that far, Edgar,' I said. 'You're a Dark One, but you're not a psychopath. An atomic bomb in the centre of Moscow? Just to kill my wife and daughter? How many people would be killed? And what if somebody panics and decides it's a nuclear attack, and it starts a world war?'
'Right! That's the most important point.' Edgar laughed again. 'Even if Geser senses that something's wrong and moves your family far away from Moscow, to some secure vault in Ufa, for example, that won't fundamentally change the situation. Your actions will still decide the fate of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Not bad bait for a Light One, is it?'
'Edgar,' I asked, 'what's happened to you?'
'Nothing,' said Edgar, with a nervous, unnatural laugh. 'I'm just fine!'
'Have you lost someone, Edgar?'
The question was a shot in the dark. But when Edgar didn't answer, I knew I'd hit the target. That I'd finally begun to under stand something about what was going on.
'My wife,' he said eventually. 'Annabel.'
'You said you were in Crete with her,' I recalled.
'I was. Exactly a year ago. We were walking to the beach from the hotel... There was a truck driving past us. The driver lost control and ran into her at eighty kilometres an hour. There was no time for me to do anything.'
'You loved her,' I said, amazed.
'Yes,' Edgar said, nodding. 'I loved her. I'm not Zabulon, I can love. Or I could.'
'I'm very sorry,' I said.
'Thank you, Anton,' Edgar replied in a perfectly normally voice. 'I know you really mean that. But it still doesn't change anything... in the way things are between us.'
'Why did you go against everyone? Why did you involve people?'
'People? What difference does it make how we use them, Anton? We live off their energy. Why shouldn't we use them as cannon fodder too? And as for why I went against everyone... that's the wrong way of putting the question. I'm not against them, I'm for them. For all Others, if you like. Dark Ones and Light Ones. When we achieve our goal, you'll understand. Even you will understand.'
'That's not what we agreed,' said Gennady.
'I remember what we agreed,' Edgar snapped. 'We do what we planned. And then you challenge Anton to fight. That's right, isn't it? You wanted an honest duel?'
'Yes,' Gennady said rather doubtfully.
'Well, if you're so certain that I'll understand,' I said as I turned onto the ring road, struggling with the temptation to swing the steering wheel hard and throw the car off the overpass, 'then you could tell me what it is you've planned. And then maybe I'll help you voluntarily'
'I thought about that,' Edgar said, nodding. 'From the very beginning, I thought that of all the Light Ones I know you were the sanest. But I happened to find myself working with Gennady here. And he was absolutely against it. He doesn't like you. And you know why ?you killed his son. His wife laid herself to rest because of you. So how could we take you into the Last Watch?'
'A very romantic name.'
'That's Gennady, he's a great romantic' Edgar chuckled. 'No, we weren't going to touch you. Revenge is a fine thing, but only if you've got nothing else left... but Geser had to go and send you to Edinburgh!'
'Did you kill Victor because he recognised Gennady?'
'Yes,' said Edgar. 'It was an improvised move. Gennady got nervous: he thought Kostya's old school friend couldn't have turned up by accident, that we were being followed. It was a mistake, of course. But we did discover how to open the barrier on the third level. We didn't have precise information about that before then.'
'But you did about the golem on the fifth level?'
'Oh yes!' said Edgar, laughing again. 'After Annabel was killed I was transferred to work in the in the secure archive. You know... to settle down and get over my pain in a quiet job ... If only you knew, Light One, what they have hidden away in the strong rooms at the Inquisition! I had never even suspected that things like that could be created. I tell you honestly, in the last hundred years, the quality of magic has actually deteriorated. We've been spoiled by using human things. But we used to have things that were like telephones and cars and aeroplanes... they weren't just like them, they were better. We could have founded a civilisation based entirely on magic!'
'Except that we produce less Power than we consume,'