by Brian Lumley
“Be quiet!” again Borowitz rounded on him. “That loose tongue of yours will choke you yet, Mikhail Gerkhov!”
“But—”
“Man, are you blind? Have you learned nothing?”
The other shrugged, fell silent. It was all beyond him, completely over his head. He had seen many strange things since he’d been transferred into the branch three years ago—seen and heard things he would never have believed possible—but this was so far removed from anything else he’d experienced that it defied reason.
Borowitz had turned back to Dragosani, had clasped his neck where it joined his shoulder. The naked man was merely pale now, neither leaden grey nor fleshy pink but pale. He shivered as Borowitz asked him: “Boris, did you get his name? Think now, for it’s very important.”
“His name?” Dragosani looked up, looked sick.
“You said he was close to me, the man who plotted my assassination with that gutted dog in there. Who is he, Boris? Who?”
Dragosani nodded, narrowed his eyes, said: “Close to you, yes. His name is … Ustinov!”
“Wha—?” Borowitz straightened up, realization dawning.
“Ustinov?” Mikhail Gerkhov gasped. “Andrei Ustinov? Is that possible?”
“Very possible,” said a familiar voice from the doorway. Ustinov stepped through it, his thin face lined and drawn, a submachine-gun cradled in his arms. He directed the weapon’s muzzle ahead of him, carelessly aimed it at the other three. “Definitely possible.”
“But why?” said Borowitz.
“But isn’t that obvious, ‘Comrade General?’ Wouldn’t any man who had been with you as long as I have want to see you dead? Too many long years, Gregor, I’ve suffered your tantrums and rages, all your petty little intrigues and stupid bullying. Yes, and I served you loyally—until now. But you never liked me, never let me in on anything. What have I been—what am I even now but a cipher of yourself, a despised appendage? Well, you’ll be pleased to note that I am, after all, an apt pupil. But your deputy? No, I was never that. And I should step aside for this upstart?” He nodded sneeringly towards Gerkhov.
Borowitz’s face clearly showed his disgust. “And you were the one I would have chosen!” he snorted. “Hah! No fool like an old fool.…”
Dragosani groaned and lifted a hand to his head. He made as if to stand, fell out of the chair on his knees, sprawled face down on the glass-littered floor. Borowitz made to kneel beside him.
“Stay where you are!” Ustinov snapped. “You can’t help him now. He’s a dead man. You’re all dead men.”
“You’ll never carry it off,” Borowitz said, but the colour was draining from his face and his voice was little more than a dry rustle.
“Of course I will,” Ustinov sneered. “In all this mayhem, this madness? Oh, I’ll tell a good tale, be sure—of you, a raving lunatic, and of the worse than crazy people you employ—and who will there be to say any different?” He stepped forward, the ugly weapon in his hands making a harsh ch-ching as he cocked it.
On the floor at his feet, Boris Dragosani was not unconscious. His collapse had simply been a ploy to put him within reach of a weapon. Now his fingers closed on the bone handle of the small, scythe-like surgical knife where it had fallen. Ustinov stepped closer, grinned as he quickly reversed his weapon, slamming its butt into Borowitz’s unsuspecting face. As the Head of ESP Branch flew backwards, blood smearing his crushed mouth, so Ustinov adjusted his grip on the gun and squeezed the trigger.
The first burst caught Borowitz high on the right shoulder, spun him like a top and tossed him down. It also lifted Gerkhov off his feet, drove him across the room and slammed him into the wall. He hung there for a second like a man crucified, then took a single step forward, spat out a stream of blood and fell face down. The wall was scarlet where his back had pressed against it.
Borowitz scrambled backwards, trailing his right arm along the floor, until his shoulders brought up against the wall. Unable to go any farther, he hunched himself up and sat there, waiting for it to happen. Ustinov drew his lips back from his teeth like a great shark before it strikes. He aimed at Borowitz’s belly, closing his finger on the trigger. At the same time Dragosani lunged upward, his knife not quite hamstringing Ustinov behind his left knee. Ustinov screamed, Borowitz too, as bullets chewed up the wall just over his head.
Hanging onto Ustinov’s coat, Dragosani hauled himself to his knees, sliced blindly upward a second time. His sickle blade cut through overcoat, jacket, shirt and flesh. It carved Ustinov’s upper arm to the bone and his useless fingers dropped the gun. Almost as a reflex action, he kneed Dragosani in the face.
Gasping his pain and terror, knowing he was badly cut, Andrei Ustinov, traitor, hobbled out of the door and slammed it shut. Anther moment saw him pass through a tiny anteroom and out into the corridor. There he closed the soundproof door more quietly behind him, stepped over the body of the KGB man where it lay with lolling tongue and caved-in skull. The killing of this one was unfortunate, but it had been necessary.
Cursing and gasping his pain, Ustinov hobbled down the corridor leaving a trail of blood. He had almost reached the door to the courtyard when a sound behind him brought him up short. Turning, he brought out a compact fragmentation grenade from his inside pocket, pulled the pin. He saw Dragosani step out into the corridor, stumble over the body sprawled there and go to his knees. Then, as their eyes met, he lobbed the grenade. After that there was nothing to do but get out of there. With the grenade’s bouncing ringing in his ears, and Dragosani’s hiss of snatched breath, he opened the steel door to the courtyard, stepped through it and pulled it firmly shut behind him.
Out in the night, Ustinov mentally ticked off the seconds as he limped towards the two white-coated attendants at the rear of the ambulance. “Help!” he croaked. “I’m cut—badly! It’s Dragosani, one of our special operatives. He’s gone mad, killed Borowitz, Gerkhov, and a KGB man.”
From behind him, lending his words definition, there came a muffled detonation. The steel door gonged as if someone had struck it with a sledgehammer; it bowed outward a little and broke a hinge, then was sucked back and open to slam against the corridor wall. Smoke, heat and a lick of red flame billowed out, all bearing the heavy stench of high explosives.
“Quick!” Ustinov shouted over the frantic questioning of the attendants and the yelling of security guards as they came clattering over the cobbles. “You, driver, get us away from here at once, before the whole place goes up!” There was little fear of that happening, but it would guarantee some action. And it would get Ustinov out of harm’s way, for the moment, anyway. The hell of it was that he couldn’t be sure any of them back there were dead. If they were he would have plenty of time to construct his story; if not he was done for. Only time would tell.
He flopped into the back of the ambulance as its engine roared into life, followed by the attendants who at once began to peel off his outer garments. Doors flapping, the vehicle pulled away across the courtyard, passed under a high stone archway and onto a track leading to the perimeter wall.
“Keep going,” Ustinov yelled. “Get us away!” The driver hunched down over the wheel and put his foot down.
Back in the courtyard the security men and the helicopter pilot hopped and skittered on the cobbles, coughing in the streamers of acrid smoke from the hanging door. The fire, what little of it there had been, had died in the smoke. And now, out from behind that dense, reeking wall of smoke staggered an ashen nightmare figure: Dragosani, naked still, black-streaked over grey and gore-spattered flesh, carried a bellowing Gregor Borowitz draped in a fireman’s lift across his shoulders.
“What?” the General shouted between coughs and splutters. “What? Where’s that treacherous dog Ustinov? Did you let him get away? Where’s the ambulance? What are you bloody fools doing?”
As the security men lifted Borowitz down from Dragosani’s bowed back, one of them breathlessly told him: “Comrade Ustinov was wounded, sir. He went off i
n the ambulance.”
“Comrade? Comrade?” Borowitz howled. “No comrade, that one! And ‘wounded,’ you say? Wounded, you arsehole? I want him dead!”
He turned his wolf’s face up to the tower, yelled: “You there—do you see the ambulance?”
“Yes, Comrade General. It approaches the outer wall.”
“Stop it!” Borowitz screamed, clutching at his shattered shoulder.
“But—”
“Blow it to hell!” the General raged.
The marksman in the tower slid his night-sight binoculars into a groove in the butt of his weapon, slapped home a mixed clip of tracers and explosive bullets. Kneeling, he picked up the vehicle again in the crosshairs of the night-sights, aimed at the cab and bonnet. The ambulance was slowing down as it approached one of the archways through the perimeter wall, but the marksman knew it would never get there. Jamming his weapon between his shoulder and the parapet wall, he squeezed the trigger and kept it squeezed. The hosepipe of fire reached out from the tower, fell short of the vehicle by a few yards, then jumped the gap and struck the target.
The front end of the ambulance burst into white fire, exploded and hurled blazing petrol in all directions. Blown off the track, turned on its side, the vehicle ploughed to a halt in torn-up turf. Someone in white crawled away from it on hands and knees as it burned; someone else, wearing an open, flapping shirt and carrying a dark overcoat, cowered back from the flames and limped in the direction of the covered exit.
Unable to see out of the courtyard from where he stood supported by the security men, Borowitz eagerly shouted up to the tower, “Did you stop it?”
“Yes, sir. Two men at least are alive. One is ambulance crew, and I think the other is—”
“I know who the other is,” Borowitz screamed. “He’s a traitor! To me, to the branch, to Russia. Cut him down!”
The marksman gulped, aimed, fired. Tracers and bullets reached out, chewed up the earth at Ustinov’s heels, caught up with him and blew him apart in blazing phosphorus and exploding steel.
It was the first time the man in the tower had killed. Now he put down his gun, leaned shakily against the balcony wall and called down, “It’s done, sir.” In the lull, his voice seemed very small.
“Very well,” Borowitz shouted back. “Now stay where you are for the moment and keep your eyes open.” He groaned and clutched at his shoulder again where blood seeped through the material of his overcoat.
One of the security men said, “Sir, you’re hurt.”
“Of course I’m hurt, fool! It can wait a little while. But for now I want everyone called in. I want to speak to them. And for the moment none of this is to be reported outside these walls. How many bloody KGB men do we have here?”
“Two, sir,” the same security man told him. “One in there—”
“He’s dead,” growled Borowitz, uncaring.
“Then only one, sir. Out there, in the woods. The rest of us are branch operatives.”
“Good! But … does the one in the woods have a radio?”
“No, sir.”
“Even better. Very well, bring him in and lock him up for now—on my authority.”
“Right, sir.”
“And don’t let anyone worry,” Borowitz continued. “All of this is on my shoulders—which are very broad, as you well know. I’m not trying to hide anything, but I want to break it in my own time. This could be our chance to get the KGB off our backs once and for all. Right, let’s see some action around here! You—” he turned to the helicopter pilot. “Get yourself airborne. I need a doctor—the branch doctor. Bring him in at once.”
“Yes, Comrade General. At once.” The pilot ran for his machine, the security men for their car where it was parked outside the courtyard. Borowitz watched them go, leaned on Dragosani’s arm and said:
“Boris, are you good for anything else?”
“I’m still in one piece, if that’s what you mean,” the other answered. “I just had time to shelter in the anteroom before the grenade exploded.”
Borowitz grinned wolfishly despite the terrible burning in his shoulder. “Good!” he said. “Then get back in there and see if you can find a fire extinguisher. Anything still burning, stop it. After that you can join me in the lecture room.” He shook off the naked man’s arm, swayed for a moment then stood rock steady. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
As Dragosani ducked back through the ruined door into the corridor, where the smoke had almost completely dispersed now, Borowitz called after him: “And Comrade, find yourself some clothes to wear, or a blanket at least. Your work is over for tonight. It hardly seems right that Boris Dragosani, Necromancer to the Kremlin—one day, anyway—should be running about in his birthday-suit, now does it?”
* * *
A week later at a special hearing held in camera, Gregor Borowitz defended the action he had taken at the converted Château Bronnitsy on the night in question. The hearing was to serve a double purpose. One: Borowitz must be seen to have been called to order over “a serious malfunction of the ‘experimental branch’ under his control.” Two: he must now be allowed the opportunity to present his case for complete independence from the rest of the USSR’s secret services, particularly the KGB. In short, he would use the hearing as a platform in his bid for complete autonomy.
The five-strong panel of judges—more properly questioners, or investigators—was composed of Georg Krisich of the Party Central Committee, Oliver Bellekhoyza and Karl Djannov, junior cabinet ministers, Yuri Andropov, head of the Komissia Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, the KGB, and one other who was not only “an independent observer” but in fact Leonid Brezhnev’s personal representative. Since the Party Leader would in any case have the last say, his “nameless” but all-important cipher was the man Borowitz must most impress. He was also, by virtue of his “anonymity,” the one who had least to say.…
The hearing had taken place in a large room on the second floor of a building on Kurtsuzov Prospekt, which made it easy for Andropov and Brezhnev’s man to be there since they both had offices in that block. No one had been especially difficult. There is an accepted element of risk in all experimental projects; though, as Andropov quietly pointed out, one would hope that as well as being “accepted,” the risk might also on occasion be “anticipated,” at which Borowitz had smiled and nodded his head in deference while promising himself that one day the bastard would pay for that cold, sneering insinuation of inefficiency, not to mention his smug and entirely inappropriate air of sly superiority.
During the hearing it had come out (exactly as Borowitz had reported it) how one of his junior executives, Andrei Ustinov, had broken down under the stresses and strains of his work and gone berserk. He had killed KGB Operative Hadj Gartezkov, had tried to destroy the Château with explosives, had even wounded Borowitz himself before being stopped. Unfortunately, in the process of “stopping” him, two others had also lost their lives and a third man had been injured, though mercifully none of these had been citizens of any great importance. The state would do what it could for their families.
After the “malfunction” and until all the facts in the case could be properly substantiated, it had been unfortunately necessary to detain a second member of Andropov’s KGB at the Château. This had been unavoidable; with the single exception of a helicopter pilot flying his machine, Borowitz had allowed no one to leave until all was sorted out. Even the pilot would have been kept back had the presence of a doctor not been urgently required. As for the agent’s detention in a cell: that had been for his own safety. Until it could be shown that the KGB itself was not Ustinov’s main target—indeed, until it was discovered that no “target” as such existed, but that a man had quite simply gone mad and committed mayhem—Borowitz had considered it his duty to keep the agent safe. After all, one dead KGB man was surely one too many; a sentiment Andropov must feel obliged to endorse.
In short, the entire hearing was little more than a reiteration of Borowitz’s
original explanation and report. No mention at all was made of the disinterment, subsequent evisceration and necromantic examination of a certain senior ex-MVD official. If Andropov had known of that then there really would have been a problem, but he did not know. Nor would matters have been improved by the fact that only eight days ago he himself had lain a wreath on that poor unfortunate’s fresh-made grave—or the fact that at this very moment the body lay in a second, unmarked grave somewhere in the grounds of the Château Bronnitsy.…
As for the rest of it: Minister Djannov had made some indelicate enquiry or other in respect of the work or the purpose of Borowitz’s branch; Borowitz had looked astonished if not outraged; Brezhnev’s representative had coughed, stepped in and sidetracked the question. What is the use, after all, of a secret branch or organization once it has been made to divulge its secrets? In fact, Leonid Brezhnev had already vetoed any such direct enquiries in respect of ESP Branch and its activities; Borowitz had been a sinewy old warhorse and Party man all his life, not to mention a staunch and powerful supporter of the Party Leader.
Throughout, it had been fairly obvious that Andropov was disgruntled. He would dearly have loved to bring charges, or at least press for a full KGB investigation, but had already been forbidden—or rather, he had been “convinced” that he should not follow that route. But when all was said and done and the others had left, the KGB boss asked Borowitz to stay back and talk awhile.
“Gregor,” he said when they were alone, “of course you know that nothing of any real importance—I mean nothing—is ever entirely secret from me? ‘Unknown’ or ‘as yet unlearned’ are not the same as secret. And sooner or later I learn everything. You do know that?”
“Ah, omniscience!” Borowitz grinned his wolf’s grin. “A heavy load for any one man’s shoulders to bear, Comrade. I sympathize with you.”
Yuri Andropov smiled thinly, his eyes deceptively misty and vacant behind the lenses of his spectacles. But he made no effort to veil the threat in his voice when he said: “Gregor, we all have our futures to consider. You of all people should bear that in mind. You are not a young man. If your pet branch goes down, what then? Are you ready for an early retirement, the loss of all your little privileges?”