bullet whined where it struck sparks from marble.
Printed over Mobius' headstone, a door floated out of nowhere. That was appropriate, Harry thought - and he made a headlong dive.
On the cold earth, the crippled East German agent watched him go, disappearing into the stone!
Panting men came together in a knot, skidding to a halt. All held guns extended forward, ready. They stared about, searched with keen, cold eyes. The crippled agent pointed. He lay there with his broken ribs and drained white face and pointed a trembling finger at Mobius' headstone. But for the moment, stunned to his roots, he said nothing at all.
The keening wind continued to blow.
By 4:45 p.m. Dragosani knew the worst of it. Harry Keogh was alive; he had not been taken but had somehow contrived to make his escape; what means he had employed in that escape were unknown, or at best the accounts were garbled and not to be trusted. But one agent was missing believed dead and another seriously injured, and now the East Germans were making angry noises and demanding to know just who or what they were dealing with. Well, let them demand what they
would - Dragosani only wished he knew what he was dealing with!
Anyway, the problem was his now and time was pressing. For there could no longer be any doubt but that Keogh was coming here, and coming tonight? How? Who could say? When, exactly? That, too, remained impossible to gauge. But of one thing Dragosani was absolutely certain: come he would. One man, hurling himself against a small army! His task was impossible, of course - but Dragosani knew of the existence of many things which ordinary men considered impossible...
Meanwhile, the Chateau's emergency call-in system had worked well. Dragosani had all the men he had asked for and half-a-dozen more. They manned machine-gun posts on the outer walls, similar batteries in the outbuildings, also the fortified pill-boxes built into the buttresses of the Chateau itself. ESPers 'worked' down below in the laboratories, in surroundings best suited to their various abilities and talents, and Dragosani had turned Borowitz's offices into his tactical HQ.
The Chateau had been searched, as per his orders, top to bottom; but as soon as he had learned of Keogh's escape he had called a halt to that; he had known where the trouble must originate. By then the lower vaults of the place had been explored to the full, floorboards and centuried flagstones had been ripped up in the older buildings, the foundations of the place had been laid bare almost down to the earth itself. Three dozen men can do a lot of damage in three hours, particularly when they've been told that their lives may well depend upon it.
But what enraged Dragosani most of all was the thought that all of this was on account of just one man, Harry Keogh, and that utter chaos had been forecast in his name. Which meant quite simply that Keogh wielded an awesome power of destruction. But what was it? Dragosani knew he was a necroscope - so what? Also, he had
seen a dead thing rise up from a river and come to his aid. But that had been his mother and the location had been Scotland, thousands of miles away. There was no one here to fight Keogh's battles for him.
Of course, if Dragosani was so worried by all of this he could always flee the place (the trouble was scheduled for the Chateau Bronnitsy and nowhere else), but that just wouldn't be in his own interest. Not only would it smack of utter cowardice, it wouldn't fulfill Igor Vlady's prediction - his prediction that the vampire in Dragosani would die this night. And that was one prediction Boris Dragosani desired fulfilled above all others. Indeed it was his ambition, while his mind was still his own to crave for it!
As for Vlady himself - the call-in squad had found a note at his place which explained his absence, a note intended for his fianc茅e. Vlady would call for her soon, the note said, from the West. Dragosani had been delighted to put out the traitor's description to all relevant points of egress. Nor had he given him any quarter: he was to be shot on sight, in the name of the security of the mighty USSR.
So much for Vlady, and yet ... would he have fared any better here? Dragosani wondered about that. Had he, Dragosani, terrified Vlady that much, or had it