And quite deliberately, it was angling in towards his and Harry Jnr's threads! Harry knew panic. The scarlet life-line drifted closer; at any moment it must converge with his and the infant's. Then — Harry Jnr's life-thread abruptly veered away from his father's, raced off at a tangent on its own amidst an ocean of weaving blue lines. And the thread of Harry Snr followed suit, avoiding the vampire thread's thrust and turning desperately away. The action had looked for all the world like the manoeuvring of drivers on some otherworldly race track. But the last move had been blind, almost instinctive, and Harry's life-thread seemed now to careen, out of control, across the skein of future time.
Then, in another moment, Harry witnessed and indeed was party to the impossible — a collision! Another blue life-thread, dimming, crumbling, disintegrating, converged with his out of nowhere. The two seemed to bend towards each other as by some mutual attraction, before slamming together in a neon blaze that was much brighter and speeding on as one thread. Briefly Harry felt the presence — or the faint, fading echo — of another mind superimposed on his own. Then it was gone, extinct, and his thread rushed on alone.
He had seen enough. The future must go its own way. (Which it surely would.) He cast about, found a door and side-stepped out of time into the Möbius continuum. At once the infant Harry's tractor id put a grapple on him and began to reel him in. Harry didn't fight it but merely let himself drift home. Home to his son's mind in Hartlepool, on a Sunday night early in the autumn of 1977.
He had intended to talk to certain new friends in Romania, but that would have to wait. As for his ‘collision' with the future of some other person: he hardly knew what to make of that. But in the brief moment before its expiry, he was sure that he had recognised that fading echo of a mind.
And that was the most puzzling thing of all…
Chapter Twelve
Genoa is a city of contrasts. From the low-level poverty in the cobbled alleys and sleazy bars of its waterfront areas, to its high-rise luxury apartments looking down on the streets from broad windows and spacious sun-balconies; from the immaculate swimming pools of the rich to the dirty, oil-blackened beaches; from the shadowy, claustrophobic labyrinthine alleys down in the guts of the city to the airy, hugely proportioned stradas and piazzas — contrast is everywhere evident. Gracious gardens give way to chasms of concrete, the comparative silence of select residential suburbs is torn cityward by blasts of traffic noise which lessen not at all through the night, and the sweet air of the higher levels gives way to dust and blue exhaust fumes in the congested, sunless slums. Built on a mountainside, Genoa's levels are many and dizzying.
British Intelligence's safe house there was an enormous top-floor flat in a towering block overlooking the Corso Aurelio Saffi. To the front, facing the ocean, the block rose five high-ceilinged storeys above the road; at the rear, because its foundations were sunk into the summit of a fang of rock, with the building perched on its rim, there was a second level three floors deeper. The aspect from the stubby, low-walled rear balconies was vertiginous, and especially so to Jason Cornwell, alias ‘Mr Brown'.
Genoa', Sunday, 9.00 P.M. — but in Romania Harry Keogh was still talking to the vampire-hunters in their suite of rooms in lonesti, and would soon set off to follow his life-thread into the near future and in Devon, Yulian Bodescu continued to worry about the men who were watching him and worked out a plan to discover who they were and what their interest was. But here in Genoa Jason Cornwell sat thin-lipped and stiffly erect in his chair and watched Theo Dolgikh using a kitchen knife to pick the rotten mortar out of the stonework of the balcony's already dangerous wall. And the sweat on Cornwell's upper lip and in his armpits had little or nothing to do with Genoa's sticky, sultry Indian summer atmosphere.
But it did have to do with the fact that Dolgikh had caught him out, trapped the British spider in his own web, right here in this safe house. Normally the flat would be occupied by a staff of two or three other secret service agents, but because Cornwell (or ‘Brown') was busy with stuff beyond the scope of ordinary espionage — a specialist job, as it were — the regular occupiers had been ‘called away' on other work, leaving the premises suitably empty and accessible to Brown alone.
Brown had taken Dolgikh on Saturday, but only a little more than twenty-four hours later the Russian had managed to turn the tables. Feigning sleep, Dolgikh had waited until Sunday noon when Brown went out for a glass of beer and a sandwich, then had worked frenziedly to free himself from the ropes that bound him. When Brown returned fifty minutes later, Dolgikh had taken him completely by surprise. Later… Brown had come to with a start, mind and flesh simultaneously assaulted by smelling salts squirted into his nostrils and sharp kicks in his sensitive places. He'd found their positions reversed, for now he was tied in the chair while Dolgikh was the one with the smile. Except that the Russian's smile was that of a hyena.
There had been one thing — really only one — that Dolgikh wanted to know: where were Krakovitch, Kyle and co now? It was quite obvious to the Russian that he'd been taken out of the game deliberately, which might possibly mean that it was being played for high stakes. Now it was his intention to get back in.
‘I don't know where they are,' Brown had told him. ‘I'm just a minder. I mind people and I mind my own business.'
Dolgikh, whose English was good however guttural, wasn't having any. If he couldn't find out where the espers were, that was the end of his mission. His next job would likely be in Siberia! ‘How did they get on to me?'
'I got on to you. Recognised your ugly face — details of which I've already passed on to London. As for them recognising you: without me they wouldn't have been able to spot you in a monkey-house at the zoo! Not that that would mean a lot.
‘If you told them about me, they must have told you why they wanted me stopped. And they probably told you where they were going. Now you'll tell me.'
‘I can't do that.'
At that Dolgikh had come very close, no longer smiling. ‘Mr Secret Agent, minder, or whatever you are, you are in a lot of trouble. The trouble is this: that unless you co-operate I will surely kill you. Krakovitch and his soldier friend are traitors, for they must at least have knowledge of this. You told them I was here; they gave you your orders, or at least went along with those orders. I am a field agent outside my country, working against my country's enemies. I will not hesitate to kill you if you are obstinate, but things will get very unpleasant before you die. Do you understand me?'
Brown had understood well enough. ‘All this talk of killing,' he tut-tutted. ‘I could have killed you many times over, but those weren't my instructions. I was to delay you, that's all. Why blow it up bigger than it is?'
‘Why are the British espers working with Krakovitch?
What are they doing? The trouble with this psychic gang is this: both sides think they're bigger than the rest of us. They think mind should rule the world and not muscle. But you and me and the others like us, we know that's not the way it is. The strongest always wins. The great warrior triumphs while the great thinker is still thinking about it. Like you and me. You do what they tell you and I work from instinct. And I'm the one on top.'
‘Are you? Is that why you use the threat of death?'
‘Last chance, Mr Minder. Where are they?'
Still Brown wasn't saying anything. He merely smiled and gritted his teeth.
Dolgikh had no more time to waste. He was an expert in interrogation, which on this occasion meant torture. Basically, there are two types of torture: mental and physical. Just looking at Brown, Dolgikh guessed that pain alone wouldn't crack him. Not in the short term. Anyway, Dolgikh wasn't carrying the rather special tools he'd require. He could always improvise but… it wouldn't be the same. Also, he didn't wish to mark Brown; not initially, anyway. It must, therefore, be psychological — fear!