That was when Liz's mind had been closest to his, the moment when she'd sensed his interest in the vehicle and its occupants…
'So how about it?' said Ben Trask, causing her to start as he reached over her and switched off the intercom connection to their driver.
'Eh?' she said. And: 'Oh, I'm sorry, Ben. I must have been daydreaming. How about what?'
'Jake, on the chopper. What was going on? Did you get anything?'
And now the image of the thin man with the binoculars vanished completely from her mind as the other question arose, the one Liz had known she would have difficulty answering.
At first it had seemed simple, even exciting in a strange and morbid sort of way. The answer to not just one question but many. But after thinking it over she had seen the enormous hurt it might cause, so that now she had to find a way around it. If Trask would let her.
'But I thought we had an understanding on that,' she said. 'I don't like spying on Jake, and—'
'What?' He cut her off. 'But on the chopper you seemed to indicate that you'd got something. So why are you holding back, Liz? What the hell is going on here?' The look on Trask's face was one of incredulity; he'd been sure they'd hammered this out and from now on it would be plain sailing. So what had happened to change her mind?
'I… I'm not sure what I got!' she blurted it out, lying so unconvincingly that even without his talent Trask would have known. And she saw in his eyes that he knew, and in the way his lips tightened. 'But… but he's my partner!' She quickly went on the defensive. 'He's got to be able to trust me. He saved my life, and—'
'Oh, for Christ's sake spare me!' Trask barked. But before he could say anything else:
'Damn you!' Liz snapped. And then more quietly, even desperately: 'Can't you see? I'm trying to spare you, Ben!'
Which set him back a little, because he saw that that was the truth, too. And despite that Trask was still frowning, his tone was less severe when he said: 'All right, so don't try so hard.'
And after a moment, when she remained silent, he went on, 'Look, whatever this is, there's only you, me, and lan here to share it. So let's have it out in the open here and now, while we can still deal with it in private. For if it has to do with me — and if it's got anything at all to do with the Branch or the job in hand — then obviously I have to know.'
'But it's so very little,' she answered. 'And his shields were up, like a blanket covering his mind, and—'
'Liz, I have to know!' Trask insisted. 'It doesn't matter how small a thing it might seem to you, it could be all-important to everyone else.'
'In its way, I'm sure it is/ Liz said. 'It's just that I would have liked to find a way to tell you — I mean a different way to tell you — without this.'
'This what?' said Trask. 'And Liz, if you lie to me again I'll know.'
She looked at him, looked at lan Goodly, sighed and shook her head. 'I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want to hurt you either. You see, it's.where Jake was — in his dream, I mean — and it's who he was speaking to.'
'Go on,' Trask nodded.
'He was down in the wrecked sump of the Romanian Refuge,' she blurted it out. 'But Ben, it had to be much more than just a dream because from what I saw of it — despite that it was so dark and shrouded — it was all so very real.''
'The Refuge?' Trask repeated her. 'Jake dreamed he was in the wrecked sump? And he was… speaking to someone?'
'To more than one,' Liz corrected him. And now that she'd got started, she quickly went on, 'But you know how dreams are supposed to happen in the last few minutes before you wake up? Well, not this one. It started the moment he fell asleep, went on until he woke up. And it was more than just a dream, Ben.'
The other's face was grey now, gaunt with the sudden, sure knowledge of what Liz was about to tell him. He knew, but asked her anyway. 'Who was Jake talking to?'
'To Harry Keogh,' she answered, 'and to someone else who I didn't know and don't want to know, ever. I couldn't read him — he was a complete blank — but I could sense his presence like a sick taste in my throat. And just the opposite to him, a little
earlier there'd been a third presence like… like a breath of fresh air. She was someone I'd never known, who I wish I had.'
'It was Zek!' Trask groaned. 'He was talking to Zek. Jake was talking to Zek, through Harry.' And clasping Liz's hands in his: 'Liz, what was she saying? What did Zek say?'
'I don't know,' she shook her head, wanted to put her arms round him but couldn't for fear it would crack him up. And anyway, they wouldn't be Zek's arms. 'I got something of what Jake was saying — though very little, because he didn't say much — but nothing of what the others actually said. That was a void.'
lan Goodly said, 'Of course it was. You heard Jake because he's alive. That was your telepathy working, Liz. But Harry and the others… they're a different category, and they were in a different mode.'
'Deadspeak, yes,' Trask murmured, gaunt and visibly shaken where he let his head flop back against the seat's headrest and closed his eyes. 'And whether I like it or not, it looks like I now have to accept it. Jake is our new Necroscope, and Harry is introducing him to… to people who'll be able to help him. As for this numbers thing that Jake was talking about when he woke up — the difficulty he seemed to be having — I think that can mean only one thing.'
Trask looked at the precog and Goodly nodded his confirmation. 'Despite that Jake's future is beyond me, uncertain now,' he said, 'still I can only go along with you. It was the Necroscope's sidereal maths, his numbers, that gave him the edge. And now it looks like the old master is trying to teach his apprentice the tricks of the trade…'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Synchronicity Again
The safe house set aside for E-Branch use was in the New Marchant Park district, north of the city. An ugly two-storey affair, it had aluminium cladding designed and painted in a rather poor imitation of timber; Brisbane no longer favoured wooden structures of any kind.
The house was set back from the road up a short palm-lined drive; its gate was remote-controlled from inside the lead limo and opened into a featureless garden. Two medium-sized, innocuous-looking saloon cars stood on a gravel drive in front of the house. In fact they were fitted with bullet-proof windows, heavily-plated bodywork, hidden roll-bars and other anti-crash/anti-terforist devices. Short of a bomb-blast or a head-on collision at speed, no one was going to come to harm driving one of these vehicles. They were for the use of Trask and his people.
Laid to lawn and enclosed within high stone walls, the garden was on a level and surrounded the house on all sides; every inch of grass (or straw as it was now) was clearly visible from the windows of both storeys. Of the house itself: it had bullet-proof, heavily curtained windows, and a security/intruder warning system second to none. In plan, the ground floor consisted of four long rooms, one on each side, each furnished and decorated in a slightly out-of-date style, with little or nothing to show that the place was anything other than a fairly expensive private dwelling house. The central room, however, which wasn't visible from the gardens, was an operational and communications nerve centre of screens and computerized equipment.
The sleeping quarters (in fact a pair of cramped dormitories with beds for up to fourteen people, or maybe eighteen at a push, and a handful of curtained-off, cell-like units for VIPs) were upstairs. And overhead on the roof, a bank of 'solar-heating panels' (tinted windows) concealed an array of hi-tech communications aerials and dishes.
The agent-chauffeurs showed Trask and his crew of six over the house, asked how they could help them settle in or if there was anything else they needed. Trask checked with Jimmy Harvey and Paul Arenson — in their element as they switched on and got acquainted with the gadgets in the ops room — and Arenson told him:
'We're fully compatible throughout. Give us ten minutes to hook our stuff up to this lot, and we'll have the HQDuty Officer up there on that big screen so clear you'll think you're in London.'
