London341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs4lFzer3lP
INTESP HQ
Robert Petley and Guy Greenway had traced Harry Moradian, Alex Picardi and Dragos Matei. The Devon-based team of espers had traveled back to the capital by train. Having used the journey to catch up on some sleep, they'd got into HQ just before midnight. Greenway had roughly "located" the three figures in question, and Petley had attempted to scry their whereabouts a little more precisely. Desperation had seemingly honed their talents and the familiarity of their surroundings had helped them to get results.....of a sort.
Now Petley held a briefing: in attendance were Greenway, Bailey Haynes (new), Josh Burke (new), Hugh Mede and three others who were permanent members of the HQ's staff. Petley was red-eyed, unshaven and itchy; his breath reeked of an endless chain of cigarettes. He glanced around the table and nodded to each man in turn, then got straight into it.
"We've been trimmed to hold back a bit," he said, untypically phlegmatic. "Moradian and Picardi are out of it, maybe permanently; Adam Shiveley's up north, and---and then there's poor Mike Baxter. And the result of our outing? Our job isn't only that much harder, it's that much more important! Yes, and we've less men to do it. We could surely use Molly Stewart now---but Harry Moradian was Stewart's main man, and Harry's not here. And as well as the danger we know exists---out there, loose---there's now a second problem which could be just as big. Namely, the espers of the Soviet E-Branch have got Moradian on ice at the Castillo Mikhailov."
This was news to everybody except Greenway. Lips tightened and heartbeats stepped up, Guy Greenway took up the briefing. "We're pretty sure he's there," he said. "I located him---I think---but only with the greatest difficulty. They've got espers blocking everything in there, far more concentrated than we've ever known it before. The place is a mental miasma!"
"That's a fact," Petley nodded. "I tried to pin-point him, get a picture of him---and failed miserably! Just a general mind-smog. Which doesn't bode at all well for Harry. If his being there was all above board, they'd have nothing to hide. Also, he's not supposed to be there at all but here. My guess is, they'll be milking him for all he's worth. And for all we're worth. If I'm cold-blooded about it, trust me it's only to save time."
"What about Alex Picardi?" Bailey Haynes put the question. "How's he faring?"
"Alex's where he should be," Greenway said. "Near as I can make out, in a place called Chernovsty under the Capathians. Whether he's there willingly is another matter."
"But we think willingly," Petley added. "I've managed to reach and see him, however briefly, and I think he's with Morozov. Which only serves to confuse things further. If Morozov is straight up, then why is Moradian in trouble?"
"And Matei?" Burke asked.
"The bastard's heading north," Petley grimly answered. "It could be a coincidence, but we don't think so. Ultimately, we think he's after the Stewart child. He knows everything, knows the guiding force behind our organization. Matei has been hit, and now he wants to hit back. The one mind in this whole world which is an authority on vampires---particularly Dragos Matei---is housed in that child. That has to be his target."
"But how is he traveling?" Greenway carried on. "Public transport? Could be. He could even be thumbing lifts! But he's surely not in any kind of hurry. He's just taking it easy, taking his time. He got into Birmingham one hour ago, since when he's been static. We think he's put up for the night. But it's the same story as before: he exudes this mental swamp. That's what it's like: groping around in the heart of a foggy swamp. You can't pinpoint him at all, but you know there's a crocodile in there somewhere. At the moment, Birmingham is the center of it..."
"But do we have any plans?" Mede couldn't stand the inactivity. "I mean, are we going to do something? Or do we just sit here playing with ourselves while everything goes to hell?"
"There are jobs for everybody." Petley held up a huge, controlling hand. "First I need a volunteer to go up and help Adam Shiveley in Gloudon. Apart from a couple of Special Branch men---who are good blokes but just can't be expected to know what they're on----Adam's on his own. The ideal thing would be to send a spotter, except we haven't got one right now. So it will have to be a telepath." He looked pointedly at Mede.
Mede shrugged and no one else objected. Petley nodded. "OK---but stay sharp! Go now, by car. The roads will be empty, so you should be able to go flat out. Depending on how things go at this end, I'll probably be joining you sometime tomorrow."
That was all Mede had wanted. He stood up, nodded once to all in general, got in his way. "Take a crossbow," Petley called after him.
"What's my job?" Mede asked.
"You'll work with Bailey Haines," Petley told him. "And with me and Greenway. We'll try to locate Picardi again, and you telepaths can take a stab at sending to him. It's a longshot, but Picardi's a spotter, he's a psychic sensitive; he might just feel you. Your message to him will be simple: if he can get in touch with us. If we can get him on the phone, we can perhaps find out about Moradian. And if he doesn't know about Moradian-----well, that in itself will answer one question. Also, if we do manage to contact him, it might be a good idea to tell Picardi to get the hell out of there....if and while he can! So that's the four of us tied up for the night." He looked around the table.
"The rest of you can concentrate on the proper running of this place before it falls apart at the seams. Every man Jack is on duty full time as of now. Right, are there any questions?"
"Are we the only ones in this?" Josh Burke asked. "I mean, are the public, the authorities, still entirely in the dark?"
"Totally. What do we tell them---that we're chasing a vampire through the countryside from Devon to British West Gloudon? Listen, even the people who found us and know we exist don't wholly believe in us! How do you think they'd react to the facts about Dragos Matei? And as for Molly Stewart----of course the public is in the dark about it."
"With a single exception, anyway," said Greenway. "We've had the police alerted to the fact that there's a mad killer on the loose----Matei's description, of course. We've told them that he's heading north, possible destination the Gloudon area. They've been warned that if he's spotted they're not to apprehend him but get in touch with us first, then the Special Branch lads who are up there on the job. As and when Matei gets closer to his target, then we'll be more specific. That's as much as we dare do for now."
Petley looked from face to face. "Any more questions?" he asked. There were none....
3:30 A.M.
At Kate Cowell's tiny but immaculate garret flat overlooking the main road through the town and, across the road, an old, old cemetery, Molly Jr. lay in her cot, sleeping and dreaming baby dreams, and her namesake's mind slept with her exhausted from the struggle she now knew she had no hope of winning. The child had her, it was as simple as that. Molly was the baby's sixth sense.
In the wee small hours of the misty morning, with dawn still half an hour away, a thicker mist was forming in slumbering minds bringing horror as hit swirled and eddied in subconscious caverns of dream. And out of nowhere, telepathic figures were reaching, probing, discovering!
Ahhh! came that gurgling, cloned mental voice in the two Mollys' minds. Is that you, Mollllllyyyyyyy? Yessssss, I see it is! Well, I'm coming for you, Molllyyyyyy----I'm coming----for----you!"
The baby's scream of terror ripped her mother from her bed as if it were the hand of some cruel giant. She stumbled to her tiny room, shook herself awake as she entered and went to her. And how she cried, cried, cried when she took her in her arms, cried like she'd never heard before. But she wasn't wet, and no nappy pins were sticking in her. Was she hungry? No, that wasn't it either.
She rocked her in her arms, but still she sobbed, and her little eyes wide and wild and full of fear. A dream, maybe? "But you're too tiny, Molly," she told her, kissing her hot little head. "Far too tiny and sweet and so very, very young to be dreaming scary dreams! That's all it was, baby, a scary dream."
She carried her back to her own bed, thinking, Yes, and I must have been dreaming too! She must have been, for the baby's scream when it woke her hadn't sounded like the scream of a child at all but that of a terrified adult woman!
It had been Bailey Haines's first choice to take the A1 north, but I n the end he'd settled for the motorway. What he lost in actual distance he'd get back in speed, comfort, three-lane running, and M1's ruler-straight road.
At Leicester Forest East he stopped for a coffee break, answered the call of nature, picked up a can of Coke and a wrapped sandwich. And breathing the
cool, moist night air he turned up his coat collar and made his way back across the almost deserted parking lot to his car. He had left the door open but had taken his keys with him. The whole stop had taken no more than ten minutes. Now he'd top of his gas tank and get on his way again.
But as he approached his car he slowed down, stopped. His footsteps, echoing back to him, seemed to pause just one moment too late. Something niggled at the back of Haines's mind. He turned, looked back toward the friendly lights of the all-night diner. For some reason he was holding his breath, and maybe it was a very good reason. He turned in a slow circle, took in the whole parking lot, the squat, hulking snail-shapes of parked cars. A heavy vehicle, turning off the motorway, lit him up in the glare of its thousand watt eyes. He was dazzled, and after the truck angled away the night was that much darker.
He shook off his nameless fears, got into his car and started the engine.
Something closed on Haines's brain like a clamp, a mind warped and powerful and growing ever more powerful! He knew it was reading him like a stolen book, reading his identity, divining his purpose. "Good evening," said a voice like hot tar in Haines's ear. He gave a gasp of shock and terror combined, an inarticulate cry, and turning looked into the back of the car. Feral eyes fixed him in a glare far more penetrating, far worse than the truck's headlights. Beneath them, the darkness was agleam with twin rows of white daggers.
"Wha---!" Haines's started to say.
Dragos Matei lifted Haines's crossbow, aimed it directly into his gaping, gaping mouth--and pulled the trigger.
It had been Alik Morozov's plan to stay overnight in Chernovtsy; in the event, however, he had ordered Eldar Polyakov to drive straight on to Kolomyya. Since Roman Demochev had known that Morozov's party was scheduled to stop over in Chernovtsy, it had seemed a very good idea not to. Thus, after Makar Alexeyeva got into Chernovtsy at about 5:00 A.M. it'd taken him a futile and frustrating two hours just to discover that the men he sought were not there. After another delay while he contacted the Castillo Mikhailov, Demochev had at last suggested that he go on to Kolomyya and try again.
Alexeyeva had been flown from Mosco to a military airport in Skala-podolskaya where he'd been required to sign for a KGB Fiat. Now, in the somewhat battered but unobtrusive car, he drove to Kolomyya and arrived there just before 8:00 A.M. Discreetly checking out the hotels, it was a case of third time lucky---and also unlucky. They had put up at the Hotel Carpatii, but they had been up and on their way again by 7:30. He had missed them by half an hour. The proprietor was only able to tell him that before leaving they'd inquired the address of the town's library and museum.
Alexeyeva obtained the same address and followed after them. At the museum he had found the curator, a bustling, beaming little Russian in thick-lensed spectacles, in the act of opening the place up. Following him inside the old cupolaed building, where their footsteps echoed in musty air. Alexeyeva said, "Might I enquire if you've had three men in here to see you this morning? I was supposed to meet them here, but as you see, I'm late."
"They were fortunate to fine me working so early," the other replied. "And luckier still that I let them in. The museum doesn't really open until 8:30, you see. But since they were obviously in a hurry----" He smiled and shrugged.
"So I've missed them by----how much?" Alexeyeva put on a disappointed expression.
The curator shrugged again. "Oh, ten minutes, maybe. But at least I can tell you where they went."
"I would be very grateful, Comrade," Alexeyeva told him, following him into his private rooms.
"Comrade?" The curator glanced at him, his eyes bright and seeming to bulge behind the dense glass of his spectacles. "We don't hear that term too much down here----on the border, so to speak. Might I ask who you are?"
Alexeyeva presented his KGB identification and said, "That makes it official. Now then, I've no more time to waste. So if you'll just tell me what they were looking for and where they went...."
The curator no longer beamed, no longer seemed happy. "Are they traitors, these men?"
"No, just under surveillance."
"A shame. They seemed pleasant enough."
"One cannot be too careful these days," said Alexeyeva. "What did they want?"
"A location. They sought a place at the foot of the mountains called Moupho Alde Benedekzig Yaborov."
"A mouthful!" Alexeyeva commented. "And you told them where to find it?"
"No," the other shook his head. "Merely where it used to be---and even then I can't be sure. Look here." He showed Alexeyeva a set of antique maps spread on a table. "Not accurate, I'm sorry to say. The oldest is about four hundred and fifty years old. Copies, obviously, not the originals. But if you look there"----he put his finger on one of the maps.... "you'll see Kolomyya. And here...."
"Benedekzig?"
The curator nodded. "One of the three---English, I believe----seemed to know exactly where to look. When he saw that ancient name on the map, 'Benedekzig,' he grew very excited. And shortly after that they left."
Alexeyeva nodded, studied the old map very carefully. "It's west of here," he mused, and a little north. Scale?"
"Roughly one centimeter to five kilometers. But as I've said, the accuracy is very suspect."
"Something less than seventy kilometers, then," Alexeyeva frowned. "At the foot of the mountain. Do you have a modern map?"
"Oh, yes," the curator sighed. "If you'll just come this way...."
15 miles out of Kolomyya a night highway, still under construction, sped north for Ivano Frankovsk, its tarmac surface making for a smooth ride. Certainly to Morozov, Picardi and Polyakov the ride was a delightful respite, following the wake of their bumpy, bruising journey from Bucharest, through Romania and Moldavia. To the west rose the Carpathians, dark, forested and brooding even in the morning sunlight, while to the east the plain fell gently away into gray-green distance and a far, hazy horizon.
Eighteen miles along this road, in the direction of Ivano-Frankovsk, they passed a fork off to the left which inclined upwards directly into misty foothills. Picardi asked Polyakov to slow down and traced a line on a rough map he'd copied at the museum. "That could be our best route," he said.
"The road has a barrier," Morozov pointed out, "and a sign forbidding entry. It's disused, a dead end."
"And yet I sense that's the easiest way to go," Picardi insisted.
Morozov could feel it too: something inside which warned that this was not the way to go, which probably meant that Picardi was right and it was. "There's grave danger there," he said.
"Which is more or less what we expected," said Picardi. "It's what we're here for."
"Very well." Morozov pursed his lips and nodded. He spoke to Polyakov, but the latter was already slowing down. Up ahead the twin lanes narrowed into one where construction gang worked to widen the road. A steam roller flattened smoking tarmac in the wake of a tar-spraying truck. Morozov turned the car about-face and, at Morozov's command brought it to a halt.
Morozov got out, went to find the ganger and speak to him. Picardi called after him. "What's up?"
"Up?" Oh! I meant to see if these people know anything about this area. Also, perhaps I am able to enlist their aid. Remember, when we find what we're looking for, we still have to destroy it!"
Picardi stayed in the car and watched Morozov stride towards the workmen and speak to them. They pointed along the deserted road to a construction shack. Morozov went that way. Ten minutes later he came back with a bearded giant of a man in faded overalls.
"This is Immanuil Vorobyov," he said, by way of introduction. Picardi and Polyakov nodded. "Apparently you are right, Alex," Morozov continued. "He says that back there, up in the mountains, that's the place of the gypsies."
"Da, da!" Vorobyov growled and nodded his concurrence. He pointed westward. Picardi got out of the car. Polyakov too. They looked where the ganger pointed. "Szgany!" Vorobyov insisted. "Szgany Benedekzig!"
Beyond the foothills, rising out of the thin morning mist, the blue smoke of a wood fire climbed almost vertically into the still air. "Their camp," said Morozov.
"They---they still come." Picardi shook his head in disbelief. "They still come!"
"Their homage," Morozov nodded.
"What now?" asked Picardi, after moment's silence.
"Now Immanuil Vorobyov will show us the place," said Morozov. "That blocked off road we passed there goes to within half a mile of the castle's site. Vorobyov had actually seen the place."
All three searchers got back into the car, the huge foreman with them, and Polyakov began to drive the way they'd come.
Picardi asked, "But where does the road go?"
"Nowhere!" Morozov answered. "It was meant to cut through the mountains to the railhead at Khust. But a year ago the pass was declared unworkable due to shale, sliding scree and badly fractured rock. To force it through would constitute a major engineering feet, and there'd be little real benefit to show from it. As an alternative, and to save face, the road will be driven through to Ivano-Frankovsk instead; that is, the existing road will be widened and improved. All on this side of the mountains. There is already a railway route, however torturous, from Ivano-Frankovsk through the mountains. As for the fifteen miles of new road already built"----he shrugged---"eventually there may be a town out there, industrial sites. It won't have been a total waste. Very little is wasted in the U.S.S.R."
Picardi smiled, however warily.
Morozov saw it, said, "Yes, I know---dogma. It's a disease we all seem to catch eventually. Now it appears I've been infected myself. There is a great waste, not least in the mass of words from which we build our excuses...."
Polyakov stopped the car at the new road's barrier; Vorobyov got out, swiveled the barrier to one side, waved them through. They picked him up again and headed up into the mountains.
Nobody noticed the battered old Fiat parked a half-mile down, the road back towards Kolomyya, or the blue exhaust fumes and a cloud of dust as it rumbled into life and followed in their tracks.....
Robert Petley had eaten two British Rail breakfasts, washed down with pints of coffee, and by the time his train pulled out of Grantham he was halfway through the day's first pack of Marlboro Lights. He was huge, red-eyed and whiskery, and nobody bothered him much. He had his corner of the carriage all to himself. Nobody looking at him would ever have guessed he possessed the talent of some primal wizard, or that his mission was to slay a 20th century vampire. Indeed the thought might be amusing---if it wasn't so very desperate. There were too many desperate things, too much to do, and no time to do it all. It was so very tiring.
Thinking back on the events of last night, he lay back in his seat and closed his eyes. He and Greenway had stayed with it right through the night, and it had been one strange, strange night for the both of them. Moradian, for instance, at the Castillo Mikhailov. As the sky had brightened into dawn, so Greenway had found it increasingly hard to locate Harry Moradian. In his own words it'd been like "the difference between finding a live man and a dead one, with Moradian somewhere in between." That didn't bode well at all for INTESP's Number One.
Petley, too, had been unable to penetrate the Castillo's mind blocks. He should have been able to "scry" Moradian, but all he'd got on those few occasions when he'd actually penetrated the mental defenses of Mikhailov's espers had been---well, an echo of Moradian. A fast-fading image. Petley didn't know for sure what E-Branch was doing to Moradian, and he didn't much care to guess.
Then there'd been Dragos Matei; or rather, there hadn't been him. For try as they might, Greenway and Petley hadn't been able to relocate the vampire. It was as if he'd just vanished off the face of the map. There was no "mind-smog" in or around Birmingham, none anywhere in the whole country, so far as the British espers were able to find. But after they'd thought about it for a little while, then the answer seemed obvious. Matei knew they were tracking him, and he had talents, too. Somehow he was screening himself, making himself "disappear" out of mindscan.
But at 6:30 in the morning, Greenway had picked him up again. Very briefly he'd made contact with a reeking, writhing mind-smog, an evil something that had sensed him at once, snarling its mental defiance before vanishing once more. And Greenway had located it somewhere in the vicinity of York.
That'd been enough for Petley. It'd seemed to him that if there'd been any doubt as to where Matei was heading, his destination was now confirmed. Leaving INTESP HQ once again in the capable hands of Howard Frost, the permanent Duty Officer, he'd prepared to head north.
It was only as he was actually making his exit from the HQ that word of Bailey Haines came in; how his car had been discovered in an overgrown ditch off the motorway at Doncaster, and how his mutilated body had been found in the trunk with a crossbow bolt transfixing the head. That had clinched it, not only for Petley but for everyone else concerned. They didn't even consider that there might be some other explanation apart from Matei. From now on it would be outright warfare---no quarter asked and none given---until the son of a bitch was staked, decapitated, burned and definitely dead!
At this juncture of Petley's reflections, someone "ahemmed" and stepped over his outstretched feet. He opened his eyes briefly, saw a slim man in a hat and overcoat claiming the seat beside him. The stranger took off his hat, shrugged out of his coat and sat down. He produced a paperback book and Petley saw that it was Dracula,, by Bram Stoker. He couldn't help but grimace.
The stranger saw his expression, shrugged almost apologetically. "A little fantasy doesn't hurt," he said, in a thin, reedy voice.
"No," Petley growled his agreement before closing his eyes again. "Fantasy doesn't hurt anyone." And to himself: But the real thing is something else entirely!
4:00 p.m.
The Russian side of the Carpathians
Makar Alexeyeva was weary as a man could be, but he drew strength from the sure knowledge that his job was almost done. After this he'd sleep for a week, then indulge himself in as many pleasurable diversions as he could manage before seeking a new assignment. Assuming, that was, that he hadn't already been assigned some new task. But pleasure can take many forms, depending on the man, and Alexeyeva's work had its moments. His missions were often very---satisfying? Certainly he was going to enjoy the end of this one.
He looked out and down from his vantage point in a clump of pines on the north face of the mountainside where it wound back into the gorge, and trained his binoculars on the four men who climbed carefully along the last hundred yards of boulder- and scree-littered ledge weathered into the sheer cliff which formed the south face. They were less than three hundred yards away, but Alexeyeva used his binoculars anyway.
He enjoyed close-up the strain in their sweating faces, imagined he could feel their aching muscles, tried to picture their thoughts as they headed one final time for the old creeper-grown ruins up there where the ravine bottle-necked and the stream rushed and gurgled unseen in the depths of the gorge. They'd be patting congratulating themselves that their quest (their mission) was almost concluded; ah, but they could hardly imagine that they themselves were also at an end!
This was the part that Alexeyeva was going to enjoy: bringing them to their conclusion, and letting them know that he was their executioner.
Most of the time the four moved in clear light, free of shadows; Morozov and his man, the British esper, and the big construction boss. But where the cliff overhung, there they merged with brown and green shade and black darkness. Alexeyeva squinted into the sky. The sun was well past his zenith, sinking slowly beyond the looming mass of the Carpathians. In just two more hours it would be twilight, the Carpathians twilight, when the sun would abruptly slip down behind the peaks and ridges. And that was when the "accident" would happen.
He trained his binoculars on them again. The huge Russian foreman carried a haversack with its strap across one shoulder. A T-shaped metal handle protruded: the firing box for gelignite charges. Alexeyeva nodded to himself. Earlier in the day he'd watched them lay charges in and around the old ruins; now they were going to blow the place and whatever it contained---a fabulous weapon according to that twisted dwarf Roman Demochev---to hell! So they thought, but that was what Alexeyeva was here to stop.
He put his binoculars away, waited impatiently until they were safely off the ledge and into the woods of the overgrown slope beyond, then quickly moved in pursuit---for the final time. The cat and mouse game was over and it was time for the kill. They were out of sight of the trees now, with maybe a mile to go to the ruins, and so Alexeyeva must make haste.
He checked his blunt, blued-steel, standard issue Tokarev automatic, shoved home the clip of snub-nosed rounds and reholstered the heavy weapon under his arm. Then he stepped out from cover. Directly opposite his positon, across the narrow gorge, the new road came to an abrupt halt. This was the point at which someone had decided it wouldn't be economical to proceed further. Rubble from the blasted cliff filled the depression, forming a dam for the mountain stream. A small lake lay smooth as a mirror behind it. Beneath the dam the water had forced a route, erupting in a torrent where the much reduced stream continued its course down towards the plain.
Alexeyeva scrambled down to the jumbled debris which formed the bridge of the dam and nimbly made his way across and up onto the road. A minute more and he'd left the tarmac behind for the narrow, treacherous surface of the scree-littered ledge. And without further pause he followed in the tracks of his quarry. As he went, he thought back on the day's events....
This morning he'd followed them when they first came up here. Finding their car parked on the road, he'd hidden his Fiat in a dense clump of bushes and tracked them on foot along this very ledge. Then, at the gorge's apex where the two sides almost came together, they'd entered crumbling ancient ruins and searched through them. Alexeyeva had observed, keeping his distance. For maybe two hours they'd busied themselves digging in the ruins. By the time they were ready to leave they all seemed much subdued. Alexeyeva didn't know what they'd found, or failed to find, but in any case he'd been told that it was probably dangerous and warned to stay clear.
Seeing them about to leave, he'd quickly hurried back to his car, waited for them to show up. And in passing, so as to be on the safe side, he'd fitted their vehicle with a magnetic bug. They'd driven back into Kolomyya then, with Alexeyeva close behind but staying just out of sight. He'd almost caught up with them where they stopped, halfway back along the new road, to talk with a party of gypsies in their encampment. But in a few minutes they'd been on their way again, and still they hadn't seen him.
Kolmyya was a railhead and meeting point for four tracks, from Khust, Ivano-Frankovsk, Chernovtsy and Gorodenka; every other building seemed to be a warehouse or storage depot. It wasn't hard to find one's way about; the industrial and commercial sides of the town were distinctly separate. The four men Alexeyeva followed had driven to the town's main telephone exchange, parked outside and gone in.
Alexeyeva parked his Fiat, stopped a passerby and asked about public call boxes. "Three!" the man told him, obviously disgusted. "Only three public telephones in a town as big as this! And all of them constantly in use. So if you're in a hurry you'd best make your call here, at the exchange. They'll put you through quick as a flash."
In about ten minutes Morozov and his party had left the exchanged, got into their car and driven away. Their tracker had been torn two ways: to follow them, or find out who they'd contacted and why. Since their car was bugged and he could always find them later, he'd decided on the latter course. Inside the small but busy exchange he'd wasted no time but asked for the manager. His KGB ID had guaranteed immediate cooperation. It turned out that Morozov had called Moscow---but not a number Alexeyeva was familiar with. It seemed that the head of E-Branch had required higher authorization for something or other; there had been some small talk of blasting, and the big man in overalls had been very much involved. Morozov had allowed him also to use the phone. That was as much as anyone at the exchange knew of the matter. Alexeyeva had then asked to be put through to Demochev at the Castillo Mikhailov, to whom he'd passed on all that he'd learned.
At first Demochev had seemed confused, but then: "They're working directly through Brezhnev's contact!" he'd snapped. "Not through me. Which can only mean that the suspect. Makar, make sure you get them all. Yes, including that construction foreman. And when it's done inform me at once."
Tracking the bug he'd planted, Alexeyeva had arrived at the depot of a local civil engineering firm in the town just in time to see Polyakov and Vorobyov loading a box of explosives into the trunk of their car while Morozov and Picardi looked on. Obviously the big Russian foreman was now a member of their team. Equally obvious, their contact in Moscow had cleared the use of materials for blasting. While Alexeyeva still did not know what they intended to destroy, he did have an idea where it was. And what was more, that was as good a place as any for them to die....
While Makar Alexeyeva was thinking back on the day's events, Alex Picardi's mind was similarly engaged; and now that the broken fangs of Thrulk Benedek's castle once more appeared through the dark, motionless pines, so his memory instinctively homed in on what he and Alik Morozov had found there during their first visit this morning. All four of them had been present, but only he and Morozov had known where to look.
The place had been nearly magnetic in their physically enhanced minds; the exact spot had drawn them like iron filings to a magnet. Except they were not filings, and it was not their intention to get stuck here. Picardi remembered now how it had been....
"Thrulk's castle," he'd breathed, as they came to a halt at the very rim of the ruins. "The mountain fortress of a vampire!" And in the eye of his mind he'd seen it again as it must have been a thousand years ago.
Vorobyov would have gone clambering into and amongst the crumbling stone blocks, but Morozov had stopped him. The ganger knew nothing at all of what was buried here, and Morozov didn't intend to tell him. Vorobyov was down to earth as any man could be. At the moment he was committed to assist them, but that might change if they tried to tell him what they were doing here. And so Morozov had simply warned, "Be careful! Try not to bother anything...." And the big Russian had shrugged and climbed down again from the tumbled mass of the decaying old pile.
Then Picardi and Morozov together had just stared at the place and touched its stones, and let the aura of its antiquity and its immemorial evil wash over them. They'd breathed its essence, tasted of its mystery and let their talents lead them to its innermost secret. As they had picked their way carefully, almost timidly through the fallen rubble of ancient masonry, suddenly Picardi had come to an abrupt halt and said huskily, "Oh, yes, it was here all right. It still is the place!"
And Morozov had agreed: "Yes, I sense it too. But I only sense it---I don't fear it. There's no warning to bar me from this place. I'm sure that there was a great evil here, but it's gone now, extinct, utterly lifeless."
Picardi had nodded, sighed his relief. "That's my feeling, too; still here, but no longer active. It's been too long. There was nothing to support it."
Then they had stared at each other, both of them thinking the identical thought. Finally Morozov had given it voice. "Dare we try to find it, maybe bother it?"
For a moment Picardi had known fear, but the he'd answered, "If I don't at least discover what it was like---at the end, I mean---then I'll wonder about it for the rest of my life. And since we're both agreed that it's harmless now....?"
And so they had called up Polyakov and Vorobyov to the place where they stood, and all four of them had set to work. At first the going was easy and they used makeshift implements and their bare hands to clear away masses of loose dirt and rubble. Soon they'd revealed the inner core of an ancient stone staircase, with the steps winding on the outside. The stone had been scorched black with fire and was scarred by jagged cracks as from great heat. Apparently Thago's plan had worked: the spiral stairwell leading downstairs had been blocked by flaming debris, burying the vampire women and the unfortunate Xylon alive. Yes, and the burrowing proto-thing too. All of them, buried alive---or undead. But a thousand years is a long time, in which even the undead might truly die.
Then Vorobyov had got his massive arms around a great block of fractured rock and eased it upwards from the rubble which seemed to completely choke the stairwell. Suddenly it had come loose, at which Polyakov had added his own inconsiderably muscle to the task. Together they'd heaved the block up and over the rim of the excavation---at which the debris at their feet had sighed and settled down a little, and a blast of foul air had rushed up into their faces!
They'd jumped back, startled, but still there had been no threat in it, no sense of impending danger. After a moment, taking Polyakov's arm to steady himself, the big Russian foreman had stepped down from the already uncovered stone steps onto the now dubious surface of the material blocking the descent. Still clinging to Polyakov he'd stamped first one foot, then the other---and at once gone down with a cry of alarm up to his waist in the stuff as it suddenly shifted and gave way under him!
Then the earth had seemed to rumble and shudder a little; Vorobyov had clung to Polyakov for dear life; Picardi and Morozov had thrown themselves flat and reached down from above to grab hold of the ganger under his armpits. But he'd been quite safe, for already his feet had found purchase on unseen steps below.
And as they'd all four watched in astonishment, so the choking debris around Vorobylov's thighs had settled down, collapsing in upon itself, sinking like quicksand into the hollow depths of the stairwell. Hollow, yes! The stairs had not been totally chocked, only plugged, and now that plug had been removed.
"Now it's our turn," Picardi had said when the dust had settled and they could freely breathe. "You and me, Alik. We can't let Immanuil go down there ahead of us, for he has no idea what he's up against. If there is still an element of danger attached to it, we should be the first ones down there."
They'd climbed down beside Vorobylov, paused and looked at one another. "We're not armed," Morozov had pointed out.
Up above, Eldar Polyakov had produced an automatic pistol, passed it down to them. Vorobylov saw it and laughed. He spoke to Morozov who smiled.
Picardi asked, "What did he say?"
"He wants to know why we need a gun if we're seeking treasure?" Morozov answered.
"Tell him we're scared of spiders!" said Picardi; and taking the gun, he had stared down the littered steps. What good bullets would be if the vampires were still extant he couldn't have said, but at least the feel of the weapon in his hand was as comfort.
Blackened chunks of rock, large and small, cluttered the stairs so badly that Picardi was often obliged to climb over them; but after turning through another full spiral, at last the steps were clear of all but small pieces of rubble, pebbles and sand sifted down from above. And at last he had been at the bottom, with Morozov and the others close on his heels. Light filtered down from above, but not much.
"It's no good," Picardi had complained, shaking his head. "We can't go in there, not without proper light." His voice had echoed as in a tomb, which was what the place was. The place he spoke of was a room, a dungeon---the dungeon, for it could be no other place than Thago's prison---beyond a low, arched stone doorway. Maybe Picardi's reluctance had been his last attempt to back away from this thing, maybe not: whichever, the resourceful Polyakov had the answer. He'd produced a small, flat pocket torch, passed it to Picardi who shone its beam ahead of him. There under the arch of the doorway, fossilized timber---ages-blackened fragments of oak---lying in a pile, with red splashes of rust marking the passing of defunct nails and bands of iron: all that remained of a once stout door. And beyond that, just darkness.
Then, stooping a little to avoid a keystone which had settled somewhat through the centuries, Picardi had stepped warily under the archway, pausing just inside the dungeon. And there he'd aimed his flashlight in a little circle to illumine each wall and corner of the place. The cell was quite large, larger than he'd expected; it had corners, niches, ledges and recesses where the beams of light couldn't follow, and it seemed cut from living rock.
Picardi aimed the beam at the floor. Dust, the filtered dust of ages, lay uniformly thick everywhere. No footprint disturbed it. In roughly the center of the floor, a humped formation of stone, possibly bedrock, strained grotesquely upwards. It seemed there was nothing here, and yet Picardi's psychic intuition told him otherwise. His, and Morozov's too.
"We were right," Morozov's voice had echoed dolefully. He'd moved up to come up alongside Picardi. "They are finished. They were here and we sense them even now, but time has put paid to them." He'd moved forward, leaned his weight on the anomalous hump of rock---which promptly crumbled under his hand!
In the next moment he'd jumped back with a cry of sheer horror, colliding with Picardi, grabbing him and hugging him close. "Oh God! Alex---Alex! It's not---not stone!"
Polyakov Vorobyov, both of them suddenly electrified, had steadied Morozov while Picardi shone his torch directly at the humped mass. Then, mouth gaping and heart fluttering, the Englishman had breathed, "Did you sense----anything?"
The other shook his head, took a deep breath. "No, no. My reaction, that was merely shock---not a warning. Thank God for that at least! My talent is working---believe me it is working---but it reveals nothing. I was shocked, just shocked...."
"But just look at this---this thing!" Picardi had been awed. He'd moved forward, carefully blew dust from the surface of the mass and used a handkerchief to dust it down. Parts of it, anyway. For even a perfunctory dusting had revealed---total horror!
The thing was slumped where in uncounted years past it had groped one final time upwards from the packed earth of the floor. It was one mass now---the mummified remains of one creature----but clearly it was composed of more than one person. Hunger and possibly madness had forced the issue: the hunger of the proto-flesh in the earth, the madness of Ehrig and the women. There had been no way out and, weak with hunger, the vampires had been unable to resist the advances of the mindless, subterranean "creeper." It had probably taken them one by one, adding them to its bulk. And now that bulk lay here, fallen where it had finally, mercifully "died." In the end, governed only by weak impulse and indeterminate instinct, maybe it had attempted to reconstitute the others. Certainly there was evidence to that effect.
It had the breasts of women, and a half-formed male head, and many psuedohands. Eyes, bulging behind their closed lids, were everywhere. And mouths, some human and others inhuman. Yes, and there were other features much worse than these....
Emboldened, Polyakov and Vorobyov had come forward; the latter, before he could be cautioned, had reached out a hand and laid it upon a cold, shriveled breast where it protruded alongside a flabby-lipped mouth. All was the color of leather and looked solid enough, but no sooner had the big ganger touched the teat than it crumbled into dust. Vorobyov snatched back his hand with an oath, stepped back a pace. But Eldar Polyakkov was much less timid. He knew something of these horrors, and the very thought of them infuriated him.
Cursing, he lashed out with his foot at the base of the thing where it sprouted from the floor, lashed out again and again. The others had made no attempt to stop him; it was his way of working it out of his system. He waded into the crumbling monstrosity, fists and feet pounding at it. And in a very little while nothing remained but billowing dust and a few fretted bones.
"Out!" Morozov had choked. "Let's get out of here before we suffocate. Alex." He'd clutched the other's arm. "Thank God it was dead!" And with their hands to their mouths, finally they'd climbed back up the stairwell into clean and healthy daylight.
"That--whatever it was, should be buried," Vorobyov had growled to Polyakov as they moved away from the ruins.
"Exactly!" Morozov had taken the opportunity to agree with him. "So as to be absolutely certain, it has to be buried. And that's where you come in...."
* * *
The four had been back to the ruins a second time since then, when Vorobyov had drilled holes, laid charges, unrolled a hundred yards of detonating cable and made electrical connections. And now they'd returned for the third and final time. And as before, Makar Alexeyeva had followed them, which was why this would be the last time.
Now, from the cover of bushes back along the overgrown track near the cliff and its precarious ledge, the KGB man watched Vorobyov put down his firing box at the end of the prepared cable, watched as the party moved on toward the ruins, presumably for one final look.
This was Alexeyeva's best chance, the moment the Russian agent had been waiting for. He checked his gun again, took off the safety and reholstered it, then quickly scrambled up the scree slope on his left and into a straggling stand of pines where the trees marched at the foot of the gaunt cliffs. If he used his cover to its best advantage, he could stay out of sight until the last minute. And so, moving with some agility beneath the trees, he quickly closed the distance between him and his intended victims as they approached the gutted ruins.
In order to maintain his cover in this way, Alexevyeva occasionally had to lost sight of his quarry, but finally he reached the furthest extent of the cliff-hugging trees and was forced back down into the lesser undergrowth of the old track. From here the group of men at the ancient castle's walls were plainly visible, and if they should happen to look in Alexeyeva's direction, they might also see him. But now, they stood silent one hundred yards away, lost in their own thoughts as they gazed upon that which they intended to destroy. All three of three of them were deep in thought.
Three? Alexeyeva squinted, frowned, glanced quickly all about. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Presumably the fourth man---that young fool, that traitor Polyakov---had entered through the broken exterior wall of the ruins and so passed out of sight. Whichever, Alexeyeva knew that he now had all four men trapped. There was no way out at their end of the defile, and in any case they had to come back her to set off the charges. Alexeyeva's leering expression changed, turned into a grim smile. An especially sadistic thought had just occurred to him.
His original plan had been simple: surprise them, tell them he was investigating them for the KGB, have them tie each other up----finally hurl them one at a time from the castle's broken rim. It was a hell of a long way down. He'd make sure that part of the rotten wall went with them, to make it more convincing. Then, at a safe place, he'd climb down, make his way back to them and carefully remove their bindings. An "accident," as simple as that. There'd be no escape for them: the nylon cord in Alexeyeva's pocket had a 200 lb. breaking strain! They probably wouldn't even be found for weeks, months, maybe never.
But Alexeyeva was something of a vampire in his own right, except he fed on fear. Yes, and now he saw the chance to give his plan an elaborate twist. A little extra something for his own amusement.
He quickly kneeled, used his strong square teeth to strip the cable down to its copper cores, and connected up the firing box. Then, still on one knee, he called out loudly up the trail: "Gentlemen!"
The three turned, saw him. Picardi and Morozov recognized him at once, looked stunned.
"Now what are we having here?" he laughed, holding up the box for them to see. "See? Something is forgetting to make the connections---but I have done it for him!" He put down the box and drew up the plunger.
"For God's sake, be careful with that!" Alex Picardi threw up his arms in warning, stumbled out of the ruins.
"Stay right where you are, Mr. Picardi," Alexeyeva shouted. And in Russian: "Morozov, you and that stupid ox of a foreman come to me. And no tricks, or I blow your English friend and Polyakov to bits!" He gave the T-shaped handle two savage right-hand twists. The box was now armed; only depress the plunger, and....
"Alexeyeva, are you mad?" Morozov called back. "I'm here on official business. The Party Leader himself..."
"----Is a mumbling old fool!" Alexeyeva finished for you. "As are you. And you'll be a dead fool if you don't do exactly as I say. Do it now, and bring that lumbering engineer with you. Picardi, Mr. English mind-spy, you stay right there." He stood up, took out his gun and the nylon cord. Morozov and Vorobyov had put up their hands in the air, were slowly leaving the area of the ruins.
In the next split second Alexeyeva sensed that something was wrong. He felt the tug of hot metal at his sleeve before heard the crack of Eldar Polyakov's automatic. For when the others had gone forward to the ruins, Polyavkov had stepped into a clump of bushes to answer a call of nature. He had seen and heard everything.
"Put up your gun!" he now yelled, coming at Alexeyeva at a run. "The next shot goes in your belly!"
Polyakov had been trained, but not nearly as thoroughly as Makar Alexeyeva, and he lacked the agent's killer instinct. Alexeyeva fell to his knees again, straightened his gun arm toward Polyakov, aimed and pulled the trigger of his weapon. Polyakov was nearly on him. He, too, had fired again. His shot went inches wide, but Alexeyeva's was right on target. His snub-nosed bullet blew away half of Polyakov's head. Polyakov, dead on the instant, jerked to a halt, then took another stumbling step forward and crashed over like a felled tree----directly on to the firing box and its extended plunger!
Alexeyeva hurled himself flat, felt a hot wind blow on him as hell opened up just one hundred yards away. Deafening sound blasted his ears, left them ringing with wild peals. He didn't see the actual explosion, or simultaneous series of explosions, but as the spray of soil and pebbles subsided and the earth stopped shaking he looked up---and then he did see the result. On the far side of the gorge the ruins of Thrulk's castle stood much as before, but on this side they had been reduced to so much rubble.
Craters smoked where the castle's roots were bedded in the mountain. A landslide of shale and fractured rock was still tumbling from the cliff onto the wide, pitted ledge, burying deep the last traces of whatever secrets had been there. And of Morozov. Picardi and Vorobyov----
Nothing whatsoever. Flesh isn't nearly as strong as rock....
Alexeyeva stood up, brushed himself down, heaved Polyakov's corpse off the detonating box. He grabbed Polyakov's legs and dragged his body to the smoldering ruins, then toppled him from the cliff. An "accident," a genuine accident.
On his way back down the track, the KGB man rolled up what was left of the cable; he also collected Polyakov's gun and the box. Halfway down the ledge where it hugged the cliff he threw all of these things into the dark gurgling ravine. It was finished now, all of it. Before he got back to Moscow he would have thought up an excuse, a reason why Demochev's supposed "weapon," whatever it had been, no longer existed. That was a pity.
But on the other hand---Alexeyeva congratulated himself that at least half of his mission had been accomplished successfully. And very satisfactorily....
8:00 P.M.
The Castillo Mikhailov
Roman Demochev lay in a shallow sleep on a cot in his inner office. Down below, in the sterility of the brainwashing laboratory, Harry Moradian also lay asleep. His body, anyway. But since there was no longer a mind there, it was hardly Moradian anymore. Mentally, he had been drained to less than a husk. The information this had released to Agnes Daschner was heir to. Which was why, as the technicians dismantled their instruments and left Moradian's body naked and drained even of instinct, she hurried to report something of her findings---and one thing in particular----to Roman Demochev.
Agnes Daschner's father was East German. Her mother had been Spanish, from Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea. When her mother died, Agnes 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 Agnes so that she could be tested. That was how she had come to E-Branch, where she had rapidly made herself invaluable.
Daschner was five-nine, slim, blonde and blue-eyed. Her hair shone and bounced on her shoulders when she walked. Her Castillo uniform fitted her like a glove, accentuating the delicate curves of her figure. She climbed the stone stairs to Semnyonovich's (no, she corrected herself, to Demochev's) office, entered the anteroom and knocked firmly on the closed inner door.
Demochev heard her knock, forced himself awake and struggled to sit up. In his shriveled 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 frail lungs.
Outside the door, while Demochev had come more surely awake, Agnes Daschner had a broken trust. It was an unwritten rule at the Castillo 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 was gross abnormalities, things with Daschner must track down to her satisfaction.
For one, the way Demochev had literally taken over Morozov's job. It wasn't as if he stood in for him at all, but had in fact replaced him----forever! Daschner had liked Morozov; from Moradian she had learned about Makar Demochev's surveillance activities in Limomata; Moradian and Morozov had been working together on....
"Come in!" Demochev repeated, breaking her chain of thought, but not before everything had fallen together. Demochev's ambition burned bright in her mind, bright and ugly. And his intention, to use those-----those Things which Morozov was quite rightly bent upon destroying.
She drew air and deeply entered the office, staring at Demochev where he lay in the dark on his cot, propped up on one elbow.
He put on a beside lamp and blinked as his weak eyes accustomed themselves. "Yes? What is it, Agnes?"
"Where's Makar Alexeyeva?" she waded straight in. No preliminaries, no formalities.
"What?" He blinked at her. "Is something wrong, Agnes?"
"Many things, perhaps. I said..."
"I heard what you said," he snapped. "And what as it to do with you where Alexeyeva is?"
"I saw him for the first time, with you, on the morning that Alik Morozov left for Italy---after he left," she answered. "Following which he was absent until he brought Harry Moradian back here. But Moradian wasn't working against us. He was working with Morozov. For the good of the world."
Demochev swung his brittle legs carefully off the cot onto the floor. "He should only have been working for the good of the Soviet Union," 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."
Demochev eased himself to his feet. He wore child's pajamas, looked frail as a twig as he made for his great desk. "Are you accusing me, Agnes?"
"Yes!" She was relentless, furious. "Moradian was our enemy, 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!"
Demochev 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, Demochev chuckled. "Mechanical necromancy, yes."
She slammed her hand flat down on the table top. "But he wasn't dead!"
Demochev's shriveled lips curled into a sneer. "He is now, or as good as...."
"Morozov 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 insane!" And in that she had hit upon the truth. For Demochev'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 understand that this country's strength lies in its people! Morozov was weak, and...."
"Was?" Her arms trembled where she leaned forward, knuckles white on the edge of his desk.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNbWt4lHiqj
H suddenly felt that she had grown very dangerous. He would make one final effort. "Listen, Agnes. 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!"
Demochev's faded eyes suddenly narrowed, their slits blazing with his own anger. "When Brezhnev is gone..."
"He's not gone, not yet!" She was shouting now. "And when he learns of this..."
That was a mistake, a big one. Even Brezhnev couldn't harm Demochev, not personally, not physically. But he could have it done for him....at a distance. He could have Demochev'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 Demochev 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 Castillo. 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 E-Branch nine months ago. And they came close to destroying the organization 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 Molly Stewart of theirs were still alive...." He paused for breath, and Daschner bit her tongue to keep from telling him the truth: that indeed Molly Stewart 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 E-Branch. You are quite correct, Agnes, the Party Leader puts a deal of faith in the branch. He is fond of it. Under old Katin Semnyonovich 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 saw 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 just let you have it all your own way? Would Makar Alexeyeva sit still for that? You have an easy time here, Agnes. Ah, but there are other jobs in other places for a strong young woman in the Soviet Union. After your---rehabilitation?---doubtless they'd find you one...." Again he paused, put away the gun, seeing that he had made his point.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGFcPZq2KlD
"Now get the hell out of here, but don't leave the Castillo. I want a report on everything you learned from Moradian. Everything. The initial report may be brief, an outline. I'll have that by midday tomorrow. The last 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, "Agnes," and she paused without facing him. "Agnes, you have a great future. Remember that. And really, that's the only choice you have. A great future---or no future at all."
Then she left, closing 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 Demochev 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....
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