Drindle pauses, curious, his finger squeezing the carbine's trigger. Findhorn's ears are singing from the bangs.
'It's going to the Chairmen of Fiat SpA and Otto Wolff. It's going to Goldman Sachs International and Chase Manhattan. It's going to Aerospatiale Matra and Siemens Defence. It's being e-mailed to Haisch at Lockheed Martin and Rueda in California and Longair at the Cavendish and Puthoff in Texas. It's going to Nobel prizewinners in Princeton and computer geeks in Idaho. Most of all it's going to electronic bulletin boards. From there it'll spread like wildfire.' He stops, gasping for breath.
The man in the white dinner suit is sobbing noisily. Findhorn, his voice raw from the sudden yelling, continues more quietly, taking deep gulps of air: 'Twenty-four hours from now the biggest secret on earth, the one you've been paid to obliterate, will be the most talked-about item on the planet.'
Drindle doesn't blink. The Korean is a statue.
'I can stop it. But not if I'm dead.'
'An ingenious lie,' suggests Drindle.
'I've put a time lock on it. If I don't reach a computer terminal by a specific time, and punch in a password, the message goes out automatically. You'll have failed. Do you want to explain that failure to Mister Matsumo? Or do you think you can spend the rest of your life one step ahead of Matsumo Holdings?'
The man falls onto his knees, bawling and pleading for his life. The Korean steps over corpses towards him, snarls fiercely, and snaps back the hammer of his weapon. Drindle shouts, 'Yamero!' The Korean shouts, 'You be quiet!', whether to Drindle or the man is unclear. The man falls silent, but his shoulders are heaving in terror.
'Contact your paymaster,' Findhorn continues, breathing in cordite and wood smoke. 'Tell him I need access to the Internet every month for the rest of my life. Tell him to hope that I never fall out of a window, never die in a car crash, never have a heart attack, never die of pneumonia or cancer, never drown at sea. I must never, never go missing. Tell him all of that. Tell him that in my good health and happiness lies his own. And my misfortune is his. I expect a man in his position has colleagues who reward success well and punish failure harshly.'
'I am sure you are right, Mister Findhorn. High rewards do entail high risks. I am equally sure that you are lying.'
'That's not your call to make.'
'I will make my call. Sit down.' Drindle gives some curt order to the Korean and leaves the room smartly. Sweat is beginning to run down Findhorn's face and neck. The woman is still praying, quietly, in German. The Korean sits down at the dining-room table. His eyes flicker between Romella and Findhorn.
Drindle is back in less than a minute, tapping numbers on a cordless phone while holding his carbine. He speaks fluent Japanese into the telephone.
'Directory Enquiries,' Romella volunteers to Findhorn. She is grey-faced and trembling. The Korean barks angrily, waving his gun.
Another number. This time the conversation is concentrated, prolonged, with a serious edge. Findhorn is almost overcome with a sort of light-headedness; the room is warm from the log fire, but he is shivering with cold. Colour, on the other hand, is slowly returning to Romella's cheeks. She looks defiantly at the Korean and turns coolly to Findhorn. 'He's phoned a secretary at home. It's about four a.m. in Kyoto.'
The conversation ends. Drindle sits down at the table, directly opposite Findhorn. He is framed by the Christmas tree. He places the carbine and the phone on the table and sits back, arms folded. Findhorn's eyes are locked hypnotically with Drindle's. He hates him more than anything else on the planet.
The silence goes on, broken only by the quiet crackling of burning logs. One crashes in the fire. Findhorn starts and Drindle smiles contemptuously. The smell of overcooked stew is beginning to drift in from the kitchen, mingling with that of wood smoke and fresh blood. It is a mixture that Findhorn knows, if he survives, he will never forget.
Ten minutes pass.
From somewhere far down in the valley, the ponderous Oompah-da-Oompah-da of a brass band drifts up. Church bells, almost on the limit of hearing, ring out eight o'clock.
The phone, when it finally cuts into the stillness, is to Findhorn like an executioner's summons. He feels himself going white. Drindle slides his right hand onto the stock of the gun, finger round trigger, and picks up the telephone with his left. The conversation is almost one-sided, Drindle interjecting no more than the occasional 'Hai!' Findhorn can't take his eyes from the assassin's; but he can read nothing in them.
Finally Drindle takes the phone from his ear, resting the mouthpiece on his shoulder. 'Are you brave?'
'Go to hell.'
Drindle nods. 'A brave answer in the circumstances. Courage, however, will merely prolong your agony without affecting the final outcome. You are to be tortured to the point where you will scream the password and the location of your electronic file even if it means your death. Medical expertise will be on hand to ensure that your heart does not give out. If you wish, we can demonstrate our skill in these matters by working on your translator friend. Once you have seen what we can do, you will tell us what we want to know. We will of course require to verify your information before we dispose of you. Please believe that I personally will not relish this process. But I cannot answer for my colleague.'
From the corner of his eye, Findhorn sees a broad grin spreading over the Korean's features. Romella has frozen, eyes wide with fear.
Findhorn says, 'You won't touch us.' He says it with an air of confidence but there is a solid lump in his stomach.
Drindle seems amused, raises sceptical eyebrows. 'No?'
'Because if you do I'll scream the password, you'll kill me, and delete the file.'
'Forgive me, but fear is making you confused. That is the object.'
Findhorn continues: 'And then you'll find that hidden away in some distant machine there's a second file, a duplicate. Maybe there's a third such file. Maybe a fourth. But how can you ever verify this? How many Romellas can you torture? Can you resurrect me to kill me all over again?'
For the first time the assassin's suavity is replaced by a darker look. 'That was naughty.' He speaks again into the telephone, his eyes never leaving Findhorn's. Then he slides the phone across the table.
Findhorn doesn't know what to expect. He picks it up. Yoshi Matsumo's voice comes over as clearly as if he is sitting at the table. 'Very clever, Mister Findhorn.'
Findhorn keeps trying for a confident tone. 'You have nothing to fear from me. So long as I outlive you.'
There is a tiny delay. The signal is, after all, travelling from Switzerland to a point twenty-four-thousand miles above the earth, relaying back down to a distant country, and the reply is traversing the same immense journey in the opposite direction. 'You claim you already had the secret before you entered the chalet?'
'I do.'
'Why then did you join my Friendship colleagues?'
'I told you. Your interests and mine coincide on this matter. I didn't want Albrecht's people getting a patent.'
'You stretch credulity to breaking point. But even if what you say is true, how can I let you go, to sell the secret?'