His mind a complete blank, a well of astonishment, Scott stayed right where he was, chain-smoked two cigarettes, and might have made it three but that would have meant surrendering to both of his bad habits. Finally he snapped to, strode into the shop, and looked for the woman in curlers. She was up on a stepladder behind the counter, replacing a dead bulb in its light socket. As she got down she was grumbling, “. . . That’s the fourth time in a bloody week! Cheap bloody . . . ! I keep putting them in; they keep blowing! And they cost a bloody fortune! I—”
“The young woman who was just in here,” Scott cut her off. “She left a minute ago, just after me. Would you happen to know who she is, where she lives, or anything about her?” Why he was bothering to ask after a crazy woman he couldn’t have said, and especially since she’d asked him not to.
Dusting her hands off on a rag, the woman said, “Eh? That girl you were speaking to outside?” And then, cocking her head on one side and cackling like a crone, “Oh, yes? Fancy her, do you? Well, I’m sorry, love, but I can’t help you. She’s been in here three or four times, but hasn’t said very much. Has to be an early bird, though, ’cos I never see her except in the mornings.” And after a further bout of cackling, closing one eye in a lewd gargoyle wink, she continued. “But never mind. P’raps if you come in again tomorrow—and chat her up a bit, you know?—maybe you’ll get lucky, eh?”
Scott left the shop and headed for home. And for the first time in what felt like a very long time his brain had something to work on other than his misery.
That girl, woman, person, who could be twenty-two going on thirty-five—who the hell was she? And how did she know about Kelly, and about Scott? Well, not so much about him, because it really must be obvious. His sorrow was written in his face, and in his demeanour; in fact, it radiated from him. Her words, yes. But what else had she said? And what the hell was it that she’d said about Three, which he’d sensed had a capital T? She’d said he was One, she was Two, and soon they’d be Three . . . also that Three wasn’t just a question but could as easily be the answer. Now what was that supposed to mean? Or maybe he wasn’t hearing things right and it was him who was crazy!
As for her looks: if he had to describe her, how would he go about it? Damn it, he couldn’t remember! She never seemed to look the same twice! And now, thinking about it, Scott believed he’d seen her maybe a dozen or more times; not only in the newsagent’s but in various places in the city. Her face, mirrored in a shop window; her figure, glimpsed across a busy street or on a crowded tube train; her perfume, lingering in the air, whose fragrance he had forgotten until she touched him. So then, was she some kind of stalker? But whatever, she had touched him—the merest touch—and his hand was still tingling.
And he felt . . . he felt alive again!
Was she Russian, Italian, American? Maybe a cross between the three? (God, that number!) Scott—whose knowledge of languages, accents, and dialects was way above average; who had to know at least something about them, because he was an interpreter—had never before heard anything like hers. But there yet again, maybe it was him. Maybe he really wasn’t hearing things right. Yet he felt sure he’d heard her well enough when she spoke his name—without ever being told it!
And what about those weird warnings? About people asking strange questions, and him keeping his distance from something unspecified, and not trying to find her? Oh, really? Well, he’d be seeing her again tomorrow morning, that was for sure!
By which time he was home, in through his gate and up the garden path to his porch . . . which was where they were waiting for him: those men in their grey, half-length overcoats, their grave-seeming eyes looking him up and down, sizing him up like so many hungry undertakers—especially the very tall, extremely gaunt, and dour-seeming one—and tucking him away in their individual mental pigeonholes.
And somehow, while Scott was registering his surprise at their presence here, and wondering about their purpose, one of them got behind him and he felt a tiny spider bite on his neck just above his upturned collar. Except that even as he reached up an oddly rubbery hand to slap the thing, he was fairly sure that it hadn’t been a spider.
Then, as his legs turned to jelly and their faces began to swim, they grabbed and steadied him, and kept him from falling; one on his left, another on his right, and the third one—the gaunt one—telling the others he’d go fetch the car, his high-pitched voice coming as if from a thousand miles away. Three of them, of course. But then, what else should Scott expect?
Following which there was only the darkness and a sense of floating, drifting, sinking . . .
2
The mind-spies of E-Branch in the heart of London were enjoying “a quiet period.” The duties of the agents in that most secret, strangest of all the United Kingdom’s Secret Services were just about as routine as they would ever get. Yes, they continued to listen to the minds of others, monitored the suffering planet’s ecology, tracked the movements of nuclear vessels and munitions across the world’s most remote terrains and beneath her oceans, maintained the status quo and when they could improved upon it, and generally did their utmost to shield humankind from terrors that a majority of the world’s inhabitants couldn’t conceive of and certainly wouldn’t believe in; but all of that was routine, even habitual at E-Branch HQ, and the ESPers were enjoying what was for them a comparatively quiet period.
Ben Trask was the Head of Branch. A mousy-haired, green-eyed man in his middle to late thirties, he was about five feet ten, just a touch overweight and somewhat slope-shouldered, and normally wore what could best be described as a dismal or lugubrious expression. This was as a result of his talent; for in a world where the plain truth was so often hard to find it was no easy thing to be a human lie detector. White lies, half truths, frauds, facsimiles, and utter falsehoods smacked into Trask from all directions, until he frequently felt he wasn’t able to take another hit. His team knew this, and while they might sometimes embroider the facts in casual conversations with other E-Branch colleagues, they invariably told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to Ben Trask.
This morning, feeling the need to clear up a growing backlog of paperwork, Trask had come into town early. But he wasn’t going to be on his own. Despite that it was only a few minutes to 7:00, already there was no lack of activity in E-Branch HQ, on this private and mainly inaccessible top floor of a building that to all intents and purposes was a quality but by no means ostentatious central London hotel. The weary Night-Duty Officer was making ready to hand over his duties, and the members of an early shift of Trask’s agents were organizing an interrogation.
In the main corridor, on his way to his office, Trask came to a halt to look down at an unconscious man on a wheeled trolley. The man was maybe thirty-five, blue-eyed, and a very light blond. While he wore his hair unfashionably short, he wasn’t at all bad-looking, but at six feet tall he didn’t appear to have the weight to go with his height. He was either lithe and athletic or he wasn’t looking after himself too well . . . probably a mixture of the two, but more likely the latter. He might well have been sleeping in his clothes; his hair was awry; he hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and so looked more than a little worse for wear.
“And who is this?” Trask inquired as one of the three-man team opened the door to the interrogation cell.
Ian Goodly, a very tall, thin, gangly man—but a man with an exceptional talent, his occasionally unruly ability to sense something of future events—paused to blink owlishly at Trask, and said, “Good morning to you, too, Ben. As for him”—he indicated the unconscious man—“you okayed and signed the paperwork yesterday.”
Nodding wryly, Trask replied, “Yes, I’ve been signing lots of things lately. Which is why I’m in so early this morning: so that the next time I write my name on something I may even have read it first!”
“As always, you’re overworked,” said the precog, smiling a rare smile. Ian Goodly’s expression was usually grave; only his eyes—la
rge, brown, warm, and totally disarming—belied what must otherwise constitute an unfortunate first impression: that of a cadaverous mortician. Sure enough, his smile vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, and he continued:
“This is Scott St. John, who was ‘spotted’ by one of ours at an OPEC conference in Venezuela . . . he’s a freelance interpreter: Arabic dialects, chiefly. We might have checked him out at that time, around three months ago, but since he’d recently lost his wife we allowed him time to recover; not long enough, apparently, for it doesn’t look like he’s fully recovered even now. In fact, he still looks very much down. He’d contracted for the Venezuelan job months prior to his wife’s sudden, terminal illness, and soon after she died he flew out to the conference where he tried to fulfill his commitment. He stuck it out for a day or two, then had to quit. It was then, when he really began to go to pieces, that our man spotted him.”
Trask nodded. “And his talent, if indeed he has one?”
“That’s why we brought him in,” Goodly replied. “Whatever it is he’s got, whatever it is he can do, if anything, we can’t pin it down. We’ve been watching him—well, from a distance—but while there’s definitely something about him it isn’t ringing any bells just yet. So it could well be something we’ve not seen before. And as I know you’ll agree, we can always use new talents. Right, Ben?”
“Scott St. John, eh?” Trask moved aside, allowing Goodly’s colleagues to wheel St. John into the interrogation room out of sight. “So why did you knock him out? Do you think he’s dangerous or something?”
“It’s his curriculum vitae,” Goodly answered. “His father, Jeremy St. John, was a diplomat; for some seven years he served as British Ambassador at the embassy in Tokyo. Divorced, he was also a single parent, but he didn’t have much time for the boy. So Scott spent a lot of time with a Japanese minder, a reformed Yakusa-type with a penchant for the martial arts. Result: Scott St. John is a karate black belt, with qualifications in several other lethal oriental, er, pastimes.” The precog paused, shrugged, and continued. “Since it seemed possible he might not want to come with us . . . well, we weren’t taking any chances.”
“Hmmm!” said Trask, frowning. “What do you think, Ian? Are we maybe a little too heavy-handed sometimes?”
“We might occasionally seem to be, I suppose,” the precog agreed, “but sometimes we’ve had to be. I think we get it right more often than we get it wrong.”
Trask nodded and said, “You’re right, of course. But being in a job like this—more or less autonomous, with the power to do just about anything, right or wrong—it occasionally gives me pause. You know what they say about absolute power?”
Goodly’s turn to nod, as gravely as always. “But we’re not that powerful, Ben,” he said. “And personally, I’ve never known a group of individuals less prone to corruption than our people in E-Branch. Which, as you’d know better than any other man, is the plain and simple truth.”
Trask smiled wryly and said, “But it wasn’t always so, now was it? What about Geoffrey Paxton? Wasn’t he one of ours, too? And let’s not forget Norman Wellesley—a former Head of Branch and my immediate predecessor!”
Goodly shook his head. “No, I can’t entirely agree. Geoffrey Paxton was mainly the Minister Responsible’s man, let loose among us to keep an eye on Harry Keogh. As for Norman Wellesley . . . he was the exception that proves the rule. With that closed mind of his we couldn’t read him. But being what we are now, we don’t need watchers to watch us, Ben. With us it’s instinct: we watch each other, and we watch ourselves. And, if I may say so, having got rid of those two we do so quite needlessly. E-Branch and its members, we’re just fine, Ben.”
Again Trask smiled, and said, “Ian, if you’re ever in need of a job you can be my conscience.” And over his shoulder as he started off again along the corridor toward his office, “But do let me know how it goes with St. John, right?”
“Of course,” Goodly answered, before following his friends into the interrogation cell . . .
Scott St. John snapped awake to the stinging smell of ammonium carbonate. Seated, he at once tried to get to his feet, only to discover that he was tied down, his wrists manacled to the arms of a chair. Then, all mush-mouthed, he commenced an instinctive response to his situation: “What in the name of . . . ?” And immediately gagged on an acrid bitter-aloes taste, before swallowing sour spittle in order to moisten his bone-dry throat. And still gulping, his eyes watering, he looked dazedly all around.
He was in a grey-carpeted, cell-like room with blank, nonreflective walls, no windows, and a single light in the ceiling behind a long narrow desk where two men sat facing him. A third man, the very tall gaunt-looking one (for Scott had immediately recognized the trio as his abductors), was just now returning to his colleagues, having tossed a used ampoule into a wastepaper basket. And as Scott quickly gathered his senses, so the gaunt one sat down with the others behind the desk.
Though the faces of the three were shaded, silhouetted in the light that shone on them from above and behind, still Scott could feel their eyes on him, watching him closely; so closely, indeed, that he felt they might somehow be probing him, albeit covertly. Which was such a weird, even ridiculous idea that he wondered how he had dreamed it up: this notion that they could be searching him without touching him—almost as if they were in his mind, or trying to be.
As best he could Scott focussed on their faces, something he hadn’t had time to do when they’d jumped him. The tall, thin one was the most distinctive of the three; seated to the right of the desk, he now leaned forward a little and began speaking in a high-pitched but by no means threatening voice:
“It seems you’re pretty much returned to us, Mr. St. John. Good! Would you like a drink? A glass of water, perhaps?”
Scott stared hard at him. “How do you suggest I drink it?” He coughed the words out, his throat still burning. “Through a straw, maybe?” He shook his trapped wrists against the arms of his chair, grimacing as he ran his tongue around the inside of his foul mouth.
“That’s the general idea, yes,” the other piped. “Through a straw, to get rid of the bad taste. For we’re well aware how that knockout drug of ours can sometimes affect people. And so I’ll ask you again: would you like a drink?”
Scott wanted to say yes, but instead he shook his head. He wouldn’t give this lanky bastard the satisfaction. “No, I don’t want anything to drink!” he growled. “I want to know where I am and why I’m here—and who you people are—and what the hell you think you’re doing? I’ve been attacked, assaulted, drugged, snatched, from right in front of my own house, manacled, and . . . and God only knows what else! And you can bet your life someone will be in serious trouble when all of this is sorted out.”
The other nodded, remained unruffled, and replied, “Well, I’ll try to answer all of your questions, and then we’d like to ask you some of our own. Meanwhile it would help if you’d calm down and try not to be so angry. A bad or threatening attitude won’t improve matters and may only prolong this procedure.”
Scott shook his head in disbelief and tried to work things out. There seemed only one possible solution to this thing, one answer. “You’ve got the wrong man,” he said, hoping, knowing it must be so. “Whoever you think I am and whatever you think I’ve done, you’re seriously mistaken.” But when that made no appreciable impression, and more furiously yet: “Listen, who the hell are you people? MI5, the KGB, or the Stasi or something? You’re not the police, that’s for damn sure!”
“No,” said the gaunt one, as calm as ever, “we’re not the police. But you may certainly think of us as police—well, of a sort, though not the usual sort—and rest assured that what we’re doing here isn’t illegal, and you won’t come to any harm. Also, I want you to know that when we’re through here you’ll be free to go; we’ll return you to where we found you. As for your other questions . . . you want to know who we are, where you are, and why you’re here? Well, that’s only fa
ir and reasonable, and my colleague here will try to supply you with some answers.” He looked at the man next to him, and Scott did the same.
There seemed to be something wrong with this one’s face. Granted it was partly shaded and silhouetted, but Scott’s eyes were adjusting to the room’s lighting now and he’d noticed the stiffness of this second man’s features. He believed that he’d already made a mental note on that same subject—probably at his house, when these three first approached him—since when events had moved so speedily that nothing much had fully registered.
Now, however, he saw that he’d been right: there was something wrong with the man’s face. For in fact Scott was looking at Paul Garvey, an E-Branch telepath. Garvey was tall and well built, athletic and about the same age as St. John, and until a time some nine months ago he had been a handsome man. Then he’d tackled a murderous, necromantic sex maniac called Johnny Found and lost most of the left side of his face. And despite that he had been subsequently worked on by the best plastic surgeons in England, still the nerves in his rebuilt face didn’t connect up too well. He could smile on the right side but not on the left, and so to avoid the travesty he didn’t smile at all. Also, his speech had suffered, which meant he must carefully control the formation of his words.
He did so now, and in a very slightly slurred voice said, “You mentioned the KGB and Stasi, Mr. St. John. Well, we’re not them; in fact, they’re working at a very low level now—‘keeping a low profile,’ as we like to say—but you also mentioned MI5, which was closer to the mark. We are in fact members of a branch of the UK’s security services. This is our headquarters, where you are our guest . . . for a little while, anyway.”
Still feeling confused, dehydrated, Scott growled, “Okay, but before we go any further, maybe I’ll take that drink now—that’s if you’ll free my hands. And perhaps you’d also like to explain why I was drugged in the first place?”