Quiller Balalaika

One. One more.

Think. Consider the choices again. Reflect.

There's no point. The choices are his, not mine. If I try anything at this stage he'll lose the last of his control, order them to beat me to the point of death or take me to the guillotine for him to play with before the climax, then bring a body bag and remember the fingers, don't leave them lying there, throw them in and don't stain the carpet whatever you do.

One. One more. But when -

'Spin it.'

His eyes brilliant with the light of joy.

Surely it must be there by now, taking its place in the scheme of things, ready to breach the skin, the bone, to shatter the seat of consciousness, to blow this beleagured creature into Christendom.

I spun the chamber and raised the gun, felt the warmth of the muzzle against the skull.

I don't know how long it was before he spoke.

'This will be the sixth, won't it? Pull the trigger. Do it now.'

I thought I heard the echoes of his voice; in extremis the mind conjures illusion.

Wait. Wait until his patience runs out.

The air pulsing, beating softly at the ears to the rhythm of the heart.

Wait.

'Fire, damn you, pull the trigger!'

Come then, dark of night, and gather shadows for thy shroud.

Click.

The room rocked again, steadied again. He was still there, the Cougar. Everything was still as it was. Sweat on my face, itching; life was real.

I threw the gun to Vishinsky and he caught it. His eyes had the light of hate in them as he stared at me. He could have told me to go on spinning the chamber, of course, go on firing until the gun kicked and they caught me as I dropped. But gamblers believe in the power of the Fates: it's their whole rationale. So perhaps he thought that since the Fates had spared me, they might show me other favours that could be dangerous if the game went on for too long. He'd played and he'd lost.

'Get me a drink,' he said softly. 'Cognac.'

Behind me as I moved for the bar I heard him slipping the rest of the shells back into the chamber of the gun and slapping it shut.

'Drink, Kaido?' he said.

'Sure, boss.'

'Then you can get another bag and take him to the forest.'

12: KICK

I told Ferris, 'Get Legge's people to check on the Mercedes. It should still be in a side street near the Hotel Faberge.'

'Check on it?'

'It could go bang.'

'I'll tell him. What did you come here in?'

'Nothing.'

I ate some more goulash, hunger beginning. We were in an all night greasy spoon cafe, as far as I'd been able to walk from Vishinsky's hotel before I dropped.

I'd signalled Ferris from the phone box outside and he'd got here a minute ago, so we had to deal with the essentials first. I didn't want some innocent policeman blowing himself up when he started investigating the abandoned Merc.

'Are you operational?' Ferris asked me. Another immediate essential.

'No.'

He sat taking me in with his calm yellow eyes. He must have been distinctly edgy, over the last few hours. When the executive's in a red sector his director in the field stays locked in his base with his nerves, counting the roses on the wallpaper while London comes through on the scrambler every ten minutes to ask for an updated report.

'You need treatment?'

I said no. There was nothing broken. But it'd be a while before I could run flat out or jump a wall or take on more than one assailant at a time with any success, which was what operational meant. Perhaps tomorrow, if I could get any sleep in what remained of the night.

Ferris scraped the legs of his rickety aluminium chair on the tiled floor and went across to the counter and came back in a minute with a ragged cotton napkin and dropped it onto the table. I wrapped my left hand in it: the bleeding had started again.

'Any down?' Ferris asked me.

'Three.'

He'd assumed I wouldn't be looking like this without somebody having become terminal somewhere along the line. There was Jakub, on the roof, and two of Vishinsky's bodyguards at the Hotel Nikolas.

'Self-defence,' Ferris said.

'That's right.' He'd have to report it to London. I'd used a full jokari.

'You reached the board?' I asked Ferris. The board for Balalaika.

'Oh, yes. As soon as you signalled.'

The stub of chalk would have gone squeaking across the slate: Executive clear of red sector. And Holmes would have gone over to pour himself some more coffee, celebrate, hallelujah.

'So you've no transport?' Ferris.

'What? No.'

'You phoned from here?'

'Box is outside.'

I finished the gruel while he went and signalled Legge for another car for me to use.

At least, Koyama would have called it a mawashi-geri, afull roundhouse kick. Qian would have called it a tie-yu, ahook kick. Actually it had been both, because when the roundhouse is drawn back to the fullest extent it automatically forms a hook, with the foot at right angles to the leg.

When I'd heard Vishinsky telling the bodyguard what he wanted done I was still approaching the bar to get him his cognac, and everything had slowed down. When we need more time, we are given it; any crisis will automatically trigger the mechanism.

At that instant the bar was still eight, nine feet away, and I had five or six seconds in which to think what to do. Something had to be done because as soon as I'd given Vishinsky his drink the bodyguard would drop me with a shot and they'd get the bag in here, finis, finito.

It was a full bar, ranging in proof from Dubonnet to straight vodka, twenty or thirty bottles in two rows. At the extreme right was a green frosted bottle of Remy Martin, which was what Vishinsky would be waiting for. The height of the bar top was some three feet, the approximate height of a jokari, depending on the build of the karateka executing the kick, which assumes the horizontal the moment the leg is drawn back.

With four armed men in the room I hadn't a chance of doing anything with my bare hands, and even a gun wouldn't have helped me: they never do. But all the same I would need a weapon, weapons, and here they were, lined up and immediately accessible. The jokari takes longer than any other kick to execute, as much as a full second, but it's also the strongest because of the build-up in momentum, and I thought there was a chance and went on walking towards the bar without breaking the pace, and when the distance had closed to an optimal two feet I dragged in a breath to fire the muscles and felt the rush of the adrenalin and initiated the jokari, turning my head to look behind me as my body swung into the movement and seeing four of the bottles at the end of the rows nestling into the hook before I called on my whole complement of strength and brought the hook forward, loaded and flying in a curve towards the targets.

There wasn't any question of taking aim: it was inevitably a scatter-shot attack and I'd known that, but as the first of the bottles were hurled through the air I saw a man go down to one of them with blood springing from his face and then I was working hard for as many hooks as I had the strength for – three, four, five, the trunk swinging into a steady reciprocating rhythm and the hooks raking the top of the bar for more bottles, three of them reaching the window and crashing against the glass, their splinters glittering as a man found his gun and a shot puckered my sleeve before I lost track of the scene in detail, was aware only of the smashing glass and a man's scream and a fusillade of shots and Vishinsky yelling something about get him and the reek of cordite and alcohol as the kicks went on hooking, sweat in my eyes and blinding me and muscle-burn setting into my right thigh as I went on working, it was this or the forest, my choice, the breath sawing in and out of my lungs and a sudden freeze-frame glimpse of a guard lurching back as a bottle caught him on the front of the skull and smashed the bone, Vishinsky on the floor now with his gold dressing-gown spread out around him and blotched with crimson while I kept the hooks coming, glass fluting through the air in a brilliant shower until hands reached for my legs and I chopped downward and broke a wrist, someone behind me and close and I used a spinning elbow strike and then fell, finding his face and using an eye-gouge and bringing a scream, silence coming in now, a kind of silence as I staggered up and saw Vishinsky groping for a fallen gun and smashed his hand with a heel strike and kicked the gun clear, stunned him with a front snap to the temple and saw him drop, heard movement and felt a hand clawing for me and snapped the fingers back and chose a heel-palm to finish him off and then stood clear and took in the scene, watching for danger.