Clarke said, ‘But you will. You see, it’s not the sort of thing I can just tell you part of, or only the bits you’re going to be interested in. If you don’t see the whole picture, then the rest of it will be doubly difficult to understand. Anyway, if you do decide you’d like in on this, you’ll need to know it all. I’ll be coming to the things you’ll find interesting later.’
Harry nodded. ‘All right – but let’s go through to the kitchen. Could you use a coffee? Instant, I’m afraid; I’ve no patience with the real thing.’
‘Coffee would be fine,’ said Clarke. ‘And don’t worry about your instant. Anything has to be good after the gallons of stuff I drink out of that machine at HQ!’ And following Harry through the dim corridors of the old house, he smiled. For all the Necroscope’s apparently negative response, Clarke could see that in fact he was starting to unwind.
In the kitchen Clarke waited until Harry brought the coffee to the large wooden kitchen table and seated himself, then started to take up the story again. ‘As I was saying, they shot this thing down over the Hudson Bay. Now-‘
‘Wait,’ said Harry. ‘OK, I accept that you’re going to tell it your own way. That being the case, I’d better know the bits round the edges, too. Like how your lot got interested in Perchorsk in the first place?’
‘Actually, by accident,’ Clarke answered. ‘We don’t automatically get called in on everything, you know. We’re still very much the “silent partner”, as it were, when it comes to the country’s security. No more than half-a-dozen of Her Majesty’s lads in Whitehall – and one lady, of course – know that we even exist. And that’s how we prefer to keep it. As always, it makes funding difficult, not to mention the acquisition of new technology toys, but we get by. Gadgets and ghosts, that’s always been the way of it. We’re a meeting point – but only just – between super-science and the so-called supernatural, and that’s how we’re likely to stay for quite some little time.
‘But since the Bodescu affair things have been relatively quiet. Our psychics get called in a lot to help the police; indeed, they’re relying up on us more and more all the time. We find stolen gold, art treasures, arms caches; we even supplied a warning about that mess at Brighton, and a couple of our lads were actually on their way down there when it happened. But by and large we’re still very much low-key. So we don’t tell everything, and alas we don’t get told everything. Even the people who do know about us have difficulty seeing how computerized probability patterns can work alongside precognition. We’ve come a long way, but let’s face it, telepathy isn’t nearly as accurate as the telephone!’
‘Isn’t it?’ Harry’s sort – with the dead – was one hundred per cent accurate.
‘Not if the other side knows you’re listening in, no.’
‘But it is more secret,’ Harry pointed out, and Clarke sensed the acid in his tone. ‘So how did you “accidentally” learn about Perchorsk?’
‘We got to know about it because our “Comrades” at Perchorsk didn’t want us to! I’ll explain: do you remember Ken Layard?’
The locator? Of course I remember him,’ Harry answered.
‘Well, it was as simple as that. Ken was checking up on a bit of Russian military activity in the Urals – covert troop movements and what-not – and he met with resistance. There were opposed minds there, Soviet espers who were deliberately smothering the place in mental smog!’
Now a degree of animation showed in Harry’s pale face, especially in his eyes, which seemed to brighten appreciably. So his old friends the Russian espers had regrouped, had they? He nodded grimly. ‘Soviet E-Branch is back in business, eh?’
‘Obviously,’ said Clarke. ‘Oh, we’ve known about them for some time. But after what you did to the Chateau Bronnitsy they’ve not been taking any chances. They’ve been even more low-key than we are! They have two centres now: one in Moscow, right next door to the biological research laboratories on Protze Prospekt, and the other in Mogocha near the Chinese border, mainly keeping a wary eye on the Yellow Peril.’ “And this lot at Perchorsk,’ Harry reminded him. ‘A small section,’ Clarke nodded, ‘established there purely to keep us out! As far as we can tell, anyway. But what on earth can the Soviets be doing there that rates so high on their security list, eh? After Pill, we decided we’d better find out.