Yulian's, but grown now and controller of George's mind and body - merely waited. The stake alone had not been enough. But that came as no real surprise, Yulian had not been especially sure that it would be.
He took up his cleaver and wiped the shining blade on his rolled shirt sleeve. And the yellow eyes in George's grey, mutilated face moved in their blood-rimmed orbits to follow his movements. Not only was the vampire's body in George's body, but its mind was in his mind, grafted to it like a feasting leech. Good!
Yulian struck. He struck rapidly, three times: hard, chopping blows that bit into George's neck and cut through flesh and bone with perfect ease. In another moment his head rolled free.
Yulian gripped the severed head by its hair and stared into the core of the neck stump. Something green- and grey-mottled drew itself out of sight into fibrous mucus. Nothing Yulian could see looked like it should. The manpart of this thing was a mere -envelope of flesh, a shell or disguise to protect the creature within. Likewise the body:
when Yulian propped up the headless trunk with his knee, a sinuous something slipped quickly down into the bloody pipe of George's yawning gullet.
Perhaps in two parts the vampire would eventually die, but it was not dead yet. Which left only one sure way, one tried and true means of disposal. Fire.
Yulian kicked the head in the direction of the furnace. It rolled past Anne where she lay exhausted, barely conscious in her extremity of terror. She had seen all that Yulian had done. The head came up against the foot of the furnace, rebounded a little way and stopped. Yulian dragged the body to the furnace and threw open the door. Inside, all was an orange and yellow shimmer. Heat blasted out; a shaft of heat roared up into the flue.
Without pause Yulian picked up the head and threw it into the furnace, as far to the back as he could get it. Then he propped up George's body against the open door, and levered him shoulders first into the inferno. Last to go in were the legs and feet, which already were starting to kick. Yulian needed all his strength to control the thrashing limbs until he at last got them up over the rim of the door and slammed it shut. The door at once banged open, impelled by a raw, steaming foot. Again Yulian thrust the member inside and slammed the door, and this time he shot the bolt. For long seconds, in addition to the roaring of the fire, there came thumping vibrations from within.
In a little while, however, the noises subsided. Then there was only a long, sustained hissing. Finally only the fire's roar could be heard. Yulian stood there for long moments with his own private thoughts, before finally turning away...
By 11.00 P.M. that same Saturday, Alec Kyle and Carl Quint, Felix Krakovitch and Sergei Gulharov were on a scheduled Al Italia night flight for Bucharest, which would arrive just after midnight.
Of the four, Krakovitch had spent the busiest day, arranging all the paraphernalia of entry into a Soviet satellite for the two Englishmen. He had done this the easy way: by phoning his Second in Command at the Château Bronnitsy - one Ivan Gerenko, a rarely talented 'deflector' - and getting him to pass the details on to his high-powered go-between on Brezhnev's staff. He had also asked that it be arranged for him to have maximum assistance, if he should require it, from the USSR's 'comrades' in puppet Romania. They were still an insular lot, the Romanians, and one could never be absolutely sure of their co-operation -...hus Krakovitch's afternoon was taken up in making and answering calls between Genoa and Moscow, until all arrangements were in hand.
Not once through all of this did he mention the name of Theo Dolgikh. Ordinarily he would have taken his complaint to the very top - to Brezhnev himself, as the Party Leader had ordered - but not in the present circumstances. Krakovitch had only Kyle's word that Dolgikh was temporarily and not permanently detained. As long as he remained ostensibly in ignorance of the KGB agent and his affairs, then all would be well. And if indeed Dolgikh were safe and merely, for the moment. 'secure' -...ime enough later to bring charges of interference against Yuri Andropov. Krakovitch did marvel, though, that the KGB had got on to his supposedly secret