E-Branch - Invaders Part 10

'London HQ, waiting,' the other nodded. 'Do you want him on- screen?'

'Put him up there/ Trask said, indicating a screen on the wall.

And the D.O. hit a switch.

As the other lights dimmed a little, the wall screen flickered into life and its picture quickly firmed up. This was the first time Jake had seen E-Branch's chief locator, David Chung. He was sm all, middle-aged, Orien tal as they come, and very serious-looking. And he was quite obviously highly intelligent. It was in his eyes just as it was in Trask's; a light behind them, shining out. But it was also in the high dome of his head. Jake didn't need advising of the extraordinary brain that was housed within. Chung's raven- black hair was thinning; there might even be a few strands of grey here and there. But his skin was clear and unwrinkled and his posture was ramrod-straight. He was sprightly, alert ... and excited, yes. That, too, showed in his eyes.

'Hi, David/ Trask greeted him with a smile - but in a moment got down to business. 'How did it go?' he said.

'Ben/ the other nodded, then immediately fixed his attention on Jake. And Jake could see that his curiosity was intense. But Trask had seen it, too. And: 'Save it/ he told the locator, his tone of voice carrying something of a warning. 'I suggest we deal with the other matter first.' And turning to the D.O.: 'Are we scrambled?'

'Yes/ the D.O. nodded.

And Chung said, 'All bad news, I'm afraid. It's as Greenpeace and the others suspected. In fact, it's worse then anyone suspected. The Russians are still doing it, but now it's where they're doing it. You know, if we'd had Anna-Marie English in on this we could have cracked it without even leaving the HQ?'

'I know/ Trask answered, his shoulders slumping a little. 'But we don't have her, and anyway she's happier where she is - G.o.d

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help us all! But is it really as bad as you make out? What, yet another treaty gone up in smoke - or nuclear pollution? I suppose you'd better put me in the picture, but not on-screen.

Let me have a printout.'

Chung spoke to someone off-screen, turned again to Trask. 'It'll take a few minutes. And later, when I've done a little checking, I'll also be sending you, er, a weather report? Some unexpected smog? But I'd like to check it out first and see if it's still hanging around, you know? Meanwhile, what about the other business?' His gaze switched however momentarily to Jake, then back to Trask.

Understanding Chung's 'coded' message, Trask gave a cursory nod and said, 'Do you remember what happened at E-Branch HQ when Nathan arrived in Perchorsk? I mean you personally? Do you remember how you proved his ident.i.ty, or his connection?'

Chung grinned, his excitement plainly in evidence. 'Do I remember? How could I ever forget? I'm way ahead of you, Ben.' And he held up a hairbrush, showing it to Trask and Jake.

'I wasn't sure you still had it.' Trask sighed his relief. 'It wasn't in Harry's Room; I had it searched immediately after Jake...

came visiting. But I knew that if you had it, it would be secure with your special items at the HQ. That's why I asked you to go and dig it out as soon as you got finished with what you were doing.'

Now the locator looked at Jake again and said, 'I suppose this is Jake Cutter?' He nodded a greeting. 'So why is he looking so - what, lost?'

Before Trask could answer, Jake leaned over him and said, 'I look so "what, lost," as you put it - though personally I'd prefer "stunned" - because no one has bothered to tell me what the f.u.c.k is going on! It's okay for E-Branch to put my life in jeopardy, set me in conflict with... I don't know - vampires? Mutated things? Alien invaders that live on the blood of human beings? - but totally out of the question to tell me what it's all in aid of. The human race, perhaps? Well, great! But since I'm a member, don't / have any rucking say in the matter?'

'Right first time,' said Trask. 'And on both counts. It's in aid of the human race, and no, you don't have any say in the matter.'

Chung saw now why the head of E-Branch was so cautious: as yet Jake Cutter knew very little. But Chung was already certain that Jake would have to know it all eventually. And so he said, 'That's fine for now, Ben. But if you're asking for my opinion, he'll have plenty of say in the not too distant future.'

Trask quickly held up his hand. 'We understand each other, and that's for the future - maybe. But don't say any more right now. Instead you can tell me about the brush.'

'Oh, it's active,' Chung said. 'Very definitely. Why, it's like a live thing in my hand even now!' He looked at the man's hairbrush - just a well-used wooden oval tufted with pig bristles, so me of them coming loose - and smiled. But alive? From what Jake could make out the brush was about as dead as ... as a piece of wood sprout ing pig bristles!

'So,' said Trask, speaking to Chung. 'Can I take it you're thinking that just like once before maybe something of - well, let's for now call him a on-friend of ours - has come back to us? But if so, come back from where? And in what form?'

'Absolutel y,' Chung answered - then sto pped smiling as the meaning of Trask's words sank in and he began to understand the other's caution. And: 'I think I see,' he said. 'So now we must ask ourselves whether or not it's beneficial. Is it here under the aegis of a friend, to help us, or is it here-?'

'-For something else,' Trask cut the locator short. And after staring at him for a long moment, he said, 'That's it for now, David. Stay there at the HQ. The chair's yours until we're all sorted out at this end. Okay?'

'Whatever you say,' Chung answered, his face once more inscrutable. And the D.O. blanked the screen ...

'What was all that about?' Jake queried the Head of E-Branch on the way to his tent. Trask had a 'room' in the Ops vehicle but

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preferred a little more s.p.a.ce. In keeping with his status, his tent was somewhat bigger than a bivouac.

'When we have a little light, I'll show you/ Trask said. 'Some of it, anyway. From which time on you'll need to be aware that you've signed the Official Secrets Act.'

'But I haven't.'' Jake said.

'But if you ever give me reason, I'll say you have,' Trask grinned his cold grin. 'And you'll have to anyway, eventually.'

Jake snorted, said, 'Could this mean you're actually going to let me in on some secret or other?'

'Sarcasm will get you nowhere,' Trask said. 'Except maybe in a whole lot of trouble.'

The camp wasn't far from the edge of a wa tering hole. Several large Australian night insects were fluttering, occasionally buzzing, through the smoky, flickering firelight. There were cl.u.s.ters of k.n.o.bbly, fat-boled trees of a type Jake didn't recognize; Trask's tent stood shaded by one of these, in comparative darkness.

Trask squeezed a rubber b.u.t.ton on a cable hanging outside the tent, and as a light glowed within he drew aside the canvas flap and a fine-mesh gauze fly screen to invite Jake in. Inside, a folding table supported Trask's briefcase, a bottle of liquor, and two gla.s.ses. There were folding chairs and a camp bed, and in a screened-off corner a portable toilet. Comfortwise it was better than a bivouac, certainly, but scarcely luxurious.

Trask sat Jake down, opened up his crammed briefcase, fumbled out a flat machine the size of a box of typing paper, and flipped a switch. The device whirred softly, and a slot opened in one end. Feeding Chung's printout into the slot, Trask said, 'It's enciphered, and this is a decoder.' 'Gadgets and ghosts,' said Jake.

'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 gri d 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, so uth 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.

Chern.o.byl 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 102.

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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? G.o.d, 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 a.r.s.e 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 j.a.panese 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 k new 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, Ja ke. 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!' 104 105.

'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 h.e.l.l 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? Shou ld I take you into my confide nce, 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 th at 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 sh aking a little out of you! G.o.d, can't you see you've got me going in circles?'

And Trask actually smiled as he slowly lowered his gun and put it away. 'Yes, I can see that,' he nodded. With which Jake got the idea.

'What ? Another b.l.o.o.d.y test?'

'To push you hard,'

Trask told him, 'and see what answered. You ... or something else.'

'Well, if I were you,' Jake said, 'I would have supposed it was something else!'

'But you're not me,' Trask told him. 'And you pa.s.sed. That leaves just one more test to go.'

'Then let's get it over with.'

'Not now, no.'

'When, then?'

'Tomorrow morning. I'm having a man flown in from Carnarvon on the coast. An expatriate Brit, and the best in his field.' 'What, yet another great "talent?"' Jake was still angry.

'Not the way you mean,' Trask shook his head. 'But he has talent enough, yes. Oh, and by the way: that's some temper you have, Jake. You said you might have shaken me? Well, you shook me all right. I thought you might actually attack me!'

Jake relaxed a little, grinned.

'I scared you?'

'I was scared I might have to shoot you, yes.'

But before that could start Jake off again, a voice called from outside the tent. 'Mr Trask? Phillips here. We have a bit of a problem.' A male figure stood silhouetted behind the gauze fly screen. Trask let him in, said: 'Shouldn't you be on your way to Carnarvon?'

'Would be/ said the other, 'if not for this problem. Its name is Peter Miller, and it won't get its ugly a.r.s.e out of my chopper!'

The speaker was small and young, and looked very hot, sticky, and agitated in his flyer's gear.