by Brian Lumley
“Sure,” said Jake. But in fact and however it was intended, John Grieve’s comment had struck home and he’d felt it. Before he could put the phone down, however:
“Jake?” said the DO. “I really would enjoy to take you up on your offer some other time.”
“My offer?”
“To eat at that little place in the Latin Quarter?”
“Damn right!” said Jake. “French onion soup, steak tartare on black unleavened bread with a little garnish, and all washed down with a glass of good beer.”
“I had fish and chips!” said Grieve, sounding almost human at last. And:
“Each to his own,” said Jake, smiling as he closed the conversation…
In fact there had been more than a “mere” delay at the airport. The VTOL aircraft that Trask and party had supposed to take had developed a fault and been taken out of service; they had been transferred to an older, much slower plane; there’d been additional holdups with baggage, arguments between airport staff and passengers, and the usual hustling and bustling that was becoming ever more the standard in the packaged holidays trade. But eventually, posing as a party of historians and amateur archaeologists, the party was airborne and heading for Istanbul.
Normally, in a British Airways VTOL aircraft, such a flight would have a duration of less than two hours; in the older airplane, flying at a lower altitude—avoiding Greece by diverting over Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria—it took almost three. The Turkish military authorities had put a ban on all aircraft crossing their borders from Greek airspace.
Then, due to complications with altered schedules, and the simultaneous arrival of a host of other incoming flights, there had been delays getting through an overworked (and exhaustively inquisitive) customs, and a further holdup when Trask had found that the car that was waiting for them—courtesy of the Minister Responsible—was a small fourseater. Hiring a minibus and waiting on its arrival consumed a further half hour in a humid, smelly airport lounge where the facilities were something less than acceptable.
“We should have packed sandwiches and drinks,” Millie said, when at last they were under way, out of the airport and heading for the northwest-bound motorway to Edirne and the border with Bulgaria.
“Sandwiches?” Trask growled scathingly. “They’d have gone a bit curly by now, I think! In another half hour it’ll be dark.”
“I didn’t realize you thought I was that mundane,” she answered archly, knowing that in fact he thought no such thing. “I was joking, Ben!”
“Well, I’m glad someone still can!” he answered. “We’ll pull over at the first service station where we can snatch a bite to eat, and I’ll try to get through to Bernie Fletcher. He’s bound to be wondering where we’ve got to.”
“Jake could have brought us first class,” said Liz from the back of the minibus—and wanted to bite her tongue when Trask turned to give her one of his looks. But before he could speak: “I know, I know,” she quickly went on. “If we were caught without passports, or with passports that weren’t properly franked, we’d have a hard time explaining it.”
“But more importantly—” Trask began.
“—More importantly,” Liz breathlessly cut him short, “you don’t want Jake making too many waves in the psychic aether…not yet, anyway. Not in Malinari’s vicinity.”
“Or Vavara’s, or Lord Szwart’s,” Trask nodded. “Because for all we know, they could all three be together again by now…”
Ten minutes later, about 7:45 P.M. local time, the precog Ian Goodly pulled off the motorway into a service station where the team could buy some dubious-looking sandwiches from a dispenser in an alleged “cafeteria.” Then, too, Trask tried to call Bernie Fletcher at his hotel in Sirpsindigi. He got the hotel, but the desk could only tell him that “Meester Fledger and other mens are outside for thee eatings, sorry.”
“My name is Trask,” Trask told the unbelievably slow-sounding person on the other end of the line, even spelling his name out for him. “Please tell Mr. Fletcher I called. Tell him we’ve had some small delays, but we’re on our…” Which was as far as he got before the line went dead. And:
“Shit and damnation!” Trask muttered, slamming the door of the booth behind him.
Back at their table, Paul Garvey was studying a map. “It’s maybe a hundred and thirty miles to Edirne, and then we take a back road to Sirp-what’s-its-name. If we don’t linger over this disgusting ‘cuisine,’ and Ian keeps us moving at sixty-five or seventy miles per hour, we can be at Bernie’s hotel—er, the what?”
“The Tundźa,” said Millie—
“—By a little after ten-thirty.”
“Good,” said Trask. “So let’s not hang about, people. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow—”
“—The food might be even worse,” said Millie.
“And actually,” said Trask, “I think your sandwiches would probably go down a treat right now, curly or otherwise!”
At 10 P.M. in Sirpsindigi: Bernie Fletcher lay fully dressed, taking a nap on his bed. His minders had an adjacent room with access through a connecting door, but of course Cliff Angel was in Bernie’s room, as was Vladimir Androsov. Angel was seated on a chair just inside the closed door; his chin kept lolling down onto his massive chest, causing him to jerk upright whenever he caught himself nodding off.
Androsov, however, was fully awake and anxiously pacing to and fro in the small room. Every few minutes would see him pause at the grimy window to look out into the night street. It had long since stopped raining, but moisture clung to the windows, making it hard to see out. The street was poorly lit and mainly deserted, and a dense ground mist was beginning to obscure the rain-slick cobbles. Very occasionally a vehicle would prowl silently by, its lights and tyres cutting tracks through the mist.
Androsov’s concern was for Venyamin, his twin brother, who had accompanied the minder Joe Sparrow across town to “inspect” the girlie revue. Venyamin had a basic grasp of several tongues including Turkish, which would simplify the purchase of tickets, et cetera. But the show must surely be over by now, and the two men on their way back. The trouble was that Vladimir wasn’t sure of that; he didn’t know it for a certainty.
Twins (not only physically but mentally), the pair had been “aware” of each other since birth, even before they’d been able to recognize or acknowledge the fact. Separated by a great many miles—and even when sleeping—still each man had felt comfortable in the sure knowledge of the other’s existence. It wasn’t telepathy but a facet of their joint talent: they automatically “located” each other. Yet now…
…For the last half hour, Vladimir’s mind—his awareness—had been void of all knowledge of his sibling esper’s whereabouts, or even of Venyamin’s existence. And that was something which had scarcely ever happened before. Deeply troubled, Vladimir decided to wait a few more minutes, then wake Fletcher—a fellow locator—and voice his concerns. And meanwhile, pacing yet again to the window, he cast a probe out into that wretched night, at the same time pressing his face to the glass and looking this way and that, scanning the street for some sign of Venyamin and Joe Sparrow.
Over there, in a dark shop doorway, something moved! But it was only a woman—perhaps a streetwalker?—waiting to make a contact. But down there, on this side of the road, keeping well in to the wall and darker shadows…two men? Coming this way? Yes! Their motion seemed odd, unsteady; was it possible they’d had something to drink?
Perhaps it was the minder and Venyamin. But if so…then Vladimir’s twin was employing his shields as never before, putting so much effort into it that he even excluded his brother.
Which could only mean that he had good reason! And Vladimir at once withdrew his own probe so as not to be detected by who- or whatever it was that Venyamin was striving to keep out.
His breath had clouded the window; he rubbed at the fogged patch with his sleeve, and put his face to the glass again. No one was there, not even the woman. Only the mist, like a river
of milk lying luminous in the street…
…And suddenly the short hairs were rising at the back of Vladimir’s neck, and he knew that everything was wrong! It was an electric sensation, a weird feeling that for many long moments froze the Russian rigid, but then he broke free, tottered to the bed, and gave Fletcher a shake. “Wake up, English! Wake up!”
“Eh? What?” Fletcher jerked on the bed, sat up, rubbed his eyes and stared at the white-faced Vladimir. “What is it?”
But now the sensation of foreboding had gone away, mysteriously vanished, been replaced by a feeling that everything was okay. “I…not know!” Vladimir’s face cracked open in a sick, uncertain grin. “I thinks I see some men in street. My brother and Joe, I thinks. But is too misty. Maybe I mistaken.”
“Eh? Misty?” said Fletcher, hiding a yawn behind the back of his hand as he got to his feet. Then his eyes narrowed, and again he said, “Misty?” But now the word rang in his mind like a cracked, ominous bell of ill omen, and pacing quickly to the window, he said, “Why in hell…why would it be misty?”
“It is come from the river,” Vladimir shrugged, absolutely sure now that everything was fine. “Is running close by. Hotel has the same name: the Tundźa.”
“River?” said Fletcher, staring down on the street. “Just a river?” But in fact, now that he was awake, he felt nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, and much like Vladimir, he felt quite sure that everything was perfectly in order.
“Wazzat? Eh? Eh?” Cliff Angel started awake. “Did somebody say something?”
“It was just Vlad,” said Fletcher, smiling almost stupidly at Angel where he got to his feet near the door. “He thought he saw someone down there in the mist. Maybe it was Joe and Venyamin, eh?”
“What?” Angel scowled. “Are you okay, pal?”
Before Fletcher could answer, footsteps sounded and floorboards creaked on the landing beyond the door, and there came a knock—four distinctive raps on the panelling—that identified a friend.
“It’s Joe,” said Angel, suddenly sure of that “fact,” as he unlocked and opened the door. At which there came another knock—or rather a thump—but this time from the window!
Three minutes earlier, downstairs in the dingy lobby, the desk clerk had been alarmed to see what at first he’d thought was a thick carpet of white smoke pouring in under the door from the street. Was there a fire in the neighbourhood, perhaps dangerously close by? It seemed the only likely explanation: a house must be burning!
If so he must alert the English party and their guests. It would be a damned shame if his only paying customers in a six-month got burned up in their beds!
The semi-invalid old man had come out from behind the desk, gone hobbling across the dusty lobby to the door, and opened it to the night. But even as he’d limped through the mist, so he’d realized that it wasn’t composed of choking smoke but a clammy, oddly clinging vapour. Then, looking out into the street…
…His eyes had bugged in amazement, for in all his years as owner-manager-caretaker and general dogsbody at the crumbling old Tundźa, he had never before seen the likes of this: in both directions, a lapping, inches-deep carpet of greasy, luminous mist! For even though the night was damp and dark, it was as if the mist glowed from within: a rotten glow like foxfire, that surged with the lazy ebb and flow of this filthily mobile stuff.
What? Had the river overflowed its banks? But surely there hadn’t been that much rain? Or was this some kind of industrial pollution, or some noxious chemical that the bloody farmers had spilled? Ugh!
The old man had gone to close the door and shut it out, but a tall, cloaked figure had stepped or flowed into view from one side. “Eh? Eh?” The old man had limped back a pace.
And the stranger had entered—and then two more, appearing silently out of the shadows behind the cloaked, heavily muffled one. And stepping close together, moving awkwardly and robotically, these two had ignored the old man and entered the lobby, leaving the cloaked one to close the door behind them.
“Eh? What?” the old proprietor had gurgled, as the two zombielike figures made for the stairs. One of them—the one in front—was known to the old man: surely he was one of the English guests? But his mouth was yawning open, drooling from its corners, and his eyes were starting from his head!
“Wait!” the old man had cried. “What happen here?”
The pair climbing the stairs had paused, and the one in the rear had turned his head to stare at the trembling old man, his eyes burning like fire in the lobby’s faltering electric light. The sight of those monstrous eyes had caused the old proprietor to stumble back a further pace. Indeed, he had stumbled directly into the arms of the cloaked one!
Then, speaking to that one, the one with the burning eyes had said, “Be a good fellow, will you, and take care of things down here?” Having spoken, he had then continued up the stairs, seeming to guide or propel the drooling one before him.
And in a voice that whooshed like a blacksmith’s bellows, the cloaked one had said, “Old man, nothing is happening here. Nothing that need concern you.”
“But…something wrong!” the old proprietor had insisted, standing straighter, and turning to face the cloaked one. “The Tundźa, she mine hotel, and something…very…wrong!”
Then he’d looked up, up, at the face of the one who steadied him. But inside the high collar of the cloak, where a head should be, there’d been only a blob of inky blackness—as if a piece of the darkest night were lodged there—and the eyes that looked out of that blackness were a poisonous yellow that seemed to drip sulphur from their rims!
“Wrong?” that monstrous voice had come again, accompanied by a soul-wrenching stench. “Only the light, old fool. There’s nothing wrong here but the light.”
And then an arm had gone up—reaching, impossibly reaching—all the way up to the high, pine-boarded ceiling, where a hand like a claw had grabbed at electrical wiring and yanked with irresistible force.
The lobby lights had sputtered out, leaving a velvet gloom whose only illumination was that of Szwart’s festering eyes and the vile phosphorescence of his breath in the yawn of cavernous jaws.
In there, too, surging up from the depths of his throat, a host of suctorial, anemonelike tendrils had greedily uncoiled themselves, fastening on the old man’s head like some terrible man-eating plant or a loathsome, lethal octopus…
19
Terror at the Tunda—the Future: Writ in Flames!
UNDER VAVARA’S SPELL, THE BENEFICENT AURA in which she shrouded herself, and which extended invisibly outward from her, the men in the Tundźa’s upstairs room were taken completely by surprise. Slow-moving and slow to react, they could only gape at what was happening as Malinari propelled Joe Sparrow into the room ahead of him, and Vavara came in through the shattering window.
As to the latter:
When Fletcher heard that first dull thump on the window, he couldn’t believe what he saw there: that doughy, leaflike hand the size of a dinner plate, all covered with suckers that stuck to the glass. And the face behind the hand, rising up into view as Vavara crawled like a chameleon up the wall. By no means the mistress of metamorphic processes, still the climb had required only a very small effort on her part. And she had had plenty of practice on Krassos, when she’d been obliged to scramble across precipitous cliff faces to escape the wrath of E-Branch.
But that had been on Krassos, while here and now—
Here and now, all had gone according to Lord Nephran Malinari’s plan. In order that no escape route or bolt-holes would be left open to the locators and their armed watchdog, he and Lord Szwart had agreed to enter the Tundźa by the door, while Vavara would break in through the window with her hypnotic, lying aura preceding her, befuddling the senses of those within…most of all the locators, Fletcher and Androsov. And while Szwart dealt with matters downstairs, doubling as a rearguard to ensure that no one fled the scene, Malinari and Vavara would attend to the coalition of enemy forces overhead.
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br /> Vavara’s motive for murder—which is what they were about—was simple: revenge! Revenge for what E-Branch and its esper membership had done to her monastery aerie, her sisterhood, and her “beautiful” garden under Palataki on the island of Krassos. And similarly the Lord of Darkness, the endlessly mutating Lord Szwart: he would do anything to strike back at the ones who had destroyed his works under London. Malinari had assured his Wamphyri peers that this was the best way: to take out these people one by one, using the ones they took as bait to trap the rest.
But as for Malinari himself: other than revenge, his motive was knowledge. Knowledge of the one called Jake Cutter, no ordinary man (not even among his extraordinary E-Branch colleagues) but a Power in the psychic aether whose signature was an incredible whirligig of ever-evolving symbols, numbers, and algebraic equations. The secrets in Cutter’s metaphysical mind would provide Malinari with everything he required to combat just such a Power in Sunside: the awesome talents of the one called Nathan.
For having failed on Earth, that was where Malinari and his Wamphyri colleagues were now headed: back to the Vampire World, to Sunside/Starside in a parallel universe beyond the Perchorsk Gate. But not before Malinari had got what he wanted here.
Such were his thoughts as he thrust the now almost mindless minder Joe Sparrow ahead of him into the upstairs room. Sparrow, his mind drained of what little knowledge of E-Branch it had ever contained—along with almost everything else—who moved only by virtue of Malinari’s terrible hand inside his back, its hairy, wormlike fingers extending sensors into the spinal canal while others channeled themselves to the brain and loaned support to its dying motor areas. Sparrow—a mere puppet now, and Malinari the puppet-master.
Sparrow had been brought along like this—not as a hostage but as a key—in case there should be problems. Since no such problems had surfaced, he was no longer required. And as Malinari withdrew his hand from the gaping, bloody hole in Sparrow’s overcoat, he caused the hairy filament extensions that were his probes to nip at the Special Branch man’s motor areas and slice through the flexible tendon that was his spinal cord, the main neural axis…either one of which actions would have finished the job. And utterly incapable of protest, Sparrow simply died, flopped free of Malinari’s red hand and crumpled to the floor.