"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

matter what. If you lived long enough! And:
Damn it to belli Trask got angry with himself, stamped his feet, shook a fist. There's plenty of
life in this old dog yet! And telling himself that he felt a little better, he headed for the ops
room. On the way out, he remembered to snatch his light summer jacket from the coatstand. . .
For some forty-odd years now, E-Branch HQ in the centre of London had occupied the same site.
Ostensibly, and viewed casually from the outside, the place was a well established hotel within
easy walking distance of Whitehall,-down below, it was precisely that-an expensive hotel. Its top
floor, however, was totally given over to a company of "international entrepreneurs," which was
and had always been the sum total of a string of hotel managers' knowledge about it.
The seldom-seen occupants of that unknown upper region had their own elevator at the rear of the
building,- private stairs, also at the rear and entirely closed off from the hotel itself,- even
their own fire escape. Indeed they-"they" being the only identification one might reasonably apply
in such circumstances- owned the top floor, and so fell entirely outside the hotel's sphere of
control and operation. And while their private elevator gave them access to the hotel's
restaurants and various facilities, the hotel's elevators stopped short of the top floor. Their
indicator panels didn't even show that such a floor existed. So that just like floor thirteen in
many another hotel, E-Branch simply wasn't there.
Except it was.
The ops and briefings room was at the opposite end of the main corridor from Trask's office.
Walking down that corridor, he necessarily passed Harry's Room. An old name plate, looking a
little tatty and spotted now, said just that:
HARRY'S ROOM
Trask paused and tried the doorknob. They had had knobs in those days, not handles. Now they
didn't even have handles! You just blinked at an eye-

level spot marked ID,- if the door recognized you it would let you in. Trask had often wondered
about that: how did dwarves manage? Did they have to jump up and down or were they given special
rooms? And what about someone sporting a recent black or bloodshot eye?
But Harry's Room was undisturbed. It had remained the same ever since he'd stayed over here, when
for a time he'd considered a position as Head of Branch. That had come to nothing and he'd moved
on, but the impression he'd made had stayed. And no one had ever thought to change Harry's Room,
not even in the slightest degree.
The door was locked,- its key swung on a hook in the D.O.'s key-press,- no one went into Harry's
Room because . . . well, just because. Because it was a region out of time, and sometimes out of
space. Because it was still his room . . .
And Trask moved on, but Harry stayed with him.
Harry.
Harry Keogh, Necroscope. The only man in the world-in this world, anyway-who could talk to dead
people. And Trask shivered despite the unaccustomed warmth. The only man who had spoken to Zek in
life who would have been able to speak to her even in ... in ...
But he must put that out of his mind. For now, out of the blue, there was another. And Trask
didn't know if he liked the idea of Jake Cutter speaking to Zek. With Harry, there had been
warmth, courtesy, humility, and understanding. But Jake Cutter . . . was Jake Cutter. And there
was something about him- still something about him, despite that he'd made a bloody good show of
it out in Australia-that Trask couldn't fathom.
Perhaps that was it: simply that he was unfathomable, to Ben Trask, anyway. For Trask's talent no
longer worked on him,- face-to-face with Jake, his built-in lie detector switched off. The man's
mental shields were that strong and getting stronger. Why, he could be lying his head off and
Trask wouldn't know it, not for sure! He'd probably suspect that something wasn't quite right,
might even suspect his own talent, but had no way to determine the truth of it one way or the