'Close to the former Soviet Union,' Trask answered. 'Odd, because the Russians are usually more careful than that. Chernobyl taught them that much of a lesson at least — taught them to look after their own, anyway. So maybe those two were accidental? Maybe they didn't intend for them to go down just there. Jesus, but whatever they intended, still it's a mess!'
I'm not with you,' said Jake, shaking his head.
'Then let me explain. Each of those pinpoints represents a hulk resting on the bottom. But what kind of hulk? The answer's almost unbelievable, but since I've already told you…'
'Submarines?'
Trask nodded. 'Those innocuous little black dots? Each one of them is a disaster just waiting to happen or already happening. They're allegedly 'decommissioned' nuclear subs we thought had been cleaned up, made safe, taken apart and stored with ten thousand tons of other radioactive rubbish years ago. Relics of Russia's penniless, outmoded, unwanted Cold War navy, yes. But the Russian military was lying to us — which is nothing new — and this is the truth.'
'And it's a bad thing?' Jake still didn't see it. 'I mean that these things have been sent to the bottom, miles deep, out of harm's way?'
'Out of harm's way? God, what an infant!' Trask shook his head. And before Jake could get upset again:
'Look, most of these subs have twin atomic engines. There are two possible meltdowns in each hulk. Barely possible, mind you, but possible. We don't know if they've been shut down properly, or even if they could be. But the very means of disposal tells us they're less than safe! Why else would the Russian military dump them on someone else's doorstep? What's more — since they're capable of this — how do we know they didn't load them to the gills with other high-level waste before scuttling them? What? They might have even left their leaking missile payloads aboard. These were ships of war, Jake! And sooner or later the bastard things will start spilling their guts!'
'What, in ten, twenty, fifty years? And a mile or so deep?' Jake still wasn't too impressed. 'And anyway, what has this to do with you and E-Branch?'
Trask scowled at him, actually clenched a fist and thumped the table. 'If Anna-Marie English were here right now… she'd knock you arse over breakfast!'
Astonished, Jake drew back. 'Anna-Marie English? Isn't she someone who Chung mentioned?'
'She worked for us,' Trask snapped. 'An ecopath, she gave warning of Earth's decline — I mean personally. She was 'ecologically aware,' or as she herself would put it, she was 'as one with the Earth'. It was her talent — or her curse. Funny, isn't it,
Jake? But there are very few in E-Branch who are happy with their talents. They would much prefer to be ordinary. But since they can't be, they're E-Branch.'
Jake wasn't.sure of Trask's meaning. 'So how did this help you? Her talent, I mean? How did it work?'
Trask shook his head. 'None of us can tell you how our talents work, only that they do. In Anna-Marie's case:
'As water tables declined and deserts expanded, so her skin dried out, became desiccated. When acid rains burned the Scandinavian forests, her dandruff fell like snow. In her dreams she heard whale species singing of their decline and inevitable extinction, and she knew from her aching bones when the Japanese were slaughtering the dolphins. She was like a human lodestone; she tracked illicit nuclear waste, monitored pollution, shrank from holes in the ozone layer. Anna-Marie was an ecopath, Jake: she felt for the Earth and suffered all its sicknesses, because she knew that she was dying from them, too…'
Trask was eloquent, Jake would grant him that much. 'You're saying she's dead, then?'
'No,' Trask answered. 'I'm saying she's somewhere else. But by now… she might well have started to suffer again, yes…' He sighed and sat up straighter, seemed on the brink of coming to a decision, finally continued:
'Me, I believe in ghosts, Jake. I really do, for I've seen a few in my time. And they weren't always of the moaning, chain-rattling and mainly harmless variety. But I also believe in listening to my colleagues. Now it seems a ghost has come among us, possibly a beneficial one. Well, according to Chung and Goodly, anyway. Unfortunately it's come at a very bad time. The coincidence is just too great — that this should happen now, just as we find ourselves in conflict with the Wamphyri and the plague they've brought with them out of Starside — for me to take any chances. That's what holds me back from telling you everything: the thought that perhaps you are an agent, albeit an unwitting agent, of the Wamphyri!'
'Me?' Jake's surprise couldn't have been more genuine. And Trask, a human lie detector, knew it more certainly than any other man ever could. Ah, but Trask remembered other times, when Harry Keogh had fooled him, too! And Jake went on, 'How in hell could I be anyone's agent? And I'm certainly no ghost!' 'No,' Trask agreed, 'but what's in you might be.' 'What's in me?'
'Don't play the fool, Jake!' Trask snapped. 'We're talking about what's in your head. This talent you've suddenly come by, which brought you to E-Branch and then returned you there when you tried to run off. But is it the ghost of Harry Keogh — or is it something that merely tastes like him? Should I take you into my confidence, or shoot you dead right here and now?'
Jake started to his feet and upset the table. His face was a snarl, his hands reaching for Trask. 'I've had it up to here with your threats and your bullying. You're an old man, Trask, and as far as I'm concerned you're an old fraud… too!?'
But by then he'd seen the gun that Trask had been holding under the table; it was aimed right at him. And he understood the other's apparent fumbling when he'd taken the decoder from his briefcase. But what he didn't understand was the way Trask stared at him, the urgent, burning question in his penetrating gaze.
'What would you have done?' Trask snapped. 'What would you have done to me?'
'Done?' Jake looked at the gun, then at Trask. 'Nothing. I… I might have shaken you, or tried to shake some sense into you. Or maybe I'd have tried shaking a little out of you! God, can't you see you've got me going in circles?'
And Trask actually smiled as he slowly lowered his gun and put it away. 'Yes, I can see that,' he nodded. With which Jake got the idea.
'What? Another bloody test?'
'To push you hard,' Trask told him, 'and see what answered. You… or something else.'
'Well, if I were you,' Jake said, 'I would have supposed it was something else!'
'But you're not me,' Trask told him. 'And you passed. That leaves just one more test to go.'
'Then let's get it over with.'
'Not now, no.'
'When, then?'
'Tomorrow morning. I'm having a man flown in from Carnarvon on the coast. An expatriate Brit, and the best in his field.'
'What, yet another great 'talent?'' Jake was still angry.
'Not the way you mean,' Trask shook his head. 'But he has talent enough, yes. Oh, and by the way: that's some temper you have, Jake. You said you might have shaken me? Well, you shook me all right. I thought you might actually attack me!'
Jake relaxed a little, grinned. 'I scared you?'
'I was scared I might have to shoot you, yes.'
But before that could start Jake off again, a voice called from outside the tent. 'Mr Trask? Phillips here. We have a bit of a problem.' A male figure stood silhouetted behind the gauze fly screen. Trask let him in, said:
'Shouldn't you be on your way to Carnarvon?'
'Would be/ said the other, 'if not for this problem. Its name is Peter Miller, and it won't get its ugly arse out of my chopper!' The speaker was small and young, and looked very hot, sticky, and agitated in his flyer's gear.
'Miller's in your machine?' Trask raised an eyebrow, then nodded decisively. 'So he wants out of here. And once away, he intends to take his story to the authorities or, worse, to some newspaper or other. Well, it can't be allowed. Yes, I want rid of him. No, I don't want the trouble he'll bring. Only a handful of people in the very highest places know what we're doing, and if we're compromised it will make them look bad. As for the man in the street… well, it's simply out of the question. The world's insecure enough as it is.'
He turned to Jake. 'Go and find Lardis Lidesci, will you? Bring him to the chopper park in the clearing on the far side of the road.' And speaking again to Phillips, 'You and me… let's go and have a word with Mr Miller.'
