‘Well,’ said the Russian, sighing, ‘I can’t say it was a Pleasure knowing you — but I’m sure it will be a great pleasure not knowing you! And so —‘
‘Wait!’ Brown gasped. ‘Promise me you’ll take me back inside if I tell you.’
Dolgikh shrugged. ‘I shall only kill you if you make me. Not answering will be more suicide than murder.’
Brown licked his lips. Hell, it was his life! Kyle and the others had their head start. He’d done enough. ‘Romania, Bucharest!’ he blurted. ‘They took a plane last night, to get into Bucharest around midnight.’
Dolgikh stepped beside him, cocked his head on one side and looked down at his sweating, upturned face. ‘You know that I only have to telephone the airport and check?’
‘Of course,’ Brown sobbed. His tears were open and unashamed. His nerve had gone entirely. ‘Now get me inside.’
The Russian smiled. ‘I shall be delighted.’ He stepped out of Brown’s view. The agent felt him sawing with his knife at the ropes where they bound his wrists behind him. The ropes parted, and Brown groaned as he brought his arms round in front of him. Stiff with cramp, he could hardly move them. Dolgikh cut his feet free and collected up the short lengths of rope. Brown made an effort, started to rise unsteadily to his feet —
— And without warning the Russian put both hands on his back and used all his strength to push him forward. Brown cried out, sprawled forward, went crashing over and through the wall into space. Fancy brickwork, fragments of plaster and mortar fell with him.
Dolgikh hawked and spat after him, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. From far below there came a single heavy thud and the crashing of fallen masonry.
Moments later the Russian put on Brown’s lightweight overcoat, left the flat and wiped the doorknob behind him. He took the lift to the ground floor and left the building, walking unhurriedly. Fifty yards down the road he stopped a taxi and asked to be taken to the airport.
On the way he wound down the window, tossed out a few short lengths of rope. The driver, busy with the traffic, didn’t see him .
By 11.00 that night, Theo Dolgikh had been in touch with his immediate superior in Moscow and was already on his way to Bucharest. If Dolgikh hadn’t been incapacitated for the past twenty-four hours — if he’d had the chance to contact his controller earlier — he would have discovered where Kyle, Krakovitch and the others had gone without killing Mr Brown for that information. Not that it mattered greatly, for he knew he would have killed him anyway.
Moreover, he could have learned something of what the espers were doing there in Romania, that in fact they were searching for . . . something in the ground? Dolgikh’s controller hadn’t wanted to be more specific than that. Treasure, maybe? Dolgikh couldn’t imagine, and he wasn’t really interested. He put the question out of his mind. Whatever they were doing, it wasn’t good for Russia, and that was enough for him.
Now, crammed in the tiny seat of the passenger aircraft as it sped across the northern Adriatic, he tilted himself backwards a little and relaxed, allowing his mind to drift with the hum of the engines .
Romania. The region around lonesti. Something in the ground. It was all very strange.
Strangest of all, Dolgikh’s ‘controller’ was one of them
— one of these damned psychic spies, whom Andropov so heartily detested! The KGB man closed his eyes and chuckled. What would Krakovitch’s reaction be, he wondered, when he eventually discovered that the traitor in his precious E-Branch was his own Second in Command, a man called Ivan Gerenko?
* * *
Yulian Bodescu had not spent a pleasant night. Even the presence of his beautiful cousin in his bed — her lovely body his to use in whichever way amused him — had not compensated for his nightmares and fantasies and frustrated half-memories out of a past not entirely his own.
It was all down to the watchers, Yulian supposed, those damned busybodies whose spying (For what purpose? What did they know? What were they trying to find out?) over the last forty-eight hours had become an almost unbearable irritation. Oh, he no longer had any real cause to fear them — George Lake was fine ashes, and the three women would never dare go against Yulian — but still the men were there! Like an itch you can’t scratch. Or one you aren’t able to reach — for the moment. Yes, it was down to them.