Necroscope

get your funny ideas, Harry Keogh, but they don't make much sense! Do you honestly think that a couple of GCEs can match the work of a lifetime? Or are you deliberately trying to annoy me?'

Keogh continued to smile, but it was now a smile with hard edges. He took a chair opposite Shukshin and smiled that hard smile right across the desk and into the other's scornful face. And he reached out his mind to an old friend of his, Klaus Grunbaum, an ex-POW who had married an English girl and settled in Hartlepool after the war. Grunbaum had died of a stroke in '55 and was buried in the Grayfields Estate cemetery. It made no difference that that was one hundred and fifty miles away! Now Grunbaum answered Harry, spoke to him — through him — spoke in a rapid, fluent German, directly across Viktor Shukshin's desk and into his face:

'And how's this for German, Stepfather? You'll probably recognise that this is how it's spoken around Ham burg.' Harry paused, and in the next moment changed

his/Grunbaum's accent: 'Or perhaps you'd prefer this? It's Hoch Deutsch, as spoken by the sophisticated elite, the gentry, and aped by the masses. Or would you like me to do something really clever — something grammatical, maybe? Would that convince you?'

'Clever,' Shukshin sneeringly admitted. His eyes had widened while Harry talked but now he narrowed them. 'A very clever exercise in dialectal German, yes, and quite fluent. But anyone could learn a few sentences like that parrot-fashion in half an hour! Russian is a different matter entirely.'

Keogh's grin grew tighter. He thanked Klaus Grunbaum and switched his mind elsewhere — to a cemetery in nearby Edinburgh. He'd been there recently to spend a little time with his Russian grandmother, dead some months before he'd been born. Now he found her again, used her to speak to his stepfather in his native tongue. With Natasha's unwavering command of the language, indeed with her mind, he commenced a diatribe on 'the failure of the repressive Communist system,' only pausing after several astonishing minutes when finally Shukshin cried:

'What is this, Harry? More rubbish learned parrot-fashion? What's the purpose of all this trickery?' But for all his bluster, still Shukshin's heart beat a little faster, a little heavier in his chest. The boy sounded so much like… like someone else. Someone he had detested.

Still using his grandmother's Russian but speaking now from his own mind, Keogh answered: 'Oh, and could I learn this parrot-fashion? Are you so blind that you can't see the truth when you meet it face to face? I'm a talented man, stepfather. More talented than you could possibly imagine. Far more talented than ever my poor mother was Shukshin stood up and leaned on his desk, and the

hatred washed out from him in a tide, seeming almost physically to break on Keogh like a wave. 'All right, so you're a clever young bastard!' he answered in Russian. 'So what? And that's twice you've mentioned your mother. What are you getting at, Harry Keogh? It's almost as if you were threatening me.'

Harry continued to use Shukshin's own tongue: 'Threatening? But why should I threaten you, stepfather? I only came to see you, that's all — and to ask a favour.'

'What? You try to make me look like a fool and then have the audacity to ask favours? What is it you want of me?'

It was time for the third bombshell. Keogh also got to his feet. 'I'm told that my mother loved to skate,' he said, his Russian still perfect. 'There's a river out there, down beyond the bottom of the garden. I'd like to come back in the winter and visit you again. Perhaps you'll be less excitable then and we'll be able to talk more calmly. And maybe I'll bring my skates and go on the frozen river, like my mother used to, down there where the garden ends.'

Once more ashen, Shukshin reeled, clutched at his desk. Then his eyes began to burn with hatred and his fleshy lips drew back from his teeth. He could no longer contain his anger, his hatred. He must strike this arrogant pup, knock him down. He must… must… must-

As Shukshin began to sidle round the desk towards him, Harry realised his danger and backed towards the door of the study. He wasn't finished yet, however. There was one last thing he must do. Reaching into his overcoat pocket, he drew something out. 'I've brought something for you,' he said, this time speaking in English. 'Something from the old days, when I was very small. Something that belongs to you.'

'Get out!' Shukshin snarled. 'Get out while you're still

one piece. You and your damned insinuations! You want to visit me again, in the winter? I forbid it! I want nothing more of you, step-brat! Go and make a fool of someone else. Go now, before — '

'Don't worry,' said Harry, 'I'm going, for now. But first — catch!' and he tossed something. Then he turned and walked through the door into the shadowy house and out of sight.

Shukshin automatically caught what he'd thrown, stared at it for a second. Then his mind reeled and he went to his knees. Long after he'd heard the front door slam he continued to stare at the impossible thing in his hand.

The gold was burnished as if brand new, and the solitary cat's-eye stone seemed to stare back at him in a cold speculation all its own…

From the air, the Chateau Bronnitsy seemed not to have changed a great deal from the old days. No one would guess that it housed the world's finest ESPionage unit, Gregor Borowitz's E-Branch, or that it was anything but a tottering old pile. But that was exactly the way Borowitz wanted it, and he silently complimented himself on work well planned and executed as his helicopter fanned low over the towers and rooftops of the place and down towards the tiny helipad, which was simply a square of whitewashed concrete emblazoned with a green circle, lying between a huddle of outbuildings and the chateau itself.

'Outbuildings,' yes — that is what they looked like from up here — old barns or sheds long fallen into disrepair and allowed to settle and crumble until they were little more than low humps of masonry dotted about the greater mass of the chateau. And this, too, was precisely to Borowitz's specifications. They were in fact defensive

positions, machine-gun posts, completely functional and fully efficient, giving them a total arc of fire to cover the entire open area between the chateau and its perimeter wall. Other pill-boxes had been built into the wall itself, whose external face could become an electrical barrier at the throw of a switch.

Second only to the space-base at Baikonur, E-Branch was now housed in one of the best-fortified installations in the USSR. Certainly it vied favourably with the joint atomic and plasma research station at Gargetya, lost in the Urals, whose chief asset was its isolation; but in one major aspect it was superior to both Baikonur and Gargetya: namely it was 'secret' in the fullest sense of the word. Apart from Borowitz's operatives, no one but a double-handful of men even suspected that the chateau in its present form existed, and of these only three or four knew that it housed E-Branch. One of these was the Premier himself, who had visited Borowitz here on several occasions; another, less happily, was Yuri Andropov, who had not visited and never would — not on Borowitz's invitation.

The helicopter settled to its pad and as its rotor slowed Borowitz slid back his door and swung out his legs. A security man, ducking low, ran in under the whirling vanes and helped him down. Clutching his hat, Borowitz let himself be assisted away from the aircraft and through an arched doorway into that area of the chateau which once had been the courtyard. Now it was roofed over and partitioned into airy conservatories and laboratories, where branch operatives might study and practise their peculiar talents in comparative comfort or whatever condition or environment best suited their work.

Borowitz had been late out of bed this morning, which was why he'd called for the branch helicopter to fly him in from his dacha. Even so, he was still an hour late for

his meeting with Dragosani. Passing through the outer complex of the chateau and into the main building, then up two flights of time-hollowed stone stairs into the tower where he had his office, he grinned wolfishly at the thought of Dragosani waiting for him. The necromancer was himself a stickler for punctuality; by now he would be furious. That was all to the good. His mind and tongue would be sharper than ever, setting the stage perfectly for his deflation. It did men good to be brought down now and then, an art in which Borowitz was past master. Taking off his hat and jacket as he went, finally Borowitz arrived at the second-floor landing and tiny anteroom which also served as an office for his secretary, where he found Dragosani pacing the floor and scowling darkly. The necromancer made no effort to alter his expression as his boss passed through with a breezy 'Good morning!' on the way to his own more spacious office. There he deftly kicked the door shut behind him, hung up his hat and jacket and stood scratching his chin for a moment or two as he pondered the best way to deliver the bad news. For in fact it was very bad news and Borowitz's temper was far shorter this morning than appearances might suggest.