Gurgling and clutching at his damaged hand, Vulpe had reared to his fee t. Armstrong spat out Vulpe's little finger, which hung from his mouth on a thread of blood and gristle. The Texan now had possession of the rifle and knew how to use it. But even as he tried to turn the weapon on the madman, so Vulpe recovered and kicked it from his hands.

Somehow Armstrong burst free of his sleeping-bag, but as he lurched to his feet he felt something clinging to his face and moving there. And shaki ng with laughter, the mad thing which had been George Vulpe pointed at Arms trong - at his face. He pointed with his freakish left hand, where all that remained of the third finger was now a b.l.o.o.d.y stump.

The Texan put up a hand and slapped at the finger on his cheek, clawed a t it. It climbed higher, with a life of its own, and gouged at the corner of his right eye. Armstrong howled as it dug in, dislodged the eyeball and ent ered the socket. With his eye hanging on his cheek, he danced and screamed a nd clutched at his face; but he couldn't dislodge the thing, which burrowed like an alien worm into his head.

'Jesus G.o.d!' he screamed, falling to his knees and tearing at the rim of the empty orbit. And: 'J-J-Jesus G-G-G.o.d!' he gurgled again as he ripped the flopping eye loose and vampire flesh put out exploratory tendrils into his br ain.

On his knees, he shuffled spastically, blindly towards the fire, and shud dered to a halt. He coughed and shuddered again, and toppled forward like a f elled tree. But the Vulpe-anomaly stepped forward, caught his collar with its good h and and swung him to one side, turning him onto his back. 'Ah, no, Seth!' th e thing said, standing over him. 'Enough is enough. For if you burn it will take time in the healing, and I would be up and gone from here.'

'Ge-o-o-orge!' the other coughed and gagged.

'No, no, my friend, no more of that,' said the monster, smiling hideously . 'From now on you must call me Janos!'

More than five and a half years later; the balcony of a hotel room in Rh odes, overlooking a noisy, jostling, early-morning street only a stone's thr ow from the harbour; salty-sweet air breezing in across the sea from Turkey, thinning out the clouds of blue exhaust smoke, the pungent miasma of the ba keries, the many odours of the breakfast bars, refuse collectors and humanit y in general in this, the nerve-centre of the ancient Greek port.

It was the middle of May 1989, the tourist season only just beginning an d already threatening to be a blockbuster, and the sun was a ball of fire on e-third of the way up the incredibly blue dome of the sky. A 'dome' because you couldn't take it in in its entirety but must close your eyes to a squint , thus rounding off the corners and turning your periphery of vision to a sh adowy curve. That was how Trevor Jordan felt about it, anyway, having thrown back maybe one or two Metaxas too many the night before. But it was early y et, just after 8:00 a.m., and he guessed he'd recover in a little while; tho ugh by the same token he knew the town would get a lot noisier, too.

Jordan had breakfasted on a boiled egg and single piece of toast and wa s now into his third cup of coffee the British 'instant' variety, not the dark-brown sludge which the Greeks drank from thimble-sized cups - which h e calculated was gradually diluting whatever brandy remained in his system.

The trouble with Metaxa, as he'd discovered, was that it was extremely che ap and very, very drinkable. Especially while watching the nonstop belly-da ncing floor-show in a place called The Blue Lagoon on Trianta Bay.

He groaned and gently fingered his forehead for the fifth or sixth time in a half-hour. 'Sungla.s.ses,' he said to the man who sat with him, similarly attir ed in dressing-gown and flip-flops. 'I have to buy a pair. Christ, this glare c ould take your eyes out!'

'Have mine,' Ken Layard told him, grinning as he pa.s.sed a pair of cheap, plastic-framed shades across their tiny breakfast table. 'And later you can buy me new ones.'

'Will you order more coffee?' Jordan groaned. 'Say, a bucketful?'

'I thought you were knocking it back a bit last night,' the other answered . 'Why didn't you tell me you'd never been to the Greek islands before?' He le aned over the balcony rail, called down and attracted the attention of a waite r serving breakfast to other early-risers on a terraced lower level, then lift ed the empty coffee pot and jiggled it suggestively. 'How do you know that?' said Jordan.

'What, that this is new to you? No one who's been here before drinks Metax a like that - or ouzo for that matter.'

'Ah!' Jordan remembered. 'We started off on ouzo!'

'You started off on ouzo,' Layard reminded him. 'I was getting atmospher e, local colour. You were getting drunk.'

'Yes, but did I enjoy myself?'

Layard grinned again, shrugged and said, 'Well ... you didn't get us throw n out of anywhere.' He studied the other in his self-inflicted discomfort.

An experienced but variable telepath, Jordan could be forceful when he needed to be; usually, though, he was easy-going, transparent, an open book . It was as if he personally would like to be as readable as other people's minds were to him, as if he were trying to make some sort of physical comp ensation for his metaphysical talent. His face reflected this att.i.tude: it was fresh, oval, open, almost boyish. With thinning fair hair falling forwa rd above grey eyes, and a crooked mouth which straightened out and tightene d whenever he was worried or annoyed, everyone who knew Trevor Jordan liked him. Having the advantage of knowing about it when people didn't like him, he simply avoided them. But rangy-limbed and athletic despite his forty-fo ur years, it was a mistake to misread his sensitivity; there was plenty of determination in him, too.

They were old friends, these two, who went back a long way. They could clown with each other now because of their past, in which there'd been time s when there was little or no room for clowning; times and events, in fact, so outre even in their weird world that they'd receded now to mere phantom s of mind and memory. Like bad dreams or tragedies (or even drunken nights) , best forgotten.

There was nothing so deadly strange in their current mission - though cert ainly it was serious enough - but still Jordan realized he'd been in error the previous night. He put on the sungla.s.ses, frowned and sat up straighter in hi s cane chair. 'I didn't draw attention to us or anything stupid like that?'

'Lord, no,' said the other. 'And anyway I wouldn't have let you. You wer e just a tourist having himself a good time, that's all. Too much sun during the day, and too much booze through the night. And what the h.e.l.l, there wer e plenty of other Brits around who made you look positively sober!'

'And Manolis Papastamos?' Jordan was rueful now. 'He must have thought me an idiot!'

Papastamos was their local liaison man, second in command of the Athens narcotics squad, who had come across to Rhodes by hydrofoil to get to know t he pair personally and see if there was anything he could do to simplify the ir task. But he'd also proved to be something of a h.e.l.lraiser, even a liabil ity. 'No,' Layard shook his head. 'In fact he was more under the influence t han you were! He said he'd join us on the harbour wall at 10:30 to see the Samothraki dock -but I doubt it. When we dropped him off at his hotel he lo oked like h.e.l.l. On the other hand . . . they do have remarkable const.i.tutio ns, these Greeks. But in any case we'll be better off without him. He knows who we are but not what we are. As far as he's concerned we're part of Cus toms and Excise, or maybe New Scotland Yard. It would be hard to concentrat e with Manolis around making conversation and creating a mental racket. I h ope to G.o.d he stays in bed!'

Jordan was looking and feeling a little healthier; the sungla.s.ses had h elped somewhat; fresh coffee arrived and Layard poured. Jordan watched his easy movements and thought: Just like a big brother. He looks after me like I was a snot-nosed kid. He always has, thank G.o.d!

Layard was a locator, a scryer without a crystal ball. He didn't need on e; a map would do just as well, or an inkling of his quarry's location. A ye ar older than Jordan, he stood a blocky seventy inches tall, with a square f ace, dark hair and complexion, expressive, active eyebrows and mouth. Under a forehead lined from acc.u.mulated years of concentration, his eyes were very keen and (of course) far-seeing, and so darkly brown as to border on black.

Looking at Layard through and in the privacy of dark lenses, Jordan's thoughts went back twelve years to Harkley House in Devon, England, where he and the locator had formed their first real partnership and worked as a team for the very first time. Then as now they'd been members of E-Branch , that most secret of all the Secret Services, whose work was known only t o a handful of 'top people'. Unlike now, however, their work on that occas ion had been far less mundane. Indeed, there had been nothing at all munda ne about the Yulian Bodescu affair.

Memories, deliberately suppressed for more than a decade, sprang once m ore into being, full-fleshed and fantastic in Jordan's ESP-endowed mind. On ce more he held the crossbow in his hand, chest-high and aimed dead ahead, as he listened to the hiss of jetting water and the girl's voice humming th at tuneless melody from beyond the closed door, and wondered if this were a trap. Then - He kicked open the door to the shower cubicle - and stood riveted to the spot! Helen Lake, Yulian Bodescu's cousin, was utterly beautiful and quite naked. Standing sideways on, her body gleamed in the streaming water. She je rked her head round to stare at Jordan, her eyes wide in terror where she fe ll back against the shower's wall. Her knees began to buckle and her eyelids fluttered.

'But this is just a frightened girl!' he told himself- in the moment befor e her thoughts branded themselves on his telepathic mind: Come on, my sweet! she thought. Ah, just touch me, hold me! Just a little closer, my sweet . . .

Then, jerking back away from her, he saw the carving knife in her hand an d the insane glare in her demonic eyes. As she drew him effortlessly towards her and lifted her knife in a gleaming arc, so he pulled the crossbow's trigg er. It was an automatic thing, his life or hers.

G.o.d! - the bolt nailed her to the tiled wall; she screamed like the d.a.m.ne d soul she was and jerked herself free of splintering tiles and plaster, stag gering to and fro in the shower's shallow well. But she still had the knife, and Jordan could do nothing but stand there with his eyes bulging, mouthing m eaningless prayers, as she advanced on him yet again ...

. . . Until Ken Layard shouldered him aside - Layard with his flamethrowe r - whose nozzle he directed into the shower to turn it into a blistering, st eaming pressure-cooker!

'G.o.d help us!' Jordan gasped now, as he'd gasped it then. He blotted the unbearable memories out, came reeling back to the present. In the wake of men tal conflict, crisis, his hangover seemed twice as bad. He breathed deeply, u sed the tips of his fingers to ma.s.sage the top of his head where it felt spli t, and wondered out loud: 'Christ, what brought that on?'

Layard's eyes were wide; he bent forward across the table and grasped Jor dan's forearm. 'You too?' he said.

Jordan broke an unspoken rule among E-Branch espers: he glanced into La yard's mind. Receding, he felt the echoes of similar memories and at once b roke the contact. 'Yes, me too,' he said.

'I could tell by your face,' Layard told him. 'I've never seen you look like that since . . . that time. Maybe it's because we're working together again?'

'We've worked together plenty,' Jordan flopped back in his chair, suddenly felt exhausted. 'No, I think it's just something that was squeezed up in ther e and had to be out. Well, it took its time - but it's out now and gone foreve r, I hope!'

'Me too,' Layard agreed. 'But both of us at the same time? And why now?

We couldn't be in a more different setting from Harkley House than we are right now.'

Jordan sighed and reached for his coffee. His hand trembled a little. 'M aybe we picked it up from each other and amplified it. You know what they sa y about great minds thinking alike?'

Layard relaxed and nodded. 'Especially minds like ours, eh?' He nodded agai n, if a little uncertainly. 'Well, maybe you're right. . .'

By 9:45 the two were down on the northern harbour wall, seated on a woo den bench which gave them a splendid view right across the Mandraki shallow s and harbour to the Fort of St Nikolas. To their left the Bank of Greece s tood on its raised promontory, its white-banded walls and blue windows refl ected in the still water, while on their right and to the rear of the promenade sprawled Rhodes New Town. Mandraki, being mainly a shallow-water moori ng, was not the commercial harbour; that lay a quarter-mile south in the ba y of the historic, picturesque and Crusader-fortified Old Town, beyond the great mole with the fort at its tip. But their information was that the dru g-runners moored up in Mandraki, taking on water and some small provisions there, before proceeding on to Crete, Italy, Sardinia and Spain.

A little cannabis resin would be dropped off here, by night (probably c arried ash.o.r.e by a crewman in swim-trunks and fins), and likewise in variou s ports of call along the way. But the great ma.s.s of the stuff - and the ma in cargo, which was cocaine - was destined for Valencia, Spain. From where, eventually, a lot of it would find its way to England. Such had been its r oute and destination in the past. Meanwhile the E-Branch agents had the tas k of determining (a) how much of the white powder was aboard; and (b) if th e amount was small, would a pre-emptive bust simply serve to tip their hand s to the drug-barons; and (c) where was the stuff kept if it was aboard?

Only a few months ago a boat had been stripped to the bones in Larnaca, Cyprus, and nothing had been found. But of course, that one had been handl ed by the Greek-Cypriot police, whose 'expertise' perhaps lacked that littl e something extra - like co-ordination or even intelligence! This time it w ould be a combined effort, terminating in Valencia before the bulk of the s tuff could be off-loaded. And this time, too, the boat - a wallowing, woode n, round-bottomed barrel of an old Greek thing called the Samothraki - woul d be stripped not just to her bones but the very marrow. And in the interim Jordan and Layard would shadow her along her route.

Dressed in tourist-trade 'American' caps with hugely-projecting peaks, b right, open-necked, short-sleeved shirts, cool slacks and leather sandals, a nd equipped with binoculars, they now awaited the arrival of their quarry. S ince they went allegedly incognito, their mode of dress might seem almost ou tlandish, but by comparison with the more lurid tourist groups they could ea sily be too conservative. And that was to be avoided.

They had been silent for some time; there was something of a mood on bo th of them; Jordan blamed the Metaxa and Layard said it was 'bad gut' broug ht on by greasy food. Whichever, it interfered a little with their ESP.

'It's . . . cloudy,' Jordan complained, frowning. Then he shrugged. 'But you don't know what I mean, do you?'

'Sure I do,' Layard answered. 'We called it mindsmog in the old days, re member? A kind of dull mental static, distorting or blocking the pictures? O r obscuring them in a sort of... well, almost in a damp, reeking fog! When I reach out and search for the Samothraki, I can feel it there like a welling mist in my mind. A dampness, a darkness, a smog. But how to explain it in a place like this? It's weird. And it doesn't come from the boat especially b ut -1 don't know - from everywhere!' Jordan looked at him. 'How long since we came up against other espers?'

'In our work, you mean? Just about every time we do an emba.s.sy job, I su ppose. What are you getting at?'

'You don't think it's likely there are other agents on the same job? Russia ns, maybe, or the French?'

'It's possible.' It was Layard's turn to frown. 'The USSR's narcotics prob lem is growing every day, and France has been in the s.h.i.t for years. But I was thinking: what if they're on the other side? I mean, what if the runners them selves are using espers? They could well afford to, and that's a fact!'

Jordan put his binoculars to his eyes, turned his head and scanned the coa stline from the fort on the mole all the way to the heart of the Old Town wher e it rose behind ma.s.sive walls. 'Have you tried tracking it?' he said. 'I mean , after all's said and done, you're the locator. But me, I've a feeling the so urce is somewhere in there.'

Layard's keen eyes followed the aim of Jordan's binoculars. A big, whit e, expensive-looking motor-cruiser lolled at anchor in Mandraki's narrow, d eep-water channel; beyond that a handful of caiques were moored insh.o.r.e, or came and went, most of them full to the gunnels with tourists; a further q uarter-mile and the Old Town's markets and streets were a hive, literally b uzzing where the hill rose in a ma.s.s of churches and white and yellow house s, burning in the morning sunlight. Except that all was in motion, he might well have been looking at a picture postcard. The scene was that perfect.

Layard stared for long moments, then snapped his fingers, sat back and grinn ed. "That's it!' he finally said. 'You got it first time.'

'Eh?' Jordan looked at him.

'And of course it would have to be worse for you than for me. For I only f ind things. I don't read minds.'

'Do you want to explain?'

'What's to explain?' Layard looked smug. 'Your tourist's map of the Old Town is the same as mine. Except you probably haven't read it. OK, I'll put you out of your misery. There's an insane asylum on the hill.'

'Wha - ?' Jordan started, then put down his binoculars and slapped his knee . 'That has to be it!' he said. 'We're getting the echoes of all of those poor sick b.a.s.t.a.r.ds locked up in that place!'

'It looks like it,' Layard nodded. 'So now that we know what it is we sho uld try to screen it out, concentrate on the job in hand.' He looked out to s ea through the mouth of the harbour and became serious in a moment. 'Especial ly since it appears the Samothraki's just a wee bit on the early side.'

'She's out there?' Jordan was immediately attentive.

'Five or ten minutes at the most,' Layard nodded. 'I just picked her up. A nd I'll give you odds she's in and dropping anchor by quarter past the hour.'

Both men now took to watching the entrance to the harbour, so missing a sudden burst of activity aboard the big, privately owned motor-cruiser.

A canopied caique ferried out a small party from steps in the harbour wall ; two men went aboard the sleek white ship, which soon weighed anchor; pow erful engines throbbed as she turned almost on her own axis and nosed idly back along the deep-water channel. Black awnings with fancy scalloped tri ms gave her foredeck shade, where a black-clad figure now lounged in one o f several reclining deckchairs. A tall man in white stood at the rail, loo king towards the harbour mouth. He wore a black eye patch over his right eye.

The white leisure craft was very noticeable now, but still it hovered on the periphery of the espers' vision, its screw idling where it waited in th e deep-water channel. Both of them now held binoculars to their eyes, and Jo rdan had stood up, was leaning forward against the harbour wall as the Samot hraki came chugging into view around the mole.

'Here she comes,' he breathed. 'Right between the Old Boy's legs!' He sen t his telepathic mind reaching across the water, seeking out the minds of the captain and crew. He wanted to know the location of the cocaine ... if one o f them should be thinking about it right now ... or about its ultimate destin ation.

'What Old Boy's legs?' Layard's voice came to him distantly, even though he was right here beside him. Such was Jordan's concentration that he'd alm ost entirely shut out the conscious world.

'The Colossus,' Jordan husked. 'Helios. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. That's where he stood - right there, straddling that harbour mouth - until 224 b.c.'

'So you did read your map after all,' breathed Layard.

The old Samothraki was coming in; the sleek white modern vessel was go ing out; the former was obscured by the latter as they came up alongside e ach other - and dropped their anchors.

's.h.i.t!' said Jordan. 'Mindsmog again! I can't see a d.a.m.n thing through it!'

'I can feel it,' Layard answered.

Jordan swept his gla.s.ses along the sleek outline of the white vessel and read off its name from the hull: the Lazarus. 'She's a beauty,' he started to say, and froze right there. Centred in his field of view, the man in black o n the foredeck was seated upright in his chair; the back of his head was visi ble; he was looking at the old Samothraki. But as Jordan fixed him in his bin oculars, so that oddly-proportioned head turned until its unknown owner was s taring straight at the esper across one hundred and twenty yards of blue wate r. And even though they were both wearing dark gla.s.ses, and despite the dista nce, it was as if they stood face to face!

WHAT? A powerful mental voice grunted its astonishment full in Jordan's mind. A THOUGHT-THIEF? A MENTALIST?

Jordan gasped. What the h.e.l.l did he have here? Whatever it was, it wasn't what he'd been looking for. He tried to withdraw but the other's mind clos ed on his like a great vice . . . and squeezed! He couldn't pull out! He flo pped there loosely against the harbour wall and looked at the other where he now stood tall - enormous to Jordan - in the shade of the black canopy.

Their eyes were locked on each other, and Jordan was straining so hard t o look away, to redirect his thoughts, that he was beginning to vibrate. It was as if solid bars of steel were shooting out from the other's hidden eyes , across the water and down the barrels of Jordan's binoculars into his brai n; where even now they were hammering at his mind as they drove home their m essage: WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU HAVE ENTERED MY MIND OF YOUR OWN F.

REE WILL. SO . . . BE . . . IT!.

Layard was on his feet now, anxious and astonished. For all that he'd exp erienced little or nothing of the telepath's shock and, indeed, terror, still he could tell by just looking at him that something was terribly wrong. With his own mind full of mental smog and crackling, buzzing static, he reached t o take Jordan's sagging weight - in time to guide and lower the telepath to t he bench as he collapsed like a jelly, unconscious in his arms . . .

4.

Lazarides

That same night: The Lazarus lay moored to a wharf in the main harbour, entirely still a nd darkly mirrored in water smooth as gla.s.s; three of the four crewmen had gone ash.o.r.e, leaving only a watchkeeper; the boat's owner sat at a window-s eat upstairs in the most disreputable taverna of the Old Town, looking out and down across the waterfront. Downstairs a handful of tourists drank chea p brandy or ouzo and ate the execrable food, while the local layabouts, b.u.m s and rejects in general laughed and joked with them in English and German, made coa.r.s.e jokes about them in Greek, and scrounged drinks.

There were three or four blowsy-looking English girls down there, some with Greek boyfriends, all the worse for wear and all looking for the main chance. They danced or staggered to sporadic bursts of recorded bouzouki mu sic, and later would dance more frantically, gaspingly, horizontally, to th e accompaniment of slapping, sweating, ouzo-smelling flesh.

Upstairs was out of bounds to such as these, where the owner of the tav erna carried out the occasional shady deal, or perhaps drank, talked or pla yed cards with some of his many shady friends. None of these were around to night, however, just the landlord himself, and a young Greek wh.o.r.e sitting alone in the alcove leading to her business premises - a small room with a bed and washbasin - and the man who now called himself Jianni Lazarides, oc cupying his window-seat.

The fat, stubble-chinned proprietor, called Nichos Dakaris, was here to serve a bottle of good red wine to Lazarides, and the girl was here because she had a black eye and couldn't ply for trade along the waterfront. Or rath er, she wouldn't. It was her way of paying Dakaris back for the beatings he gave her whenever he was obliged to cough up hush-money to the local constab ulary for the privilege of letting a prost.i.tute use his place. If not for th e fact that he felt the urge himself now and then, he probably wouldn't let her stay here at all; but she paid for her room 'in kind' once or twice a we ek as the mood took Dakaris, on top of which he got forty per cent of her ta ke. Or would get it if she only used her room and wouldn't insist on freelan cing in Rhodian back-alleys! Which was his other reason for beating her.

As for Jianni Lazarides: he also had his reasons for being here. This w as the venue for his meeting with the Greek 'captain' of the Samothraki and a couple of his cohorts, when he would look for an explanation as to how a nd why someone had been selling tickets for their a.s.sumed 'covert' drug-run ning operation. Actually he already knew why, for he'd had it from the mind of Trevor Jordan; but now he wanted to hear it from Pavlos Themelis himsel f, the Samothraki's master, before deciding how best to detach himself from the affair.

For Lazarides had put good money into this allegedly safe business (wh ich now appeared to be anything but safe), and he wanted his money back or ... payment in kind? For money and power were G.o.ds here in this era no le ss than in all the foregone centuries of human avarice, of which Lazarides had more than an obscure knowledge. And indeed there were easier, safer, more guaranteed ways to make and use money in this vastly complex world; w ays which would not attract the attention of its law-keepers, or at any ra te not too much of it.

Money was very important to Lazarides, and not just because he was gre edy. This world he'd emerged into was overcrowded and threatening to become even more so, and a vampire has his needs. In the old times a Boyar woul d be given lands by some puppet prince or other, to build a castle there a nd live in seclusion and, preferably and eventually, something of anonymit y. Anonymity and longevity had walked hand in hand in the Old Days; you co uld not have one without the other; a famous man must not be seen to live beyond his or any other ordinary creature's span of years. But in those da ys news travelled slowly; a man could have sons; when he 'died' there woul d always be one of those ready and waiting to step into his shoes.

Likewise in the here and now, except that news and indeed men no longer travelled slowly, because of which the world was that much smaller. So ...

how then to build an aerie, and all unnoticed, in these last dozen years o f this 20th Century? Impossible! But still a very rich man could purchase o bscurity, and with it anonymity, and so go about his business as of old. Wh ich begged a second question: how to become very rich?

Well, Janos Ferenczy thought he had answered that one more than four hu ndred years ago, but now in the guise of Lazarides he wasn't so sure. In th ose days a gem-encrusted weapon or large nugget of gold had been instant we alth. Now, too, except that now men would want to know the source of such a n item. In those days a Boyar's lands and possessions - or loot - had been his own, no questions asked. And only let him who dared try to take them aw ay! But today such baubles as a jewelled hilt or a solid gold Scythian crow n were 'historic treasures', and a man might not trade with them without fi rst satisfying a good many - far too many - queries as to their origin.

Oh, Janos knew the source of his wealth well enow; indeed, here it sat in this window-seat, overlooking a harbour in the once powerful land of R hodos! For the very man who 'discovered' and unearthed these treasures in the here and now was the selfsame one who had buried them deep in the eart h more than four hundred years ago! How better to prepare for a second com ing into the world, when one has foreseen a long, long period of uttermost dark?

And having retrieved these several caches, these items of provenance put down so long ago, surely it would be the very simplest thing to transfer th em into land, properties of his own, the territories and possessions of a Wa mphyri Lord? Oh, true, an aerie were out of the question, even a castle . .