As for Alec Kyle: he too had made an international call, to the Duty Officer at INTESP. That had been late in the afternoon, when it had looked fairly certain that he and Quint would be accompanying the two Russians to Romania. ‘Is that Grieve? How are things going, John? he had asked.
‘Alec?' the answer came back. ‘I've been expecting you to give us a ring.' John Grieve had two talents; one of them ‘dodgy', branch parlance for an as yet undeveloped ESP ability, and the other quite remarkable and possibly unique. The first was the gift of far-seeing: he was a human crystal ball. The only trouble was he must know exactly where and what he was looking for, otherwise he could see nothing. His talent didn't work at random but must be directed: he must have a definite target. His second string made him doubly valuable. It could well prove to be a different facet of his first talent, but on occasions like this it was a godsend. Grieve was a telepath, but one with a difference. Yet again he must ‘aim' his talent: he could only read a person's mind when he was face to face with that person, or when talking to him — even on the telephone, if he knew the person in question. There was no lying to John Grieve, nor any need for a mechanical scrambler. That was why Kyle had left him on permanent duty at HQ while he was away.
‘John,' said Kyle, ‘how are things at home?' And he also asked: What's happening down on the ranch, in Devon?
‘Oh, well, you know…‘ Grieve's answer sounded iffy. ‘Can you explain?' What's up? But careful how you answer.
‘Well, see, it's young YB,' came back the answer. ‘It seems he's cleverer than we allowed. I mean, he's inquisitive, you know? Sees and hears too much for his own good.'
‘Well we must give him credit for it,' Kyle tried to sound casual while, in his head, he added urgently: You mean he's talented? Telepathy? -
‘I suppose so,' answered Grieve, meaning probably.
Jesus Christ! Is he on to us? ‘Anyway, we've had tough customers before,' said Kyle. ‘And our salesmen are in possession of the full brief…‘ How are they armed?
‘Well, yes, they have the standard kit,' said Grieve.
‘Still, it's a bit leery, I'll tell you! Set his dog on one of our blokes! No harm done, though. As it happens it was old DC — and you know how wary he is! No harm will come to that one.'
Darcy Clarke? Thank God! Kyle breathed more easily. Out loud he said, ‘Look, John, you'd better read my file on our silent partner. You know, from eight months ago?' The first Keogh manifestation. ‘Our blokes might well need all the help they can get. And I really don't think that in this case standard kit is sufficient. It's something I should have thought of before, except I didn't anticipate young YB's foxiness.' 9mm automatics might not stop him
— or any of the others in that house. But there's a description in the Harry Keogh file of something that will — I think. Get the squad armed with crossbows!
‘Just as you say, Alec, I'll look into it at once,' said Grieve, no sign of surprise in his voice. ‘And how are things with you?'
‘Oh, not bad. We're thinking of moving up into the mountains — tonight, actually.' We're off to Romania with Krakovitch. He's OK — I hope! As soon as I've got anything definite I'll get back to you. Then maybe you'll be able to move in on Bodescu. But not until we know all there is to know about what we're up against.
‘Lucky you!' said Grieve. ‘The mountains, eh? Beautiful at this time of year. Ah, well, some of us must work. Do drop me a card, now, won't you? And do take care.'
‘Same goes for you,' Kyle spoke light and easy, but his thoughts were sharp with concern. For God's sake make sure those lads down in Devon are on the ball! If anything were to happen, I —‘— Oh, we'll do our best to keep out of trouble,' Grieve cut him off. It was his way of saying, ‘Look, we can only do as much as we can do.'
‘OK, I'll be in touch.' Good luck. And then he had broken the connection
For a long time he'd stood in his room looking at the telephone and chewing his lip. Things were warming up and Alec Kyle knew it. And when Quint came in from the room next door where he'd been taking a nap.
one look at his face told Kyle that he was right. Quint looked rough round the edges, suddenly more than a little haggard.
He tapped his temple. ‘Things are starting to jump,' he said. ‘In here.'
Kyle nodded. ‘I know,' he answered. ‘I've a feeling they're starting to jump all over the place.
In his tiny room in what had once been Harry Keogh's Hartlepool flat, whose window looked out over a graveyard, Harry Junior was falling asleep. His mother, Brenda Keogh, shushed the baby and lulled him with soft humming sounds. He was only five weeks old, but he was clever. There were lots of things happening in the world, and he wanted in on them. He was going to make very hard work of growing up, because he wanted to be there now. She could feel it in him: his mind was like a sponge, soaking up new sensations, new impressions, thirsting to know, gazing out of his father's eyes and striving to envelop the whole wide world.
Oh, yes, this could only be Harry Keogh's baby, and Brenda was glad she'd had him. If only she could still have Harry, too. But in a way she did have him, right here in little Harry. In fact she had him in a bigger way than she might ever have suspected.
Just what the baby's father's work had been with British Intelligence (she assumed it was them) Brenda didn't know. She only knew that he had paid for it with his life. There had been no recognition of his sacrifice, not officially, anyway. But cheques arrived every month in plain envelopes, with brief little covering notes that specified the money as ‘widow's benefit'. Brenda never failed to be surprised: they must have thought very highly of Harry. The cheques were rather large, twice as much as she could ever have earned in any mundane sort of work. And that was wonderful, for she could give all of her time to Harry.
‘Poor little Harry,' she crooned at him in her soft northern dialect, an old, old ditty she'd learned from her own mother, who'd probably learned it from hers. ‘Got no Mammy, got no Daddy, born in a coal hole.'
Well, not quite as bad as all that, but bad enough, without Harry. And yet — . - occasionally Brenda felt pangs of guilt. It was less than nine months since she'd last seen him, and already she was over it. It all seemed so wrong, somehow. Wrong that she no longer cried, wrong that she never had cried a great deal, entirely wrong that he had gone to join that great majority who so loved him. The dead, long fallen into decay and dissolution.
Not necessarily morally wrong, but wrong conceptually, definitely. She didn't feel that he was dead. Perhaps if she'd seen his body it would be different. But she was glad that she hadn't seen it. Dead, it wouldn't have been Harry at all.
Enough of morbid thinking! She touched the baby's tiny button nose with the knuckle of her index finger.
‘Bonk!' she said, but very, very softly. For little Harry Keogh was asleep —
Harry felt the infant's whirlpool suction ebb, felt the tiny mind relax its constraint, aimed himself into and through a trans-dimensional ‘door' and found himself adrift once more in the Ultimate Darkness of the Möbius continuum. Pure mind, he floated in the flux of the metaphysical, free of the distortions of mass and gravity, heat and cold. He revelled like a swimmer in that great black ocean which stretched from never to forever and nowhere to everywhere, where he could move into the past no less rapidly than into the future.
Harry could go any and everywhere — and everywhen — from here. It was simply a matter of knowing the right direction, of using the right ‘door'. He opened a time-door and saw the blue light of all Earth's living billions streaming into unimagined, ever-expanding futures. No, not that one. Harry selected another door. This time the myriad blue life-threads streamed away from him and contracted, narrowing down to a far-distant, dazzling, single blue point. It was the door to time past, to the very beginning of human life on Earth. And that wasn't what he wanted either. Actually, he had known that neither of these doors was the right one; he was simply exercising his talents, his powers, that was all.