The Russian response was immediate, faster than Kyle might ever have believed. He didn't know that Leonid Brezhnev would soon be wanting all the answers, and that Felix Krakovitch had only four months left of his year's borrowed time.
They were to meet on the first Friday in September, these two heads of ESPionage, on neutral ground. The venue was Genoa, Italy, a seedy bar called Frankie's Franchise lost in a labyrinth of alleys down in the guts of the city, less than two hundred yards from the waterfront.
Kyle and Quint got into Genoa's surprisingly ramshackle Christopher Columbus airport on Thursday eve-fling; their minder from British Intelligence (whom they hadn't met and probably wouldn't) was there twelve hours earlier. They'd made no reservations but had no problems getting adjoining rooms at the Hotel Genovese, where they freshened up and had a meal before retiring to the bar. The bar was quiet, almost subdued, where half-a-dozen Italians, two German businessmen, and an American tourist and his wife sat at small tables or at the bar with their drinks. One of the Italians who sat apart, on his own, wasn't Italian at all; he was Russian, KGB, but Kyle and Quint had no way of knowing that. He had no ESP talent or Quint would have spotted him at once. They didn't spot him taking photographs of them with a tiny camera, either. But the Russian had not gone entirely undetected. Earlier he'd been seen entering the hotel and booking a room.
Kyle and Quint were in a corner of the bar, on their third Vecchia Romagnas, and talking in lowered tones about their business with Krakovitch tomorrow, when the bar telephone tinkled. ‘For me!' Kyle said at once, starting upright on his barstool. His talent always had that effect on him: it startled him like a mild electric shock.
The bartender answered the phone, looked up. ‘Signor — ‘he began.
‘Kyle?' said Kyle, holding out his hand.
The bartender smiled, nodded, handed him the phone. ‘Kyle?' he said again into the mouthpiece.
‘Brown here,' said a soft voice. ‘Mr Kyle, try not to act surprised or anything, and don't look up or go all furtive. One of the people in the bar with you is a Russian. I won't describe him because then you'd act differently and he'd notice it. But I've been on to London and put him through our computer. He's dressed Eyetie but he's definitely KGB, name of Theo Dolgikh. He's a top field agent for Andropov. Just thought you'd like to know. There wasn't supposed to be any of this stuff, was there?'
‘No,' said Kyle, ‘there wasn't.'
‘Tut-tut!' said Brown. ‘I should be a bit sharp with your man when you meet him tomorrow, if I were you. It really isn't good enough. And just for your peace of mind, if anything were to happen to you — which I consider unlikely — be sure Dolgikh's a goner too, OK?'
‘That's very reassuring,' said Kyle grimly. He gave the phone back to the barman.
‘Problems?' Quint raised an eyebrow.
‘Finish your drink and we'll talk about it in our rooms,' said Kyle ‘Just act naturally. I think we're on Candid Camera.' He forced a smile, swallowed his brandy at a gulp, stood up. Quint followed suit; they left the bar unhurriedly and went up to their rooms; in Kyle's room they checked for electronic bugs. This was as much a job for their psychic sensitivity as for their five mundane senses, but the room was clean.
Kyle told Quint about the call in the bar. Quint was an extremely wiry man of about thirty-five, prematurely balding, soft-spoken but often aggressive, and very quick thinking. ‘Not a very auspicious start,' he growled. ‘Still, I suppose we should have expected it. This is what your common-or-garden secret agent comes up against all the time, I'm told.'
‘Well, it's not on!' Kyle was angry. ‘This was supposed to be a meeting of minds, not muscle.'
‘Do you know which one of them it was?' Quint was practical about it. ‘I think I can remember all of their faces. I'd know any one of them again if we should bump into him.'
‘Forget it,' said Kyle. ‘Brown doesn't want a confrontation. He's geared to get nasty, though, if things go wrong for us.'
‘Charmed, I'm sure!' said Quint.
‘My reaction exactly,' Kyle agreed.
Then they checked Quint's room for bugs and, finding nothing, called it a day.
Kyle took a shower, got into bed. It was uncomfortably warm so he pushed his blankets on to the floor. The air was humid, oppressive. It felt like rain, and if a storm blew up it would probably be a dandy. Kyle knew Genoa in the autumn, also knew that it has some of the worst storms imaginable.
He left his bedside light burning, settled down to sleep. A door, unlocked, stood between the two rooms. Quint was right next door, probably asleep by now. The city's traffic was giving it hell out beyond the louvered window shutters. London was a tomb by comparison. Tombs hardly seemed a fitting subject to go to sleep on, but.
Kyle closed his eyes; he felt sleep pulling him down, soft as a woman's arms; and he felt —
— something else pulling him awake!
His lamp was still on, its shade forming a pool of yellow light on the mahogany bedside table. But there was now a second source of illumination, and it was blue! Kyle snatched himself back from sleep, sat bolt upright in his bed. It was Harry Keogh, of course.
Carl Quint came bounding through the joining door, dressed only in his pyjama bottoms. He pulled up short, backed off a pace. ‘Oh my God!' he said, his mouth hanging open. The Keogh apparition — man, sleeping child and all — turned through ninety degrees to face him.
Don't be alarmed, said Keogh.
‘Can you see him?' Kyle wasn't quite awake yet.
‘Lord, yes,' Quint breathed, nodding. ‘And hear him, too. But even if I couldn't, I'd still know he was here.'
A psychic sensitive, said Keogh. Well, that helps.
Kyle swung his legs out of bed, switched off the lamp. Keogh stood out so much better in the darkness, like a hologram of infinitely fine neon wires. ‘Carl Quint,' Kyle said, his skin prickling with the sheer weirdness of this thing he'd never get used to, ‘meet Harry Keogh.'
Quint stumblingly found a chair close to Kyle's bed and flopped into it. Kyle was wide awake now, fully in control. He realised how insubstantial it must sound, how hollow and commonplace when he asked: ‘Harry, what are you doing here?'
And Quint almost laughed, however hysterically, when the apparition answered: I've. been talking to Thibor Ferenczy, using my time to my best advantage — for there's precious little of it to waste. Every waking hour makes Harry jar stronger and me less able to resist him. It's his body and I'm being subsumed, even absorbed. His little brain is filling up with its own stuff, squeezing me out or maybe compacting me. Pretty soon I'll have to leave him, and then I don't know if I'll ever be corporeal again. So on the way back from Thibor, I thought I'd drop in on you.
Kyle could almost feel Quint's near-hysteria; he glanced warningly at him in the light of the soft blue glow. ‘You've been talking to the old Thing in the ground?' he repeated. ‘But why, Harry? What is it you want from him?'
He's one of them, a vampire, or he was. The dead aren't much bothered with him. He's a pariah among the dead. In me he has, well, if not a friend, at least someone to talk to. So we trade: I converse with him, and he tells me things I want to know. But nothing's easy with Thibor Ferenczy. Even dead he has a devious mind. He knows that the longer he strings it out, the sooner I'll be back. He used the same tactics with Dragosani, remember?
‘Oh, yes,' Kyle nodded. ‘And I also remember what happened to Dragosani. You should be careful, Harry.'
Thibor's dead, Alec, Keogh reminded him. He can do no more harm. But what he left behind might.
‘What he left behind? You mean Yulian Bodescu? I've got men watching the place in Devon until I'm ready for him. When we're sure of his patterns, when we've assessed everything you've told us, then we'll move in.'