Then they were gone, and a kindly, learned, face—a long face, with grey eyes whose inner orbits curved into the bridge of a straight, even nose, over drooping moustaches that touched the corners of his small but by no means mean mouth—peered into Harry’s. The man’s forehead was large and open; his cheeks were ruddy; his ears protruded slightly, with sideburns that flowed down into a full golden-brown beard. But his eyes were his most remarkable feature, for at one and the same time they were severe and smiling! And as well as discipline, a great humanity—an inexplicable mysticism—seemed to blaze outwards from them.
Then:
“Ah, son of my visions!” he said. “Or are you in fact the father? But away with you now, for I am assured that as yet it is not your time.”
And that was all. The ops room swam back into focus again and Harry felt like he was about to throw up.
“What the hell … ?” Ben Trask’s eyes were staring. “Where were you, just then?” For he had been unable to read the truth of a mind that was elsewhere.
And Darcy wanted to know: “Harry, how long has this been going on?”
They stared so hard at him—they tried so very hard to pierce the veil of the Necroscope’s metaphysical mind—that he felt their gaze was almost hypnotic.
Hypnotic! Hypnotic! Hypnotic!
He couldn’t stop it. His every thought conjured new, even stranger visions. “Just hang onto me!” he croaked, as yet again the universe stood on its head.
This time it was a mere moment, a displacement, a genuine “glimpse,” such as the precog Alec Kyle had used to experience. A frozen picture like a single celluloid frame that gets jammed too long under the hot glare of the projector’s lamp, until it browns, crisps, and blisters out of existence.
Harry stood at a crossroads. On the one hand beyond a low wall, the mainly untended plots and leaning headstones of some unknown graveyard were half-obscured by long grasses. While on the other a signpost said “Meersburg” along with a distance in kilometres. None of which had any relevance to Harry—not yet at least.
But then the picture browned, crisped, distorted all out of shape and vanished—
—And Darcy and Ben were holding on to him for dear life.
Then:
It hurt! Something in the Necroscope’s head hurt like all hell! And just exactly like the single frame under the burning glare of the projector’s lamp, he felt or sensed the something being burned out of him, too.
Those unique connections, near-magical synaptic triggers, in what had once been Alec Kyle’s brain, finally disconnecting themselves, re-aligning, conforming to Harry’s mental patterns. For he had overburdened the old system, channelled too great a current along its circuits. And at last the “fuses” had blown.
It went out of him like a sigh, with a sigh, as he stopped straining and fell back in his chair, where for a long time his face gradually, tentatively unscrewed itself as the pain ebbed until it, too, went out of him. And:
“Done,” he said. And Ben Trask knew that it was so.
“The last of him, gone,” he said.
Darcy looked from one to the other and back again. “What?” was all he could say. “What?”
And eventually Harry was able to tell him: “You know, I’ve never been too sure of God—that there is one, I mean. And I’m still not. But if there is, well, I thank Him for this at least, that at last Alec is out of my system for good.”
Which was all he was willing to say by way of explanation. But at the same time he knew that there’d been much of value in Kyle’s talent. In the beginning it had warned of an IRA bomb in Oxford Street and saved lives, a great many. And at the last—or almost at the last—it had warned of another, greater bomb. The meaning of the first was now academic: it had worked itself out. But as for the last?
“Where is it now?” Harry asked out of the blue, after Ben had replenished their coffees. “That bomb, I mean.”
“Made safe,” Darcy told him. “And in a very safe place.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Tonight?”
“As soon as possible, yes.”
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Darcy said. “But it’s quite a distance. Just how do you propose to, er, get there?”
Harry looked at him almost in surprise. “Don’t you have a duty vehicle?”
“Of course,” Darcy nodded at once. “Silly of me …” Then he left Ben and Harry on their own for a few minutes, while he went to “make the arrangements.”
Darcy made several calls from an office next door to the Operations Room, then turned to the saturnine figure who was seated before a one-way window looking in on Ben and their guest. And despite that the walls were soundproofed, still Darcy kept his voice low as he asked, “Well, have you formed any opinions?”
Doctor James Anderson, hypnotist, turned and looked at him with eyes deep as space. “Several,” he said, in that sepulchral voice of his. “Even some about our Mr. Keogh! But tell me, this bomb story. Is it true?”
Darcy sighed. “Look, we’re short on time. As for anything you’ve learned: I know I don’t have to remind that you’re still subject to the Official Secrets Act.”
“It is true, then? My God, but … !”
“ … But that’s the kind of thing we’re up against here in E-Branch,” Darcy’s voice was cold now, even harsh. “Now forget it and tell me about Harry.”
Anderson nodded, took a deep breath. “Maybe we should reconsider. It could be I went … what, too deep? Going on what you’ve told me, and on what I’ve seen, it seems to me he’s developed an obsession; he’s now denying these skills of his as if even he no longer believes in them! And that’s a kind of schizophrenia. And it could get worse, manifest itself in a variety of ways.”
At which Darcy knew what he must do. “I want it reversed. But will he know? I mean, will he suspect what we did to him?”
“Not if we do it the same way. In fact you can be certain he’ll only feel a great relief—because that’s what I’ll tell him he’ll feel.”
“I’ll convince him to sleep here tonight,” Darcy said.
And again Anderson nodded. “That will give me time to prepare myself,” he said.
“And you’ll be here when we get back?”
“You can be sure of it,” Anderson answered, because he had no way of knowing that he’d be somewhere else entirely …
II
ANDERSON, THE BOMB, AND R.L.’S OBI
JAMES ANDERSON, HARRY KEOGH,” DARCY CLARKE “INTRODUCED” THE TWO men as all four of them, including Ben Trask, entered the elevator. But he deliberately left Anderson’s “Doctor” prefix unstated. The hypnotist and the Necroscope shook hands, and Harry showed never a sign that he recognized or remotely remembered the other. “James,” Darcy went on, feeling as treacherous as a dog who turns on his own master, “Harry was once with E-Branch and still helps us out occasionally.” And to Harry: “James is a specialist who also gives us a hand now and then. Nothing to do with the current situation; we’re just dropping him off at his home, that’s all.”
The conversation terminated there and then, which was what Darcy had intended. The least said by both parties the better. And twenty minutes later, as Trask stopped the car at a junction in upper-class Knightsbridge where James Anderson got out just a short walk from his home, no one gave a second thought to the vehicle that pulled up close behind, or the two passengers who alighted at the same junction. The streets were full of people going home.
Following which Trask set out in earnest to drive west to Greenham Common near Newbury, Berkshire, the US Air Force base that housed NATO’s American-owned Cruise missiles …
And when at last they were on the west-bound motorway:
“How long?” Darcy leaned forward to ask Ben Trask.
“An hour and a half, maybe two,” Trask answered. “Depends on the traffic. But now that the rush hour is over, it’s looking good.”
“So then,” Darcy turned to Harry where they sat t
ogether in the back of the car. “Plenty of time to talk. And with luck that gaggle of CND harridans at the Common will have quietened down for the night and we won’t have to run the gauntlet. Can you hear us back here OK, Ben?”
The driver glanced at them in his interior mirror, gave a thumbs-up sign.
“Very well,” Darcy said. And to Harry: “So, if you’ve got any questions for me … ?”
“Bomb questions, yes,” said Harry at once, with the white heat of his incendiary vision still burning on the eye of memory. “Like, whose bomb is it?”
Darcy understood and nodded. “Its design? Chinese. Dirty as the ‘rough’ technology that produced it. But miles ahead of anything the West might have suspected of them. In other words, they’re catching up on us fast.”
“And if there was one bomb—?” Harry said, or questioned.
“—There could be more?” Darcy cocked his head. “No, not anywhere in the UK, anyway.” He looked uncomfortable. “But … we do know that there was one more bomb, at least.”
“Where?”
“Would you believe … Russia, Moscow?”
Harry’s jaw fell open. “What? But how do you know?”
“Even harder to believe,” Darcy grinned, however humourlessly. “Yuri Andropov told us. He’s the Big Chief over there now, you know. He also told us about the bomb in Hyde Park!”
Now the Necroscope shook his head in astonishment. “Well it beats me!” he said. “Gregor Borowitz established The Opposition under Brezhnev, but Borowitz was anti-KGB from head to toe. And the Russian outfit, before we wrecked it, was just as covert, esoteric, as E-Branch itself, and hated by the KGB even as much as Borowitz hated them. And God only knows they have to hate us, or you—or me—even more! Yet now Andropov, ex-head of the KGB, is taking time out to warn you of nuclear sabotage? A bomb that the Chinese have buried in a London park? It doesn’t make sense!”
“It makes perfect sense,” Darcy told him. “Because while the Cold War was one thing, World War Three would be something else entirely. Can’t you just see it? These bombs going off at some time in the near future—let’s say at a time when East-West relationships are at a low ebb—and the utter chaos that would ensure?”
Harry frowned and shook his head. “It still doesn’t work out. What, China? The agent provocateur? But surely they’d get dragged in. Don’t nuclear weapons have their own signatures?”
“China would get dragged in, certainly,” Darcy answered. “She’d be answerable eventually, but much too late. What, with London and Moscow in ruins, and all the world’s big guns targeting and firing on each other? And because the West is still way ahead, you can bet we’d obliterate China, too.”
“Then how can China profit by planting these bombs?”
“Who said she did?” And Darcy grinned his mirthless grin again—more a grimace, really—and as the Necroscope fell silent told the rest of the story.
“So that’s it,” he said at last. “Tibet. The bombs were planted by a bunch of Tibetan extremists, the crazy devotees of some kind of sect. Which leads us to your involvement …”
“Eh?” Harry jerked upright. “Me? You think I’m involved? But how? In what way?” And his indignation was a hundred percent genuine, Darcy knew, else Ben would have spoken up about it. Yet while Trask remained silent, he was in fact conscious of something strange; he had definitely “felt” the Necroscope go on the defensive at first mention of Tibetan involvement, and again when Darcy had spoken of “red-robed monks.”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Darcy said.
And now Trask came in with: “Like I said back at HQ, you haven’t been straight with us for quite some time, Harry. And you’re not being entirely straight even now.”
“I haven’t told you any lies!” the Necroscope snapped.
“Maybe not,” Ben said. “But neither have you told us the whole truth. It goes right back to that ‘werewolf’ job you did in London. That’s where it started: the night you—well, did your thing—in that garage.”
“Where what started?” Harry demanded. But in fact he already had an inkling of what they were talking about. And they were right: he hadn’t told them everything about that night.
Darcy answered his blustered question anyway: “Where you began to deviate from the true facts a bit … ?”
Then, after a long, thoughtful pause, Harry sighed, sank back into his seat. “The night Brenda and my boy vanished,” he said, his voice subdued, his thoughts going off at a different tangent entirely.
“But that’s not what we’re on about—” Darcy told him, and at once shut up as he realized that his tone wasn’t as sympathetic as it might be. “I’m sorry,” he said then. “That’s not how I meant to put it.”
“Harry,” said Ben Trask from the driver’s seat, “it isn’t fair of us to be grilling you when you can’t see the whole picture. I mean, we’re not interrogating you. We’re not trying to make you trip over your own tongue. So it’s only right we tell you what’s bothering us and let you take it from there. OK?”
“So tell me,” Harry said.
And Darcy took it up again. “Do you remember when I called you about those Tibetan sect members who got killed in a mobile shoot-out? It was in your neck of the woods—the Spey Valley?”
“I remember,” Harry said, frowning again. “I wasn’t involved …” (Was I? Bloody was I?) “So what of it?”
And in the front of the car, Ben Trask likewise wondered, Was he involved? Was he? What the fuck was wrong with his talent? He couldn’t make any sense of it. For to him things were either black or white, but never, never grey! Until now.
“One of those monks in that burned-out wreck was shot with a crossbow,” Darcy said. “There was another bolt in the door of the car, and both of them had the same silvered heads that were found in the bodies of those thugs you dealt with in the garage that night in the East End. You told us you shot those two. And if so, doesn’t it follow that you might also have had something to do with the Spey killings? Or that you’d know about them, at least?”
Harry’s head reeled in sudden conflict—of identity, forbidden knowledge, and loyalty—but he quickly brought it under control. It wasn’t him they were after but Bonnie Jean, and she was innocent. Definitely innocent of whatever Darcy was talking about, because she had been with Harry that day. The day she’d called off their climbing and hunting expedition. He remembered it well … didn’t he? Of course he did.
They had stayed at Auld John’s place overnight, setting off early the next morning to go climbing in the Cairngorms. Except B.J. had called it off at the last moment. Maybe she’d reckoned he wasn’t up to it. And then they had driven back to Edinburgh. That was all there was to it.
. Yellow men in red robes!
.. A burning car!
… And B.J.—with a crossbow in her hand!
“Harry?” Darcy pulled him out of it, offering him a target for his frustration. And:
“I don’t know anything about any shoot-out!” Harry snapped. “As for the garage job … no, I didn’t do it.” (There, it was out. But it was all they’d get. He wasn’t about to betray B.J.)
Darcy nodded. “You never did actually tell us you were responsible that time. So, you were covering for someone else.”
“Someone who helped me, yes,” Harry said under his breath. “Someone who saved my life, stopped that lunatic ‘Skippy’ from splitting my head with a machete—or would you rather have me dead? Look, you said you’d been covering for me. Well, is it so hard to understand that I might want to cover for someone else? Surely it’s a question of loyalty. As for my loyalties: they’ve always been in the right place.”
Darcy pulled at his lower lip, looked for comment from Ben Trask. Trask saw Darcy’s querying look in his mirror and gave a puzzled, irritated shrug. Damn it to hell, he wasn’t sure!
“So we have to assume,” Darcy said, “that if you didn’t take out those red-robes in Scotland, whoever you’re protecting did.”
/>
“No way!” said Harry with conviction. “For she was with me …” And in the next moment he saw Darcy’s trap, except it really hadn’t been intended that way. And:
“We didn’t hear that,” Darcy said at once. “So it makes no difference. And anyway, that makes two favours we owe him, or her, or whoever. One for pulling your fat out of the fire, and two for getting rid of a couple of saboteurs. But—” (and he couldn’t hold it back,) “she must be one hell of a girl!”
And something clicked into place in Harry’s mind—incorrectly as it happened, but to the Necroscope it seemed to fit just exactly right.
For he had in fact seen those red-robed priests when he and B.J. had stopped at the tea-shop in the Forest of Atholl. He’d seen and remembered them; and since the sighting hadn’t been part of the action, B.J. hadn’t thought to erase it.
But now, to Harry, it seemed that if B.J. had had reason to fear the Tibetans, it might be why she had called off their trip so suddenly. It might also explain why she’d suggested he should vacate the old house for a while: if the four remaining monks were a threat to her, they might also be a threat to him. But as to her connection with them—or to the bolts that had killed one of them—he didn’t have the foggiest idea!
Did he?
And what about the tele-Tibetan? That bloody awful visitation in the old house, when his phone gave birth to a yellow Thing that turned to so much slop, but not before it cried for help? Obviously there was a connection, but what was it?
From the driver’s seat, Trask half-looked back over his shoulder and said, “So you see, Harry, we’ve been more than a little concerned about you ever since the werewolf thing. And before you ask: no, I wasn’t checking on you at the time. And if I had been I’d have asked you for the truth there and then. But your back-up on that job was Trev Jordan, a damn fine telepath. His report details how he detected someone else in that garage but couldn’t get a clear reading. The same someone who you’re protecting, obviously.”
“Which leaves only one question unanswered,” Darcy said. “That of the silvered boltheads. Maybe that’s something you’ll look into some time, eh, Harry? I mean, surely you can see why we’re interested? When it comes down to people depositing nuclear weapons left, right and centre, we can’t afford to leave any loose ends dangling. There is no lead that we, or others, wouldn’t follow up. So someone shot those two red-robes, fine. But why were they shot? And where have the other four gone to? And who is it that seems to be protecting our interests here?”