‘I’ll stay in touch,’ Harry said. ‘There’s still a lot I don’t know. About our organisation, theirs, how to go about tracking them down. Many things.’
‘Do you know about Batu?’ again Gormley’s fear was apparent. ‘The little Mongol, Harry – do you know about him?’
‘I know he’s one of them, but – ‘ ‘He has the evil eye – he can kill with a glance! My heart attack – he brought it on. He killed me, Harry, Max Batu. That face of his, that evil eye, it generates mental poison! His power bites like acid, melts the brain, the heart. He killed me . . .’
‘Then he’s another I have to settle with,’ Harry answered, cold determination stiffening his resolve. ‘But be careful, Harry.’ ‘I will.’
‘I think the answers are in you, my boy, and God only knows how much I pray you can find them. Just let me give you this warning: when Dragosani was . . . with me, I sensed something else in him. It wasn’t just his necromancy. Harry, there’s an evil in that man that’s older than time! With him loose in the world nothing, no one is safe. Not even the people who think they control him.’
Harry nodded. ‘I’ll be watching out for him,’ he said. ‘And I’ll find the answers, Keenan, all of them. With your help. For as long as you can give me that help, anyway.’
‘I’ve thought about that, Harry,’ said the other. ‘And you know, I don’t think it’ll be the end. I mean, this isn’t me. What you see here used to be me, it was me – but so was a baby born in South Africa, and so was a young man who joined the British Army when he was seventeen, and so was the head of E-Branch for thirteen years. They’ve all gone now, and after my funeral pyre this part will also be gone. But me, I’ll still be here. Somewhere.’
‘I hope so,’ said Harry, opening his eyes and standing up, and avoiding looking at the room.
‘Find yourself a hotel, then,’ said Gormley, ‘and get back to me when you can. The sooner we get started the better. And afterwards – I mean when all of this is over and done, if it ever is -‘
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it would be nice if you could look me up some time. You see, unless I’m mistaken, you’re the only one who’ll ever be able to. And you know you’ll always be welcome.’
An hour later Harry locked himself in his cheap hotel room and got in touch with Gormley again. As always, having already been in contact with him, it came very easy. The ex-boss of E-Branch was waiting for him, had been considering what to tell him and gave the information in order of priority. They started with E-Branch itself – a deeper view of the branch and the people who worked in it – and went on to the reasons why at this stage Harry should not approach Gormley’s second in command or in any way attempt entry into the organisation.
‘It would be too time-consuming,’ Gormley explained. ‘Oh, there would be benefits, of course. For one thing you’d be funded – any necessary expenses would be covered – but at the same time they’d want to give you a good close going-over. And naturally they’d be eager to test your talent. Especially now that I’m gone, and when it comes out what someone has done to my corpse . . .’
‘You think I’d be suspect?’
‘What, a necroscope? Of course you’d be suspect! I do have a file on you, true, but it’s pretty sketchy and obviously incomplete – and actually I’m the only one who could have vouched for you! So you see, by the time our side had cleared you the other side would have raced ahead. Time is of the essence, Harry, and not to be wasted. So what I propose is this: you won’t attempt to join E-Branch right now but work on your own. After all, the only ones who know anything at all about you at this time are Dragosani and Batu. The trouble with that, of course, is that Dragosani knows everything about you, for he stole it directly from me! What we must ask ourselves is this: why did Borowitz send these two here? Why now? What’s brewing? Or is he just stretching his tentacles a bit? Oh, he’s had agents here before, certainly, but they were only intelligence gatherers. They were enemy, and they sought information – but they weren’t killers! So what has happened that Borowitz has decided to turn a cold ESP war into a hot one?’