Which meant they would be waiting for him.
He switched to special lenses. At once his vision changed. Using lenses he could pick out the shape of a tiny insect at five hundred ch'i. Squeezing the corners of his eyes he adjusted them to medium range and checked all the surfaces ahead for signs of antipersonnel devices. It seemed clear, but for once he decided not to trust the visual scan. He set one of his hand lasers to low charge and raked it along the walls and floors, then along the ceiling. Nothing. Yet he still felt ill at ease. Some instinct held him back. He waited, breathing shallowly, counting to twenty in his head, then heard a sound behind him—so faint that it would have been easy to miss it. The faintest clicking, like a claw gently tapping the side of a porcelain bowl.
He tensed, listening, making sure, then turned fast and rolled to one side, just as the machine loosed off a burst of rapid fire. The wall exploded beside him as the heavy shells hit home. He cursed and fired back, the first few rounds wild, the next deadly accurate. The machine sputtered, then blew apart, hot fragments flying everywhere. A piece embedded itself in his side, another cracked the front of his visor.
There was no time to lose now. The machine was like the one they had used to attack Tolonen, but more deadly. A remote. Which meant they had seen him. Seen how good he was. He was using up his advantage.
He considered the situation as he ran. They knew he was coming. Knew what he was like, how fast, how agile he was. There was one of him and two of them. Older, yes, but more experienced than he. A Security Major and a special-services assassin, now sixty-eight, but still fit and active, he was certain. On those facts alone it might seem he had little chance of succeeding. But there was one final factor, something they didn't know; that DeVore couldn't know, because it had never got into Karr's service record. In his teens—before he had become a blood— he had been an athlete; perhaps the finest athlete the Net had ever produced. And he was better now. At twenty-nine he was fitter and faster than he'd ever been.
Karr slowed as he neared the end of the corridor. There was no tape to break this time; even so, his time was close to nine seconds. They wouldn't think . . .
He fired ahead of him, letting momentum take him through the door, rolling and springing up, turning in the next movement to find Cherkassky on the ceiling above the door, held there in an assassin's cradle. He was turning with his feet, but it wasn't fast enough. Karr shot away the strands, making Cherkassky tumble to the floor, all the while his eyes darting here and there, looking for DeVore. He skipped over the rubble and crouched above the winded assassin.
"Where is he? Tell me where he is."
The old man laughed, then coughed blood. Karr shot him through the neck. DeVore had gone. Had traded on his final friendship. But he could not have gone far. Cherkassky hadn't been operating the machine. So ...
Quickly, carefully, he checked the rest of the apartment. There was no sign of the controls here, so DeVore had them elsewhere. Somewhere close by. But where? He pushed his helmet out into the corridor, then, a moment later, popped his head around the comer to look. Nothing. There was a high-pitched screaming from a nearby apartment but he ignored it, stepping out into the corridor again. There was no way out overhead. The roof was sealed here. He had checked on that earlier. No. The only way out was down.
He glanced at his timer. It was only three minutes and forty-eight seconds since he had stood at the far end of the corridor. Was that time enough for DeVore to get to the elevator? Possibly. But Karr had a hunch that he hadn't done that. DeVore would want to make sure he was safe, and that meant getting back at his pursuer. He walked slowly down the corridor, keeping to the wall, the largest of his guns, an antique Westinghouse-Howitzer, pressed tight against his chest. He would take no chances with this bastard.
He was about to go on when he paused, noticing the silence. The screaming had stopped suddenly, almost abruptly, in mid-scream. It had taken him a second or two to notice it, but then it hit him. He turned, lowering himself onto his haunches, as if about to spring. Two doors down the corridor, it had been. He went back slowly, his finger trembling against the hair trigger, making a small circle around the door until he stood on its far side, his back to Cherkassky's apartment. He had two options now: to wait or to go in. Which would DeVore expect him to do? Was he waiting for Karr to come in, or was he about to come out? For a moment Karr stood there, tensed, considering; then he smiled. There was a third option: burn away the wall and see what lay behind it. He liked that. It meant he didn't have to go through a door.
He lay down, setting the big gun up in front of him, ejecting the standard explosive shells and slipping a cartridge of ice-penetrating charges into the loader. Then he squeezed the trigger, tracing a line of shells first up the wall, then along the top of it. The partition shuddered, like something alive, and began to peel away from where the charges had punctured holes in it. There was no sound from the other side of the wall; only silence and the roiling smoke.
He waited, easing his finger back and forth above the hair trigger as the ice curled back, revealing the shattered room. Karr's eyes took in each and every detail, noting and discarding them. A young woman lay dead on the lounger, her pale limbs limp, her head at an odd angle—garrotted, by the look of it. There was no sign of DeVore, but he had been there. The woman had been alive only a minute before.
Karr crawled into the room. A siren had begun to sound in the corridor. It would bring Chen and help. But Karr wanted to finish this now. DeVore was his. He had pursued him for so long now. And, orders or no, he would make sure of things this time.
He stopped, calling out, "Surrender yourself, DeVore. Put your hands up and come out. You'll get a fair trial."
It was a charade. Part of the game they had to play. But DeVore would pay no heed. They both knew now that this could end only in death. But it had to be said. Like the last words of a ritual.
His answer came a moment later. The door to the right hissed open a fraction and a grenade was lobbed into the room. Karr saw it curl in the air and recognized what it was. Dropping his gun, he placed his hands tight over his ears and pushed his face down into the floor. It was a concussion grenade. The shock of it ripped a hole in the floor and seemed to lift everything in the room into the air.
In a closed room it would have been devastating, but much of the force of it went out into the corridor. Karr got up, stunned but unhurt, his ears ringing. And then the door began to iris open.
Reactions took over. Karr buckled at the knees and rolled forward, picking up his gun on the way. DeVore was halfway out the door, the gun at his hip already firing, when the butt of Karr's gun connected with his head. It was an ill-aimed blow that glanced off the side of his jaw, just below the ear, but the force of it was enough to send DeVore sprawling, the gun flying from his hands. Karr went across, his gun raised to aim another blow, but it was already too late. DeVore was dead, his jaw shattered, fragments of it pushed up into his brain.
Karr stood a moment looking down at his old enemy, all of the fierce indignation and anger he felt welling up in him again. He shuddered, then, anger getting the better of him, brought the gun down, once, twice, a third time, smashing the skull apart, spilling DeVore's brains across the floor.
"You bastard . . . You stinking, fucking bastard!"
Then, taking the small cloth bag from his top pocket, he undid the string and spilled the stones over the dead man. Three hundred and sixty-one black stones.