They had been silent for some time; there was something of a mood on both of them; Jordan blamed the Metaxa and Layard said it was 'bad gut' brought on by greasy food. Whichever, it interfered a little with their ESP.
'It's... cloudy,' Jordan complained, frowning. Then he shrugged. 'But you don't know what I mean, do you?'
'Sure I do,' Layard answered. 'We called it mindsmog in the old days, remember? A kind of dull mental static, distorting or blocking the pictures? Or obscuring them in a sort of... well, almost in a damp, reeking fog! When I reach out and search for the Samothraki, I can feel it there like a welling mist in my mind. A dampness, a darkness, a smog. But how to explain it in a place like this? It's weird. And it doesn't come from the boat especially but -1 don't know - from everywhere!'
Jordan looked at him. 'How long since we came up against other espers?'
'In our work, you mean? Just about every time we do an embassy job, I suppose. What are you getting at?'
'You don't think it's likely there are other agents on the same job? Russians, maybe, or the French?'
'It's possible.' It was Layard's turn to frown. 'The USSR's narcotics problem is growing every day, and France has been in the shit for years. But I was thinking: what if they're on the other side? I mean, what if the runners themselves are using espers? They could well afford to, and that's a fact!'
Jordan put his binoculars to his eyes, turned his head and scanned the coastline from the fort on the mole all the way to the heart of the Old Town where it rose behind massive walls. 'Have you tried tracking it?' he said. 'I mean, after all's said and done, you're the locator. But me, I've a feeling the source is somewhere in there.'
Layard's keen eyes followed the aim of Jordan's binoculars. A big, white, expensive-looking motor-cruiser lolled at anchor in Mandraki's narrow, deep-water channel; beyond that a handful of caiques were moored inshore, or came and went, most of them full to the gunnels with tourists; a further quarter-mile and the Old Town's markets and streets were a hive, literally buzzing where the hill rose in a mass of churches and white and yellow houses, burning in the morning sunlight. Except that all was in motion, he might well have been looking at a picture postcard. The scene was that perfect.
Layard stared for long moments, then snapped his fingers, sat back and grinned. "That's it!' he finally said. 'You got it first time.'
'Eh?' Jordan looked at him.
'And of course it would have to be worse for you than for me. For I only find things. I don't read minds.'
'Do you want to explain?'
'What's to explain?' Layard looked smug. 'Your tourist's map of the Old Town is the same as mine. Except you probably haven't read it. OK, I'll put you out of your misery. There's an insane asylum on the hill.'
'Wha - ?' Jordan started, then put down his binoculars and slapped his knee. 'That has to be it!' he said. 'We're getting the echoes of all of those poor sick bastards locked up in that place!'
'It looks like it,' Layard nodded. 'So now that we know what it is we should try to screen it out, concentrate on the job in hand.' He looked out to sea through the mouth of the harbour and became serious in a moment. 'Especially since it appears the Samothraki's just a wee bit on the early side.'
'She's out there?' Jordan was immediately attentive.
'Five or ten minutes at the most,' Layard nodded. 'I just picked her up. And I'll give you odds she's in and dropping anchor by quarter past the hour.'
Both men now took to watching the entrance to the harbour, so missing a sudden burst of activity aboard the big, privately owned motor-cruiser. A canopied caique ferried out a small party from steps in the harbour wall; two men went aboard the sleek white ship, which soon weighed anchor; powerful engines throbbed as she turned almost on her own axis and nosed idly back along the deep-water channel. Black awnings with fancy scalloped trims gave her foredeck shade, where a black-clad figure now lounged in one of several reclining deckchairs. A tall man in white stood at the rail, looking towards the harbour mouth. He wore a black eye patch over his right eye.
The white leisure craft was very noticeable now, but still it hovered on the periphery of the espers' vision, its screw idling where it waited in the deep-water channel. Both of them now held binoculars to their eyes, and Jordan had stood up, was leaning forward against the harbour wall as the Samothraki came chugging into view around the mole.
'Here she comes,' he breathed. 'Right between the Old Boy's legs!' He sent his telepathic mind reaching across the water, seeking out the minds of the captain and crew. He wanted to know the location of the cocaine ... if one of them should be thinking about it right now ... or about its ultimate destination.
'What Old Boy's legs?' Layard's voice came to him distantly, even though he was right here beside him. Such was Jordan's concentration that he'd almost entirely shut out the conscious world.
'The Colossus,' Jordan husked. 'Helios. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. That's where he stood - right there, straddling that harbour mouth - until 224 b.c.'
'So you did read your map after all,' breathed Layard.
The old Samothraki was coming in; the sleek white modern vessel was going out; the former was obscured by the latter as they came up alongside each other - and dropped their anchors.
'Shit!' said Jordan. 'Mindsmog again! I can't see a damn thing through it!'
'I can feel it,' Layard answered.
Jordan swept his glasses along the sleek outline of the white vessel and read off its name from the hulclass="underline" the Lazarus. 'She's a beauty,' he started to say, and froze right there. Centred in his field of view, the man in black on the foredeck was seated upright in his chair; the back of his head was visible; he was looking at the old Samothraki. But as Jordan fixed him in his binoculars, so that oddly-proportioned head turned until its unknown owner was staring straight at the esper across one hundred and twenty yards of blue water. And even though they were both wearing dark glasses, and despite the distance, it was as if they stood face to face!
WHAT? A powerful mental voice grunted its astonishment full in Jordan's mind. A THOUGHT-THIEF? A MENTALIST?
Jordan gasped. What the hell did he have here? Whatever it was, it wasn't what he'd been looking for. He tried to withdraw but the other's mind closed on his like a great vice... and squeezed! He couldn't pull out! He flopped there loosely against the harbour wall and looked at the other where he now stood tall - enormous to Jordan - in the shade of the black canopy.
Their eyes were locked on each other, and Jordan was straining so hard to look away, to redirect his thoughts, that he was beginning to vibrate. It was as if solid bars of steel were shooting out from the other's hidden eyes, across the water and down the barrels of Jordan's binoculars into his brain; where even now they were hammering at his mind as they drove home their message:
WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU HAVE ENTERED MY MIND OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL. SO... BE... IT!
Layard was on his feet now, anxious and astonished. For all that he'd experienced little or nothing of the telepath's shock and, indeed, terror, still he could tell by just looking at him that something was terribly wrong. With his own mind full of mental smog and crackling, buzzing static, he reached to take Jordan's sagging weight - in time to guide and lower the telepath to the bench as he collapsed like a jelly, unconscious in his arms...
4
Lazarides
That same night:
The Lazarus lay moored to a wharf in the main harbour, entirely still and darkly mirrored in water smooth as glass; three of the four crewmen had gone ashore, leaving only a watchkeeper; the boat's owner sat at a window-seat upstairs in the most disreputable taverna of the Old Town, looking out and down across the waterfront. Downstairs a handful of tourists drank cheap brandy or ouzo and ate the execrable food, while the local layabouts, bums and rejects in general laughed and joked with them in English and German, made coarse jokes about them in Greek, and scrounged drinks.