Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

‘Third,’ he finally continued, ‘I could kill you now — on the spot, shoot you dead — and no one would even question me about it. If they did, I would say that I had had my suspicions about you for a long time. I would tell them that your work had driven you mad, and that you threatened me, threatened E-Branch. You are quite correct, Zek, the Party Leader puts a deal of faith in the branch. He is fond of it. Under old Gregor Borowitz it served him well. What, a woman, mad, running around loose here, threatening irreparable damage? Of course I should shoot her! And I will — if you don’t mark each word I say most carefully. Do you think anyone would believe your accusation? Where’s the proof? In your head? In your addled head! Oh, they just might believe, I’ll grant you that — but what if they didn’t? And would I sit still and simply let you have it all your own way? Would Theo Dolgikh sit still for that? You have any easy time here, Zek. Ah, but there are other jobs in other places for a strong young woman in the USSR. After your — rehabilitation? — doubtless they’d find you one . .

Again he paused, put away the gun. He saw that he had made his point.

‘Now get out of here, but don’t leave the Château. I want a report on everything you learned from Kyle. Everything. The initial report may be brief, an outline. I’ll have that by midday tomorrow. The final report will be detailed down to the last minutia. Do you understand?’

She stood looking at him, bit her lip.

‘Well?’

Finally she nodded, blinked away tears of frustration, turned on her heel. On her way out, he softly said, ‘Zek,’ and she paused. But she didn’t face him. ‘Zek, you have a great future. Remember that. And really, that’s the only choice you have. A great future — or none at all.’

Then she left and closed the door behind her.

She went to her own small suite of rooms, the austere quarters she used when she was not on duty, and threw herself down on her bed. To hell with his report. She’d do it in her own time, if she did it at all. For what use would she be to Gerenko once he knew what she knew?

After a little while she managed to compose herself and tried to sleep. But though she was weary to death, she tried in vain . .

Chapter Sixteen

Wednesday, 11.45 P.M. — fifteen minutes to midnight in Hartlepool on England’s north-east coast — and a thin drizzling rain turning the empty streets shiny black. The last bus for the colliery villages along the coast had left the town half an hour ago; the pubs and cinemas had all turned out; grey cats slinked in the alleys and a last handful of people headed for their homes on a night when it simply wasn’t worth being out.

But in a certain house on the Blackhall Road there was a muted measure of activity. In the garret flat, Brenda Keogh had fed her baby son and put him down for the night and was now preparing herself for bed. In the hitherto empty first floor flat, Darcy Clarke and Guy Roberts sat in near-darkness, Roberts nodding off to sleep and Clarke listening with an anxious awareness to the timbers of the old house creaking as they settled for the night. Downstairs in the ground floor flat, its permanent ‘residents’, two Special Branch men, were playing cards while a uniformed policeman made coffee and looked on. In the entrance hail a second uniformed officer kept his vigil just inside the door, smoking a slightly damp and ill-made cigarette while he sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair and wondered for the tenth time just what he was doing here.

To the Special Branch men it was old hat: they were here for the protection of the girl in the garret flat. She didn’t know it, but they weren’t just good neighbours, they were her minders. Hers and little Harry’s. They’d looked after her for the better part of a year, and in all of that time no one had so much as blinked at her; theirs must be the cushiest, best paid number in the entire length and breadth of the security business! As for the two uniformed men: they were on overtime, kept over from the middle shift to do ‘special’ duties. They should have gone off home at 10.00 P.M., but it appeared there was this bloody maniac on the loose, and the girl upstairs was thought to be one of his targets. That was all they’d been told. All very mysterious.

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