Gesar’s voice was cool, but basically neutral. The chief of the Night Watch really didn’t have anything to reproach Svetlana with – what had happened was simply beyond the range of her present knowledge and skills.
‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ Olga said abruptly. She was sitting on the pouffe between Gesar’s desk and the window, smoking nervously. ‘If the Dark One’s actions couldn’t be read in advance at all, doesn’t that mean he was acting on intuition? Without planning or thinking anything through in advance?’
‘Yes, it does,’ Gesar agreed. ‘He prefers to create probabilities, rather than choose from the ones that already exist. It’s a pretty bold way of doing things, but it has its dangers. Intuition can be deceptive. And that’s how we’ll get him.’
There was a brief silence; Semyon walked noiselessly across the office and sat on the sofa, a short distance from Anton and Svetlana.
‘Actually, there’s something else bothering me,’ Gesar said darkly, reaching into his pocket and taking out a packet of Pall Mall. He looked at it in surprise, put it back in his pocket and took out a Cuban cigar in a metal tube, a clipper to cut off its tip and a huge table-top ashtray But he didn’t open the cigar. ‘Something quite different.’
‘The fact that the Dark One had no trouble using the energy of the portal and some of Svetlana’s too?’ Semyon asked, guessing immediately. ‘But that was to be expected.’
‘Why was it?’ Gesar asked cautiously.
Semyon shrugged.
‘It seems to me that he’s more powerful than we think. He simply disguises the fact. In principle Ilya and I, and even Garik, can make use of the Dark Ones’ power. Under certain circumstances. And with certain consequences for ourselves.’
‘But not so brazenly and not so quickly,’ Gesar said with a shake of his head. ‘Remember Spain. When Avvakum tried to draw power from the Dark portal. Remember how that ended?’
‘I remember,’ said Semyon, not disconcerted in the least. ‘All that means is that our Dark One is significantly more powerful than Avvakum. And nothing else.’
Gesar looked at Semyon for a few seconds, then shook his head and turned his gaze to Svetlana.
‘Sveta,’ he said in a voice that was noticeably gentler, ‘try once again to remember everything that you felt at the time. But don’t hurry. And please, don’t get upset. You did everything right, the trouble is it just turned out not to be enough.’
Semyon glanced in surprise at Svetlana, with the expression of someone who has missed the most interesting thing.
‘What do you mean, try to remember? Create the image and the job’s done,’ he advised them.
‘The image won’t materialise,’ Gesar growled. ‘That’s the whole problem. What does materialise is some kind of gibberish, not an image.’
‘And have you tried creating a different one?’ Semyon asked eagerly. ‘An abstract image, not connected with the Dark One?’
‘She has,’ Gesar answered for Svetlana. ‘Any other image is okay, but this one just doesn’t work.’
‘Hmm,’ Semyon muttered. ‘Maybe the impressions are too vivid, too oppressive. Remember how I tried for twenty years to re-create the image of the Inferno vortex over the Reichstag when Hitler was speaking. But I just couldn’t get it to look real.’
‘We’re not talking here about trying to get it to look real,’ said Gesar. ‘There isn’t any picture at all. Just a grey blur, as if Svetlana’s trying to remember the Twilight world.’
Anton, who still hadn’t uttered a single word, glanced hopefully at Sveta.
‘Well, then,’ she began. ‘At first I didn’t notice anything at all. When you left to follow the Brother who made a run for it, Boris Ignatievich, I stayed with the portal. Then I noticed that the Dark Ones on the floor had started moving and I fed some power into your Net. The Dark Ones were pressed flat against the floor again; then you came back. And almost immediately – it was like a fainting fit, everything went black, I felt weak … And then there’s a blank. I came round on the floor when Anton splashed water in my face. The memories are all I have left. And I can’t even remember anything properly.’ The enchantress bit her lip, as if she was about to burst into tears. Anton looked at her as if he hoped his look alone would be enough to calm her down.
‘I don’t have a rational explanation,’ Ilya put in. ‘There’s simply nothing to go on – too little data.’
‘There’s more than enough data,’ Gesar snorted. ‘But I don’t have an explanation either. Not in the sense of a hundred per cent correct explanation. I have a few suspicions of my own, but they need to be checked out. Olga?’
Olga shrugged.
‘If you have nothing to say, I won’t even try. Either he’s a top-flight magician who’s never been registered anywhere by anyone, or someone’s messing with our heads. For instance, I still can’t understand why Zabulon hasn’t got involved. You’d think smuggling in the Talon was an operation of the highest importance. But he hasn’t raised a finger to help his rabble.’
‘That’s true,’ Gesar drawled thoughtfully, and finally took the cigar out of its tube, looked at it carefully, breathed in the aroma of its tobacco with obvious pleasure and put it away again. ‘The Moscow Day Watch might have nothing at all to do with the operation to smuggle in Fáfnir’s Talon. The Regin Brothers could easily have been acting on their own initiative. In that case we have absolutely no claim against Zabulon. His rabble appears to have been acting independently. And not all that effectively either, otherwise they’d never have allowed us to intercept the Brothers.’
‘What good are the Brothers to us, boss?’ Ignat said in annoyance, getting up. ‘If the Dark One from Ukraine really is predestined for the Talon, then the Dark Ones won the fight at the airport.’
‘If the Dark One from Ukraine was predestined for the Talon,’ Gesar said in a quiet voice, ‘we’d all be settling into spending the rest of eternity in the Twilight. Even I wouldn’t have been able to save any of you. Not any of you. Is that clear, Ignat?’
‘Is that right?’ Semyon asked calmly. ‘It’s that serious?’
‘It’s exactly right, Semyon. I have only one hope: the Dark One doesn’t even understand his own role in all this yet. That’s why he’s thrashing about like this. Our only chance is to outguess him and take the Talon. And in principle that would balance out the odds.’
‘But how can we outguess him?’ Ignat persisted. ‘Maybe I should try talking to him, convincing him. I’m good at convincing people. If only we can find him.’
‘The Dark One won’t be able to just sit around doing nothing with the Talon burning his fingers. He’s bound to turn up in Moscow.’ Gesar stood up and surveyed his subordinates, then rubbed his cheek in a tired gesture. ‘That’s it. Get some rest. Everybody get some rest.’
He turned to Anton.
‘Anton, stay close to Sveta. Stick like glue. And you shouldn’t go home – not to your place or hers. Stay here.’
‘All right, Boris Ignatievich,’ said Anton. He still had his arm round Sveta’s shoulders.
Ten minutes later Anton and Sveta were alone in the comfortable duty staff lounge. Anton held out his minidisc player and the earphones to the exhausted enchantress.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘there’s this sort of game I play. There’s a lot of music on that disc. All sorts. I put it on random, but somehow it always comes up with the right songs. Why don’t you give it a go?’
Svetlana smiled faintly and took the earphones.
‘Press here.’