Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

'Yes,' Trask answered, 'I have to agree. This is certainly a gadget, and Chung's message is about ghosts — of a sort.'

'Are you kidding me?' Jake couldn't any longer be sure of anything.

'I suppose I am,' Trask suddenly looked tired, 'though not

necessarily. Don't you believe in ghosts, Jake?' And before the other could answer: 'Well, these ghosts are submarines. They're dead Russian subs, yes — except they're still very much alive. Another paradox? Not really. Just wait a minute and you'll see what you'll see. Meanwhile, why don't you pour us a drink? And consider yourself lucky. It's Wild Turkey.'

Jake poured; the machine whirred; eventually two sheets of paper slid from the slot, pushed out and followed by the original. One of the decoded sheets was a-large-scale map of Europe and the seas around, with numbered, circled pinpoints of reference. The other was a list of grid references, numbered to correspond with those on the map. All of the grid references were oceanic: two pinpoints in the Black Sea off Varna in Bulgaria, another off Podisma in Turkey; two more in the Tyrrhenian midway between Naples and Sardinia; one in the Atlantic off Portugal's Algarve; and three more between Iceland and Norway, south of the Arctic Circle. And there were others marked out by tiny question marks instead of dots. Looking at these little black marks on the map, and matching them with the grid references, Trask's expression was very bleak.

'Look there,' he indicated the question marks. 'As close to home as that: the Barents Sea, off Norway. Crazy!'

'Close to home?' Jake echoed him.

'Close to the former Soviet Union,' Trask answered. 'Odd, because the Russians are usually more careful than that. Chernobyl taught them that much of a lesson at least — taught them to look after their own, anyway. So maybe those two were accidental? Maybe they didn't intend for them to go down just there. Jesus, but whatever they intended, still it's a mess!'

I'm not with you,' said Jake, shaking his head.

'Then let me explain. Each of those pinpoints represents a hulk resting on the bottom. But what kind of hulk? The answer's almost unbelievable, but since I've already told you…'

'Submarines?'

Trask nodded. 'Those innocuous little black dots? Each one of them is a disaster just waiting to happen or already happening. They're allegedly "decommissioned" nuclear subs we thought had been cleaned up, made safe, taken apart and stored with ten thousand tons of other radioactive rubbish years ago. Relics of Russia's penniless, outmoded, unwanted Cold War navy, yes. But the Russian military was lying to us — which is nothing new — and this is the truth.'

'And it's a bad thing?' Jake still didn't see it. 'I mean that these things have been sent to the bottom, miles deep, out of harm's way?'

'Out of harm's way? God, what an infant!' Trask shook his head. And before Jake could get upset again:

'Look, most of these subs have twin atomic engines. There are two possible meltdowns in each hulk. Barely possible, mind you, but possible. We don't know if they've been shut down properly, or even if they could be. But the very means of disposal tells us they're less than safe! Why else would the Russian military dump them on someone else's doorstep? What's more — since they're capable of this — how do we know they didn't load them to the gills with other high-level waste before scuttling them? What? They might have even left their leaking missile payloads aboard. These were ships of war, Jake! And sooner or later the bastard things will start spilling their guts!'

'What, in ten, twenty, fifty years? And a mile or so deep?' Jake still wasn't too impressed. 'And anyway, what has this to do with you and E-Branch?'

Trask scowled at him, actually clenched a fist and thumped the table. 'If Anna-Marie English were here right now… she'd knock you arse over breakfast!'

Astonished, Jake drew back. 'Anna-Marie English? Isn't she someone who Chung mentioned?'

'She worked for us,' Trask snapped. 'An ecopath, she gave warning of Earth's decline — I mean personally. She was "ecologically aware," or as she herself would put it, she was "as one with the Earth". It was her talent — or her curse. Funny, isn't it,

Jake? But there are very few in E-Branch who are happy with their talents. They would much prefer to be ordinary. But since they can't be, they're E-Branch.'

Jake wasn't.sure of Trask's meaning. 'So how did this help you? Her talent, I mean? How did it work?'

Trask shook his head. 'None of us can tell you how our talents work, only that they do. In Anna-Marie's case:

'As water tables declined and deserts expanded, so her skin dried out, became desiccated. When acid rains burned the Scandinavian forests, her dandruff fell like snow. In her dreams she heard whale species singing of their decline and inevitable extinction, and she knew from her aching bones when the Japanese were slaughtering the dolphins. She was like a human lodestone; she tracked illicit nuclear waste, monitored pollution, shrank from holes in the ozone layer. Anna-Marie was an ecopath, Jake: she felt for the Earth and suffered all its sicknesses, because she knew that she was dying from them, too…'

Trask was eloquent, Jake would grant him that much. 'You're saying she's dead, then?'

'No,' Trask answered. 'I'm saying she's somewhere else. But by now… she might well have started to suffer again, yes…' He sighed and sat up straighter, seemed on the brink of coming to a decision, finally continued:

'Me, I believe in ghosts, Jake. I really do, for I've seen a few in my time. And they weren't always of the moaning, chain-rattling and mainly harmless variety. But I also believe in listening to my colleagues. Now it seems a ghost has come among us, possibly a beneficial one. Well, according to Chung and Goodly, anyway. Unfortunately it's come at a very bad time. The coincidence is just too great — that this should happen now, just as we find ourselves in conflict with the Wamphyri and the plague they've brought with them out of Starside — for me to take any chances. That's what holds me back from telling you everything: the thought that perhaps you are an agent, albeit an unwitting agent, of the Wamphyri!'

'Me?' Jake's surprise couldn't have been more genuine. And Trask, a human lie detector, knew it more certainly than any other man ever could. Ah, but Trask remembered other times, when Harry Keogh had fooled him, too! And Jake went on, 'How in hell could I be anyone's agent? And I'm certainly no ghost!' 'No,' Trask agreed, 'but what's in you might be.' 'What's in me?'

'Don't play the fool, Jake!' Trask snapped. 'We're talking about what's in your head. This talent you've suddenly come by, which brought you to E-Branch and then returned you there when you tried to run off. But is it the ghost of Harry Keogh — or is it something that merely tastes like him? Should I take you into my confidence, or shoot you dead right here and now?'

Jake started to his feet and upset the table. His face was a snarl, his hands reaching for Trask. 'I've had it up to here with your threats and your bullying. You're an old man, Trask, and as far as I'm concerned you're an old fraud… too!?'

But by then he'd seen the gun that Trask had been holding under the table; it was aimed right at him. And he understood the other's apparent fumbling when he'd taken the decoder from his briefcase. But what he didn't understand was the way Trask stared at him, the urgent, burning question in his penetrating gaze.

'What would you have done?' Trask snapped. 'What would you have done to me?'

'Done?' Jake looked at the gun, then at Trask. 'Nothing. I… I might have shaken you, or tried to shake some sense into you. Or maybe I'd have tried shaking a little out of you! God, can't you see you've got me going in circles?'