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Gasping his shock
Jordan felt that he was fighting it for all he was worth, every step of the
way, even knowing it was useless. It was like being drunk in a strange place
and among strangers, when you lie on your back and the room spins. It actually
seems to spin, the corners of the ceiling chasing each other like the spokes
of a wheel. And there's nothing you can do to stop it because you know it
isn't really spinning - it's your mind that's spinning inside the head on top
of your body.
Your bloody head and body but they won't obey you . . . you can't make them do
what you want no matter how hard you try!
And all the time you can hear yourself trapped in your own skull like a fly in
a bottle, buzzing furiously and banging repeatedly against the glass, and
saying over and over again, 'Oh, God, let it stop! Oh, God, let it stop! Oh,
God ... let... it...
stop!'
It's the alcohol - the alien in your system, which has taken control - and
fighting it only makes you feel that much worse. Try lifting your head and
shoulders up off the bed and everything spins even faster, so fast you can
feel the centrifugal force dragging you down again. Force yourself to your
feet and you stagger, you turn, begin to spin with the room, with the entire
bloody universe!
But only lie still, stop fighting it, close your eyes tight and cling to
yourself . . . eventually it will go away. The spinning will go away. The
sickness. The buzzing of the fly in the bottle -
which is your own battered, astonished, gibbering psyche - will go away. And
you'll sleep. And it's possible the strangers will roll you and rob you blind.
Roll you? They could steal your underpants - even rape you, if they felt
inclined - and you couldn't stop them, wouldn't feel it, wouldn't even
suspect.
It was a replay of Jordan's first violent experience with alcohol. That had
been when he'd started university and got homesick - of all bloody things! A
couple of fellow students, college comedians thinking to have a little fun at
his expense, had spiked his drinks. Then they'd played a few tricks on him in
his room. Nothing vicious: they'd rouged his cheeks, given him a cupid's bow
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mouth, fitted him up with a garter-belt and stockings and stuck a Mickey Mouse
johnnie on his dick.
He woke up cold, naked, ill, not knowing what had happened, wanting to die.
But a day or two later when he was sober, he'd tracked them down one at a time
and beaten the living shit out of them. Since when he'd only ever got physical
when there was no other way around it.
But by God, he wished he could get physical now! With himself, with this mind
and body which wouldn't obey him, with whoever it was that was doing this to
him. For that was the terrible thing: he knew it was someone else doing it to
him, jerking him about like a puppet on a set of strings, and there was still
nothing he could do about it!
'Stop!' he kept telling himself. 'Get a grip of yourself. Sit down . . . throw
up ... hold your head in your hands . . . wait for Ken. Do anything - but of
your own free will!' But before his runaway body could even begin to obey such
instructions:
AH . . . BUT IT IS
NOT
FREE! YOU CAME SPYING, INVADED MY MIND - AN ANT IN A WASP'S NEST! SO NOW PAY
THE PRICE. GO ON: PROCEED JUST AS YOU ARE. GO
TO THE WINDMILLS.
That terrible, gonging, magnetic voice in his head -that will which
superimposed itself over his will - that telepathic, hypnotic command of some
One or Thing as powerful, more powerful, than anything he'd ever imagined
before, which made a mockery of resistance more surely than any Mickey Finn.
Jordan's legs felt like rubber - almost vibrating, twanging at the knees - as
he strained to hold them back. As well hold back opposite magnetic poles, or a
moth from a candle. And still he followed the waterfront to the mole, and
along its rocky neck, until the ancient windmills stood visible there against
a horizon of dark ocean.
Dressed all in black, Seth Armstrong was waiting, crouching in the shadows
where the sea wall was shaped like a castle's battlements, after the style of
the old Crusaders whose works were still visible all around. He let Jordan go
stumbling by, looked back into the darkness of the mole, under the winking
lights of Rhodes Old Town where it sprawled on the hill. He heard footsteps,
running, and a voice, panting:
'Trevor? For Christ's sake, slow down, will you? Where the hell do you th - ?'
And Armstrong struck.
Layard saw something big, black, gangling, step out of the shadows. One eye
glared at him from a slit in a black balaclava. Gasping, he skidded to a halt,
spun on his heel to flee - and
Armstrong rabbit-punched him down to the night-shining cobbles of the path.
Out like a light, Layard lay crumpled at the foot of the sea wall. And Jordan,
feeling the strictures on his will slacken a little, turned back.
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Gasping his shock
He saw the large, dark, mantis-like figure of Armstrong bent over Layard's
unconscious form, saw his friend hoisted aloft on powerful shoulders - and
ejected through one of the wall's embrasures, out into thin air! A moment more
and there came a splash - then the chop, chop, chop of disturbed water
gradually settling - and finally, as the figure in black now turned towards
him . . .
. . . More running footsteps!
The beam of a torch cut the night, slashing it to left and right like a white
knife through black card. And Manolis Papastamos's voice, just as sharp,
slicing the silence:
'Trevor, Ken, where are you?'
Be careful!
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the alien voice in Jordan's mind commanded, but the order was the merest
whisper and no longer directed at him. It no longer dominated but merely
advised. And he knew that his telepathic mind had simply 'overheard'
instructions meant for some other, meant in fact for the man in black.
Do not allow yourself to be caught or recognized!
Splashing sounds from below the wall, and a gurgling cry. Ken Layard was
alive! But Jordan knew for a fact that the locator couldn't swim. He forced
his legs to carry him to the wall, where he could look out through an
embrasure. And all the while he was aware of his controlling alien, confused
and furious, mewling like a scalded cat in the back of his mind. But no longer
fully in control.
Papastamos came running, a small, slim, streamlined shape in the night, and
Jordan saw the long-limbed, gangling figure in black back off into the
shadows. 'Man -Manolis!' he forced his parched throat to croak. 'Look out!'
The Greek lawman came to a halt, breathlessly called out: Trevor?' and flashed
his torch beam full in Jordan's face.
The shadows erupted and Armstrong smashed a blow to Papastamos's face. The
Greek rode with it, went sprawling. His torch fell with him, clattering, its
beam slithering everywhere.
The man in black was running back along the mole towards the town. Papastamos
cursed in Greek, snatched at the torch where it rolled past him, aimed it
after the fleeing figure. Its beam trapped an elongated human shadow, jerking
on the sea wall like a giant crab escaping to the sea. But Papastamos was
armed with more than just a torch.
His Beretta Model 92S barked five times in rapid succession, slinging a
five-spoked fan of lead after the scuttling shadow. A wailing cry of pain and
a gasped, '
Uh - uh - uh!'
came back, but the footsteps didn't stop running.
'M-M-Manolis!' Jordan hadn't let up on his battle with the clamp on his will.
'K-K-Ken ... is ... in ... the . . . sea!'
The Greek got up, ran to the sea wall. From below came a gurgling and gasping,
the slosh of water wind-milled by flailing arms. And without a thought for his
own safety, Papastamos climbed up into the embrasure and launched himself
feet-first into the harbour . . .
In his window-seat upstairs in the Taverna Dakaris, Janos Ferenczy's
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