THE FIRST FRIDAY IN SEPTEMBER, 1977.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxc5ucMxqbP
11:00 P.M.
In Liomata Harry Moradian and Alan Picardi were hurrying through rain-slick cobbled alleys toward their rendezvous with Alik Morozov at a dive called Sagoma.
But seven hundred miles away in Devon, England, the time was 10:00 p.m. on a sultry Indian summer evening. At Hartley House, Dragos Matei lay naked on his back on the bed in his spacious garret room and considered the events of the last few days. In many ways they'd been very satisfactory days, but they had been fraught with danger, too. He had not known the extent of his influence before, for the people at school and later Cornelia had all been weak and hardly provided suitable yardsticks. The Williamses had been the first true test, and Dragos had sailed through that with very little difficulty.
John Williams had been the only real obstacle, but even that had been an accidental encounter, when Dragos wasn't quite ready for him. The youth smiled a slow smile and gently touched his shoulder. There was a dull ache there now, but that was all. And where was "Uncle John" now? He was down in the vaults with his wife, Zoe, that's where. Down where he belonged, with Vlad standing guard at on the door. Not that Dragos believed that to be absolutely necessary: it was a precaution, that's all. As for the Other: that had left its vat, gone into hiding in the earth where the cellars were darkest.
Then there was Dragos's "mother," Cornelia. She was in her room, lost in self-pity, in her permanent state of terror. As she had been for the last year, since the time he did it to her. If she hadn't cut her hand that time it might never have happened. But she had, and then shown him the blood. Something had happened to him then---the same thing that happened every time he saw blood---but on this occasion it'd been different. He'd been unable to control it. When he had bandaged her hand, he'd deliberately let something---something of himself, get into the wound. Cornelia hadn't seen it, but Dragos had. He had made it.
She had been ill for a long time, and when she recovered----well, she had never really recovered. Not fully. And Dragos had known that it had grown in her, and that he was its master. She had known it too, which was what horrified her.
His "mother," yes. Actually, Dragos had never considered her his mother at all. He had come out of her, he knew that, but he'd always felt that he was more the son of a father---but not a father in the conventional sense of the word. The son of----something else. Which was why this evening he had asked her (as he'd asked her a hundred times before) about George Matei, and about the way he died, and where he died. And to make sure he got the entire story in every last detail, this time he'd hypnotized her into the deepest possible trance.
And as Cornelia had told him how it had been, so his mind had been lured east, across oceans and mountains and plains, over fields and cities and rivers, to a place which had always existed in the innermost eye of his mind: a place of hills and woods and---and yes, that was it! A place of low wooded hills in the shape of a cross. The cruciform hills. A place he would have to visit. Very soon....
He would have to, for that's where the answer lay. He was in thrall to that place as much as the rest of them in the house were in thrall to him, which was to say totally. And the strength of its seduction was just as great. It was a strength he had not realized until John had come back. Back from his grave at Blaydon cemetery, back from the dead. At first that had been a shock----then an all-consuming curiosity-----finally a revelation! For it had told Dragos what he was. Not who he was but what. And certainly he was more than just the son of George and Cornelia Matei.
Dragos knew that he was not wholly human, that a large part of him was utterly inhuman, and the knowledge thrilled him. He could hypnotize people to his will, whatever he wanted. He could produce new life, or a sort, out of himself. He could change living beings, people, into creatures like himself. Oh, they didn't have his strength, his weird talents, but that was all to the good. The change made them his slaves, made him their undisputed master.
More, he was a necromancer: he could open up dead bodies and learn the secrets of their lives. He knew how to prowl like a cat, swim like a fish, savage like a dog. The thought had occurred to him that given wings he might even fly---like a bat. Like a vampire bat!
Beside him on a beside table lay a hardback book titled Vampires! Fact and Fiction. Now he reached out a slender hand to touch its cover, trace the figure of a bat in flight impressed into the black binding cloth. Absorbing, certainly---but the title was a lie, as were the contents. Most of the alleged fiction was fact (Dragos was the living proof), and some of the supposed fact was fiction.
Sunlight, for instance. It didn't kill. It might, if he should ever be foolish enough to stretch himself out in a sheltered cove in midsummer for more than a minute or two. It must be some kind of chemical reaction, he thought. Photophobia was common enough even among ordinary men. Mushrooms grow best under a covering of straw through foggy, late September nights. And he'd read somewhere that in Cyprus one can find the selfsame edible species, except they never break the surface. They push up the parched earth until cracks appear, which tell the locals where to find them. They didn't much care for sunlight, mushrooms, but it wouldn't kill them. No, Dragos was wary of the sun but not afraid of. It was a question of being careful, that's all.
As for sleeping through the day in a coffin full of native soil: sheer fallacy. He did occasionally sleep during the day, but that was because he often spent much of the night deep in thought, or prowling the estate. He preferred night, true, because then, in the darkness of the moonlight, he felt closer to his source, closer to understanding the real nature of his being.
Then there was the vampire's lust for blood: false, at least in Dragos's.case. Oh, the sight of blood aroused him, did things to him internally, working him into a frenzy, but drinking it from a victim's veins was hardly the delight described in the various fictions. He did like rare meat, however, and plenty of it, and had never been much of a fan of greens. On the other hand, the thing Dragos had grown in the vat in the cellar, that had thrived on blood! On blood, flesh, anything living or dead. On flesh or the red juice of flesh, alive or dead! It didn't need to eat, Dragos new, but it would if it could. It would have absorbed John, too, had ne not been there to stop it.
The Other----Dragos shuddered deliciously. It knew him for its master, but that was its sum total of knowledge. He'd grown it from himself, and remembered how that had come about:
Just after he'd been expelled from school, the first of what he had always supposed to be his adult teeth had come loose. It was a back tooth and painful. But he wouldn't see a dentist. Working and worrying at it, one night he'd broken the thread. And he'd examined the tooth closely, finding it curious that this was part of himself which had been shed. White bone and a thread of gristle, the red root. He'd put it in a saucer on the window ledge of his bedroom. But in the morning he heard it clatter to the floor. The core had put out tiny white rootlets, and the tooth was dragging itself like a hermit crab out of the morning light.
Dragos's teeth, except the back ones, had always been sharp as knives and chisel-tipped, but human teeth for all that. Certainly not animal teeth. The one which had pushed out the lost one was anything but human. It was a fang. Since then most of his teeth had been replaced, and the new ones were all fangs. Especially the eye-teeth. His jaws had changed too, to accommodate them.
Sometimes he thought: Perhaps I'm the cause of this change in myself. Maybe I'm making it happen. Willing it. Mind over matter. Because I'm evil.
Cornelia had used to say that to him sometimes, tell him he was evil. That was when he was small and she still had a measure of control over him, when he'd done things she didn't like. When he'd first started to experiment with his necromancy. Ah, but there'd been many things she hadn't like since then!
Cornelia---"mother"---terror-stricken chicken penned with a fox cub, watching him grow sleek and strong. For as Dragos had grown old, so the element of control had changed, passed into his hands. It was his eyes: he only had to look at her with those eyes of his and---and she was powerless. The teachers and pupils at his school, too. And with use, so he'd become expert in hypnotism. Practice makes perfect. To that extent, at least, the book was right: the vampire is quite capable of mesmerizing his prey.
But what about mortality---or immortality, undeath? That was still a puzzle, a mystery, but it was one he'd soon resolve. Now that he had John there was very little he couldn't resolve. For John was still in large part a man. Returned from the grave, undead, yes, but his flesh was still human flesh. And that which was inside him couldn't have grown very large in such a short time. Unlike the Other, which had had plenty of time.
Dragos had, of course, experimented with the Other. His experiments had told him very little, but it was better than nothing. According to the fiction, vampires were supposed to succumb to the sharpened stake. The Other ignored the stake, seemed immune to it. Trying to stake it was like trying to leave an imprint upon water. The Other could be solid enough at times: it could form teeth, rudimentary hands, even eyes. But in the main its tissues were protoplasmic, gelatinous. And as for putting a stake through its "heart" or cutting off its "head".....
And yet it wasn't indestructible, it wasn't immortal. It could die, could be killed. Dragos had burned part of it in an incinerator down here in the cellars. And by God---if there was a God, which Dragos doubted-----it hadn't like that! He was perfectly sure the wouldn't have liked it himself. And that was a thought which occasionally worried him: if ever he were discovered, if men found out what he was, would they try to burn him? He supposed they would. But who could possibly find him out? And if someone did, who would believe it? The police weren't much likely to listen to a story about vampires, now were they? On the other hand, what with the local "satanic cult," maybe there were!
Again he smiled his awful smile. It was funny now, but it hadn't been at all funny when the police came knocking at the door the day after John returned. He had very nearly made a serious mistake then, had gone too quickly on his guard, on the defensive. But of course they'd put his nervousness down to the recent loss of his "uncle." If only they'd been able to know the truth, that in fact John Williams was right under their feet, whining and shivering in the cellars. And even so, what could they have done about it? It was hardly Dragos's fault that John wouldn't lie still, was it?
And that was another part of the legend which was a fact: that when a vampire killed a victim in a certain way, then that victim would return as one of the undead. Three nights John had lain there, and on the fourth he'd clawed his way out. A mere man buried alive could not ever have done it, but the vampire in him had given John all the strength he needed and more. The vampire which had been part of the Other, which had put one of its pseudoheads into him and stopped John's heart. The Other, which had been part of Dragos, in fact, Dragos's tooth.
What a torn and bloodied state John had been in when Dragos opened the door to him that night. And how the house had rung to his demented sobbing and shrieking, until Dragos had grown angry with him, told him to be quiet and locked him in the cellar. And there he stayed.
Dragos watched the silver light of the moon creeping through a crack in his curtains, channeled his thoughts anew. What had he been recounting? Ah, yes, the police.
They had come to report a shocking crime, the illegal opening of John Williams's grave by person or persons unknown, and the theft of his corpse. Was Mrs. Williams still residing at Hartley House?
Why, yes she was, but she was still suffering from the shock of her husband's death. If it wasn't absolutely necessary that they see her, Dragos would prefer to break the news to her himself. But who could have perpetrated such a dastardly crime?
POLICE: "Well, sir, we do believe we've got one o' them there cults at work here in these bloody parts, despoiling graveyards and the like and holding, uh, sabbats? Druids or some such rubbish. Satan worshippers, y'know? But this time they've gone too far! Don't you worry, sir, we'll catch 'em in the end. But do break it easy to his missus, all right?"
DRAGOS: "Of course, of course. And thank you for bringing us this news, terrible though it is. I surely don't envy you your job."
POLICE: "All in a day's work, sir. Sorry we've nothing good to report, that's all. Good night to you...."
And the rest was history.
But again he had strayed, and once more he was obliged to focus his thoughts back on the "legend" of the vampire. Mirrors: vampires hated mirrors because they had no reflections. False---and yet in also true. Dragos did have a reflection; but sometimes, looking in a glass, especially at night, he saw far more than others could see. For he knew what he was looking at, that it was something alien to man. And he had wondered, if others saw him like that, reflected in a glass, would they too see the real thing, the monster inside of the man?
And lastly there was the vampire's lust, the way he sated himself on women. Now Dragos had tasted the blood---and more than the blood----of women, and had found it rich as deep red wine. It excited him as all blood died, but not so much that he'd glut himself on it. Zoe, Cornelia and Penelope---he'd tried the blood of all three. And certainly in good time, he'd try the blood of many more.
But his attitude toward taking blood puzzled him. If he were a true vampire, surely blood would be the driving force of his life. And yet it wasn't. Perhaps his metamorphosis wasn't yet complete. Maybe, as the change waxed in him, so the human part would wane, disappear altogether. And then he'd become a vampire full-blown. Or full-blooded?
Lust, yes----but there was more to lust than mere blood-lust. Much more. And little wonder the women in the fiction succumbed so readily to the vampire's charms. Especially after the first time. Hah! What woman had ever truly felt fulfilled in the arms of a man? Not one! They only thought they had because they didn't know better. What, "fulfilled? Filled full? By a mere man? Utterly impossible! But by a vampire.....
Dragos turned a little to his side and gazed in the moon-pierced darkness of his room at the girl beside him. Cousin Penelope. She was very beautiful and had been very innocent. Not quite pure, but very nearly. Who was it took her virginity----but what did that matter? In fact he had taken nothing, and he had given very little. They'd been fumbling lovers for one hour.
But now? Now she knew what it was to be "fulfilled." Indeed, she knew that if Dragos willed it he could fill her to bursting---literally!
A chuckle rose in his throat, formed on his lips like a bubble of bile. Oh, yes, for the Other wasn't the only one who could put out pseudopod extensions of himself! Dragos held back the laughter he felt welling up inside, reached out a hand and with a deceptive gentleness stroked Penelope's cool, rounded flank.
Even deeply asleep and dreaming the dreams of the damned, still she shuddered under the touch of his hand. Gooseflesh appeared and her breathing rapidly mounted to a moaning pant. She whined in her hypnotic sleep like a thin wind through a cracked board. Her hypnotic sleep, yes. The power of hypnotism, and that of telepathy which was its kin.
Nowhere in literature---except for the occasional hint in some of the better fictions---had Drago discovered mention of the vampire's control of others by will and the reading of minds at a distance; and yet this, too, was one of his powers. It was very inchoate as yet, as were all his talents, but it was also very real. Once touched by Dragos, once invaded by him physically, then his victim was an open book to him, even from a distance. Even now, if he reached out his mind in a certain way----there1 Those were the dull, vacuous "thoughts" of the Other. No, not even that: he had merely touched upon the Other's instinctive sense of being, a sort of basic animal awareness. The Other was aware of himself---itself?---in much the same way as an amoeba is aware; and because it'd been part of him, Dragos could sense that awareness.
Now that he'd taken or used Penelope, Cornelia, John and Zoe, why, he could sense all of them! He let his exterior thoughts leave the Other and wander, and---and there was Cornelia, asleep in some cold, damp corner down there in the dark. And there, too, was John. Except that John was not asleep.
John. Dragos knew he would soon have to do something about John. He wasn't behaving as he should. There was an obstinacy in him. Oh, he'd been completely under Dragos's control in the beginning, just like the women. But just recently....
Dragos focused on John's mind, wormed his way silently into his thoughts and----a pit of black hatred dotted with flashes of red rage! Lust, too----a bestial lust Dragos could scarcely believe----and not just for blood but also----revenge?
Frowning, Dragos withdrew his mind before John could sense him. Obviously he'd have to deal with the uncle sooner than he'd thought. He'd already decided to make use of him----knew how he would use him---but now he must set a definite date on it. Like tomorrow. He left the unsuspecting, undead creature raging and prowling the cellars, and....
What was that?
Hair prickling at the nape of his neck, Dragos swung his legs down to the floor and stood up. It hadn't been one of the women, and he'd only just left John, so who had it been? Someone close by was thinking thoughts about Hartley House, thoughts about Dragos himself! He went to the curtains, opened them six inches, stared anxiously out at the night.
Out there, the estate. The old derelict buildings, gravel path, shrubbery and copse; the high perimeter wall and gate; the road beyond the gate, a ribbon of light under the moon, and beyond that a tall hedge. Dragos wrinkled his nose, sniffed suspiciously like a dog at a stranger. Oh, yes, a stranger---there! In the hedgerow, that glint of moonlight on glass, the dull red glow off a cigarette's tip. Someone in the shadow of the hedge, watching Hartley. Watching Dragos!
Now, knowing where to aim, he redirected his thoughts---and met the stranger's mind! But only for a moment, the merest instant of time. Then mental shutters came down like the jaws of a steel trap. The glint of spectacles or binoculars vanished, the cigarette's glow was extinguished, and the man himself, the merest shadow, was gone.
Vlad! Dragos commanded instinctively. Go, find him. Whoever he is, bring him to me!
And down in the brambles and undergrowth near the door to the vaults, where he lay half-asleep, Vlad at once came alert, turned his sensitive ears towards the drive and the gate, sprang up and set off at a loping run. Deep in his throat, a growl not quite a dog's growl rumbled like dull thunder.
Devon Phitts was doing the late shift on the Hartley Place. He was a psychic sensitive with a high degree of telepathic potential. Also, he was big on self-preservation. A freakish automatic talent, over which he had no conscious control, was always on guard to keep him "safe"; he was the opposite of accident prone and led a "charmed" life. Which on this occasion was just as well.
Phitts was young, only 25, but what he lacked in years he more than made up for in zeal. He would have made a perfect soldier, for his duty was his all. It was that duty which had kept him here in the vicinity of Hartley House from 5:00 till 11:00 p.m. And it was just on the spot of 11:00 p.m. that he saw the crack of the curtains widen a little in one of Hartley's dormer windows.
That by itself was nothing. There were five people in that house and God-knows-what-else, and no reason at all for it not to show signs of life. With a grimace, Phitts quickly corrected himself: sign of undeath? Fully briefed, he knew that Hartley's inhabitants were something other than they seemed. But as he adjusted his nite-lite binoculars on the window, suddenly there was something else, a realization that struck at Phitts like a bolt out of the blue.
He'd known, of course, that someone in there, probably the youth, was psychically endowed. That had been obvious for the last four days, ever since Phitts and the others first laid eyes on the place. To any half-talented sensitive the old house would reek of strangeness. And not just strangeness, evil! Tonight, as night fell, Phitts had sensed it growing stronger, the wash of dark emanations flowing from the house right past him, without touching, but as that dark figure had come into view behind the crack in the curtains, and as he'd focused his binoculars upon it....
.....Something had been there in his head, touching on the mind. A talent at least as strong as his own, probing his thoughts! But it wasn't the talent that surprised him----that was a game he'd played before with his colleagues at INTESP, where they'd practiced constantly to break in on one another's thoughts----it was the sheer unbridled animal animosity that caused him to gasp, draw back a little, slam the doors on his ESP-enriched consciousness. The gurgling black maelstrom bog of the invading mind.
And because he had set up defenses, so he failed to detect any hint of the physical threat, the orders Dragos had issued to the black Alsatian. He had failed, but his primary talent----the one no one as yet understood---wasn't failing him. It was 11:00 P.M. and his instructions were quite clear: he'd go back now to the temporary surveillance HQ at a hotel in Oakthwaite and make his report. The watch on the house would start again at 6:00 A.M. tomorrow, when a colleague of Phitts's would take it up. He tossed his cigarette down, ground it out under his heel, pocketed his nite-lites.
Phitts's car was parked in a layby where the hedge and fence were cut back 25 yards down the road. He was on the field side of the hedge. He put his hand on the top bar preparatory to climbing over to the road, then thought better of it. Though he didn't know it, that was his hidden talent coming into lay. Instead of climbing the fence, he hurried through the long grass at the edge of the field towards his car. The grass was wet where it whipped his trousers, but he ignored it. It saved time this way and he was in a hurry now, eager to be away from the place. Only natural, he supposed, considering what he'd just learned. And he hardly gave it a thought that by the time he got to his car he was almost running.
But it was then, as he fumbled the key into the lock and turned it, that he heard something else running: the faint scuff of padded feet slapping the road, the scrabble of claws as something heavy jumped the fence back there where he'd been standing. Then he was into the car, slamming the door behind him, eyes wide and heart thumping as he gazed back into the night.
And two seconds later, Vlad hit the car!
He hit so hard, with forepaws, shoulder and head, that the glass of the window in Phitts door was starred into a cobweb pattern. The impact had sounded like a hammer blow, and Phitts knew that one more charge like that would shatter the glass to fragments and leave him totally defenseless. But he'd seen who, or what, his assailant was, and he had no intention of sitting here immobile and just waiting for it to happen.
Phitts turned the key in the ignition, revved, reversed a skidding three feet to bring the bonnet free of overhanging branches. Vlad's second sprint, aimed again at Phitts's window, sent the dog sprawling on the bonnet directly in front of the windshield. And now the young esper saw just how lucky his escape had been. Out in the open---there was little he could have done about that!
Vlad's face was a savage black mask of hatred, a contorted, snarling, saliva-flecked visage of madness! Yellow eyes spotted with crimson pupils glared through the glass at Phitts with such a burning intensity that he almost fancied he could feel their heat. Then he was into first gear and skidding out onto the road.
As the car jerked and slowed forward, so the dog's feet were jolted from under him. He crashed over onto his side on the bonnet and was sent sprawling into the darkness of the hedgerow as Phitts straightened the car up and sent it careening along the road. In his rearview mirror, he saw the dog emerge from the hedge and shake itself, glaring after the speeding car. Then Phitts was round a bend and Vlad out of sight.
That wasn't something he felt sorry about. Indeed, he was still shaking when he switched off the car's engine in the hotel car park in Oakthwaite. Following which---he flopped back in his seat and wearily lit a cigarette, which he smoke right down to the cork tip before securing the car and going in to make his report.....
Sagoma was wall to wall sleazy. It was a place for habitual wharf-rats, prostitutes and their pimps, pushers and Liomatese low-life in general. And it was noisy. An old American juke-box, back in fashion, was blasting Little Richard's raw "Tutti Frutti" across the main room like a hurricane-force wind. There was no smallest corner of the place that escaped the music's blast, but in any one of the half-dozen arched alcoves you could at least hear yourself think. That was why Sagoma was so ideally suitable; you couldn't concentrate enough to hear anyone else think.
Harry Moradian and Alex Picardi, Alik Morozov and Eldar Polyakov, sat at a small square table with their backs to the protective alcove walls. East and West faced each other across their drinks. Curiously, on one side Harry and Alex drank vodka, and on the other Morozov and Polyakov sipped American beers.
Identifying each other had been the easiest thing in the world: in Sagoma, no one else fitted the prescribed picture at all. But personal appearance wasn't the only yardstick; for of course, even in the hubbub, the three sensitives were able to detect each other's psychic auras. They had made their acknowledgement with nods of their heads, picked their way with their drinks from the bar to an empty alcove. Certain of the club's regulars had given them curious glances: the hard men a little wary, narrow-eyed, the prostitutes speculative. They had not returned them.
Seated for a few moments, finally Morozov had opened the discussion. "I don't suppose you speaking my language," he said, his voice heavily but not offensively accented, "but I speaking yours. But badly. This is my friend Eldar." He tipped his head sideways a little to indicate his companion. "He know a little, very little, English. He not have ESP."
Moradian and Picardi glanced obediently at Polyakov. What they saw was a moderately handsome young man with close-cropped blond hair, gray eyes, hard-looking hands where they lay loosely crossed on the table, enclosing his drink. He seemed uneasy in his modern Western clothes, which weren't quite the right fit.
"That's true enough," Alex narrowed his eyes, turning back to Morozov. "He's not skilled that way, but I'm sure he has many other worthwhile talents," Morozov smiled thinly and nodded. He seemed a little sour.
Harry had been studying Morozov, committing him to memory. The Russian head of ESPionage was in his late thirties. He had thinning black hair, piercing green eyes and an almost gaunt, hollow face. He was of medium height, slimly built. A skinned rabbit, thought Harry. But his thin, pale lips were firm, and the high dome of his head bespoke a rare intelligence.
Morozov's impression of Harry was much the same: a man just a few years younger than himself, intelligent and talented. It was only the physical side of Harry that was different, which hardly mattered. Harry's hair was coal black and plentiful, naturally close-cropped, negro style. He was well fleshed, even a little overweight, but with his height that that barely showed. His eyes were brown as his hair, his teeth even and white in a too-wide mouth that sloped a little from left to right. In another face that might well be mistaken for cynicism, but not in Harry, Morozov thought.
Picardi, on the other hand, was more aggressive, but he probably had superb self-control. He would reach conclusions quickly, right or wrong. And he would probably act on them. He would act, and hope he'd done the right thing. But he wouldn't feel guilty if it turned out wrong. Also, there wasn't much emotion in Picardi. All of this showed in his face, his figure, and Morozov prided himself on reading character. Picardi was lithe, built like a cat. By no means massive, but he had that coiled spring look about him. Not nervous tension, just a natural ability to think and act fact. He had eyes of disarming blue that took in everything, a thin, even nose, and a forehead creased from frowning. He too was in his mid-thirties, thin on top, dark featured. And he had a talent. Morozov could tell that Picardi was extremely ESP-sensitive. he was a spotter.
"Oh, Eldar Polyakov has been trained...." Morozov finally answered, "---as my bodyguard. But not in your arts, or mine. He has not got that kind of mind. Indeed, of the four of us, I could argue that he is the only 'normal' man present. Which is unfortunate," ----now he stared accusingly at Harry...."for you and I were supposed to meet as equals, without, er, backup?"
At the moment the music went quiet, the rock'n'roll replaced by an Italian ballad.
"Morozov," said Harry, hard-eyed now and keeping his voice down, "we'd better get started on this. You're right, our deal was that the two of us should meet. We could each bring along a second. But no telepaths. What we have to say to each other we'll just say, without someone picking our thoughts. Alan isn't a telepath, he's a spotter, that's all. So we weren't cheating. And as far as your man here----er, Polyakov?---is concerned: Alan says he's clean, so you're not cheating either. Or you wouldn't appear to be---but your third man is something else!"
"My third man?" Morozov sat up straight, seemed genuinely shocked. "I have no..."
"Yes, you do," Alan cut in. "KGB. We've seen him. In fact, he's here in Sagoma right now."
That was news to Harry. He looked at Alan Picardi. "Are you sure?"
Picardi nodded. "Don't look now, but he's sitting in the corner over there with a Liomatese whore. He's changed his clothes, too, and looks like he's just off a ship. Not a bad cover---but I recognized him the moment we walked in here."
Out of the corner of his eye Morozov looked, then slowly shook his head. "I do not know him," he said. "Not to be surprised. I do not know any of them. I dislike---strongly! But---you are sure? How can you be so sure?"
Harry would have been caught on the hop, but not Alan. "We run the same kind of branch as the one you run, Comrade," he stated flatly. "Except we have the edge on you. We're better at it. He's KGB, all right."
Morozov's fury was obvious. Not against Picardi but the position in which he now found himself. "Intolerable!" he snapped. "Why, the Party Leader himself has given me his..." He half looked up, half turned towards the man indicated, a thickset barrel of a man in rough and ready suit and open-necked shirt. His neck must be at least as thick as Morozov's thigh! Fortunately he was looking the other way, talking to the prostitute.
Before Morozov could carry it any further, Harry said, "I believe you---that you don't know him. It was done behind your back. So sit down, act naturally. Anyway, it's obvious we can't talk here. Apart from the fact that we're being watched, it's too damned noisy. And Christ, for all we know there might even be someone listening in on us!"
Morozov abruptly sat down. He looked shocked, glanced nervously about. "Bugged?" He remembered how his old boss, Semnyonovich, had had a thing about electronic surveillance.
"We could be." Picardi gave a sharp nod. "This one either followed you here or he knew in advance where we were going to meet."
Morozov gave a snort. "This getting out of hand. I no good at this. What now?"
Harry looked at Morozov and knew he wasn't faking it. He grinned. "I'm not good at it either. Listen, I'm like you, Alik. I prognosticate. I don't know your word for it. I, er, foretell the future? I occasionally get fairly accurate pictures of how things are going to be. Do you understand?"
"Of course," said Morozov. "My talent almost exactly. Except I usually get warnings. So?"
"So I saw us getting along OK together. How about you?"
Morozov heaved a sigh of relief. "I also," he shrugged. "At least, no had warnings." Time was running out for the Russian and there were things he desperately needed to know, questions he must have answered. This Englishman might be the only one who could answer them. "So what we do about it?"
Picardi said, "Wait." He got up, crossed to the bar, ordered fresh drinks. He also spoke to the bartender. Then he came back with drinks on a tray. "When we get the nod from the bloke behind the bar we pile out of here fast," he said.
"Eh?" Harry was puzzled.
"Taxi," said Picardi, smiling tightly. "I've ordered one. We'll go to---the airport! Why not? On the way we can talk. At the airport we find a warm, comfortable place in the arrivals lounge and carry on talking. Even if our pal over there manages to follow us he won't dare get too close. And if he does show up we'll take a taxi somewhere else."
"Good," said Morozov.
Five minutes later their taxi came and all four exited at speed. Harry was last out. Looking back, he saw the KGB man rise slowly to his feet, saw his face twisting in anger and frustration.
In the taxi they talked, and at the airport. They started talking about twenty minutes before midnight and finished at 2:30 A..M. Harry did most of it, aided by Picardi, with Morozov listening intently and only breaking in here and there to confirm or ask for an explanation of something that had been said:
Harry began with these words:
"Molly Stewart was our best. She had talents no one ever had before. A lot of them. He told me everything I'm going to tell you. If you believe what I tell you, we can help you with some big problems you've got in Russia and Romania. In helping you, we'll also be helping ourselves, for we'll learn by experience. Now then, do you want to know about Semnyonovich and how he died? About Sam Tabur and how he died? About the---the fossil men, who wrecked the Castillo Mikhailov that night? I can tell you all of those things. More importantly, I can tell you about Dragan....."
And nearly three hours later he finished with these: "So, Dragan was a vampire. And there are more of them. You have them, and we have them. We know where at least one of yours is. Or if not a vampire, something a vampire left behind. Which could be just as bad. Whichever, it's got to be destroyed. We can help if you'll let us. Call it what you like---détente, while we deal with a mutual threat? But if you don't want our help, then you'll have to do the job yourself. But we'd like to help, because that way we might learn something. Face it, Alik, this is bigger than East-West political squabbling. We'd work together if it was a plague, wouldn't we? Drug trafficking? Ships in trouble at sea? Or course we would. And I'm admitting right here and now, our own problem back in England might be bigger than we know. The more we learn from you, the better our chances. The better all of our chances..."
Morozov had been quiet for a long time. At last he said: "You want to come to Soviet Union with me and....put this thing down?"
"Not the Soviet Union..." said Picardi. "Romania. That's still your territory."
"The two of you? Both the leader, and a high-ranking member of your E-Branch? Is that not to be the big risks?"
Harry shook his head. "Not from you. At least I don't think so. Anyway, we all have to start trusting someone somewhere. We've already started, so why not go all the way?"
Morozov nodded. "And afterwards, I perhaps come with you? See what kind problem you got?"
"Of course."
Morozov pondered it. "You tell me a lot," he said. "And you solve some big problems for me, maybe. But you not say where exactly this thing in Romania."
"If you want to go it alone," said Harry, "I'll tell you. Not exactly, for I don't know exactly, but close enough that you'll be able to find it. Working together we might do it a lot faster, that's all."
"Also," Morozov was still thinking it out, "you not say how you knowing all this. Hard to accept all I hear without I know how you know."
"Molly Stewart told me," said Harry.
"Stewart been dead long time now," said Morozov.
"Yes," Picard cut in, "but he she told us everything right up to the time she died."
"Ah?" Morozov drew breath sharply. "She was that good? Such talent in a telepath must be----very rare."
"Unique!" said Harry.
"And your lot killed her!" Picardi accused.
Morozov quickly turned to him. "Dragan killed her. And she killed Dragan---almost."
It was Harry's turn to gasp. "Almost? You mean.....?"
Morozov held up a hand. "I finish the job Steward began," he said. "I tell you about that. But first: you say Stewart in contact until the end?"
Harry wanted to say, she still is! But that was a secret best kept. "Yes," he answered.
"Then you can describe what happened that night?"
"Every detail," said Harry. "Would that satisfy you that the rest of what I've said it the truth?"
Morozov slowly nodded.
"They came out of the night and the falling snow," Harry began. "Zombies, men dead for 400 years, and Molly their leader. Bullets couldn't stop them, for they were already dead. Cut them down with machine-gun fire, and the bits kept right on coming. They got into your defensive positions, your pillboxes. They pulled the pins on grenades, fought with their old rusty weapons, their swords and axes. They were Tartars, fearless, and made more fearless by the fact that they couldn't die twice. Stewart wasn't just a telepath; amongst her other talents, she could also teleport! She did---right into Dragan's control room. She took a couple of her Tartars with her. That was where she and Dragan had it out, while in the rest of the Castillo...."
"....In the rest of the Castillo," Morozov took up the story, his face ghostly white, "it was....hell! I was there. I lived through it. A few others with me. The rest died---horribly! Stewart was----some kind of monster. She could call up the dead!"
"Not as big a monster as Dragan," said Harry. "But you were going to tell me what happened after Stewart died. How you finished off the job she started. What did you mean by that?"
"Dragan was a vampire," Morozov nodded, almost to himself. "Yes, you are right, of course." He got a hold of himself. "Look, Eldar here was with me when we clean up what was left of Dragan. Let me show you what happen when I remind him about that....and when I tell to him there are more of them." He turned to his companion, spoke to him rapidly in Russian.
They were sitting at a scruffy bar lit by flickering neon in the airport's almost deserted night arrivals lounge. The barman had gone off duty two hours ago and their glasses had stood empty since then. Polyakov's reaction to what Morozov had told him was immediate and vehement. He went white and drew back from his boss, almost falling from his barstool. And as Morozov finished speaking, so he slammed his empty beer glass down on the bar.
"Nyet, nyet!" he gasped his denial, his face working with an odd mixture of fury and loathing. And then, his voice gradually rising and growing shrill, he began a diatribe in Russian which would soon attract attention.
Morozov gripped his arm and shook him, and Polyakov's jabbering faded into silence. "Now I ask him if we accepting your help," Morozov informed. He spoke to the younger man again, and this time Polyakov nodded twice, rapidly, and his color began to return to normal.
"Da, da!" he gasped emphatically. His throat made a dry rattle as he added something else, unintelligible to the two Englishmen.
Morozov smiled humorlessly. "He says we should accept all the help we can get," he translated. "Because we have to kill these things---finish them! And I agreeing with him..." Then he told these strangest of allies all that had happened at the Castillo Mikhailov after Molly Stewart's war.
When he'd finished there was a long silence, broken at last by Picardi. "We're in agreement then? That we'll act together on this?"
Morozov nodded. He shrugged, said simply, "No alternative. And no time to waste."
Picardi turned to Harry. "But how do we go about it?"
"As far as possible," Harry answered, "we go the straightforward way. We get it all right up front, without any of the usual...." The airport tannoy broke in on him, echoing tinnily as some sleepy, unseen announcer requested in English that a Mr. H. Moradian please take a telephone call at the reception desk.
Morozov's face froze. Who would know that Moradian was here?
Harry stood up, shrugged apologetically. This was very embarrassing. It could only be "Green," and how to explain that to Morozov? Picardi, on the other hand, was his usual ready-for-everything self. Calmly he said to Morozov, "Well, you have your little bloodhound following you about. And now it would seem that we have one too."
Morozov gave a curt, sour nod. And with an edge of sarcasm, echoing Harry, he said, "Without any of the usual, eh? Did you know about this?"
"It's none of our doing." Picardi wasn't exactly truthful. "We're in the same boat as you."
"Eh?" Morozov had turned sour again. "We are followed, spied on, overheard, bugged, and you say is favorable?"
"I meant you and Moradian both having shadows," Picardi explained. "It evens the score. And maybe we can cancel out one with the other."
Morozov was alarmed. "I not being party to violence! Anything happen to that KGB dog, is possible I get the troubles."
"But if we could arrange for him to be, er, detained for a day or two? I mean, unharmed, you understand----completely unharmed----just detained....?"
"I not know."
"To give you time to clear our route into Romania. You know, visas, etcetera? With a bit of luck we'll be finished there in just a day or two."
Morozov nodded. "Maybe---but positive guarantee, no dirty work. He is KGB---you say---but if true, then he's Russian, too. And I am Russian. If he vanish...."
Picardi shook his head, grasped the other's elbow. "They both vanish!" he said. "But only for a few days. Then we'll be out of here and getting on with the job."
Again Morozov gave his slow nod. "Maybe---if it can be arranged safely."
Harry and Polyakov returned. Harry was careful. "That was somebody called Green," he said. "He's been watching us, evidently." He looked at Morozov. "He says your KGB tail has traced us and is on his way here. By the way, this GB fellow is well known----his name is Makar Alexeyeva."
Morozov shook his head, shrugged, looked mystified. "I never heard of him."
"Did you get Green's number?" Picardi was eager. "I mean can we contact him again?"
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Actually, yes," he nodded. "He said that if things were getting ugly, he might be able to ask. Why do you ask?"
Picardi grinned tightly, said to Morozov, "Comrade, it might be a good idea if you were to listen carefully. Since you're a little concerned about this, you can start working on an alibi. For from this point on you're hand in glove with the enemy. Your only consolation is that you'll be working against a greater enemy." The grin left his face, and deadly serious he said, "Okay, here's what I suggest...."
* * *
On Saturday morning at 8:30 Moradian phoned Morozov at his and Polyakov's hotel. The latter answered the call, grunted, fetched Morozov who came grumbling to the phone. He was just out of bed, could Harry call later? While this brief show was going on, downstairs in the Liomatese's lobby, Picardi was talking to Green. At 9:15 Moradian phoned Morozov again and arranged another meeting: they would meet outside Sagoma in an hour's time and go on from there.
There was nothing new in this arrangement; it was part of the plan worked out the night befeore: Moradian suspected that the phone in his room was now bugged and he just wanted to give Makar Alexeyeva plenty of advance warning. If Moradian's phone wasn't bugged, then Morozov's surely was, which could only work out the same way. Anyway, the psychic sixth senses of both Moradian and Picardi were playing up a little, which told them something was brewing.
Sure enough, when they left the Liomatese just before 10:00 A.M. and headed for the docks, they had a tail. Alexeyeva was keeping well back, but it could only be him. Moradian and Picardi had to admire his tenacity, for despite his rought night he was still very much the master-spy; now his attire was that of the shipyard worker, dark-blue coveralls and a heavy bag of tools, and the blue-black stubble of twenty-four hours' growth on his round, intense face.
"He must have a hell of a wardrobe, this bloke," said Moradian as he and Picardi approached the narrow, still slumbering streets of Liomata's dockland. "I'd hate to have carry his luggage!"
Picardi shook his head. "No," he answered, "I shouldn't think so. They'll probably have a safe house here and there's bound to be one of their ships in the harbor. Whichever, when he requires a change of clothing, they'll be the one's who'll fix it for him."
Moradian squinted at him out of the corner of his eye. "You know," he said. "I'm sure you'd have been better off in MI5. You've got a bent for it."
"It might make an interesting hobby," Picardi grinned. "Mundane spying, that is----but I'm happy where I am. The real talent's with INTESP. Now if our man Alexeyeva were an esper, then we could be in real trouble."
Moradian gave his companion a sharp glance, then relaxed. "But he's not or we'd have spotted him without Green's assistance. No, he's just one of their surveillance types, and damn good at his job. I've been thinking of him as something big, but this is likely the biggest assignment he's ever had."
"Which," Picardi grimly added, "with any luck, is just about to terminate a mite ingloriously. But I wouldn't be too sure he's small fry, if I were you. After all, he was big enough to show up on Green's firm's computer."
Alec Picardi was right: Makar Alexeyeva was not small fry, not in any sense of the word. Indeed, it was a measure of Yuri Andropov's "respect" for the Soviet E-Branch that he'd put Alexeyeva on the job. For Leonid Brezhnev would likely give Andropov a hard time if Morozov were to report to him that the KGB were interfering again.
Alexeyeva was in his early thirties, a native Siberian bred of a long line of Komsomol lumberjacks. He was the complete communist for whom little else existed but Party and State. He had trained, and later done some teaching in East Berlin, Bulgaria, Cuba and North Korea. He was also an expert in weapons (especially NATO weapons), also in terrorism, sabotage, interrogation and surveillance; as well as Russian , he could speak a broken Italian, descent German and English. But his real forte----indeed his penchant----lay in the field of murder. For Makar Alexeyeva was a cold-blooded killer.
Because of his compressed build, Alexeyeva might seem at a distance short and stubby. In fact he was five-ten and weighed in at almost sixteen stone. Heavy-boned, heavy-jowled under a moon face that supported a mop of uneven jet-black hair, Alexeyeva was "heavy" in all departments. His Japanese instructor at the KGB School of Martial Arts in Moscow used to say:
"Comrade, you are too heavy for this game. Because of your bulk, you lack speed and agility. Sumo wrestling would be more your style. On the other hand, very little of your weight is fat, and muscle is most useful. Since teaching you the disciplines of self-defense is probably a great waste of time. I shall therefore concentrate my instruction on ways of killing, for which I am assured you are not only physically but mentally best suited."
Now, closing in on his quarry as they entered the winding, labyrinthine streets and alleys close to the docks, Alexeyeva felt his blood rising and wished this were that kind of job. After last night's runaround he could happily murder these two! And it would be so easy. They seemed utterly obsessed with this most seamy side of the city.
Thirty yards ahead of him, Moradian and Picardi made a sudden sharp turn in a cobbled alley where the buildilngs loomed high, blocking out the light. Alexeyeva put on a little speed, arrived at the alley's entrance, passed from gray drizzle into a steamy gloom where the refuse of four or five days stood uncollected. In many places overhead the opposing buildings were arched over. Following a frantic Friday night, this district wasn't even awake yet. If Alexeyeva had been after the livese of these two, this would have been the spot to do it.
Footsteps echoed back to him. The Russian agent narrowed small round eyes to gaze through the gloom of the alley at a pair of shadowy figures as they rounded a bend. He paused for a second, then started after them. But, sensing movement close by, a silent presence, he at once skidded to a halt.
From the shadows of a recessed doorway a gravelly voice said, "Hello, Makar. You don't know me, but I know you!"
Alexeyeva's Japanese instructor had been right: he wasn't fast enough. At times like his bulk got in the way. Gritting his teeth in anticipation of the dull smack of the suspected cosh and its pain, or maybe the blue glint of a silencer at the end of a gun barrel, he whirled toward the voice in the darkness, hurled his heavy bag of tools. A tall, shadowy figure caught the bag full in the chest, grunted, and lobbed it aside to clatter on the cobbles. Alexeyeva's eyes were getting used to the gloom. It was still dark, but he'd seen no sign of a weapon. This was just the way he liked it.
Head down, like a human torpedo, he hurled himself into the doorway's shadows.
"Mr. Green" hit him twice, two expertly delivered blows, not calculated to kill but only stun. And to be doubly sure, before Alexeyeva could fall, Green slammed the Russian's head into the stout panels of the door, splintering one of them.
A moment later he stepped out of the shadows into the alley, glanced this way and that, satisfied himself that all was well. Just the drip of rain and the stinking vapors from the garbage. And now there was this extra heap of garbage. Green grinned hugely, toed Alexeyeva's crumpled figure.347Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXD5nMrRbLN
That was always the way of it with big men: t hey tended to assume that they were the biggest, the strongest. But that wasn't always so. Green was about the same weight as Alexeyeva, but he was three inches taller and five years younger. Ex-SAS, his training had been none too gentle. In fact, if he hadn't developed something of a kink in his mental makeup, he'd probably still be with the SAS.
He grinned again, then hunched his shoulders and shrank down into his raincoat. Hands thrust deep into his pockets, he hurried to fetch his car....
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