positions, machine-gun posts, completely functional and fully efficient, giving them a total arc of fire to cover the entire open area between the chateau and its perimeter wall. Other pill-boxes had been built into the wall itself, whose external face could become an electrical barrier at the throw of a switch.
Second only to the space-base at Baikonur, E-Branch was now housed in one of the best-fortified installations in the USSR. Certainly it vied favourably with the joint atomic and plasma research station at Gargetya, lost in the Urals, whose chief asset was its isolation; but in one major aspect it was superior to both Baikonur and Gargetya: namely it was 'secret' in the fullest sense of the word. Apart from Borowitz's operatives, no one but a double-handful of men even suspected that the chateau in its present form existed, and of these only three or four knew that it housed E-Branch. One of these was the Premier himself, who had visited Borowitz here on several occasions; another, less happily, was Yuri Andropov, who had not visited and never would — not on Borowitz's invitation.
The helicopter settled to its pad and as its rotor slowed Borowitz slid back his door and swung out his legs. A security man, ducking low, ran in under the whirling vanes and helped him down. Clutching his hat, Borowitz let himself be assisted away from the aircraft and through an arched doorway into that area of the chateau which once had been the courtyard. Now it was roofed over and partitioned into airy conservatories and laboratories, where branch operatives might study and practise their peculiar talents in comparative comfort or whatever condition or environment best suited their work.
Borowitz had been late out of bed this morning, which was why he'd called for the branch helicopter to fly him in from his dacha. Even so, he was still an hour late for
his meeting with Dragosani. Passing through the outer complex of the chateau and into the main building, then up two flights of time-hollowed stone stairs into the tower where he had his office, he grinned wolfishly at the thought of Dragosani waiting for him. The necromancer was himself a stickler for punctuality; by now he would be furious. That was all to the good. His mind and tongue would be sharper than ever, setting the stage perfectly for his deflation. It did men good to be brought down now and then, an art in which Borowitz was past master. Taking off his hat and jacket as he went, finally Borowitz arrived at the second-floor landing and tiny anteroom which also served as an office for his secretary, where he found Dragosani pacing the floor and scowling darkly. The necromancer made no effort to alter his expression as his boss passed through with a breezy 'Good morning!' on the way to his own more spacious office. There he deftly kicked the door shut behind him, hung up his hat and jacket and stood scratching his chin for a moment or two as he pondered the best way to deliver the bad news. For in fact it was very bad news and Borowitz's temper was far shorter this morning than appearances might suggest. But as everyone who knew him was well aware, when the boss of E-Branch appeared in a good mood, that was usually when he was most deadly.
Borowitz's office was a spacious affair of great bay windows looking out and down from the tower's curving stone wall over rough grounds towards the distant woodland. The windows, of course, were of bullet-proof glass. The stone floor was covered in a fairly luxurious pile carpet, burned here and there from Borowitz's careless smoking habits, and his desk — a huge block of a thing in solid oak — stood in a corner where it had both the
protection of thick walls and the benefit of maximum light from the bays.
There he now seated himself, sighing a little and lighting a cigarette before pressing a button on his intercom and saying: 'Come in, Boris, will you? But do please see if you can leave your scowl out there, that's a good fellow…'
Dragosani entered, closing the door a little more forcefully than necessary, and crossed catlike to Borowitz's desk. He had 'left his scowl out there', and in its place presented a face of cold, barely disguised insolence. 'Well,' he said, 'I'm here.'
'Indeed you are, Boris,' Borowitz agreed, unsmiling now, 'and I believe I said good morning to you.'
'It was when I got here!' said Dragosani, tight-lipped. 'May I sit down?'
'No,' Borowitz growled, 'you may not. Nor may you pace, for pacing irritates me. You may simply stand there where you are and — listen — to-me!'
Never in his life had Dragosani been spoken to like that. It took the wind right out of his sails. He looked as if someone had slapped him. 'Gregor, I — ' he began again.
'What?' Borowitz roared. 'Gregor, is it? This is business, agent Dragosani, not a social call! Save your familiarity for your friends — if you've any left, with that snotty manner of yours — and not for your superiors. You're a long way off taking over the branch yet, and unless you get certain fundamentals sorted out in your hot little head you may never take it over at all!'
Dragosani, always pale, now turned paler still. 'I… I don't know what's got into you,' he said. 'Have I done something?'
'You, done something?' now it was Borowitz's turn to scowl. 'According to your work sheets very little — not for
the last six months, anyway! But that's something we're going to remedy. Anyway, maybe you'd better sit down. I've quite a lot of talking to do and it's all serious stuff. Pull up a chair.'
Dragosani bit his lip, did as he was told.
Borowitz stared at him, toyed with a pencil, finally said: 'It appears we're not unique.'
Dragosani waited, said nothing.
'Not at all unique. Of course we've known for some time that the Americans were fooling about with extra sensory perception as an espionage concept — but that's
all it is, fooling about. They find it "cute". Everything is "cute" to the Americans. There's little of direction or purpose to anything they're doing in this field. With them it's all experimentation and no action. They don't take it seriously; they have no real field agents; they're playing with it in much the same way they played with radar before they came into World War Two — and look what that got them! In short, they don't yet trust ESP, which gives us a big lead on them. Huh! That makes a nice change.'
'This is not new to me,' said Dragosani, puzzled. 'I know we're ahead of the Americans. So what?'
Borowitz ignored him. 'The same goes for the Chinese,' he said. 'They've got some clever minds over there in Peking, but they aren't using them right. Can you imagine? The race that invented acupuncture doubting the efficacy of ESP? They're stuck with the same sort of mental block we had forty years ago: if it isn't a tractor it won't work!'
Dragosani kept silent. He knew he must let Borowitz get to the point in his own good time, t hen there's the French and the West Germans. Oddly enough, they're coming along quite well. We actually have some of their ESPers here in Moscow, field agents
working out of the embassies. They attend parties and functions, purely to see if they're able to glean anything. And occasionally we let them have titbits, stuff their orthodox intelligence agencies would pick up anyway, just to keep them in business. But when it comes to the big stuff — then we feed them rubbish, which dents their credibility and so helps us keep right ahead of them.'
Borowitz was bored now with toying with his pencil; he put it down, lifted his head and stared into Dragosani's eyes. His own eyes had taken on a bleak gleam. 'Of course,' he finally continued, 'we do have one gigantic advantage. We have me, Gregor Borowitz! That is to say, E-Branch answers to me and me alone. There are no politicians looking over my shoulder, no robot policemen spying on my spying, no ten-a-penny officials watching my expense account. Unlike the Americans I know that ESP is the future of intelligence gathering. I know that it is not "cute". And unlike the espionage bosses of the rest of the world I have developed our branch until it is an amazingly accurate and truly effective weapon in its own right. In this — in our achievements in this field — I had started to believe we were so far ahead that no one else could catch us. I believed we were unique. And we would be, Dragosani, we would be — if it were not for the British! Forget your Americans and Chinese, your Germans and your French; with them the science is still in its infancy, experimental. But the British are a different kettle of fish entirely