I couldn’t help remembering that Romanov was an Other. Only he wasn’t initiated, he’d been spotted too late …They’d offered him the chance, but he’d refused.
That’s one option.
I wondered how often he heard this music in the night.
‘Like some more?’ The deputy was Mr Conviviality in person. I wondered what suggestions Bear and Tiger Cub had implanted in his mind. That I was his best friend? That he was eternally in my debt? That I was the president’s illegitimate but favourite son?
But that’s all rubbish. There are hundreds of different ways of making people trust you and like you and want to help you. The Light has its own methods, but unfortunately the Dark has plenty as well. It’s all rubbish.
The question was: what did the boss need me for so badly?
CHAPTER 6
ILYA WAS waiting for me beside the road, standing there with his hands stuck in his pockets, staring up in disgust at the sky through a flurry of fine snowflakes.
‘You took your time,’ was all he said after I’d shaken the deputy’s hand and got out of the car. ‘The boss is getting impatient.’
‘What’s going on here?’
Ilya grinned, but it wasn’t his usual cheerful smile.
‘You’ll see … let’s go.’
We set off along a trampled path, overtaking women with shopping bags rambling home from the supermarket. How strange it is that we have supermarkets now, just like the real things. But people still walk the same old tired way, as if they’d spent an hour standing in line for little blue corpses described as chickens.
‘Is it far?’ I asked.
‘If it was, we’d have taken a car.’
‘How did our sexual giant make out? Couldn’t he handle it?’
‘Ignat tried his best,’ was all Ilya said. I felt a brief pang of vengeful satisfaction, as if it were in my interests for handsome Ignat to screw up. If a mission required it, he was usually in someone else’s bed within two hours of being given his assignment.
‘The boss has declared a state of readiness for evacuation,’ Ilya suddenly said.
‘What?’
‘At a moment’s notice. If the vortex isn’t stabilised, the Others quit Moscow.’
He was walking ahead of me, I couldn’t look into his eyes. But what reason would Ilya have to lie?’
‘And is the vortex still …’ I began. Then I stopped. I could see it.
Above the dismal nine-storey block facing us, a black tornado was revolving slowly against the background of the dark, snowy sky.
You couldn’t call it a twister or a vortex any longer. It was a tornado. It rose up out of the next building along, hidden by the one we could see. And judging from the side-angle of the dark cone, it went almost down to the ground.
‘Damn …’ I whispered.
‘Watch what you say,’ Ilya snapped. ‘It could easily come true.’
‘It’s thirty metres high …’
‘Thirty-two. And still growing.’
I cast a hasty glance at my shoulder and saw Olga sitting there. She’d emerged from the Twilight.
Have you ever seen a bird frightened? Frightened like a human?
The owl looked ruffled. Can feathers really stand on end? There was an orange-yellow flame blazing in her amber eyes.
The shoulder of my poor jacket was torn into tiny shreds, and the claws carried on scraping, as if they wanted to scrape right through to my body.
‘Olga!’
Ilya turned back and nodded.
‘Now you see … The boss says the vortex at Hiroshima wasn’t that high.’
The owl flapped its wings and soared smoothly into the air, without a sound. A woman shrieked behind me – I swung round and saw a stupefied face, glazed eyes following the bird’s flight in amazement.
‘It’s a crow,’ Ilya said quietly, half turning his head to glance at the woman. His reactions were far quicker than mine. A moment later the accidental witness was overtaking us, muttering about the narrow path and people who liked to block the way.
‘Is it growing fast?’ I asked, with a nod at the tornado.
‘In bursts. But it’s stabilising now. The boss called Ignat off just in time. Come on …’
The owl made a wide circle round the tornado, then flew lower and over our heads. Olga still looked very self-possessed, but her careless emergence from the Twilight showed how agitated she really was.
‘Why, what did he do wrong?’
‘Nothing really … except for being overconfident. He got to know the girl. Then he started pushing things along and that made the twister start to grow … and how!’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, confused. ‘It can only grow that way if it’s being fed with energy by the magician who summoned up the Inferno …’
‘That’s the whole point. Someone must have tracked Ignat and started shovelling coal in the firebox. This way …’
We entered the building that stood between us and the vortex. The owl flew in after us at the last moment. I gave Ilya a puzzled look, but I didn’t ask any questions. Anyway, it was clear soon enough why we were there.
An operations centre had been set up in an apartment on the first floor. The heavy steel door, firmly closed in the human world, was standing wide open in the Twilight. Without stopping, Ilya dived into the Twilight and walked through. I fumbled for a few seconds, raising my shadow, and followed him.
It was a large apartment, with four rooms, all very comfortable. But it was also noisy, smoky and hot.
There were more than twenty Others there, including the field operatives and us back-room boys. No one took any notice when I arrived, they just glanced at Olga. I realised that the old Watch members knew her, but no one made any attempt to say hello or smile at the owl.
What could she have done?
‘Go through into the bedroom, the boss is in there,’ Ilya said briskly, turning off into the kitchen, where I could hear glasses clinking. Maybe they were drinking tea, or maybe it was something a bit stronger. I glanced in quickly as I passed and saw I was right. They were reanimating Ignat with cognac. Our sexual terrorist looked completely knackered, crushed. It was a long time since he’d suffered this kind of failure.
I walked on by, pushed open the first door I came to and looked inside.
It was the children’s room. A child of about five was sleeping on a little bed, and his parents and teenage sister were on the carpet beside it. Clear enough. The owners of the apartment had been put into a sound, healthy sleep so they wouldn’t get under our feet. We could have set up the entire operations office in the Twilight, but why waste all that energy?
Someone slapped me on the shoulder and I looked round – it was Semyon.
‘The boss is this way,’ he told me. ‘Come on …’
It seemed like everyone knew I was expected.
When I entered the next room, I was taken aback for just a moment.
There couldn’t be any more absurd sight than a Night Watch operations centre set up in a private apartment.
There was a medium-size magic sphere hanging in the air above a dressing table stacked with cosmetics and costume jewellery. The sphere was transmitting a view of the vortex from above. Lena, our best operator, was sitting on a chair beside it, silent and intense. Her eyes were closed, but when I came in she raised one hand slightly in greeting.