Then he was gone.
Dragosani relaxed, breathed deeply, suddenly felt exhausted. It had been no easy thing, exorcising Thibor. The vampire had resisted, but Dragosani had been stronger. The real problem had not lain in getting him out - it would lie in keeping him out. Or perhaps not. Now that Dragosani knew Thibor was able to secretly insinuate himself in his being, he could maintain a watch for the old devil.
But as for his Romanian 'holiday': that was over before it had begun. Cursing, he savagely applied the brakes and slewed the Volga round in a half circle, then started back the way he had come. He was tired but sleep would have to wait. All Dragosani wanted now was to put distance between himself and the Thing in the ground.
Dragosani stopped just outside Bucharest for petrol and tried to raise Thibor. It was still full daylight but he got something: a faint response, a shiver in his mind that echoed like a coffin and wriggled like a graveworm. In Braida in the dusk he tried again. The presence was stronger as night drew on. Thibor was there and might have responded if Dragosani had given him the opportunity. He did not but closed his mind and drove on. At Reni, after passing through Customs, he let down all his defences and literally invited Thibor in. It was full night now but the whisper in his mind was faint, as if it came from a million miles away:
Dragosaaaniiii. Coward! You flee from me. An old creature trapped in the earth.
Tm no coward, old one. And I'm not fleeing but putting myself outside your range, where you can't reach me. And if you do manage to reach me, next time I'll know. You see, Thibor, you need me more than I need you. Now you can just lie there and think it over. I may come back one day and I may not. But when, if I do, it will be on my terms.'
Dragosani (the whisper was faint but urgent) I -
'Goodbye, Thibor.'
And behind him, Thibor Ferenczy's mental whisper was eaten up along with all the miles, and in a little while Dragosani felt safe to stop and sleep.
And dream his own dreams.
Chapter Ten
The spring of '76 ...
Viktor Shukshin was running close to broke. He had frittered away his inheritance from Mary Keogh-Snaith's estate on various business ventures which had fallen through; rates on the big house near Bonnyrigg were high; the money he made from his private tutoring was insufficient to keep him. He would sell the house but it had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it would no longer realise a high price; also, he needed the seclusion that the place gave him. To let some of the rooms would likewise diminish his privacy, and in any case the structural and decorative repairs necessary before any letting could even be considered were quite beyond his means.
His linguistic talent was not the only one he commanded, however, and so, over the period of the last few months, he had made several discreet trips into London to follow up and check out certain points of information he had acquired in the years he had been domiciled in the British Isles - information which should be worth a deal of money to certain very interested foreign parties.
In short, Viktor Shukshin was a spy - or at least, it had been intended that he should become one when Gregor Borowitz first sent him out of the USSR, in 1957. Of course, there had been a hardening of East-West relationships at that time - and a general hardening of Russia's policy towards her dissidents - so that it hadn't been too difficult for Shukshin to get into Great Britain in the guise of a political refugee.
After that, and especially after meeting, marrying murdering Mary Keogh, Shukshin had found himself so well-fixed that he had reneged on his Soviet boss and settled to actual citizenship. Still, he had not forgotten his original reason for coming to Great Britain, and as a hedge against the future had long since set about amassing information which might eventually be useful to his mother country. It was only recently, though, because of his financial difficulties, that he had begun to realise what a good position he was in. If the Soviets would not pay him the price he demanded for his information, then he could threaten them with the release to the British of his knowledge of a certain Russian organisation.
Which was why, this sparkling May morning, Shukshin had written a carefully coded letter to an old 'pen-friend' in Berlin - one who had not heard from him in over fifteen years, and had thought never to hear from him again - who would forward his letter through East Germany and on to Gregor Borowitz himself in Moscow. That letter was in the post even now, and Shukshin had just returned home in his battered Ford from the Bonnyrigg post office.
But coming across the river on the stone bridge that led to his driveway, Shukshin had been startled to feel in himself a strange churning which he'd at once recognised of old, a weird energy which turned his spine chilly and tugged at his hair like static electricity. On the bridge, leaning over the parapet and staring into the river's slow swirl, a slim young man in a scarf and overcoat had lifted his head and stared at Shukshin's car. His pale blue serious eyes had seemed to burn right through the car's bodywork, touching Shukshin with their cold gaze. And the Russian had known that the stranger was endowed with more than Nature's ordinary talents, that he commanded more than man's normal powers of perception.
He had known it absolutely, for Shukshin, too, was gifted. He was a 'spotter': his talent lay in the instant recognition of another ESP-endowed person.
As to who the youth could be, the significance of his appearing here at this time: there were several possibilities. It could be coincidence, an accidental meeting; this would not be the first time nor even the fiftieth that Shukshin had stumbled across such a person. But ESP came in a range of strengths and colours, and this one had been strong indeed and scarlet - a red-tinged cloud in Shukshin's mind. Or his presence here could be deliberate: he may have been sent here. The British branch must also have its spotters, and Shukshin may well have been detected and trailed. In the light of his recent trips to London - and what he had subsequently discovered of the British ESPionage branch - this theory was by no means far-fetched and sent something of a panic surging through him. Panic and more than panic. There was something else in Shukshin now, something he must control. Something which made his eyes narrow as he thought how easily he might have swerved his car to crush the stranger against the parapet wall. The emotion was hatred, the deep and abiding hatred he felt towards all ESPers.
His rage slowly subsided and he looked at his hands. The knuckles of his fingers were white where he gripped the edges of his desk. He forced himself to release his grip and sat back, breathing deeply. It was always this way, but he had learned how to control it - almost. But if only he had not sent that letter to Borowitz. That might have been a big mistake. Perhaps he should have offered his services direct to the British instead; perhaps he still should, and without delay. Before they could investigate him any further...
Such were his thoughts when the doorbell rang, because they were guilty thoughts he gave a violent start.
Shukshin's study was downstairs in a room to the rear of the house that opened through patio windows into its own courtyard. Now he stood up from his desk, passed from bright spring sunshine into gloom as he hurried through the ground floor rooms and corridors towards the front, and midway started again as the doorbell once more tore at his nerve-endings.