MOSCOW, FRIDAY EVENING, DRAGAN'S FLAT ON THE PUSHKIN ROAD356Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS0OOuzOMRZ
It was growing dark by the time Dragan gratefully let himself into his flat and poured himself a drink. The trains had been maddeningly slow on the journey from Romania, and Sam Tabur's absence had made the return trip seem that much longer. Tabur's absence, yes, and Dragan's growing feeling of urgency, this sensation of being rushed towards some colossal confrontation. Time was quickly passing and still there remained so much for him to do. Achingly tired, still he couldn't rest. Some instinct urged him onward, warning him against pausing in his set course.
With a second drink inside him and starting to feel a little better, he telephoned the Castillo Mikhailov and checked that Semnyonovich was still in mourning at his dacha at Dechny. Then he asked to speak to Boleslaw Yuriev but Yuriev had already left for home. Dragan phoned him three, asked if he could come round. The other agreed at once.
Yuriev lived in his own state flatlet not too far away but Dragan took his Volga anyway; in less than ten minutes he was seated in Yuriev's tiny living-room, toying with a comforting glass of vodka."
"Well, Comrade?" Yuriev finally asked when they'd done with the usual formalities and preliminaries. "What can I do for you?" He peered curiously, almost speculatively at Dragan's dark glasses and gaunt gray features.
Dragan nodded, as if he silently confirmed something or other, and said: "I can see you've been expecting me."
"Yes, I thought I might be seeing you," Yuriev carefully answered.
Dragan decided against beating about the bush. If Yuriev failed to produce the right answers he'd simply kill him---which he'd probably do anyway, eventually. "Very well, I'm here," he said. "Now tell me: how's it going to be?"
Yuriev was a small dark man and normally transparent as glass. That was the impression he achieved, anyway. Now he raised an eyebrow, put on an expression of mild surprise. "How's what going to be?" he asked, innocently.
"Look, let's not piddle around," said Dragan. "You probably already know just what I've come here. That's what you're paid for: your ability to see things in advance. So I'll ask you again: how is it going to be?"
Yuriev drew back and scowled. "With Semnyonovich, you mean?"
"For starters, yes."
Yuriev's face grew strangely impassive, almost cold. "He'll die," he said, without emotion. "Tomorrow, at midday or thereabouts. A heart attack. Except---" and he paused and frowned.
"Except?"
Yuriev shrugged. "A heart attack," he repeated.
Dragan nodded, sighed, relaxed a little. "Yes,' he said, "that's how it'll be. And what about me---and you?"
"I don't do readings for myself," said Yuriev. "It's tempting, of course, but far too frustrating. To know the future and not be able to change it. Also, it's scary. As for you----that's a bit odd."
Dragan didn't like the sound of that. He put down his drink and leaned forward. "What's odd?" he asked. This might be very important to him.
Yuriev took up both of their glasses and poured more vodka. "First let's get something straight, you and I," he said. "Comrade, I'm not your rival. I have no ambitions in respect of E-Branch. None whatsoever. I know Semnyonovich had me in mind for the job----along with yourself---but I'm just not interested. I think you should know that."
"You mean you'll step aside for me?"
"I'm not stepping aside for anyone," the other shook his head. "I just don't want the job, that's all. I don't envy any man that job. Yuri Andropov won't rest until he's crushed the lot of us----even if it takes the rest of his lifetime! Frankly, I wish to hell I was out of it altogether. Did you know I was a trained architect, Dragan? Well, I am. Read the future? I'd far prefer to read the plans of great buildings any day."
"Why do you tell me this?" Dragan was curious. "It has nothing to do with anything."
"Yes it does. It has something to do with living. And I want to live. You see, Dragan, I know that you'll have something to do with Semnyonovich's death. With his "heart attack." And if you can tackle him and win, which you will, then what chance would I have? I'm not brave, Dragan, and I'm not dumb. E-Branch is all yours....."
Again Dragan leaned forward. His eyes were pricks of red light gleaming through the dark lenses of his spectacles. "But your job is to tell Semnyonovich this kind of thing, Boleslaw," he rasped. "Especially this kind of thing. Are you saying you haven't told him? Or does he in fact already know that I'll be----involved?"
Yuriev shook himself, sat up straighter. For a moment he'd felt almost hypnotized by Dragan. The man's gaze was like that of a snake. A wolf? Something not quite human, anyway. "I really don't know why I've told you any of this," he said at last. "I mean, for all I know the old warhorse might even have sent you here!"
"But wouldn't you know if he had?" said Dragan. "Isn't that something your talent would have foreseen?"
"I can't see everything!" Yuriev snapped.
Dragan nodded. "Hmmm! Well, he didn't send me. Now tell me truthfully: does he know that he's doing to die tomorrow? And if so, does he know that I'll be involved? Well, I'm waiting......"
Yuriev bit his lips, shook his lip, shook his head. "He doesn't know," he mumbled.
"Why haven't you told him?"
"Two reasons. First, it wouldn't change anything even if he did know. Second, I hate the old bastard! I have a fiancée and want to be married. I've wanted it for ten years. But Semnyonovich says no. He needs me to keep my wits sharp. He doesn't want my talent dulled. Too much sex might ruin me, he says! Damn the old bastard----he rations me with my own fiancée!"
Dragan sat back and laughed out loud. Yuriev saw the gape of his mouth and the length of his teeth and once more felt that he talked with some strange animal rather than a man. "Oh, I can believe that!" Dragan's laughter finally rumbled into silence. "Yes, that's just typical of him. Well, Boleslaw," he nodded knowingly. "I think you can now safely go ahead with your wedding plans. Yes, just as soon as you like."
"But you'll want to keep me in the branch, eh?" Yuriev's tone stayed sour.
"Of course I will," Dragan nodded. "You're much too valuable to be a simple architect, Boleslaw Yuriev----and far too talented! But the branch? That is just a beginning. There's more to life than that. After this is over I'm going on and up. And you can come with me."
Yuriev's response to that was a blank stare. Suddenly Dragan was sure he was hiding something. "You were going to tell me what you've read in my future," he reminded. "Now that we've dealt with Semnyonovich, I think that would be a good idea. I think you said there was something---strange?"
"Strange, yes," Yuriev agreed. "But of course I could be wrong. Anyway, you'll know more about it----tomorrow." And he gave a nervous twitch at Dragan's startled expression.
"What? What's that about tomorrow?" the necromancer came slowly to his feet, uncoiling from his chair. "Have you been wasting my time and confusing me with trivialities when all the time you knew there was something in store for me tomorrow? When, tomorrow? And where?"
"Tomorrow night---at the Castillo," said Yuriev. "Something big, but I don't know what it'll be."
Dragan began to pace the floor, searching his own mind for clues, "KGB? Is it likely they'll find Semnyonovich's body that fast? I doubt it. Even if they did, why should they suspect the branch? Or me? After all, it'll only have been a 'heart attack.' That could happen to anyone. Or is it someone inside the branch itself? Maybe you, Boleslaw, having second thoughts about your loyalties?" (Yuriev hastily shook his head in denial.) "Will it be sabotage?" Dragan started to pace. "And if so what form of sabotage?" He angrily shook his head. "No, no, I can't see that! Damn it, come one, Boleslaw, you know more than you're saying! What is it, exactly, that you've seen?"
"You don't seem to understand!" Yuriev shouted. "Man, I'm not superhuman. I can't be exact all the time!" It was true and Dragan knew it; Yuriev's voice betrayed his own exasperation; he, too, wished he had an answer. "Sometimes things are very vague---like that time when Murat Bobrov got his. I knew there would be a ruckus that night and warned Semnyonovich about it, but I couldn't for the life of me say who or what would be involved! It's the same this time, too. There'll be big trouble tomorrow and you'll be right in the middle of it. It'll come from outside and it'll be---big trouble! Of that much I'm sure, but that's all."
"Not quite all," said Dragan, ominously. "I still don't know what you meant by 'odd.' Why do you avoid the issue? Will I be in any danger?"
"Yes," said Yuriev, "a great deal of danger. And not just you but everyone at the Castillo."
"Dammit, man!" Dragan slammed his fist down on the table. "You make it sound like we'll all be dead men!"
Yuriev's face slowly lost some of its dark color. He half turned his face away but Dragan leaned over him, clasped his cheeks in the fingers of one great hand, drew his averted face and the O-shape of his quivering mouth back towards him. He looked deep into the other's frightened eyes. "Are you quite sure you've told me everything?" he asked, forming his words slowly and very carefully. "Can you not at least try to explain what you meant by your use of the word 'odd'? Is there a chance, maybe, that you've also foreseen my death for tomorrow?"
Yuriev jerked his face free and pushed back in his chair away from Dragan. The white pressure marks of the other's fingers faded on his cheeks, were replaced by a dark pink flush. Dragan was capable of murder beyond a doubt. Yuriev must at least try to satisfy his demands. "Listen," he said, "and I'll explain as best I can. After that----you must make of it what you will.
"When I look at a man---when I try to see into his future---I normally detect a straight blue line extending forward. Like a line drawn down a sheet of paper from top to bottom. Call it his line of life, if you want. From the length of this line I can work out the length of the man's life. From kinks and deviations which take place in it, I can determine something of future occurrences and how they will affect him. Semnyonovich's line ends tomorrow. At the end there is a kink which indicates a physical malfunction: his heart attack. As to how I know you will be involved: it was just that at the end your life-line crosses his---and goes on alone!"
"But for how long?" Dragan demanded to know. "What about tomorrow night, Boleslaw? Is that where my line ends?"
Yuriev shivered. "Your line is entirely different," he finally answered. "I hardly know how to read it at all. Some six months ago Semnyonovich demanded that I prepare weekly readings on you for his eyes only. I tried but----it wasn't possible. There were so many deviations in your line that I couldn't read it with any degree of accuracy at all! Kinks and wriggles I'd never come across before. Also, as the months passed, what had begun as one line began to divide, to split into two parallel lines. The new one wasn't blue but red, which was something else I'd never seen before. As for the old, original line: it too slowly turned out red. You are like----like twins, Dragan. I know no other way to put it. And tomorrow...."
"Yes?"
"Tomorrow night one of your lines terminates....."
Half of me will die! thought Dragan. But which half? Out loud he asked, "The red or the blue?"
"The red line terminates," said Yuriev.
The vampire---dead! Dragan's spirits soared but he controlled the laughter he felt welling up inside. "What of the other line?"
Yuriev shook his head, patently at a loss for any reasonable explanation. Finally he said, "That is the oddest thing of all. It's something I just can't explain. The other line loses its red tinge and forms a loop, bends back on itself, rejoins the other where the division first occurred!"
Dragan sat down again and took up his drink. What Yuriev had given him wasn't satisfactory but it was better than nothing. "I've been hard on you, Boleslaw," he said, "and I'm sorry for that. I can see you've tried to do your best for me and I thank you. But you've said that this thing tomorrow will be big, which tells me that you've probably done readings for the others who'll be at the Castillo. So now I want to know----just how big will it be?"
Yuriev bit his lip. "You won't like the answer, Comrade," he warned at last.
"Tell me anyway."
"It'll be very nearly total! A force---a power---will visit itself upon the Castillo Mikhailov, and it will bring devastation."
Stewart! It could only be Molly Stewart! No other threat existed....Dragan stood up, grabbed his coat, headed for the door. "I'll have to leave now, Boleslaw," he said. "But again I thank you. I won't forget what you've done for me tonight, believe me. And if you should see anything new, I'd be obliged if....."
"Of course," said Yuriev, breathing a sigh of relief, following him to the door; and, as Dragan went out into the night: "Comrade---what happened to Sam Tabur?" It was a dangerous question, but he had to ask it.
Dragan paused just beyond the threshold, glanced backwards. "Sam? Oh, you know about him, do you? Well, it was an accident."
"Ah," said Yuriev with a nod. "Of course....."
When he was alone again, Yuriev finished off the vodka and then sat deep into the night, wrapped in his own thoughts. But as a clock tolled midnight somewhere out in the cold city he started up and shivered, and finally decided to break his own rule. Quickly he cast his mind into the future, followed his own lifeline to its inevitable end. Which came in just three days' time, and with a violent, wrenching terminal squiggle!
Automatically, then, Yuriev began to pack a few things and prepare to flee. And uppermost in his mind was thought that with Semnyonovich gone Dragan would be the head of E-Branch, or head of what survived. Whatever else, Katin Semnyonovich was, at least he was human! But Dragan----? Yuriev knew he could never serve under him. Oh, it could well be that Dragan would die tomorrow night---but what if he didn't? His line was so very confusing, so very alien. No, there was only one course for Yuriev now. He must try---at least try---to avoid the unavoidable.
And almost a thousand miles away, where a dark watchtower overlooked the wall in East Berlin, a Kalishnikov machine-gun waited for Boleslaw Yuriev. He didn't know it, but even now his and the weapon's futures were bending towards each other. They would meet at exactly 10:32 P.M.----in just three days' time!
Dragan drove straight back to his flat. From there he phoned the Castillo and got hold of the Duty Officer. He passed on Molly Stewart's name and description for immediate transmission to border crossing points and incoming airports within the Soviet Union, along with the information that Stewart was a spy for the West who should be arrested on sight or, if that should prove impossible, shot dead without dead. The KGB would get to know about it, naturally, but Dragan didn't give a damn. If they took Stewart alive they wouldn't know what to do with her, and one way or the other Dragan would get his hands on her. And if they killed her.....that would be the end of that.
As for Yuriev's predictions: Dragan had some faith in them but it was by no means total. Yuriev insisted that the future couldn't be changed. Dragan thought differently. One of them must be right but they must wait until tomorrow night to find out which one. In any case, the promised "trouble" at the Castillo Mikhailov might well turn out to be nothing to do with Molly Stewart after all; and so, until then at least, things must continue according to plan.
After passing on his information to the Castillo, Dragan had another drink---a stiff one, which was not his normal habit---and at last fell into his bed. Exhausted, he slept right though until mid-morning....
At 11:40 A.M. he parked his old Volga in a copse off the main road half a mile from the closest dacha, turned up the collar of his overcoat and walked the rest of the way into Dechny precinct. Just before noon he turned off a track inches deep in sow and walked through a strip of woodland lying parallel to the river, until he came to Semnyonovich's dacha. Smiling grimly, he went quickly along the paved path to the door and knocked gently on the rustic oak panels. While he waited, he sniffed at wood smoke where it hung in the bitter cold air. The fine hairs inside his nostrils crackled, but melting icicles where they hung from Semnyonovich's roof told him that already the temperature was rising. Soon the snow would melt and Dragan's footprints would disappear; there would be nothing to connect him with this place.
There came slow footsteps from within and the door cracked open. Pale, shaggy and red-eyed, Katin Semnyonovich peered out, blinked in the gray light of day. "Dragan?" he frowned darkly. "But I said I wasn't to be disturbed. I...."
"Comrade General," Dragan cut in, "if it wasn't a matter of the utmost urgency...."
Semnyonovich stepped aside, opened the door wider. "Come in, come in," he grumbled, but without his accustomed fire. He'd been alone here for a week; he no longer seemed robust; his grief was very real and had left him old and tired. All of which suited Dragan very well indeed.
He entered, followed the other down a short corridor and through hanging curtains into the small, pine-paneled room where Ludmilla Semnyonovich lay silently in her shroud. The woman had been a peasant, pleasant enough in life but plain and dowdy in death. Like a stout, badly made candle she lay there, the wax of her face wrinkled, the wick of her hair coarse and sparse. Semnyonovich patted her cold face and bowed his head as he turned away. But he couldn't hide a very real tear glittering in the corner of his eye.
Now he led Dragan through into the more familiar living-cum-dining room and offered him a seat close to a window. The rest of the dacha's windows were shuttered but this one's shutters stood open, letting in the light. With a silent shake of his head, Dragan declined to sit, watched Semnyonovich flop heavily down on a padded couch. "I'd rather stand," the necromancer said. "This won't take long."
"A flying visit?" Semnyonovich grunted, scarcely interested. "You might have waited, Dragan. Tomorrow they take my Ludmilla away from me, and then I return to Moscow and the Castillo Mikhailov. What is it that brings you here so urgently anyway? You told me that your trip to England was successful."
"And so it was," said Dragan. "But something has come up since then."
"What?"
"Comrade General," said Dragan, "Katin, I want you to ask no questions just yet but simply tell me something. Do you remember a conversation we once had, you and I, regarding the future of E-Branch? You said that one day you would decide who would take over from you when you----retired. Also, you said the decision would lie between myself and Boleslaw Yuriev."
Semnyonovich drew his brows together, stared at Dragan disbelievingly. "So that's why you're here!" he growled. "A matter of the utmost urgency, is it? You think I'm ready to step down, do you? Or maybe you think it's time I stepped down! Now that Ludmilla's gone, maybe I'll consider retiring, eh?" He sat up straighter, his eyes flashed something of the fire Dragan was accustomed to seeing in them. Except that the necromancer no longer stood in awe of the man.
"I said you should ask no questions," he reminded, a low, dark rumble in his voice. "I am the one who seeks answers, Katin. Now tell me: who do you decide would be your replacement? Indeed, have you decided? And if so, have you made a record of your decision?"
Semyonovich was shocked, outraged. "You dare....?" he scowled, his eyes bulging. "You dare.....? You forget yourself, Dragan. You forget who I am and where you are. And apparently you forget---or choose to ignore the fact---that I am recently bereaved! Well, damn you, Dragan! But in answer to your questions: no, I have committed nothing to paper---there's nothing to commit for I'll be going on as head of E-Branch for a long time yet, I assure you. Moreover, even if I had chosen a successor, as of this moment you could erase from your mind any thoughts of yourself in that position!" He stood up, shaking with rage. "Now get your damn ass out of here! Get out before I....."
Dragan took off his dark, wide-rimmed spectacles.
Semnyonovich looked at Dragan's face and was suddenly staggered by the massive metamorphosis taken place in him. Why, it hardly seemed like Dragan at all standing there but someone else entirely. And those eyes---those incredible scarlet eyes!
"I am retiring you, Katin," Dragan rumbled. "But you don't go empty-handed. Not after so many years of faithful service." He crouched down into himself, his shoulders and back seeming to bunch up with a horrific life of their own.
"Retiring me?" Semynovich tried to back away from Dragan but couch was right behind him. "You? Retiring me?"
Dragan nodded, opened his long jaws and smiled, displaying fangs like scythes. "We've got a small retirement gift for you, Katin."
"We?" Semnyonvich croaked.
"Me and Sam Tabur," said Dragan. And in the next moment Semnyonovich looked into the face of hell itself!
Then----it was just like a mule kicking him in the chest. He flew backwards, his arms thrown wide, crashed into the wall and bounded off. Small shelves and pictures were brought crashing down. Semnyonovich fell, half-sprawling on the couch. He clutched at his chest, fought to take control of his rubber limbs and climb to his feet, gulped air to his straining lungs. His heart felt crushed---and if he didn't know how, at least he knew what Dragan had done to him.
Finally he struggled upright. "Dragan!' he held out wildly fluttering, pudgy hands towards the necromancer. "Dra---"
Again Dragan hurled his psychic bolt, and again.
Semnyonovich was swatted like a fly by the first blast, knocked over backwards on the couch. He actually managed to sit up, to finish the final word he would ever speak, before the second blast hit him: "---gan!"
Then it was done. The ex-boss of E-Branch sat there, upright, dead as a doornail, showing all the signs of a heart attack.
"Classic!" Dragan grunted his approval.
He glanced around the room. The door of a corner cupboard stood open, displaying a battered old typewriter on a shelf with papers, envelopes and other items of stationary. He quickly carried the machine to a table, inserted a blank sheet of paper, began to type laboriously:
I feel unwell. I think it's my heart. Ludmilla's death has affected me badly. I think I'm finished. Since I've not yet nominated another to carry on my work, I do so now. The only man who can be trusted to carry on where I leave off is Vladimir Dragan. He is completely loyal to the USSR, and especially to the aims and welfare of the Party Leader.
Also, if as I fear the end is coming, I want my body put in Dragan's care. He knows my wishes in this respect....
Dragan grinned as he rolled the typewritten sheet up a space or two. He read over the note, took up a pen and scrawled "K. S." as neatly as possible in the style of Semnyonovich at the end of the final line, then dusted the keys with his handkerchief where he'd touched them and carried the machine to the couch. Sitting down beside the dead man, he took his hands and laid his fingers briefly on the keys. And all the time Semnyonovich watching him through sightless, popping eyes.
"All done, Katin," said Dragan as he took the typewriter back to the table. "I'm going now, but I'll not say goodbye just yet. After they find you we'll be meeting again, eh, at the Castillo Mikhailov? And what price your innermost secrets than Katin Semnyonovich?"
It was 12:25 P.M. when he let himself out of the silent cabin in the trees and backtracked to his car.
Since it was a Saturday there were fewer people about than one would usually find at the Castillo Mikhailov, but as the guards on the outer wall checked Dragan through, so they sent word of his arrival ahead of him. At the central cluster of buildings the Duty Offficer awaited him. Wearing the Castillo's uniform of gray overalls with a single diagonal yellow strip across the heart, he came breathlessly forward to greet Dragan where he parked his Volga in its designated space.356Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvluCQd3w5M
"Good news, Comrade!" he declared, walking with Dragan through the complex and holding a door open for him. "We have word of this British agent, this Molly Stewart, for you."
Dragan at once grabbed him by the shoulder, his grip like a vice. The other carefully disengaged himself, stared curiously at Dragan. "What's wrong, Comrade?"
"If we've got Stewart, nothing," Dragan growled. "No, nothing at all. But you're not the man I spoke to last night?"
"No, Comrade. He has gone off duty. I read his log, that's all. And of course I was here this morning when word of Stewart came in."
Dragan looked more closely at the speaker. He saw him remotely. Thin and slope-shouldered, a typical nothing to look at----and yet puffed up with his own importance. Not an ESPer, the Duty Officer was simply Senior Ground Staff. A good clerk, mainly, and efficient, but a bit too pompous----too smug and self-satisfied---for Dragan's liking.
"Come with me," he said coldly. "You can tell me all about Stewart as we go."
With the DO at his heels, Dragan loped easily through the Castillo's corridors and began climbing stairs towards Semnyonovich's private office complex. Finding it hard to keep up, the man said, "Slow down a little, Comrade, or I'll not have breath to tell you anything!"
Dragan kept going. "About Stewart," he snapped over his shoulder. "Where is she? Who has her? Are they bringing her here?"
"No one 'has' her, Comrade," the other puffed. "We merely know where she is, that's all. She's in East Germany, Leipzig. She got in through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin---as a tourist! And no attempt to hide her identity, apparently. Very odd. She's been in Leipzig for three or four days now. Seems to have spent most of her time there in a graveyard! Obviously she's waiting for a contact."
"Oh?" Dragan came to a brief halt, glared at the other, sneered at him. "Obvious, did you say? Let me tell you, Comrade, that nothing is obvious about that woman! Now, quickly, come into my office and I'll give you some instructions."
A moment later and the DO followed Dragan into the antechamber of Semnyonovich's suite. "Your office?" he gaped.
Behind his desk, Semnyonovich's secretary, a young man with thick-lensed spectacles, thin eyebrows and a prematurely receding hairline looked up, startled. Dragan jerked his thumb towards the open door. "You, out! Wait outside. I'll call you when I want you."
"What?!" bewildered, the man stood up. "Comrade Dragan, I must protest! I...."
Dragan reached across the desk, grabbed the man by the left cheek of his face and dragged him bodily across the desk top, scattering pens and pencils everywhere. Amidst a squall of muted, pained squawkings, he whirled him toward the open door and aimed a kick at his backside as he let him go. "Protest to Katin Semnyonovich next time you see him," he snapped. "Until then obey my orders or I'll have you shot!"
He continued through into Semnyonovich's old office, the DO trembling as he followed on behind. Without pause Dragan lowered himself into Semnyonovich's chair behind his desk, continued to glare at the DO. "Now, who's watching Stewart?"
Completely overawed, the DO stuttered a little before settling down. "I----I---we---the GREPO," he finally got it out. "The Grenzpolizei, the East German Border Police."
"Yes, yes---I know who the GREPO are," Dragan scowled. Then he nodded. "Good! They're very efficient, I'm told. Right, these are my orders----on behalf of Katin Semnyonovich. Stewart is to be taken, alive if possible. That was what I ordered last night, and I hate to repeat myself!"
"But they had no holding charge, Comrade Dragan," the DO explained. "She's not listed, this Stewart, and thus far she's done nothing wrong."
"The charge is----murder," said Dragan. "She murdered one of our agents, a sleeper, in England. Anyway, she will be taken. If that proves difficult, the orders are to shoot her! I ordered that, too, last night."
The DO felt that he, personally, was being accused. He felt a need to make excuses: "But these are Germans, Comrade," he said. "Some of them like to believe that they still govern themselves, if you take my meaning."
"No," said Dragan, "I don't. Use the telephone next door. Get me the H.Q. of the Grenzpolizei in Berlin. I'll talk to them."
The DO stood gaping at him.
"Now!" Dragan snapped. And as the man scurried out he called after him: "And send in that dolt from outside."
When Semnyonovich's secretary entered Dragan said, "Sit. And listen. Until the Comrade General returns I'll be in charge. What do you know about the workings of this place?"
"Almost everything, Comrade Dragan," answered the other, still pale and frightened and holding his face. "The Comrade General left many things to me."
"Manpower?"
"What about it, Comrade Dra....?"
"Cut that out!" Dragan snapped. "No more 'Comrade,' it wastes time. Just call me Dragan."
"Yes----Dragan."
"Manpower," Dragan repeated. "What do we have here right now?"
"Here at the Castillo? Right now? A skeleton crew of ESPers, and maybe a dozen security men."
"Call-in system?"
"Oh, yes, Dragan."
"Good! I'll want at least enough men to make our numbers up to thirty. And I'll want them by 5:00 P.M.----at the very latest. I want our best telepaths and forecasters, including Boleslaw Yuriev, to be among them. Can that be done? Can we muster these men by 5:00 P.M.?"
The other immediately nodded. "In more than three hours? Oh, yes, Dragan. Definitely."
"Then get on with it!"
When he was alone Dragan settled back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He thought about what he was doing. If the East Germans took Stewart, especially if they killed her (in which case Dragan must make sure that he, personally, got hold of the corpse) that must surely cancel out the possibility of Stewart's being part of tonight's disturbance. Mustn't it? In any case it was tough to see how Stewart could possibly make it here, from Leipzig, in just a few hours. So maybe Dragan should be concentrating on some other eventuality----but what? Sabotage? Was the cold ESP war finally starting to heat up? Had his murdering Sir Arthur Gerrard lit some kind of slow fuse, laid perhaps a long time ago? But what could possibly harm the Castillo? The place was impregnable. Fifty Stewarts wouldn't make it over the outer wall!
Angry with himself, with the gradual buildup of tension inside him, Dragan forced Stewart out of his mind. No, the threat must come from somewhere else. He gave a little more thought to the Castillo's fortifications.
Dragan had never fully understood the need to fortify the Castillo, but now he was glad indeed for its defenses. Of course, old Semnyonovich had been a soldier long before he had started E-Branch; he was an expert strategist, and doubtless he'd had his reasons for insisting on this degree of security. But here, right next door to Moscow itself? What had he feared? Insurgency? Trouble from the KGB, maybe? Or was it just one of the old man's hangups from his political or military feuding days?
Not that this was the only fortified place in the Soviet Union, far from it. The space centers, nuclear and plasma research stations, and the chemical and biological warfare labs at Berezov were all security hotspots, tight as proverbial drums.
Dragan scowled. How he wished he had Semnyonovich here now, downstairs in his operating room, stretched out on a steel table with his guts hanging open and all the secrets of his soul laid bare. Ah, well, and that too would come to pass---when they finally found the old bastard's body!
"Comrade Dragan!" the DO's voice calling from next door shattered his thoughts to shards. "I have GREPO HQ in Berlin for you. I'm putting them through now."
"Good," he called back. " And while I'm speaking to them there is something else you can do. I want the Castillo searched from top to bottom. Especially the cellars. To my knowledge there are rooms down there no one ever went into. I want the place turned inside out. Look for bombs, incendiary devices, for anything at all that looks suspicious. I want as many men on it as possible----especially the ESPers. Understood?"
"Yes, Comrade, of course."
"All right, now let me speak to those goddamn Germans."
It was 3:15 P.M. and Artic cold in the city cemetery in Leipzig.356Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNpnu9HavqX
Molly Stewart, her fur coat turned up around her ears and a flask of coffee (long empty) in her lap, sat frozen at the foot of August Ferdinand Mobius's grave and despaired. She had sought to apply her ESPer's mind---her "metaphysical" talent----to the equally conjectural properties of altered space-time and four-dimensional topology and failed. Intuition told her it was possible, that she could in fact take a Mobius trip sideways in time, but the mechanics of the thing were mountain-sized stumbling blocks that she just couldn't climb. Her instinctive or intuitive grasp of math and non Euclidean geometry wasn't enough. She felt a like a woman given the equation E = mc2 and then asked to prove it by producing a nuclear explosion---but with her mind alone! How does one go about turning unbodied numbers, pure math into physical facts? It's not sufficient to know that there are ten thousand bricks in a house; you can't build the house of numbers, you need the bricks! It was one thing for Mobius to send his unbodied mind out beyond the farthest stars, but Molly Stewart was a physical three-dimensional woman of living flesh and blood. And just suppose she succeeded and actually discovered how to teleport herself from "A" to some hypothetical "B" without physically covering the space between. What then? Where would she teleport herself to---and how would she know when she was there? It could prove as dangerous as stepping off a cliff to prove the law of gravity!
For days now she'd occupied her mind with the problem to the exclusion of almost everything else. She'd taken food, drink and sleep, yes, attending to all of Nature's needs, but to nothing else. And still the problem remained unsolved, space/time refused to warp for her, the equations stayed dark unfathomed squiggles on the now grubby, well-thumbed pages of her mind. A wonderful ambition, surely----to impose herself physically within a metaphysical frame---but how to go about it?
"You need a spur, Molly," said Mobius, wearily breaking in on her thoughts for what must be the fiftieth time in the last day or so. "Personally, I think that's all that remains. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, you know. So far you know what you want to do---and I for one believe you have the knack, the intuitive ability, even though you haven't found it yet----but you haven't a good enough reason for doing it! That's all you need now, the right spur. The prod that will make you take the final step."
Molly gave a mental nod of acknowledgment. "You're probably right," she said. "I know I will do it; it's just that I----haven't tried yet? It's something like giving up smoking: you can but can't. You probably will when it's too late, when you're dying of cancer. Except I don't want to wait that long! I mean, I have all the math, all the theory---I have all the ego, really, the intuition----but I haven't the need, not yet. Or the spur, if you like. Let me tell you what it feels like:
"I'm sitting in a well-lighted room with a window and a door. I look out the window and it's dark out there. It always will be. Not night but a stronger darkness that will last forever. It's the darkness of the spaces between the spaces. I know there are other rooms out there somewhere. My problems is that I don't have any directions. If I go out that door I'll be part of the darkness, surrounded by it. I might not be come in again, here or anywhere else. It's not so much that I can't go out but more than I don't want to think about what it's like out there. Actually, to know it's there is to know I can go out into it. I feel that the going will just be an extension of the other things I can do, but an untried extension. I'm a chicken in a shell, and I won't break out until I must!"
"Who are you talking to, Ms. Molly Stewart?" asked a voice that wasn't Mobius's, a flat, cold voice, as curious as it was emotionless.
"What?" Startled, Molly looked up.
There were two of them. It was obvious who or what they were. Even knowing nothing about spying or East/West politics, she would've recognized these two on sight. They chilled her more than the thin wind which now began to keen through the empty cemetery, blowing dead leaves and paper scraps along the aisles between the tombs.
One was very tall, the other short, but their dark-gray overcoats, their hats pulled down at the front and their narrow-rimmed spectacles were so uniform in themselves as to make them seem like twins. Certainly twins in their natures, in their thoughts, and in their petty ambitions. As plainclothesmen---policemen, probably political---they were quite unmistakable.
"What?" Molly said again, coming stiffly to her feet. "Was I talking to myself again? I'm sorry about that, I do it all the time. It's just a habit of mine."
"Talking to yourself?" the tall one repeated after her, and shook her head. "No, I don't think so." His accent was thick, his lips thin as his mirthless smile. "I think you were talking to someone else----probably to another spy, Molly Stewart!"
Molly backed away from them a pace or two. "I really don't know what...." she began.
"Where is your radio, Ms. Stewart?" said the short one. He came forward, kicked at the dirt of the grave where Molly had been sitting. "Is it here, buried in the soil, maybe? Day after day, sitting here, talking to yourself? You must think we're all fools!"
"Listen," Molly croaked, still backing away. "You've got me confused with someone else. Spy? That's crazy. I'm a tourist, that's all."
"Oh?" said the tall one. "A tourist? In the middle of winter? A tourist who comes and sits in the same graveyard day after day, to talk to himself? You can do better than that, Ms. Stewart. And so can we. We have it on good authority that you're a British agent, also that you're a murderer. So now, please, you will come with us."
"Don't go with them, Molly!" It was Arthur Gerrard's voice, coming from nowhere, unbidden to Molly's mind. "Run, girl, run!"
"What?" Molly gasped. "Gerrard? But how....?"
"Oh, Molly! My Molly!" cried her mother. "Please be careful!"
"What?" she said again, shaking her head, still backing away from the two men.
The small one produced handcuffs, said, "I must warn you, Ms. Stewart, against resistance. We are counterespionage officials of the Grenzpolizei, and...."
"Hit him, Molly!" urged "Sergeant" Max Anderson in Molly's innermost ear. "You have the measure of both these Huns. You know the way. Do it to them before they do it to you. But watch it---they're armed!"
As the short one took three quick paces forward, holding out the handcuffs, Molly adopted a defensive stance. Also closing in, the tall one yelled: "What's this? You threaten violence? You should know, Molly Stewart, that our orders are to take you dead or alive!"
The short one made to snap the cuffs on Molly's wrists. At the final moment Molly slapped them aside, half-turned, lashed out with her heel at the end of a leg stiffened into a bar of solid bone. The blow took the short one in the chest, snapped ribs, drives him backwards into his tall colleague. Screaming his agony, he fell to the ground.
"You can't win, Molly!" Gerrard insisted. "Not this way!"
"He's right," said Evie Elizabeth Wilson. "This is your last chance, Molly, and you have to take it. Even if you stop these two there'll be others. This isn't the way. You have to use your talent, Molly. Your talent is bigger than you think. I didn't teach you anything about math---I only showed you how to use what was inside you. But your full potential remains untapped. Girl, you've got formulae I haven't even dreamed of! You yourself once said something like that to my son, remember?"
Molly remembered.
Strange equations suddenly flashed on the screen of her mind. Doors opened where no doors should be. Her metaphysical mind reached out and grasped the physical world, eager to bend it to her will. She could hear the felled plainclothesman screaming his rage and pain, could see the taller one reaching into his overcoat and drawing out an ugly, short-barreled weapon. But printed over this picture of the real world, the doors in the Mobius space-time dimension were there within reach, their dark thresholds beckoning.
"That's it, Molly!" cried Mobius himself. "Any one of them will do!"
"I don't know where they go!" she yelled out loud.
"Good luck, Molly!" shouted Gerrard, Anderson and Wilson, almost in unison.
The gun in the tall agent's hand spouted fire and lead. Molly twisted, felt a hot breath against her neck as something snatched angrily at the collar of her fur coat. She whirled, leaped, drop-kicked the tall man and felt deep satisfaction as her feet crashed into face and shoulder. The man went down, her weapon clattering to the hard ground. Cursing and spitting blood and teeth, he scrambled after it, grasped it in two hands, came up into a stumbling crouch.
Out of the corner of her eye, Molly spied a door in the Mobius strip. It was so close that if she reached out her hand she could touch it. The tall agent snarled something incomprehensible, swung his gun in Molly's direction. Molly knocked it aside, grabbed the man's sleeve, tugged him off balance and swung him....
----Through the open door.
The German agent was----no longer there! From nowhere, an awful, lingering, slowly fading scream came echoing back. It was the cry of the damned, of a soul lost forever in ultimate darkness.
Molly listened to that cry and shuddered----but only for a moment. Over and above it as it dwindled, she heard shouted instructions, the crunch of running feet on gravel. Men were coming, dodging between the tombstones, converging on her. She knew that if she was going to use the doors, it had to be now. The injured agent on the ground was holding a gun in hands that trembled like jelly. His eyes were impossibly round for he'd seen----something! He was no longer sure if he dared pulled the trigger and shoot at this woman.
Molly didn't give him a chance to think it over. Kicking his gun away, he paused for one final split-second and let the screens in her mind display once more their fantastic formulae. The running men were closer; a bullet whined where it struck sparks from marble.
Printed over Mobius's headstone, a door floated out of nowhere. That was appropriate, Molly thought---and she made a headlong dive.
On the cold earth, the crippled East German agent watched her go, disappearing into the stone!
Panting man came together in a knot, skidding to a halt. All held guns extended forward, ready. They stared about, searched with keen, cold eyes. The crippled agent pointed. He lay there with his broken ribs and drained white face and pointed a trembling finger at Mobius's headstone. But for the moment, stunned to his roots, he said nothing at all.
The keening wind continued to blow.
By 4:45 P.M. Dragan knew the worst of it. Molly Stewart was alive: she had not been taken but had somehow contrived to make her escape; what means she had employed in that escape were unknown, or at best the accounts were garbled and not worth trusting. But one agent was missing believed dead and another seriously injured, and now the East Germans were making angry noises and demanding to know just who or what they were dealing with. Well, let them demand what they would----Dragan only wished he knew what he was dealing with!
Anyway, the problem was his now and time was fleeting. For there could no longer be any doubt but that Stewart was coming here, and coming tonight? How? Who could say? When, exactly? That, too, remained impossible to measure. But of one thing Dragan was absolutely sure: come she would. One woman, hurling herself against a small army! Her task was impossible, of course----but Dragan knew of the existence of many things which ordinary men considered impossible....
Meanwhile, the Castillo's emergency call-in system had worked well. Dragan had all the men he had asked for and half-a-dozen more. They manned machine-gun posts on the outer walls, similar batteries in the outbuildings, also the fortified pillboxes built into the buttresses of the Castillo itself. ESPers "worked" down below in the laboratories, in surroundings best suited to their various abilities and talents, and Dragan had turned Semnyonovich's offices into his tactical HQ.
The Castillo had been searched, as per his orders, top to bottom; but as soon as he had learned of Stewart's escape he'd called a halt to that; he had known where the trouble must originate. By then the lower vaults of the place had been explored to the full, floorboards and centuried flagstones had been ripped up in the older buildings, the foundations of the place had been laid bare almost down to the earth itself. Three dozen men can do a lot of damage in three hours, particularly when they've been told that their lives may well depend on it.
But what enraged Dragan most of all was the thought that all of this was on account of just one woman, Molly Stewart, and that utter chaos had been forecast in her name. Which meant quite simply that Stewart wielded an awesome power of destruction. But what was it? Dragan knew she was the Mollyscope---so what? Also, he'd seen a dead thing rise up from a river and come to his aid. But that had been her mother and the location had been Scotland, thousands of miles away. There was nobody here to fight Stewart's battles for her.
Of course, if Dragan was so worried by all of this he could always flee the place (the trouble was scheduled for the Castillo Mikhailov and nowhere else), but that just wouldn't be in his own interest. Not only would it smack of cowardice, it wouldn't fulfill Boleslaw Yuriev's prediction---his prediction that the vampire in Dragan would die this night. And that was one prediction Vladimir Dragan desired fulfilled above all others. Indeed it was his ambition, while his mind was still his own to crave for it!
As for Yuriev himself---the call-in squad had found a note at his place which explained his absence, a note intended for his fiancée. Yuriev would call for her soon, the note said, from the West. Dragan had been delighted to put out the traitor's description to all relevant points of egress. Nor had he given him any quarter: she was to be shot on sight, in the name of the security of the mighty Soviet Union.
So much for Yuriev, and yet---would he have fared any better here? Dragan wondered about that. Had he, Dragan, terrified Yuriev that much, or had it been something else he'd fled from?
Something he'd seen approaching, maybe, out of the very near future.
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