by Adam Hall
I didn't think I could do it in three minutes but I thought I could do it in five.
Footsteps.
No go.
'Have you got something?'
It would take thirty seconds with a crowbar, sixty with an axe. That wasn't enough.
'No.'
'Then what the hell have you — '
There's a ganger on his way here with something. He's fetching it from the tool store.'
'Christ, we'll be all day.'
'He won't be long.'
Down an inch, another inch.
The rag dripped, this time on to my head.
The thick coat was a hazard, deadening the nerves of the skin: there'd be no warning before the folds at the elbow caught the door-handle.
Lower. Smell of the rag stronger.
'See anything of the others up there?'
'They're working towards the end of the platforms.'
Stop.
A soft sound had begun near my feet and when I stopped moving the sound stopped too. I moved the broom again, downwards, a quarter of an inch, and the sound came back. It was the bristles, touching the rim of the bucket. I didn't know it was so close, so dangerous. Down an inch, keep it clear.
The nerves were reacting and suddenly anger came, anger with him, with what he'd say, told me they found you in the station lav, old boy, sorry about that, they've got no sense of privacy, those chaps.
He'd enjoy saying that. My break would have frightened him and he'd want to take it out on me.
Sweat inside my hands because of the anger.
The head of the broom touched the floor.
'Beats me, you know.'
'Eh?'
'First we get orders to take things quiet so as not to alarm the visitors, next thing there's half a brigade of us turnin' Warsaw Central upside down.'
It would be easier with the coat off but I couldn't take it off without knocking against the door-handle. I stood the broom against the back wall.
'Who's that?'
'The ganger.'
I heard the footsteps coming.
Do it now or stand here like a bloody fool because you think there isn't time, sorry about that, old boy, don't let him say it, do it now.
'Come on then, we're in a hurry!'
'Been quick as I could.'
'Let's have it then.'
Sweat on the palms wipe it off.
The cupboard was small but not small enough for me to use a foot on each side of the side walls and I had to brace them both against the wall in front of me with my back pressed to the one behind but the chimneying action would be just as efficient and I began when they put the end of the crowbar into the jamb and started prising with it. Sound-factor to my advantage, their greater noise covering mine. Splinters were coming away. Unknown datum was the exact height of the ceiling but I knew it was at least thirteen feet, shoulder-height plus arm's length plus handle of broom and therefore six feet higher than the top of the door.
Press. Slide. Press.
'It's coming.'
'Give me a bit of room, then.'
The door was shaking but the sound was below me now… a crackle of splitting timber.
Back-muscles signalling strain, ignore, the body will do what you mean it to do when it senses you won't take refusal. Press. Press harder.
'This time.'
Shoulders on fire, nerve-lights flashing under the lids. Harder. Higher. Press…
Explosion of sound as the lock went, the door banging back.
Stop.
Flood of light below but here I was in gloom. 'All right.'
'Wasted our time.'
'No, we had to make sure.'
I listened to their boots, to the echoes fading. When it was silent I came down.
I gave them one hour.
The cadre left in place at key points would probably comprise special M.O. patrols with a handful of Policia Ubespieczenia manning the public exits, civilian dress.
I must go but the hazard was critical: they knew my image, knew that I was now bareheaded.
A train had been through and some people had come into the washroom and it wouldn't have been difficult to talk one of them into selling he his kepi but that would have been fatal. They'd have stopped him at the exit, where is your hat, I sold it to a man in the Toaleta. Fatal.
But I had to go now and take the hazard with me.
It was quiet here. Distant sounds: shunting in the freight area, voice on the P.A. system, background of street traffic.
I went into the subway and turned left for the nearest staircase and we met face to face at the comer because the sound of his footsteps had been covered by my own.
17: COMBAT
He was one of Foster's men.
It worried me because he ought not to be down here in the subway: an hour had been quite long enough for half a brigade to deal with the station area and the main search should have been called off by now, leaving only the exits under observation. He shouldn't be so close to the centre as this and I didn't like it. I couldn't see where I'd made the mistake.
Then I got the answer and it was very simple: he was in fact manning one of the peripheral points but had needed to come down to the lavatory. It was reassuring to know I hadn't made a mistake.
I knew he was one of Foster's men because his face showed immediate recognition: my image was the known image and he was responding by reflex. His actual features didn't mean anything to me but he had a brown leather coat on and I'd seen that two of them had been wearing coats that colour.
He was going very fast for his gun but I had to wait because if I engaged right away the thing would have to stay where it was and he'd be able to get at it later if I got into an awkward position and I didn't want that to happen.
He had the eyes of an Alsatian in the instant of attack, wide open and with the pupils dark and enlarged, the gold irises glittering: his teeth were bared and this too gave him the look of a trained killer dog. Even so he appeared to need his gun and I had to wait several fractions of a second before it was in his hand.
At close quarters a gun is highly dangerous. The danger is present before it leaves the holster, since it gives a feeling of power, of superiority, thus leading to false confidence and the impression that no serious effort has to be made, that the conflict has already been won. The danger increases tenfold once the gun is in the hand because only one hand is left free for useful work; at the same time the psychological danger remains present: it is felt that the mere sight of the gun will intimidate the opponent to the extent of rendering him powerless, quite incapable of movement. If, at this stage, the opponent decides to move, the danger becomes so great that it dominates the situation and can no longer be averted. The simple act of moving confounds the strongly held belief that no movement will in fact be made, and the surprise has the proportions of severe psychological shock.
Kimura's first rule is grilled into new trainees until they're sick of it but later it saves their lives: when threatened by an armed man, do nothing until he comes into close quarters.
It's usually easy enough because he likes to frisk you and then you can go to work. In this case I was lucky because we'd walked into each other and the distance was perfect. The gun was in his hand but that was all: his index hadn't settled inside the trigger guard and he was nowhere near horizontal aim. In another tenth of a second I would have had to use the routine deflection drill designed to get the body clear of the bullet but I didn't wait for that because the noise would alert the nearest patrols.
I chopped upwards against the wrist-nerve and the force swung him partly round as the gun spun high and hit the glazed tiles of the ceiling and that was all right but he was already hooking for a kite blow and I knew I'd been wrong: he hadn't been relying a hundred per cent on his gun — he'd just thought it might be the most convenient way.
I went down first and he dropped and tried for the throat so I used the knee and he rolled and corrected and I thought it was probably kamin
ari, a bastardised form of kung fu, because he got very busy and couldn't relax the tensions so it was easy until the speed of the blows began foxing me and I had to go for a straight classic hand-edge for the shoulder hoping to numb and not succeeding the first time and not getting the chance to do it again because he was on to it and pulling clear and coming in again with a series of horribly fast kites that burned at the muscles while I hooked at what I could reach: windpipe, groin, plexus, trying for blows and then for locks and not getting them as I should.
Specialised disciplines are effective within their range but none of them are flexible enough: their patterns are too formalised. Pure karate can stop any amateur attack because it has the answer to every move in the book but there are one or two others and some of the kaminari blows have never been fully understood in the West so that an element of the unknown enters the conflict and there's no time to rethink on the established techniques because this form of attack is tense and fast and accumulative: the aim is to break down the opponent before he's had time to work for any kind of finalising strike or lock.
That's why karate has never been taught at Norfolk. They teach something different there.
I still couldn't use it. His energy was appalling and the blows came chopping wickedly fast for the vulnerable points and I knew that if I left only one of them unprotected for a half-second he'd be in there and finish me. His attack was animal: I couldn't believe that this creature could ever, short of killing it, be tamed; or that, once tamed, it could speak or write with a pen in a human hand. His breathing was like a wolf's, his frenzy producing grunts through the teeth and nostrils, a bestial snuffling, and somewhere in my mind there was surprise that these weren't claws ripping at me, that I touched no fur. Yet his blows were infinitely disciplined.
And suddenly I knew that if I didn't do something quickly he'd break me down and I'd have to be taken to Foster in an ambulance. My arms were losing strength and their muscles burned. I couldn't shift his weight from across my legs.
For a long time, for two or three seconds, I let myself relax, bringing the strikes closer to give him confidence, then twisted and freed an elbow and drove it hard enough to disturb his rhythm and he shifted his weight and I went for a yoshida and brought it off but couldn't hold the full lock because he slipped it enough to sap the leverage and come in again with neck strikes so that I had to roll back and parry them. Light had begun flashing in my head.
A hokku and it threw him and 'I followed with the second stage of the lock but wasn't fast enough and his weight came back and I had to protect again because if only one of his strikes got through it would leave me paralysed. My head throbbed, pulsing to the rhythm of the flashing light, and breathing was difficult now. He fluttered above me, a vague dark shape whose weight increased and bore down and smothered my movements, and its snuffling became excited as the strikes hammered at the crossed shield of my arms and shifted their aim and hammered again and found the target protected but only clumsily now as I lost strength, and worse, lost science. Time was going, no more time. I needed time.
Sorry about that, old boy, but you shouldn't have chanced your arm, these chaps won't put up with it.
Relax and bring him closer. Get the breathing right or it's no go. Relax.
But I was a torch, a body burning, my own light blinding. His blows poured pain into me and the flames burst brighter. There was no time. Then let it be done without time. Now.
Twist. But he was ready and I had to try again and it didn't work but his aim was shifted and I moved the other way and felt purchase available as we rolled with my knee rising hard but not hard enough: it baulked his strikes but he went for a neck lock and I had to stop it because it was a musubi and we are frightened of that one, all of us. Lock and counter-lock and we lay still, the muscles alone engaged, contraction without kinetics, the hiss of our breathing the only sign of life. Then I felt purchase again: my foot had come into contact with the wall of the subway and when I used it he was surprised and the lock went slack and I had time and forced him over and we lay still again but the position was changed and I saw that there was a blow I could use if I worked very quickly.
But I hesitated. Morality came into this and the awareness of what I was going to do was holding me back. This was the jungle but even in the jungle there are laws: a male wolf, in combat with another and sensing mortal defeat, will pause and expose its neck and the jugular vein, tokening submission; and the victor will leave it.
Here the law didn't apply: a vulnerable point had been exposed by chance and morality was out of place because the organism was shouting it down, squealing for survival, and I put the last of my strength into the blow. It wasn't very hard because I was weakened now, but it was effective because it struck the point that Kimura had told us about.
Then I got up and leaned with my back to the wall, dragging air into my lungs while the nerve-light went on flashing in my head. A sound was somewhere, a rumbling, and I remembered where I was, in the railway station of a modern city where men could speak, and write with pens. It seemed a long time since I was here before: an act so primitive had brought a time shift and the past few minutes had been measured in millennia.
The rumbling became thunder overhead and its rhythm slowed: a train was stopping. I would have liked to rest but there'd soon be people here.
In the washroom I took his coat and kepi, putting them on. He was Piotr Rashidov, attached to the 4th Division of the Polish State Information Services on temporary duty, and his credentials carried the facsimile of the Communist Party seal. I sat him in the end cubicle where the hinges were still intact, locking the door and climbing over the partition, dropping and checking that his feet looked as they should.
Then I bathed my face, turning away from the mirror when I dried it. There's always the feeling of personal failure because it's an easy thing to do, and even when there's no choice it still has the look of a cheap trick.
There were more than I'd expected.
The train had pulled out and no one was in the middle platforms except for station staff and the M.O. patrols. Two of them were posted at the north end and that was the way I had to go because there were no ticket-barriers.
I walked steadily in the brown leather coat and kepi. My legs were all right. the punishment had been taken by the arms because his technique had forced me to shield. Head still throbbing and the throat raw though I'd drunk some water at the basin.
I looked at my watch. The glass was smashed and the dial twisted and the hands torn away and when I took it off there was its shape imprinted on my wrist, a purple weal. The clock over the main hall barriers showed 14:20 and it was no longer a question of hurrying but of cutting down the whole schedule and running it closer and hoping not to wreck it.
The two M.O. patrols weren't moving. They stood facing towards me, dark figures against the screen of drifting snow at the station's mouth. They were fifty feet away and there was no one between us along this stretch of platform. The snow looked easeful, whirling on the wind, and I felt a longing to walk in it and be lost in it. This place was a trap.
They'd want a report at the Bureau, was it necessary, what were the possible alternatives, was the person armed, so forth, and the sweat came on me again because they wanted too bloody much, they wanted you to go in and do the job and come out with your tie straight and your hair brushed and your hands clean, it was rather embarrassing for them, this kind of thing, and you had to be careful not to shout at them, yes I had to do it because I was losing consciousness and it was the last chance I'd get and it was his bad luck that the point he'd exposed was that one, not my fault, can happen to the best of us, what do you think things are like when a couple of ferrets go at it tooth and claw in a tunnel under the ground? Quite put them off their tea.
I was walking faster because of the anger and the distance had closed to thirty feet and when I'd gone another five I began calling out to them in Russian, pointing behind me — 'Who's meant to be manning the barrier
s down there, is it you?'
They didn't bloody well understand so I said it again in Polish, keeping the vowels flat and rounding the r's, and one of them came towards me with his paces circumspect.
'The two barriers this side of the hall — you think you can survey them at this distance without a pair of binoculars?'
He stood with his bright eyes hating me but all he could legitimately do was ask for identification, showing that just for a moment he had the upper hand by virtue of his uniform. I would even expect it of him: it was said that Dabrowski himself couldn't enter his own official residence without showing his papers.
'I must ask to see your credentials.'
Piotr Rashidov. The red seal was sufficient — and I didn't give him time to study the photograph.
'Answer my question.'
'Our orders are to guard this end of the platform.'
'And leave the barriers uncontrolled? Who is your officer?'
'There is a patrol on the other side of the barriers.'
'We shall see.'
I turned my back to him and began walking again the way I had come, looking to my left and to my right, watching for signs of inefficiency among the uniformed patrols at the flank exits.
My shoulders were stiffening and the glare of the lamps went through my eyes and ached inside my head. Walking in this direction, back into the trap and away from the healing and liberating snow, was retrogressive and irked me and to an increasing extent worried me because he'd be expected back at his post or back in the area he was controlling, say in five minutes, ten at the most.
Two station officials on the far side of the barriers, an M.O. patrol and a man in plain clothes: I stared at them and turned away and stood with my back to them, looking to the left and to the right, swinging again on my heel and pacing to the north end of the platform.
'And what patrols are there beyond this point?'
'You would have to ask my Captain?'
'There should be patrols out there. Or is it that you're afraid of the cold?'