Necroscope III: The Source

Chapter 17

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Intruder

Khuv, Agursky and the others reeled as they entered the room of the thing. In the swirl and reek of the dead, frying creature in the tank, they failed to see that man-shaped space where the smoke rushed in to fill a sudden gap. Harry had made his exit just in time.

Agursky recovered first, leaped across the room and switched off the power. 'Who has done this?' he demanded of no one in particular. 'Who is responsible?' He clapped a hand to his brow, staggered toward the sputtering, smoking tank, where even now shards of glass were beginning to melt in the intense heat. Then, as the smoke began to clear, he saw the creature's blackened remains hanging out through the shattered glass wall; saw, too, something else - something which he didn't want anyone else to see. He ripped off his smock, quickly threw it over the monstrous remains.

Khuv had meanwhile turned to Leo Grenzel, the locator. 'You said he was here, an intruder. Well, someone has certainly been here - though I'm damned if I can see how! The door was locked, and there's a guard outside. Oh, a half-asleep, stupid guard, that's true, but he's not a complete idiot! So...just getting in here would be hard enough if not impossible - but as for getting out...?' Then Khuv grasped Grenzel by the shoulders, stared hard at him. 'Leo? Is there something else?'

Grenzel's face was pale again; his grey eyes were deep as deep space; he swayed where Khuv held him upright. 'Still here,' he finally said. 'He's still here!'

Khuv stared all about the room, as did the others.

Black smoke boiling from the mess under Agursky's smock, and the crackle of cooked, alien flesh starting to cool; but no sign of any intruder. 'Here? Where, here?'

The girl,' Grenzel swayed. The prisoner...'

Taschenka Kirescu?'

'Yes,' Grenzel's nod.

Khuv whirled on Savinkov and Slepak. 'How can this be?' he asked. But already his mind was working; memories of reports he'd read flashed before his mind's eye; it was something from before his time, but weren't the British supposed to have a man who could do this sort of thing? Harry Keogh was said to have been one such, and after him Alec Kyle. Keogh was dead but... but they never had found Kyle's body after the mess at the Chateau Bronnitsy.

'How can it be?' Savinkov repeated his KGB master. 'It can't be!' He was definite. But:

'Oh, it can,' Grenzel's far-away voice contradicted him. 'It is!'

'Quickly!' Khuv rasped. The cells. I want to know what the hell is happening here!'

They ran out of the room, left Grenzel swaying there, his face slack and vacant, but his eyes seeing, seeing. And Agursky, bundling up the dead creature and its dead parasite in his smock, trembling in his eagerness to get it back to his private quarters and away from any threat of inspection by others. For he now knew what had controlled this nameless thing, and he wanted to examine that controller most minutely.

Indeed, to Vasily Agursky there was nothing more important in the entire world but that he examine the thing's parasite - whose egg had been deposited and was even now maturing inside Agursky himself!

Tassi's nightmare - of the key grating in the lock on her cell door, and of Khuv entering, dark-eyed and evil - had kept her awake. It was that sort of nightmare, the sort you suffer when you're awake. It was doubtful if she would have slept anyway; she hadn't since... since the horror Khuv had shown her in the room of the thing. She couldn't sleep, for the face of her father kept smiling at her from the darkness behind her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes; her father's face - on the body of a beast.

She kept her cell light on, and lay warm on her cot but shivering, drained of energy, waiting for Khuv. For her time was up, and she knew he would soon be coming for her. That had been his threat, and Major Chingiz Khuv didn't make idle threats. If only there was something she could tell him, but she didn't know anything. Only that she was the most wretched, unhappiest girl in the world.

When Harry stepped out of the Mobius Continuum, Tassi had just turned on her side, turned her face away from his re-entry point into this universe. A quick glance about the cell told Harry they were alone; he took a single pace to the metal bed, put a hand round Tassi's face and over her mouth, cautioned her in Russian: 'Shhh! Be quiet. Don't shout or do anything stupid. I'm going to get you out of here.'

He kept his hand clamped to her face but let her turn her head to look at him. And with his hand still in place, he helped her to sit up. Then: 'OK?' he asked.

Tassi nodded, but she was trembling in every limb. Her eyes looked like saucers above her nose and the bands of Harry's fingers. He slowly took his hand away, gently urged her to her feet. She looked at the door, then at Harry, said: 'Who? - How? - I don't...'

'It's OK,' Harry put a finger to his lips.

'But how did you get in here? I didn't hear you come. Was I asleep?' Then her hand flew to her mouth. 'Did the Major send you? But I've told him: I don't know anything! Oh, please don't hurt me!'

'No one's going to hurt you, Tassi,' Harry told her. And then he made his mistake: 'Your father sent me.' Seeing her expression, he could have bitten his tongue through.

She shook her head and backed away from him. There were tears in her eyes now. 'My father's dead,' she wept. 'He's dead! He couldn't have sent you...' And accusingly: 'What are you going to do to me?'

'I've told you,' Harry answered, an edge of desperation in his tone, 'I'm going to take you out of this place. Do you hear those alarms?'

She listened, and indeed she could hear the klaxons, sounding from deep down in the heart of the place. 'Well,' Harry continued, 'I'm what those alarms are all about. They're looking for me, and pretty soon they'll be looking in here. So now I'm asking you to trust me.'

What he was saying was impossible. It was either a trick of Khuv's or else this man was insane. No one could get out of this place, Tassi was sure. But on the other hand, how had he got in? 'Do you have keys?' she asked.

Harry could see he was making an impression. 'Keys?' he grinned, however tightly. 'I have an entire door! Lots of doors!'

He was mad, surely. But he was different from the others here, totally different. 'I don't understand,' she said, still backing away. Her legs struck the edge of her bed and she flopped down on it again.

Running footsteps sounded, and the tight grin slipped from Harry's face. 'They're coming,' he said. 'Get up.' The sudden authority in his voice had her on her feet again in a moment.

There was shouting outside, the jangle of keys, Khuv's voice hoarsely commanding: 'Open it! Open it!'

Harry grabbed Tassi by the waist. 'Put your arms round my neck,' he said. 'Quickly, girl. No arguments, now!' She did it. She had no reason to trust him, but she had no reason not to. 'Close your eyes,' he said. 'And keep them closed.' Tightening one arm around her narrow waist, he grunted as he lifted her feet from the floor.

She heard the cell door grating open, then silence - but such absolute silence.

'Wha - ?' she commenced a question she couldn't finish, and shrank from the booming of her own voice. Startled, she opened her eyes for a moment - but only for a moment. Then she snapped them tightly shut again.

'There,' said Harry, and he lowered her feet to a solid floor. 'You can open your eyes now.'

She did, the merest slit... then opened them wide, wider - and sagged against him. Her eyes rolled up and she began to slide down his body.

Harry caught her up, lifted her, laid her on the Duty Officer's desk. Behind his newspaper, the DO had just this moment realized that he had visitors. Then the girl's arm and hand flopped into view under his open newspaper and he reared up and back with an inarticulate cry: 'G-yahhh!'

'It's OK,' said Harry, who was growing accustomed to excusing himself. 'It's only me, and the friend of a friend of mine.'

'Jesus! Jesus! - oh, sweet Jesus!' the DO clutched at his desk for support. Of all people, it was Darcy Clarke. Harry nodded the very briefest of greetings, began to massage the unconscious girl's hands...

It had been 1:15 a.m. when Harry arrived at E-Branch HQ, and it was almost an hour later when he left. In between times he passed on some information, told Clarke all he had learned, and in return received a little information from the other. His instructions for the welfare of Tassi Kirescu were these:

She was to be given refuge, comforted as best the staff of E-Branch knew how, offered permanent political asylum. A Russian interpreter was to be provided for her, and she should be debriefed (but with a great deal of care and sensitivity) with regard to the Perchorsk Projekt. For the present she was to keep a low profile: her presence here in the West should be kept secret, and when she was released it must be with a new identity. Lastly, E-Branch was to use such usual and paranormal means as were required to discover the whereabouts in the USSR of her mother. Harry had made Kazimir Kirescu a promise and it was one he intended to keep - eventually.

As for the information Darcy Clarke had for Harry:

'It's Zek Foener,' he had told the Necroscope.

'Zek? What about her?' The last time Harry had seen Zek was eight years ago. She had been a telepath at the Chateau Bronnitsy, the USSR's equivalent of E-Branch HQ, which had made her an enemy, but a reluctant one. Harry could have destroyed her, but he'd sensed a deep-rooted decency in her, a desire to be free of her KGB masters. All she had wanted was to return to Greece. He had suspected she would. But ... he had warned her not to come up against him again.

'She may be part of this,' Clarke had told him.

'How do you mean? Part of Perchorsk?' Was Zek the one who'd betrayed his presence there? She would have known his mind at once, as soon as he materialized in the place. Of course, there was also Khuv's detachment of espers; they could have picked him up just as easily. For the moment Harry preferred to believe the latter. At least he hoped so.

'Part of Perchorsk, yes. A cog in the wheel of the place. We've kept an eye on her ever since the Bodescu affair.

She was doing time at a forced labour camp; not especially hard stuff, but not pleasant either. Then they sent her to Perchorsk. This was some months ago and we've just had news of it. We can only assume she's working for Soviet E-Branch again. And for the KGB...'

Harry's face soured. 'Again,' he said. 'I warned her not to. Well, if I have to mix it with them again...' He let the threat hang there.

Clarke stared hard at him. 'But isn't it more serious than that, Harry? At the end of the Bodescu affair, Zek Foener was working with Ivan Gerenko - '

'Had been working with him,' Harry cut in, correcting him. 'But she'd quit. I thought so, anyway.'

'But you know what I mean,' Clarke insisted. 'Gerenko had some crazy idea about using vampires. That's why he and Theo Dolgikh - and Zek - went back to that mountain pass east of the Carpathians: to see if, after all those centuries, anything remained of Faethor Ferenczy's buried creatures. Zek knows about vampires! It makes it that much more definite that the Russians have discovered a way to make the damned things, and that they're doing it there at Perchorsk!'

'So you're saying...?'

'Harry, you remember how you dealt with the Chateau Bronnitsy?'

After a moment, Harry had nodded. Oh yes, he remembered it well enough. Using the Mobius Continuum, he'd laid plastic explosive charges there. Gouting, shattering fire and lashing heat, and the Chateau reduced to smouldering rubble. And the Soviet E-Branch reduced along with it, for their sins. In the space of less than a minute, enough sheer destructive savagery to last any man a lifetime. 'I remember,' he had finally answered. 'Except -'

'Yes?'

'Darcy, if you're right, well, obviously the place has to go. But not until we're sure one way or the other, and not yet. I have this feeling that the answer to my one big problem is right there. It may be risky - I mean, I know what has escaped from that place, and what could presumably escape from it in future; indeed, I've seen and dealt with an example - but for the moment I can't, daren't, try to close it down. Not if I want to see Brenda and Harry Jnr again.'

For a moment it had seemed that Clarke understood, but then he'd said, 'Harry, it's not just a case of "risky" -it's deadly! Unthinkable! You must see that?'

And then it had been Harry's turn. Coldly he had answered: 'There are a couple of things you have to see, too, Darcy. Like old man Kirescu being dead - his death probably precipitated by your sending Jazz Simmons in there. And that poor girl having lost both her father and her brother. And her mother, probably in a forced labour camp by now, half out of her mind with grief and worry, no doubt. These are things you can't write off, Darcy, and you're certainly not going to write off Brenda and Harry Jnr. So for now we'll continue to play this my way.'

White-faced, Clarke could only agree. 'So ... what's your way going to be? What's your next step, Harry?'

'Well, there are questions I need answered. It looks like I'll have to go right to the top to get them answered.'

The top?'

Harry had nodded. 'The Perchorsk Projekt. If I'm right and it's not about breeding vampires, then what is it about? Someone in that place knows and is going to tell me. There has to be a boss, a controller. Not Khuv but someone above him.'

'Of course there is,' Clarke had answered at once. 'Khuv's in charge of security, that's all. The man you want is Viktor Luchov.' And he'd gone on to fill Harry in on Luchov's background.

When he was done Harry had nodded grimly. Then he's the man I need to talk to. If anyone has the answers, Viktor Luchov has to be the one.'

'When will you try to see him?'

'Now.'

'Now?' Clarke had been taken aback. 'But the place will still be on top alert!'

'I know. I'll create a smoke screen.'

'A what?'

'A diversion. Let me worry about it. You just look after that girl.'

Clarke had nodded, stuck out his hand. 'Best of luck, Harry.'

The Necroscope wasn't one for holding grudges. He shook hands, conjured a Mobius door. Clarke watched him take his departure, thought: I was there once! Pray God he'd never be there again...

Viktor Luchov was back in his own executive quarters (which meant that they were slightly less austere than anyone else's at Perchorsk) and he was furious. Quite apart from this latest incident - this 'intrusion', if such it had been - the Projekt Direktor had chosen the period of the alert to approach and challenge Khuv in respect of certain rumours which were beginning to circulate through the Projekt, rumours alleging brutality and murder. They concerned the KGB officer's prisoners, Kazimir and Taschenka Kirescu.

Perhaps Luchov's approach had been a little too liverish (he had after all been shocked awake in the middle of the night, with klaxons sounding all around like wailing demons out of hell) but that could not excuse Khuv's response, which had been brusque to put it mildly.

Namely, he had told Luchov that he should get off his back and let him attend to the Projekt's security with a minimum of interference. Or better still, with no interference at all. This confrontation had taken place not in private but in the detention area, where Khuv's espers had been crowding one of the cells in their search for something or other. 'Sniffing the ether!' as one of them had put it.

Appalled at the apparent chaos and confusion, Luchov had demanded to see the prisoners, which was when Khuv had rounded on him.

'Listen, Comrade Direktor,' the KGB Major had hissed. 'I would be delighted if I could show you the girl Tassi Kirescu. This was her cell. A little over one hour ago she was here, and a guard on duty in the corridor outside. Then - ' he had thrown up his hands, ' - she was no longer here, and the door still locked! Now, I know you hold E-Branch in small regard, and the KGB in no regard at all, but surely it must be amply apparent even to your oh-so-scientific mind that something quite exceptional - something, indeed, entirely metaphysical - has occurred here? My espers are attempting to discover what that something was. And I, who have no ESP talent of my own, am trying to make sense of what they're telling me. So ... now is not the ideal moment for you to come interfering!'

'You go too far, Major!' Luchov had shouted.

'And I shall go further,' Khuv had shouted back. 'If you do not get out of my way I shall have you escorted back to your quarters and locked in!'