by Brian Lumley
Jake thought about it, looked from face to face as the six crowded around him, and shook his head. “I feel…different,” he said. “But other than that—” And he shrugged.
“And Korath?” said Liz. “Is he still there?”
“Oh, he’s there,” Jake answered sourly. “But contained…” Following which he sat bolt upright and his jaw dropped. “What in the…? I mean, how in hell do I know that?”
“Instinct,” said Trask. “Something you had without knowing you had it.” And, using Harry’s terminology: “There was a certain room in the manse of your mind which you’d never had cause to visit. Harry went there and found it dark, and switched the lights on, that’s all.” Then, nodding curtly to Chung and Goodly, “I think you can untie him now.”
“Harry was here?” said Jake, as they set about to free him from the chair.
“He took you over.” Liz nodded. “Quietened you down. If he hadn’t…Korath would have been in charge. Maybe for good.”
“Or for bad.” Jake licked lips as dry as dust, then got to his feet, swayed a little and grabbed Liz for support. “Whoah!” he said. “I feel like I’ve just had three or four rides on the world’s biggest, fastest, nastiest roller coaster!”
“Two worlds,” Trask told him, sighing his relief. And then, hardening again: “But it’s not over yet.”
“Oh?” Jake looked at him.
Trask nodded. “Putting it bluntly, Harry or whatever it was of him told us a thing or two that might help us to clear you—you and Millie both.” This was the simple truth, which, despite sounding cold, came out naturally. Knowing the drawbacks of his talent, however, Trask glanced at Millie apologetically. But she understood, took his arm reassuringly, made no comment.
“So, what’s next?” said Ian Goodly. And despite that it was a serious question, coming from him it lightened the moment considerably.
And with a wry chuckle Trask answered, “Now here’s a thing. The precog wants to know what’s next!”
At which footsteps sounded, and there came a sharp knock at the door. It was John Grieve, the Duty Officer.
“Two things,” he said, when Trask opened the door. “Turchin has had a call come in on scrambled, and the Russians have just broken the news that he’s gone missing from the Earth Year Conference. No accusations as yet, and the word ‘defection’ hasn’t entered into it. He’s just missing, that’s all.”
“Where’s Turchin now?” Trask came out into the corridor.
“Waiting outside Ops,” said Grieve. “The techs wouldn’t let him in without your say-so.” Turning to lead the way, he added, “Oh yes, and there’s some kind of problem with the decoder. It seems that the codes Turchin gave us are incomplete.”
Trask spoke to the rest of the team. “To work, people. And Jake—don’t go experimenting or anything until we’re all ready to sit in on it with you. You’re on trust—but not so much on trust that you’re to leave the HQ. I’m sure you understand. The thing in your head may be under control now, but I’d like to be absolutely sure it’ll stay that way. Ian, you’ll, er, keep Jake company. Millie, Liz will be looking after you. It seems only fair, and—and I mean—oh, what the hell! Personalities and other considerations aside, it’s simply a matter of bloody security!” Not much for swearing nowadays, still on occasion Trask found it the only satisfactory solution.
Jake and Millie glanced at each other, and she said, “Don’t worry about it, Ben. We both understand.”
Sure that they did understand but hating the situation anyway, Trask let it go and followed Grieve to the Ops Room…
Turchin was waiting anxiously outside the closed door with one of the techs (a member of E-Branch’s technical staff, not psychically talented but nevertheless highly valued), a prematurely bald young man called Jimmy Harvey. Apologetic but rock steady, and for all that he was only five feet five or six, Harvey was blocking the door, denying access to the bulky Russian Premier.
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” said Trask as he approached. “Let him take his telephone call. In fact we’ll be going in with him.”
“Sorry about that, boss,” Harvey told Turchin, opening the door for him.
For a moment the Russian scowled at Jimmy, at his lush red sideburns and bushy eyebrows—which tried desperately hard to make up for his baldness—then brushed by him, saying, “Don’t concern yourself, Mr. Harvey. We all have our duties to perform. Just as long as we haven’t lost what could be a most important connection…” And then he was into the Ops Room.
But if Trask had expected Turchin to be taken aback by the complexity of the place—its communications equipment, computer consoles, decoding devices, variously coloured telephones, wall screens, charts, and other gadgets galore—then he was the one who was taken by surprise. The Russian Premier barely paused but headed straight for a desk where another tech held out a telephone to him. More than just a telephone, its function was to descramble messages onto a screen—if the correct code had been tapped into the keyboard on the phone’s console.
“The code that Premier Turchin gave us is incomplete,” the tech at the console explained. “The message on-screen repeats, but it’s still a mishmash.”
Turchin glanced at the screen—at its jumble of meaningless, repetitive characters scrolling in endless procession—nodded and shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Since I could not be absolutely certain how I would be received here,” he explained, “it made sense to keep a little something back. Utterly ridiculous to give my all if I was getting nothing in return.”
“Understood,” said Trask, just a little peevishly. “But do you think you might like to complete the code now, before your man on the other end gets fed up and stops sending?”
“Simplicity itself,” said Turchin, shooting his cuffs. “It only requires my initials for authentication.”
“Russian language?” said Trask. “But this keyboard has the British alphabet.”
“I’m aware of your several shortcomings,” Turchin smiled a fox’s smile at him, “and made allowance for them. In Moscow, my own decoder’s keyboards are on-screen and carry fourteen languages…you simply tell the computer which one you’re entering the code in. Enormously useful when, er, assisting foreign dignitaries? But as I said, I anticipated your—how should I put it?—embarrassment? The confirmation uses British letters.”
Then he spoke into the combiphone. “Turchin here.”
And a desk speaker answered in Russian, saying, “Voice recognition confirmed. Are you receiving?”
“I am now,” Turchin answered, tapping keys G and T.
The jumble on the screen at once reassembled itself, and a printer purred into action and commenced delivering the message in English language hard copy. It took only a few seconds, and then, abruptly, the screen went blank and the printout ceased.
“Thank you, Yuri,” said Turchin into the phone, in Russian. “And now you’d better get off before they trace you.”
“I’m sure they already have,” said the other. “Don’t worry. By the time they get here I’ll be long gone…” The phone made a beeping sound and the line went dead.
John Grieve, standing beside Trask, had translated for him, repeating Turchin’s and his agent’s conversation. He, too, fell silent as Trask put a hand on Turchin’s shoulder, saying, “Just assuming someone back home was eavesdropping, you’ve slipped up and told them who to look for—this Yuri fellow.”
“Indeed,” said Turchin. “‘Assuming’ that was his name—but it wasn’t!” And raising his eyebrows quizzically, “You’ve never been a conventional field agent, have you, Ben? Meaning espionage as opposed to ESPionage? Ah, but for me, being a politician in the old USSR, that was experience enough!”
Trask grimaced and answered, “You live and you learn. And I thought the Wamphyri were devious!” Then he tore off the printout and read the message:
The clock strikes twelve. The pyramids point upwards. The bats are hanging upside down. The pigeons are in flight. The moon shines sil
ver. The waters will find their own level. The dog bites…
Trask read it again, twice, looked at Turchin and said, “I hope this means something to you, because it’s utter gibberish to me!”
“As it was designed to be,” said the Premier. “But in fact it is very simple. Seven short statements, but only the middle one means anything. The birds it refers to are made of clay.”
“Clay pigeons?” said Trask. “Targets.”
“Precisely, which my people have lofted to be shot at by my enemies. But these pigeons might as easily be cured fishes.”
“Red herrings?” Trask inclined his head enquiringly.
“Now we are getting somewhere,” said the Premier. “Red, yes—like the colour of the old USSR, and also of today’s greatest enemies, yours and mine both. Ah, but my enemies are human. And now I must beg of you to please forgive my cautious nature, but since we need to discuss this further, I would much prefer the privacy of your office.”
“Everyone here is trustworthy,” said Trask.
“I don’t doubt it,” Turchin answered. “But the more people who know our business, the more who could talk about it…er, if the right pressures were applied in the right places.”
“But that’s to anticipate falling into enemy hands,” Trask said. “Which in turn is to assume action behind enemy lines.”
“But wasn’t that always the plan?” said Turchin. “So maybe it’s happening a little earlier than expected, that’s all. And now…can we talk in your office?”
And five minutes later, alone together in Trask’s office:
“Talk,” Trask grunted.
“Very well,” said Turchin. “Before leaving the Earth Year Conference, I told one of my people back home to ‘let it slip’ that I had become privy to vital information concerning wealth beyond all dreams of avarice. This was done in accordance with a previous arrangement.”
“But you really do have just such information,” said Trask. “Sunside/Starside is one huge open-cast mother lode that makes El Dorado look like the backyard of the local poorhouse!”
“Indeed,” Turchin nodded. “Which my powerful military enemies already know about thanks to Mikhail Suvorov. Or should we say they know he was on to something, if not its nature or its location.”
“Yes,” said Trask, impatiently. “I haven’t forgotten these things. It was some kind of vindictive safety measure that Suvorov took before he went, er, adventuring beyond the Perchorsk Gate.”
“Correct,” said Turchin. “Perhaps he suspected I knew more about the parallel world than I was saying—in which case he was right—which was why he told several of his military cronies that if he didn’t come back to cut them in, then they should come to me for the answers…the bastard!”
“Yes, I understand all of that,” said Trask. “And now that they’ve started asking questions you’ve come to us rather than tell them about the Vampire World. All very laudable—but it doesn’t explain why we’re in here talking in private—or why suddenly I have this feeling that I don’t know everything.”
“Everything I’ve told you so far is true,” said Turchin.
“Right,” said Trask. “But that doesn’t mean you’ve told me everything.”
“It’s this damned talent of yours!” Turchin burst out, and threw his arms wide. “Since I couldn’t lie to you—”
“—You didn’t bother to tell the whole truth,” said Trask.
“But I would have—believe me I would have,” said Turchin, beginning to sweat now. “If only there had been time, I promise you I would have.”
“Eh? Time? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Turchin, “that ever since that greedy swine Mikhail Suvorov took charge of Perchorsk, I’ve had a spy there. I mean that six months ago something very terrible came through the Gate—something so utterly terrible that if it hadn’t been half-dead it might well have raged through the complex, killing everyone it found there. But Suvorov’s criminal crew were lucky and it died when they burned it. And finally, I mean that those heavily armed, very dangerous ex-convicts in the Perchorsk complex have grown tired of waiting for Suvorov to return, and it’s only a matter of time now before greed overcomes fear and they pluck up sufficient courage to go through the Gate looking for him. For the General…and for whatever else they can find.”
Trask frowned and shook his head. “And there you’ve lost me. Surely if this gang of criminals at the complex has had to deal with a crippled warrior creature left over from the war in Sunside/Starside, the last thing they would want to do is go someplace where they might bump into similar things, possibly of a fighting fit variety!”
“A warrior, yes,” Turchin answered. “From its description, that’s what it was. A nightmarish thing like—I don’t know—like a primal dinosaur, all armoured and bristling with fiendish chitin weaponry…but having the face of a man, albeit a face with fangs! Built to go on four legs, to do battle on the ground, it had the trappings of a mount: a saddle, stirrups, a bit in its mouth, and reins. And that’s where the trouble lies. For all of the metal parts, bit, chains, stirrups, and such—”
“—Were of massive gold!” said Trask, beginning to understand.
“Gold, yes,” said Turchin. “Heavy, beautiful gold. Suvorov had promised to make those men rich, and now they know what he was talking about and where it was going to come from.”
“So why haven’t you told me this before?” said Trask. “And what is it you’re still not telling me?”
The Premier flopped back in his chair, sighed and answered, “Well then, now that the pigeons are in flight, it seems I must tell you all.”
Trask’s talent helped him with that one. “Which sounds like you’ve started wheels turning that can’t be stopped, right?”
Turchin nodded. “My plans are laid, they are in motion, and there’s no going back on them.”
“So what’s the bottom line?” said Trask. “What is it you’ve done, and what is it you want?”
“First, what I want,” said Turchin. “These enemies of mine: there are three of them, one ex-military and two serving high-rankers. Except, they are not only my enemies but yours and all the free world’s, too. Hard-liners—with communism, expansionism, and world domination stamped into their every fiber—only supply them with the means, precious metal enough to fuel their ambitions and start that terrible, crushing engine up again…” He paused and shook his head, then quickly went on. “What do I want? That’s easy. I want them dead!”
For several long seconds Trask sat and stared at his guest, his expression cold and inscrutable. But Turchin scarcely required any special talent to know what the other was thinking.
“I’m not a murderer, Ben!” he burst out. “But no less than your vampires, these people are! Should I tell you what they’re capable of? Plans so monstrous that if the west had known about them when first they were broached it could easily have started World War Three? Hah! You don’t know the half of it! You think the CIA have hatched some feverish plots in their time, this or that assassination that didn’t quite work out? But these people I’m talking about are capable of genocide. They’d think nothing of destroying entire countries!” And as he paused for breath:
“Go on,” said Trask. “I’m listening.”
Now Turchin was sweating freely. He mopped his forehead and said, “And so I have arrived at the point of no return. Defection is one thing, but these are my country’s best kept secrets. And I am trusting them to you. They must go no further. If ever they got out no one would ever trust Russia, or Gustav Turchin, again. I would remain your guest for the rest of my life, which probably wouldn’t be a long one…”
“I’m still listening,” said Trask.
“One of these three men,” said Turchin, “—should we call him Admiral X? You can work it out for yourself—is responsible for dumping our fleet of decrepit nuclear submarines and other radioative waste in international waters. This same man, in the late nineteen sixties through the sevent
ies, when he was a lowly apparatchik in the USSR’s Defense Department, proposed to change the world’s weather patterns by detonating enormous atomic devices deep under the Arctic ice. The melting ice—fresh water, you understand, as it flowed into the Atlantic Ocean—would permanently reverse the Atlantic Conveyor, bringing Siberian temperatures to western Europe and a Mediterranean climate to the Russian heartland. Madman that he is, I know he still harbours such schemes, and that he has the fanatical will to bring them into being. All he lacks is the finances, the means. Perchorsk and the Vampire World would furnish such a means, though first he would have to cleanse that world of men and monsters alike. Ah, but with his perverse penchant for nuclear devices, I cannot see the mere destruction of an alien world as too great a problem! Well, except for our friends the Szgany, that is…”
And Trask nodded. “I think I can see why you’d want rid of that one. And I can also see where you’re making a big mistake. But go on, tell me all.”
“Air defences,” said Turchin. “The original plans for our answer to Ronald Reagan’s SDI, his marvellous, mythical Strategic Defence Initiative, are extant still. Moreover, a certain scientist and senior officer in the Russian Air Force believes that if he were able to generate and contain sufficient energy he could make the failed Perchorsk Experiment work. All that he needs to go ahead is the funding: gold, Ben! Just think of it: an invisible umbrella, shielding an entire country, neutralizing all incoming weapons of mass destruction. After that, what could the West refuse us, eh? In any war, an impregnable force must conquer. But even if there was no war, the West would go broke trying to duplicate the umbrella. Total chaos whichever way you look at it.
“Finally the Army. My third and last great enemy is an ex-General, now an industrialist. A former close ally of Suvorov, he has been, is, and always shall be a hawk to the bitter end. If you think that the American General Patton was a militarist, or your own Bomber Harris, who reduced Dresden to a fiery hell, then you haven’t reckoned with this man. When President Reagan made his ‘joke’ about nuking Moscow, this man moved a regiment of tanks into the countryside, commandeered a missile site, and sat there waiting, with his finger on the button! He had to be taken out of there by force. How fortunate that on both counts Gorbachev had a sense of humour. He ignored the first maniac’s gaffe, promoted the other and privately awarded him a medal of honour…!”