Brian Lumley - Necroscope

The gold was burnished as if brand new, and the solitary cat's-eye stone seemed to stare back at him in a cold speculation all its own…

From the air, the Chateau Bronnitsy seemed not to have changed a great deal from the old days. No one would guess that it housed the world's finest ESPionage unit, Gregor Borowitz's E-Branch, or that it was anything but a tottering old pile. But that was exactly the way Borowitz wanted it, and he silently complimented himself on work well planned and executed as his helicopter fanned low over the towers and rooftops of the place and down towards the tiny helipad, which was simply a square of whitewashed concrete emblazoned with a green circle, lying between a huddle of outbuildings and the chateau itself.

'Outbuildings,' yes — that is what they looked like from up here — old barns or sheds long fallen into disrepair and allowed to settle and crumble until they were little more than low humps of masonry dotted about the greater mass of the chateau. And this, too, was precisely to Borowitz's specifications. They were in fact defensive

positions, machine-gun posts, completely functional and fully efficient, giving them a total arc of fire to cover the entire open area between the chateau and its perimeter wall. Other pill-boxes had been built into the wall itself, whose external face could become an electrical barrier at the throw of a switch.

Second only to the space-base at Baikonur, E-Branch was now housed in one of the best-fortified installations in the USSR. Certainly it vied favourably with the joint atomic and plasma research station at Gargetya, lost in the Urals, whose chief asset was its isolation; but in one major aspect it was superior to both Baikonur and Gargetya: namely it was 'secret' in the fullest sense of the word. Apart from Borowitz's operatives, no one but a double-handful of men even suspected that the chateau in its present form existed, and of these only three or four knew that it housed E-Branch. One of these was the Premier himself, who had visited Borowitz here on several occasions; another, less happily, was Yuri Andropov, who had not visited and never would — not on Borowitz's invitation.

The helicopter settled to its pad and as its rotor slowed Borowitz slid back his door and swung out his legs. A security man, ducking low, ran in under the whirling vanes and helped him down. Clutching his hat, Borowitz let himself be assisted away from the aircraft and through an arched doorway into that area of the chateau which once had been the courtyard. Now it was roofed over and partitioned into airy conservatories and laboratories, where branch operatives might study and practise their peculiar talents in comparative comfort or whatever condition or environment best suited their work.

Borowitz had been late out of bed this morning, which was why he'd called for the branch helicopter to fly him in from his dacha. Even so, he was still an hour late for

his meeting with Dragosani. Passing through the outer complex of the chateau and into the main building, then up two flights of time-hollowed stone stairs into the tower where he had his office, he grinned wolfishly at the thought of Dragosani waiting for him. The necromancer was himself a stickler for punctuality; by now he would be furious. That was all to the good. His mind and tongue would be sharper than ever, setting the stage perfectly for his deflation. It did men good to be brought down now and then, an art in which Borowitz was past master. Taking off his hat and jacket as he went, finally Borowitz arrived at the second-floor landing and tiny anteroom which also served as an office for his secretary, where he found Dragosani pacing the floor and scowling darkly. The necromancer made no effort to alter his expression as his boss passed through with a breezy 'Good morning!' on the way to his own more spacious office. There he deftly kicked the door shut behind him, hung up his hat and jacket and stood scratching his chin for a moment or two as he pondered the best way to deliver the bad news. For in fact it was very bad news and Borowitz's temper was far shorter this morning than appearances might suggest. But as everyone who knew him was well aware, when the boss of E-Branch appeared in a good mood, that was usually when he was most deadly.

Borowitz's office was a spacious affair of great bay windows looking out and down from the tower's curving stone wall over rough grounds towards the distant woodland. The windows, of course, were of bullet-proof glass. The stone floor was covered in a fairly luxurious pile carpet, burned here and there from Borowitz's careless smoking habits, and his desk — a huge block of a thing in solid oak — stood in a corner where it had both the

protection of thick walls and the benefit of maximum light from the bays.

There he now seated himself, sighing a little and lighting a cigarette before pressing a button on his intercom and saying: 'Come in, Boris, will you? But do please see if you can leave your scowl out there, that's a good fellow…'

Dragosani entered, closing the door a little more forcefully than necessary, and crossed catlike to Borowitz's desk. He had 'left his scowl out there', and in its place presented a face of cold, barely disguised insolence. 'Well,' he said, 'I'm here.'

'Indeed you are, Boris,' Borowitz agreed, unsmiling now, 'and I believe I said good morning to you.'

'It was when I got here!' said Dragosani, tight-lipped. 'May I sit down?'

'No,' Borowitz growled, 'you may not. Nor may you pace, for pacing irritates me. You may simply stand there where you are and — listen — to-me!'

Never in his life had Dragosani been spoken to like that. It took the wind right out of his sails. He looked as if someone had slapped him. 'Gregor, I — ' he began again.

'What?' Borowitz roared. 'Gregor, is it? This is business, agent Dragosani, not a social call! Save your familiarity for your friends — if you've any left, with that snotty manner of yours — and not for your superiors. You're a long way off taking over the branch yet, and unless you get certain fundamentals sorted out in your hot little head you may never take it over at all!'

Dragosani, always pale, now turned paler still. 'I… I don't know what's got into you,' he said. 'Have I done something?'

'You, done something?' now it was Borowitz's turn to scowl. 'According to your work sheets very little — not for

the last six months, anyway! But that's something we're going to remedy. Anyway, maybe you'd better sit down. I've quite a lot of talking to do and it's all serious stuff. Pull up a chair.'

Dragosani bit his lip, did as he was told.

Borowitz stared at him, toyed with a pencil, finally said: 'It appears we're not unique.'

Dragosani waited, said nothing.

'Not at all unique. Of course we've known for some time that the Americans were fooling about with extra sensory perception as an espionage concept — but that's

all it is, fooling about. They find it "cute". Everything is "cute" to the Americans. There's little of direction or purpose to anything they're doing in this field. With them it's all experimentation and no action. They don't take it seriously; they have no real field agents; they're playing with it in much the same way they played with radar before they came into World War Two — and look what that got them! In short, they don't yet trust ESP, which gives us a big lead on them. Huh! That makes a nice change.'

'This is not new to me,' said Dragosani, puzzled. 'I know we're ahead of the Americans. So what?'

Borowitz ignored him. 'The same goes for the Chinese,' he said. 'They've got some clever minds over there in Peking, but they aren't using them right. Can you imagine? The race that invented acupuncture doubting the efficacy of ESP? They're stuck with the same sort of mental block we had forty years ago: if it isn't a tractor it won't work!'