Pastukhov turned away and started slowly groping for the lighter on the ground. The man with watchdog’s eyes walked past without taking the slightest notice of him.
‘A drop too much yesterday?’ Bisat asked sympathetically.
‘Who?’ muttered Pastukhov. ‘Ah . . . no, it’s just that the lighter’s slippery . . .’
‘Your hands are shaking and you’ve turned as white as a sheet,’ his partner remarked.
Pastukhov finally gave him a light, checked out of the corner of his eye that the man was walking away towards the car park, took out a cigarette and lit up himself – without waiting for Bisat’s lighter.
‘You’re acting kind of funny . . .’ said Bisat.
‘Yes, I was drinking yesterday,’ Pastukhov muttered. He looked at the terminal building again.
This time there was a ‘wolf’ coming out of it. With a self-confident, predatory gaze and determined stride. Pastukhov turned away.
‘You should eat khash the morning after,’ Bisat admonished him. ‘But only the right khash – ours. That Armenian khash is poison!’
‘Ah, come on, they’re absolutely identical,’ Pastukhov replied in his usual manner.
Bisat spat disdainfully and shook his head.
‘They may look the same. But in essence they’re completely different!’
‘They might be different in essence, but in reality they’re absolutely identical!’ Dima replied, watching the ‘wolf’, who had walked past and was also going towards the car park.
Bisat took offence and stopped talking.
Pastukhov finished off his cigarette in a few quick drags and looked at the door of the terminal again.
His first thought was angry, even resentful: Are they holding some kind of grand get-together in there today?’
And then the fear hit him.
The individual who had walked out of the doors when they slid open and was now standing there, gazing round thoughtfully, wasn’t a ‘dog’. But he wasn’t a ‘wolf’, either. He was someone else. A third kind.
A kind that ate wolves for breakfast and dogs for lunch. And left the tastiest parts for supper.
The classification that immediately occurred to Pastukhov was ‘tiger’. He said: ‘I’ve got stomach cramps . . . I’m off to the can.’
‘Go on, I’ll have a smoke,’ replied his partner, still offended.
To have asked Bisat to go to the toilet with him would have been strange. There wasn’t any time to explain anything or invent anything. Pastukhov turned round and walked away quickly, leaving Iskenderov in the path of the ‘tiger’. ‘He won’t do anything to him . . . He’ll just walk straight past, that’s all . . .’ Pastukhov reassured himself.
Pastukhov only looked round as he was already walking into the departure hall.
Just in time to see Bisat salute casually and stop the ‘tiger’. Of course, his partner couldn’t spot them – there wasn’t any incident in his past like the one Pastukhov had experienced. But this time even he had sensed something – with that policeman’s intuition that sometimes helped you pull an entirely unremarkable-looking man out of a crowd and discover that he had a rod stashed in a secret holster or a knife in his pocket.
Pastukhov suddenly realised that his stomach cramps were genuine now. And he sprinted into the airport’s safe, noisy interior, full of people and suitcases.
Since he was a good polizei, he felt very ashamed. But he felt even more afraid.
CHAPTER 1
‘GORODETSKY WILL REPORT on the situation regarding this morning’s incident,’ said Gesar, without looking up from his papers.
I stood up. Caught Semyon’s glance of sympathy. Started talking.
‘Two hours ago I saw Mr Warnes off on the flight to New York. After our colleague had checked in and was buying vodka in the duty-free . . .’
‘You mean you went through passport control with him, Gorodetsky?’ Gesar enquired, again without raising his eyes.
‘Well, yes.’
‘What for?’
‘To make sure that he was all right . . .’ I cleared my throat. ‘Well, and to buy something for myself in the duty-free . . .’
‘What, exactly?’
‘A couple of bottles of whisky.’
‘What kind?’ Gesar looked up from the desk.
‘Scotch. Single malt. Glenlivet twelve-year-old and Glenmorangie eighteen-year-old . . . but that was for a present, I personally think drinking eighteen-year-old whisky is rather flashy . . .’
‘What the hell!’ barked Gesar. ‘Of all the petty selfish indulgences . . .’
‘Pardon me, Boris Ignatievich,’ I said, ‘but Mr Warnes drinks like a fish. And he prefers decent single malts, not White Horse. My bar’s completely empty. Tomorrow some other guest will arrive and you’ll assign me to look after him. But I can’t buy alcohol in the fancy “A-Z of Taste” supermarkets on my salary.’
‘Go on,’ Gesar said in an icy voice.
‘After that I sat down in the bar to drink a mug of beer.’
‘How long have you been drinking beer in the mornings, Gorodetsky?’
‘Four days now. Since Warnes arrived.’
Semyon giggled. Gesar half-rose to his feet and glanced round everyone sitting at the table – ten Others, all at least Third-Level or, as the veterans said, ‘third-rank’.
‘We’ll discuss the specifics of entertaining visitors later. So, you were drinking beer for your hangover. Then what happened?’
‘A woman came in with a child. A fat little boy about ten years old, bawling and howling. He was begging his mother not to get on the plane, said it was going to crash. Well . . . naturally, I scanned his aura. The kid turned out to be an uninitiated Other, High-Level, at least First or Second. From all the indications – a clairvoyant. Possibly even a Prophet.’
A light stir ran round the room.
‘Why such bold conclusions?’ asked Gesar.
‘The colour. The intensity. The glimmering . . .’ I strained slightly and broadcast what I had seen into space. Naturally, I didn’t create any real image, but the mind will always oblige and find some point in mid-air for a picture.
‘Possibly,’ Gesar said, with a nod. ‘But even so, a Prophet . . .’
‘As a rule, a clairvoyant doesn’t have the ability to foretell his own future. But the boy was frightened of his own death. That’s an argument in favour of a Prophet . . .’ Olga said in a quiet voice.
Gesar nodded reluctantly.
‘I enquired if we had the right to a first-or second-level intervention – to save the entire plane. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that right. Then I personally took the right to a fifth-level and removed the boy and his mother from the flight.’
‘Reasonable,’ said Gesar, apparently a bit calmer now. ‘Reasonable. Is the boy being monitored?’
I shrugged.
Semyon cleared his throat delicately. ‘We’re working on it, Boris Ignatievich.’
Gesar nodded and looked at me again: ‘Is there anything else?’
I hesitated. ‘He made another prediction. To me personally.’
‘To a Higher Other?’ Gesar asked, to make quite sure.
‘A Prophet!’ said Olga, sounding almost jolly. ‘Definitely a Prophet!’
‘Can you repeat it for us, Anton?’ Gesar asked in a voice that was perfectly calm and friendly now.
‘By all means. “You are Anton Gorodetsky, Higher White Magician. You are Nadka’s father. Because of you . . . all of us . . .”
‘What came after that?’
‘At that point he was interrupted.’
Gesar muttered something and started drumming his fingers on the table. I waited. Everybody else was waiting too.
‘Anton, I wouldn’t like to seem impolite . . . but are you certain it was your own decision to drink beer?’
I was flabbergasted. Not even offended, just flabbergasted. To ask an Other if he has fallen under someone else’s influence is quite a serious matter. It’s like .
. . well, it’s like one man enquiring about the success of another man’s intimate life. Between close friends, of course, that kind of question is possible. But between a boss and his subordinate . . . and in the presence of other colleagues . . . naturally, if an inexperienced Other commits some kind of inept blunder, then the question ‘Were you thinking with your own head?’ is quite appropriate, although even so it’s rhetorical. But asking a Higher Other a question like that . . .
‘Boris Ignatievich,’ I said, furiously tearing away all my layers of mental defence. ‘I must have given you some reason to say that. I honestly can’t think exactly what. In my view, I acted entirely of my own free will. But if you have any doubts, scan me – I don’t object.’
Of course, that was another rhetorical phrase. Absolutely rhetorical. The kind of thing a man who has fallen under some absurd suspicion would say – for instance, when he’s a guest in someone’s house and is accused of stealing the silver spoons off the table . . .
‘Thank you, Anton. I accept your suggestion,’ Gesar replied, getting up.
The next moment I blanked out.
And then I opened my eyes.
Between those two points, of course, some time had passed – five or ten minutes. Only I didn’t remember it. I was in Gesar’s office, lying on the small divan referred to ironically by everyone as ‘the brainstorm launch pad’. Olga was holding my head – and she was very, very angry. Gesar was sitting on a chair opposite me – and he was very, very embarrassed. There was no one else in the office.
‘Well, then, am I a trembling wretch or am I justified?’ I asked, quoting Dostoevsky’s famous phrase.
‘Anton, I offer you my very humblest apologies,’ said Gesar.
‘He’s already apologised to all the others,’ Olga added. ‘Anton, forgive the old fool.’
I sat up and rubbed my temples. My head didn’t actually hurt – it just felt incredibly empty and it was ringing.
‘Who am I? Where am I? Who are you, I don’t know you!’ I muttered.
‘Anton, please accept my apologies . . .’ Gesar repeated.
‘Boss, what made you think I was under some kind of influence?’
‘Doesn’t it seem strange to you that after seeing off our guest you sat down to drink beer in a lousy, expensive little cafe, even though you knew you were going to drive?’
‘It does, but that’s the way the day went.’
‘And that, at the precise moment when you suddenly decided to linger at the airport, a clairvoyant boy threw a hysterical fit right in front of your eyes?’
‘Life is made up of coincidences,’ I said philosophically.
‘And that the plane reached Barcelona safely?’
That really knocked me back. ‘How?’
‘The usual way. Engines roaring and wings swaying. It got there, offloaded all the people and set off on the way back an hour ago.’
I shook my head from side to side. ‘Boris Ignatievich . . . of course, I’m no clairvoyant. But when I specifically check the probability of one event or another . . . The boy started howling about a catastrophe. I glanced at his aura – an uninitiated Other in a spontaneous outburst of Power. I started checking through the reality lines – the plane crashed. With a probability of ninety-eight per cent. Maybe . . . well, there are no absolutely certain predictions . . . maybe those two per cent came up?’
‘Possibly. But how else can you interpret what happened?’
‘A deliberate provocation,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Someone pumped the boy full of Power and hung a false aura on him. It’s a well-known move – you yourself . . . Hmm. Well, then the boy has a fit of hysterics, I hear him howling and start calculating the probabilities . . . let’s assume they’ve been distorted, too.’
‘With what intent?’
‘To make us use our right to a first-level intervention for nothing. The plane was never going to crash, the kid is of no interest. And we, like idiots, have wasted our bullet.’
Gesar raised his finger didactically.
‘But we didn’t have the right to intervene in any case!’ I exclaimed.
‘We did,’ Gesar muttered gruffly. ‘We did and we do. But reserved exclusively for me. If you had come directly to me . . . I would have allowed you to intervene.’
‘So that’s how it is . . .’ I said. ‘Well . . . that really does make it look like a trick. But what about the kid?’
‘A Prophet . . .’ Gesar said reluctantly. ‘A very powerful one. And you bear no signs of having been influenced. So you’re probably right.’
‘But the plane didn’t crash,’ Olga said quietly.
We stopped talking for a moment.
‘Prophets don’t make mistakes. The boy is a Prophet, since he made predictions about his own fate and the fate of a Higher Other. But the plane didn’t crash. You didn’t interfere in events . . .’ Gesar said quietly.
That was when it hit me. ‘You weren’t checking if I was under some kind of influence or not,’ I said. ‘You were checking if I saved the plane without permission.’
‘That too,’ said Gesar, not even embarrassed now. ‘But I didn’t want to state a reason like that in front of our colleagues.’
‘Well, thanks a million.’ I got up and walked towards the door.
Gesar waited until I opened it before he spoke. ‘I must say, Anton, I’m very pleased for you. Pleased and proud.’
‘Why, exactly?’
‘Because you didn’t intervene without permission. And you didn’t even come up with any human nonsense like phone calls about a bomb on the plane . . .’
I walked out and closed the door behind me.
I felt like screaming out loud or smashing my fist against the wall.
But I held out. I was imperturbable and cool.
I really hadn’t come up with any ‘human nonsense’! The thought had never even entered my head. I was convinced that we had no legal right to save two hundred people – and I had saved one Other and his mother.
I must have learned all my lessons well – I had behaved entirely correctly for a Higher Other.
And that made me feel lousy.
‘Anton!’
Looking round, I saw Semyon hurrying to catch up with me. He seemed slightly embarrassed, like an old friend who has just witnessed an awkward and ugly scene. But we had been close friends for a long time already, and Semyon didn’t have to pretend that he had been detained by chance.
‘I thought I’d have to wait longer,’ Semyon explained. ‘Well, that was a freaky move by the boss – very, very freaky . . .’
‘He’s right,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘It really was a strange situation.’
‘I’ve been assigned to talk to the boy, initiate him and explain to the mother why he should study in our school . . . basic standard procedure. Why don’t we go together?’
‘You mean you’ve already found him?’ I asked. ‘I only read the names, I didn’t take any more trouble . . .’
‘Of course we’ve found him! This is the twenty-first century, Antokha! We called our information centre and asked them who didn’t show up for such-and-such a flight to Barcelona. A minute later Tolik called back and gave me the names and addresses. Innokentii Grigorievich Tolkov, ten and a half years old. Lives with his mum . . . well, you know that Others are statistically more common in single-parent families.’
‘It’s the effect of social deprivation,’ I muttered gruffly.
‘The explanation I heard is that dads subconsciously sense when a child is an Other and leave the family,’ said Semyon. ‘In other words, they’re afraid . . . The Tolkovs live not far from here, near the Water Stadium metro station – why don’t we mosey over?’
‘No, Semyon, I won’t go,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You’ll manage just fine on your own.’
Semyon gave me a quizzical look.
‘Everything’s cool!’ I said firmly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not having a fit of hysterics, I’m not going on a binge and I’m not hatching pla
ns to quit the Watch. I’ll take a trip to the airport and wander about there for a while. This whole thing’s wrong somehow, can’t you see? A boy-Prophet mouthing vague prophecies, a plane that should have crashed and didn’t . . . it’s not right!’
‘Gesar’s already sent someone to inspect Sheremetyevo,’ Semyon told me.
His voice had a sly kind of note to it . . .
‘Who did he send?’
‘Las.’
‘I see,’ I said with a nod, stopping in front of the lifts and pressing the call button. ‘In other words, Gesar’s not expecting anything interesting.’
Las was an untypical Other. He didn’t have any Other abilities at all to begin with, and he shouldn’t have developed any. But several years earlier he had managed to get in the way of the spell of an ancient magical book, the Fuaran. The vampire Kostya, who at one time was my neighbour and even my friend, had used Las to demonstrate that the book gave him the power to turn human beings into Others . . .
What had seemed strangest to me was not that Las was transformed into an Other, but that he was transformed into a Light Other. He was no evil villain, but he had a very specific sense of humour . . . and his views on life would have been more suitable for a Dark One too. Working in the Night Watch hadn’t changed him all that much – he seemed to regard it as just one more joke.
But he was a weak Other. Seventh-Level, the very lowest, with only vague prospects of ever reaching the Fifth or Sixth (and Las wasn’t desperately keen on the idea anyway).
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Semyon disagreed amiably. ‘Gesar simply isn’t expecting anything interesting in the line of magic. You were there, after all, you didn’t spot anything. And you’re a Higher Magician . . .’
I winced.
‘Yes, you are, you are,’ Semyon said in a friendly tone. ‘You don’t have much experience, but you have all the abilities. So digging in that direction is pointless. But Las – he’ll look at the situation differently. Practically from a human point of view. His head works in a rather paradoxical fashion . . . what if he spots something?’