Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (10 page)

A string of six red-robed Hari Krishna types with shaved, bowed heads, beads galore, and their arms folded up their wide sleeves went single-file, in an almost mechanical pitter-patter shuffle, along the pavement. With their heads down like that - the way they seemed intent upon their own feet and moving with that rapid, rhythmic, apparently blind locomotion - it astonished Harry that they somehow managed to avoid collision with anyone or thing in their way! Their leader, and the one bringing up the rear, carried tiny golden bells that chimed in time to their precise, almost clockwork motion …

Except Harry wasn’t here as an observer of life but as a foil against death. Fine, but how to go about it? So he stood there undecided, until a young policeman of about his own age approached and said, ‘Best to get well away from the barriers, sir.

We’ll be clearing the whole street in a litle while.’

Harry looked him in the eye and said, ‘Look, some friends of mine -E-Branch people, Trevor Jordan and Darcy Clarke? - are helping you blokes out. Now, it’s possible you never heard of these people, but your seniors very definitely have. Since I fancy my friends are a lot closer to the action than I am right now, that’s where I need to be. So I’d be obliged if you would, wel, direct me? Where’s it al happening?’

Listening to Harry, the policeman had at first looked surprised; then his eyes had taken on a blank expression; now they went hard and his eyebrows came together in a frown. ‘E-Branch? Sorry, pal, but you’re right: I never heard of it.

Press, d’you mean? But in any case, and since it isn’t in my orders, I have to ask you to move on.’

The pavement was still alive with people. Harry pointed at them, saying, ‘What, just me? I mean … can’t you get this lot moving first? What about the Hari Krishna types?’

Now the young officer was really ruffled. His lips tightened and he said, ‘Look,
chummy,
we have to start somewhere and you’re it! So just leave out all the lip and move your backside out of here!’

Harry refused to display his annoyance. He simply nodded, conjured a Mobius door and stepped through it. He wasn’t there any more. The young officer started to say, ‘And if I can give you a word of advice and stopped short. He wasn’t speaking to anyone and people were starting to look at him. He turned a couple of stiff-legged, complete circles, looked for Harry and failed to find him, finally shuffled sideways into a shop doorway and out of sight…

The Necroscope emerged from the Mobius Continuum at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street, and knew that he must be pretty close to the venue. Policemen in uniform were everywhere, working frantically to clear the street. Glancing at his watch, Harry saw the reason why: it was 10:16. If indeed a bomb had been planted, it was due to explode in something less than nine minutes’ time.

Caught in a crush of people being shepherded down Regent Street, he stepped to one side and looked about. Then, just as he was about to be caught up again, he spotted Trevor Jordan on a traffic island in urgent conversation with two uniformed senior policemen. Sidestepping the cordon, he ran towards Jordan, shouting, Trevor, can I be of help?’

Jordan saw him and quickly spoke to the inspectors; one of them waved off a policeman who was hot on Harry’s heels. And as he skidded to a halt, Harry was apologetic. ‘I … just thought it might be a good idea to be in on this,’ he gulped.

Jordan shrugged and said, ‘Right now I don’t see what you can do, but since you’re here …’ He shrugged again. Jordan was the easy-going sort generally, but it was obvious from his tone of voice that in the current situation he saw the Necroscope as an encumbrance. There weren’t any dead people to talk to here … not just yet, anyway.

A seasoned if occasionally variable telepath, Jordan was thirty-two years old. His looks fitted his character precisely: he
was
usually transparent, open as a favourite book. It was as if he personally would like to be as readable to others as they were to him; as if he were trying to make some sort of physical compensation for his metaphysical talent. His face reflected this attitude: oval, fresh, open and almost boyish. He had lank mousy hair falling forward above grey eyes, and a crooked mouth that straightened out whenever he was worried or annoyed. Mostly, people liked him; having the advantage of knowing it if someone
didn’t
like him, Jordan would simply avoid that person. But, rangy and athletic, it was a mistake to misread his

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obvious sensitivity; there was plenty of determination in him, too.

Harry asked him: ‘Is this where it will happen?’ He scanned all about, trying to work out what was going on.

In his time (just seventeen months ago), the Necroscope had been the author of a considerable amount of bombing of his own, but he told himself that that had been different and even necessary. Or was it all in the eye of the beholder? Well, maybe, except this wasn’t a nest of mindspy thugs and megalomaniacs in some nightmare-riddled chateau in the USSR, but a busy thoroughfare in the heart of London. The people who could get involved, hurt, killed here, were innocent of any crime other than being here. And there were still far too many of them.

A flood of shoppers was even now issuing from stores both east and west, adding to the crushes down Regent, Portland and New Bond Streets. And police activity had grown even more urgent. There were dog-handlers, with sniffers straining at their leads; loudhailers boomed to left and right, issuing raucous instructions; motorists were leaving their blocked-in cars and hurrying on foot in what they hoped was the safest direction.

‘Chaos!’ Harry said, guessing that Jordan hadn’t answered his question because he didn’t know.

The name of the game, sir,’ one of the police inspectors harshly answered. The three “D”s. To cause as much disruption, death and destruction as inhumanly possible. Chaos, yes. But if you’re with Mr Clarke’s Branch - and if this is new to you - where’ve you been?’

‘Oh, places,’ Harry looked at him in a certain way of his, and was glad that Alec Kyle had been the sort who kept himself to himself. And turning to Jordan: There are only six minutes left, and people all over the place!’

But Trevor Jordan wasn’t listening. He was half-collapsed in the back of a squad car parked on the traffic island, with a pained expression on his face and his hands to the sides of his head. The policemen looked at each other, went to question him. Harry stopped them, saying, ‘He’s at work. Leave him.’

The police cordon in Regent Street had let a car through the crush. It slewed across the road, bumped up onto the traffic island alongside the squad car. And Darcy Clarke got out. He saw Harry at once and began to protest, ‘Jesus, Harry—!’

But the Necroscope had gone down on one knee beside Jordan, who was muttering: ‘It’s … it has to be … Sean!’

‘Scan?’ Harry gripped his shoulder, stared hard into his squeezed-up face.

‘Sean Milligan,’ Darcy hissed in Harry’s ear. ‘He’s one of their best, or worst!’

‘Armed,’ Jordan gasped. ‘And with more than just a bomb! He … he hasn’t primed it yet. Too many police around.

Sean knows he’ll be

spotted, knows they’ll get him. He’s thinking of… of creating a diversion. Yes, that’s it, a diversion!’ Jordan’s eyes blazed open.

‘Oh, fuck!
Now
he’s primed it!’

‘Primed!’ Darcy snapped at the two officers, who at once turned away and began speaking into walkie-talkies. Up on the roof of a building, Harry caught the glint of metal as a marksman took his position behind a parapet.

‘Primed, yes … ” Jordan’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut again, and sweat rivered his face. ‘And he’s set the timer for … just one and a half minutes!’

‘God!’ Darcy was trembling; he looked like he might make a run for it, which told him - and Harry Keogh - a lot.

Trevor,’ the Necroscope spoke softly. ‘With only ninety seconds left, Sean has to be on the move. Which way’s he heading?’

But Darcy Clarke babbled, ‘Oh, I can tell you that!’

And Harry continued to speak to Jordan: ‘Has he still got the bomb?’

‘Yes!’Jordan’s gasped answer, as he squeezed his temples more yet. ‘But he knows he must get rid of it, and now!

Jesus, fifteen pounds of semtex!’

‘Christ!’ Darcy suddenly yelped. ‘Let me in the car. I’ve got to get
out
of here!’ He made to scramble for his car, tripped and went sprawling across the back of the police vehicle.

And it happened. A tal thin man with a pale, badly pock-marked face, wearing a loosely flapping overcoat and carrying a sausage-shaped holdall, came at a run down the middle of the road. Jordan looked up, saw him, yelped: ‘Sean!’ And the recognition was mutual. Not that Milligan recognized Trevor Jordan, but seeing the squad car, the senior policemen, and three civilians all grouped on the traffic island - and all staring at him - he did know that he’d been made.

The right-hand side of his coat went back and the snout of an ugly, short-barrelled machine-pistol swung into view.

Harry sensed hasty movement on a roof, the re-alignment of a weapon; Milligan sensed it, too, and the gun in his hand swept up, his thin lips drew back, and both he and his machine-pistol snarled their abuse! Bullets chewed the high parapet of the building, causing the marksman up there to duck down out of sight. And over the chatter of Milligan’s gun, Harry heard Jordan cry out:

‘Getaway! He’s looking for the getaway car!’

Milligan was maybe forty feet away, pointing his gun here, there, everywhere, trying to choose a main target. A secondary crowd of people had come bursting out of a large store onto the street, but they weren’t a threat to the IRA man. On the other hand, the sausage-shaped holdall in his hand was definitely a threat to them. And it was rapidly becoming one to Sean Miligan, too.

As the Necroscope glanced again at his watch and saw that there was

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something less than a minute to go, two things happened. Darcy Clarke had finally got into his car, started the motor, and was making to drive away. His car had just lurched off the traffic island onto the street when a second car, low, dark, fast and mean, came careening through a traffic barrier in a tangle of twisted metal. The two vehicles collided; Darcy’s car was thrown back onto the traffic island and the rogue car glanced off, smashed through a pair of bollards, mounted the kerb and nose-dived through a store window. Scan Milligan wouldn’t be making his getaway after al.

He knew it, and it was time to apply the crazed logic of the total terrorist. The sniper on the roof couldn’t get off a shot at Sean because of the people on the street; Sean had to get rid of his holdall in the next twenty seconds and then make one hell of a run for it, but first he had to get these people out of his fucking way and he couldn’t shoot them all. He aimed his gun at the parapet hiding the sniper, pulled the trigger and stitched the wall of the building with a tracery of bullets. Then, as the milling people scrambled for cover, Sean chose his target. Not so difficult, for there was only one target after all: the City Centre itself, and what could only be a bunch of top-ranking officials and police officers.

By now he should have been shot dead, and he knew that, too. Which meant there were no armed policemen on the ground in the immediate vicinity. So maybe he stood a slight chance after all… (/there was still time.

Panting, sweating, cursing, he ran towards the group on the traffic island and, pivoting like a discus-thrower, whirled the holdall. Which was when he saw Harry Keogh. Harry had come forward onto the road, putting himself between his friends and Sean Milligan. Still pivoting, preparing to release his deadly missile, Sean let rip with a burst of wild fire from his gun.

Harry had guessed how the other would react; he’d already conjured a Mobius door between himself and Milligan.

Stray bullets ripped past him, but Scan’s arc of fire was restricted by the door, which no one else but the Necroscope could see. The main stream of bullets crossed the threshold and passed right out of this universe. While up on the roof, the sniper finally had Milligan in his sights and fired one hurried shot.

Hit in the hip, the IRA man tripped and went flying. Him and his holdall both, flying right in through Harry’s door!

And the Necroscope knew what he must do. If he simply collapsed the door there’d be questions, because people just don’t vanish into thin air like that. But Harry had a picture in his mind that he couldn’t shift, which told him how it must be. And with only three seconds to go, he tilted the door on its side.

His mind wrestled with the alien, metaphysical math of the thing … and won! And as if the invisible door’s top edge were hinged, it swung

upwards through ninety degrees into the horizontal. And the Necroscope hurled himself backwards away from it as it blew!

Fifteen pounds of semtex in the Mobius Continuum, a place where even thoughts have weight, and a spoken word can be deafening. And only the frail however savage shell of a human body to take the blast. With one exception it was exactly as it had been during that split-second of precognition in Darcy’s Clarke’s office; the exception was sound. For even though the Continuum acted as a baffle, still there came the subdued roar of the explosion, as the immaterial frame of the door buckled and warped and finally blinked out of existence.

But not before the Continuum had rid itself of a hideous contamination, and a jet of wet red stinking human debris had erupted like a volcano, flinging the guts and brains and shit and shattered bones of a man up and outwards against the high walls and windows of the street.

And then the slimy, spattering rain, that smelled of cordite and copper and many a crime corrected …

It was over but as yet the street was still and strangely silent. Street-cleaning vehicles had been ordered-up and were on their way; somewhere in the near-distance police and ambulance sirens wailed their unmistakable dirges; a handful of unfortunate uniformed officers were picking up … whatever pieces were large enough to be gathered off the street. A man, staggering and bloody, was being led away from a shattered store window, where the rear of his car stuck up at an odd angle.