stays in her room for a day or two. Curtains drawn, dark room, all wrapped up in her bed, shivering. Just like when she was a little girl and sick. She says she doesn't want a doctor, but — ' he shrugged again. ' — I worry about her.'
'Don't,' said Dragosani. 'I mean, don't worry about her.'
'Eh?' Kinkovsi looked surprised.
'She's a full-grown woman. She'll know what's best for her. Rest, quiet, a nice dark room. Those are the right things. They're all I need when I'm a bit down.'
'Hmm! Well, perhaps. But still it's worrying. And a lot of work to be done, too! The English come today.'
'Oh?' Dragosani was glad that the other had changed the subject. 'Maybe I'll meet them tonight.'
Kinkovsi nodded, looked gloomy. He gathered up the empty tray. 'Difficult. I don't know a lot of English. What I know I learned from tourists.'
'I know some English,' said Dragosani. 'I can get by.'
'Ah? Well, at least they'll be able to talk to someone. Anyway, they bring good money — and money talks, eh?' he managed a' chuckle. 'Enjoy your breakfast, Herr Dragosani.'
'I'm sure I will.'
Beginning to grumble again under his breath, Kinkovsi left the garret room and made his way downstairs. Later, when Dragosani went out, both Hzak and Maura were readying the lower rooms for their expected English guests.
By midday Dragosani had driven into Pitesti. He did not know why exactly, except that he remembered the town had a small but very comprehensive reference library. Whether or not he would have gone to the library — or what he would have done there — is academic. The question did not arise for he was not given the chance to go there; the local police found him first.
Alarmed at first and imagining all sorts of things (worst of all, that he had been watched and followed, and that his secret — concerning the old devil in the ground — had been discovered), he calmed down as soon as he found out what the trouble really was: that Gregor Borowitz had been trying to track him down since the day he left Moscow and finally had succeeded. It was a wonder Dragosani hadn't been stopped at the border where he'd crossed into Romania at Reni. The local law had tracked him to lonestasi, from there to Kinkovsi's, finally to Pitesti. In fact it was his Volga they'd tracked: there weren't many of those in Romania. Not with Moscow plates.
Finally the policeman in charge of the patrol vehicle which had stopped him apologised for any inconvenience and gave Dragosani a 'message' — which was simply Borowitz's Moscow telephone number, the secure line. Dragosani went with them at once to the police station and phoned from there.
On the other end of the line, Borowitz came right to the point: 'Boris, get back here a.s.a.p.'
'What is it?'
'A member of the staff at the American embassy has had an accident while touring. A fatal accident: wrecked his car and gutted himself. We haven't identified him yet — not officially, anyway — but we'll have to do it soon. Then the Americans will want his body. I want you to see him first — in your, er, specialist capacity…'
'Oh? What's so important about him?'
For some time now we've suspected him and one or two others of spying. CIA, probably. If he's one of a network, it's something we should know about. So get back quickly, will you?'
'I'm on my way.'
Back at Kinkovsi's Dragosani tossed his things into the car, paid what he owed and a little more, thanked Hzak and Maura and accepted sandwiches, a flask of coffee and a bottle of local wine. But for all that they gave him these parting gifts, it was obvious that Hzak had some misgivings about him.
'You told me you were a mortician,' he complained. 'The police laughed when I told them that! They said you're a big man in Moscow, an important man. It seems a great shame that an important man would want to make a fool out of a fellow countryman — an unimportant man!'
'I'm sorry about that, my friend,' said Dragosani. 'But I am an important man and my job is very special — and very tiring. When I come home I like to forget my work completely and just take it easy, and so I became a mortician. Please forgive me.'
That seemed to suffice; Hzak Kinkovsi grinned and they shook hands, and then Dragosani got into his car.
From behind her drawn curtains Use watched him drive away and breathed a sigh of relief. It was unlikely she'd ever meet another like him, and maybe that was as well, but…
Her bruises were blooming now but would soon fade, and anyway she could always say she had suffered a dizzy bout, tripped and fallen. The bruises would disappear, yes, but not the memory of how she had got them.
She sighed again… and shivered deliciously.
INTERVAL ONE:
On the top floor of a well-known London hotel, in a suite of private offices, Alec Kyle sat at the desk of his ex-boss and scribbled frantically in shorthand. The 'ghost' (he couldn't help thinking of it that way) which stood facing him across the desk had been speaking rapidly, in soft, well-modulated tones, for more than two and a half hours now. Kyle's wrist felt cramped; his head ached from the myriad weird pictures implanted there; he had no doubt at all but that the 'ghost' spoke the truth, the whole truth, and etc…
As to how it (he!) knew these matters he so fluently related, or why he related them — who is to say what knowledge such a creature should or shouldn't have and tell? But one thing Kyle knew for certain was this: that the information to which he now found himself privy was vastly important, and that he must also consider himself privileged to be the medium through which it was imparted.
As a pain suddenly shot up his forearm from his wrist, causing him to drop his pencil and clutch at his hand as it went into a brief spasm, so his unearthly visitor paused. It was as good a juncture as any, Kyle thought, and he was grateful. He massaged his hand and wrist for a
minute, then took up a sharpener and renewed the
pencil's point for what must be the ninth or tenth time at least.
'Why not use a pen?' the ghost asked, in such a perfectly natural and inquiring tone that Kyle found himself answering without even considering that he talked to something far less substantial than smoke.
'I prefer pencils. Always have. Just a quirk, I suppose. Anyway, they don't run out of ink! I'm sorry I stopped just then, but my wrist feels mangled!'
'We've a way to go yet.'
'I'll manage some how.'
'Look, go and get yourself another coffee. Have a cigarette. I realise how strange all this must be for you. It's strange for me, too — but if I were you my nerves would be leaping! I think you're doing remarkably well. And we're getting on fine. I was fully prepared, before I came here, to allow several visits just to let you adjust to me. So as you can see, we're well ahead.'
'Yes, well it's time that's worrying me,' Kyle answered, lighting up and drawing luxuriously on the smoke, saturating his lungs with it. 'You see, I've a meeting to attend at 4:00 p.m. It's then that I'm to try to convince some rather important people that they keep the branch open and allow me to take over from Sir Keenan and run it. So you see, I'd like to be finished before then.'
'Don't let it concern you,' the other smiled his wan smile. 'Consider them convinced.'
'Oh?' Kyle got up and went through into the main office, put money into the coffee machine. This time the ghost followed him, stood behind him. When he turned from the machine it was there, office furniture visible right through it. It was less than a holograph, less than a bubble, ectoplasm. Kyle started and slopped a little coffee, edged around the other and went back into Gormley's office.
'Yes,' the ghost continued, back where it had been, 'I believe we'll be able to 'sway' your superiors in your favour.'
'We?' said Kyle.
The other merely shrugged. 'We'll see. Anyway, I want to tell you a little more about Harry Keogh now, before returning to Dragosani. Sorry to jump about like this, but it's better if you see a complete picture.'
'Anything you say.'
'Are you ready?'
