But not Gesar's! The vampire had not seen that I was really an Other. And now all those suppressed non-life instincts that Higher Vampires can keep under control came bursting out. I don't know who he took me for. Maybe some special human being with reactions that could rival a vampire's, or a mythical half-blood – the child of a human woman and a male vampire – or for a rather less mythical warlock, a hunter of lower Others. But the vampire was clearly on the point of cutting loose and smashing everything around him. His features began melting like soft putty, changing into a bestial face with a heavy forehead, fangs sliding out of his upper jaw and razor-sharp claws springing from his fingers.
A crazed vampire is a terrible thing.
The only thing worse is a vampire poised and in control.
My reflexes saved me from a duel with a dubious outcome. I held back and didn't strike, and shouted out the traditional formula of arrest:
'Night Watch! Leave the Twilight!'
And immediately I heard a voice from the doorway.
'Stop, he's one of us!'
I was amazed how quickly the vampire normalised. The claws and the fangs were withdrawn, the face quivered, like jellied meat, assuming that reserved, noble expression of a prosperous European. And I remembered this European very well – from the glorious city of Prague, where they brew the best beer in the world and still have the finest Gothic architecture.
'Witiezslav?' I exclaimed. 'What do you think you're doing?'
And, of course, the person standing at the door was Edgar. The Dark Magician who had worked for a short while in the Moscow Day Watch before leaving to join the Inquisition.
'Anton, I beg your pardon!' The imperturbable Estonian was really embarrassed. 'A slight error. In pursuit of our common goal . . .'
Witiezslav was politeness itself.
'Our apologies, watchman. We did not recognise you.'
His gaze slid over me tenaciously and a note of admiration appeared in his voice.
'What a disguise . . . Congratulations, watchman. If that is your work, I bow to you.'
I didn't explain who had constructed my defences. It's not often that a Light Magician (or a Dark Magician, for that matter) gets a chance to give Inquisitors a good bawling-out.
'What have you done to this man?' I barked. 'He is under my protection!'
'It was necessary for our work, as my colleague has already said,' Witiezslav replied with a shrug. 'We're interested in the information from the video cameras.'
Edgar casually moved aside the chair with the frozen security boss in it and came closer. He smiled:
'Gorodetsky, everything's all right. We're all doing the same job, aren't we?'
'Do you have permission for . . . using methods like this?' I asked.
'We have permission for very many things,' Witiezslav replied frostily. 'You have no idea how many.'
That was it, he'd recovered his equilibrium. And he was set on confrontation. But of course – he'd very nearly given way to his instincts, lost his self-control, and for a Higher Vampire that's an unpardonable disgrace. A note of genuine, cold fury appeared in Witiezslav's voice:
'Would you like to test that, watchman?'
Of course, an Inquisitor can't allow anyone to yell at him. Only now there was no way I could back down either.
Edgar saved the situation. He raised his hands and exclaimed in emotional tones.
'It's my fault! I ought to have recognised Mr Gorodetsky. Witiezslav, it's all the result of my poor work. I'm sorry.'
I held out my hand to the vampire first.
'Fair enough, we are all doing the same job. I hadn't expected to see you here.'
I'd hit the bull's eye there. Witiezslav looked away for a moment. And he smiled very amiably as he shook my hand. The vampire's palm was warm . . . and I realised what that meant.
'Our colleague Witiezslav has come straight from the plane,' said Edgar.
'And he hasn't gone through temporary registration yet?' I asked.
No matter how powerful Witiezslav might be, no matter what position he might hold in the Inquisition, he was still a vampire. And he was obliged to go through the humiliating procedure of registration.
I didn't press the point too hard. Just tried to be helpful.
'We can complete all the formalities here,' I suggested. 'I have the right to do that.'
'Thank you,' the vampire said with a nod. 'But I'll call into your office. Proper procedure above all things.'
A shaky truce had been patched together.
'I've already looked through the recordings,' I said. 'Letters were posted three days ago by four men and one woman. And some construction worker posted a whole pile of letters. There are builders from Uzbekistan working here.'
'A good sign for your country,' Witiezslav said very politely. 'When the citizens of neighbouring states are used as manpower, it's an indication of economic growth.'
I could have explained to him what I thought about that. But I didn't.
'Would you like to see the recording?' I asked.
'Yes, I think so,' the vampire said.
Edgar stood aside.
I brought up the image of the post office on the monitor, then switched on 'movement search', and we watched all the local lovers of the epistolary genre once again.
'I know this one,' I said, pointing at Las. 'I'll find out today what it was he posted.'
'Do you suspect him?' asked Witiezslav.
'No,' I said and shook my head.
The vampire ran the tape through again. But this time the unfortunate security boss was set in front of the monitor, still under the spell.
'Who's this?' Witiezslav asked him.
'A resident,' he replied indifferently. 'Block one, sixteenth floor.'
He had a good memory. He named all the suspects, except the building worker with the pile of letters. As well as Las, the resident from the sixteenth floor and the old woman from the eleventh, letters had been posted by two of Assol's managers.
'We'll deal with the men,' Witiezslav decided. 'For a start. You check the old woman, Gorodetsky. All right?'
I shrugged. Collaboration was all very well, but I wasn't going to let anyone order me about.
Especially not a Dark One. And a vampire.
'It's easier for you,' Witiezslav explained. 'It's . . . hard for me to approach old people.'
The admission was frank and unexpected. I mumbled something in reply and didn't press him for any further explanation.
'I sense in them something that I don't have,' he went on to explain anyway. 'Mortality.'
'You envy them that?' I couldn't resist asking.
'It frightens me.' Witiezslav leaned down over the security chief and said: 'We're going to go now. You will sleep for five minutes and have beautiful dreams. When you wake up, you will forget our visit. You will only remember Anton . . .you will feel very friendly towards him. If Anton needs anything, you will give him any help you can.'
'There's no need . . .' I protested weakly.
'We are all working for the same cause,' the vampire reminded me. 'I know how hard it is to work undercover. Goodbye.'
And instantly he disappeared. Edgar gave a guilty smile and walked out of the door.
I left the office too, without waiting for the head of security to wake up.
CHAPTER 4
FATE, WHICH OUR magicians claim does not exist, was kind to me.
In Assol's vestibule (well, you really couldn't call that spacious hall a lobby,) I saw the old woman that the vampire had been afraid to approach. She was standing by the lift, gazing pensively at the buttons.
I glanced at the old woman through the Twilight, and realised that she was totally confused, almost in a panic. The well-trained security guards were no help here. On the outside the old woman seemed entirely calm and collected: I realised she was definitely a lady – not an ordinary old Russian woman at all. I set off decisively towards her.
'Excuse me, can I be of any help?' I asked.
She cast me a sideways glance. Not a glance of senile suspicion, more of embarrassment.
'I've forgotten where I live,' she confessed. 'Do you happen to know?'
'The eleventh floor,' I said. 'Allow me to show you the way.'
The grey curls with delicate pink skin showing through them swayed ever so slightly.
'Eighty years old,' said the old woman. 'I remember that . . . it's painful to remember it. But I do.'
I took the lady by the arm and led her towards the lift. One of the security men started walking towards us, but my aged companion shook her head:
'The gentleman's showing me the way . . .'
The gentleman did show her the way. The elderly lady recognised her own door and even quickened her step in delight. The apartment was not locked, it had been magnificently refurbished and furnished, and there was a lively girl about twenty years old striding to and fro in the hallway and complaining into a phone:
'Yes, I've looked downstairs! She slipped out again . . .'
The girl was delighted when we showed up. Only I'm afraid the sweet smile and the touching concern were mostly meant for me.
Good-looking young women don't take servants' jobs in homes like that because the money's good.
'Mashenka, bring us some tea,' said the old woman, interrupting the girl's prattling. She probably had no illusions either. 'In the large room.'
The girl went dashing obediently to the kitchen, but not before she had smiled once more and deliberately brushed her pert breasts against me as she said in my ear:
'She's got really bad . . . My name's Tamara.'
Somehow I didn't feel like introducing myself. I followed the old woman through into the 'large room'. Well, it was huge. With furniture from Stalin's time and clear traces of the work of an expensive designer. The walls were covered with black-and-white photographs – at first I even took them for elements of the design. But then I realised that the blindingly beautiful young woman with white teeth, wearing a flying helmet, was my elderly lady.
'I bombed the Fritzes,' the lady said modestly as she sat down at a round table covered with a maroon velvet tablecloth with tassels. 'Look, Kalinin himself presented me with that medal . . .'
Dumbfounded, I took a seat facing the former pilot.
Even in the best of cases people like that live out their final days in old state dachas or in monolithic, dilapidated Stalinist buildings. But not in an elite residential complex. She had dropped bombs on the fascists, not ferried the Reichstag's gold reserves back home to Russia.
'My grandson bought the apartment for me,' the old woman said, as if she had read my thoughts. 'A big apartment. I don't remember anything here . . . it all seems familiar, like it's mine, but I don't remember . . .'
I nodded. She had a good grandson, what could I say? Of course, transferring an expensive apartment to your war-heroine grandmother's name and then inheriting it later was a very clever way to do things. But in any case it was a good deed. Only the servant should have been chosen with more care. Not a twenty-year-old girl obsessed with the profitable capital investment of her pretty young face and good figure, but an older, reliable nurse . . .
The old woman looked pensively out of the window. She said:
'I'd be better off in those houses, the little ones . . . I'm more used to that . . .'
But I wasn't listening any more. I was looking at the table, heaped high with letters bearing the eye-catching stamp 'No longer at this address'. It was hardly surprising. The addressees included such figures as the old Soviet Union figurehead Kalinin, Generalissimus Joseph Stalin, Comrade Khrushchev and 'Dear Leonid Ilich Brezhnev'.
Our more recent national leaders had clearly not been retained in the old woman's memory.
I didn't need any Other abilities to guess what kind of letter the old woman had posted three days earlier.
'I can't bear having nothing to do,' she complained, catching my glance. 'I keep asking to be assigned to the schools, the flying colleges . . . so I can tell the young people what our life was like . . .'
I took a look at her through the Twilight anyway. And I almost exclaimed out loud.
The old pilot was a potential Other – maybe not a very powerful one, but it was crystal clear.
Only, to initiate her at that age . . . I couldn't imagine it. At sixty, at seventy . . . but at eighty?
The stress of it would kill her. She'd just fade away into the Twilight, an insane, insubstantial shadow.
You can't check everyone. Not even in Moscow, where there are so many watchmen.
And sometimes we recognise our brothers and sisters too late.
Tamara appeared carrying a tray set with dishes of biscuits and sweets, a teapot and beautiful old cups. She set the dishes down on the table without making a sound.
But the old woman was already dozing, still perched on her chair as firm and upright as ever.
I got up carefully and nodded to Tamara:
'I'll be going. You should keep a closer watch on her, you know she forgets where she lives.'
'But I never take my eyes off her,' Tamara replied, fluttering her eyelids. 'I'd never . . .'
I checked her too. No Other abilities at all.
An ordinary young woman. Even quite kind in her own way.
'Does she often write letters?' I asked with the faintest of smiles.
Taking the smile as sign of absolution, Tamara began smiling too:
'All the time! To Stalin, and Brezhnev . . . Isn't that hilarious?'
I didn't argue with her.
Of all the cafés and restaurants that Assol was crammed with, the only one open was the café in the supermarket. A very nice café, on the second-floor balcony above the checkouts. With an excellent view of the entire supermarket hall. It had to be a good place to drink a cup of coffee, mapping out your route for a pleasant stroll as you bought the groceries – doing your 'shopping': that terrible word, that monstrous Anglicism that has eaten its way into the Russian language, like a tick boring into its helpless prey.
That was where I had my lunch, trying not to feel horrified by the prices. Then I bought a double espresso, and a packet of cigarettes – which I smoke only very rarely – and tried to imagine that I was a detective.
Who had sent the letter?
The renegade Other or the Other's human client?
It didn't look like there was any advantage in it for either of them. And the scenario with another individual attempting to forestall the initiation was just too melodramatic.
Think, head, think! You've come across more confused situations than this before. We have a renegade Other. We have his client. The letter was sent to the Watches and to the Inquisition. So the letter was most likely sent by an Other. A powerful, intelligent, well-informed Other.