The Last Aerie (7 page)

“To phone me?” Tzonov raised his customary eyebrow. “Is it not better to talk face to face?”

Trask smiled. “The walls of trust are built by degrees, my friend. First pebbles, later boulders.”

The Russian nodded. “And they are just as easily tumbled. Remove a pebble, and the whole wall breaks. That is one of our sayings.”

“Exactly,” Trask answered.

“Very well,” Tzonov agreed. “
My
Duty Officer will stand by for your Duty Officer’s call, for I too have things to put in order. Meanwhile, I shall look forward to working with you and yours.” His face disappeared from the screen and was replaced by white dazzle …

“Just the two of us,” Trask spoke to his precogs. “Myself and one of you two. The flip of a coin.” He held a penny, his good-luck piece of pre-decimal coinage, between thumb and finger.

Ian Goodly shook his head; his high-pitched voice belied his mournful expression as he answered, “No need for that, Ben. We already know.”

Guy Teale pulled a wry face. “I’m staying here. That’s how we see it, anyway.”

Trask shrugged and said to Goodly, “Then you’d better get your things together. It won’t be long.” His advice wasn’t necessary, but between them the espers kept their conversations as near normal as possible. As the precogs left his office, Trask saw David Chung waiting in the corridor and called him in.

“David?”

“I’d like to come with you.”

“You think you’d be of use?”

“I’m fascinated to know the connection between this thing and Harry Keogh.”

“And that’s it?”

“More or less.”

Trask shook his head. “You’re one of our best, David, and I know you have enough to do right here. Also, I have to think of the Branch. If anything were to happen to us out there … well, the organization would be weakened enough without losing you, too. Still, it’s not my decision entirely; I’ve just been speaking to the Minister Responsible. He’s okayed it, however reluctantly, but just for the two of us. So I’m afraid that’s that. Incidentally, you’ll be in the chair while I’m away. And if anything
was
to happen to us in Perchorsk, you’d most likely stay in the chair. So you see: there’s no way we can also jeopardize the life of the heir apparent!”

Chung remained silent, standing there before Trask’s desk, until the Head of Branch felt obliged to ask, “Was there something else?”

Chung looked embarrassed. “Don’t you think it’s possible you made a mistake when you were talking to Tzonov on-screen?”

“In what way?”

“When you asked him if he thought his visitor at Perchorsk might be a spy for the Wamphyri, possibly working for Harry? Up until then Harry Keogh hadn’t been mentioned. It seemed to me an error, to bring up the question of the Necroscope.”

Trask shook his head. “I only mentioned him by name, not by talent. I deliberately avoided even
thinking
of Harry’s talents. But you see, you’d already put thoughts of Harry into my head. They were
in
there, fresh after sixteen years. Tzonov is possibly the world’s finest telepath: his eyes look right into your mind. So even covered by all that static, I still wasn’t sure he wouldn’t read something. The easy way out was to mention Harry, but slightly out of context. That way, Tzonov would ‘know’ what I thought
he
thought and look no further. You see, David, through you we’re reasonably certain that something of Harry Keogh has come back into our world. But the Opposition knows nothing of that, not yet.” He smiled. “It’s just one more reason why I won’t take you east with us. You’re much too valuable right where you are.”

He stood up and saw Chung to the door. Out there, the long central corridor was empty now, silent. Chung said, “What about Harry’s room?”

Trask nodded. “It can’t hurt to look inside. What was that you said about it? Always cold in there?”

As they walked down the corridor and paused at the door in question, Chung answered, “Cold, yes. Always. The heating is on but the room stays cold.” He reached for the doorknob …

… And the door opened!

Both men gasped and started, then breathed mutual sighs of relief, glancing at each other sheepishly as the cleaning lady, Mrs. Wills, came into the corridor. Armed with her appointments—galvanized bucket, short-bladed squeegee, mop and dusters—she perspired freely.

Sure that his shock was still registering, Trask made an effort to cover his embarrassment. “Well … Mrs. Wills doesn’t look very cold,” he said. And speaking directly to the cleaning lady, “Mr. Chung was telling me how this room always feels too cold. How do you find it?”

Mrs. Wills was a short, rather stout, fiftyish Londoner. Not especially bright, she was a hard worker and had a heart of gold. She was the only permanent member of staff who was in no way “talented”, and in all her fifteen years’ service to the Branch she had never had the slightest idea what it was all about, except that its simple rules were for obeying and its people not for talking about. Indeed, Mrs. Wills had been chosen for her singular lack of curiosity. Now her face lit up ruddily as she beamed first at Trask, then Chung: two of the gentlemen “what she did for”.

Finally Trask’s question got through to her. “What, Mr. ‘arry’s room, sir? Cold, did yer say? Can’t say I’ve noticed it meself. But the ‘eating’s working, all right!”

Concerned, she followed them in. At the back there was a recess with a sliding door, containing a wash basin, shower, and toilet. In front … just a small overnight bedroom, maybe four paces by five, from the days when the top floor, too, had belonged to the hotel. The floor space along one wall was occupied by an obsolete computer console, with a chair and space below for the operator’s feet, plus a second swivel chair and ample work surface. In a corner, a small wardrobe stood open; it was equipped with coat hangers, and shelving to one side.

Chung nodded to indicate the wardrobe’s interior. “Some of Harry’s things,” he told Trask. “A shirt of his, trousers and a jacket. A bit mothy by now, I should think. Plus a few other bits and pieces on the top shelf there. The other items were left behind —” (he glanced out of the corner of his eye at Mrs. Wills, who had found a speck of dust to wipe from the computer console),”— by people we lost from time to time. I kept them … because I didn’t like to destroy them. As a locator, I’d used them all in my time. Stuff belonging to Darcy Clarke, Ken Layard, Trev Jordan. These things formed my link with them in the field …”

As Chung talked Trask was looking into the wardrobe, but he wasn’t seeing. Rather, he was feeling. And Chung was right: the room was cold. Or if not cold, empty. Despite the computer console, the wardrobe and its contents, it felt like an empty space, as if nothing was here. Not even Trask, Chung, and Mrs. Wills. Trask felt like an echo of himself in this room, like a shadow. He felt if he stood here just a little while longer he might fade into the walls and disappear forever. The place was psychically charged, definitely. And the cold wasn’t physical but metaphysical, psychological … supernatural? Whichever, Trask shivered anyway.

Mrs. Wills had finished with her dusting. “There we are,” she said, drawing Trask back into himself. “All spick-’n-span again. As my Jim’s always saying, ‘Meg me love, whatever yer do, just be sure yer keeps ‘arry’s room spick-’n-span.’ That’s what my Jim always says.”

As she turned away Trask’s jaw fell open and he glanced at Chung. Then she’d gone back out into the corridor, and the two espers were after her in a moment. “Er, Mrs. Wills.” Trask caught her by the elbow. “Did you and, er, Jim—I mean, did you
know
Harry, then?”

Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide. “Oh, my! Was I talking about Jim again? Oh, dear, I
am
sorry, sir! I mean, after all these years, yer’d think I’d let it be, now wouldn’t yer?”

Trask raised his eyebrows, looked mystified, waited.

“See,” she said, “my Jim was a talker. Lord, Jim could talk! Of a night before we’d go ter sleep, he’d just talk and talk and
talk
! About all and everything, and nothing very much. I used ter tell him, ‘Jim Wills, yer’ll likely talk yerself ter death one day!’ And bless him, he did. A heart attack, anyway. But … well … yer see, I was so used ter Jim’s voice, that sometimes I ‘ears it even now! And even if I never did know Mr. ‘arry, whoever he is, it seems my Jim must ‘ave known him, or ‘eard of him, anyway. Truth is, my Jim says an ‘ell of a lot of ‘em knows—or knew—‘arry Keogh.”

That did it. There may be plenty of Harrys in the world, but by Trask’s reckoning there could only be one Harry Keogh. The Necroscope’s second name had never been mentioned—or it shouldn’t have been—
in front of Mrs. Wills. Her knowledge of his Christian name was easy to explain: she’d been reading it five days a week, plainly visible on the plaque on the door. But his surname? Trask glanced at Chung.

David Chung was thinking much the same thing as his boss. Through Harry, the espers of E-Branch had learned that death is not the end but a transition to incorporeality, immobility. The flesh may be weak and corruptible, but mind and will go beyond that. People, when they die, do not accompany their bodies into dissolution but become one with the Great Majority; and merging into a sort of limbo—a darkness where
Thought
is the all—the minds of the teeming dead occupy themselves naturally with whatever was their passion in life. Great artists continue to visualize magnificent canvases, pictures they can never paint; architects plan faultless, world-spanning cities they can never build; scientists follow through the research they weren’t able to complete in life, whose benefits can never be passed on to the living.

And Jim Wills, the cleaning lady’s husband? In life he’d just overflowed with words; and the one he’d loved to talk to most of all … had been his wife. Was it so strange? And how many other lonely people “hear” their absent loved ones talking to them, Trask wondered? But out loud he only said, “What else has Jim told you, Mrs. Wills?”

Perhaps there was a tear in the corner of her eye as she looked at him, but she hid it and smiled anyway. “Only how I should be a good girl,” she said. “And treat others the way I’d expect to be treated. And remember that Jim loved me, and only me, all his days.”

Trask nodded. “That’s all good advice,” he said, softly. “But I meant about Harry. What did Jim tell you about Harry?”

She shrugged and sighed. “Not much. Just ter look after his room and keep it spick-’n-span, that’s all. “Meg, me love, whatever else goes ter the wall, you look after ‘arry’s room,” he says. And when I asks him why, he shrugs and says, “Well, yer never knows when he’ll be needin’ ter use it again, now does yer?”

She looked at the two espers and smiled, and the tears were gone now. “Anyway, that’s what my Jim always says …”

PART TWO:

NESTOR’S

STORY

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