‘Harry Keogh!' Zek breathed, but to herself.
Then the main building went; its lower walls of massive stone seemed to inhale and go on inhaling. They bowed outwards, and finally blew apart in white light and golden fire! This time Zek did feel the blast: it tossed her down on the road and stung her hands where she held them up before her face.
The Château Bronnitsy was slowly settling down into itself. A sandcastle caught in the first wave of a swelling tide, it crumbled like so much chalk. Volcanic fires burned in its guts, and spewed out through its cratered walls; and as the upper storeys and towers fell inwards, so there came secondary blasts to throw them up again. Already the Château was a total ruin, but then the big one in the Duty Room added its voice to the cacophony of destruction.
By this time Zek had managed to climb into the jeep beside Gerenko. They felt a huge fist batter at the rear of the vehicle, shove it forward; felt their ears savaged by the massive detonation, shuttered their eyes against a sudden incendiary glare. A brilliant fireball like the breath of hell turned everything to a negative photograph, blotted out the entire scene and made night into blinding day, then slowly faded and revealed the truth — that the Château Bronnitsy was no more. Bits of it, from pebbles to huge blocks of concrete, still rained to earth. Black smoke curled up across the moon; white and yellow fire seethed and roiled in the gutted ruins; a mere handful of figures stumbled about like crippled flies, trying to make their way outwards from the centre of the inferno.
Gerenko, stunned, had stalled the jeep and it wouldn't start again. Now he got out, ordered Zek out, too. The helicopter had veered sharply away as the first explosion occurred; it circled, came down and landed with a bump on the road near the perimeter wall. Theo Dolgikh spoke briefly to the pilot, climbed out and advanced at a run. Zek Föener and Gerenko made their way staggeringly towards him.
‘For Alec,' said Harry Keogh softly to himself.
He stood in the shadows at the foot of the perimeter wall and watched the three people moving towards the helicopter. He took note of the two men — one the mere husk of a man and the other a hulking brute — and the way they manhandled the girl into the chopper. Then the machine lifted off and Harry was alone with the night and his hideous handiwork. But like an after-image, a mental picture of those two men kept superimposing itself over the leaping flames. Harry didn't know who they were, but his intuition told him that these two above all others ought not to have escaped the holocaust.
He'd have to speak to Carl Quint and Felix Krakovitch about them.
Epilogue
Three days later Ivan Gerenko, Theo Dolgikh and Zek Föener stood on the scarred rim of the gorge in the Carpathians and gazed gloomily on a great mound of scree and rubble, where only the stumps of the ancient castle's massive outer walls protruded. The scene was desolate as only these mountains can be, with jagged crests and peaks all around, an eerie wind moaning up off the plain, and birds of prey circling slowly in a sky ribboned with cloud. It was evening and the light was beginning to fade, but Gerenko had insisted upon seeing the site. There was nothing they could do tonight, but at least it would give him an idea of what must be done tomorrow.
Gerenko was here because Leonid Brezhnev had given him one week to come up with the answer — one all-inclusive answer — to the destruction of the Château Bronnitsy; Dolgikh because Yuri Andropov also required answers; Zek in order that Gerenko could keep an eye on her. She said she had lost her talent on the night of the as yet unexplained inferno — and worse, that all memory of what she'd learned from Alec Kyle had also been burned out of her — but Gerenko thought not. In which case he couldn't be sure that if she were left on her own in Moscow she'd keep her mouth shut.
But most importantly, and if she were lying, she was here because she was the world's foremost close-range telepath. If danger threatened from any source, Zek Föener would probably know it first; and so her actions would be Gerenko's indicator that all was well — or otherwise. After what had happened at the Château one must look to one's personal safety, and a mind such as Zek's could well be of the utmost importance.
‘Nothing,' she said now, frowning at the grey ruins, her forehead furrowed. ‘Nothing at all. But even if there were something here I couldn't read it! Not now. I've told you, Ivan, my talent has been destroyed. It burned up in that great bonfire and now… I can't even remember what it was like.'
She told a part-truth: her talent was intact, all right — she knew that from the seething cauldron of Gerenko's mind, and the cesspool of Dolgikh's — but she really couldn't detect anything else. Only a Necroscope may talk to the dead or hear them talking to each other.
‘Nothing!' Gerenko repeated her, his voice rasping. He kicked at the dirt and sent pebbles flying. ‘Then it's a black day for us.'
‘For you, Comrade, perhaps,' said Dolgikh, turning up the collar of his coat. ‘But you're up against the Party Leader, who happens to have lost a lot. Andropov may not have gained anything, but he certainly hasn't lost much. Not that he'll notice, anyway. And there's no point in him taking it out of my hide. As for E-Branch: he's waged war with you espers for years, and now you're finished. No skin off his nose. He won't agonise over it, take my word.'
Gerenko turned on him. ‘You fool! So you'll return to simple thuggery, will you? And how far will that get you? You could have gone up in the world, Theo, with me. Right to the top. But now?'
At the back of the ruins in the heaped shale and fallen scree, something stirred. The rubble formed a small mound, cracked open, and foul gases filtered up into the evening air. A bloodied hand, that of a corpse, scrabbled for a moment until it found purchase in the rocks. The two men and the girl heard nothing.
Dolgikh scowled at the smaller man. ‘Comrade, I'm not sure I want to go anywhere with you,' he said. ‘I prefer the company of men — and sometimes women.' He glanced at Zek Föener and licked his lips. ‘But I warn you, be careful who you're calling a fool. Head of E-Branch? You're head of nothing now. Just another citizen, and a poor specimen at that.'
‘Idiot!' Gerenko muttered, turning away from Dolgikh. ‘Dolt! Why, if you'd been at the Château that night I'd suspect you of being involved in that mess, too! You're too bloody good at blowing things up, Theo!'
Dolgikh caught his slender arm, turned him about. Gerenko's talent was alerted… but so far the KGB man intended no real harm. ‘Listen, you spindly thing,' Dolgikh spat the words out. ‘You think you're so high and mighty, but you forget that I've still got enough on you to put you away for the rest of your days!'
Back in the ruins, his movements covered by their arguing, Mikhail Volkonsky got to his knees and then dragged himself to his feet. He'd lost an arm and shoulder and most of his face, but the rest of him still worked. He shuffled awkwardly into the shadow of the cliff, drew closer to the three live ones.
‘But it's mutual, Theo, it's mutual!' Gerenko mocked the KGB agent. ‘And it isn't only you I can damage but your boss, too. How would Andropov fare if I let it out that he'd been trying to interfere with branch work again? And how would you fare after that? Overseer in a salt mine, that's where you'd be, Theo!'
‘Why you runt!' Dolgikh swelled up huge. He raised his fist… and a strange expectant something filled the air. However blunt his senses, Dolgikh felt it too. ‘Why, I could —‘
Gerenko faced him squarely. ‘But that's just the point, Theo. You couldn't! Neither you nor any other man. Try it and see for yourself. It's waiting for you to try, Theo. Go on, strike me if you dare. You'll be lucky if you merely miss, fall over in the stones and break your arm. But if you're unlucky this wall could fall on you and crush you. Your superior physical strength? Pah! I…‘ He paused and the sneer fell from his face. ‘What was that?'