The Source by Brian Lumley Page A

likely to believe—anything that we tell you! Your Debriefing Officer not only speaks very good English, but he’s a top-rank psychologist, too. So don’t blame yourself that you let your side down. You really had no choice. You thought you were home and dry, and that you were only doing your duty.”
    Jazz merely grunted for reply. His face was void of emotion, which was the way he’d kept it most of the time since discovering he’d been duped.
    â€œOf course,” Khuv continued, “your own British, er, ‘chemists’ are rather clever men in their own right. That capsule in your mouth, for instance: we weren’t able to analyse its contents here at the Projekt. Hardly surprising; we aren’t equipped with a full range of analytical facilities—mat’s not what the Perchorsk Projekt is about—but even so we were at least able to conclude that your little tooth capsule contained a remarkably complex substance. That’s why we’ve sent it to Moscow. Who can say, maybe there’s something in it we can use, eh?”
    While he spoke to Jazz, Khuv kept glancing back at
him, checking him up and down as he’d done so often during the course of the past few weeks. He saw a man only thirty years of age, upon whose shoulders his secret service masters in the West had placed an awesome weight of responsibility. They obviously respected his abilities. And yet for all Simmons’s training, his physical and mental fitness, still he was inexperienced. Then again, how “experienced” can a field agent in the secret service be? Every mission was a flip of a coin: heads you win, and tails … you lose your head? Or as the British agent himself might have it, a game of Russian roulette.
    For all Simmons’s expertise in his many subjects, still they were only theoretical skills, as yet untested under “battle” conditions. For on his very first assignment the dice had rolled against him, the cylinder had clicked into position with its bullet directly under the firing pin. Unfortunate for Michael J. Simmons, but extremely fortunate for Chingiz Khuv.
    Again the KGB Major’s dark jewel eyes rested on Simmons. The Englishman stood just a fraction under six feet tall, maybe a half-inch less than Khuv himself. During the time he’d spent in his role as a logger he’d grown a red beard to match his unruly shock of hair. That had gone now, revealing a square jaw and slightly hollow cheeks. He’d be a little underweight, too, for apparently the British liked their agents lean and hungry. A fat man doesn’t run as fast as a thin one, and he makes a much easier target.
    For all that he was young, Simmons’s brow was deeply lined from frowning; even taking into account his present circumstances, he did not seem a particularly happy man, or even one who’d ever been especially happy. His eyes were keen, grey, penetrating; his teeth (with the exception of the ones Karl had removed) were in good order, strong, square and white; about his sturdy neck he wore a small plain cross on a silver chain, which was his only item of jewellery. He had
hands which were hard for all that they were long and tapered, and arms which seemed a little long, giving him a sort of gangling or gawky appearance. But Khuv was well aware that appearances can be deceptive. Simmons was a skilled athlete and his brain was a fine one.
    They reached an area of the perimeter Jazz had not seen before. Here the coming and going of staff was far less frequent, and as the three turned the curve of the long corridor so a security door had come into view, blocking it entirely. On the approach to this door the ceiling and walls were burned black; great blisters were evident in the paintwork; closer to the door the very rock of the ceiling appeared to have melted, run down like wax and solidified on the cool metal of the artificial walls. The rubber floor tiles had burned right