by Brian Lumley
Krakovitch gave a disbelieving snort, shook his head. ‘But why? What reason?’
Quint shrugged. ‘You have to know him better than I do. Is he ambitious? Could he have been got at — and by whom? But remember, we did have that trouble in Genoa, and didn’t you remark how surprised you were that the KGB were trailing you? Your explanation was that they’d probably had you under constant surveillance
— until we put a stop to it, anyway. But just let’s suppose there is an enemy in your camp. Did Gerenko know you were meeting us in Italy?’
‘Apart from Brezhnev himself — through an intermediary who cannot be brought into question — Gerenko is the only one who knew!’ Krakovitch answered.
Quint said nothing, merely shrugged again and raised an eyebrow.
‘I am thinking,’ said Krakovitch slowly, ‘that from now on I tell no one how I moving until after the move is completed!’ He looked at Quint, saw his troubled frown. ‘Is there something else?’
Quint pursed his lips. ‘Let’s just say this Gerenko fellow is a plant, a spy in your organisation. Am I right in thinking he can only be working for the KGB?’
‘For Andropov, yes. Almost certainly.’
‘Then Gerenko must think you’re a complete fool!’
‘Oh? Why do you say so? In fact he thinks most men are fools. He fears no one, Gerenko, and so can afford to think so. But I? No, I believe I am one of the few men who he respects — or used to.’
‘Used to,’ Quint nodded. ‘But no more. Surely he must know you’ll work all of this out for yourself given a little time? Theo Dolgikh in Genoa, and now this shambles at the Romano-Soviet border? Unless he himself is an idiot,
Gerenko must know he’s for the high-jump as soon as you get back to Moscow!’
Sergei Gulharov had managed to understand most of this. Now he spoke to Krakovitch in a soft, rapid burst of Russian.
‘Hah!’ Krakovitch’s shoulders jerked in a humourless chuckle. For a moment he was silent, then he said, ‘Perhaps Sergei is smarter than all of us. And if he is, then we’re in for trouble.’
‘Oh?’ said Quint. ‘What did Sergei say?’
‘He said, perhaps Comrade Gerenko feels that he can now afford to be a little slipshod. Perhaps he isn’t expecting to see me again in Moscow! And as for you, Carl — we just crossed the border and you’re in Russia.’
‘I know,’ Quint quietly answered. ‘And I must say, I don’t exactly feel at home.’
‘Strangely,’ Krakovitch nodded, ‘neither do I!’
Nothing more was said until they reached Chernovtsy.
Chapter Fifteen
Back in London at INTESP HO, Guy Roberts and Ken Layard had traced Alec Kyle, Carl Quint and Yulian Bodescu. The Devon-based team of espers had travelled back to the capital by train, leaving Ben Trask to mend in the Torquay hospital. Having used the journey to catch up on some sleep, they’d got into HO just before midnight. Layard had roughly ‘located’ the three figures in question, and Roberts had attempted to scry their whereabouts a little more precisely. Desperation had seemingly honed their talents and the familiarity of their surroundings had helped them to get results — of a sort.
Now Roberts held a briefing: in attendance were Layard, John Grieve, Harvey Newton, Trevor Jordan, and three others who were permanent members of the HO’s staff. Roberts was red-eyed, unshaven and itchy; his breath reeked of an endless chain of cigarettes. He glanced around the table and nodded to each man in turn, then got straight into it.
‘We’ve been trimmed back a bit,’ he said, untypically phlegmatic. ‘Kyle and Quint are out of it, perhaps permanently; Trask is banged up a bit; Darcy Clarke’s up north, and… and then there’s poor Simon Gower. And the result of our outing? Our job isn’t only that much harder, it’s that much more important! Yes, and we’ve less men to do it. We could certainly use Harry Keogh now — but Alec Kyle was Keogh’s main man, and Alec’s not here. And as well as the danger we know exists — out there, loose — there’s now a second problem which could be just as big. Namely, the espers of the Soviet EBranch have got Kyle on ice at the Château Bronnitsy.’
This was news to everyone except Layard. Lips tightened and heartbeats stepped up. Ken Layard took up the briefing. ‘We’re pretty sure he’s there,’ he said. ‘I located him — I think — but only with the greatest difficulty. They’ve got espers blocking everything in there, far more concentrated than we’ve ever known it before. The place is a mental miasma!’
‘That’s a fact,’ Roberts nodded. ‘I tried to pinpoint him, get a picture of him — and failed miserably! Just a general mind-smog. Which doesn’t bode at all well for Alec. If his being there was all above board, they’d have nothing to hide. Also, he’s not supposed to be there at all but here. My guess is, they’ll be milking him for all he’s worth. And for all we’re worth. If I’m cold-blooded about it, believe me it’s only to save time.’
‘What about Carl Quint?’ John Grieve put the question. ‘How’s he faring?’
‘Carl’s where he should be,’ Layard said. ‘Near as I can make out, in a place called Chernovtsy under the Carpathians. Whether he’s there willingly is another matter.’
‘But we think willingly,’ Roberts added. ‘I’ve managed to reach and see him, however briefly, and I think he’s with Krakovitch. Which only serves to confuse things further. If Krakovitch is straight up, then why is Kyle in trouble?’
‘And Bodescu?’ Newton asked. He now felt he had a personal vendetta with the vampire.
‘That bastard is heading north,’ Roberts grimly answered. ‘It could be coincidence, but we don’t think so. Ultimately, we think he’s after the Keogh child. He knows everything, knows the guiding force behind our organisation. Bodescu has been hit, and now he wants to hit back. The one mind in this entire world which is an authority on vampires — particularly Yulian Bodescu — is housed in that child. That has to be his target.’
‘We don’t know how he’s travelling,’ Layard carried on. ‘Public transport? Could be. He could even be thumbing lifts! But he’s certainly not in any sort of hurry. He’s just taking it easy, taking his time. He got into Birmingham an hour ago, since when he’s been static. We think he’s put up for the night. But it’s the same story as before:
he exudes this mental swamp. That’s what it’s like:
groping around in the heart of a foggy swamp; You can’t pinpoint him at all, but you know there’s a crocodile in there somewhere. At the moment, Birmingham is the centre of it.
‘But do we have any plans?’ Jordan couldn’t stand the inactivity. ‘I mean, are we going to do something? Or do we just sit here playing with ourselves while everything goes to hell?’
‘There are jobs for everybody.’ Roberts held up a huge, controlling hand. ‘First I need a volunteer to go up and help Darcy Clarke in Hartlepool. Apart from a couple of Special Branch men — who are good blokes but simply can’t be expected to know what they’re on — Darcy’s on his own. The ideal thing would be to send a spotter, except we don’t have one right now. So it will have to be a telepath.’ He looked pointedly at Jordan.
Harvey Newton got in first, however, saying: ‘That’s me! I owe Bodescu that much. He got by me last time, but he won’t do it again.’
Jordan shrugged and no one else objected. Roberts nodded. ‘OK — but stay sharp! Go now, by car. The roads will be empty, so you should be able to go flat out. Depending on how things go at this end, I’ll probably be joining you sometime tomorrow.’
That was all Newton had wanted. He stood up, nodded once to all in general, got on his way. ‘Take a crossbow,’ Roberts called after him. ‘And Harvey, next time you “shoot your bolt” make sure you hit the target!’
‘What’s my job?’ Jordan asked.
‘You’ll work with Mike Carson,’ Roberts told him.
‘And with me and Layard. We’ll try to locate Quint again, and you telepaths can take a stab at sending to him. It’s a long shot, but Quint’s a spotter, he’s
a psychic sensitive; he might just feel you. Your message to him will be simple: if he can he’s to get in touch with us. If we can get him on the phone, we can perhaps find out about Kyle. And if he doesn’t know about Kyle — well, that in itself will answer one question. Also, if we do manage to contact him, it might be a good idea to tell Quint to get the hell out of there — if and while he can! So that’s the four of us tied up for the night.’ He looked round the table.
‘The rest of you can concentrate on the proper running of this place before it comes apart at the seams. Every man Jack is on duty full time as of now. Right, are there any questions?’
‘Are we the only ones in on this?’ John Grieve asked. ‘I mean, are the public, the authorities, still entirely in the dark?’
‘Totally. What do we tell them — that we’re chasing a vampire through the countryside from Devon to British West Hartlepool? Listen, even the people who fund us and know we exist don’t wholly believe in us! How do you think they’d react to the facts about Yulian Bodescu? And as for Harry Keogh… of course the public is in the dark about it.’
‘With a single exception, anyway,’ said Layard. ‘We’ve had the police alerted to the fact that there’s a mad killer on the loose — Bodescu’s description, of course. We’ve told them he’s heading north, possible destination the Hartlepool area. They’ve been warned that if he’s spotted they’re not to apprehend him but get in touch with us first, then the Special Branch lads who are up there on the job. As and when Bodescu gets closer to his target, then we’ll be more specific. That’s as much as we dare do for now.’
Roberts looked from face to face. ‘Any more questions?’ he asked. There were none
3.30 A.M. at Brenda Keogh’s tiny but immaculate garret flat overlooking the main road through the town and, across the road, an old, old cemetery. Harry Jnr lay in his cot sleeping and dreaming baby dreams, and his father’s mind slept with him, exhausted from a struggle he now knew he had no hope of winning. The child had him, it was as simple as that. Harry was the baby’s sixth sense.
In the wee small hours of the misty morning, with dawn still half a night away, a thicker mist was forming in slumbering minds, bringing horror as it swirled and eddied in subconscious caverns of dream. And out of nowhere, telepathic fingers were reaching, probing, discovering!
Ahhh! came that gurgling, clotted mental voice in the two Harrys’ minds. Is that you, Haarrryyy? Yesss, I see it is! Well, i’m coming for you, Haarrryyy — I’m coming.
for… you! -
The baby’s scream of terror ripped his mother from her bed as if it were the hand of some cruel giant. She stumbled to his tiny room, shook herself awake as she entered and went to him. And how he cried, cried, cried when she took him in her arms, cried like she’d never heard before. But he wasn’t wet, and no nappy pins were sticking in him. Was he hungry? No, it wasn’t that either.
She rocked him in her arms, but still he sobbed, and his little eyes wide and wild and full of fear. A dream, maybe? ‘But you’re too tiny, Harry,’ she told him, kissing his hot little head. ‘Far too tiny and sweet and so very, very young to be dreaming naughty dreams! That’s all it was, baby, a naughty dream.’
She carried him back to her own bed, thinking: Yes, and 1 must have been dreaming, too! She must have been, for the baby’s scream when it woke her hadn’t sounded like the scream of a child at all but that of a terrified man.
It was 3.30 in London, where Guy Roberts and Ken Layard, assisted by the telepaths Trevor Jordan and Mike Carson, had spent the last ninety minutes trying to ‘get through’ to Carl Quint — without any success that they could measure.
They were working in Layard’s private locations room, an office or study set by solely for his use. Wall racks carried maps and charts of the entire world, without which Layard’s work for INTESP would be almost impossible. The map which had been spread on his desk for the last two hours was a blown-up aerial recce photograph of the Russo-Moldavian border, with Chernovtsy circled in red felt-tip.
The air was blue and acrid from Roberts’s endless chain-smoking, and steam whistled from an electric kettle in one corner where Carson was making yet another cup of instant coffee. ‘I’m knackered,’ Roberts admitted, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette and lighting another. ‘We’ll take a break, find somewhere quiet and try to snatch forty winks. Start up again in an hour’s time.’ He stood up, stretched, said to Carson, ‘Stow the coffee for me, Mike. One addiction’s enough, thanks!’
Trevor Jordan pushed his chair away from the desk, went over to the room’s small window and opened it as far as possible. He lowered himself into a chair beside it and hung his head out into the night.
Layard yawned, rolled up the map and pigeon-holed it in a rack behind him. In doing so he exposed the huge 1:625,000 scale map of England which they had worked on earlier. At ten miles to an inch the thing covered the desk. He glanced at it, at Birmingham’s grey blot, let his talent reach out and touch that sleeping city — and.
‘Guy!’ Layard’s whisper stopped Roberts halfway out of the door.
He looked back. ‘Eh?’
Layard jerked stiffly to his feet, crouched over the map. His eyes searched frantically and he licked suddenly dry lips. ‘Guy,’ he said again, ‘we thought he was down for the night, but he’s not! He’s off and running again — and for all we know he’s been on the move for the last hour and a half!’
‘What the hell…?‘ Roberts’s tired mind could barely grasp it. He came lurching back to the desk, Jordan too. ‘What are you talking about? Bodescu?’
‘Right,’ said Layard, ‘that bloody thing! Bodescu! He’s cleared off out of Birmingham!’
Grey as death, Roberts slumped down into his chair as before. He put a meaty hand over Birmingham on the map, closed his eyes, forced his talent into action. But no use, there was nothing: no mind-smog, no slightest suggestion that the vampire was there at all. ‘Oh, Christ? Roberts hissed through grating teeth.
Jordan looked across the room at Carson where he was stirring sugar into three cups of coffee. ‘Square one, Mike,’ he said. ‘You’d better make it four after all.
It had been Harvey Newton’s first choice to take the Al north, but in the end he’d settled for the motorway. What he lost in actual distance he’d get back in speed, comfort, three-lane running, and the Ml’s ruler-straight road.
At Leicester Forest East he stopped for a coffee break, answered the call of nature, picked up a can of Coke and a wrapped sandwich. And breathing the cool, moist night air he turned up his coat collar and made his way back across the almost deserted car park to his car. He had left the door open but had taken his keys with him. The whole stop had taken no more than ten minutes. Now he’d top up with petrol and get on his way again.
But as he approached his car he slowed down, stopped. His footsteps, echoing back to him, seemed to pause just a moment too late. Something niggled at the back of Newton’s mind. He turned, looked back towards the friendly lights of the all-night eater. For some reason he was holding his breath, and maybe it was a very good reason. He turned in a slow circle, took in the entire car park, the squat, hulking snail-shapes of parked cars. A heavy vehicle, turning off the motorway, lit him up in the glare of its thousand watt eyes. He was dazzled, and after the lorry angled away the night was that much darker.
Then he remembered the upright, forward-leaning dog-thing he thought he’d seen — no, which he had seen — at Harkley House, and that brought his mission back into focus. He shook off his nameless fears, got into his car and started the engine.
Something closed on Newton’s brain like a clamp, a mind warped and powerful and growing ever more powerful! He knew it was reading him like a stolen book, reading his identity, divining his purpose. ‘Good evening,’ said a voice like hot tar in Newton’s ear. He gave a gasp of shock and terror combined, an inarticulate cry, and turning looked into the back of the car. Feral eyes fixed him in a glare far more penetrating, far worse than the lorry�
��s lamps. Beneath them, the darkness was agleam with twin rows of white daggers.
‘Wha —!?‘ Newton started to say. But there was no need even to ask. He knew that his vendetta with the monster had run its course.
Yulian Bodescu lifted Newton’s crossbow, aimed it directly into his gaping, gasping mouth — and pulled the trigger.
It had been Felix Krakovitch’s plan to stay overnight in Chernovtsy; in the event, however, he had ordered Sergei Gulharov to drive straight on to Kolomyya. Since Ivan Gerenko had known that Krakovitch’s party was scheduled to stop over in Chernovtsy, it had seemed a very good idea not to. Thus, after Theo Dolgikh got into Chernovtsy at about 5.00 A.M. it had taken him a futile and frustrating two hours simply to discover that the men he sought were not there. After another delay while he contacted the Château Bronnitsy, Gerenko had finally suggested that he go on to Kolomyya and try again.
Dolgikh had been flown from Moscow to a military airport in Skala-podolskaya where he’d been required to sign for a KGB Fiat. Now, in the somewhat battered but unobtrusive car, he drove to Kolomyya and arrived there just before 8.00 A.M. Discreetly checking out the hotels, it was a case of third time lucky — and also unlucky. They had put up at the Hotel Carpatii, but they had been up and on their way again by 7.30. He had missed them by half an hour. The proprietor was only able to tell him that before leaving they’d inquired the address of the town’s library and museum.
Dolgikh obtained the same address and followed after them. At the museum he found the curator, a bustling, beaming little Russian in thick-lensed spectacles, in the act of opening the place up. Following him inside the old cupolaed building, where their footsteps echoed in musty air, Dolgikh said, ‘Might I enquire if you’ve had three men in to see you this morning? I was supposed to meet them here, but as you see I’m late.’
‘They were fortunate to find me working so early,’ the other replied. ‘And luckier still that I let them in. The museum doesn’t really open until 8.30, you see. But since they were obviously in a hurry…‘ He smiled and shrugged.