Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,47

constructed, could ever fool him. The police used him a lot, to crack stone killers; also he came in handy in respect of international negotiations, when it was good to know if the cards on the table made a full deck.

David Chung: a young Londoner, a locator and scryer of the highest quality. He was slight, wiry, slant-eyed and yellow as they come. But he was British, loyal, and his talent was amazing. He tracked Soviet nuclear 'stealth' subs, IRA units in the field, drug-runners. Especially the latter. Chung's parents had been addicts, and their addiction had killed them. That's where his talent had started, and it was still growing.

Anna Marie English was something else. (But weren't they all?) Twenty-three, bespectacled, enervated, pallid and dowdy, she was hardly an English rose! That was a direct result of her talent, for she was 'as one with the Earth': her way of defining it. She felt the rain forests being eaten away; she knew the extent of the ozone holes; when the deserts expanded she felt their desiccation, and the mass erosion of mountain soil made her physically sick. She was 'ecologically aware' beyond the five senses of mundane mankind. Greenpeace could base their entire campaign on her, except no one would believe. The Branch did believe, and used her as it used David Chung: as a tracker. She tracked illicit nuclear waste, monitored pollution, warned of invasions of Colorado beetle and Dutch elm disease, cried aloud the extinction of whales, elephants, dolphins, other species. And she knew that the Earth was sick and growing sicker. She only had to look in the mirror each day to know that.

Then there was Geoffrey Paxton, a telepath, one of several. An unpleasant person, the Minister thought, but his talent was useful. And it takes all sorts to make a world. Paxton was ambitious, he wanted it all. Better to employ him where he too could be watched than have him turn to high-stakes blackmail or become the mindspy agent of some foreign power. Later... Paxton's would be a career worth following. And closely.

Sixteen of them gathered here, under one roof, and eleven more out in various parts of the world, guiding that world, or at least watching over it. They were paid according to their talents, handsomely! And they were worth every penny. It would cost a lot more if they ever decided to work for themselves...

Sixteen of them, and as the Minister's eyes roved over them so they studied him: a man who so far had kept himself to the shadows and would prefer to stay there, except that now some affair of the utmost moment had lured him out. He was in his mid-forties, small and dapper, dark hair brushed back and plastered down. And he had no nerves to speak of, or none that was visible, anyway. He wore patent-leather black shoes, a dark-blue suit and light-blue tie. His brow had a few wrinkles but other than these his face was normally unlined, and his eyes were bright, clear and blue. Right now, though, and especially since his conversation with Ben Trask, he was looking harried.

'Ladies, gentlemen,' (he wasn't one for preamble), 'what I have to say would seem fantastic to almost anyone outside these walls, as would almost everything that goes on within them. But I'll try not to bore you with too many things you already know. Mainly, I've gathered you together to tell you we have one hell of a problem. First I'll tell you how it came to be, and how it came to light. Then you'll have to tell me how we're going to deal with it, in which instance I know that even the least of you - if there is such a thing - has more practical experience than I have. In fact, you're the only people with practical experience of these things, and so the only ones who can deal with the matter in hand.'

He took a deep breath, then continued: 'Some time ago we appointed a traitor as head of E-Branch. I'm talking about Wellesley, yes. Well, he can't do any more harm. But after him it was my job to make sure it couldn't happen again. In short, we needed someone who was capable of spying on the spies. Now, I know you people have an unwritten code: you don't spy on each other. So I couldn't use one of you, not in situ anyway. I had to take one of