Trask understood. It was supposed to have been an order, but the Minister had turned it into a warning. Following his pause, his last words had been rushed, almost shouted, near-hysterical, and at the end Trask had heard a second voice - perhaps military? Certainly authoritative, angry - as its owner snatched the phone from the Minister's hand.
'Shit!' Trask said under his breath. But not so quietly that it went unheard.
'It's all coming to a head, right?' David Chung's face was shiny now with sweat.
'Let's see Nathan off.' Trask nodded. Then it's our necks we'll have to worry about.' He was thinking about lan Goodly's warning, that he and Chung had no immediate future. But Nathan had read his mind, and:
'I can take you out of here,' the Necroscope said. 'I have the co-ordinates of a dozen different places. Anywhere you want to go. E-Branch?'
'Christ!' Trask groaned. The Mobius Continuum . .. again?'
But Chung was all for it. 'Why not?' he asked eagerly. 'I mean, if you think we're in danger here .. .?'
'Both of you,' said Nathan, as his eyes went through their weird metamorphosis. And catching hold of their arms, he drew them through a Mobius door ...
... And out again into E-Branch HQ.
... The Ops room.
... Now an encampment of the enemy!
lan Goodly was there, his face a mask of shocked realization. So was the Minister Responsible, red and raging.
(Trask hadn't known his call was from E-Branch HQ; it was a place the Minister visited only rarely.) And half a dozen espers wearing as many expressions, and a handful of CMI thugs, their weapons to hand but mercifully not at the ready. The Minister had his back to the trio when they appeared out of thin air. He was flailing his arms and shouting something unintelligible at a uniformed man with a cordless telephone in his hand.
But the precog lan Goodly had 'known' where they would come through and was looking directly at them, yelling, 'For God's sake, go! Get out of here!'
Even as Goodly shouted his warning, the Minister Responsible turned and saw them. Still a few years from retirement, he was small and grey, sparse but sprightly. Red-faced one minute, in the next he turned pale as he recognized Trask, Chung and Nathan, and his single atypical comment was: 'Jesus!'