But now, with his subject’s viscera entirely exposed, again a strange stillness came over him. Greyer than before, if that were at all possible, he once more straightened up, rocked back on his heels, let his red hands fall to his sides. And rocking forward again, his neutral blue eyes turned down and began a slow, minute examination of the corpse’s innards.
In the other room the man on the left sat gulping continuously, his hands clawing at the arms of his chair, his face gleaming with fine perspiration. The one on the right had turned the colour of slate, shaking from head to toe, rapidly panting to compensate for a heart which now raced in his chest. But between them ex-Army General Gregor Borowitz, now head of the highly secret Agency for the Development of Paranormal Espionage, was utterly engrossed, his leonine head forward, his heavily jowled face full of awe as he absorbed each and every detail and nuance of the performance, ignoring as best he might the discomfort of his juniors where they flanked him. On the rim of his consciousness a thought formed: he wondered if the others would be sick, and which one would throw up first. And where he would throw up.
On the floor under the table stood a metal wastebin containing a few crumpled scraps of paper and dead cigarette ends. Without taking his eyes from the one-way screen, Borowitz reached down, lifted the wastebin up between his knees and placed it centrally on the table before him. He thought: Let them fight it out between them. In any case, and whichever one let the side down, his vomiting would doubtless elicit a response in the other.
As if reading his mind, the man on the right panted, “Comrade General, I do not think that I—”
“Be still!” Borowitz lashed out with his foot, catching the other’s ankle. “Watch—if you can. If you can’t, then be quiet and let me!”
The naked man’s back was bowed now, bringing his face to within inches of the corpse’s exposed organs and entrails. Left and right his eyes darted, up and down, as if they sought something hidden there. His nostrils were wide, sniffing suspiciously. His brow, hitherto smooth, was now furrowed in a fantastic frown. He resembled in his attitude nothing so much as a great naked bloodhound intent upon tracking its prey.
Then … a sly grin tugged at his grey lips, the gleam of revelation—of a secret discovered, or about to be discovered—shone in his eyes. It was as if he said, “Yes, something is in here, something is trying to hide!”
And now he threw back his head and laughed—laughed out loud, however briefly—before returning to a more frantic scrutiny. But no, it wasn’t enough, the hidden thing would not be exposed. It shrank down out of sight, and glee turned to rage on the instant!
Panting furiously, his grey face trembling in the grip of unimaginable emotions, the naked man snatched up a slim tool whose sharpness shone in mirror brightness. In something of an ordered manner at first, he commenced to cut out the various organs, pipes and bladders; but as his work progressed so it grew ever more vicious and indiscriminate, until the guts as they were partially or almost wholly detached hung out of the body over the edge of the fluted metal table in grotesque lumpy rags, flaps and tatters. And still it was not enough, still the hunted thing eluded him.
He gave a shriek which passed through the speaker into the other room like chalk sliding on a blackboard, like a shovel grating in cold ashes, and grimacing hideously began to hack off the dangling gobbets and hurl them all about. He smeared them down his body, held them to his ear and “listened” to them. He scattered them wide, tossed them over his hunched shoulders, hurled them into the bath, the sink. Gore spattered everywhere; and again his cry of frustration, of weird anguish, ripped through the speaker:
“Not there! Not there!”
In the other room the gasping of the man on the right had turned to a wretched choking. Suddenly he snatched the wastebin from the table, lurched upright and staggered away to a corner of the room. Borowitz grudgingly gave him credit that he was reasonably quiet about it.
“My God, my God!” the man on the left had started to repeat, over and over, each repetition louder than the one before. And, “Awful, awful! He is depraved, insane, a fiend!”
“He is brilliant!” Borowitz growled. “See? See? Now he goes to the heart of the matter.…”
Beyond the screen, the naked man had taken up a surgical saw. His arm and hand and the instrument itself were a blur of red, grey and silver where he sawed upwards through the centre of the sternum. Sweat rivered his gore-spattered skin, dripped from him in a hot rain as he levered at the subject’s chest. It would not give; the blade of the silver hacksaw broke and he threw it down. Crying like an animal, frantic in his movements, he lifted his head and scanned the room, seeking something. His eyes rested briefly on a metal chair, widened in inspiration. In a moment he had snatched the chair up, was using two of its legs as levers in the fresh-cut channel.
In a cracking of bones and a tearing of flesh the left side of the corpse’s chest rose up, was forced back, a trapdoor in the upper trunk. In went the naked man’s hands … a terrible wrenching … and out they came, holding the prize aloft … but only for a moment. Then—
Holding the heart at arms’ length in both hands, the naked man waltzed it across the room, whirled it round and round. He hugged it close, held it up to his eyes, his ears. He pressed it to his own chest, caressed it, sobbed like a baby. He sobbed his relief, burning tears coursing down his grey cheeks. And in another moment all the strength seemed to go out of him.
His legs trembled, became jelly. Still hugging the heart he crumpled, plopped down on the floor, curled up into an almost foetal position with the heart lost in the curl of his body. He lay still.
“All done—” said Borowitz, “—maybe!”
He stood up, crossed to the speaker and pressed a second button marked “Intercom.” But before speaking he glanced narrow-eyed at his subordinates. One of them had not moved from his corner, where he now sat with his head lolling, the wastebin between his legs. In another corner the second man was bending from his waist, hands on hips, up and down, up and down, exhaling as he went down, inhaling as he came erect again. The faces of both men were slick with sweat.
“Hah!” Borowitz grunted, and to the speaker: “Boris? Boris Dragosani? Can you hear me? Is all well?”
In the other room the man on the floor jerked, stretched, lifted his head and stared about. Then he shuddered and quickly stood up. He seemed much more human now, less like a deranged automaton, though his colour was still grey as lead. His bare feet slipped on the slimed floor so that he staggered a little, but he quickly regained his balance. Then he saw the heart still clutched in his hands, gave a second great shudder and tossed it away, wiping his hands down his thighs.
He was (Borowitz thought) like someone newly awakened from the turmoil of a nightmare … but he must not be allowed to come awake too rapidly. There was something Borowitz must know. And he must know it now, while it was still fresh in the other’s mind.
“Dragosani,” he said again, keeping his voice as soft as possible. “Do you hear me?”
As Borowitz’s companions finally got themselves under control and came to join him at the large screen, so the naked man looked their way. For the first time Boris Dragosani acknowledged the screen, which on his side was simply a lightly frosted window composed of many small leaded panes. He looked straight at them, almost as if he could actually see them, in the way a blind man will sometimes look, and answered:
“Yes, I hear you, Comrade General. And you were right: he had planned to assassinate you.”
“Hah! Good!” Borowitz balled a meaty fist and slammed it into the palm of his left hand. “How many were in it with him?”
Dragosani looked exhausted. The greyness was going out of him and already his hands, legs and lower body had taken on a more nearly fleshly tint. Only flesh and blood after all, he seemed on the point of collapse. It was a small effort to right the steel chair where he had thrown it and to seat himself, but it seemed to consume his last dregs of energy. Placing his elbows on h
is knees, his head in his hands, he now sat staring at the floor between his feet.
“Well?” Borowitz said into the speaker.
“One other,” Dragosani answered at last without looking up. “Someone close to you. I could not read his name.”
Borowitz was disappointed. “Is that all?”
“Yes, Comrade General.” Dragosani lifted his head, looked again at the screen, and there was something akin to pleading in his watery blue eyes. With a familiarity Borowitz’s juniors could hardly credit, he then said: “Gregor, please do not ask it.”
Borowitz was silent.
“Gregor,” Dragosani said again, “you have promised me—”
“Many things,” Borowitz hurriedly cut him off. “Yes, and you shall have them. Many things! What little you give, I shall repay many times over. What small services you perform, the USSR shall recognize with overwhelming gratitude—however long the recognition is in coming. You have plumbed depths deep as space, Boris Dragosani, and I know your bravery is greater than that of any cosmonaut. Science fiction to the contrary, there are no monsters where they go. But the frontiers you cross are the very haunts of horror! I know these things.…”
The man in the other room sat up, shuddered long and hard. The greyness crept back into his limbs, his body. “Yes, Gregor,” he said.
For all that Dragosani could not see him, still Borowitz nodded, saying, “Then you do understand?”
The naked man sighed, hung his head again, asked: “What is it you wish to know?”
Borowitz licked his lips, leaned closer to the screen, said, “Two things. The name of the man who plotted with that eviscerated pig in there, and proof which I can take before the Presidium. Not only am I in jeopardy without this knowledge, but you, too. Yes, and the entire branch. Remember, Boris Dragosani, there are those in the KGB who would eviscerate us—if only they could find a way!”
The other said nothing but returned to the trolley carrying the remains of the corpse. He stood over the violated mess, and in his face was written his intent: the ultimate violation. He breathed deeply, expanding his lungs and letting the air out slowly, then repeating the procedure; and each time his chest seemed to swell just a little larger, while his skin rapidly and quite visibly returned to its deep slate-grey hue. After several minutes of this, finally he turned to gaze upon the tray of surgical instruments in its case.
By now even Borowitz was disturbed, agitated, unnerved. He sat down in his central chair, seemed to shrink into himself a little.
“You two,” he growled at his subordinates. “Are you all right? You Mikhail—is there any puke left in you? If so, stand well away.” (This to the one on the left, whose nostrils were moist, flaring jet-black pits in a face of chalk.) “And you, Andrei—are you done now with your bending and ventilating?”
The one on the right opened his mouth but said nothing, keeping his wet eyes on the screen, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The other said: “Let me see the beginning at least. But I would prefer not to throw up. Also, when all is done, I would be grateful for an explanation. You may say what you like of that one in there, Comrade General, but I personally believe he should be put down!”
Borowitz nodded. “You shall have your explanation in good time,” he rumbled. “Meanwhile I agree with you—I, too, would prefer not to throw up!”
Dragosani had taken up what looked like a hollow silver chisel in one hand, and a small copper-jacketed mallet in the other. He placed the chisel in the centre of the corpse’s forehead, brought the mallet sharply down and drove the chisel home. As the mallet bounced following the blow, so a little brain fluid was vented through the chisel’s hollow stem. That was enough for Mikhail; he gulped once, then returned to his corner and stood there trembling, his face averted. The man called Andrei remained where he was, stood there as if frozen, but Borowitz noted how he clenched and unclenched his fists where they hung at his sides.
Now Dragosani stood back from the corpse, crouched down, stared fixedly at the chisel where it stood up from the pierced cranium. He nodded slowly, then sprang erect and stepped to the table with the case of instruments. Dropping the mallet onto the tough floor tiles, he snatched up a slender steel straw and dropped it expertly, with hardly a glance, into the chisel’s cavity. The fine steel tube sank slowly, pneumatically down through the body of the chisel until just its mouthpiece projected.
“Mouthpiece!” Andrei suddenly croaked, turning away and stumbling blindly across the floor of the observation cell. “My God, my God—the mouthpiece!”
Borowitz closed his eyes. Tough as he was he could not watch. He had seen it all before and remembered it only too well.
Moments passed: Mikhail in his corner, trembling—Andrei across the room, his back to the screen—and their superior with his eyes tightly shut, squeezed down in his chair. Then—
The scream that came over the speaker was one to shatter the strongest nerves, indeed a scream to raise the dead. It was full of horror, full of monstrous knowledge, full of … outrage? Yes, outrage—the cry of a wounded carnivore, a vengeful beast. And hot on its heels—chaos!
As the scream subsided Borowitz’s eyes shot open, his heavy eyebrows forming a peaked tent over them. For an instant he sat there, a startled owl, nerves jumping, fingers clawing at the arms of his chair. Then he gave a hoarse shout, threw up an arm before his face, hurled his heavy body backward. His chair crashed over, allowing him to roll clear, protected by the chair to the left, as the screen caved inward in a shower of glass and small, buckling strips of lead. A large hole had appeared in the screen, with the legs of the steel chair from the other room protruding halfway through. The chair was snatched back out of sight—and again driven forward, smashing out the rest of the small panes and sending fragments of glass flying everywhere.
“Swine!” Dragosani’s shriek came from both the speaker and the shattered screen. “Oh, you swine, Gregor Borowitz! You poisoned him—an agent to rot his brain—and now, you bastard, now I have tasted that same poison!”
From behind the outraged, hate-filled voice came Dragosani himself, to stand outlined for a moment in a frame of jagged, dangling glass teeth, before hurling himself across the table and tumbled chairs at Borowitz where he floundered on the floor. In his hand, something glittered silver against the grey of his flesh.
“No!” Borowitz boomed, his bullfrog voice loud with terror in the confines of the small room. “No, Boris, you’re mistaken. You’re not poisoned, man!”
“Liar! I read it in his dead brain. I felt his pain as he died. And now that stuff is in me!” Dragosani leapt on to Borowitz where he fought to struggle to his feet, bore him down again, raised high the sickle shape of silver in his clenched fist.
The man called Mikhail had been flapping in the background like a wind-torn scarecrow, but now he came forward, his hand reaching inside his overcoat. He caught Dragosani’s wrist just as it commenced its downward sweep. Expert with a cosh, Mikhail applied it at precisely the correct point, just hard enough to stun. The bright steel flew from Dragosani’s nerveless fingers and he fell face down across Borowitz, who managed to roll half out of the way. Then Mikhail was helping the older man to his feet, while Borowitz cursed and raved, kicking once or twice at the naked man where he lay groaning. Up on his feet, he pushed his junior away and began to dust himself down—but in the next moment he saw the cosh in Mikhail’s hand and understood what had happened. His eyes flew open in shock and sudden anxiety.
“What?” he said, his mouth falling open. “You struck him? You used that on him? Fool!”
“But Comrade Borowitz, General, he—”
Borowitz cut him off with a snarl, pushed with both hands at Mikhail’s chest and sent him staggering. “Dolt! Idiot! Pray he is unharmed. If there’s any god you believe in, just pray you haven’t permanently damaged this man. Didn’t I tell you he’s unique?” He went down on one knee, grunting as he turned the stunned man over on to his back. Colour was returning to Dragosani’s face, the n
ormal colour of a man, but a large lump was growing where the back of his skull met his neck. His eyelids fluttered as Borowitz anxiously scanned his face.
“Lights!” the old General snapped then. “Let’s have them up full. Andrei, don’t just stand there like—” he paused, stared about the room as Mikhail turned up the lights. Andrei was not to be seen and the door of the room stood ajar. “Cowardly dog!” Borowitz growled.
“Perhaps he has gone for help,” Mikhail gulped. And continued: “Comrade General, if I had not hit Dragosani he would have—”
“I know, I know,” Borowitz growled impatiently. “Never mind that now. Help me get him into a chair.”
As they lifted Dragosani up and lowered him into a chair he shook his head, groaned loudly and opened his eyes. They focused on Borowitz’s face, narrowing in accusation. “You!” he hissed, trying to straighten up but failing.
“Take it easy,” said Borowitz. “And don’t be a fool. You’re not poisoned. Man, do you think I would so readily dispose of my most valuable asset?”
“But he was poisoned!” Dragosani rasped. “Only four days ago. It burned his brain out and he died in agony, thinking his head was melting. And now the same stuff is in me! I need to be sick, quickly! I have to be sick!” He struggled frantically to get up.
Borowitz nodded, held him down with a heavy hand, grinned like a Siberian wolf. He brushed back his central streak of jet-black hair and said, “Yes, that is how he died—but not you, Boris, not you. The poison was something special, a Bulgarian brew. It acts rapidly … and disperses just as rapidly. It voids itself in a few hours, leaves no trace, becomes undetectable. Like a dagger of ice, it strikes then melts away.”
Mikhail was staring, gaping like a man who hears something he can’t believe. “What is this?” he asked. “How can he possibly know that we poisoned the Second in Command of the—”