The Striker Portfolio

'Don't you have a gun?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'The bang frightens me.'

Their faces were pale in the headlights. They both had hats on to look respectable. One of them wasn't happy about it and went diving about in the back of the car and I thought he must be taking the stuffing out of the seats. He was the kind who couldn't understand anyone not carrying a gun, which meant he depended on his own quite a lot, so he was the one I'd go for if a chance came.

'There isn't a gun anywhere,' he said.

'It doesn't matter,' his friend said.

They both climbed into the back of the car and shut the doors.

'What are you doing in Hanover?'

'Having a look round.'

'Who are you?'

'A bad-tempered ferret.'

'Don't mover It was jabbed into my neck.

'I was going to show you my papers.'

'We're not interested in false papers.'

'Then I'll leave them where they are.'

'Yes.' There was a rustling noise.

'Would you like some marzipan?'

I angled my head round politely. He was holding a packet to me with the silver paper half peeled off.

'Not just now, thank you.'

'Don't you like it?'

He was the one who couldn't understand anyone not carrying a gun either.

'Not very much. It's got prussic acid in it'

'It's got what?'

'Bitter almonds. Not very much, of course. What you might call a homeopathic dose, but somehow the idea puts me off.'

They wanted me alive or they could have done it by now and left the body here: it was an excellent place and no one would come up here until the morning. They wanted me to tell them things first. They couldn't make me do that here because there's no really useful technique available when the subject isn't tethered: hurt him too hard and he'll get violent and it's no good waving a gun at him when he realizes he's got a value; you're not going to kill him with it because then he can't talk and he knows that.

'I like it, anyway,' he said. He began smelling of almonds again.

His friend with the fan-teeth said: 'We're not going to kill you.'

'That's good.'

'But after we've finished with you I must warn you to leave Germany. You mustn't think about it any more. He did himself in like a lot of people do, so why do you have to worry about it? Do you know how many people in Germany commit suicide?'

'A lot of people, you said.'

They were enjoying themselves and it worried me. It meant they'd enjoy 'finishing' with me too and sometimes that kind of situation can get out of hand: they go od for the pleasure and then it's suddenly too late; the sigmoid colon becomes too bruised or the blood-loss increases to the point where the heart starts trying to pump a vacuum.

'Yes,' he said. 'Approximately ten thousand every year. That's almost one every hour. So you mustn't think any more about him. Start your engine and drive back into the main road.'

They were very cautious, not wanting to do it here. It was an excellent place but they obviously knew of a better one.

I said: 'You've left your car in the way.' I looked round and through the rear window.

'Can't you get past?'

'I don't think so, but I'll try.'

'No, I'll go and move it. I've got to switch off the lights anyhow.'

He got out and his friend sat very still with the Walther P38 lined up with the bridge of my nose. The catch was off and his hand was dead steady. He'd stopped munching on the marzipan so that he could concentrate. His face was plump and the stare had a slight smile in it as if he wanted me to know that for him it was a special thing, to kill a man, a special pleasure, a substitute for orgasm, and that he wanted badly to do it and he would in fact do it if I made him and that he hoped I would make him.

I wondered who his controllers were.

'Switch your headlights on,' he said.

Just as, a little while ago, the time sequence of the traffic lights had governed that situation, unseen people — his controllers — now governed this one. Their orders, through the media of his memory and his motor-nerves, were operating the fixator muscles of his finger so that it remained still, three millimetres from the end of the primary spring's travel, two millimetres from the end of the secondary spring's travel and the percussion.

I would have liked to know who his controllers were. He had respect for them but I couldn't rely on that. All I had to do was make too sudden a move and the flexor muscles would contract in nervous sympathy.

'You want to do it,' I said, 'don't you?'

'Yes.' The smile was going out of his stare. 'Switch your head-lights on.'

I thought I'd better do that. Target attraction is a fairly common phenomenon in most physical disciplines and if I let him go on staring at the bridge of my nose long enough he might easily lose his control.

It happens to military pilots on exercise, especially with dive-bombers: they home in on the target with such concentration that sometimes they become hypnotized and can't pull out. I wondered if the Strikers were always on dummy-gunning trips when they went straight in: but someone would have thought of that already.

His friend moved the Opel and doused the lights and we were sitting in reflected glare from the wall now that my own were on.

We listened to his footsteps coming back. If there had been a chance it was over now. The advantage had been that they didn't expect me to try anything while he was busy with the Opel. They both had faith in the gun even though there was only one of them with me. The main disadvantage had been the springs of the driving-seat: it would have needed an inflexible base for the body so that sudden movement wouldn't be shock-absorbed, giving the equivalent of a pulled punch.

'Good,' the man behind me said.

I knew he'd been watching me in the mirror but I didn't know he was so skilled: he understood that however poker-faced I was, the decision to move fast and suddenly would have shown in my eyes a tenth-second before the muscles were given the order; and in that tenth-second he would have tightened his finger.

'You're jumpy,' I said. 'You need more sugar.'

'I do what I can,' he said, and bit off another piece of marzipan.

His friend climbed in and said: 'Drive carefully.'

I put off the headlights and backed into the main street 'Ernst-August-Platz.'

'Where's that?'

'Go left just here.'

Halfway along Georgstrasse the one with fan-teeth said:

'Switch off your headlights.'

'I did.'

'Yes, but then you switched them on again.'

That was silly of me.'

'Yes.'

They'd seen people flashing me. I'd been hoping a patrol-car would decide to pull me up about it and ask to see my papers.

'Make for Sudstadt now.'

The only other chance before we got there was when we were held up at some lights at the Stadtbibliothek. A policeman was hanging around. The exercise was easy enough: clip the wing of the car alongside and cause a jam and bring him across to deal with me. But I didn't trust them: they were pure German and therefore law-respecting but they or their group had finished Lovett and they might finish me with one in the spine and get out and run clear before a policeman could reach his holster. They might even chance a running duel in the street: the police sometimes open fire on running men and the papers usually call them 'gangsters' but now and then they're not gangsters at all; they're men caught in a bad spot somewhere between a high-level attempt to sabotage a summit meeting and the mechanics of the opposition lined-up against the idea. Men like these.

Turn right in the square.'

We began heading for one of the main industrial sections. There were some lights on in the Sprengel chocolate factory and the three-quarter moon silvered the parapets and sparked on the glass.

One of them spoke quietly and the wet guttural laugh came again.