by Adam Hall
Mine but to do or die, yes, quite. If I didn't kill Schrenk he would have to kill me, I knew that. Things can get very basic in the end phase of a mission. Croder would probably laugh if he knew my thoughts, his rat's teeth nibbling with secret amusement, my dear fellow, the issue is cut and dried, surely you see that. It's impossible for you to get this man out of Russia if he refuses to go, and if he stays here he'll get picked up again and this time they'll get everything out of him, you've said so yourself. Are you really saying that one man's life is worth the entire Leningrad cell and possibly the security of the Bureau as well? You must be indulging in some sort of sentimentality, and that can be highly dangerous. The rat's teeth nibbling and the hooded eyes looking away. Besides, the man's a complete wreck now: we could never put him into the field again.
Good reason. Good logic. But Lord, hear my prayer, and damn their eyes.
He was watching me, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette with an expression I couldn't quite read. He was looking at me almost as if he'd never seen me before, though it wasn't exactly that. Got it, yes: as if he were never going to see me again.
How would he try to kill? He couldn't do it himself, and Ignatov was no use to him. He probably had a dozen people not far away, a clique of fanatical dissidents lying low in readiness for a coup. He'd set the whole pack on me once I was outside there in the dark. He seemed very confident.
So I'd have to get in first.
Give him a last chance.
'I was sent out here to find you,' I told him, and the tightness in my throat distorted the words slightly. 'I was told to pull you out.'
'I understand that:
'And you understand why.'
'Of course.' He began pacing again, one thin leg swinging an inch farther than the other, like the pendulum of the clock. That must worry him too, but he couldn't do anything about it. 'They don't want me to be put under interrogation again, because next time I might have to blow the whole works. I understand that.'
A bit too loudly I said, 'Then for Christ's sake give it a minute's thought, will you? Think out the implications.'
He looked at me sharply and away again, and went on with his pacing. I wanted him to think this out for himself. I didn't want to have to tell him, the instant before I had to do it.
Final considerations: reluctance to do it in front of the girl, because she adored him. Possibility of getting her to leave the room, ask her to fetch something, tell Schrenk to send her away for a moment. Other thought intruding: For sale, Jensen Interceptor, only 27,000 miles, fitted anti-radar unit, all refinements. Also 200 classic jazz records (15 Harry James, 12 Duke Ellington) and player. The plastic chess set would remain in the Caff and the other things like tennis racquets and skis and karate swords would be offered up and down the corridors in off-duty hours: there's usually a jumble sale when someone fails to come back, because we're loners, most of us, and not the kind of people who have relations to leave things to; we're born alone and we die alone and no one really notices. At the Bureau a prerequisite of our service is that we agree not to exist.
'I've told you,' Schrenk said, 'I've done all the thinking.' He brought his pacing to a clumsy halt between the window and the small Victorian writing-desk in the corner. 'But what you mean is, if you can't pull me out of Moscow you've got instructions to do the other thing. That right?'
'Yes.'
He nodded. 'Perfectly logical.'
I moved at once but the inertia cost me time and he was much closer to the writing-desk than I was and his lunge for the top drawer was accurate and he had the gun in his hand and the safety catch off before I was anywhere near.
'Careful,' he said.
I looked at his face and stopped dead. The desk was still rocking on its thin varnished legs and the drawer was sticking out at a slight angle with its brass handle swinging to stillness. There was something else in the drawer but I couldn't see it clearly from this distance; it was just one of a hundred items of data that were bombarding the consciousness and there wasn't enough time to examine it. In addition to this the emotional block was inhibiting reason: I'd lost.
'Back off a bit,' Schrenk said, 'you're too close.'
I did what he told me.
'Never carry a gun, do you?' His hand was absolutely steady. 'That's a mistake.'
Peripheral vision: Ignatov had moved away from the wall where he'd been standing with a handkerchief pressed to his temple; he was looking at Schrenk and waiting for instructions. Misha hadn't moved but I could hear her tremulous breathing: she was a country girl and not used to the big city with its tall concrete towers and the grinding underground trains and men who were ready to kill each other in the warmth of a ground-floor apartment with the comfortable smell of boiled cabbage in the air.
'Sweetheart,' Schrenk said, 'would you get me another cigarette?' He didn't take his eyes off me.
The girl moved out of my sight and then came back, lighting a cigarette from the crumpled paper packet and handing it to him, taking away the butt of the old one and dropping it into the ashtray. `Will everything be all right?' she asked him, close to tears.
'Everything will be all right, sweetheart, yes. Don't worry.'
My left eyelid had begun flickering and without thinking about it I was breathing more deeply. There wasn't going to be any action because things had passed beyond that stage: you can't rush a gun and I wasn't going to try. The only conceivable chance was in getting behind Ignatov and using him as a shield but there was Schrenk behind that thing, Shapiro, not some half-trained amateur. And he wanted me out of his way.
'Had some good times, didn't we?' He drew deeply on the cigarette. `Remember Rosita?'
I didn't say anything. He wasn't making sense.
`Tenerife? Tell you something. I took her out the night before old Templer flew in. What a gal!' He began wheezing with quiet laughter, his thin body shaking with it. But his gun hand remained perfectly steady. `Poor old Templer. He was going to take her out that night, but of course those bastards…' He began coughing but managed to control it: the range was fifteen feet and he knew I could move very fast. 'Remember that bloody bomb in the consulate in Cairo? Got the motto out, didn't we?' He giggled again. `Good times. We had some good times.' Then he straightened up as far as he could and his tone was serious. 'We could do a deal if you like.'
I began listening carefully. 'What deal?'
I think Ignatov must have moved at this point, though he was outside my vision field. Schrenk said to him sharply: 'Pytor, stay where you are. If you move any closer he'll try to use you as a shield, can't you see that? Stay exactly where you are.'
In English he asked me: 'Are you interested?'
'I don't know yet.'
'Pretty simple. If you agree to abort the mission I'll let you go home.'
`It's not on.'
'Always so bloody obstinate,' he said in annoyance. `Don't you know the alternative?'
'Yes.'
'You think there's a chance?' He shook his head. 'I'm not going to have you picked up again, you know that. It's too risky — you might get away as you did before. You know what I've got to do.'
He was losing his colour, and there was a certain stiffness coming into his body, as if he were readying himself to do something that would need a lot of effort on his part, a lot of determination. I could feel my eyelid flickering again and wondered if it showed: it's always been an embarrassment.
'Spell it out for me,' I told Schrenk. 'We don't want any misunderstandings.'
'You're so right. All I want you to do is to go back to London without telling them where I am, or even that you found me. I want to be left alone.'
In a moment I said: 'You'd take my word?'
He looked surprised. 'Of course.'
'You think you know me that well?'
'Oh yes. I'm not risking anything.'
I thought about it. 'Yes, you are. They could pick me up again and grill me, and I know where to find you.'
Concerne
d, he asked quickly: 'Haven't you got a capsule?'
'Yes.'
'Then you'd have to use it. That would be part of the deal.'
He waited impatiently.
I watched him, trying to read the truth in his eyes, in his face, in the set of his angular body, in the steadiness of the hand that held the gun. I believed he meant what he was saying. I was certain he did.
'You know what I'm offering you,' he said quietly.
`My life.'
'Yes.' His face was bloodless now. At least it was going to mean something to him when he finally had to pump that thing and watch my body go reeling back in a series of jerks.
I'd at least have an epitaph to go out with: Someone cared. But that didn't have to happen. I could take him at his word and walk out of here and report to Bracken and have the cell move in: there were six of them, fully trained, and they could take Schrenk and get him out of the country and put him back into a clinic and go on working on him, the best specialists, the best attention, until one fine day he could walk without hobbling and stand up straight and go and see that girl in Brighton again, take her out in his Jensen Interceptor and then one day, one day say to me, you broke your word to me that time in Moscow and it's a bloody good thing you did or I wouldn't be here now.
He was half out of his mind and needed protecting from himself: he was mixed up with a bunch of wildcat dissidents planning some kind of protest that was going to land him inside Lubyanka again or flat on his back in the street with his head in the gutter and the young po-faced militia men standing arrogantly over him, kicking him idly with their polished boots until the transport arrived. You have to use every means to complete a mission and the object of Scorpion was to get this man out of Moscow and I could do it without any problem, without lifting a finger, yes I accept the deal and you've got my word on it. The rest would be up to Bracken and his team and they wouldn't have any problem either, once Schrenk was subdued and in their care; Croder had lined up support facilities that would get them across the frontier at an hour's notice: Bracken had told me so.
'The thinking,' Schrenk said heavily, 'is for you to do, not me. But I haven't got a lot of time, quite frankly. I'm going to give you another minute. Sixty seconds. I think that's fair.'
The gun was aimed at my forehead. He was a first class shot and could drop me where I stood without any pain. He was a humane man. Sixty seconds. That was a long time, more time than I really needed. A generous man.
I heard the tick of the clock. We all heard it. The other two hadn't understood anything of what we'd been saying but they could sense what the silence meant: we'd both stopped talking and he was holding the gun perfectly still. I looked at it carefully; it was a 9mm Smith and Wesson and would carry eight shots in the magazine. Schrenk would only use one.
Tick… tock.
The idea occurred to me that if I remained staring into the barrel of that thing I would perhaps see the nose of the bullet travelling towards me in the final microsecond of life, as young Chepstow had possibly seen it when he'd been sitting at the cafe table drinking his last cup of coffee in Phnom Penh a couple of years ago, thinking perhaps it was a bee.
Tick… tock.
Schrenk was very pale now, and there was something coming into his eyes, a kind of blankness. I suppose he was having to blank out his mind and leave it clear of any philosophical considerations that might finally get in the way of what he had to do, which was to squeeze the first nicotine-stained finger of his right hand by a simple command to the motor nerves.
Tick… tock.
How long had he said? Sixty seconds. But he wouldn't fire without some kind of warning. He wouldn't expect me to know when the sixty seconds were up. Perhaps he was counting. Was I expected to count, as well? Schrenk. Do you want me to count?
Because it was no go. If I gave him my word I would have to keep it. It didn't matter if he were half out of his mind and needed protecting from himself, so forth: those arguments were rational but not admissible. It wasn't for me to judge him now. He'd worked damned hard for our people and kept us safe, all of us, Leningrad and London, all of us, while they'd been trying to break him in Lubyanka, and he'd earned our trust, my trust.
Tick… tock.
I really do wish you'd get that bloody thing. What I was not going to do was walk out of here and tell Bracken I was aborting the mission and ask him to give me safe passage back to London with my tail between my legs. Wish you'd get that bloody thing to tick evenly. It's getting on my nerves. Call it pride, would you, not enough guts to face the fact that for the first time in my life I'm failing a mission, I don't give a damn what you call it, it's none of your bloody business. Must I suppose be up by now, sixty seconds aren't long.
Tick…
Flickering. Left eyelid flickering. Sweat running down, wet on the palms. The face wound throbbing, the pulse rate high. Small round barrel and I suppose, I suppose that if in point of fact I finally glimpse the pointed lead nose of the bullet it's going to look quite large, two inches from the centre of my forehead, large enough to blot his whole face out of sight.
Tock.
'I'd say that's about it, Q.' I took a breath.
'All right. No deal.'
His eyes widened slightly. 'Why not, for God's sake?'
'That's none of your bloody business.'
He went on staring for another second or two. 'I didn't think you'd be such a bastard. Making me do a thing like this.' His tone had gone dead.
'You should have thought of that before.'
In a moment he nodded, and kept the gun on me while he felt for the drawer of the writing-desk with his left hand, and found it, and took the thing out, the thing I'd seen before. It was a silencer and he fitted it to the gun.
The distance was still something like fifteen feet, almost the width of the room. The window was obliquely behind him and the door was three or four feet to my left and out of sight. Ignatov was over by the wall and the girl was on the other side near the kitchen area. The only thing in the centre of the room was the short velvet-covered settee. There was nothing in the environment I could use for survival in the half second it would take Schrenk to fire. Nothing.
'No hard feelings, I hope.' I hardly recognized his voice. He stood there with his body twisted and the left shoulder down, the sweat shining on his thin agonized face as he stared at me — not at my eyes but slightly above them, making no contact, giving me the chilling idea that I was a lifeless object, nothing he could communicate with.
'It's your own conscience,' I told him. 'That's all you'll get.'
'All I expected. Mind turning round?'
'You mean you haven't got the guts to do it while I'm looking at you?'
I seemed to be breathing cold air in the warmth of the room, my lungs gradually contracting, my body shrinking. I didn't watch Schrenk any more: I wanted to forget him, if I could, in the last instant. I watched the heavy shape of the silencer.
'I'm not going to shoot,' he said. 'I just want you to turn round.'
Of course I could refuse but the organism was thinking for itself and I had the instinctive knowledge that if I didn't turn round he'd have to shoot anyway. So I turned round.
'Pyotr,' he said.
I heard Ignatov moving away from the wall. 'Yes, Viktor.'
'Take this gun,' I heard the strange voice saying in Russian, 'and go outside with him. Keep the gun in the pocket of your coat, so that no one else will see it.' The voice stopped, and I heard the effort he was having to make to go on with what he was saying. 'This man is extremely clever, and he will take risks, because his life is at stake. You must keep a good distance between him and yourself. Take him out to your car and when he is inside it, shoot him dead.' There was another pause, and when Schrenk spoke again there was anger in his voice, as if he had to work up some kind of resentment against me to go through with this. 'Drive him as far as the river. If you want to, ask Boris and Dmitriy to go with you, but I'd prefer you to go alone. You don't have t
o use any weights, in the river. All you have to do is to make sure he is found a long way from here. You understand?'
'Yes, Viktor.'
A change in Ignatov's voice, too: it sounded strong now, and deeper. He said to me: 'Open the door.'
The senses had become acute. I heard Misha whispering, so softly that I didn't catch the words. Some kind of prayer? I was quite moved, and had a sudden hatred of Schrenk for doing this in front of her, for being so coarse: he could have sent her out. Slightly short on good taste, I thought as I opened the door, and wondered who had said that, where I'd heard it.
'Pyotr. If he makes any attempt to get away, shoot at once, and to kill.'
'Yes, Viktor.'
Then I heard a long shuddering breath, and Schrenk spoke softly in English. 'Good times.'
16: SHOOT
He fired six rapid shots at short range into the spine and the impact pitched my body forward in a series of jerks as the chips of bone and cartilage from the shattered vertebrae were forced out through the rib cage in an explosion of blood and plasma. As my face hit the snow I thought Schrenk you bastardI hope they burn you for this.
Have to do better. Gut-think wouldn't help me.
I listened to his footsteps along the corridor behind me. I estimated the distance at something like six feet, not nearly dose enough to do anything in safety. We kept on walking towards the door leading to the car park at the rear.
He fired directly into the back of the head and the brain matter burst and splattered against the walls in a welter of skull fragments. There was no more time for conscious thought, even of Moira, even of roses: life was simply present, then absent. Executive deceased.
Have to do much better, yes. A normal reaction to awareness of imminent death with the imagination running wild but gut-think useless and dangerous: survival possible only through rational thought, brain-think.
Man in a worn brown overcoat and horn-rimmed glasses. 'Good evening, comrade.' Ignatov.
'Good evening. They say it's going to snow again.' 'Surely we've had enough!'