The configuration I needed, unless something unexpected happened, was the space between them, outlined by their figures and by the panels and ceiling above their heads. It would make things much more difficult for me if anyone moved.
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
The soft quick sound reminded me.
'Thirty seconds,' I said.
Then one of them moved.
Kuznetski.
Zade hadn't seen him yet because he was standing with his back to him. I don't think he'd heard him either, or he would have swung round to see what was happening. Now he heard him, and swung round.
'Kuznetski!'
Zade didn't carry a gun but Shadia was there and Ventura and Ramirez were there and one of them swung his machine-gun round in the low aim but that was probably by instinct because those two were the hit-men and would ready their weapons at any sign of crisis.
'Kuznetski!'
It was a jungle sound, the cry of an animal.
But Kuznetski had gone. The configuration had changed and he'd left a space to one side. No one had closed the main door when I'd come aboard and he had gone through there, as Sassine must have done not long ago.
It was Kuznetski I'd been relying on to break first, but with Sassine I'd got two for the price of one. I suppose Zade shouldn't have hit him like that.
Tick-tick-tick.
I looked down at the needle.
'Sixteen seconds.'
It felt very close now in the compartment: the air seemed to press against the face. I wiped my palms dry again. When I looked up from the chronometer I saw Zade had half-turned towards me again. I could see by the movement of his chest that he was taking deep breaths: something he'd learned, perhaps, as a means of controlling the nerves. His voice still had a tremor to it but he spoke slowly, and clearly enough to make sure I heard him.
'I am not a man to threaten. You can see that now.'
This was what I thought he might do in the last few seconds. I suppose in a way it was admirable: if I had to choose any of these men as a comrade in some dangerous enterprise, it would be Satynovich Zade.
Tick-tick.
I looked down quickly.
The sliver of blue steel was moving in rapid jerks, each one as precise as the last, and as precise as those to come.
'Nine seconds.'
I looked up again, along the aisle, No one had moved.
'Let the girl go,' I said.
Zade kept his head turned towards me and spoke over his shoulder.
'If the girl moves, Shoot her. If this man moves, shoot him. But the doctor can go. Tell him, Carlos.'
Ramirez spoke in Portuguese and I heard his voice was shaking.
Dr Costa answered him, saying he would stay with his patient.
Then I saw Ramirez turn and walk out through the door of the aircraft.
Zade didn't move his head.
'Who was that?' he asked.
'Carlos,' Ventura told him.
There was no sound of firing. Sorenson had told me that if any of these people came out of the Boeing they would be arrested, providing they carried no weapons.
'What would you expect,' Zade said, 'from the son of a Seville prostitute?'
No one answered.
No one moved.
So it wasn't going to work.
Again it was a question of predictability: the chemical chain reaction that would take place inside the time-bomb a few seconds from now was predictable; the chain reaction within the Kobra cell was not. I'd been relying on breaking their nerve and I'd been relying on Kuznetski to provide the initiative and Sassine had done it for him but only two of them had followed him out. The reaction had stopped there, as if the powder in an explosive compound had been badly mixed.
Shadia watched me still, her sun-bronzed hand on the gun. She was smiling with her mouth but the pale eyes were glass-bright and expressionless.
Ventura had come to stand behind one of the seats, and his arm rested along its back. He stood perfectly upright and perfectly still, and his eyes were slightly defensive, as people sometimes look when they're having their photograph taken in a studio: there was something Victorian about him, and something still of the men's haberdashery assistant.
He and Shadia had a certain likeness: they were thin and quietly-moving people with shut faces and eyes that saw everything and Showed nothing. Zade seemed a man of action, a man of iron, with reasons for his actions and some brand of dim political philosophy to push him along; but in the other two I sensed an unnaturalness, the kind- of sadomasochistic force that had once sent millions of their fellow humans into the gas chambers. And somewhere in it was also the death wish and that was why they had stayed.
Sweat on my palms. I wiped it off.
Tick.
I looked down.
There was no need to tell them.
A stray thought sparked across my mind: they should have let the girl go. It was all I'd asked.
Final thought-flash: roses for Moira.
I could hear the click of the four-second alarm sounding but I'd already begun moving and I picked the thing up and aimed for the centre of the space outlined by the solid configurations at the other end of the aisle. The sweat on the pads of my fingers had caused the plastic case to slip a little but I'd allowed for that and it left my hand with an up-swing designed to drop it seven or eight feet behind where Zade was standing because if I could get it to burst at that exact spot a considerable degree of blast would vent through the main doorway and reduce the enormous air pressure inside the fuselage.
Final impressions aural and visuaclass="underline" Zade shouting something and Shadia's gun coming up with the flame burst spreading at the muzzle.
Then I was down on the floor with my head buried in my crossed arms and my legs drawn clear of the aisle. I was thinking about Dr Costa: I'd told him what to do when he saw me pick the thing up and he'd understood. He and the girl were three rows aft of where I was lying and would experience minimally less blast, but it was relative and it would have been pointless to try working out the chances for any of us.
Popping noise: Shadia's gun again.
Then the Boeing shuddered to the shock of the blast and my hearing was blocked off as the detonation wave drove through the length of the fuselage and brought debris with it to smash against the panels of the aft bulkhead.
Someone screaming.
Everything red for an instant and the air burning the throat: a sensation of being somewhere else, spinning in the vortex of some vast cataclysm, with the reason struggling to survive and the forebrain desperate to analyse data. Then memory making its demands: the memory of intentions to be carried out if there were a chance left for us.
Thick smoke billowing and I rolled over and got up and smashed into one of the seats and went down and got up again and lurched to the place where Costa and the girl had been sheltering. But they were in the aisle ahead of me and the rear emergency door swung inwards as he wrenched at the lever and then the girl fell down and I got hold of her and dragged her on to her feet and pushed her through the opening and dropped after her.
The rescue people had positioned something for us, some kind of chute — I'd asked them to wheel up some flight steps but I suppose the height was wrong for the tail end. I hit the ground and saw Costa with the girl, helping her along in a limping jog-trot, then the main tanks blew and we all began running as hard as we could through the fire-foam that was spreading towards us.
Sirens wailing, like the cry of the dead.