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'Maybe,' Jake snapped. 'But on my terms!'

'Well now it's on my terms/ Trask growled. 'Or E-Branch's terms/ Then he relaxed a little, looked less severe, and said, 'Okay, I'll tell you. It was a test. Oh, it served its purpose, too, but it was nevertheless a test. And you both pa.s.sed it. We saw enough tonight - enough happened - to convince us we were right/ 'About me?' Jake said.

'About both of you/ Trask replied. 'Liz did her thing, and we all saw Trennier's reply. She sent and he received - and he reacted!'

'Did he ever!' said Liz with a shudder. 'But you're the one who told me to taunt him/ Trask nodded and said, 'And you made a d.a.m.n good job of it, too, and satisfied our best expectations. So, if you still want in, welcome to the club. You're one of us. And having seen what you've seen - even with what little we've allowed you to learn - we've no doubt but that you'll join us. So that's that. And in any case you have time to think about it/ 'And do I have time to think about it, too?' Jake said testily. 'If so you can have my answer right now. It's no, I'm out/ Trask frowned, narrowed his eyes, and said, 'Well, that's a d.a.m.n shame because you don't have a choice. And that's because you, too, did your thing tonight. Something I haven't seen the likes of in, oh, fi ve ye ars. And when I did last see it ... it was in another world, a vampire world, Lardis's world/ Jake looked at the three men in turn - Trask, Goodly, Lardis Lidesci, the way they looked back at him: sincere, serious, speculative? - and shook his head in mock despair. 'I've been telling myself that it's all a dream, one from which I'll soon be waking up/ he said. Then his voice hardened. 'But it isn't and I won't - not from any dream of mine, anyway. This is your dream, your f.u.c.king nightmare, and I've had it up to here!'

'Oh no, this is everyone's nightmare/ Trask told him, and then pressed on: 'But which part do you think is a dream,

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Jake? The strange work we do, or the fantastic thing that you do?'

'I don't do anything!' Jake turned on him, and for a moment looked like he might hit him. 'It just ... it just happens.' He clenched his fists, unclenched them, stood lost for words.

Trask shook his head. 'But things don't "just happen", Jake,' he said. 'They happen for reasons. And we've got to figure out why they're happening to you.' He turned to lan Goodly. 'Do we have his file?'

The precog nodded, swung his chair to a filing cabinet set in a se ction of the oval desk, took out a slim folder and handed i t over. There were chairs that folded into the walls. Trask let one down, sat in it, and invited the others to do the same. Then he opened the file. And: 'Jake Cutter ...' he began. But Jake's voice was harsh as he interrupted: 'Do you intend to to read it all? Even the nasty bits? With a woman present?' The others had taken chairs, but he was still standing.

'Brief details,' Trask said, staring up at him. 'Why do you ask?

Is there something you're ashamed of?'

'What has that got to do with it?' Jake blurted. 'That's my life you're holding in your hands. It's private - or it used to be.'

'The newspapers didn't think so.' Trask didn't even blink.

'h.e.l.l, no, they didn't!' Jake said. 'They held me one hundred per cent responsible for my "crimes!" And do you intend to detail those, too? Is this how you're going to keep me in line, working for you, for E-Branch: by holding a b.l.o.o.d.y axe over my head every time I voice an opinion or refuse to cooperate?'

Trask shook his head. 'That has nothing to do with it. The object of the exercise is to get to the root of your talent. As for your so-called "crimes" ... it's the opinion of this Branch that you don't have too much to be ashamed of.'

For a moment Jake was taken aback, but then he said, 'What if I don't much care about the opinion of this Branch?'

'But you do,' said Trask. 'You believe in justice, and you couldn't get any. So you provided your own rough justice, which was just a little too rough for our modern society. In E- Branch, Jake, we understand rough justice. It's sometimes the only kind that will fit. And we were taught by an expert, someone who believed in an eye for an eye almost as much as you do. Well, now we wonder if that's all you have in common with him, or if this talent of yours is something else. And what's more, there might even be other talents. We want to explore that possibility, too - indeed, every possibility - and you can help us or hinder us. In which case ... eventually we'd be obliged to give up on you. And there's still an e mpty cell waiting for you, remember?'

Jake's hard-frozen sh.e.l.l was coming apart now. Not his resolve but the icy sheath that covered it, without which he wouldn't have been able to face his own atrocities. For that was how he secretly viewed some of his past deeds, as atrocities. Everyone else had seemed to think so, anyway. Yet in his heart, still Jake believed that what Ben Trask had said was right: sometimes an eye for an eye was the only way. And suddenly Jake found himself believing everything else that Trask was telling him, that E-Branch really d id care and was on his side. It was just that it had been such a long time since anyone was on his side.

And now Trask was saying, 'So can we get on?'

Jake drew a chair out from the wall, sat down heavily and said, 'Why do I get this feeling this isn't a con? You're what they call a human lie-detector, right? Well, Mr Trask, if you ask me, I'd say your talent works both ways! I get the impression that you really do want to help me, even if it's only so I can help you ...' Trask actually smiled th en, and said, 'Jake, you're exactly r ight. I hate all lies and liars, and I instinctively know when something isn't true, isn't right. Don't ask me how, I just do.

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But it's equally hard for me to tell a lie as to listen to one. I just thought you might like to know that.'

Jake nodded and, feeling a little more in control now, said, 'Okay, so if you think there's ... something wrong with me and you can maybe fix it, I suppose I'd be a fool to object.'

Trask sat back and issued an audible sigh. 'Very well. But you have to understand. It's not that we think there's anything wrong with you, but that something may be right. From our point of view, anyway.'

And th en he returned to the file ...

'Your father was a USAF pilot,' Trask began. 'As a rookie, Joe Cutter served at an American airbase in southern England. That was where he met your mother, an English girl from a well-to- do family. Janet Carson's folks objected; they got married anyway; for a while Janet was a camp follower, living wherever Joe was based. Then you came along, doing your bit to stabilize a frequently stormy relationship ... well, for a little while, anyway.

But the marriage didn't last. Your father was too often away, and your mother ... took lovers.' Trask lifted his gaze from the file, looked at Jake. 'If this is too personal I can skip forward ... ?'

'You're doing okay/ Jake shrugged. 'Since my parents left me nothing in the way of great memories, what does it mat ter ?'.

And so Trask continued. 'Your mother had friends in what's called "high society." Eventually she married a French businessman, with whom she lived in St Tropez, until ... well, until she died five years ago.'

Again Jake's shrug, though not as careless as he might have tried to make it seem. 'It's nice in Nice,' he said.

'So as a baby you went to your British grandparents,' Trask went on, 'who were maybe a little on the wrong side of fifty to take on your upringing. As for your father: Joe Cutter died on aerial manoeuvres in Germany in 1995, piloting a way beyond its sell-by-date airplane known "affectionately" to its pilots as a "Flying Coffin." Joe was coming to the end

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of his service when it happened, and you were just fifteen years old ...

'You were an unruly kid, Jake. Too much money, courtesy of your then aging and indeed doting grandparents, too many opportunities to smoke "funny" cigarettes, and probably to try other "controlled" pharmaceuticals? Too much time on your hands, and nothing much to look forward to, not to your way of thinking at least. So you dropped out of school, spent some time with your mother in France; but she had quite a few bad habits of her own and wasn't a very good influence. And anyway, you didn't get on with her. You said you might join the Army and your grandfather was delighted. He said, "Excellent! The Brigade of Guards! The old school tie and all that, wot? Wot?" So you joined the Parachute Regiment because you wanted to jump out of airplanes! And in just two years you transferred to the SAS. Well, so much for parental guidance.

'When they kicked you out of the SAS your final report said you were incapable of taking orders. Also, and this is a d.a.m.ned strange thing for the SAS, the report said you were too much of a loner! This from an outfit that prides itself on self- dependence, or total independence! So there you were, five years ago: back to the good life, a life of luxury in the South of France, where you lived off your Ma's money.'

Jake shrugged, but he lo ok ed more than a little uncomfortable. 'Her second husband left her a packet,' he said. 'And her third was even richer. So why should I break my back workin g?'

'I'm not criticizing you, Jake,' Trask told him. Tm just pointing out what you were then, in order to find a comparison with what you later became in the eyes of society. Which is to say a criminal. More than that, a brutal murderer.'

'Now just you wait a minute!' Jake started to say, 'Didn't you tell me that you-' until Trask cut him off with: 'In the eyes of society, anyway. But society has been known to make the odd mistake here and there. And E-Branch ... well, we're sometimes called in to clean up the mess; though as often as not we just jump in feet first regardless. Very well, now we can get away from your story for a minute or so ...' And after a brief pause fie went on: 'For the last fifteen to twenty years - or even longer than that, indeed ever since the fall of Communism - Europe has been in one h.e.l.l of a mess. Recessions, revolutions, coups one after the other; nuclear black spots where Russian power-stations and weapons dumps are left rotting down to so much atomic rubble; little wars, and not so little wars left, right, and centre as nations take their revenge, engage in racial vendettas that should have been settled, probably would have been settled, a hundred years ago if Soviet expansionism and Communism hadn't called a temporary halt to them. Power struggles in political systems that are still sorting themselves out, in Rome and Moscow and elsewhere; ethnic cleansing in and around the Slavic and Baltic countries, and regular revolutions in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. Italian, French, and German governments coming and going as regular as the ticking of a clock, and lasting about the same length of time, never long enough to do anyone any good. And as for the Near and Middle East, Africa, the Orient .. / Trask sighed and shook his head. 'Have I painted a sufficiently gloomy picture?' And without waiting f or an answer: 'Well, thank G.o.d we're an island - England, I mean - and also that we've maintained and strengthened our ties with America and Australia. Because the rest of the world seems like no-man's-land. In a word, it's chaos.

'It seems an ideal scenario for the end of life as we know it, right? Even as I speak the depletion of the ozone layer continues, we're into yet another El Nifio - the fourth in fifteen years - and there's a rip-roaring plague spreading west out of an ideologically and financially exhausted China. But there are worse plagues than a new strain of the bubonic variety, believe me ...'

Again a brief pause, until: 'And so back to you,' Trask continued, staring at Jake.

'Your mother died of an overdose, left you some money-'

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'The money was about the only decent thing she ever did for me,' Jake nodded, his husky tone betraying his true emotions.

'-But you and money together spelled more trouble.' Trask chose to ignore the interruption. 'So maybe you didn't have too much going for you, you and your Ma - still her death affected you badly. You went on a long drinking spree in all the Mediterranean resorts from Genoa to Ma.r.s.eille, wrecked your car on the Italian Riviera; the paparazzi took your photograph during several fist-fights in Cannes. Also it's not at all unlikely that you returned to your drug-taking habits.'

'I never had much of a habit,' Ja ke told him. 'Oh, I tried just about every brand, that's true, but they only made me ill. Those "funny" cigarettes were about as bad as it ever got, and where I've spent the last three months even they were far too expensive. I'm used to my a.s.shole the shape and size I've al ways known it!' He looked at Liz and said, 'Sorry, but if you insist on being here ...'

She shook her head, answered, 'I'm not a child, Jake. After tonight I thought you'd know that much, at least.'

And Trask went on just as if no one else had spoken: 'Then you met a girl. There'd been women in your life - quite a few - but this one was something else. She was special.'

'This is the bit you can skip,' Jake told him gruffly. But: 'Unfortunately not,' Trask answered. 'If Liz is to be your partner, and the rest of E-Branch is to work with you, they'll need to know that you aren't quite the savage that the world - and probably you, too, Jake - thinks you are. They'll need to know you had your reasons.'

And Jake sat silently now, his head lowered ...

n

CHAPTER FIVE Jake's Story.

'Her name was Natasha,' Trask went on. 'And she was working for the Moscow Mafia. She was a courier for the Mob in the guise of a fashions artist, but in fact the only designs that interested her were the designer micro-drugs in her sports car's roll-bars. Natasha was also the Mob's collection agent and ferried lots of high-denomination francs and lire back to a vastly depleted Russian economy ... or rather, to the thugs who were in large part responsible for that depletion.'

Trask shook his head in disgust. 'G.o.d.' Hoods of the world, unite.' We thought it was over and done with when the Mafia took a couple of bad falls back in 1984 to '87. In America, the families really suffered. When Gotti went down everyone thought it was the end of that kind of corruption, at least in the USA. In Sicily, '87, nearly four hundred of these lizards were convicted of murder, extortion, graft, racketeering, prost.i.tution, you name it. Surely that was the end of it? Oh, really?

'But the Russian Mafia were just starting out, and with the collapse of the European immigration laws ten years ago and the removal of border controls on the continent ... well, as I said, thank the Lord that the UK's an island. We kept our border controls, our immigration laws, and for once we got it dead right. Even so, the illicit drugs trade is hard to beat and we're suffering our fair share, though not nearly as badly as the rest of the world.

And, of course, hard-core survivors of police activity and "old"

Mafia-style gang wars in Italy, Sicily and the States have formed liaisons with the ever more powerful Russian gangs, which means that, in common with the world's terrorist organizations, they're now pretty much integrated.

'Ma.r.s.eille has always had a big drug problem. The Riviera, with its jet-setters and high-roller socialites, has been drug-dealer heaven for a long, long time. Natasha Slepak's mobility - the routes she used - were several, but mainly she would fly from Moscow to Budapest and then drive down into Italy or over into France. Or she might use another route into France, driving into Genoa, then taking a yacht to the French Riviera. The Mob have contacts, keep boats, in most Italian sea ports.

'Jake met Natasha in Ma.r.s.eille. According to a statement he made later - much later - to the Italian police, she wanted out of the drugs business. She was being pestered for s.e.x by one of the Italian Mob's top men, one Luigi Castellano, a young Sicilian who ran the French side of the action from a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Ma.r.s.eille. Castellano was Natasha's top contact in France, and he was also the man she most feared and hated ...'

As Trask paused, Jake - who had been looking more and more agitated - burst out, 'If it has to be told, let me do the telling from here on in.' Trask pursed his lips, then nodded.

'We met in a bar,' Jake began. '

What you 've just heard is true: Natasha wanted out. But there was nowhere she could run, not on the Continent, anyway. No border controls; the Mob would find her wherever she went.

Maybe that's why she went for me - because I had British nationality - but that's only a maybe. I prefer to think ... well, otherwise. Anyway, we got on famously. For a couple of days I wined and dined her; she was a very good reason fo r staying sober, staying clean. We roomed at different hotels ... so I thought. But in fact she was staying at Castellano's villa, and all the time fending the b.a.s.t.a.r.d off! And she wouldn't come anywhere near my place. In short, she wasn't any kind of pushover. And I knew she was worried about something.

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'Eventually she told me just about everything. And all the time - all through our "romance," if you want to call it that - I was aware that she was being watched; even when I'd first met her, this tall guy had been watching from the shadows. I didn't tell her about it, but I knew I wasn't mistaken. Finally she told me why we couldn't be together. It was for my sake: she didn't want me to get into trouble.

'The time came when she said she'd have to be moving on. I knew I loved her, even though we'd known each other less than a week.

Maybe I needed someone to love. My mother was recently dead, and I guessed that at the rate I was burning myself up it wouldn't be too long before I'd be joining her. And now there was Natasha to fill a void I had never thought would exist, and I just couldn't see anything to stop us being together. But she could: the Mob.

So I asked her why shouldn't we go and tell her story to the local police, the Surete? She said they were in Castellano's pocket. So I said she should think about something: next time she'd be in Ma.r.s.eille, let me know beforehand and I would be there to take her out of it; to England where she'd be safe. Or comparatively safe, anyway.

And she said okay.

'So on our last night together I was in a pretty frustrated mood.

And wouldn't you know it? Her tail was there as always. I would know him anywhere: this tall man with his thin white face and dark eyes. But we had made our plans and the next time Natasha was in town would be the last time. She would come with me into England on a tourist visa, we'd get married, and she would stay on as my wife. It seemed more than likely she'd be lost to the Mob for good. So maybe she thought we should seal our pact. Or perhaps it was more than that; maybe she simply wanted to be with me on what would be our last night for some time to come.

'Anyway, she said yes, she would come back to my hotel with me. But there was no way I intended to have the tall fellow for company!