E-Branch took no chances.

'What next?' Jake jerked his head to indicate the scene of recent devastation. 'For this place, I mean?'

Liz shrugged. 'The mine's sealed, there are no life signs.

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Tomorrow the sun will come up and scorch the bluff clean.

Maybe they'll bulldoze the surface and dynamite the ramp, eventually. But there's no real hurry now. The main man was Bruce Trennier, as yet only a lieutenant but a would-be Lord.

If he had got away ...' Again her shrug. 'Tomorrow they'd be back to tracking him down again. As it is, the operation was a complete success.'

'And this was the first time you've seen this kind of action?'

Jake slipped the 'Rover into third, let gravity draw them down the dusty ramp. 'How come you know so much more about this stuff than I do?'

Liz tossed her hair back. 'I've had a little time to study what they do - the Branch, I mean - and I'm "aware" of my own talent, which makes their talents so much more acceptable.

Once you begin to realize that all the weird stuff is real, it's not so difficult to believe the weirdest stuff of all.'

But Jake only wondered, And that's a good, thing- to actually believe in all ofthisPEut still it was hard to deny his own five senses.

a.s.suming they were his own, of course.

Down on the level, he turned onto the old road. A quarter-mile ahead, Trask's tail lights glowed red. 'I still can't accept that we were simply thrown in at the deep end,' Jake said.

'It was a test, as Trask told you,' Liz answered. 'I guess he knew that once we'd actually experienced it, gone up against the plague itself... well, that we really would accept it.' 'So why don't I?' Jake wanted to know. For a while she was silent, letting the wind blow her hair back, breathing the night air.

Then she said, 'Jake, about your story tonight, in the Ops Room. There are terrible experiences, and there are terrible experiences. There are monsters and monsters, and I don't know which ones are the worst. But your life has been one of extremes. Maybe if mine had been messed with as much as yours, I'd start to wonder what was real, too. But this talent of yours, that's really something else. I mean, what you did tonight was-'

'-Wasn't me!' he said sharply, cutting h er off. And with a shake of his head: 'I can't explain it any better than that.'

'Try,' she said. 'If we are to be partners, surely you can try?

Look, this isn't something I suggest lightly - the Branch has its own internal code of conduct for espers, telepaths, empaths and such - but if you'll just let your thoughts flow free, I'll...'

'You'll what?' he looked at her. 'Read my mind? See if I'm as messed up as you suspect? Well, I probably am. Probably have been ever since ... since Natasha died. The way she died.' Then he sighed and relaxed a little. 'On the other hand you could be right. My life las been a mess, and fate seems bent on s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g me around more than my fair share. So is it any wonder I have a problem sorting out what's real from what's fantasy? And as for E-Branch,' Jake shook his head wonderingly. 'Gadgets and ghosts - yeah!'

'And they want you for one of their gadgets/ she said.

'Huh!' he answered. 'Maybe one of their ghosts, if things had gone wrong tonight!'

'You've changed the subject,' Liz accused. 'Look, back in the Ops Room you started to tell your story. A good start, but you didn't nearly tell it all. Now me, I'm a h.e.l.l of a listener.

And right now, right here, there's just the two of us.'

'Oh really?' he said. 'A good listener - and bloodthirsty with it? Like one of those things we destroyed tonight?'

'That's not fair,' Liz answered. 'And that's not the part that interests me.' She gave a little shudder. 'I mean, I know you killed all of those men-'

'No, not all of them,' Jake said, coldly. 'Castellano and one other, they've still got it coming.'

'-And that your methods were ... extreme, but that's not what I'm talking about. I've heard Ben Tras k going on about the way you use what he calls the Mobius Route. That's your talent, right, Jake? It's how you moved us to safety back at the lair.'

He nodded, growled, 'And that's what I keep trying to tell you.

It's not mine! It's like - I don't know - somebody else?

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if Someone who gets into my head, anyway. Someone who's living in there like a b.l.o.o.d.y squatter. Trask keeps men tioning this Harry Keogh. Well who is this Keogh? Some kind of telepath? And if so why is he so d.a.m.ned keen to mess with my mind? Why not pick on someone else, someone more receptive. No, I can't see it. Maybe it's a part of me that this me - I mean the real me - doesn't recognize. Like I'm a ... a split personality or something? G.o.d, maybe I really am crazy!'

He banged on the steering wheel with the flats of his hands, stamped his feet and set the Landrover to swerving.

Liz gave him time to cool down, then said, 'Jake, how can I get through to you? This isn't just for me, nor even for Ben Trask or his people; it's mainly for you. I wish you'd tell me about it: how you escaped from jail and all, and ended up with E- Branch. I know it happened, but not how it happened. So what do you say? Will you tell me?'

And he knew she wouldn't let it go until he did ...

'I got sloppy,' Jake began. 'When I killed the third and last but one of Castellano's men - of the men who had been present at the villa that night - it was a sloppy job. A case of famil iarity breeding contempt?' Glancing at Liz, he shook his head.

'I would really hate to think so; hate to admit that I was getting used to it. But who can say? Maybe I was at that.

'Anyway, he was an Italian and I killed him in Italy. And I got caught there, too. Maybe they were waiting for me. After all, I had been working down a list, like a serial killer, you know?

Of course, Castellano must by then have made the connection - must have figured out that this wasn't just another gang war-and it's possible he had tipped off the authorities, the police. When I thought it out, it was even possible he'd sent that last victim out of France to put distance between himself and me! If so, then I'd actually managed to get to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d - I'd worried him considerably - which felt very good. But in any case: 'I was tried and convicted in Italy, and there was no hope of extradition. Having dual nationality - English and French - only made the legal side of it even more tangled, complicated, hopeless. And to put the cap on it, current European law made it imperative that I was tried "in the country where the crime was committed for any serious offence against nationals of the said country". Well, you can't get any more serious than murder, which was their term for what I'd done, even if I called it an act of justice! And finally, if found guilty - which of course I was - I would have to serve out my time in that same country.

'That's why I think it was Castellano who set the trap for me, and baited it with his own man. Castellano's a Sicilian, or an Italian if you like. And it's like Trask says: the gangs are highly organized now - computerized, integrated and all - and as always they have their fingers in every pie.

'So, why do you reckon this b.a.s.t.a.r.d thug would want me in an Italian jail? Obviously, it was one of those pies in which he had a finger! Jake Cutter was a dead man. If not immediately, then soon.

'But to me the h.e.l.l of it was I'd never been able to get a sniff of Castellano himself. The villa in Ma.r.s.eille was always guarded to the hilt, and if he'd everleft it... well, I certainly didn't know about it. How could I? I still didn't - still don't - even know what he looks like. This is one secretive son of a b.i.t.c.h! But I will find him one day, and when I do ...'

'But not while you're working for E-Branch,' Liz broke in. 'The one thing you mustn't do is compromise the Branch. They're your protection, Jake. And you've got to remember: Trask is the only thing standing between you and a return visit to that cell in ... where?'

'In Torino,' Jake answered. 'Turin, where they're alleged to have found The Shroud, and where I was being fitted for one! I tell you, Liz, there were some hard men in that jail. It took me maybe - oh, twenty-four hours? - to figure out that I wasn't getting out in one piece. The looks, the nudges, the winks. But what I said earlier about the size of my... er, you know what, that wasn't true;

84.

could have been but wasn't. No one came sidling up to me offering their protection for a little b.u.g.g.e.ry on the side; I guess because the word had gone out that I couldn't be protected, and that anyone who tried it might well need some protection himself.

'And there were a couple of narrow squeaks. Knife fights I wasn't involved in to start with, that I somehow got involved in. And once in the prison hospital - I was in for abdominal bruising and a suspected fractured rib... yes, another one - when someone tried to inject me with a hypodermic full of human s.h.i.t... 'Anyway, I'd been in there for eleven weeks when this guy - just a guy, no one sinister, I thought, but someone who probably pitied me - got me on my own and told me that it was coming. And when it was coming. I had a week to live, he said. And no good going to the prison staff; they were in on it, and the governor was a man who knew which side his bread was b.u.t.tered.

'Then a funny thing. This same little fellow said he was working in the machine shop. He gave me a rough key - just a strip of metal, really - showed me how to make an impression of the lock on my cell. This was an old, old prison, Liz. Not like the home from home you'll find in a lot of modern English jails. Anyway: "You take the impression," he said, "and I make finish the key."

'So what was in it for him? He already had his own key, he said, and a plan. But he couldn't do it on his own. And he figured I might be just desperate enough to go along with him.

Oh, he supposed I had seen those old prison movies - of the double double-cross kind? - but hey, it was his life, too, wasn't it? Did I think he was suicidal or something? So maybe he was, but he'd got one thing right at least: I was desperate enough.

'Okay, my reasons for wanting to escape were plain enough: I wanted Castellano dead, and couldn't do it from inside where my own life seemed destined to be a pretty short one. But what about my new-found friend's reasons?

'Apparently it was for a woman. "A dear old friend of mine, he f.u.c.king my Maria," he told me, grinning emotionlessly. "The last man who did that, he dead ... is why I in here. This time I going f.u.c.k loth of them, Maria, too. After that I not care.'

'Funny thing is, I understood him well enough. Just didn't realize how far he'd go to clear this little matter up, that's all.

'Came the night. We got out into the exercise yard way too easy and I felt it was all wrong, all fixed. But it was far too late to go back and lock myself in ... and what if I was simply being paranoid? I mean, this was my one last chance. It was his one chance, too, this bald, scrawny little Italian murderer who made the keys.

'His plan was simple: he had a length of chain he'd welded hooks to. Between us and freedom there was a twelve-foot wall, barbed-wired at the top. He was a little guy ; he would get on my back, use his chain like a grapnel to grab at the barbed wire. He'd tried it in the workshops and it worked. By G.o.d, it also worked out there in the exercise yard!

'So Paolo scrambled from my shoulders up the chain, took a prison blanket from around his neck and tossed it over the barbed wire, which his weight had pulled flat. He balanced himself u p the re with a leg over the wall, stretched out a hand for me. But when I was on the chain and as I was reaching for his hand ...

he withdrew it! And I saw his eyes, looking beyond me into the night. I glanced over my shoulder, saw them: 'Prison guards, armed and taking aim! I looked up at Paolo, his face staring down at me. "I sorry, Jake," he shrugged. "But they promise me ..." And then, cutting him short, the crack! of a rifle shot...'

Jake paused, swerving to avoid a pothole, and Liz took the opportunity to ask: 'Is that when it happened? When you ... moved?'

He shook his head. 'Not quite. But Liz, you know how they say you don't hear the one that kills you? Well, it's true. I know because I heard the bark of that first shot, but I didn't feel a thing. Paolo, on the other hand ... his blood splashed me as his right eye turned black. Then he was falling, and taking me with him.

86.

It was only a few feet, but with him on top of me I hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Just as well because there was more shooting, shouting, the flash of bullets sparking where they spanged off the wall.

'That's when it happened. But exactly what happened ... I don't know to this day. And something very weird: if you don't hear the one that kills you, how about seeing it? I mean, did you ever hear of anyone actually seeing a bullet in flight? Of course not; and please, no cracks about phoney stage magicians who catch them in their teeth!

'Yet I saw ... something. A flash of fire from a ricochet? It could be. But it didn't look like fire. It was tiny, bright, and it came came right at me - at my head - and couldn't have missed me. If it had been a bullet, then I was dead ...

'... But it wasn't, couldn't have been, and I only thought I was dead.' Liz nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. Because for a moment, as Jake had finished speaking, she had received a vivid impression of something alien to all science and knowledge, something from outside. She'd 'seen' his meeting - his confrontation? - with what he'd described. A transitory thing, it came and went, like a bright flash of fire reflecting from the surface of his mind ... or still burning in his mind?

'That was when you did it/ she said hoa.r.s.ely, and cleared her throat. 'That was when you moved, took the Mobius Route.'

'There was an indescribable darkness,' Jake told her. 'More than darkness, a nothingness. It was death; I mean I thought it was death, for what else could it be? But I was drawn into and through it, towards a point of light.'

'A typical out-of-body experience,' Liz said. 'A near-death experience, as certain survivors are supposed to have known it.

The Light, which you refused to enter.'

But Jake shook his head. 'Refused nothing; I had no choice; I was dragged right in! But suddenly there was gravity, weight, and I'd been struggling with the darkness - whatever it was - and the wrong way up. I emerged upside down, fell, smacked my head against something ... a desk, as it turned out. So you see, the second bout of darkness wasn't nearly so drastic. I was merely unconscious. Or about to be.

'Anyway, even as I pa.s.sed out I remember there were alarms going off, someone hammering at a door, a v oice shouting. Then nothing more.'

'Not until you came to at E-Branch HQ in London,' Liz said. 'That's where your talent had taken you: to Harry's Room...

sanctuary.'

He shook his head in denial. 'Not my talent. Oh, someone's, as it appears. Harry's, maybe? But not mine, Liz, not mine ...'

The radio crackled into life, Trask's voice saying: 'All call- signs, but especially Hunter One, this is Zero One. Maybe five miles up the road from here, the chuck wagon. Base camp, where we eat, drink and debrief. Those wit h beds i n the ops vehicle, use 'em. Tentage for the rest. Or should you prefer to stretch your legs you can put up your own tents and bivouacs. And Hunter One, I'll be wanting to speak to you. All acknowledge.'

'Hunter One, roger,' Liz answered into her handset. And in strict numerical order, coming through the hiss and crackle of static: 'Hunter Two, roger.'

'Hunter Three, roger,' and so on.

Jake shifted his position in the driver's seat, craned his neck, and glanced back along the dark, winding road through the ancient river valley. Back there, stretched well out, a handful of headlights made a lantern string in the night. And from dragonfly shapes on high came the steady, near-distant whup!

whup! whup! of powerful blades slicing the air, the occasional flickering beam of a searchlight.

'Five miles,' Liz said. 'Maybe seven or eight minutes. Will you tell me the rest of it while we still have time?'

89 88.

'The rest of it?' Jake was reluctant again. 'You still need convincing I'm crazy?'

'You're not crazy/ she said. 'Just troubled. Come on, Jake You ran away, escaped again, this time from E-Branch. What happened? How did that come about? Was it any different?'

He sighed and said, 'Once you stick your claws in you just don't let go, do you?'

'Or could it be that I'm simply fascinated?' she answered. And quickly added, 'Er, with your story, I mean.'

(Huh!']ake snorted, but he also angled his face a little, turned it away from her. Liz could have sworn that he was grinning and didn't want her to see. But that was a good thing.

'Okay,' she said. 'I'm fascinated, period. So now will you tell me the rest?'

'So you can report it to Trask, right? Well, I've got news for you: your boss - our boss - has already had this from me, oh, at least a dozen times. Don't you get it? I can't tell you what isn't there.'

'Then tell me what is,' she said.

Again Jake's sigh, before he succ.u.mbed to the inevitable. But then: 'Okay, this is how it was ...'

'When - or rather, where - I woke up, everyone was speaking English. I don't know what I thought. Oh, several things. A jangle of things, rattling around in my skull. Maybe, following injuries sustained in the failed jailbreak, I'd been extradited back to England after all. But what injuries? While it's true I was flat on my back with a sheet and blanket thrown over me, I didn't feel in any way injured. Also, I was in no way conscious of the pa.s.sage of any real tim e; it felt like snap!... I had been in Turin and now was here. So logically, while this wasn't the prison, it had to be a place somewhere in or near Turin.

As for the people, Trask and Co - they weren't jailers or even physicians. So if this place was a hospital, well, it wasn't like any I'd ever heard of! And they kept asking me a lot of nonsense questions, the silliest with regard to my ident.i.ty. "Who are you?" they all wanted to know. Huh! Who were they kidding?