The Twilight Watch (35 page)

'Did you think I was joking?' my 'neighbour' chuckled. 'It's a
really great drink. Is that the kind you were thinking of selling?'

'Yes, that's the stuff,' I blurted out without thinking.

'Then you won't be able to, that's from Kirghizstan. The place
you ought to have gone to is Ufa. It's nearer, and there's less trouble
with the customs. They make kumis there, and buza. Have you
ever tried buza? It's a mixture of kumis and oat jelly. Horrible
stuff but it completely sorts you out if you've got a hangover.'

Meanwhile, other items had appeared on the table: salami,
braised meat, sliced bread and a litre bottle of Polignac French
cognac, a brand I didn't know.

I gulped and added my modest offering to the provisions, then
I said:

'Let's try the armagnac first.'

'Okay,' Las agreed, taking out two plastic cups for water and
two cupro-nickel shot-glasses for the armagnac.

'Open it.'

'It's your armagnac, you open it,' Las countered casually.

There was definitely something fishy here.

'No, you do it,' I blurted out. 'I can never pour the drinks
evenly.'

Las looked at me as if I was a total idiot. He said:

'I can see you must be a serious drinker. Do you often share a
bottle of vodka three ways out in the street?'

But he picked up the flask and started twisting the top.

I waited.

Las huffed and puffed, then frowned. He stopped trying to
unscrew the top and took a close look at it. He muttered:

'Looks like it's stuck . . .'

Surely he had to be a disguised Other . . .

He lifted up the edge of his T-shirt, took a tight grip on the top
and turned it sharply with all his strength. He exclaimed excitedly:

'It's moving, it's moving!'

There was a crunching sound.

'That's got it . . .' Las said tentatively. 'Oh . . .'

He held his hands out to me, embarrassed. One was holding
the glass flask, the other was holding its broken-off neck, with the
lid still firmly screwed onto it.

'Sorry . . . oh shit . . .'

But a moment later a glint of pride appeared in Las's eyes.

'That's some strength I've got! I'd never have thought . . .'

I didn't say a word, just pictured Edgar's face when he realised
he'd lost his useful artefact.

'Valuable, was it?' Las asked guiltily. 'An antique flask, right?'

'It's nothing,' I muttered. 'It's the armagnac I'm upset about.
Some glass got into it.'

'That's no problem,' Las said cheerfully. He went looking in the
suitcase again, leaving the mutilated flask on the table. Taking out
a handkerchief, he demonstratively stripped the label off it: 'Clean.
Never even washed. And not Chinese, but Czech, so you don't
need to worry about pneumonia.'

He folded the handkerchief in two, wound it round the broken
neck of the flask and calmly poured the armagnac through it into
the two shot-glasses. He raised his own:

'To our journey!'

'To our journey,' I repeated.

The armagnac was soft, fragrant and sweetish, like warm grape
juice. It went down easily, without even inspiring the idea of some
kind of snack to go with it, and then somewhere deep inside it
exploded – humanely and precisely enough to make any American
missile jealous.

'Wonderful stuff,' Las commented, breathing out. 'But very high
in sugar, I'm telling you! That's why I like the Armenian cognacs
– the sugar content right down at the minimum, but the full
flavour's all still there . . . Let's have another.'

The glasses were filled a second time. Las looked at me expectantly.

'Here's to health?' I suggested uncertainly.

'To health,' Las agreed. He drank and then sniffed at the handkerchief.
He looked out the window, shuddered and muttered:
'That's some stuff . . . it doesn't mess around.'

'What's wrong?'

'You'll never believe it, but I thought I just saw a bat fly past
the train!' Las exclaimed. 'Huge, the size of a sheepdog. Br-rr-rr
. . .'

I realised I'd have to give Kostya a couple of words of friendly
advice. Out loud I just joked:

'It probably wasn't a bat, more likely a squirrel.'

'A flying squirrel,' Las said mournfully. 'God help us all . . . No,
honestly, a huge bat!'

'Maybe it was just flying very close to the glass?' I suggested.
'And you only caught a glimpse of it, so you couldn't judge how
far away it was – so you thought it was bigger than it really was.'

'Maybe so . . .' Las said thoughtfully. 'But what was it doing
here? Why would it want to fly alongside the train?'

'That's elementary,' I said, taking the broken flask and pouring
us a third glass. 'A train moves at such great speed that it creates
a shield of air in front of it. The shield stuns mosquitoes and butterflies
and all sorts of other flying creatures and tosses them into
turbulent streams of air running along both sides of the train. So
at night bats like to fly alongside a moving train and eat the
stunned flies.'

Las thought about it. He asked:

'Then why don't birds fly around moving trains in the daytime?'

'Well, that's elementary too!' I said, handing him his glass. 'Birds
are much more stupid than mammals. Bats have already guessed
how to use trains to get food, but birds haven't figured it out yet.
In a hundred or two hundred years the birds will discover how
to exploit trains too.'

'How come I didn't realise all that for myself?' Las asked in
amazement. 'It's really all so simple. Okay, then . . .here's to common
sense!'

We drank.

'Animals are amazing,' Las said profoundly. 'Cleverer than Darwin
thought. I used to have . . .'

I never got to hear what it was Las used to have – a dog, a
hamster or a fish in an aquarium. He glanced out of the window
again and turned green.

'It's there again . . . the bat!'

'Catching the mosquitoes,' I reminded him.

'What mosquitoes? It swerved round a lamp-post like it wasn't
even there! The size of a sheepdog, I tell you!'

Las stood up and resolutely pulled the blind down. He said in
a determined voice:

'To hell with it . . . I knew I shouldn't be reading Stephen King
just before bed . . .The size of that bat! Like a pterodactyl. It could
catch owls and eagles, not mosquitoes!'

That freak Kostya! I realised that in his animal form a vampire,
like a werewolf, became completely brainless and had little control
over his own actions. He was probably getting a kick out of
hurtling along beside the train in the night, glancing into the
windows, taking a breather on the lamp-posts. But he should at
least take basic precautions.

'It's a mutation,' Las mused. 'Nuclear tests, leaks from reactors,
electromagnetic waves, mobile phones . . . and we just carry on
laughing at it all, think it's all science fiction. And the gutter press
keeps feeding us lies. So who can I tell – they'll just think I was
drunk or I'm lying!'

He opened his bottle of cognac with a determined expression
and asked:

'What do you think of the supernatural?'

'I respect it,' I said with dignity.

'Me too,' Las admitted. 'Now I do. I never even thought about
it before . . .' He cast a wary glance at the blind over the window.
'You live all those years, and then somewhere out in the Pskov
peat bogs you suddenly meet a live yeti – and you go right off
your rocker! Or you see a rat a metre long Or . . .' He waved his
hand and poured brandy into the glasses. 'What if it turns out
there really are witches and vampires and werewolves living right
here alongside us? After all, what better disguise could there be
than to get your image enshrined in the culture of the mass media?
Anything that's described in artistic terms and shown in the movies
stops being frightening and mysterious. For real horror you need
the spoken word, you need an old grandpa sitting on a bench,
scaring his grandkids in the evening: "And then the master of the
house came to him and said: I won't let you go, I'll tie you up
and bind you tight and you'll rot under the fallen branches!" That's
the way to make people wary of strange happenings. Kids sense
that, you know, it's no wonder they love telling stories about the
Black Hand and the Coffin on Wheels. But modern literature, and
especially the movies, it all just dilutes that instinctive horror. How
can you feel afraid of Dracula if he's been killed a hundred times?
How can you be afraid of aliens if our guys always squelch them?
Hollywood is the great suppressor of human vigilance. A toast –
to the death of Hollywood, for depriving us of a healthy fear of
the unknown!'

'I'll always drink to that,' I said warmly. 'Tell me, Las, what made
you decide to go to Kazakhstan? Is it really a good place for a
holiday?'

Las shrugged and said:

'I don't even know. I suddenly got a yen for something exotic
– kumis in milking pails, camel races, ram-fights, beautiful girls
with unfamiliar kinds of faces, arboraceous cannabis in the town
squares . . .'

'What kind of cannabis?' I asked, puzzled.

'Arboraceous. It's a tree, only it never gets a chance to grow,'
Las explained, with the same kind of serious expression I'd used
for my stories about bats and swallows. 'But what do I care, I'm
ruining my health with tobacco. I just fancy something exotic . . .'

He took out a pack of Belomor and lit up.

'The conductor will be here in a minute,' I remarked.

'No he won't, I put a condom over the smoke detector.' Las
nodded upwards. There was a half-inflated condom stretched over
the smoke detector projecting from the wall. Delicate pink, with
plastic studs.

'I think you probably have the wrong idea about the exotic fun
that Kazakhstan has to offer,' I said.

'Too late to worry about that – I'm on my way now,' Las
muttered. 'The idea just came to me out of nowhere this morning:
Why don't I go to Kazakhstan? I just dropped everything, gave
my assistant his instructions, and went to catch the train.'

I pricked my ears up at that.

'Just upped and left? Are you always so footloose and fancy-free?'

Las thought about it and shook his head.

'Not really. But this was like something just clicked . . . It's no
big deal. Let's have one more for the road . . .'

He started pouring – and I took another look at him through
the Twilight.

Even though I knew what to look for, I could barely even sense
the vestigial trace, the unknown Other's touch had been so light
and elegant. It was already fading, almost cold already.

Simple suggestion, the kind that even the weakest Other could
manage. But how neatly it had been done!

'One more for the road,' I agreed. 'I can't keep my eyes open
either . . . we'll have plenty of time to talk.'

But I wasn't going to get any sleep in the next hour. I had a
conversation with Edgar coming up – and possibly one with Gesar
too.

E
DGAR LOOKED SADLY
at the broken pieces of the flask.
Unfortunately he wasn't dressed appropriately for expressing
profound sorrow – loose shorts with a jolly pattern and a baggy
undershirt, with his paunch oozing out between the two of them.
Inquisitors obviously didn't take great care to keep in good shape;
they relied more on the power of their magic.

'This isn't Prague,' I said, trying to comfort him. 'This is Russia.
When bottles don't surrender here, they're exterminated.'

'I'll have to write an explanatory note,' Edgar said gloomily.
'Czech bureaucracy is a match for the Russian version any day.'

'At least we know now that Las isn't an Other.'

'We still don't know anything,' the Inquisitor muttered irritably.
'A positive result would have been unambiguous. With a negative
one, there's still a chance he's such a powerful Other that he sensed
the trap. And decided to have a little joke with us.'

I didn't try to object. It was a possibility that we really couldn't
exclude.

'He doesn't seem like an Other to me,' Kostya said in a low
voice. He was sitting on his bunk in just his shorts, streaming
with sweat and breathing heavily. It looked like he'd spent too
long flitting about as a bat. 'I checked him out back at the Assol.
Every way I could. And just now too . . . Doesn't look it.'

'I have something else to say to you,' Edgar snapped. 'Why did
you have to fly right outside the window?'

'I was observing.'

'Couldn't you just sit on the roof and lean down?'

'At a hundred kilometres an hour? I might be an Other, but
the laws of physics still apply. I'd have been blown off!'

'So the laws of physics don't prevent you from flying at a
hundred kilometres an hour, but you can't stay on the roof of the
carriage?'

Kostya frowned. He reached into his jacket and took out a small
flask full of some thick, dark crimson liquid. He took a mouthful.

Edgar frowned:

'How soon will you require . . . food?'

'If I don't have to transform again, tomorrow evening,' Kostya
waved the flask through the air, and it made a heavy slashing
sound, 'I've got enough left for breakfast.'

'I could . . . in view of the special circumstances . . .' Edgar
paused and cast a sideways glance at me. 'I could issue you a
licence.'

'No,' I said quickly. 'That's a breach of established procedure.'

'Konstantin is on active service with the Inquisition at present,'
Edgar reminded me. 'The Light Ones would receive compensation.'

'No,' I repeated.

'He has to nourish himself somehow. And the people in the
train are probably doomed anyway. Every last one of them.'

Kostya said nothing, looking at me. Without smiling, a serious,
intent kind of look . . .

'Then I'll get off the train,' I said. 'And you can do whatever
you like.'

'That's the Night Watch style,' Kostya said in a quiet voice.
'Washing your hands of the whole business. That's the way you
always behave, giving us the people yourselves, and then turning
your noses up in contempt.'

'Quiet!' Edgar barked, getting up and standing between us.
'Quiet, both of you! This is no time for squabbling. Kostya, do
you need a licence? Or can you hold out?'

Kostya shook his head.

'I don't need a licence. While we're stopped somewhere in
Tambov I'll get out and catch a couple of cats.'

'Why cats?' Edgar asked curiously. 'Why . . . er . . . not dogs,
for instance?'

'I feel sorry for dogs,' Kostya explained. 'Cats too . . . but where
am I going to find a cow or a sheep in Tambov? And the train
doesn't stop for long at the small stations.'

'We'll get you a ram in Tambov,' Edgar promised. 'There's no
point in helping spread mystical rumours. That's how it all begins
– they find the bodies of animals drained of blood, write their
articles for the gutter press . . .'

He took out his phone and selected a number from its address
book. He had to wait a long time before someone who had been
sleeping peacefully answered his call.

'Dmitry? Stop whining, this is no time for sleeping, the
motherland calls . . .' Edgar squinted at us and said in a clear
voice: 'Greetings from Solomon, with all the signatures and
seals.'

Edgar stopped talking for a while, either allowing the man to
gather his wits or listening to his reply.

'Yes. Edgar. Remember now? Precisely so,' said Edgar. 'We
haven't forgotten about you. And we need your help. In four
hours the Moscow–Almaty train will stop in Tambov. We need
a ram. What?'

Taking the phone away from his face and covering the speaker
with his hand, Edgar said angrily:

'What stupid asses they are, these human personnel.'

'An ass would suit me fine too,' Kostya chuckled.

Edgar spoke into the phone again:

'No, not you. It has to be a ram. You know, the animal. Or
an ordinary sheep. Or a cow. That doesn't bother me. In four
hours, be standing near the station with the animal. No, a dog's
no good. Because it's no good! No, no one's going to eat it. You
can keep the meat and the skin. Right, I'll call you when we
get there.'

Edgar put his mobile away and explained:

'We have a very limited . . . contingent . . . in Tambov. There
aren't any Others there at the moment, only a human member of
staff.'

'Ah.' That was my only comment. There had never been any
humans in the Watches.

'Sometimes it's unavoidable,' Edgar explained vaguely. 'Never
mind, he'll manage it. He's paid for it. You'll get your ram,
Kostya.'

'Thanks,' Kostya replied amicably. 'A sheep would be better, of
course. But a ram will do the job too.'

'Is the gastronomical discussion over now?' I asked sarcastically.

Edgar turned to me and spoke in a didactic tone:

'Our battle-readiness is a matter of great importance . . . So,
you're telling us that this . . . Las . . . has been influenced by magic?'

'That's right. This morning. The desire to travel to Alma-Ata by
train was implanted in his mind.'

'It makes sense,' Edgar agreed. 'If you hadn't discovered the trace,
we'd have put serious effort into this guy. And wasted a bundle
of time and energy. But that means . . .'

'That the perpetrator is intimately familiar with the affairs of
the Watches,' I said with a nod. 'He knows about the investigation
at the Assol complex, and who was under suspicion. In other
words . . .'

'Someone from the very top,' Edgar agreed. 'Five or six Others
in the Night Watch, the same number in the Day Watch. Let's say
twenty altogether, at most . . . Even so, it's not many, not many at
all.'

'Or someone from the Inquisition,' said Kostya.

'Okay. A name, brother, a name.' Edgar laughed. 'Who?'

'Witiezslav.' Kostya paused for a second and then added: 'For
instance.'

For a few seconds I thought the Dark Magician, usually so
unflappable, was about to let rip with a string of obscenities. And
definitely in a Baltic accent. But Edgar restrained himself:

'Perhaps you're feeling a bit tired after the transformation,
Konstantin? Maybe it's time to go bye-byes?'

'Edgar, I'm younger than you, but we're both babies compared
to Witiezslav,' Kostya replied calmly. 'What did we see? Clothes
filled with dust. Did we personally analyse that dust?'

Edgar didn't answer.

'I'm not sure you can tell anything from the remains of a
vampire . . .' I put in.

'Why would Witiezslav . . .' Edgar began.

'Power,' Kostya answered laconically.

'What's power got to do with it? If he had decided to steal the
book, why report that he'd found it? He could have just taken it
and slipped away. He was alone when he found it. Do you understand
that? Alone.'

'He might not have realised immediately what he was dealing
with,' Kostya parried. 'Or not decided to steal it straight away. But
to fake his own death and bolt with the book while we're trying
to catch his killer – that would be a brilliant move.'

Edgar started breathing faster. He nodded:

'All right. I'll ask them to check it. I'll get in touch with . . .
with the Higher Ones in Moscow and ask them to check the
remains.'

'Just to be sure, ask Gesar and Zabulon both to check the
remains,' Kostya advised him. 'We can't be sure one of them isn't
involved.'

'Don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs . . .' Edgar
growled. He settled down more comfortably on the bunk, and
switched off the light.

Gesar and Zabulon weren't going to get a good night's rest
either . . .

I yawned and said:

'Gentlemen, I don't know about you, but I'm going to sleep.'

Edgar didn't answer – he was engaged in mental conversation
with one of the Great Ones. Kostya climbed under his own
blanket.

I climbed up onto the top bunk, undressed and shoved my jeans
and shirt onto the shelf. I took off my watch and put it beside
me – I don't like sleeping with it on. Below me, Kostya clicked
the switch of the night light, and it went dark.

Edgar sat there without moving. The wheels of the train
hammered on reassuringly. They say that in America, where they
use incredibly long rails cast in single pieces, they put special
notches in them to imitate the joints and recreate that comforting
rhythm . . .

I couldn't sleep.

Someone had killed a Higher Vampire. Or the vampire himself
had faked his own death. It didn't matter which. In either case,
someone was in possession of unimaginable Power.

Why would he run? Why hide on a train – with the risk
that the entire train would be destroyed or perhaps surrounded
by hundreds of Others and subjected to an exhaustive search?
It was stupid, unnecessary, risky. He had become the most
powerful Other of all – sooner or later power would come to
him. In a hundred years, or two hundred – when everybody
would have forgotten about the witch Arina and the mythical
book. If anybody should have understood all that, Witiezslav
would have.

It was . . . too human, somehow. Messy and illogical. Nothing
like the way a wise and powerful Other would have acted.

But only an Other like that could possibly have killed
Witiezslav.

Again it didn't add up.

Down below, Edgar began to stir. He sighed and his clothes
rustled as he climbed up onto his bunk.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

I imagined the rails stretching out behind the train . . . through
the stations and the small stops, past the cities and the little towns,
all the way back to Moscow, and the roads running away from
the station until out beyond the ring road they were pocked by
potholes and after the hundredth kilometre, transformed into strips
of pulverised tarmac that crept towards the sleepy little village and
up to the old log house . . .

'Svetlana?'

'I was waiting, Anton. How are you getting on?'

'Still travelling. But there's something strange going on . . .'

I tried to open myself up to her as much as possible . . . or
almost
.
To unroll my memory like a bolt of cloth on the cutter's
table. The train, the Inquisitors, the conversation with Las, the
conversation with Edgar and Kostya . . .

'It's strange,' Svetlana said after a short pause. 'Very strange. I get
the feeling someone's playing games with you all. I don't like it,
Anton.'

'Me neither. How's Nadya?'

'She's been asleep for ages.'

In this kind of conversation that only Others can have, there is
no real inflection of the voice. But there is something that replaces
it – I could sense Svetlana's slight indecision.

'Are you at home?'

'No. I'm . . . visiting a certain old lady.'

'Svetlana!'

'I'm just visiting, don't worry. I decided to talk the situation
over with her . . . and learn a bit about the book.'

I should have realised straight away that it wasn't just concern
for our daughter that had made Svetlana leave.

'And what have you found out?'

'It was the
Fuaran
. The real one. And . . . we were right about
Gesar's son. The old woman thought the good turn she'd done
for Gesar was hilarious . . . and she re-established some useful
contacts at the same time.'

'And then she sacrificed the book?'

'Yes. She left it behind, absolutely certain that the secret room
would soon be found, and the search would be called off.'

'What does she think about what's happened?' I carefully
avoided using any names, as if a conversation like this could be
tapped.

'I think she's panicking. Although she's putting a brave face on
it.'

'Svetlana, how quickly can the
Fuaran
turn a human being into
an Other?'

'Almost instantly. It takes ten minutes to pronounce the spells,
and you need a few ingredients . . . or rather, one . . . blood from
twelve people. Maybe only a drop, but from twelve different
people.'

'What for?'

'You'd have to ask Fuaran that. I'm sure any other liquid would
have done instead of blood, but the witch bound the spell to
blood . . . Anyway, ten minutes' preparation, twelve drops of
blood, and you can turn a human being into an Other. Or a
whole group of people, just as long as they're all within your
field of vision.'

'And what grade of power will they be on?'

'It varies, but you can raise the grade of the weak ones with
the next spell. In theory you can turn any human into a Higher
Magician.'

There was something in what she'd just said. Something important.
But I just couldn't grasp the thread yet . . .

'Sveta, what is the . . . old woman afraid of?'

'The transformation of people into Others on a massive scale.'

'Is she planning to come in and confess?'

'No. She's planning to run for it. And I can understand that.'