own tents and bivouacs. And Hunter One, I'll be wanting to speak to you. All acknowledge.'
'Hunter One, roger,' Liz answered into her handset. And in strict numerical order, coming through the hiss and crackle of static:
'Hunter Two, roger.'
'Hunter Three, roger,' and so on.
Jake shifted his position in the driver's seat, craned his neck, and glanced back along the dark, winding road through the ancient river valley. Back there, stretched well out, a handful of headlights made a lantern string in the night. And from dragonfly shapes on high came the steady, near-distant whup! whup! whup! of powerful blades slicing the air, the occasional flickering beam of a searchlight.
'Five miles,' Liz said. 'Maybe seven or eight minutes. Will you tell me the rest of it while we still have time?'
'The rest of it?' Jake was reluctant again. 'You still need convincing I'm crazy?'
'You're not crazy/ she said. 'Just troubled. Come on, Jake You ran away, escaped again, this time from E- Branch. What happened? How did that come about? Was it any different?'
He sighed and said, 'Once you stick your claws in you just don't let go, do you?'
'Or could it be that I'm simply fascinated?' she answered. And quickly added, 'Er, with your story, I mean.'
(Huh!']ake snorted, but he also angled his face a little, turned it away from her. Liz could have sworn that he was grinning and didn't want her to see. But that was a good thing.
'Okay,' she said. 'I'm fascinated, period. So now will you tell me the rest?'
'So you can report it to Trask, right? Well, I've got news for you: your boss — our boss — has already had this from me, oh, at least a dozen times. Don't you get it? I can't tell you what isn't there.'
'Then tell me what is,' she said.
Again Jake's sigh, before he succumbed to the inevitable. But then: 'Okay, this is how it was…'
'When — or rather, where — I woke up, everyone was speaking English. I don't know what I thought. Oh, several things. A jangle of things, rattling around in my skull. Maybe, following injuries sustained in the failed jailbreak, I'd been extradited back to England after all. But what injuries? While it's true I was flat on my back with a sheet and blanket thrown over me, I didn't feel in any way injured. Also, I was in no way conscious of the passage of any real time; it felt like snap!… I had been in Turin and now was here. So logically, while this wasn't the prison, it had to be a place somewhere in or near Turin.
As for the people, Trask and Co — they weren't jailers or even physicians. So if this place was a hospital, well, it wasn't like any I'd ever heard of! And they kept asking me a lot of nonsense questions, the silliest with regard to my identity. 'Who are you?' they all wanted to know. Huh! Who were they kidding? If they didn't know who I was, who would? Who was P But the question I kept asking myself was who the hell were they?
'Then a real doctor arrived who checked me over, giving me a thorough physical before I was allowed up on my feet. I supposed I was lucky that I hadn't at first been able to talk even if I'd wanted to. The whole experience had struck me dumb. But then it dawned on me that they really didn't have any idea who I was. So why should I tell them?
'I kept quiet, told them nothing, didn't even speak.
'But Trask… he knew I wasn't on the level. Right from square one I could see that he was more than curious, positively suspicious about me. I suppose he had every right to be; I know now that the place I — er, emerged into? 'Harry's Room?' — is highly significant to the Branch. More than that, though, Trask knew I was lying. Even without me saying a word, he knew I wasn't telling the truth, knew I was hiding something.
'Well, of course I was! Wherever I'd 'escaped' to, anywhere had to be better than the vermin-infested slaughterhouse in Turin that I'd escaped from! And yes, I had already made up my mind that as soon as this weird crowd gave me room to breathe, I'd likewise be escaping from here — wherever 'here' was!
'Finally, instead of asking me stuff and getting no satisfactory answers, no answers at all, Trask said, 'You're in the headquarters of a branch of government, a very off-limits establishment, Mr… whoever you are. You shouldn't be here, and the penalty for trespass is a high one. But I'm really interested in you, in how you arrived — especially where you arrived — and I'd very much like you to start explaining. If you don't, I'll have to assume you're a common criminal and deal with you on that basis…'
'But then he got a certain look in his eye, like he'd suddenly stumbled across the truth — maybe a truth even I didn't know — and quickly went on, 'Or maybe an uncommon criminal? In which case we might just be getting somewhere.'
'Some of Trask's people had guns and there didn't seem too much point in trying to break out of there, not at present. So I just had to keep playing along.
'Finally, I was escorted to the HQ Ops Room.' Jake glanced at Liz. 'Do you know the place? I take it you've been there.'
He waited for her nod, the one word that summed up her own feelings the first time she'd seen the Ops Room. 'Awesome…'
'Yes, awesome,' he agreed. 'I don't know about ghosts, but E-Branch certainly has the gadgets! Anyway, as soon as we entered — before anyone could stop me — I stepped to a window and yanked the blinds. It was night but there were plenty of street lights. There could be no mistaking where I was; the very sight of it set me reeling. That skyline, that city. Impossible, but it was Westminster! London! The centre of bloody London!
'And grabbing me, looking at me with those all-seeing eyes of his, Trask said, 'Surprise, surprise! So where did you think you were, Mr Nobody?'
'By then a lot of other people had arrived. They'd got the place up and running. It was the middle of the night after all, and my being there was just as big — maybe a bigger — shock to them as it was to me. But they must have a good emergency call-in; the place was fully operative in no time at all. And every man-jack and woman of them wide-eyed, whispering, curious… maybe even awestruck? But why? What was so special about me? 'Anyway, things were happening at a rapid pace. ' 'Prison clothing,' Trask said. 'At a guess, continental. Very well, get fingerprints, mug shots — do it now. Then get a link to Interpol, see if we can get a match. But let's not get carried away, not yet. Let's not think the unthinkable, or the incredible? Check the security system and see if it recorded a physical breakin. And let's have a check on all doors and windows, and the elevator. Then get me the Duty Officer. Didn't I hear him saying something about not being able to get into Harry's Room because the door was locked? Now why would Mr Nobody here first break in, then lock himself in? And how
could he do it anyway without a key… assuming he broke in at all?'
'Trask said all of these things, if not in the same words. And he probably said a lot more that I can't remember before he finished up with: 'Answers, people, I want all the answers. And I do mean tonight…'
'I had been fingerprinted and photographed by the time two new agents entered the Ops Room. Trask greeted them with, 'Current Affairs, and Tomorrow's Affairs. And not before time, you two.''
Liz nodded, said, 'Millicent Cleary and lan Goodly. Millicent is a telepath, but she's also an expert in current affairs. She has that kind of memory. You want to know what's gone down in the last ten years, ask Millicent. And lan Goodly—'
'—A precog,' Jake said. 'Yes, I know that now. But then — I couldn't make head nor tail of their conversation. Trask wanted to know why Goodly hadn't 'seen' anything, and he asked the woman if she was 'getting' anything. That was the way he talked to everyone around him. It all seemed pretty esoteric to me!'
'Espers have an almost different tongue,' Liz answered. 'It takes some getting used to.'
'Anyway, lan Goodly was at a loss to explain his lapse. And the woman, Millicent Cleary? She stared hard at me, frowned and said there was a lot of confusion. Damn, right there was!'
'The confusion was in you,' Liz told him.
'Looking back on it, you're dead right,' he said. And after a moment:
'By then all the wall screens were up and working — people processing my pictures and feeding them into machines, computer keyboards tap, tap, tapping away — but I was a little less the centre of attention. I saw my chance, snatched a gun from a man who was momentarily distracted, grabbed hold of Goodly. I had the gun to his neck, his arm up behind his back.
'For a moment I thought Trask and the others might rush me.
But then Goodly said, 'It's okay, Ben. Everything will be fine. Just let us go, and be sure we'll be back.'
'I told him, 'Do you want to bet?' But now… I'm glad he didn't! I'll cut a long story short. I got Goodly out of
