So that was it. The way up. And you couldn’t get to heaven unless you’d already done your time rattling around in hell. Except that heaven and hell were different for everyone – but then that was what Kipelov was really singing about anyway.
Strange. I’d heard the song before, and the singer’s name had stuck in my memory I’d even included it on the mini-disc I put together for my player. But now it sounded completely new, it had suddenly slashed across my mind like an invisible shard of broken glass.
‘Colleague! Please hurry!’ Edgar called to me.
Regretfully I stepped away from the door.
‘I’ll have to listen to it later. Buy the whole album and listen to it.’
The singer’s voice faded away behind me:
It somehow seemed to me that Kipelov knew only too well what he was singing about. About blood. About the lower depths. About the sky. This long-haired idol of the Russian heavy metal set could easily turn out to be an Other. I for one wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
I went up to the next floor with Edgar and Shagron, and we found ourselves in a genuine office space, with a large open-plan area divided into little compartments separated by screens, individual offices on one side and an open area overlooking Tverskaya Street through a huge window of lightly tinted glass. I noticed that the Dark Ones used hardly any desktop PCs: at least, the three Watch staff members who were there – they must have been either very late owls or very early larks – were all sitting with their noses stuck in the screens of their laptops.
‘Hellemar!’ Edgar called, and one of the three – a werewolf, like the guard on duty downstairs – reluctantly tore himself away from some game on the screen.
‘Yes, chief?’
‘I want an urgent news update! All movements of reagents or artefacts of great power. Lost, disappeared, smuggled. Anything that’s happened recently.’
‘What’s happened?’ the werewolf Hellemar asked. ‘Is there something serious going on?’
‘The Light Ones have information that someone’s trying to smuggle an artefact into Moscow. Move it, Hellemar!’
Hellemar turned to the other players:
‘Hey you dickheads! Get to work!’
The dickheads instantly dropped what they’d been doing, and seconds later I could hear the quiet tapping of keyboards while on the screens the endless corridors filled with monsters had been replaced by the bright windows of Netscape.
Edgar took me into an office separated off from the large open-plan area by a glass wall and blinds. Shagron went off somewhere for a moment, but he soon came back with a jar of Tchibo and a carton of Finnish glacier water. He poured the water into an electric kettle and switched it on. In a moment the kettle started murmuring industriously.
‘I hope you have sugar here,’ Shagron muttered.
‘I’ll find some.’ Edgar lowered himself into one armchair and offered me the other: ‘Have a seat, colleague. You don’t mind if I simply call you Vitaly do you?’
‘Of course not. Feel free.’
‘Excellent. Well, then, Vitaly, I’ll do the talking, and you correct me if I get something wrong. Okay?’
‘Sure,’ I said readily. Because I had almost no idea what weird stories might surface from my subconscious for me to tell these intent agents of the Day Watch.
‘Am I right in thinking that you have no information about the artefact?’
‘You are,’ I confirmed.
‘A pity,’ Edgar said with genuine disappointment. ‘It would have greatly simplified matters.’
As a matter of fact, not only didn’t I have any information about the artefact, I didn’t have any information at all about any artefacts that Edgar might be interested in. This was a field where experienced Others were like connoisseurs, but I still know less about it than a pig does about oranges.
‘Then let’s move on. You arrived in Moscow from Ukraine, if I understand correctly?’
‘Yes. From Nikolaev.’
‘For what purpose?’
I pondered for about half a minute. Nobody tried to hurry me.
‘It’s hard to say,’ I confessed honestly. ‘Clearly without any particular purpose. I just got fed up of sitting at home doing nothing.’
‘You were only initiated very recently am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you just have an urge to see a bit of the world?’
‘Probably.’
‘Then why Moscow, and not the Bahamas, for instance?’
I shrugged. But really – why? Surely not just because I didn’t have a passport for foreign travel yet?
‘I don’t know. The Bahamas are a place to go in summer.’
‘It’s summer now in the tropics. And there are plenty of places to go to.’
True. I hadn’t thought of that.
‘All the same, I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘Later, maybe.’
I had the feeling that Edgar wanted to ask about something else, but at this point Hellemar entered the office without knocking. His eyes were as wide as Jerry’s when he suddenly sees Tom just behind him.
‘Chief! Berne, Fáfnir’s Talon! It’s been stolen from the Inquisition’s vault! The whole continent’s been in uproar for over two hours now!’
Shagron couldn’t restrain himself – he leapt to his feet. Edgar held back, but his eyes glinted and even without entering the Twilight I could see the orange streaks that sprang up in his aura. But he quickly gathered himself again.
‘Is this open information?’
‘No. It’s restricted. The Inquisition hasn’t made any official statement yet.’
‘Your source?’
The werewolf hesitated.
‘The source is unofficial. But reliable.’
‘Hellemar,’ Edgar said with a hint of emphasis, ‘your source?’
‘One of our men in the Prague information agency,’ Hellemar confessed. ‘An Other. Dark. I caught him in a private chat room.’
‘I see, I see.’
I wanted very much to ask questions, but naturally all I could do for the time being was stare stupidly and keep quiet as I absorbed the important but, unfortunately, incomprehensible things they were saying.
‘And how do the Light Ones know about this?’ Shagron asked, puzzled.
‘Who can tell?’ said Edgar, twitching his eyebrows in a bizarre manner. ‘They have a wide network of informers …’
‘Status “Aleph”,’ Edgar said abruptly to Hellemar. ‘Call everyone in.’
About half an hour later the floor was crowded. Of course, they were all Others. And all Dark.
But I still didn’t understand a thing.
When Anton got back to suite six twelve, Ilya was sitting in an armchair and massaging his temples, and Garik was striding nervously to and fro across the carpet between the window and the sofa. Tolik and Tiger Cub were sitting on the sofa, and Bear was hovering in the doorway of the bedroom.
‘… he sensed me, by the way,’ Bear was saying gloomily ‘Your “cloud” didn’t help.’
‘The Estonian?’
‘No, the Estonian didn’t sense me. And neither did Shagron, of course. But the other one did, almost straight away.’