Wamphyri

By 1.30 P.M. they had driven back to Harkley; and then, too, Yulian had briefly picked up the thoughts of another watcher. He'd tried to infiltrate the stranger's mind but it immediately shut him out. They were clever, these watchers! Furious, he raged inwardly through the afternoon and could scarcely contain himself until the fall of night.

Peter Keen was a comparatively recent recruit to INTESP's team of parapsychologists. A sporadic telepath, (his talent, as yet untrained, came in uncontrolled, una

Yulian Bodescu was under full twenty-four hour surveillance now, and Keen had the mid-morning shift, 8.00 A.M. till 2.00 P.M. At 1.30 when the girl had driven Bodescu back through Harkley's gates and up to the house, Keen had been only two hundred yards behind in his red Capri. Driving straight past Harkley, he'd stopped at the first telephone kiosk and phoned headquarters, passing on details of Bodescu's outing.

At the hotel in Paignton, Darcy Clarke took Keen's call and passed the telephone to the man in charge of the operation, a jolly, fat, middle-aged chain-smoking ‘scryer' called Guy Roberts. Normally Roberts would be in London, employing his scrying to track Russian submarines, terrorist bomb squads and the like, but now he was here as head of operations, keeping his mental eye on Yulian Bodescu.

Roberts had found the task not at all to his liking and far from easy. The vampire is a solitary creature whose nature it is to be secretive. There is that in a vampire's mental makeup which shields him as effectively as the night screens his physical being. Roberts could see Harkley House only as a vague, shadowy place, as a scene viewed through dense, weaving mist. When Bodescu was there this mental miasma rolled that much more densely, making it difficult for Roberts to pinpoint any specific person or object.

Practice makes perfect, however, and the longer Roberts stayed with it the clearer his pictures were coming. He could now state for certain, for instance, that Harkley House was occupied by only four people:

Bodescu, his mother, his aunt and her daughter. But there was something else there, too. Two somethings, in fact. One of them was Bodescu's dog, but obscured by the same aura, which was very strange. And the other was — simply ‘the Other'. Like Yulian himself, Roberts thought of it only that way. But whatever it was — in all likelihood the thing in the cellars which Alec Kyle had warned about — it was certainly there and it was alive .

‘Roberts here,' the scryer spoke into the telephone. ‘What is it, Peter?'

Keen passed his message.

‘Travel agency?' Roberts frowned. ‘Yes, we'll get on to it at once. Your relief? He's on his way right now. Trevor Jordan, yes. See you later, Peter.' Roberts put down the telephone and picked up a directory. Moments later he was phoning the travel agency in Torquay, whose name and address Keen had given him.

When he got an answer, Roberts held a handkerchief to his mouth, contrived a young voice. ‘Hello? Er, hello?'

‘Hello?' came back the answer. ‘Sunsea Travel, here —who's calling, please?' It was a male voice, deep and smooth.

‘Seem to have a bad line,' Roberts replied, keeping his voice to a medium pitch. ‘Can you hear me? I was in, oh, an hour ago. Mr Bodescu?'

‘Ah, yes, sir!' The booking agent raised his voice. ‘Your Romanian inquiry. Bucharest, any time in the next two weeks. Right?' Roberts gave a start, made an effort to keep his muffled voice even. ‘Er, Romania, yes, that's right.' He thought fast — furiously fast. ‘Er, look, I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but —‘

‘Yes?'

‘Well, I've decided I can't make it after all. Maybe next year, eh?'

‘Ah!' There was some disappointment in the other's tone. ‘Well, that's the way it goes. Thanks for

calling, sir. So you're definitely cancelling, right?'

‘Yes.' Roberts jiggled the phone a bit. ‘I'm afraid I have to... Damn bad line, this! Anyway, something's come up, and —,

‘Well, don't worry about it, Mr Bodescu,' the travel agent cut him off. ‘It happens all the time. And anyway, I haven't yet found the time to make any real inquiries. So no harm done. But do let me know if you change your mind again, won't you?'

‘Oh, indeed! I will, I will. Most helpful of you. Sorry to have been such a nuisance.'

‘Not at all, sir. Bye now.'

‘Er, goodbye!' Roberts put the phone down.

Darcy Clarke, who had been party to this exchange, said, ‘Sheer genius! Well done, Chief!'

Roberts looked up but didn't smile. ‘Romania!' he repeated, ominously. ‘Things are hotting up, Darcy. I'll be glad when Kyle gets his call through. He's two hours overdue.'

At that very moment the phone rang again.

Clarke inclined his head knowingly. ‘Now that's what I call a talent. If it doesn't happen — make it!'

Roberts pictured Romania in his mind's eye — his own interpretation, for he'd never been there — then superimposed an image of Alec Kyle over a rugged Romanian countryside. He closed his eyes and Kyle's picture came up in photographic — no, live — detail.

‘Roberts here.'

‘Guy?' Kyle's voice came back, crisp with static. ‘Listen, I intended to route this through London, John Grieve, but I couldn't get him.' Roberts knew what he meant: obviously he would have liked the call to be one hundred per cent secure.

‘I can't help you there,' he answered. ‘There's no one that special around right now. Are there problems, then?'

‘Shouldn't think so.' In the eye of Roberts's mind, Kyle was frowning. ‘We lacked a bit of privacy in Genoa, but that cleared up. As for why I'm late: it's like contacting Mars getting through from here! Talk about antiquated systems. If I didn't have local help... anyway, have you got anything for me?'

‘Can we talk straight?'

‘We'll have to.'

Roberts quickly brought him up to date, finishing with Bodescu's thwarted trip to Romania. In his mind's eye he saw, as well as physically hearing, Kyle's gasp of horror. Then the head of INTESP got hold of his emotions; even if Bodescu's plans to come over here hadn't been foiled, still it would have been too late for him.

‘By the time we've finished over here,' he grimly told Roberts, ‘there'll be nothing left for him anyway. And by the time you've finished over there... he won't be able to go anywhere.' Then he told Roberts in detail exactly what he wanted done. It took him a good fifteen minutes to make sure he covered everything.

‘When?' Roberts asked him when he was finished.

Kyle was cautious. ‘Are you part of the surveillance team? I mean, do you physically go out to the house and watch him?'

‘No. I co-ordinate. I'm always here at the HO. But I do want to be in on the kill.'

‘Very well, I'll tell you when it's to be,' said Kyle. ‘But you're not to pass it on to the others! Not until as close as possible to zero hour itself. I don't want Bodescu picking it out of someone's mind.'

‘That makes sense. Wait — ‘ Roberts sent Clarke into the next room, out of earshot. ‘OK, when?'

‘Tomorrow — in daylight. Let's settle for 5.00 P.M. your time. By then we'll have done our bit, just an hour or so earlier. There are certain obvious reasons why daylight will be best, and on your side of the job one not so obvious reason. When Harkley goes up, it'll make a big blaze. You'll need to make sure local fire services don't get there too soon and put it out. If it was at night, the flames would be visible for miles. Anyway, that's for you to work on. But the last thing you want is outside interference, OK?'