bitter nights, be sure of it — but did they come to set me free? Not them! So Ladislau Giresci fancies himself a tracker of vampires, does he? But I would have shown him how to track them, who left me to the dirt and the worms and the seep of centuries, when I rise up from this place! Ah, well, they are gone now, and my vengeance with them…
Dragosani smiled grimly. 'I can't help asking myself, Thibor, why they deserted you and left you to your fate? Your own father, for instance, Faethor Ferenczy: who would know you better than him? And why did your brother, Janos, hate you so? There's more to you than meets the eye, eh, Thibor? A black sheep among vampires! Who ever heard of such a thing? But why not? — you yourself have mentioned your excesses more than once. And I have personal recollections of them. Do the things you've done bother even your conscience? Or are the Wamphyri, and you in particular, without conscience?'
You make much of very little, Dragosani.
'Oh? I don't think so. I'm only just beginning to learn about you, Thibor. When you aren't lying outright, then you're obscuring the truth. It's the way you are; you don't know any other way.'
The vampire was furious. You find it easy to insult me because you know I may not strike you! How have I obscured the truth?
'How? Haven't you said that I "gave" you the opportunity to discover what had become of these kin of yours? But in fact you made your own opportunity. It wasn't my intention when I started out from Moscow to go to the library in Pitesti, Thibor, so who put that thought in my head again, eh? And when you learned of Ladislau Giresci, why, I just had to go and see him, didn't I?'
Listen, Dragosani —
'No, you listen. You used me. Used me just as the vampire of popular fiction uses his human vassals, just as you used your Szekely serfs five hundred years ago. But I'm no serf, Thibor Ferenczy, and that's your big mistake. It's one you'll come to regret, too.'
Dragosani, I —
'I'll hear no more talk, old dragon, not from your forked tongue. There's only one thing you can do for me now: get yourself out of my mind!'
Dragosani's mind was fully developed now, trained, sharp as one of his own scalpels. Case-hardened by the necromancy which this very vampire had inspired in him, its cutting edge was swift and deadly. In its action it was keener than an ordinary man's is over that of a mongol — but how strong was it? Now Dragosani put it to the test. He squeezed with his mind, thrusting the monster out, driving him away.
Ingrate! Thibor accused, retreating. But don't think it ends here. One day you'll need me, and then you'll return. Only don't wait too long, Dragosani. A year at most, and after that put aside all thoughts of ever acquiring Wamphyri knowledge, for you'll be too late. A year, my son, and no more than a year. I'll be waiting, and perhaps by then I will… have… forgiven you… Dragosaaniiii…/
Then he was gone.
Dragosani relaxed, breathed deeply, suddenly felt exhausted. It had been no easy thing, exorcising Thibor. The vampire had resisted, but Dragosani had been stronger. The real problem had not lain in getting him out — it would lie in keeping him out. Or perhaps not. Now that Dragosani knew Thibor was able to secretly insinuate himself in his being, he could maintain a watch for the old devil.
But as for his Romanian 'holiday': that was over before it had begun. Cursing, he savagely applied the brakes and slewed the Volga round in a half circle, then started back the way he had come. He was tired but sleep would have to wait. All Dragosani wanted now was to put distance between himself and the Thing in the ground.
Dragosani stopped just outside Bucharest for petrol and tried to raise Thibor. It was still full daylight but he got something: a faint response, a shiver in his mind that echoed like a coffin and wriggled like a graveworm. In Braida in the dusk he tried again. The presence was stronger as night drew on. Thibor was there and might have responded if Dragosani had given him the opportunity. He did not but closed his mind and drove on. At Reni, after passing through Customs, he let down all his defences and literally invited Thibor in. It was full night now but the whisper in his mind was faint, as if it came from a million miles away:
Dragosaaaniiii. Coward! You flee from me. An old creature trapped in the earth.
Tm no coward, old one. And I'm not fleeing but putting myself outside your range, where you can't reach me. And if you do manage to reach me, next time I'll know. You see, Thibor, you need me more than I need you. Now you can just lie there and think it over. I may come back one day and I may not. But when, if I do, it will be on my terms.'
Dragosani (the whisper was faint but urgent) I -
'Goodbye, Thibor.'
And behind him, Thibor Ferenczy's mental whisper was eaten up along with all the miles, and in a little while Dragosani felt safe to stop and sleep.
And dream his own dreams.
The spring of '76…
Viktor Shukshin was running close to broke. He had frittered away his inheritance from Mary Keogh-Snaith's estate on various business ventures which had fallen through; rates on the big house near Bonnyrigg were high; the money he made from his private tutoring was insufficient to keep him. He would sell the house but it had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it would no longer realise a high price; also, he needed the seclusion that the place gave him. To let some of the rooms would likewise diminish his privacy, and in any case the structural and decorative repairs necessary before any letting could even be considered were quite beyond his means.
His linguistic talent was not the only one he commanded, however, and so, over the period of the last few months, he had made several discreet trips into London to follow up and check out certain points of information he had acquired in the years he had been domiciled in the British Isles — information which should be worth a deal of money to certain very interested foreign parties.
In short, Viktor Shukshin was a spy — or at least, it had been intended that he should become one when Gregor Borowitz first sent him out of the USSR, in 1957. Of course, there had been a hardening of East-West relationships at that time — and a general hardening of Russia's policy towards her dissidents — so that it hadn't been too difficult for Shukshin to get into Great Britain in the guise of a political refugee.
After that, and especially after meeting, marrying murdering Mary Keogh, Shukshin had found himself so well-fixed that he had reneged on his Soviet boss and settled to actual citizenship. Still, he had not forgotten his original reason for coming to Great Britain, and as a hedge against the future had long since set about amassing information which might eventually be useful to his mother country. It was only recently, though, because of his financial difficulties, that he had begun to realise what a good position he was in. If the Soviets would not pay him the price he demanded for his information, then he could threaten them with the release to the British of his knowledge of a certain Russian organisation.
Which was why, this sparkling May morning, Shukshin had written a carefully coded letter to an old 'pen-friend' in Berlin — one who had not heard from him in over fifteen years, and had thought never to hear from him again — who would forward his letter through East Germany and on to Gregor Borowitz himself in Moscow. That letter was in the post even now, and Shukshin had just returned home in his battered Ford from the Bonnyrigg post office.
But coming across the river on the stone bridge that led to his driveway, Shukshin had been startled to feel in himself a strange churning which he'd at once recognised of old, a weird energy which turned his spine chilly and tugged at his hair like static electricity. On the bridge, leaning over the parapet and staring into the river's slow swirl, a slim young man in a scarf and overcoat had lifted his head and stared at Shukshin's car. His pale blue serious eyes had seemed to burn right through the car's bodywork, touching Shukshin with their cold gaze. And the Russian had known that the stranger was endowed with more than Nature's ordinary talents, that he commanded more than man's normal powers of perception.
He had known it absolutely, for Shukshin, too, was gifted. He was a 'spotter': his talent lay in the instant recognition of another ESP-endowed person.
As to who the youth could be, the significance of his appearing here at this time: there were several possibilities. It could be coincidence, an accidental meeting; this would not be the first time nor even the fiftieth that Shukshin had stumbled across such a person. But ESP came in a range of strengths and colours, and this one had been strong indeed and scarlet — a red-tinged cloud in Shukshin's mind. Or his presence here could be deliberate: he may have been sent here. The British branch must also have its spotters, and Shukshin may well have been detected and trailed. In the light of his recent trips to London — and what he had subsequently discovered of the British ESPionage branch — this theory was by no means far-fetched and sent something of a panic surging through him. Panic and more than panic. There was something else in Shukshin now, something he must control. Something which made his eyes narrow as he thought how easily he might have swerved his car to crush the stranger against the parapet wall. The emotion was hatred, the deep and abiding hatred he felt towards all ESPers.
His rage slowly subsided and he looked at his hands. The knuckles of his fingers were white where he gripped the edges of his desk. He forced himself to release his grip and sat back, breathing deeply. It was always this way, but he had learned how to control it — almost. But if only he had not sent that letter to Borowitz. That might have been a big mistake. Perhaps he should have offered his services direct to the British instead; perhaps he still should, and without delay. Before they could investigate him any further…
Such were his thoughts when the doorbell rang, because they were guilty thoughts he gave a violent start.
Shukshin's study was downstairs in a room to the rear of the house that opened through patio windows into its own courtyard. Now he stood up from his desk, passed from bright spring sunshine into gloom as he hurried through the ground floor rooms and corridors towards the front, and midway started again as the doorbell once more tore at his nerve-endings.
'I'm coming, I'm coming!' he called ahead — but he slowed down and came to a halt on the interior threshold of the long, glazed porch. Out there beyond the frosted glass stood a well-muffled figure which Shukshin knew at once: it was that of the young man from the bridge.
Shukshin knew it in two ways, one of which was simple observation and could be in error. The other way was more certain, as positive as a fingerprint: he felt again the surge of rare energy-fields and the heat of his instinctive hatred for all such ESP-talented men. Again a tide of panic and passion rose up in him, which he forcibly put down before moving to the door. Well, he had wondered about the stranger, hadn't he? Now it seemed that he was not to be kept in suspense. One way or the other he would soon discover what was going on here.
He opened the door…
'How do you do,' said Harry Keogh, smiling and extending his hand. 'You must be Viktor Shukshin, and I believe you give private tuition in German and Russian?'
Shukshin did not take Keogh's hand but simply stood and stared at him. For his own part, Harry stared back. And for all that he continued to smile, still his flesh crawled in the knowledge that he now stood face to face with his mother's murderer. He put the thought aside; for the moment it was sufficient to just look at the other and absorb what he could of this stranger who he intended to destroy.
The Russian was in his late forties but looked at least ten years older. He had a paunch and his dark hair was streaked with grey; his sideburns ran into a neatly trimmed, pointed beard beneath a fleshy mouth; his dark eyes were red-rimmed and deeply sunken in a face lined and grey. He did not appear in good health, but Keogh suspected that there was a dangerous strength in him. Also, his hands were huge, his shoulders broad for all that they were a little hunched, and if he had stood upright he would be well over six feet tall. All in all, he was a grotesquely impressive figure of a man. And (Keogh now allowed himself to remember) he was a murderer whose blood was cold as ice.
'Er, you do give language lessons, don't you?'
Shukshin's face cracked into something approaching a smile. A nervous tic tugged at the flesh at the corner of his mouth. 'Indeed I do,' he answered, his voice liquid and deep, retaining a trace of his native accent. 'I take it I was recommended? Who, er, sent you to me?'
'Recommended?' Keogh answered. 'No, not exactly. I've seen your ads in the papers, that's all. No one sent me.'
'Ah!' Shukshin was cautious. 'And you require lessons, is that it? Excuse me if I'm slow on the uptake, but no one seems much interested in languages these days. I have one or two regulars. That's about it. I can't really afford the time to take on anyone else just now. Also, I'm rather expensive. But didn't you get enough of them at school? Languages, I mean?'
'Not school,' Keogh corrected him, 'college.' He shrugged. 'It's the old story, I'm afraid: I had no time for it when it was free, and so now I'll have to pay for it. I intend to do a lot of travelling, you see. and I thought — '
'You'd like to brush up on your German, eh?'
'And my Russian.'
Alarm bells rang in Shukshin's mind, vying with the pressures already there. This was all false and he knew it. Also, there was more to this young man than some weird ESP talent. Shukshin had the odd feeling that he knew him from somewhere. 'Oh?' he finally said. 'Then you're a rare one. Not many Englishmen go to Russia these days, and fewer still want to learn the language! Is your visit to be business or — ?'
'Purely pleasure,' Keogh cut him off. 'May I come in?'