The Day Watch Part 23

Which of you has not plumbed the depths?

Without pa.s.sing through h.e.l.l, You can never build heaven!

Hey, you inhabitants of the depths!

The thunder is laughing at you.

To be on equal terms with them- There is only one way upward!

There is only one way upward...

So that was it... The way upward. And you couldn't get to heaven unless you'd already done your time rattling around in h.e.l.l. Except that heaven and h.e.l.l 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 in the mini-disk 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 gla.s.s.

"Colleague! Please hurry!" Edgar called to me.

I stepped regretfully away from the door.

I'll have to listen to it later... Buy the whole alb.u.m and listen to it...

The singer's voice faded away behind me: But if the light flares up in your brain And dislodges all the submission, The old days will come alive in your soul, And a new sin will be committed.

Blood on your hands, blood on the stones, And over the bodies and the pitiful backs Of those willing to die as slaves, You strive upward once again.

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. At least, I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

I went up to the next floor with Edgar and s.h.a.gron, and we found ourselves in a genuine office s.p.a.ce, with a large hall divided into little booths separated off by screens, individual offices at one side and an open area overlooking Tverskaya Street through a huge window of lightly tinted gla.s.s. 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 notebooks.

"h.e.l.lemar!" 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 artifacts of great Power. Lost, disappeared, smuggled. All the latest events!"

"What's happened?" the werewolf h.e.l.lemar asked. "Is there something dangerous going on?"

"The Light Ones have information that someone's trying to smuggle an artifact into Moscow. Move it, h.e.l.lemar!"

h.e.l.lemar turned to the other players: "Hey, you blockheads! Get to work!"

The blockheads instantly dropped what they'd been doing and seconds later I could hear the quiet rustling of keyboards, and 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 hall by a gla.s.s wall and blinds. s.h.a.gron 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 pressed the appropriate switch. The kettle started murmuring industriously almost immediately.

"I hope you have sugar here?" s.h.a.gron 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 call you simply 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. Agreed?"

"Certainly" I said readily. Because I had almost no i.e. what weird stories would surface out of my subconscious for me to tell to these intent agents of the Day Watch.

"Have I understood correctly that you possess no information about the aforementioned artifact?"

"You have," 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 possess any information about the aforementioned artifact, I didn't possess any information at all about any artifacts that Edgar might be interested in. This was no doubt an area where experienced Others felt like connoisseurs, but I still understood less about it than a pig does about oranges.

"Then let's move on to the next point. You arrived in Moscow from Ukraine, if I understand correctly?"

"Yes. From Nikolaev."

"For what purpose?"

I pondered for about half a minute. n.o.body tried to hurry me.

"It's hard to say," I confessed honestly. "Clearly without any particular purpose. I just got fed up sitting at home doing nothing."

"You were only initiated very recently, am I right?"

"Yes."

"Did you just get the 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 pa.s.sport for foreign travel yet?

"I don't know. The Bahamas are a place to go in summer."

"It's summer now in the Southern Hemisphere. And there are plenty of places to go."

Yes, that was true. I hadn't thought about 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 h.e.l.lemar entered the office without knocking. His eyes were as wide as the cartoon mouse Jerry's when he suddenly spots his eternal pursuer, Tom, just behind him.

"Chief! Berne, Fafnir's Talon! It's been taken from the Inquisition's vault! The whole of Europe's been in an uproar for over two hours now!"

s.h.a.gron 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 took himself in hand.

"Is this open information?"

"No. It's restricted. The Inquisition hasn't made any official statements yet."

"Your source?"

The werewolf hesitated. "The source is unofficial. But reliable."

"h.e.l.lemar," Edgar said with a hint of emphasis, "your source?"

"One of our men in the Prague information agency," h.e.l.lemar confessed. "An Other. Dark. I caught him in a private chat room."

"I see, I see..."

I wanted very much to ask a few questions, but naturally all I could do for the time being was stare stupidly and keep quiet as I absorbed the important but, alas, incomprehensible things they were saying.

"And how do the Light Ones know about this?" s.h.a.gron asked in puzzlement.

"Who can tell?" said Edgar, twitching his eyebrows in a funny manner. "They have a wide network of informers..."

"Status 'Aleph,"" Edgar said abruptly to h.e.l.lemar. "Call in the staff..."

About half an hour later the office hall was crowded. Of course, all the individuals there were Others. And all Dark.

But I still didn't understand a thing.

When Anton got back to suite six hundred twelve, Ilya was sitting in an armchair and ma.s.saging his temples, and Garik was striding nervously to and fro across the carpet between the window and the divan. Tolik and Tiger Cub were sitting on the divan, and Bear was hovering in the doorway of the bedroom.

"... he spotted me, by the way," Bear was saying gloomily. "Your 'cloud' didn't help."

"The Estonian?"

"No, the Estonian didn't spot me. And neither did s.h.a.gron, of course. But the other one did, almost straightaway."

"But that's nonsense, guys. He can't be more powerful than the Estonian, can he?" said Garik.

"But why can't he, really?" Ilya asked without raising his head. "A couple of hours ago I thought I knew all four of the Dark Ones in Moscow I wouldn't be able to handle one-on-one. But now I'm not sure of anything."

Anton slumped back against the refrigerator. The question his tongue was poised to ask had remained unspoken so far-the conversation was more interesting than Anton had thought it would be at the beginning.

And then Tiger Cub got in before him: "Ilya! Why don't you fill us in? About the artifact."

Ilya abruptly stood up and began: "To keep it short, Fafnir's Talon has been removed from the Inquisition's vault in Berne. Two..."-he glanced at his watch-"no, already three hours ago now. The Swiss department is in a panic.

The Inquisition is fuming and thundering, but so far it hasn't issued an official communique. The details are unknown; all we do know is that the Talon is at the seasonal peak of its Power. In the Dark phase, of course.

Simple calculations indicate that liberating even part of the Power acc.u.mulated by the Talon in the territory of Central Russia is likely to result in powerful discharges, up to and including a localized Inferno breakthrough. And that's the way things stand..."

"And Zabulon's not in Moscow..." Tolik drawled with slow emphasis.

"You mean the Dark Ones are behind this?" asked Tiger Cub.

"Well, we aren't, are we?" Ilya asked and his shoulders twitched as if he were suddenly feeling chilly.

"Does Gesar know about this?" she asked.

"Of course," Ilya said. "He was the one who told me. He ordered me not to worry, but just keep on working away..."

Ilya sat down again.

"I don't even know what to think," he said in a voice that somehow sounded tough and helpless at the same time.

"To be quite honest, when I heard about a Shahab's Ring killing a Light One, I suspected the Talon was already here. There's no point in setting up a Ring with such monstrous Power-it's just a waste, a sheer, unnecessary waste. I'd understand if it was to protect the Talon, but for a lousy heap of bucks... it's simply idiotic..."

"A Dark One wouldn't have left the Talon in his suite without someone to watch it," Garik put in.

"Of course not. It would be stupid," said Tiger Cub.

"Yes, it would," Ilya agreed. "But we had to check."

"And what can we do now?" Tiger Cub asked gloomily. "Now Andriukha's dead, and we can't even punish his killer?"

"Katya," Ilya said, looking at her sympathetically, "it's sad, but that's the way it is. And now we've been hit with a problem that makes Andrei's death seem almost unimportant. Our a.n.a.lysts have been following the approximate balance between global nexuses of Power since four o'clock this morning. If the Talon is moved, the balance is bound to be disrupted."

"And have they come up with anything?"

"Yes. About an hour ago it became clear that the Talon is either already in Moscow or due to appear here at any moment."

"Hang on," Tolik put in again, "so the recurrences of poaching and unmotivated aggression by Dark Ones are due to the influence of the Talon?"

"Probably."

"But the first incident took place on Sat.u.r.day!" Tiger Cub protested in surprise.

Ilya ma.s.saged his temples again; it was obvious now that he was very tired. "The Talon is a very powerful thing, Tiger Cub.

The lines of probability extend far into the future. And the Dark Ones are more powerfully influenced by Dark artifacts than we are. So the small fry have already started running wild..."

"If it's such a powerful thing, how come the Inquisition has mislaid it?"

"I don't know," Ilya retorted, "I wasn't there. But I'm quite sure of one thing: If it's possible to do something, sooner or later someone's going to do it."

"Our people are coming," Garik remarked, off the point.

He was right-someone from the service section had arrived. Obviously Andrei Tiunnikov's body had to be taken away after the poor unfortunate had stumbled into a matrix of Power that was still way beyond his level.

"And what about this Dark One?" Anton finally asked. "Do you think he's connected with the thieves?"

"Not necessarily." Ilya watched morosely as Tiunnikov's body was zipped into a black polythene bag. "He could be distracting us. Or he might not even be aware of what he's doing. That's what it actually looks like most of all.