before seating herself and hugging her knees. Below where she sat the ice had crusted over again and snow had settled on the place where she'd cut her escape hole, so that only an outline showed through.
After sitting in silence for a while, she said: "Stepfather, can you hear me?"
"-----Yes," came the answer in a little while. "Yes, I can hear you, Molly Stewart. I hear you and I feel your presence! Why don't you go away and leave me in peace?"
"Be careful, Stepfather. Mine might be the last voice you ever hear. If I 'go away and leave you in peace,' who'll speak to you then?"
"So that's your talent, is it, Molly? You speak to the dead. You're a corpse rabble-rouser! Well, I want you to know that it hurts me, like all ESP hurts me. But last night, for the first time in many long years, I lay here in my freezing bed and slept soundly, and there was no pain. Who'll speak to me? I don't want anyone to speak to me! I want peace."
"What do you mean, it hurts you?" Molly pressed. "How can my just being here hurt anything?"
Lerner told her.
"And that's why you killed my mother?"
"Yes, and it's why I tried to kill you. But in your case, it might also have served to save my own life." And now he told Molly about the men Semnyonovich had sent to kill her, Dragan and Tabur.
Molly wasn't satisfied. She wanted to know it all, from the beginning right to the present. "Tell me about it," she said, "all of it, and I swear I'll never bother you again."
And Lerner told her.
About Semnyonovich and the Castillo Mikhailov. About the Russian ESPers where they were worked for world domination through ESP in their secret den in the heart of the Soviet Union. He told of how Semnyonovich had sent him out of Russia to England to find and kill British ESPers, and how he had broken away and become a British citizen. And he told him again about the curse that dogged him: how ESP-talented people robbed his nerves raw and brought on the madness in him. And at last Molly understood and might almost have pitied Lerner---were it not for her mother.
And as Lerner talked so Molly thought of Sir Arthur Gerrard and the British E-Branch, and he remembered his promise to go and see Gerrard and perhaps join his group when all of this had been sorted out. Well, not it was sorted out. And now Molly knew that she must go and see Gerrard. For Sergei Lerner wasn't the only guilty one. There were others far worse than he could ever be. The one had sent him out on this murderous mission in the first place, for instance. For if Lerner had never come here, Molly's mother would still be alive.
And finally Molly was satisfied. Until now her life had seemed greatly aimless, unfulfilled---her one ambition had been to kill Lerner----but now she knew that it was bigger than that, and suddenly she felt small in view of the task which still awaited her.
"All right, Stepfather," she finally said, "I'll leave you now and let you rest. But it's a peace that you don't deserve. I can't and won't forgive you."
"I don't want your forgiveness, Molly Stewart, just your promise that you'll leave me alone here," Lerner told her. "And you've given me that. So now go and get yourself killed and let me be...."
Molly climbed stiffly to her feet. Every bone in her body ached---her head, too---and she felt completely sapped of strength. It was partly physical, but mostly emotional. It was the calm which follows the storm, and, although she couldn't yet know it, it was also the lull before the greater storm still to come.
But now he shrugged herself upright, left the cushion lying there forgotten in the snow, headed back towards her car. Behind her and yet with her a voice said in her mind: "Goodbye Molly." But it wasn't Lerner's voice.
"Goodbye, Mum," she answered. "And thanks. I'll always love you."
"And I'll always love you, Molly." "What?" now came Lerner's horrified mental gasp. "What! Stewart, what's this? I saw you raise her up, but....?"
Molly didn't answer. She let Constance Stewart do it for her:
"Hello, Sergei. No, you're wrong. Molly didn't raise me up. I raised myself up. For the sake of love, which is something you can't understand. But that's over now and I'll not do it again. My Molly has others to look after her now; so I'll just lie here, lonely in the mud. Except maybe I won't be so lonely now...."
"Stewart!" Lerner frantically called out after Molly again. "Stewart, you promised me---you said you were the only one who could talk to me. But now she's talking to me---and she hurts most of all!"
Molly kept on walking.
"Now, now, Sergei," she heard her mother's answer, as if she spoke to a small child. "That will get you nowhere. Did you say you want peace and quiet? Oh, but you'll soon get bored with peace and quiet, Sergei."
"Stewart!" Lerner's voice was a diminishing mental shriek now. "Stewart, you have to get me out of this. Dig me up---tell them where to find my body---only don't leave me here with her!"
"Actually, Sergei," Constance Stewart remorselessly continued, "I think I'll rather enjoy talking to you. You're so close to me that it's no effort at all!"
"Stewart, you bitch! Come back! Oh---please----come----back!"
But Molly just kept right on walking.
1:30 PM. HARTLEPOOL341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjiS1TnwDsB
The roads were nightmarish, layered with compacted snow for more than half the journey, so that in the main she was driving on her nerves. This only served to drain more of her strength, and when at last she got home it was as much as she could do to drag herself upstairs.
Brian, her husband of eight weeks, was bright and chirpy about the flat, which had undergone some fantastic and inexplicable metamorphosis since he had moved in after their registry office wedding. Molly was less than three months pregnant and not yet blooming. Brian, too, had been in fine fettle when last he had seen her; but now, in complete contrast....
She barely managed the effort of kissing him on the cheek, was asleep almost before her head hit the pillows.
She had been away for three days, doing "research," he knew, for a new book she was planning---what and where exactly she'd never bothered to say. Well, that was Molly and he should be used to that by now---but he was not used to her turning up looking like she'd spent three days in a concentration camp!
After she had slept right through the afternoon and seemed to have developed a fever, he called the doctor who visited at about 8:00 P.M. Molly didn't bother to wake up for her visit; the doctor thought it might be the flu, though the symptoms weren't quite right; he left pills, instructions and his telephone number. If Molly got worse during the night, especially if her breathing became irregular or she started coughing, or if her temperature went up appreciably, Brian was to rush her to the hospital immediately, as an affliction like this might prove fatal to the child she was now carrying.
But Molly got no worse through the night, and in the morning she was able to have a bite of breakfast, following which she engaged Brian in a peculiar, guarded conversation, which he was dismayed to find as depressing and morbid as any talk he'd ever had with her during her gloomy or morose periods of previous, less happy times. After listening to her for a little while, when he began to talk about making a will leaving everything to him, or to their child in the event he was unable to make use of it, then he rounded on her and laughed out loud.
"Molly," he said, taking her hands where he sat on the edge of the bed with her shoulders slumped, "what is this all about? I know you're pregnant and you've had a bug of some sort or other and that you're still feeling low, and I know that when you're a bit down in the mouth it really seems like the end of the world to you, but here we are married for just eight weeks and you sound as if you expect to be dead by spring! Yes, and me shortly after! I've never heard anything so silly! Just a week ago you were swimming, fighting, skating, full of life---so what is that's suddenly bothering you?"
At that he decided she really couldn't hedge any longer. Anyway, he was her husband now and it was only right that he should know. And so she sat him down and told him everything, with the exception of her dream of the tombstones, and of course excluding the death of Sergei Lerner. She passed off her aggressive "exercising" of the past few months as simply a means of ensuring her fitness for work still to come, work which could well prove dangerous; which in turn led her to speak of the British ESP organization, but not in any depth. It was sufficient he should know that she wasn't the only strangely talented person----that in fact there were many more---and that there were foreign powers ranged against the free world who were not above using such talents to its detriment. Part of Molly's work with the organization would be to ensure that these alien powers failed in their objectives; her talent as the Mollyscope would be used as a weapon against them; the future therefore seemed at best-----unsure. Her talk of wills and such had been just an expression of this uncertainty; she thought it was best to be ready for any eventuality.
Even telling him all of this----and while not being too specific at any point----still she wondered if maybe she was making a mistake, if it would have been better to keep him entirely in the dark. And she wondered at her own motives: was he really confiding in him in order to prepare him for----what? Or was it that she right, that she was feeling at a low ebb and so needed someone to share the load?
Or there again, was it guilt? She had a course to run now and must pursue it; the chase was not at an end; Lerner had merely been a faltering step in the right direction. Did she feel that because she chose to go in that direction Brian was at risk? The dream epitaph----her mother's warning----had said nothing about Brian dying as a result of anything Molly was yet to do. She was pregnant by him, yes, which would result in a birth; but how could any course she took now influence the physical event of the birth itself? And yet a nagging voice in the back of her mind told him that indeed it could.
And so it seemed to her that her motive for telling him was mainly one of guilt, and also because she needed to tell someone----needed to tell a friend. The trouble was that she seemed to be leaning on the very one she endangered, which aggravated and magnified the guilt aspect out of all proportion!
It was all very confusing and abstruse, and trying to muddle through it made her more tired than ever, so that when she was done speaking she was glad to sit back and let him think it over.
Strangely, he accepted everything she said almost as a matter of course---indeed with visible relief---and at once set about to explain why:
"Molly, I know I'm not as clever as you, but I'm not dumb either. I've known there was something in the air ever since you told me that story of yours----about the Mollyscope. I sort of sensed that you hadn't finished it, that you wanted to say more but you were scared to. Also, there've been times up in Harden when Mr. Wilson had stopped me and asked after you. The way he talked, I knew he thought there was something strange about you, too....."
"Wilson?" she frowned suspiciously. "What did he....?"
"Oh, nothing to fret over. In fact I think he's more than a little frightened of you. Molly, I've listened to you talking to your poor dead Mum in your sleep, and I knew you were holding real conversations! And there were so many other things. Your writing, for example. I mean, how come you were suddenly a brilliant author? I've read your stories, Molly, and they're not you. Oh, they're wonderful stories, all right, but you just aren't that wonderful! Not the real you. The real you is ordinary, Molly. Oh, I love you---of course I do----but I'm nobody's fool. And your swimming, your skating, your Judo? Did you think I'd believe you were Supergirl? I promise you its easier to believe you're the Mollyscope! It's a relief to know the truth, Molly. I'm glad you've finally told me....."
Molly shook her head in open astonishment. Talk about level-headed.....!
Finally she said: "But I haven't told you everything, love."
"Oh, I know that," he answered. "Of course, you haven't! If you're to be working for your country, why obviously there'll be things you need to keep secret---even from me. I understand that, Molly."
It was as if someone had lifted a great weight off her chest (so to speak). She breathed deeply, lay back again, let her head sink back into her pillows. "Brian, I'm still very tired," she yawned. "Just let me sleep now, there's a love. Tomorrow I'm to go down to London."
"All right, my love," he leaned over her to kiss her forehead. "And don't worry, I won't ask you to tell me a thing about it."
Molly slept right through until evening, then got up and ate a meal. They went out about 8:00 P.M. just to walk for an hour in the crisp night air, until Brian started to feel the cold. Then they hurried home, took hot showers, and made love, and afterwards both of them slight right through the night.
It was the least Molly had done in any single day in her life.
Later she would have reason to recall it as the most wasteful day in her life.
Sir Arthur Gerrard was thoughtful as he left ESP HQ, took the lift down to the tiny lobby and went into the cold London night. Several things had given him cause for worry just recently, not the least of them being Molly Stewart. For Stewart had not yet contacted him, and with each day that passed Gerrard felt the time weighting on him like lumps of lead. It was just after 9:00 as Gerrard walked the streets heading for Westminster tube station, and two hundred and twenty-five miles away Molly Stewart herself was just making love to her husband before settling to a night's sleep.
As for Gerrard's other causes of worry: there were two of them. One was the way his second in command kept enquiring after his health, which might seem silly if his second in command weren't Harry Moradian, and if Harry Moradian wasn't a very talented seer, a man whose by negligible talent lay in predicting the future! Moradian's concern for his boss over the last week or ten days had been pretty obvious, no matter how carefully he'd tried to hide it. If there was anything specific, Gerrard knew that Moradian would tell him. That was why he hadn't pressed him about it, but it was worrying anyway.
And finally there was the other thing, the big thing. Over the period of that last six/seven weeks there had been at least a dozen different occasions when Gerrard had known that there were ESPers about, when he'd "spotted" them in his mind. He had never come face to face with one, had never been able to pin one down, but he'd known they were there anyway. At least two of them.
It had got so he could recognize them almost as easily as he recognized his own men, but these were not his men. Their auras were strange. And always they watched him from the safety of crows, in the busy places, never where he could connect a face to a feeling. He wondered how long they would go on watching, and if that was all they would do. And as he reached the underground and went down to the trains he patted the bulge of his 9mm Browning through his overcoat and jacket. At least that was a comfort. There wasn't an ESPer in the world who could think himself out of the way of a bullet---not that Gerrard knew of, anyway....
There were only a few people on the platform and fewer in the compartment where Gerrard picked up a discarded copy of the Daily Mail to keep him company during the journey. He found it mildly alarming that the headlines seemed completely alien to him. Was he really that much out of touch? Yes, he probably was! His work had been putting a lot of strain on him and taking up far too much of his time; this was the third night in a row he'd worked late; he couldn't remember the last time he'd really read a book right through or entertained friends. Maybe Moradian was right to be worried about him----and on a purely personal level at that---not from the point of view of an ESPer. Maybe it was time he took a break and left his second in command to mind the shop. God only knew he would have to sooner or later. And he made himself a promise that he would take a break----just as soon as he'd initiated young Molly Stewart into the fold.
Stewart......
Gerrard had given a lot of thought to Stewart, had considered some of the ways her talent might be put to use. Fantastic ways. All in the mind for now, but fascinating anyway. He would have started to go over them again, but just as it crossed his mind to do so the train pulled into St. James's and Gerrard found himself distracted by an incredibly pretty pair of legs in a tiny skirt that passed directly in front of his eyes and out of the twin doors. It was a wonder the lovely creature didn't freeze to death, he thought---and wouldn't that be a loss!
Gerrard grinned at his own thoughts. His wife, God bless her, was always complaining he had an eye for girls. Well, his heart might be tricky but the rest of him seemed to be in working order. An eye wouldn't be all he had for that young lady, if he were thirty years younger!
He coughed loudly, returned to his newspaper and tried to get himself reacquainted with the world. A brave effort but he lost interest halfway down the second column. It was pretty mundane stuff, after all, compared with his world. A world of fortune-tellers, telepaths, and now a girl who called herself the Mollyscope.
Molly Stewart again.
There was a game Gerrard played with Moradian, a word-association game. Sometimes it startled Moradian's future-oriented mind into action, opening a window for him. A window on tomorrow. Normally Moradian's talent worked independent of conscious thought; he usually "dreamed" his predictions; if he consciously tried for results they wouldn't come. But if you could catch him unawares....
They had played their game just a few days ago. Gerrard had had Stewart on his mind and had wandered into Moradian's office. And seeing the ESPer sitting there he'd smiled and said: "Game?"
Moradian had understood. "Good right ahead."
"It's a name," Gerrard had warned, to which Moradian had nodded his head.
"I'm ready," he said, sitting up and putting down whatever he was working on.
Gerrard paced a while, then turned quickly and faced the other where he sat at his desk. "Molly Stewart!" he had stopped then.
"Mobius!" answered Moradian at once.
"Math?" Gerrard frowned.
"Space-time!" Now Moradian went white, scared-looking, and Gerrard had known they'd got something. He gave it one final shot:
"Mollyscope!"
"Necromancer!" the other shot back at once.
"What? Necromancer?" Gerrard had repeated. But Moradian was still working.
"Vampire!" he'd shouted then, starting to his feet. Then he was swaying, trembling, shaking his head, saying. "That----that's enough, sir. Whatever it was, it---it's gone now."
And that had been that.....
Gerrard came back to the present.
He looked up and found they'd passed through Victoria and that the train was almost empty. Already they were midway to Sloane Square. And that was when he began to feel a strange depression settling over him.
He felt that there was something wrong but he couldn't just put his finger on it. It might just be the train's emptiness (which even at this hour was a rare enough occurrence in itself) and that he missed the bustle of life and contact with other human beings, but he didn't think so. Then, as the train pulled into the station he knew what it was: it was his talent working!
The doors hissed open and a middle-aged couple got out, leaving Gerrard quite alone, but just before the doors hissed shut again two mien got in---and their ESP-aura washed over him like a wave of icy water! Yes, and now he could put faces on feelings.
Dragan and Tabur sat directly opposite their quarry, stared straight at him with cold, expressionless faces. They made an odd pair, he thought, not designed with any degree of compatibility. Not outwardly, at least. The taller one leaned forward, his eyes reminding Gerrard yet again of Molly Stewart. Yes, they were like Stewart's eyes in a way, probably in their color and intelligence. And that was especially strange, for set in this face one got the impression that by rights they should be feral or even red, and that the intelligence behind them was barely human at all but that of a beast.
"You know what we are, Sir Gerrard," the stranger said in a voice as deep as it was dark, whose Russian accent he made no attempt to hide, "if not who we are. And we know who and what you are. Therefore it would be childish simply to sit here and pretend that we were ignorant of each other. Don't you agree?"
"Your logic leaves little room for argument," Gerrard nodded, imagining that his blood was already beginning to cool in his veins.
"Then let us continue to be logical," said Dragan. "If we wanted you dead, you would be dead. We have not lacked the opportunity, as I'm sure you know. And so, when we leave the train at South Kensington, you will not attempt to run or make a fuss, or bring unnecessary attention to yourself or to us. If you do, then we would be forced to kill you and that would be unfortunate, of benefit to no one. Is that clear? Is it?"
Gerrard forced himself to remain calm, raised an eyebrow and said: "You're very sure of yourself, Mr., er....?"
"Dragan," said the other one at once. "Vladimir Dragan. Yes, I am very sure of myself. As is my friend here, Sam Tabur."
"----For a stranger in this country, I was about to say," Gerrard continued. "It seems to me that I'm about to be kidnapped. But are you sure you know all you need to know about my habits? Mightn't there be something you've overlooked? Something your logic hasn't taken into account?" he quickly, nervously took out a cigarette lighter from his right-hand overcoat pocket and placed it in his lap, patted his pockets as if he searched for a pack of cigarettes, finally started to reach inside his overcoat.
"No!" said Dragan warningly. As if from nowhere he produced his own weapon and held it before him at arm's length, pointing it directly into Gerrard's face, so that the older man looked straight down the rifled barrel of the stubby black silencer. "No, nothing has been overlooked. Sam, could you see to that, please?"
Tabur got up, eased himself on to the seat next to Gerrard, drew the other's hand slowly back into the open and took the Browning from Gerrard's trembling fingers. The safety catch was still on. Tabur released the magazine and pocketed it, gave the automatic back to Gerrard.
"Nothing at all," Dragan continued. "Unfortunately, however, that was the last wrong move you'll be allowed to make." He put away his gun, folded his slim fingers into his lap. His posture was unnatural, Gerrard decided: very sinuous, almost feline, very nearly female. He didn't know what to make of Dragan at all.
"Any more heroics," Dragan continued, "will result in your death----now!" And Gerrard knew he wasn't kidding.
Carefully, he pushed the useless automatic back into its holster and said: "What is it you want with me?"
"We want to talk to you," said Dragan. "I wish to -----to put some questions to you."
"I've had questions put to me before," Gerrard answered, forcing a tight smile. "I imagine they'll be very searching questions, eh?"
"Ah!" said Dragan. Now he smiled, and it was ghastly. Gerrard felt physically repulsed. The man's mouth gaped like a panting dog's, where elongated teeth gleamed sharply white. "Ah, no. There'll be no bright lights in your eyes, Sir Arthur, if that's what you mean," said Dragan. "No drugs. No pincers. No hose to fill your belly with water. Oh, no, nothing like that. But you will tell me everything I want to know, of that I can assure you...."
The train was slowing as it pulled into South Kensington. Gerrard's heart gave a little lurch in his chest. So close to home, and yet so far. Dragan had a light overcoat folded over his arm. He showed Gerrard the silencer of his weapon, let it peep out of the folds of the overcoat for a moment, and reminded him: "No heroics."
There was a handful of people on the platform: young people mainly, and a pair of down-and-outs with a bottle in a paper bag between them. Even if Gerrard looked for help, he couldn't find any here. "Just leave the station by the same route you take every night," said Dragan at Gerrard's shoulder.
Gerrard's heart was hammering now. He knew full well that if he went with these men it was all up with him. He was an older hand at this game than the two foreign agents. When Dragan had told him his and his squat little companion's names, that had been as good as saying: "But it won't do you any good, for you won't be around to tell anyone!" And so he must escape from them---but how?
They left the underground onto Pelham Street, walked down the Brompton Road to Queen's Gate. "I cross here, at the lights," Gerrard said. But as they reached the parking lanes straddling the central reservation Dragan's grip tightened on his arm.
"We have a car here," he said, drawing Gerrard to the right and along the line of parked vehicles towards an anonymous looking Ford. Dragan had bought the car second-hand (tenth-hand, he suspected) and cash down, no questions asked. It would last only as long as his and Sam Tabur's visit. Then it would be found burned-out in some suburban lane. But it was then, as they approached the car, that Gerrard saw his chance.
Not twenty-five yards away a police patrol car pulled into an empty space and a uniformed constable got out and began checking the doors of the parked cars. A routine check, Gerrard guessed. Or more properly, where he was concerned, a miracle!
Dragan felt the sudden tension in Gerrard, sensed his move before he could begin to make it. Tabur had opened the nearside front and rear doors of the Ford, was turning back towards Dragan and Gerrard, when his partner hissed: "Now, Sam!"
Unprepared, still Tabur instantly adopted his killing crouch, his moon face undergoing his monstrous metamorphosis. Dragan maintained his grip on Gerrard, looked away at the final moment. Gerrard had opened his mouth to yell for help, but all that came out was a croak. He saw Tabur's face silhouetted against the night, and one eye which was a yellow slit while the other was round, green and throbbing as if filled with sentient pus! Something passed from that Gerrard as fast as the thrust of a mental knife, its razor edge located his spirit, his very soul, and opened them up! Except for what little traffic passed in the street, all was quiet, and yet Gerrard heard the cacophonic gonging of some great cracked bell from deep within himself, and knew it was his heart.
With that it should've been finished, but not quite. Thrown backward by the shock of Tabur's awful power, Gerrard slammed loudly against the wing of a car parked behind the Ford. Along the street the constable's face turned enquiringly in their direction as a second policeman got out of the patrol car. Worse, another vehicle, a blue Porsche, pulled in with a screech of brakes, its headlights dazzling where they picked the three figures out and pinned them against the darkness. In another moment the Porsche seemed to eject a tall young man into the street, his face worried as he grabbed hold of Gerrard to steady him.
"Uncle?" he said, staring into the other's bulging eyes, his blue face. "My God! It must be his heart!" The two policemen were already hurrying to see what was happening.
Dragan found himself almost paralyzed by the changing situation. Everything was going wrong. He made an effort to regain control, whispered to Sam Tabur: "Get into the car!" Then he turned to the stranger. By now the policemen were on hand, offering assistance.
"What happened here?" one of them asked.
Dragan thought fast. "We saw him stumble," he said. "I thought maybe he was drunk. Anyway, I went to help, asked if there was anything I could do. He said something about his heart....? I was about to take him to a hospital but then this gentleman arrived and...."
"I'm Ewan McDonald," said the man in question. "This is Sir Arthur Gerrard, my uncle. I was on my way to meet him at the station when I saw him with these two. But look, this isn't the time or place for explanations. He has a bad heart. We have to get him to a hospital. And I mean right now!"
The policemen were galvanized into action. One of them said to Dragan, "Maybe you'll give us a ring later, sir? Just so we can get a few more details? Thanks." He helped McDonald get his uncle into the Porsche while his driver ran back to the patrol car and got the blue light going. Then, as McDonald pulled away from the curb and swung the Porsche around in a screeching half-circle, the constable yelled: "Just follow us, sir. We'll have him under care in two shakes!"
A moment later and he had joined his colleague in the patrol vehicle, by which time the siren was blaring its dee-dah, dee-dah warning to traffic. In a kind of numb disbelief Dragan watched as the two cars moved off in tandem. He watched them out of sight, then slowly, unsteadily got into the Ford and sat there beside Tabur trembling with rage. The door was still open. Finally Dragan grabbed its handle and slammed it shut, slamming it so hard that it almost sprang from its fixings.
"Damn!" he snarled. "Damn the British, Sir Arthur Gerrard, his nephew, their bloody oh-so-civilized police----everything!"
"Things are not going well," Sam Tabur agreed.
"And damn you, too!" said Dragan. "You and your bloody evil eye! You didn't kill him!"
"Allow me to know my business," Tabur quietly answered. "I killed him all right. I felt it. It was like crushing a bug."
Dragan started the engine, pulled away. "I saw him looking at me, I tell you! He'll talk...."
"No," Tabur shook his head. "He won't have any strength for talking. He's a dead man, Comrade, take my word for it. At this very moment, a dead man."
And in the Porsche, suddenly Gerrard choked out a single word---"Dragan!" which meant nothing at all to his horrified nephew---and slumped down in his seat with spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
Sam Tabur was right: he was dead on arrival.
Molly Stewart arrived at Gerrard's house in South Kensington at about 3:00 P.M. the following day. Meanwhile Ewan McDonald had been a very busy man. It seemed a year but in fact it was only yesterday when he'd driven up from Chichester with his wife, Gerrard's daughter, on a flying visit. Then there had been his uncle's heart attack, since when the entire world seemed to have gone stark, staring mad! And horribly so!341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtkHd5wiOZY
First there had been the awful business of phoning his aunt, Sarah, from the hospital and telling her what had happened; then her breakdown when she arrived at the hospital; and her daughter consoling her all through the long night, when she had broken her heart as she wandered to and fro through the house looking for her husband. This morning she'd stayed at the house until they brought Sir Gerrard from the hospital morgue. The mortician there had done a pretty good job with him, but still the old man's face had been twisted in a dreadful rictus. Funeral arrangements were swift---that was the way Gerrard had always said he would want it: a cremation tomorrow----until when he would lie in state at his home. Sarah couldn't stay there, however, not with him looking like that. Why, it didn't look like him at all! So she had to be taken to her mother's place on the other side of London. That, too, had been McDonald's job; and finally he had driven his wife to Waterloo so that she could go back to Chichester to the children. She'd be back for the funeral. Until then he was stuck at the house after putting his wife on the Chichester train....
That had been the worst of all. It had been----mindless! Ghoulish! Unbelievable! And for all that it had been fifteen minutes ago, he was still reeling, still sick, numb to his brain with shock and horror, when Molly Stewart's ring at the doorbell took him staggering to the front door.
"I'm Molly Stewart," said the attractive young woman at the doorstep. "Sir Arthur Gerrard asked me to come and see...."
"H---help!" McDonald whispered, choking the word out as if there was no wind in him, as if all the spit had dried up in him. "God, Jesus Christ!----whoever you are---h-help me!"
Molly looked at him in amazement, grabbed him in order to hold him up. "What is it? What's happened? This is Sir Arthur Gerrard's house, isn't it?"
The other nodded. He was slowly turning green, about to throw up----again---at any moment. "C-come in. He's in----there. In the living room, of all bloody places----but don't go in there. I have to----I have to call the police. Someone has to, anyway!" His legs began to buckle and Molly thought he would fall. Before that could happen she pushed him backwards and down into a chair into the lobby. Then she crouched down beside him and shook him.
"Is it Sir Arthur? What happened to her?"
Even before the answer came, Molly knew.
Soon to die in agony. First and foremost a patriot.
McDonald looked up, stared at Molly from a green-tinged face. "Did you----did you work for him?"
"I was going to."
McDonald bulked, burst to his feet, staggered to a tiny room to one side of the lobby. "He died last night," he managed to gulp the words out. "A heart attack. He was to be cremated tomorrow. But now...." He yanked open the door and the odor of fresh vomit welled out. The room was a toilet and it was obvious that he'd already used it.
Molly turned her face away, grabbed a mouthful of fresh air from the open front door before quietly closing it. Then she left McDonald retching and walked through into the living-room---and so for himself what was wrong with McDonald.
And what was wrong with Sir Arthur Gerrard.
A heart attack, McDonald had said. One look at the room told Molly there'd been an attack, all right, but what sort didn't bear thinking about. She fought down the bile which at once rose up and threatened to swamp her, went back to McDonald where he crouched weakly at the bowl of the toilet in the small room. "Call the police when you can," she said. "Sir Gerrard's office, too, if anyone's on duty there. I'm sure he would want them to know about......this. I'll stay here with you---with him----for a little while."
"Th-thanks," said McDonald, without looking up. "I'm sorry I can't be more help right now. But when I came in and found him that way....."
"I understand," said Molly.
"I'll be OK in a minute. I'm working on it."
"Of course."
Molly went back to the other room. She saw everything, began to catalogue the horror, then stopped. What stopped her was this: a Queen Anne chair with claw feet lay on its side on the floor. One of its wooden legs was broken off just below the platform of the seat. Embedded in the club-like foot was a tooth; other teeth, wrenched out, lay scattered on the floor; the mouth of the corpse had been forced open and now gaped like a black shaft in the widely distorted, frozen grimace of the face!
Molly gropingly found herself a seat---another chair, but one free of debris----and collapsed into it. She closed her eyes, pictured the room as it must've looked before this. Sir Gerrard in his coffin on an oak table draped in black, rose-scented candles burning at head and feet. And then, as he lay here alone, the----intrusion.
But why?
"Why, Gerrard?" she asked.
"Noooooo! No, keep off!" came the answer at once, causing Molly to rock back in her chair with its force, its fear, its freezing terror. "Dragan, you bastard! No more---for God's sake have mercy, man!"
"Dragan?" Molly reached out soothing mental fingers. "This isn't Dragan, Gerrard. It's me, Molly Stewart."
"What?" the single word was a gasp in his mind. "Stewart? Molly?" Then a sigh, a sob of relief. "Thank God! Thank God it's you, Molly, and not----not him!"
"Was this Dragan?" Molly gritted her teeth. "But why? Is he insane? He'd have to be totally----"
"No," Gerrard's vigorous denial cut her off. "Oh, he's crazy, of course he is---but crazy like a fox! And his talent is----hideous!"
Suddenly the answer----or what she thought was the answer---came to Stewart in a flash. She felt the blood draining from her. "He came to you after you died!" she gasped. "He's like me! He can talk to the dead!"
"No, absolutely not!" again Gerrard's denial. "Not like you at all, Molly. I'm talking to you because I want to. All of----of us, talk to you. You're the bringer of warmth, of peace. You're contact with the dream that went before and which now has faded. You're a chance---the one final chance---that something worthwhile might linger over, might even be passed on. A light in the tunnel, Molly, that's what you are. But Dragan...."
"What's his talent?"
"He's a necromancer---and that's a different thing entirely!"
Molly opened her eyes a crack and glanced once again at the state of the room. But as the horror welled up again she closed her eyes and said: "But this is the work of a ghoul!"
"That and worse," Gerrard shuddered, and Molly felt it---felt the dead man's shudder of absolute terror shaking his spirit. "He---he doesn't just talk, Molly, he doesn't ask. Doesn't even try. He just reaches in and takes, steals. You can't hide anything from him. He finds his answers in your blood, your guts, in the marrow of your very bones. The dead can't feel pain, Molly, or they shouldn't. But that's part of his talent, too. When Vladimir Dragan works, he makes us feel it. I felt his knives, his hands, his tearing nails. I knew everything he did, and all of it was hell! After one minute I would have told him everything, but that's not his way, it's not his art. How could I be sure I told the truth? But his way he knows it's the truth! It's written in skin and muscle, in ligaments and tendons and corpuscles. He can read it in brain fluid, in the mucus of the eye and ear, in the texture of the dead tissue itself!"
Molly kept her eyes closed, shook her head, felt sick, dizzy and totally disoriented, as if this were all happening to someone else. At last she said: "This can't---mustn't happen again. He has to be stopped. I have to stop him. But I can't do it alone."
"Oh, yes, he has to be stopped, Molly. Especially now. You see, he took everything. He knows it all. He knows our strengths, our weaknesses, and all of it is knowledge he can use. Him and his master, Katin Semnyonovich. And you may well be the only one who can stop him."
With another part of his awareness, Molly heard McDonald on the telephone in the lobby. Time was now short, and there was so much Gerrard must tell her. "Listen, Gerrard. We have to hurry now. I'll stay with you a little while longer, and then I'll find a hotel in the city. But if I stay here now the police will want to talk to me. Anyway, I'll find a place and from now until----" she realized what she had almost said and bit the words off unspoken, but not unvisioned.
"----Until I'm cremated, yes," said Gerrard, and Molly could pictured him nodding understandingly. "It was to have been soon, but now it will probably be delayed."
"I'll stay in touch," Molly said. "There's still a lot I don't know. About our organization, theirs, how to go about tracking them down, many things."
"Do you know about Tabur?" again Gerrard's fear was apparent. "The little Mongol, Molly----do you know about him?"
"I know he's one of them, but..."
"He has the evil eye----he can kill with a glance! My heart attack---he brought it on! He killed me, Molly, Sam Tabur. That face of his, that evil eye, it generates mental poison! His power bits like acid, melts the brain, the heart. He killed me...."
"Then he's another I have to settle with," Molly answered, cold determination stiffening her resolve.
"But watch it, Molly."
"Sure."
"I think the answers are in you, young lady, and God only knows how much I pray you can find them. Just let me give you this warning: when Dragan was----with me, I sensed something else in him. It wasn't just his necromancy, Molly, there's an evil in that man that's older than time! With him loose in the world nothing, no one is safe. Not even the people who think they control him."
Molly nodded. "I'll be watching out for him," she said. "And I'll find the answers, Gerrard, all of them. With your help. For as long as you can give me that help, anyway."
"I've thought about that, Molly," said the other. "And you know, I don't think it'll be the end. I mean, this isn't me. What you see here used to be me, it was me---but so was a baby born in South Africa, and so was a young man who joined the British Army when he was seventeen, and so was the head of E-Branch for thirteen years. They've all gone now, and after my funeral pyre this part will also be gone. But me, I'll still be here. Somewhere."
"I hope so," said Molly, opening her eyes and standing up, and avoiding looking at the room.
"Find yourself a hotel, then," said Gerrard, "and get back to me when you can. The sooner we get started the better. And afterwards----I mean when all of this is over and done, if it ever is...."
"Yes?"
"Well, it'd be nice if you could look me up some time. You see, unless I'm mistaken, you're the only one who'll ever be able to. And you know you'll always be welcome."
One hour later Molly locked herself in her cheap hotel room and got in touch with Gerrard again. As usual, having already been in contact with him, it came very easy. The ex-boss of E-Branch itself----a deeper view of the branch and the people who worked in it---and went on to the reasons why at this stage Molly should not approach Gerrard's second-in-command or in anyway attempt entry into the organization.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtxRDGrK1AI
"It'd be too time-consuming," Gerrard explained. "Oh, there'd be benefits, of course. For one thing you'd be funded---any necessary expenses would be covered---but at the same time they'd want to give you a good close going-over. And naturally they'd be eager to test your talent. Especially now that I'm gone, and when it comes out what someone has done to my corpse...."
"You think I'd be suspect?"
"What, the Mollyscope? Of course you'd be suspect! I do have a file on you, true, but it's pretty sketchy and obviously incomplete---and actually I'm the only one who could've vouched for you! So you see, by the time our side had cleared you the other side would have raced ahead. Time is of the essence, Molly, and not to be wasted. So what I propose is this: you won't attempt to join E-Branch right now but work on your own. After all, the only ones who know anything at all about you at this time are Dragan and Tabur. The trouble with that, of course, is that Dragan knows everything about you, for he stole it directly from me! What we must ask ourselves is this: why did Semnyonovich send these two here? Why now? What's brewing? Or is he just stretching his tentacles a bit? Oh, he's had agents here before, certainly, but they were only intelligence gatherers. They were enemy, and they sought information---but they weren't killers! So what has happened that Semnyonovich has decided to turn a cold ESP war into a hot one?"
Molly told him about Lerner, gave him a brief overview of things as she saw and understood them.
Gerrard's thoughts were wry indeed when he answered: "So you've been working for us for some time, it appears! What a pity I didn't know all of this that time I came to see you. We could have done the job that much more quickly. Lerner might have been important to you, Molly, but in reality he was very small fry. We might even have been able to use him."
"I wanted him for myself," said Molly viciously. "I wanted him used up! Anyway, I didn't know that there was any connection. I only found that out after I killed him. But that's done with and now we have to get on. So----you want me to work on my own. But there's the rub: see, I don't have the foggiest idea of how to be an agent! I know what I want to do: I have to kill Dragan, Tabur, Semnyonovich. That's my priority---but I can't even begin to think how to go about it."
Gerrard seemed to understand her problem. "That's the difference between espionage and ESPionage, Molly. We all understand the first. All the cloak-and-daggery, the thud-and-blundering, the DTB---or Dirty Tricks Brigade----it's all old school. But none of us really knows a lot about the second. You do what your talent tells you to do. You find the best possible ways to use it. That's all any of us can do. For some of us it's easy: we don't have sufficient talent to worry about, we can't expend it. Myself, for example, I can spot another ESPer a mile away; but that's it, end of story. In your case, however....."
Molly began to grow frustrated. His talk seemed huge, impossible. She was only a girl, one mind, one barely mature talent. What could she do?
Gerrard picked her up on that: "You weren't listening, Molly. I said you have to find the best way to use your talent. Until now you haven't been doing that. Let's face it, what have you achieved?"
"I've talked to the dead!" Molly snapped. "That's it, it's what I do. I'm the Mollyscope!"
Gerrard was patient. "You've scratched the surface, Molly, nothing more. Look, you've written the stories a dead man couldn't finish. You've used formulae that a mathematician never had time to develop in life. Dead men have taught you how to drive, how to speak Russian and German. They've improved your swimming and your fighting and one or two other things. But what do you personally reckon all of this amounts to?"
"Nothing!" Molly answered, after only a moment's thought.
"Right, nothing. Because you've been talking to the wrong people. You've been letting your talent guide you, instead of you guiding your talent. Now I know these are probably bad examples, but you're like a hypnotist who can only hypnotize herself, or a clairvoyant who forecasts her own death----for tomorrow! You have a groundbreaking talent, but you're not breaking any ground. The problem is that you're entirely self-taught. So in a way you're ignorant, like a heathen at a banquet, stuffing yourself full of everything and savoring none of it. And not recognizing the good stuff because of the way it's dressed up. But if I'm right you had the answer at your fingertips way back when you were a kid. Except your kid's mind failed to see the possibilities. But you're a woman now and the possibilities should be starting to make themselves obvious. Not obvious to me but to you! After all, it's your talent. You have to learn how to use it, that's all....
What Gerrard said made sense and Molly knew it. "But where do I start?" She was desperate.
"I have what might be just a clue for you," Gerrard was careful not to be too optimistic. "The result of an ESP game I used to play with Harry Moradian, my second-in-command. I didn't mention it before because there might not be anything in it, but if we have a starting point...."
"Go on," said Molly.
And with his mind, Gerrard drew her a mental picture.
"What the hell is that?" Molly was nonplussed.
"It's a Mobius strip," said Gerrard. "Named after its inventor, August Ferdinand Mobius, a German mathematician. Just take a thin strip of paper, give it a half-twist and join up the ends. It reduces a two-dimensional surface to only one. It has many implications, I'm told, but I wouldn't know for I'm not a mathematician."
Molly was still baffled, not by the principle but by its application. "And this is supposed to have something to do with me?"
"With your future---your immediate future---maybe," Gerrard was deliberately vague. "I told you there mightn't be anything in it. Anyway, let me tell you what happened." He told Molly about his and Moradian's game. "So I started with your name, Molly Stewart, and Moradian came back with 'Mobius.' I said, 'Math?'---and he answered, 'Space-time'!"
"Space-time?" Molly was at once interested. "Now that might well fit in with this Mobius strip thing. It seems to me that the strip is only a diagram of warped space, and space and time are inextricably linked."
"Oh?" said Gerrard, and Molly pictured his surprised expression. "And is that an original thought, Molly, or do you have----outside help?"
This gave Molly an idea. "Wait," she said, "I don't know your Mobius, but I do know someone else." he got in touch with Evie Elizabeth Wilson in the cemetery in Harden, showed her the strip.
"Sorry, can't help you, Molly," said Wilson, her thoughts clipped and precise as ever. "I've gone in an entirely different direction. I was never into curves anyway. By that I mean that my math was---is---all very practical. Different but practical. But of course you know that. If it can be done on paper, I can probably do it; I'm more visual, if you like, than Mobius. A lot of his stuff was in the mind, abstract, theoretical. Now if only he and Einstein could have got together, then we really might have seen something!"
"But I have to know about this!" Molly was desperate. "Can you suggest anything?"
Wilson sensed Molly's urgency, raised a mental eyebrow. In that emotionless, calculating fashion of hers, she said: "But isn't the answer obvious, Molly? Why don't you ask him, Mobius himself? After all, you're the only one who can...."
Suddenly excited, Molly crossed back to Gerrard. "Well," she told him, "at least I have a place to start now. What else came out of this game of yours with Harry Moradian?"
"After he came up with 'Space-time' I tried him with 'Mollyscope,' said Gerrard. "He immediately came back with 'necromancer.'"
Molly was silent for a moment, then said: "So it looks like he was reading our future as well as mine..."
"I suppose so," Gerrard answered. "But then he said something that's got me stumped even now. I mean---even assuming that's all we've just mentioned is somehow connected---what on earth am I supposed to make of 'vampire,' eh?"
Cold fingers crept up Molly's spine. What indeed? Finally she said:
"Gerrard, can we stop there? I'll get back to you as soon as possible, but right now there are one or two things I have to do. I want to give my husband a call, find a reference library, check some things out. And I want to go and see Mobius, so I'll probably be booking a flight to Germany. Also, I'm hungry! And---I want to think about things. Alone, I mean."
"I understand, Molly, and I'll be ready when you want to start again. But by all means see to your own needs first. Let's face it, they have to be greater than mine. So go ahead, girl. You see to the living. The dead have plenty of time."
"Also," Molly told him, "there's someone else I want to speak to---but that's my secret for now."
Gerrard was suddenly worried for her. "Don't do anything rash, Molly, I mean..."
"You said I should go it alone, do it my way," Molly reminded him.
She sensed Gerrard's nod of acquiescence. "That's right, girl. Let's just hope you do it right, that's all."
Which was one sentiment Molly could only agree with.
Later that same evening, at the Russian Embassy Dragan and Tabur had finished their packing and were looking forward to their morning flight out. Dragan had not yet started to commit his knowledge to paper; this was the last place for that kind of undertaking. One might as well write a letter direct to Yuri Andropov himself!341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzobvgLQDos
The two Russian agents had rooms with a linking door and only one telephone, which was situated in Tabur's apartment. The necromancer had just stretched himself out on his bed, lost in his own bizarre, dark thoughts, when he heard the phone ring in Tabur's room. A moment later and the squat little Mongol knocked on the joining door. "It's for you," his muffled voice came through the strained, dingy oak panels. "The switchboard. Something about a call from outside."
Dragan got up, went through into Tabur's room. Sitting on the bed, Tabur grinned at him. "Ho, Comrade! And do you have friends here in London? Someone seems to know you."
Dragan scowled at him, snatched up the telephone. "Switchboard? This is Dragan. What's all this about?"
"A call for you from outside, Comrade," came the answer in a cold, nasal female voice.
"I doubt it. You've made a mistake. I'm not known here."
"He says you'll want to speak to her," said the operator. "Her name is Molly Stewart."
"Stewart?" Dragan looked at Tabur, raised an eyebrow. "Ah, yes! Yes, I do know of her. Put her through."
"Very well. Remember, Comrade, speech is insecure." There came a click and a buzzing, then:
"Dragan, is that you?" The voice was young but strangely hard. It didn't quite fit the beautiful yet vacant face that Dragan had seen staring at him from the frozen riverbank in Scotland.
"This is Dragan, yes. What do you want, Molly Stewart?"
"I want you, necromancer," said the cold, hard voice. "I want you, and I'm going to get you."
Dragan's lips drew back from his needle teeth in a silent snarl. This one was clever, daring, brash---dangerous! "I don't know who you are," he hissed, "but you're obviously a madman! Explain yourself or get off the phone."
"The explanation's simple, Comrade," the voice had grown harder still. "I know what you did to Sir Arthur Gerrard. He was my friend. An eye for an eye, Dragan, and a tooth for a tooth. That's my way, as you've already seen. You're a dead man."
"Oh?" Dragan laughed sardonically. "I'm a dead man, am I? And you, too, have ways with the dead, don't you, Molly?"
"What you saw at Lerner's was nothing, 'Comrade,'" said the icy voice. "You don't know all of it. Not even Gerrard knew all of it."
"Bluff, Molly!" said Dragan. I've seen what you can do and it doesn't frighten me. Death is my friend. He tells me everything."
"That's good," said the voice, "for you'll be speaking to him again soon----but face to face. So you know what I can do, do you? Well think about this: next time I'll be doing it to you!"
"A challenge, Molly?" Dragan's voice was dangerously low, full of menace.
"A challenge," the other agreed, "and the winner takes all."
Dragan's Wallach blood was up; he was eager now: "But where? I'm already beyond your reach. And tomorrow there'll be half a world between."
"Ooh, I know you're running now,' said the other contemptuously. "But I'll find you, and soon. You, and Tabur, and Semnyonovich..."
Again Dragan's lips drew back in a hiss. "Maybe we should meet, Molly---but where, how?"
"You'll know when it's time," said the voice. "And know this, too: it'll be worse for you than it was for Gerrard."
Suddenly the ice in Stewart's voice seemed to fill Dragan's veins. He shook himself, pulled himself together, said: "All right, Molly Stewart. Whenever and wherever, I'll be waiting for you."
"And the winner takes all," said the voice a second time. There came a faint click and the dead line began its intermittent, staccato purring.
For long moments Dragan stared at the receiver in his hand, then hurled it down into its cradle. "Oh, I surely will!" he rasped then. "Be sure I'll take everything, Molly Stewart!"
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