Day Watch

"We're not talking here about trying to get it to look real," said Gesar. "There isn't any picture at all. Just a gray blur, as if Svetlana's trying to remember the Twilight world."

Anton, who still hadn't uttered a single word, glanced hopefully at Sveta.

"Well, then," she began. "At first I didn't notice anything at all. When you left to follow the Brother who made a run for it, Boris Ignatievich, I stayed with the portal. Then I noticed that the Dark Ones on the floor had started moving and I fed some Power into your Net. The Dark Ones were pressed flat against the floor again; then you came back. And almost immediately- it was like a fainting fit, everything went black, I felt weak… And then there's a blank. I came around on the floor when Anton splashed water in my face. The memories are all I have left… And I can't even remember anything properly." The enchantress bit her lip, as if she were about to burst into tears. Anton looked at her as if he hoped just his look would be enough to calm her down.

"I have no rational explanation," Ilya put in. "There's simply nothing to go on-too little data."

"There's more than enough data," Gesar snorted. "But I don't have any explanation either… Not in the sense of a hundred percent correct explanation. I have a few suspicions of my own, but they need to be checked out. Olga?"

Olga shrugged. "If you have nothing to say, I won't even try. Either he's a top-flight magician who's never been registered anywhere by anyone, or someone's messing with our heads. For instance, I still can't understand why Zabulon hasn't got involved. You'd think smuggling in the Talon was an operation of supreme importance. But he hasn't raised a finger to help his rabble."

"That's right," Gesar drawled thoughtfully and finally took the cigar out of its tube, looked at it carefully, breathed in the aroma of its tobacco with obvious delight, and put it away again. "The Moscow Day Watch might have nothing at all to do with the operation to smuggle in Fafnir's Talon. The Regin Brothers could easily have been acting on their own initiative. In that case we have absolutely no claims against Zabulon. His rabble appears to have been acting independently. And not all that effectively, either, otherwise they'd never have allowed us to intercept the Brothers."

"What good are the Brothers to us, boss?" Ignat said in a

"If the Dark One from Ukraine was predestined for the Talon," Gesar said in a quiet voice, "we'd all be settling into spending the rest of eternity in the Twilight. Even I wouldn't have been able to save any of you. Not any of you. Is that clear, Ignat?"

"Is that right?" Semyon asked calmly. "It's that serious?"

"It's exactly right, Semyon. I have only one hope: The Dark One doesn't even understand his own role in all this yet. That's why he's thrashing about like this. Our only chance is to outguess him and take the Talon. And in principle that would balance out the odds."

"But how can we outguess him?" Ignat persisted. "Maybe I should try talking to him, convincing him. I'm good at convincing people. If only we can find him…"

"The Dark One won't be able to just sit around doing nothing with the Talon burning his fingers. He's bound to turn up in Moscow." Gesar stood up and surveyed his subordinates, then rubbed his cheek in a tired gesture. "That's it. Get some rest. Everybody get some rest."

He turned to Anton.

"Anton… Stay close to Sveta. Stick like glue. And you shouldn't go home-not to your place or hers. Stay here."

"All right, Boris Ignatievich," said Anton. He still had his arm around Sveta's shoulders.

Ten minutes later Anton and Sveta were alone in the comfortable duty staff lounge. Anton held out his mini-disk player and the earphones to the exhausted enchantress.

"You know," he said, "there's this sort of game I play. There's a lot of music on that disk. All sorts. I put it on random selection, but somehow it always comes up with the songs I need. Why don't you give it a try?"

Svetlana smiled faintly and took the earphones.

"Press here."

She pressed the button. The player blinked its green eye as it spun the disk; the laser slid across the tracks and stopped on one.

I dream of dogs and of wild beasts,

I dream that animals with eyes like lamps

Bit into my wings high in the heavens,

And I fell clumsily, like a fallen angel…

"It's Nautilus Pompilius," said Svetlana, adjusting the earphones slightly. "'Fallen Angel." It certainly suits the mood…"

"You know," Anton told her with emphatic seriousness, "call me superstitious, but I was sure Nautilus would come up. I really love that song."

"Let's listen to it together," Svetlana suggested, sitting down on the divan.

"Okay," Anton agreed, and mentally thanked the person who invented mini-earphones with no hard frame.

I don't remember the fall,

I only remember

The impact as I struck the cold stones.

How could I have flown so high and then

Tumbled down so cruelly, like a fallen angel?

Straight back down into the place that we

Had left behind, hoping for a new life.

Straight back down into the place from where

We stared avidly up into the blue heavens. Straight down…

They sat there for a long time with their arms round each other, each with a tiny Nautilus Pompilius singing in one ear. The three of them shared the feeling of bitterness and happiness-the magician, the enchantress, and the fallen angel.

"But when I went into the terminal building," Shagron said, "there was nobody there. They'd just closed the portal, over near the entrance, just a bit to the right, where the baggage hall is. The Light Ones had already removed their HQ and I could just barely sense them, somewhere near the edge of the airport.

Either they were getting into their vehicles or they'd already driven off."

"What about the Brothers?" Edgar asked.

"Damned if I know what's happened to them. I think one of them got killed. The Light Ones immobilized the others and took them away with them."

"What for?" Deniska asked in surprise, even putting down his coffee. "Why didn't they finish them off on the spot?"

"Come on, they're Light Ones!" said Yura, amazed by the question. "The Brothers surrendered, so they just arrested them. They'll probably hand them over to the Inquisition… The sadists. It would have been better just to kill them."

"I think he got away after all," said Nikolai, toying idly with his discharged wand. The Power it had contained only recently had melted the snow on the airport runway in a few brief moments and then dried out the ground. "Well, Yura, what do you think?"

"I can't sense the Talon. It's not in Moscow."

"But how could he have got away?" said A

"I don't know," Yura snapped, "but something happened back there."

"Maybe he could have used a portal?" Edgar asked cautiously.

"A portal?!" Yura snorted. "Can you use a portal?"

"Not easily," Edgar admitted. "I don't have the Power."

"Oh!" Yura said emphatically, jabbing his finger toward the ceiling in a vague gesture. "And apart from that, after the fight on the boulevard our friend looked like a squeezed lemon."

"But after the fight in the airport it was the Light Ones' enchantress who looked like a squeezed lemon," Nikolai remarked i

"Yes, that's right," said Shagron, brightening up. "When you think about it, the energy picture of events at Vnukovo looks pretty much like straightforward vampirism. Everything was kind of purple…"