done, all of you. And now get your thinking caps on and try to look ahead. Jimmy: dig up some plans of Xanadu, its subsurface systems, et cetera, lan: please draft a comprehensive record of this meeting. Paul: it's late now, but first thing tomorrow ensure I have access to Prime Minister Blackmore's office so that I can organize a liaison with someone on this marine park thing.'Turning away, he offered one of his rare smiles and said: 'And that, I think, is that. Now I have to speak to our Australian friends. I'll see you all in the morning ...'The next day, a Saturday, they split the teams up. Lardis, Jake and Liz were together on the northern routes (Trask didn't want Liz anywhere near Xanadu); Goodly and Chung flew south, each of them hoping to complement the other's strange talent.
The trips were mainly uneventful; the precog's mind was a frustrating blank - at least where the future was concerned - and the locator daren't get too close to Xanadu in case someone, or something, should locate him! But in any case and as per Trask's orders, they were looking at different mountains this time out. As for Trask himself:
He had a very satisfying day, and when the teams returned to the safe house he was waiting to speak to them. This time he brought the SAS in on it - at least for the first stage of his briefing. For while it wasn't his intention to explain his findings in their entirety (the way E-Branch had used its combined paranormal talents to discover their targets) still he did have to display those targets, and advise these men as best possible on what they would be up against.
This was done with the aid of the wall screen; Trask supplied the narrative:'This island in the Capricorn Group - its grid reference is shown alongside - is our secondary target. Now, I've called it an island, but in fact it's little more than a rock or coral reef. It has a few trees, some other tough vegetation; nothing much to mention. It was a marine park conservation station some years ago but that moved to Heron Island, forty miles away. All that's there now is the reef, a shallow lagoon, a private villa on the island, and, we presume, our enemies. But I have to emphasize that they are probably lesser enemies, which is to say we don't think they're of the order of unpleasantness that we were obliged to deal with in the Gibson Desert. However, and having said that, you should remember that they will be vampires.'How many of them? No more than five or six, which is six too many. But with a chopper, a hired vessel, and half a dozen or so of your men - along with Jake Cutter here and Lardis Lidesci from our side - that should be sufficient. You, which is to say the military, will have command; but you'll listen very carefully to Lardis, and you'll take his advice in the ... the handling of whatever you find on that island. Take my word for it, Lardis is the foremost authority in these matters.Very well, what can you expect to find in the villa? The master of the house for one, a man of some fifty-eight years of age. Easy? But he'll be a vampire, and as strong as any four or five of your men! Then there'll be his married daughter and her husband, also his son and possibly a woman friend. The worst of them will be a fourth man, not family, who we think will be acting in the role of their keeper. And he will be dangerous, much more so than the others.'Now, the problem is this: some if not all of these people will look and act perfectly normal. A bit edgy, perhaps. But if you were to strand your boat on the beach there, they'd probably help out; they might even call the coastguard for assistance. That's because they want to appear normal, because they daren't be discovered for what they really are - not until their master decides they're no longer of any use to him, or her. So, assuming it's a "him" for the time being, what use are they to him?'Well, for one, the island is a bolthole: it's a place for the Vampire Lord to hide in the event he gets driven