‘I saw him for the first time, with you, on the morning that Felix Krakovitch left for Italy — after he left,’ she answered. ‘Following which he was absent until he brought Alec Kyle back here. But Kyle wasn’t working against us. He was working with Krakovitch. For the good of the world.’
Gerenko swung his brittle legs carefully off the cot onto the floor. ‘He should only have been working for the good of the USSR,’ he said.
‘Like you?’ she came back at once, her voice sharp as broken glass. ‘I know now what they were doing, Comrade. Something that had to be done, for safety and sanity. Not for themselves, but for mankind.’
Gerenko eased himself to his feet. He wore child’s pyjamas, looked frail as a twig as he made for his great desk. ‘Are you accusing me, Zek?’
‘Yes!’ She was relentless, furious. ‘Kyle was our opponent, but he personally had not declared war on us. We aren’t at war, Comrade. And we’ve murdered him. No, you have murdered him — to foster your own ambitions!’
Gerenko climbed into his chair, put on a desk lamp and aimed its light at her. He steepled his hands in front of him, shook his head almost sadly. ‘You accuse me? And yet you were party to it. You drained his mind.’
‘I did not!’ She came forward. Her face was working, full of anger. ‘I merely read his thoughts as they flooded out of him. Your technicians drained him.’
Unbelievably, Gerenko chuckled. ‘Mechanical necromancy, yes.’
She slammed her hand flat down on the desk top. ‘But he wasn’t dead!’
Gerenko’s shrivelled lips curled into a sneer. ‘He is now, or as good as. .
‘Krakovitch is loyal, and he’s Russian.’ She wouldn’t be stopped. ‘And yet you’ll murder him too. And that really would be murder! You must be mad!’ And in that she had hit upon the truth. For Gerenko’s warps weren’t only in his body.
‘That — is — enough!’ he snarled. ‘Now you listen to me, Comrade. You speak of my ambition. But if I grow strong, Russia herself grows that much stronger. Yes, for we are one and the same. You? You’ve not been Russian long enough to know that. This country’s strength lies in its people! Krakovitch was weak, and —,
‘Was?’ Her arms trembled where she leaned forward, knuckles white on the edge of his desk.
He suddenly felt that she had grown very dangerous.
He would make one last effort. ‘Listen, Zek. The Party Leader is a weak old man. He can’t go on much longer.
The next leader, however —‘
‘Andropov?’ Her eyes went wide. ‘I can read it in your mind, Comrade. Is that how it will be? That KGB thug? The man you already call your master!’
Gerenko’s faded eyes suddenly narrowed, their slits blazing with his own anger. ‘When Brezhnev is gone —‘
‘But he isn’t, not yet!’ She was shouting now. ‘And when he learns of this . .
That was an error, a bad one. Even Brezhnev couldn’t harm Gerenko, not personally, not physically. But he could have it done for him — at a distance. He could have Gerenko’s state flat in Moscow booby-trapped. Once a booby-trap is set, no man’s hand is involved. From then on the thing is entirely automatic. Or Gerenko could wake up one morning and find himself behind bars — and then they could forget to feed him! His talent did have certain limitations.
He stood up. In his child’s hand was an automatic, taken from a drawer in the desk. His voice was a whisper. ‘Now you will listen to me,’ he said, ‘and I will tell you exactly how it is going to be. First, you won’t speak of this matter or even mention it again, not to anyone. You’ve been sworn to secrecy here at the Château. Break your trust and I’ll break you! Second: you say we are not at war. But you have a short memory. The British espers declared war against E-Branch nine months ago. And they came close to destroying the organisation utterly! You were new here then; you were away somewhere, holidaying with your father. You saw nothing of it. But let me tell you that if this Harry Keogh of theirs were still alive . . .‘ He paused for breath, and Föener bit her tongue to keep from telling him the truth: that indeed Harry Keogh was still alive, however helpless.