Quiller Balalaika

9: FINITO

He smelled of sweat, athlete's foot, and chewing-gum.

I would have liked to know his name. That's always important when death has to be dealt.

We were lying side by side on the brittle snow; his legs were drawn up. He was trying to find some kind of purchase for his splendid new Nikes, some way of kicking out and giving himself leverage. His breath rose in small clouds, and mine with it, as if we were brothers, which of course we were: all men are brothers.

When I'd moved in on him a minute ago, chopping down with a heel-palm against the muzzle of the AK-47, his finger hadn't had time to thrust itself into the trigger-guard; the gun had not fired. It was lodged between us.

The door of the staircase was still open. Even if I could have moved, I wouldn't have closed it. If there were any more footsteps on the concrete stairs I wanted to hear them. I couldn't move because we were in a double check, the fancy name for this situation, dreamed up by some chess-playing bloody poet in the Bureau. But I suppose -

Watch it.

He'd made an attempt at moving, this man, my brother, at first relaxing by infinite degrees so that I wouldn't notice, then blasting the motor nerves with signals; but I had noticed, and he didn't get his half-fist any farther than an inch or two, aimed at my throat. He'd been trained in close combat, which was not good news; on the other hand it made him more predictable, since I would know most, perhaps all, of his moves.

Sweat running on both of us: the muscular tension was enormous because neither wanted to let go, to get ourselves, in other words, killed. To extend the fanciful idiom, that would be checkmate.

Earlier, thirty or forty seconds ago, he'd tried to reach the trigger of the assault rifle, in the hope of releasing a burst as a signal to the other guards. There was no chance at this stage of turning the muzzle on me – I've told you, these things are totally useless at close quarters.

I could feel his heart-beat. He could feel mine. They wouldn't slow for a long time, for minutes, until one of us was dead. We had a lot in common, as all brothers have; each of us was seeking, would soon seek more actively as fatigue set in and mistakes were made, the other's death.

Below in the street a last car door slammed; I suppose one of the guests hadn't been in terribly good shape for driving, was now being escorted home. The staff would be clearing up the ballroom by now, the remains of the caviar and the boar's head, the roast goose, the dirty glasses, the single white glove dropped by one of the women, perhaps, a ballpoint pen or two, a visiting-card, while in the -

No you fucking well don't.

He'd tried again, testing me.

While in the rest of the hotel Vishinsky would be conducting the search, the manager with him to placate any guests who were trying to sleep. They would take it floor by floor, starting on the ground and gradually coming higher. It hadn't occurred to this man lying here with me that the most he had to do was hold me off until there were footsteps on the stairs; if it had occurred to him he wouldn't have tried those moves.

'What's your name?' I asked him, hardly enough breath to spare but as I say it's always important.

He didn't answer.

The cold air pressed against our faces, the chill of the sweat clammy, beginning to itch. I hadn't made a move yet because when I made it I wanted it to succeed, to kill. There'd be no chance of letting him live: I had to get to the roof of the other building after I'd buried him under the snow.

I didn't know how much longer I had before another guard came up here to look around. Ten minutes? Five? None?

Watch the doorway.

He had callouses, this man, along the sword-edge, harder on the right hand. He liked chopping bricks, to show how strong he was – correction – to prove to himself howstrong he was: these cocky super jocks always have the seed in them of self-doubt.

He made a move and I parried it but he was desperate and managed to bring an elbow strike to graze my head and followed through with a knee strike and I had to roll face down and try for his eyes but he got a hand free and found the trigger of the rifle and put out a short burst before I could do anything, blinding flash and the stink of cordite, the eyes having to accommodate now, the thought process having to re-establish itself after the shock of the percussion, time needed, milliseconds, before I could react and hook for his eyes to inflict pain, got it and found leverage enough to drive a half-fist into his throat with the necessary force to kill as he too rolled and found the trigger again but I was there first and broke his finger and now he began calling out or trying to, but the strike had broken the cartilage in his throat and internal haemorrhage was beginning and he couldn't manage any kind of sound that could raise the alarm.

Reassess time factor: shots were heard at all hours of the night in this city and under the open sky there'd be no directional acoustics to guide the guards in the streets below – that short burst could have come from anywhere. But it would have sounded in the stairwell through the doorway and I got the guard's wallet and put it away and pulled his padded jacket off because I'd checked my sable coat in the hotel lobby when I'd arrived tonight.

Liquid sounds now from my dying brother, requiescat in pace, the soft ululation of the blood blocking the windpipe as I got him into my arms to avoid leaving tracks, carried him across the roof and laid him down and covered him with snow, kicking it loose and scooping it until my hands were raw and gradually his body took on the form of its own white crystalline grave; then I left him and crossed to the emergency stairs and listened, heard nothing, closed the metal door and went to the parapet that faced the next building, didn't look down this time into the narrow gap, looked across to the parapet opposite, didn't think again of the conditions: frozen snow with only pale moonlight to work with, the shadows deceptive, the distance too great for any kind of confidence, the muscles sluggish because of the cold, the chances of success dauntingly thin.

Needs must.

Yea, verily, but 'tis easily said.

I stood with my feet close to the parapet, the toes of my calf-skin boots just touching it. This wouldn't be my point of departure: the parapet was ten inches high, twelve, a stumbling-block. My point of departure would have to be the top of the parapet, giving the legs leverage, the instep hooked over the front angle of the stone as I pitched forward, kicking out to send me past the point of no return, balanced in the air above the gap and for a moment flying, wingless, borne on hope alone – hope? You must be joking, we mean desperation, don't we, because there's no bloody choice and if we don't do this we'll go down under the tree, rat-tat-tat, and onto the forest floor.

Theice crackled, its sound infinitely slight as the ancient building moved under its own weight and the earth's rotation and the change in temperature as midnight pressed down on the mercury a degree at a time. The ice melted under my feet: I could feel it. The ice was everywhere, here where I stood, over there on the other side of the further parapet, treacherous, uninviting.

The night's chill pressed at the face, burned on the fingers still from the work of the grave-digging. Fear sat patiently at the threshold of the heart, awaiting admittance once the guard was down and the door swung back.

Rat-tat-tat and the rough barkof the tree grazing the neck as the body slumped, all we needed to give us the will to choose otherwise, so I scraped the frozen snow off the top of the parapet and stood with both feet on it and took in oxygen to fire the muscles and felt the rush of adrenalin and sighted across the gap and leaned into the skiing stance and waited until my weight carried me forward and felt the night close in to focus on this irrational act of sauve qui peut in the instant before I kicked out and thought of nothing more until the roof of the next building came slanting up and I flung my hands out to break the impact and brought my right shoulder into an aikido roll and followed it with another one and then a third as full consciousness came back after the gap in the mental process that had set in as I'd flown across the gap between the buildings, the high quarter-moon afloat in the void above me now, the sound of a car not far away in the street below, life becoming normal again, mundane.

'Jakub?'

I didn't move.

The voice was coming from the adjoining roof. 'Jakub, are you up here?'

Not in his entirety, no, just the chemical residue he left behind him under the makeshift tomb, don't go looking for him, don't start all that, the discovery and the sounding of the alarm and the hue and cry, for Christ's sake leave well alone, give me a break, don't stack these bloody odds, they're already as high as I can handle.

'Jakub?'

God's sake go away.

From where I lay I could just see the pale blur of his face as he left the doorway and looked around, swinging his Kalashnikov. I shut my eyes to hide the moon's reflected light in case he looked across here, would have liked very much to keep him in sight because I couldn't be presenting anything but the image of a man lying here on the melting snow, a man or a human body, perhaps Jakub's. But I had rolled into shadow, and this could give me a chance.

I lay in silence, listening for the movement of his boots, hearing the clink of the brass gun swivel as he turned, crunching over the frozen snow, the sound diminishing as it met the open doorway and ceased to echo.

Turning again. 'Jakub?'

To reassure himself before he clanged the iron door shut and I lay for another minute, waiting until the thudding underneath me between the rib-cage and the roof slowed to eighty, seventy-five, seventy and I rolled over and moved to the parapet where there should be a drainpipe, where there was indeed – look – a drainpipe, tilting down in perspective against the wall of the building, thinning to a point where the alleyway lay under virgin snow and for the moment unpatrolled, a haven, if you will, if I could get there, nine floors below.

The guard across there had taken a quick look for Jakub but he was still missing and at any given time there'd be someone else coming up to make a thorough search of the roof - Jakub? He was on the emergency staircase the last time I saw him, and as far as I know he hasn't come down – and they'd find the tomb and kick the snow aside and then it would start, the alarm and the hue and cry, so I'd have to reach the alleyway before it happened, reach ground and get clear.

So I kicked the snow off the top of the parapet and swung my legs over before rational thought could get in my way, rational thought and primitive instinct – I don't like this, you're going to kill yourself if -

Possibly.

It's nine storeys -

I'm glad you're learning to count at last.

It was solid, this drainpipe, square-section, cast iron, the way they made things in the nineteenth century, none of your thin tin tubing that wouldn't have given me a hope in hell, and between the pipe and the wall there was a gap an inch wide, not much but adequate for a finger hold. And below, halfway down with any luck, there would be creeper, thin tendrils at first and then larger, stronger, leafless and with the sap drained for the winter's hibernation but that made no difference; it would provide me with a rope, a life-line, so all is not lost, my good friend, providing the heart is sanguine and the will in charge.

And I was out of sight, had found cover.

Get Mr Croder.

Cover of a sort, the iron pipe freezing the fingers, numbing them as I let my weight drop another six inches and found new purchase with my feet.

The executive's found cover, sir.

Six inches in a hundred feet.

He can't have.

Because the last signal was still there, chalked on the board for the mission: Executive in red sector, no support requested.

Before I could relay any new signal through Ferris the red sector thing would have to be wiped out with the chalk-powdered block and they couldn't do that yet.

It's not terribly good cover, sir.

What the hell are you telling me?

It's a drainpipe, a hundred feet over a sheer drop.

And his hands, these hands, are frozen now, the bones providing claws and that was all: I could have done with Croder's steel grappling iron except that it would have made a noise, ringing through the hollows of the pipe, the sound transferred to the alleyway below.

For the first time I looked down, and saw no one, looked up again as the vertigo started like a worm in the cerebellum: a hundred feet, viewed from an angle of five degrees, looks like a thousand.

Let the weight go again, the toes of the calf-skin boots scraping the wall, the claws that used to be hands and fingers shifting downward another six inches, hooking into the gap again and holding as I waited, controlling the breath, I could use more adrenalin, more heat, but for that to happen there would need to be the onset of panic as the claws slipped and one boot lost its purchase and the other one followed and the dead weight, the dying weight of the shadow executive for Balalaika hung for a moment in the air and then dropped and gathered speed as the windstream played on the face and then tore at the cheekbones until the boots struck ground and the legs buckled, snapping at the knee joints, and by first light of the morning the director in the field would send the initial signal of the day: No further report from the executive, red sector call uncancelled. Request instructions.

Croder, wakened from a moment of snatched sleep at two in the afternoon – If he's still alive, pull him out and shut down the mission.

If he's still alive, bullshit, of course I'll still be alive, drop another six inches, keep the iron rectangle between the feet for guidance, drop another six inches but the strain on the shoulders was beginning to nag, the shoulders and the biceps, what would you expect, drop another six but don't hurry, don't slip, ignore the absence of feeling now in the fingers, the claws, they're just obeying the motor nerves, clamp and wait and release and clamp again with the tenacity of a bloody crab, drop another six inches then and don't complain but the shoulders were on fire now and into my mind there came the question, why wasn't the heat from them melting the snow, but there wasn't any snow on the wall, what was I -

Watch it, don't lose your marbles, this is hardly the time or the place.

Shook my head to clear it, just the strain, it was just the strain of the physical demand on the organism that was threatening to blank out rational thought, ignore and proceed and drop another six inches and look down, take another look down, oh Jesus, we weren't more than halfway through this desperate business and it was going to be a question of time now before the fingers, the claws lost their muscle tone and couldn't clamp any more, couldn't clamp and wait and release and clamp again, would simply come away from the pipe and send me backwards into the air and down into the pit of oblivion, look up again and keep the eyes shut and wait for the vertigo to fade, think of nothing, or think of Jakub, the cooling cadaver whose padded coat I wore, smelling still of his sweat, are we then to meet, my good friend, my late adversary, is that the game now, are you waiting for me there, watching over the rites of passage this dangling crab thing is now embarked upon? Are we so soon to be united, my brother, in the death that shall transcend all means by which we shall dance in the shadowed hinterland of – Watch it, for Christ's sake, get the mind under control, count five, then, and drop again, feel for the pipe below and drop again.

I think I was twenty feet from the ground, judging by the level of the window sills, when I realized there was no creeper on this bloody wall, no fibrous life-line I could use after all if I needed one, and it was now that I felt movement in the iron rectangle of the pipe as one of the big staples came away and the pipe quivered and I dropped again without intention this time and clawed for purchase as the adrenalin came flooding into the bloodstream and brought a flush to the skin as the pipe turned by degrees against the wall and another staple was ripped from its hole, loosened by my weight and movement and the erosion that had been going on for year after year and the -

Mother of God -

As the last section of pipe was torn from the wall it leaned across the gap over the alleyway and I went with it, dangling now like a monkey from a pole with my legs swinging in space and one hand losing its grip and the other clinging on until the whole section rolled and pitched me sideways and there was nothing but the air beneath me and I plummeted, hitting the wall and bouncing off with the sound of a huge bell ringing in my skull and the burst of star shells as I hit the ground and heard another sound, the quick thudding of feet, and as the dark came down I caught the pale blur of a face and the glint of a gun barrel slanting towards me and thought yes, finis this time, finito.