But if only Malinari had had longer with the Foener woman. There had been so much more that he might have learned (such as the nature of their skills, these men of esoteric talents), and so very much more that he would have enjoyed… of that beautiful woman herself, perhaps, and not only her mind.
Well, too late for that now — too late from the moment he hurled her down that shaft into oblivion — but at least he had fathomed something of the dangers of this world. Especially the greatest danger of all, which was E-Branch.
And now they had found him… as he had known they would, against which inevitability he'd long since taken ingenious and even marvellous precautions.
On a board bolted to the wall close to Malinari's 'window' (which was simply a large hole in the moulded concrete facade), a master switch stood in the 'off position beside a series of smaller electrical switches set in a roughly oblong array. The array was a precise match for Xanadu itself, its concentric pattern of switches duplicating the cobweb design of the resort in the gloom of the mountain saddle.
Now, waiting there in his secret bolthole, Malinari threw the master switch. There was a low, answering hum of power, but nothing more. And his slender fingers were impatient where they fluttered over the smaller switches — those electrical messengers of instantaneous death — as he gloatingly rehearsed a certain sequence:
'First the outer chalets, to close them in. Then the inner structures, to catch them where they run. And when finally they think they have me "trapped" in my night-dark dome…' His hand trembled with pent anticipation over the central switch.
'A pleasure dome, aye. But for my pleasure, not theirs!'
He laughed a coughing laugh, long and low… then paused abruptly. Down there, coming into view along the approach road toward Xanadu's gates: a vehicle. The night was dark now — but night and darkness were Malinari's greatest allies — and that vehicle with its lowered, carefully probing lights; the coiled-spring tension in its vengeful passengers!
Malinari sensed it, their human bloodlust — or what passed for bloodlust in men — and laughed again. Bloodlust? Why, Nephran Malinari had pissed thicker blood than coursed through the veins of whelps such as these!
And with his telepathic probes concentrating on the vehicle, he felt what its occupants felt:
Fear, of the Great Unknown that was Malinari. Oh, he recognized and relished it! Primal fear of the night and what the night might bring, its roots burrowing like worms in every human fibre, revenant of cavern-dwelling ancestors. Fear in the face of an alien threat, the menace of the blood-beast!
But tempering the fear, holding it at bay, there was also a wall of grim determination. And bolstering that blind determination, the sure knowledge of vastly superiorfirepower.
Oh, really…?
And again Malinari laughed, but a second later hissed and grimaced, and clasped his handsomely alien head in wildly trembling hands. It was the pain — those lightning-flashes of terrible pain which ever accompanied any excessive use of his mentalism — the pain that came from searching out or listening to the thoughts of so many others, and of suffering the tumult of their massed emotions, their thronging dreams and fancies. For weirdly mutated minds were gathering here now, and the greater their talents the more piercing the pain in his head.
Cursing vividly, in the tongue of Starside, Malinari swiftly withdrew his probes. And as the pain receded, so he relaxed a little and gave vent once more to strained, broken laughter.
But strained? And broken?
He had thought often enough about that before — even Malinari — finding cause to wonder: The laughter of a madman? Well, perhaps it was at that, though he preferred to think of himself as merely… eccentric? And anyway, what of it? When a man is unique, surely he has a right to such small idiosyncrasies…
Drawing him back from his musing, the fading pounding in Malinari's temples was suddenly matched by a stuttering in the sky: the mechanical throbbing of jets, as their power diverted to whirling, fanlike vanes. And though momentarily startled — sufficiently so that he lifted his crimson gaze to the dragonfly shape that blurred the stars — still he felt no real concern or threat. His plans were laid, and every eventuality had been anticipated. Even this one.
Down in the gardens, in front of the casino, that was the most obvious of the few places where the jetcopter could land. But it was also one of the many places that Malinari had mined. And:
Hah! So be it! he thought. Now let this game commence.
The car at the gate issued a single man; equipped with a heavy, deadly automatic weapon, he crouched low and ran to the small, open-fronted chalet that housed reception. A rearguard, of course; also a guard against anyone trying to escape. These guileless fools! No one would be trying to 'escape' from Xanadu — well, except for these ridiculous invaders themselves! As for Malinari quitting the place… but that was the plan! And in any case, what would it serve to stay? When this was all over, there would be nothing left to stay for.
And now the flying machine was settling towards the garden, its searchlight beams flickering over the dark casino, the chalets, the pools. And suddenly the car's lights were blazing bright, lighting the way as it sped to its rendezvous.
Its rendezvous with certain death… but not just yet.
First let Trask and these E-Branch people taste something of what they had brought down on themselves when, of their own free will, they had chosen to pursue Nephran Malinari.
Lord Malinari, aye, of the Wamphyyrrriiii!
The coastguard vessel made smoke where she lolled port-side on to the narrow strip of sandy beach that fronted Jethro Manchester's island. Apparently crippled, she rocked this way and that in the gentle wavelets of the night surf. On her starboard side, hidden by the cabin, an SAS man aimed his flamethrower at the sky and fired short-lived bursts of flame above the cabin's roof. As viewed from the island, it would seem for certain that the ruddily lit boat was on fire; even as her keel bit into the sand, so a signal flare made a starburst high in the sky.
Also in the sky, but not so very high now — indeed, wheeling in low over the ocean's horizon — Chopper Two's pilot saw the starburst and told his crew:
'We're over the island. I can see the boat "burning" down there, and the lights of the villa in the trees. So this is it. Jump to it as soon as we touch down. I'll be airborne and waiting for you when you get done. You can whistle me down. I mean, you know how to whistle, don't you? Good luck, guys!'
Dark figures were running up the beach as the chopper came down, and a faint waft of garlic tainted the night air…
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO The Storming
Situated one hundred and sixty yards from where the coastguard vessel had beached, and set well back from the high-water mark behind massively thick, fortress-like rock walls in four acres of landscaped rockeries and gardens watered from a small desalination unit, Jethro Manchester's two-storey villa was a luxurious, custom-built dwelling.
Standing central on a jutting promontory, the house was of timber and natural stone, mainly fossilized coral. It had been built from imported teak and dynamited rubble from a channel blasted through to a rocky inlet on the other side of the promontory. In style it was part sprawling Roman villa, part Austrian chalet. Manchester's yacht — by his standards a 'modest' thirty-five footer — was moored in a roofed-over lock in the artificial channel, midway between the villa and the sea.