But how was it possible to find a single man in an immense city like this, when his powers manifested themselves spontaneously? Just flared up and then faded away again. Lying dormant between one killing and the next, one pointless victory over Evil and the next. And if he really was known to the Dark Ones, it was a secret kept by the very top bosses.
Not by the Dark Ones who were wasting their time up here.
I looked around in disgust.
This wasn’t serious!
The guard I’d killed so easily. The third-grade magician debating so keenly with our observer and not bothering to keep his eyes open. Those young guys at the terminals, shouting out:
‘Tsvetnoi Boulevard has been checked!’
‘Polezhaevskaya Street is under surveillance!’
Yes, this was a field headquarters. And it was about as ludicrously unprofessional as the inexperienced Dark Ones hunting for me right across the city. Yes, the net had been cast, but no one was concerned about the gaping holes in it. The longer I could keep on dodging the round-up and the more I thrashed about, the more the Dark liked it. At the strategic level, of course. Svetlana wouldn’t be able to bear it, she’d lose control. She’d try to help, because she could sense the genuine power developing inside her. None of our people would be able to restrain her – not directly. And she’d be killed.
‘Volgograd Avenue.’
I could slit all their throats, or shoot them all right here and now! Every last one of them. They were the Dark’s rejects and the failures, the dunces who had no prospects because they had too many shortcomings. It wasn’t simply that the Dark Ones didn’t feel sorry for them – they were a hindrance, they got in the way. The Day Watch was nothing like the almshouse that we sometimes resembled. The Day Watch got rid of anyone who was surplus to requirements. In fact, it usually got us to do the job, handing them a trump card, the right to respond, to redress the balance.
And the Twilight figure that had directed me to the Ostankino Tower was another product of the Dark. An insurance policy, in case I couldn’t guess where I ought to go to fight my battle.
But the real action was being coordinated by just one Other.
Zabulon.
He didn’t feel the least resentment against me. Of course not. What use would such complex and petty feelings be in a serious game like this?
He’d eaten dozens like me for breakfast, removing them from the board, sacrificing his own pawns to pay for them.
When would he decide that the game was played out and it was time for the endgame?
‘Do you have a light?’ I asked, putting down my beer mug and picking up a pack of cigarettes lying on the counter. Someone had forgotten them, maybe one of the restaurant’s customers, fleeing in a state of panic, maybe one of the Dark Ones.
Tiger Cub’s eyes lit up and she tensed her muscles. I realised the sorceress could start her battle transformation at any moment. She must have assessed the enemy’s strength too. She knew we had a serious chance of success.
But there was no need.
The old third-grade Dark Magician casually held out his Ronson lighter. It gave a tuneful little click and shot out a tongue of flame, and he carried on talking.
‘There’s only one reason why you constantly accuse the Dark of playing a double game and organising deliberate provocations – in order to disguise the fact that you’re not fit to survive. Your failure to understand the world and its laws. When you get right down to it, your failure to understand ordinary people! Once it’s accepted that the diagnosis made by the Dark Side is far more accurate, then what becomes of your morality? Of your whole philosophy of life? Eh?’
I lit up, nodded politely and headed for the exit. Tiger Cub watched me go with a puzzled look. Well, you just figure out for yourself why I’m leaving.
I’d found out all I could round here.
Or rather – almost all.
I leaned down towards the short haircut of the young guy in glasses who had his nose stuck in his notebook and asked briskly:
‘What districts are we closing off last?’
‘Botanical Gardens and the Economic Exhibition,’ he answered, without even looking up. The cursor carried on sliding across the screen. The Dark One was issuing instructions, relishing his power as he moved red dots across the map of Moscow. It would have been harder to prise him away from the exercise than to drag him away from his girlfriend.
They know how to love too, after all.
‘Thanks,’ I said, dropping my burning cigarette into the full ashtray. ‘That’s very helpful.’
‘No worries,’ the terminal operator said casually, without looking round. He poked the tip of his tongue out of his mouth and stuck another dot on the map: one more rank-and-file Dark One moving into the round-up. What are you so delighted about, you stupid idiot? The ones with real power will never appear on your map. You’d be better off playing with toy soldiers if power’s the way you get your kicks.
I slid across to the spiral staircase. All the fury I’d felt on my way here – the determination to kill or, more likely, be killed – had disappeared. I’m sure at some point during a battle a soldier enters a state of icy calm. The same way a surgeon’s hands stop trembling when the patient starts dying on the operating table.
What possible variants have you provided for, Zabulon?
That I start thrashing about in the nets closing in around me, and the commotion attracts both Light Ones and Dark Ones, all of them – and especially Svetlana?
No, that one’s out.
That I give myself up or get caught and then the long, slow, exhausting trial starts, concluding in a frenzied outburst by Svetlana at the tribunal?
No, that one’s out.
That I start a fight with your field headquarters operatives and kill them all, but end up trapped a third of a kilometre above the ground, and Svetlana comes racing to the tower?
No, that one’s out.
Or I take a stroll round the field headquarters and figure out that no one there knows anything about the Maverick, and try to play for time?
That’s a possibility
The ring was getting tighter, I knew that. It had been closed off first round the outskirts of the city, along the Moscow Ring Road, then the city had been carved up into districts and the major transport routes had been closed off. It still wasn’t too late to take a quick look around nearby districts that weren’t under surveillance yet, find a hiding place and try to lie low. The only advice the boss had been able to give me was to hold out for as long as possible, while the Night Watch was racing about, trying to find the Maverick.
It’s no accident that you’re squeezing me into the district where we had our little scuffle last winter, is it, Zabulon? I can’t help remembering it, so one way or another the way I act is bound to be affected by my memories.
The observation platform was completely empty now. The final visitors had fled, and there were no staff – only the man I’d recruited, standing by the stairs, clutching his pistol in his hand and staring downwards with his eyes blazing.
‘Now we’ll change clothes again,’ I told him. ‘The Light thanks you. Afterwards you’ll forget everything we’ve talked about. You’ll go home. All you’ll remember is that it was an ordinary day, like yesterday Nothing much happened.’
‘Nothing much happened!’ the security man blurted out cheerfully as he took my clothes off. It’s so easy to turn humans to the Light or the Dark, but they’re happiest of all when they’re allowed to be themselves.
CHAPTER 6