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!’