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.’