Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

an expert with many years of practice behind him; but at that earlier time he'd been a far younger man, less experienced and wont to panic. He was much calmer now, and with every reason: in the years flown between Harry had faced terrors such as these two thugs could scarcely imagine.

'And so we are mistaken,' the wooden one said, his command of English slightly guttural but still very good, especially in its sarcastic inflection. 'You are not this Harry Keogh after all but a Greek gentleman named… Hari Kiokis? Ah, a dealer in antiques, I see! But a Greek who speaks only English?'

The one with the ferret's face was more direct. 'Where did you stay last night, Harry?' He prodded the snout of his pistol deep into Harry's ribs. 'What traitor gave you shelter, eh, Mr spy?'

'I… I stayed with no one,' Harry answered, which wasn't entirely true. He indicated his holdall. 'I slept in the open. My sleeping-bag is in here.'

The tall one took the holdall from him and opened it, and pulled out the sleeping-bag. It had a little mud on it and a few stains from the grass. And now the special policeman's face wasn't so wooden. If anything he looked bewildered, but only for a moment. 'Ah, I see!' he said then. 'Your contact didn't show up, and so you've had to make the best of things. Very well, then perhaps you'll tell us who was supposed to meet you, eh?'

'No one,' said Harry, as an idea began to form in his head. 'It's just that sleeping out is cheap and I enjoy a little fresh air, that's all. And in any case, what business is it of yours? You've seen my passport and know who I am, but who the hell are you? If you're policemen I'd like to see some sort of identification.'

And while they stared at him, and at each other, in something of astonishment, so he reached out with his deadspeak to the minds of his new friends in the graveyard half a mile away. He spoke (but silently) to Ion and Alexandru Zaharia, and his message was simple and to the point:

I'm under threat from two men. Your countrymen, I'm afraid: Securitatea, Without your help I'm done for! Harry got so much out, and only so much, before the small one kicked him in the groin. He saw it coming and managed to deflect most of it, but still he collapsed, rolling in feigned agony in the dust of the road.

'There now!' said the wooden one, his voice cold and empty of emotion. 'You see, you see? You've angered Corneliu! You really must try, Harry Keogh, to be more co-operative. Our patience is by no means infinite.' He went to the back of the car, opened it and threw Harry's things in. But he placed the forged passport in his own pocket.

But what can we do, Harry? Ion Zaharia's anxious voice came to him where he huddled on his side, playing for time. We could try to… but no, for you're too far away. We'd never get to you in time.

No, Harry answered, you stay right where you are. Only dig yourselves out, that's all. You and anyone else who — well, who's still in shape — and who wants to help. But don't go wasting yourselves trying to come to me, for I think I know how to bring these bastards to you.

'Jacket!' the small, thin one — Corneliu — snapped. 'Quickly!'

Harry sat up, half-shrugged out of his jacket before it was snatched from his back.

'All very disappointing, really,' said the other one, who wasn't so much wooden now as disdainful, superior. 'We fully expected that we would have to shoot you! Such things they told us about you! Such problems you've caused our friends across the border! And yet… you don't seem very desperate to me, Harry Keogh. Perhaps your reputation is undeserved?'

Harry had given up all thoughts of trying to bluff it out. They knew well enough who he was, if not what. 'That was all a long time ago,' he said, 'when I was younger. I'm not so foolish now. I know when the game is up.'

An open-backed truck rumbled by heading for Bucharest. In the back, seated on benches along the sides-, twin rows of men and women, mainly aging peasants, faced each other. Their eyes were uniformly empty of hope; they scarcely glanced at Harry where he kneeled in the dirt with a pair of thugs standing over him; they had troubles of their own. They were the destitute, the homeless ones, their lives blighted by Ceausescu's blind, uncaring agro-industrial policy.

'Well, the game is most certainly up for you, my friend,' the tall one continued. 'You'll know, of course, that they want you for espionage and sabotage — and murder? Oh, a great deal of the latter, apparently!' He took out handcuffs. 'So much, in fact, that I think we'll just immobilize you a little. One can never be too careful. You look harmless enough, and you're unarmed, but…'

He put the cuffs on, locking Harry's hands together.

'Return air tickets to Rhodos,' (the ferret had been ferreting in Harry's pockets), 'cigarettes and matches, and a lot of American dollars. That's all.' And to Harry: 'Get up!'

He was bundled into the back of the car with the small one beside him, holding his gun on him. The tall, lurching one got into the driver's seat. 'And so you were heading for the airport,' the latter said. 'Well, we shall give you a lift. We have a small room there where we can wait for the flight from Moscow. And after that you are out of our hands.' He started the car and headed for Bucharest.

'I don't get it,' said Harry, genuinely puzzled. 'Since when have the Securitatea been big friends with the KGB? I would have thought the USSR's glasnost and perestroika were totally at odds with what Ceausescu is doing? Or perhaps you two, as a team, are a two-edged sword, eh? Is that it? Are you working for two bosses, Mr, er — ?'

'Shut up!' the ferret scraped his gun down Harry's ribs. 'No, let him talk,' their driver merely shrugged. 'It amuses me to discover how little they know, in the West.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'And how much of what they do know is based on guesswork. Mr Keogh, you may call me Eugen. And why not, since our acquaintance will be so short? But does it surprise you that Russia has friends in Romania, when Romania has been a satellite and neighbour of the USSR for so very long? Why, next you'll be telling me that there are no Russian agents in England, or France, or America! No, I can't believe you're that naive.' 'You're… KGB?' Harry frowned. 'No, we're Securitatea — when it suits us to be. But you see, compared to the leu the rouble has always been so very strong and stable — and we all must look to our futures, eh? We all must retire sooner or later.' He glanced back, smiled at Harry, and gradually let the smile slide from his face. 'In your case, sooner.'

So… these two were in the pockets of the KGB, who in turn would have a section working with Harry's old 'friends' at the Soviet E-Branch HQ in Moscow. It was the Russian espers who were raising their ugly head again; they remembered Bronnitsy too well and desired to pay Harry back for it. Yes, and they must fear him mightily! First Wellesley's crazy plot in Bonnyrig, and now this. He would be smuggled quietly out of Romania and into the USSR, handed over to Soviet E-Branch, and simply… disappear. Or at least, that was the scenario as they had worked it out.

But it told Harry quite a lot. If he was to be smuggled out of Romania, then patently the actual Romanian authorities didn't know about him at all. To them he was simply what his passport said he was: Hari Kiokis, a perfectly legitimate businessman from Greece. It made sense. The KGB (or E-Branch) had contacted their own in Romania, men who could be trusted to expedite the job — because to try to arrange any other kind of extradition would only prove to be lengthy and frustrating. So maybe there was something to be said for Ceausescu's way of running the show after all.

'Er, Eugen?' he said. 'It seems to me that your main task was simply to pick me up. So why didn't you do it yesterday, at the airport? Because you needed to avoid publicity?'

'That was one reason,' the tall one answered over his shoulder. 'Also, we thought to kill two birds with one stone: tail you and discover your contact. You must have come here to see someone, after all. So we simply followed your taxi. But alas, a puncture! These things happen. Later we picked up your taxi driver and he showed us where he'd dropped you off. Also, he said you'd be catching a bus back into the city in the morning. Now that was frustrating! All that driving up and down since dawn, waiting for you to put in an appearance. As a last resort, of course, we would be obliged to return to Bucharest and wait for you at the airport. There is only one flight to Athens today. As it happened, however, that wasn't necessary.'

'There was no contact!' Harry suddenly blurted it out. 'I was just… just supposed to leave certain instructions, and pick up certain information.' He was taking a chance they knew almost nothing about him, except that he was to be detained for their Russian bosses. Also, time was getting shorter. By now his friends in the cemetery back there should be very nearly ready for him.

Eugen applied the brakes, slowed the car to a halt. 'You left instructions? There's a drop, back there?'