Trask spoke to Chung. 'What do you make of it?'
'He's up there, definitely,' said Chung. 'At this range I can't be mistaken. Mindsmog, and dense. But it's so steady — I mean, it registers like steady breathing, you know? — that at a guess I'd say he's asleep. Which at this time of day shouldn't come as a surprise. But Ben, hear me out: I think there's more smog than just his.'
Vampires!' said Trask, emphasizing the plural. 'Lieutenants? Thralls? How many?'
'Him, and maybe two others. I can't be sure. But they're weak, too weak to be lieutenants. Again I'm guessing, but I'd say they're raw recruits, thralls.'
Trask shook his head. 'It still feels wrong. Too easy. I have this feeling he knows about us, that this whole scenario is — I don't know — a lie?'
Chung shrugged, but not negligently. 'That's your department, boss. I can't help you.'
Trask gave himself a shake, tried to tell himself he was wrong. And anyway, there was nothing he could do about it now. Tonight was their window of opportunity, and it had been 'foreseen' by lan Goodly. So from now on it was all go, go, go.
'David,' Trask said. 'I won't be seeing you until I come in with Chopper One, after dark. Take care to stay tuned, old friend. And lead these people right to their target, right?'
'You've got it,' Chung answered, as the first car out of Xanadu sped in a cloud of dust past the lay-by and on down the often precipitous road.
'You'd better be on your way,' Chung nodded. 'Good luck, Ben.'
But then a strange thing. A car coming in the other direction, up the mountain road, pulled in sharply onto the lay-by's gravel surface and skidded to a halt.
The driver cursed out of his open window, said, 'Did you see that? If it wasn't for this lay-by I'd be over the fucking edge! I mean, God damn it to…!' He had been forced off the road by someone trying to overtake the lead cars in the exodus from Xanadu. 'What the fuck is going on up there?'
Trask stared hard out of his own vehicle's window at the speaker — at his angular, somehow spidery figure, that seemed crammed into the seat of his battered, blue-grey, Range Rover-styled vehicle — and for a moment knew a sensation of deja vu. The man wore an open-necked shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, and the way he crouched over the steering wheel like that, he had to be pretty tall.
Tall and spidery, and his vehicle was…
Trask stared harder, and the tall thin man stared back — but only for a moment. Then his eyes went wide and the back of his vehicle fishtailed as he slammed her in first, revved up, and slewed back out onto the road. And:
'Damn!' Trask shouted, getting out of his car as the dust of the other's departure drifted back to earth. 'Deja vu nothing! That car, and that man — they fit Liz Merrick's description of the watcher at the airport where we came in!'
Even as the suspect car had fishtailed out onto the road, so the SAS type with the guitar had yanked open the boot of the observation post's vehicle and hauled out an evil-looking piece of artillery. Quickly assuming a firing stance behind a stunted pine, he rested the rifle's long barrel on the gnarled stump of a branch. And sweeping the steeply snaking road, he made adjustments to the telescopic sights. Then:
'Mr Trask,' he shouted. 'Up there where the road zig-zags. I can take him out as he rounds that last bend. The range isn't too much, maybe five hundred yards, and this weapon is lethally accurate to fifteen hundred. That's to assume a stationary target, of course. But I'm qualified with this gun and won't miss. Once he's over that ridge, though, he's gone with the wind. You have maybe thirty seconds to think it over.'
Trask thought it over. He knew he was right — but what if he was wrong? What if the spidery man was an innocent? But then again, why had he taken off like that? And the look on his face — probably shock as he'd realized he was face to face with his master's enemy. In which case he'd be on his way to make report to Malinari even now. But if Trask was wrong… how to balance one life against the security of a world?
The man with the sniperscope yelled, 'He'll be coming into view any time now!'
And Trask thought: The die is cast. We've got Nephran Malinari trapped up there. He can't come out until sundown, and Lan Goodly has forecast shit and hellfirefor tonight, the night of the full moon. So what difference does this make one way or the other?
What was it that the precog was always saying — something about the future being as immutable as the past? 'What will be has been,' and all that? Yes, that was it… but it was always coupled with, 'There's no way of telling how it will be, that's all…'
Trask started towards the marksman's position, and in his mind's eye he saw the knuckle of the man's finger turning white on the trigger. As if that were some kind of invocation, the marksman called out, 'I have him in my sights now, Mr Trask.'
There was no time left, and Trask skidded to a halt shouting, 'Do it! Take him out!' But:
'Skit!' said the other. His finger went slack on the trigger, and beads of sweat sprang into being on his forehead. Letting his weapon slump, he said, 'Cars out of Xanadu, a fucking convoy! They were in my way, shielding him. Ordinary civilians. No way I was going to risk firing on them.'
Trask had been holding his breath. Now he let it out in a long 'Phew!3 and then said, 'Take it easy. It isn't your fault, and it wasn't meant to be. The future can be like that.'
'What?' said the other, relieved but frowning. 'Some kind of fatalism?'
'Forget it,' Trask told him. 'But tonight, if you see that car or its driver in the resort, then you can fire on them with all you've got. And ditto should they try to come back down out of there.'
Then it was time for a final word with Bygraves and Chung, before the downhill traffic got too heavy. Even now the thunder of fleeing vehicles was becoming deafening.
'It looks like our little scheme is going to work,' Trask told Bygraves. 'Stay on it, and when the traffic thins out flag down a car. See if you can get some idea of how many people are still up there. As for that fellow who slipped through our fingers a moment ago: don't let it worry you. I'll do the worrying for all of us. And anyway, what can he tell Malinari other than what he's already figured out for himself— or will figure out just as soon as he pops up from his hidey-hole?'
Then he turned to Chung. 'David, stay tuned. If that mindsmog gets active, starts moving about, let us know at once. But whether it does or doesn't, and unless something really drastic happens, we'll probably be going in as planned. Okay?'
After the WO II and Chung had nodded their understanding, Trask got back into the car with Jimmy Harvey and drove to the side of the road. There he waited for a break in the stream of traffic, gave a final wave and set off downhill.
The vast bulk of the exodus was still to come…
And in a Xanadu that would soon be empty of entirely human life, there were just three and a half hours of life-giving, or wn-life threatening, natural light left. Then the sun would dip westward, the shadows of the mountain range would lengthen, and Xanadu's lights would blink on one by one, holding the darkness and the long night to follow at bay.
Or at least, that was how it would be under normal circumstances…
It was some eighty miles back to the safe house. Along the way Jimmy Harvey radioed ahead to give the people back there their ETA. He also passed a brief, coded message concerning Liz Merrick's watcher, and likewise passed on the locator David Chung's expert opinion that Lord Nephran Malinari was indeed in Xanadu. At which the team at the safe house held a final o-group, then went into action to ensure that everything would be fully operational and ready for Trask on his return.
Radio messages went out. With the exception of the Xanadu observation post, the various SAS units began converging on the flying club where Chopper Two had been checked over, refuelled, and was warming up for the long flight to Gladstone. The other machine stood idle for the moment; its flight to Xanadu would be of much shorter duration. Meanwhile, in the harbour at Gladstone, a fully-fuelled coastguard vessel and pilot had gone on immediate standby. And every man who formed a part of the team was fully aware of the details of the job in hand…