E-Branch - Invaders Part 33

'Go on,' Trask nodded.

'He was down in the wrecked sump of the Romanian Refuge,'

she blurted it out. 'But Ben, it had to be much more than just a dream because from what I saw of it - despite that it was so dark and shrouded - it was all so very real.''

"The Refuge?' Trask repeated her. 'Jake dreamed he was in the wrecked sump? And he was ... speaking to someone?'

'To more than one,' Liz corrected him. And now that she'd got started, she quickly went on, 'But you know how dreams are supposed to happen in the last few minutes before you wake up? Well, not this one. It started the moment he fell asleep, went on until he woke up. And it was more than just a d ream, Ben.'

The other's face was grey now, gaunt with the sudden, sure knowledge of what Liz was about to tell him. He knew, but asked her anyway. 'Who was Jake talking to?'

'To Harry Keogh,' she answered, 'and to someone else who I didn't know and don't want to know, ever. I couldn't read him - he was a complete blank - but I could sense his presence like a sick taste in my throat. And just the opposite to him, a little earlier there'd been a third presence like ... like a breath of fresh air. She was someone I'd never known, who I wish I had.'

'It was Zek!' Trask groaned. 'He was talking to Zek. Jake was talking to Zek, through Harry.' And clasping Liz's hands in his: 'Liz, what was she saying? What did Zek say?'

'I don't know,' she shook her head, wanted to put her arms round him but couldn't for fear it would crack him up. And anyway, they wouldn't be Zek's arms. 'I got something of what Jake was saying - though very little, because he didn't say much - but nothing of what the others actually said. T hat was a void.'

lan Goodly said, 'Of course it was. You heard Jake because he's alive. That was your telepathy working, Liz. But Harry and the others ... they're a different category, and they were in a different mode.'

'Deadspeak, yes,' Trask murmured, gaunt and visibly shaken where he let his head flop back against the seat's headrest and closed his eyes. 'And whether I like it or not, it looks like I now have to accept it. Jake is our new Necroscope, and Harry is introducing him to ... to people who'll be able to help him.

As for this numbers thing that Jake was talking about when he woke up - the difficulty he seemed to be having - I think that can mean only one thing.'

Trask looked at the precog and Goodly nodded his confirmation. 'Despite that Jake's future is beyond me, uncertain now,' he said, 'still I can only go along with you. It was the Necroscope's sidereal maths, his numbers, that gave him the edge. And now it looks like the old master is t rying to teach his apprentice the tricks of the trade ...'

378.

379.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Synchronicity Again The safe house set aside for E-Branch use was in the New Marchant Park district, north of the city. An ugly two-storey affair, it had aluminium cladding designed and painted in a rather poor imitation of timber; Brisbane no longer favoured wooden structures of any kind. The house was set back from the road up a short palm-lined drive; its gate was remote-controlled from inside the lead limo and opened into a featureless garden. Two medium-sized, innocuous-looking saloon cars stood on a gravel drive in front of the house. In fact they were fitted with bullet-proof windows, heavily-plated bodywork, hidden roll-bars and other anti-crash/anti-terforist devices. Short of a bomb-blast or a head-on collision at speed, no one was going to come to harm driving one of these vehicles. They were for the use of Trask and his people.

Laid to lawn and enclosed within high stone walls, the garden was on a level and surrounded the house on all sides; every inch of gra.s.s (or straw as it was now) was clearly visible from the windows of both storeys. Of the house itself: it had bullet- proof, heavily curtained windows, and a security/intruder warning system second to none. In plan, the ground floor consisted of four long rooms, one on each side, each furnished and decorated in a slightly out-of-date style, with little or nothing to show that the place was anything other than a fairly expensive private 380.

dwelling house. The central room, however, which wasn't visible from the gardens, was an operational and communications nerve centre of screens and computerized equipment.

The sleeping quarters (in fact a pair of cramped dormitories with beds for up to fourteen people, or maybe eighteen at a push, and a handful of curtained-off, cell-like units for VIPs) were upstairs. And overhead on the roof, a bank of 'solar-heating pa nels' (tinted windows) concealed an array of hi-tech communications aerials and dishes.

The agent-chauffeurs showe d Trask and his crew of six over the house, asked how they could help them settle in or if there was anything else they needed. Trask checked with Jimmy Harvey and Paul Arenson - in their element as they switched on and got acquainted with the gadgets in the ops room - and Arenson told him: 'We're fully compatible throughout. Give us ten minutes to hook our stuff up to this lot, and we'll have the HQDuty Officer up there on that big screen so clear you'll think you're in London.'

'Scrambled?' Trask wasn't that easily satisfied.

'As per SOPs, yes,' said the other.

At which Trask thanked the ASI men (Australian Special Intelligence), who headed back to the airstrip to connect with incoming Chopper Two's military commanders and three more members of Branch ground staff. Once they were in, and until the slower back-up squads of Australian SAS types had arrived and taken up their tactical locations, the advance party was on its own...

In fact, it took the technicians half an hour t o complete their hook-up. Meanwhile an uncharacter istically subdued Liz had brewed a pot of Earl Grey for Trask and herself, coffee for Jake and the others. Goodly had taken his coffee through into ops. Trask was enjoying his tea in one of the living rooms while poring over a small-scale map of the Queensland/New South Wales border areas. It was somewhere there, in the vicinity of the border, that the locator Chung had detected mindsmog, probably due to the 381.

mental activity of a master vampire, Wamphyri! Probably, but not definitely, not with one hundred per cent certainty; the Branch had long since discovered psychic 'hotspots' where a proliferation of lesser, human ESP talents could produce the same result. It had been David Chung's 'hunch', however, that this time it was the real thing, which the synchronous 'coincidence' of vampire lieutenant Bruce Trennier's death had seemed to confirm.

Jake took his coffee over to where Trask worked, watched him use a red highlighter to plot a dotted li ne along t he border from Stanthorpe to Coolangatta, then circle the whole area in a ring of pale red ink. As Trask looked up from what he was doing, Jake lifted an enquiring eyebrow.

'If our target is here/ Trask explained, 'and if he has established himself, then he's somewhere inside this ring. Personally, I fancy he is. I've known David Chung for a long time and he doesn't make too many mistakes. It was Chung who discovered Trennier. Once we had an approximate location, we checked with the local police and picked up on a handful of disappearances - Trennier's recruits, those creatures we killed at the Old Mine gas station. That one was fairly easy; in a region as thinly populated as the Gibson Desert, people are wont to take notice when their kith and kin cease to exist! But here in the east, on the coastal strip ...' He paused, glanced again at the map, shook his head.

'Densely populated,' Jake nodded. 'And that circle you've drawn covers, what - maybe five, six thousand square miles?'

'Closer to eight,' Trask corrected him glumly. 'And folks disappear around here every other half-hour, about the same as they do in similar areas of population all over the world .'.

Lardis Lidesci had been talking to Liz. Now he came over, put a gnarled finger on the map and growled, 'These?' 'Mountains,'

Trask answered.

'Huh!' Lardis grunted. 'Thought so. And the border follows the mountains, right?'

'In part,' Trask nodded. 'A natural boundary, yes.'

'An wnnatural boundary, in Sunside/Starsidef Lardis said. 'But there again, the Barrier Mountains are different entirely, and they never knew sunligh t such as these mountains have seen. But beggars, and even the Wamphyri, can't be choosers. Not in a world like this. So there you are. And now maybe you can narrow it down.'

Concentrating on the map, Trask was only half-listening to what Lardis was saying. But in another moment he looked up from where he sat at the table. 'Eh?'

'Mountains,' Lardis said. 1 understand 'em. And so do the Wamphyri. If this one's a Lord, where do you think he'll be?'

'Where do I think-?' T rask frowned, looked again at the map, then came erect and snapped his fingers.

'In the mountains, aye,' Lardis antic.i.p.ated him, scowling in his fas.h.i.+on. 'In his aerie, of course. That's a logical con- er, conclusion? - wouldn't you say? And here's another: if it is one of them, it isn't Szwart. What, in all this heat and light? No way - not a chance. It's too much for me, let alone for Lord Szwart. Huh! Darkness himself, that one!'

And: 'd.a.m.n! You're probably right!' Trask husked.

At which point lan Goodly returned from the ops room. 'Up and running,' he said. 'And Ben, David Chung's on-screen, wanting to speak to you ...'

'I have some hot-off-the-press news for you,' Chung told Trask as he seated himself within the screen's viewing arc.

'Big deal,' Trask answered wearily, with a touch of sarcasm but no real malice. 'Just about any news fits that description!

We've been busy, air-mobile, and only just got settled in here.

So, what's going down in your neck of the woods that's such hot stuff?'

Chung shrugged. 'In my neck of the woods? Not a lot. But in yours: an opportunity to speak to an old pal of ours, maybe, if that's of any interest?' And then, more seriously: 'It's Gustav Turchin. He's going to be there at the Earth Year Conference in Brisbane. The time in the City is now-' he glanced off- screen '-a little after eight a.m. But just an hour ago Turchin himself was on-screen, unscrambled, from Moscow. He was interested to 382 383.

know if you'd be attending the conference. He was very careful, oh-so-polite, and diplomatic as usual, but John Grieve was doing Duty Officer and read him like a book. Premier Turchin is eager to see you, Ben. It was a last-minute call, probably monitored, before he boarded an Aeroflot VTOL Atmozkim to Brisbane. And John says Turchin stressed the fact that he would be accompanied by "several members of his staff ...'

'That's very interesting,' Trask answered. 'His bodyguards will be special police, KGB lookalikes - watchdogs for the real leaders , al l the military types like Mikhail Suvorov - who will be making sure he doesn't step out of line. So maybe Turchin is on his way out, his days of power at an end. But of course I'll see him. I have a few questions for him, and while he still has some pull there's a favour I need to ask of him ...' Trask glanced at Jake, perhaps musingly, then turned back to the screen.

'So thanks for the information, David,' he continued, 'and you can be sure I'll act on it. But now I'd like you to tell me something about our main problem. How is the search going?

Have you picked up anything new to corroborate your original lead?'

Chung pulled a wry face. 'There's something there, I would swear to that. But it's too distant, too s.h.i.+elded, literally on the other side of the world! Your side of the world, Ben. Which is where I have to be if you want any kind of accuracy. I mean, how can I be expected to locate someone or something through eight thousand miles of solid rock and white-hot magma?' 'You want in on this?' Trask's face was a blank. 'Absolutely!'

'And you wouldn't be playing on your talent simply so you can come swarming around out here?'

Chung's face showed his confusion. For the truth was that he would dearly love to go 'swarming around' in Australia with his E-Branch colleagues - and if he denied it Trask would know he was lying! So after letting his face work its way through a number of mutually contradictory expressions, finally he said, 'But isn't that the wrong question? What you should have asked is, do I 384.

think I'll be better placed to find what we're searching for if I'm out there with you?... To which I would have to answer, yes.'

At which Trask's stony expression broke and he grinned. 'I know,' he said. 'I'm good at asking awkward questions, right?'

'Too true!' Chung rubbed his chin and looked hurt - until a moment later, when Trask said: 'Okay, so how soon can you be out here? The fact is you'll come in useful apprising Premier Turchin first-hand of all that you've discovered about the Russian navy's illegal pollution of the world's oceans ... and in Earth Year at that! Which in turn will afford me a little more leverage on what I would like from him. That's if leverage is required, which I doubt. For, in fact, Gustav Turchin isn't a bad sort of bloke.'

Watching Chung's face come alive with antic.i.p.ation on the wall screen, Jake thought: Synchronicity again! Like some kind of weird word&tild;a.s.sociation. E-Branch: Gustav Turchin: the down-at-heel Russian military's systematic pollution of the oceans: the Earth Year eco&tild;summit. And all of it coming together right here and now, in Brisbane - along with a whole hunch of other s.h.i.+t, possihly.

And meanwhile, with a smile as broad as his face, the locator was saying, 'I, er, already mentioned the possibility that I mightbe needed to John Grieve. He's happy to take over here, and there'll be no shortage of staff in support. So ... when is the next flight out?'

Trask nodded, knowingly. 'I'm sure you'll be able to check that out for yourself,' he said. 'Er, if you haven't already.'

And Chung laughed and said, 'I have an hour and forty minutes to make Heathrow!'

'I thought so,' Trask said. 'Very well, lan Goodly can get his head down now and pick you up in the wee small hours at the airport. You'll travel under an a.s.sumed ident.i.ty, of course.'

'Of course.' And Chung was still grinning his delight when Trask broke the connection...

Chung wasn't the only one who was met at the airport in the wee small hours. Premier Gustav Turchin was there first, 385.

along with his minder entourage. No one paid them much attention.

Russia was no longer a world superpower - in fact, she was rapidly crumbling, held under siege not by the world community but from within her own borders by political and ideological intractability, corruption, organized crime, and desperate poverty - but still Turchin was recognized as a world leader of sorts, if only a figurehead without any real power. In any case the Earth Year Conference wasn't diplomacy-conscious; it wasn't that kind of venue: the eco-summi t's organizers were not so much standing on ceremony as requiring action.

Australia, now a republic and a very powerful nation in its own right, was still viewed as a 'clean' country and was determined to stay that way. While the all too frequent El Ninos and other ecological disasters were not caused by Australians, Australians were suffering their consequences.

Now they and other like-minded - indeed right-minded - countries were considering real action, political, legal, and economic, against nations with bad-to-criminal ecological records. Since Russia was reckoned more than merely 'suspect'

in this regard, and since Premier Turchin's attendance had been an eleventh-hour decision, no red-carpet arrangements had been made for him and his party.

A limo and driver had been arranged - which was literally the least that the organizers could do without being seen to be rude - but Trask had seen to it that these had been called off. This hadn't been the easiest thing in the world to arrange, but Trask's connections were second to none.

Diplomatic immunity saw the Russian Premier and his poker- faced party of four clone-like minders through the international airport's red-tape entry procedures without too much fuss, each man carrying his own spartan to modest luggage, until they were met in the arrivals lounge by a pair of'chauffeurs' who introduced themselves as 'Mr Smith' and 'Mr Brown'.

Swiftly escorted to the carport by Smith and Brown, Turchin was bundled into the back of the first limo... the doors of which immediately clicked shut and locked, all except the driver's door, which stood open. And before the jet-lagged, travel- disorientated quartet of grey-suits could even begin to object, Mr Smith slid into the driver's seat and drove away.

As the minders got into the second limo, one of them growled a concerned, heavily accented: 'Who was that man sitting in the front of the first car?'

'Er, that was Mr Smith,' said Mr Brown. 'I believe he's an important convention official. It seemed only right that a person of stature should welcome your Premier personally.'

'Oh, indeed, yes!' said the othe r, gruffly. And then, with a frown: 'But, er ... wasn't the driver also Mr Smith?'

'That's correct,' said Brown, quickly recovering from his gaffe.

'We have an awful lot of Smiths, you know - and Browns, too, for that matter. Why, we even had a Prime Minister called Smith once over! And anyway, what's wrong with that? I imagine it's much the same with Ivans and Ivanovs in your country.'

'Yes, certainly. I understand. Pardon me. Ahem!' To cover his embarra.s.sment, the minder coughed into a handkerchief.

Over the intercom Mr Brown chuckled and said, 'Let's face it, this is Australia! I mean, who did you think would be meeting you - Marx and Engels?'

'Oh, ha ha ha ha!' The minders laughed woodenly, almost in unison. 'No, not at all. Indeed, no!' But when they'd quietened down, their head man cautiously enquired, 'Er, how long will it be before we get to the hotel?'

'Eh?' said Mr Brown, grinning. 'Well, I don't really know, mate. All I know is I have orders to tail the car in front, and that's it. About an hour, at a guess - maybe more, maybe less.

But now, if you'll excuse me, I have to concentrate on my driving.'

'Yes, of course. Just as long as you stay right behind the car in front.' But the car in front was already out of sight.

'Oh, don't worry, I won't lose him. No fear of that. But I do understand your concern. It must be very daunting, having to keep an eye on someone like Gustav Turchin. What, dodgy is he?'

386.

387.

But now Mr Brown's familiarity was getting to be too much.

'What's that?' the leading grey-suit said stiffly. 'Did you say dodgy? Something about keeping an eye on him? Now you listen to me, Mr ...'

'... Well, that's what you are, aren't you?' Brown cut him off. 'I mean, just how long have you lot been special policemen anyway - or KGB as was - or whatever you call yourselves now?'

But suddenly the four were very tight-lipped, scowling at each other.

And with his mouth twitching in one corner, and his eyes like black marbles, their leader slowly answered, 'We have been -ah, shall we say, specialists? - a lot longer, I fancy, than you have been a chauffeur, Mr Brown!'

At which Brown looked back, grinned, and then switched off the intercom...

Out on the airport service road, Trask got out of the front of the limo and into the back with Turchin. Then they shook hands, and Turchin hugged him in a typically Russian greeting.

'Funny, but we've never met person to person/ Turchin said then. 'Yet it seems I know you.'

'A meeting of minds, perhaps?' said Trask. And, 'Listen, I apologize for the subterfuge back there, but your friends-'

'No friends of mine!' Turchin cut him short. 'Indeed, they are only here to make sure I don't talk out of turn. But before you ask ... yes, I do know about the despicable and destructive activities of our armed forces. They are like dogs fouling someone else's garden. But Trask, understand this: I am not the one who let those dogs off the leash. In today's Russia, my friend, they roa m wild. Indeed, I've been lucky to hold on to what small degree of power still remains to me. But if I were to tell this conference everything I know, then even that would be lost, and our currently uneasy east-west relations.h.i.+p would slip a little bit farther downhill.'

Trask nodded. 'I understand, and it's much as I suspected. But Premier, you don't have to explain to me, not about that, at least. And I know that you won't be able - won't be allowed - to explain it to the conference. So, why are you here?' He fell silent, wanting to let the other do the talking. Maybe he would learn more that way.

'How long do we have?' Turchin inquired.