Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

Harkley House in Devon, England, where he and the locator had formed their first real partnership and worked as a team for the very first time. Then as now they'd been members of E-Branch, that most secret of all the Secret Services, whose work was known only to a handful of 'top people'. Unlike now, however, their work on that occasion had been far less mundane. Indeed, there had been nothing at all mundane about the Yulian Bodescu affair.

Memories, deliberately suppressed for more than a decade, sprang once more into being, full-fleshed and fantastic in Jordan's ESP-endowed mind. Once more he held the crossbow in his hand, chest-high and aimed dead ahead, as he listened to the hiss of jetting water and the girl's voice humming that tuneless melody from beyond the closed door, and wondered if this were a trap. Then -

He kicked open the door to the shower cubicle — and stood riveted to the spot! Helen Lake, Yulian Bodescu's cousin, was utterly beautiful and quite naked. Standing sideways on, her body gleamed in the streaming water. She jerked her head round to stare at Jordan, her eyes wide in terror where she fell back against the shower's wall. Her knees began to buckle and her eyelids fluttered.

'But this is just a frightened girl!' he told himself-in the moment before her thoughts branded themselves on his telepathic mind:

Come on, my sweet! she thought. Ah, just touch me, hold me! Just a little closer, my sweet…

Then, jerking back away from her, he saw the carving knife in her hand and the insane glare in her demonic eyes. As she drew him effortlessly towards her and lifted her knife in a gleaming arc, so he pulled the crossbow's trigger. It was an automatic thing, his life or hers.

God! — the bolt nailed her to the tiled wall; she screamed like the damned soul she was and jerked herself free of splintering tiles and plaster, staggering to and fro in the shower's shallow well. But she still had the knife, and Jordan could do nothing but stand there with his eyes bulging, mouthing meaningless prayers, as she advanced on him yet again …

… Until Ken Layard shouldered him aside — Layard with his flamethrower — whose nozzle he directed into the shower to turn it into a blistering, steaming pressure-cooker!

'God help us!' Jordan gasped now, as he'd gasped it then. He blotted the unbearable memories out, came reeling back to the present. In the wake of mental conflict, crisis, his hangover seemed twice as bad. He breathed deeply, used the tips of his fingers to massage the top of his head where it felt split, and wondered out loud: 'Christ, what brought that on?'

Layard's eyes were wide; he bent forward across the table and grasped Jordan's forearm. 'You too?' he said.

Jordan broke an unspoken rule among E-Branch espers: he glanced into Layard's mind. Receding, he felt the echoes of similar memories and at once broke the contact. 'Yes, me too,' he said.

'I could tell by your face,' Layard told him. 'I've never seen you look like that since… that time. Maybe it's because we're working together again?'

'We've worked together plenty,' Jordan flopped back in his chair, suddenly felt exhausted. 'No, I think it's just something that was squeezed up in there and had to be out. Well, it took its time — but it's out now and gone forever, I hope!'

'Me too,' Layard agreed. 'But both of us at the same time? And why now? We couldn't be in a more different setting from Harkley House than we are right now.'

Jordan sighed and reached for his coffee. His hand trembled a little. 'Maybe we picked it up from each other and amplified it. You know what they say about great minds thinking alike?'

Layard relaxed and nodded. 'Especially minds like ours, eh?' He nodded again, if a little uncertainly. 'Well, maybe you're right…'

By 9:45 the two were down on the northern harbour wall, seated on a wooden bench which gave them a splendid view right across the Mandraki shallows and harbour to the Fort of St Nikolas. To their left the Bank of Greece stood on its raised promontory, its white-banded walls and blue windows reflected in the still water, while on their right and to the rear of the promenade sprawled Rhodes New Town. Mandraki, being mainly a shallow- water mooring, was not the commercial harbour; that lay a quarter-mile south in the bay of the historic, picturesque and Crusader-fortified Old Town, beyond the great mole with the fort at its tip. But their information was that the drug-runners moored up in Mandraki, taking on water and some small provisions there, before proceeding on to Crete, Italy, Sardinia and Spain.

A little cannabis resin would be dropped off here, by night (probably carried ashore by a crewman in swim- trunks and fins), and likewise in various ports of call along the way. But the great mass of the stuff — and the main cargo, which was cocaine — was destined for Valencia, Spain. From where, eventually, a lot of it would find its way to England. Such had been its route and destination in the past. Meanwhile the E-Branch agents had the task of determining (a) how much of the white powder was aboard; and (b) if the amount was small, would a pre-emptive bust simply serve to tip their hands to the drug-barons; and (c) where was the stuff kept if it was aboard?

Only a few months ago a boat had been stripped to the bones in Larnaca, Cyprus, and nothing had been found. But of course, that one had been handled by the Greek-Cypriot police, whose 'expertise' perhaps lacked that little something extra — like co-ordination or even intelligence! This time it would be a combined effort, terminating in Valencia before the bulk of the stuff could be off-loaded. And this time, too, the boat — a wallowing, wooden, round-bottomed barrel of an old Greek thing called the Samothraki — would be stripped not just to her bones but the very marrow. And in the interim Jordan and Layard would shadow her along her route.

Dressed in tourist-trade 'American' caps with hugely-projecting peaks, bright, open-necked, short-sleeved shirts, cool slacks and leather sandals, and equipped with binoculars, they now awaited the arrival of their quarry. Since they went allegedly incognito, their mode of dress might seem almost outlandish, but by comparison with the more lurid tourist groups they could easily be too conservative. And that was to be avoided.

They had been silent for some time; there was something of a mood on both of them; Jordan blamed the Metaxa and Layard said it was 'bad gut' brought on by greasy food. Whichever, it interfered a little with their ESP.

'It's… cloudy,' Jordan complained, frowning. Then he shrugged. 'But you don't know what I mean, do you?'

'Sure I do,' Layard answered. 'We called it mindsmog in the old days, remember? A kind of dull mental static, distorting or blocking the pictures? Or obscuring them in a sort of… well, almost in a damp, reeking fog! When I reach out and search for the Samothraki, I can feel it there like a welling mist in my mind. A dampness, a darkness, a smog. But how to explain it in a place like this? It's weird. And it doesn't come from the boat especially but -1 don't know — from everywhere!'

Jordan looked at him. 'How long since we came up against other espers?'

'In our work, you mean? Just about every time we do an embassy job, I suppose. What are you getting at?'

'You don't think it's likely there are other agents on the same job? Russians, maybe, or the French?'

'It's possible.' It was Layard's turn to frown. 'The USSR's narcotics problem is growing every day, and France has been in the shit for years. But I was thinking: what if they're on the other side? I mean, what if the runners themselves are using espers? They could well afford to, and that's a fact!'

Jordan put his binoculars to his eyes, turned his head and scanned the coastline from the fort on the mole all the way to the heart of the Old Town where it rose behind massive walls. 'Have you tried tracking it?' he said. 'I mean, after all's said and done, you're the locator. But me, I've a feeling the source is somewhere in there.'

Layard's keen eyes followed the aim of Jordan's binoculars. A big, white, expensive-looking motor-cruiser lolled at anchor in Mandraki's narrow, deep-water channel; beyond that a handful of caiques were moored inshore, or came and went, most of them full to the gunnels with tourists; a further quarter-mile and the Old Town's markets and streets were a hive, literally buzzing where the hill rose in a mass of churches and white and yellow houses, burning in the morning sunlight. Except that all was in motion, he might well have been looking at a picture postcard. The scene was that perfect.

Layard stared for long moments, then snapped his fingers, sat back and grinned. 'That's it!' he finally said. 'You got it first time.'

'Eh?' Jordan looked at him.