«Yes.»
«A network of fifty machines. It has to be maintained. We pay well.»
I felt myself starting to smile. It was a good offer. A local network. Decent money. And no one sending you out at night to catch vampires, making you drink blood and sniff out trails on the frozen streets…
«Shall I give you my card?» The man deftly slipped one hand into his jacket pocket. «Think about it…«
«No thanks. I'm afraid no one just leaves my kind of work.»
«KGB, is it?» the driver asked with a frown.
«More serious than that,» I answered. «Much more serious. But something like it.»
«Oh, well…« the driver said, and paused. «A pity. And I thought it was a sign from on high. Do you believe in fate?»
He'd slipped into a familiar tone quite naturally. I liked that.
«No.»
«Why not?» asked the driver, genuinely surprised, as if he'd never met anyone but fatalists in his life.
«There's no such thing as fate. It's been proved.»
«By whom?»
«In the place I work.»
He laughed.
«That's great. So it's not meant to be! Where shall I stop for you?»
We were already driving down Zelyony Avenue.
I peered hard through the layer of ordinary daily reality, into the Twilight. I couldn't make anything out clearly; my powers weren't strong enough. I sensed it rather than saw it—a cluster of dim lights in the gray gloom. Almost the entire central office was there.
«Over there…«
While I was still in ordinary reality I couldn't see my colleagues. I walked over the gray city snow toward the little square buried under snowdrifts between the apartment blocks and the avenue. A few frozen little trees, a few lines of footsteps—either some kids had been having fun or a drunk had just walked straight across.
«Wave to them; they've spotted you,» Olga advised me.
I thought for a moment and followed her advice. Let them think I could see clearly from one reality into the other.
«A meeting,» Olga said mockingly. «An emergency briefing.»
I glanced around, just for form's sake, then summoned the Twilight and stepped into it.
The entire central office really was there. The whole Moscow department.
Standing in the middle was Boris Ignatievich. Lightly dressed, in a suit and a light fur cap, but wearing a scarf for some reason. I could just imagine him scrambling out of his BMW, surrounded by his bodyguards.
The field operatives were standing beside him. Igor and Garik—they were the ones really suited to the role of front-line fighters. Thickset, stony faces, square shoulders—impervious. You can tell at a glance what kind of education they'd had: eight grades of school, technical college, and the special forces. And as far as Igor's concerned that's exactly right. But Garik has two full college degrees. The appearance is similar, the behavior's almost identical, but the content's absolutely different. By comparison with them, Ilya looked like a refined intellectual, but don't be fooled by those round spectacles with the thin frames, that high forehead, and naive expression. Semyon was another exaggerated character: short, stocky, with a cunning gleam in his eyes, in a cheap nylon baseball jacket. A provincial, come up to the big city. And he'd come from somewhere out of the '60s, from the prize-winning collective farm Lenin's Stride. Absolute opposites. But what Ilya and Semyon did have in common was their beautiful tans and dejected expressions. They'd been pulled out of Sri Lanka in mid-vacation, and they weren't enjoying the Moscow winter too much. Ignat, Danila, and Farid weren't there, although I could sense their fresh trails. But standing right behind the boss, not exactly like they were trying to hide, but not really noticeable unless you looked hard, were Bear and Tiger Cub. Those two gave me a jolt. They're not ordinary front-line fighters; they're really good, and they don't let anything stand in their way.
There were lots of workers from the office there too.
The analytical section, all five of them. The research team—everyone except Yulia, but that wasn't surprising; she's only thirteen years old. The only ones missing were the archive group.
«Hi,» I said.
Some nodded, some smiled. But I could see they all had more important things to worry about. Boris Ignatievich gestured for me to come closer and then continued:
«Not in their interest, and we welcome that. We won't get any help from them… well fine, that's just great…«
Clear enough. He meant the Day Watch.
«We can search for the girl without anybody interfering, and Danila and Farid are already getting close. I'd say, another five or six minutes… But we've still been given an ultimatum.»
I caught Tiger Cub's eye. Oh, that was her ominous smile. That's right, her smile. Tiger Cub's a woman, but there was just no way the name «Tigress» would stick.
Our agents don't much like the word «ultimatum!»
«We don't keep the Black Magician,» the boss said, looking around at everyone with a dissatisfied expression. «Got that? We'll have to find him in order to disarm the vortex. But after that we hand the magician over to the Dark Ones.»
«We hand him over?» Ilya queried.
The boss thought for a second.
«Yes, that's a fair point. We don't eliminate him and we don't prevent him from contacting the Dark Ones. As far as I've been able to tell, they don't know who he is either.»
The operatives' faces were turning sourer by the moment. Any new magician on the territory they monitored was a big headache. Even if he was registered and observed the terms of the Treaty. But a magician this powerful…
«I'd prefer a slightly different scenario,» Tiger Cub said quietly. «Boris Ignatievich, in the course of our work, situations can crop up over which we have no control…«
«I'm sorry, but we can't allow any such situations to arise,» the boss snapped. But his irritation was fleeting, he did not press too hard; he'd always been fond of Tiger Cub. She backed off immediately.
I'd have done the same.
«Well, that's about it…« The boss glanced at me. «I'm glad you got here, Anton. There's something I especially wanted you to hear…«
I automatically tensed up.
«You did a good job yesterday. Yes, it's true, the reason I sent you out to look for the vampires was to test you. And not just to see how good an operative you are, either… you've been in a difficult situation for a very long time, Anton. Killing a vampire is a lot harder for you than for anyone else here.»
«That's just where you're wrong, boss,» I said.
«I'm glad if I'm mistaken. I want to thank you on behalf of the entire Night Watch. You destroyed one vampire and captured the image of the female vampire's trail. Captured it very accurately. You still don't have enough experience for investigative work. But you know how to record information clearly. The same thing goes for this girl. It was a completely non-standard situation, but you made a humane decision… and that's gained us some time. The image of her aura was magnificent. I knew right away where to look for her.»
That really stung. No one was smiling or laughing, no one was smirking at me, but I still felt humiliated all the same. The white owl, whom nobody had seen yet, twitched on my shoulder. I took a deep breath of the Twilight air, that cold, tasteless air that isn't air at all. I asked:
«Boris Ignatievich, then what was the reason for sending me around the circle line if you already knew the right district?»
«I could have been wrong,» the boss replied with a note of surprise in his voice. «That's another thing… you have to understand that when you're working out in the field, you can't afford to rely on any opinion, no matter how high up it comes from. One man in a field is a warrior—if he knows he's alone.»