Revelation

35 The Kill

Findhorn is nauseous. He is shaking, and almost choking with stress. He knows the answer but tries it anyway: 'These people know nothing about the process. You can let them go.'

Drindle smiles. 'You are so naive.'

What happens next spans no more than three seconds.

The woman at Drindle's feet moans. He points his carbine down at her and fires. The bang is deafening. A fountain of red spray shoots into the air. The bearded man, still trying to stem the blood from her legs, looks up in astonishment, his face dotted with little red spots, but there is another deafening bang and he falls back in slow motion, his chest a mangled red hole. Albrecht opens his mouth to speak but there is a third bang and his eyes roll back and he flings his arms out like a preacher and collapses lifeless on the sofa. The woman at the Christmas tree still has her eyes closed and she is praying in a wild, frightened voice, and Drindle is pointing his gun at her but now Findhorn is on his feet and screaming at the top of his voice, 'It's going out on the Internet! It's going out on the Internet!'

Drindle pauses, curious, his finger squeezing the carbine's trigger. Findhorn's ears are singing from the bangs.

'It's going to the Chairmen of Fiat SpA and Otto Wolff. It's going to Goldman Sachs International and Chase Manhattan. It's going to Aerospatiale Matra and Siemens Defence. It's being e-mailed to Haisch at Lockheed Martin and Rueda in California and Longair at the Cavendish and Puthoff in Texas. It's going to Nobel prizewinners in Princeton and computer geeks in Idaho. Most of all it's going to electronic bulletin boards. From there it'll spread like wildfire.' He stops, gasping for breath.

The man in the white dinner suit is sobbing noisily. Findhorn, his voice raw from the sudden yelling, continues more quietly, taking deep gulps of air: 'Twenty-four hours from now the biggest secret on earth, the one you've been paid to obliterate, will be the most talked-about item on the planet.'

Drindle doesn't blink. The Korean is a statue.

'I can stop it. But not if I'm dead.'

'An ingenious lie,' suggests Drindle.

'I've put a time lock on it. If I don't reach a computer terminal by a specific time, and punch in a password, the message goes out automatically. You'll have failed. Do you want to explain that failure to Mister Matsumo? Or do you think you can spend the rest of your life one step ahead of Matsumo Holdings?'

The man falls onto his knees, bawling and pleading for his life. The Korean steps over corpses towards him, snarls fiercely, and snaps back the hammer of his weapon. Drindle shouts, 'Yamero!' The Korean shouts, 'You be quiet!', whether to Drindle or the man is unclear. The man falls silent, but his shoulders are heaving in terror.

'Contact your paymaster,' Findhorn continues, breathing in cordite and wood smoke. 'Tell him I need access to the Internet every month for the rest of my life. Tell him to hope that I never fall out of a window, never die in a car crash, never have a heart attack, never die of pneumonia or cancer, never drown at sea. I must never, never go missing. Tell him all of that. Tell him that in my good health and happiness lies his own. And my misfortune is his. I expect a man in his position has colleagues who reward success well and punish failure harshly.'

'I am sure you are right, Mister Findhorn. High rewards do entail high risks. I am equally sure that you are lying.'

'That's not your call to make.'

'I will make my call. Sit down.' Drindle gives some curt order to the Korean and leaves the room smartly. Sweat is beginning to run down Findhorn's face and neck. The woman is still praying, quietly, in German. The Korean sits down at the dining-room table. His eyes flicker between Romella and Findhorn.

Drindle is back in less than a minute, tapping numbers on a cordless phone while holding his carbine. He speaks fluent Japanese into the telephone.

'Directory Enquiries,' Romella volunteers to Findhorn. She is grey-faced and trembling. The Korean barks angrily, waving his gun.

Another number. This time the conversation is concentrated, prolonged, with a serious edge. Findhorn is almost overcome with a sort of light-headedness; the room is warm from the log fire, but he is shivering with cold. Colour, on the other hand, is slowly returning to Romella's cheeks. She looks defiantly at the Korean and turns coolly to Findhorn. 'He's phoned a secretary at home. It's about four a.m. in Kyoto.'

The conversation ends. Drindle sits down at the table, directly opposite Findhorn. He is framed by the Christmas tree. He places the carbine and the phone on the table and sits back, arms folded. Findhorn's eyes are locked hypnotically with Drindle's. He hates him more than anything else on the planet.

The silence goes on, broken only by the quiet crackling of burning logs. One crashes in the fire. Findhorn starts and Drindle smiles contemptuously. The smell of overcooked stew is beginning to drift in from the kitchen, mingling with that of wood smoke and fresh blood. It is a mixture that Findhorn knows, if he survives, he will never forget.

Ten minutes pass.

From somewhere far down in the valley, the ponderous Oompah-da-Oompah-da of a brass band drifts up. Church bells, almost on the limit of hearing, ring out eight o'clock.

The phone, when it finally cuts into the stillness, is to Findhorn like an executioner's summons. He feels himself going white. Drindle slides his right hand onto the stock of the gun, finger round trigger, and picks up the telephone with his left. The conversation is almost one-sided, Drindle interjecting no more than the occasional 'Hai!' Findhorn can't take his eyes from the assassin's; but he can read nothing in them.

Finally Drindle takes the phone from his ear, resting the mouthpiece on his shoulder. 'Are you brave?'

'Go to hell.'

Drindle nods. 'A brave answer in the circumstances. Courage, however, will merely prolong your agony without affecting the final outcome. You are to be tortured to the point where you will scream the password and the location of your electronic file even if it means your death. Medical expertise will be on hand to ensure that your heart does not give out. If you wish, we can demonstrate our skill in these matters by working on your translator friend. Once you have seen what we can do, you will tell us what we want to know. We will of course require to verify your information before we dispose of you. Please believe that I personally will not relish this process. But I cannot answer for my colleague.'

From the corner of his eye, Findhorn sees a broad grin spreading over the Korean's features. Romella has frozen, eyes wide with fear.

Findhorn says, 'You won't touch us.' He says it with an air of confidence but there is a solid lump in his stomach.

Drindle seems amused, raises sceptical eyebrows. 'No?'

'Because if you do I'll scream the password, you'll kill me, and delete the file.'

'Forgive me, but fear is making you confused. That is the object.'

Findhorn continues: 'And then you'll find that hidden away in some distant machine there's a second file, a duplicate. Maybe there's a third such file. Maybe a fourth. But how can you ever verify this? How many Romellas can you torture? Can you resurrect me to kill me all over again?'

For the first time the assassin's suavity is replaced by a darker look. 'That was naughty.' He speaks again into the telephone, his eyes never leaving Findhorn's. Then he slides the phone across the table.

Findhorn doesn't know what to expect. He picks it up. Yoshi Matsumo's voice comes over as clearly as if he is sitting at the table. 'Very clever, Mister Findhorn.'

Findhorn keeps trying for a confident tone. 'You have nothing to fear from me. So long as I outlive you.'

There is a tiny delay. The signal is, after all, travelling from Switzerland to a point twenty-four-thousand miles above the earth, relaying back down to a distant country, and the reply is traversing the same immense journey in the opposite direction. 'You claim you already had the secret before you entered the chalet?'

'I do.'

'Why then did you join my Friendship colleagues?'

'I told you. Your interests and mine coincide on this matter. I didn't want Albrecht's people getting a patent.'

'You stretch credulity to breaking point. But even if what you say is true, how can I let you go, to sell the secret?'

Findhorn puffs out his cheeks. The Korean is frowning angrily. 'Why all talk talk? Just finish the job. Two seconds.'

'Think about it, Matsumo.'

'I think, Mister Findhorn, that you are a principled man. Your principles have forced you to kill the innocent in order to hide the secret. These same principles will not allow you to make this devastating thing public even to save your life. Therefore your Internet files do not exist. Therefore you can safely be executed. Purely, you understand, as a precaution, in case on some future date poverty or greed should overcome those strong principles of yours.'

Drindle is watching Findhorn with quiet interest: a lion studying an antelope.

The telephone is now slippery with sweat. 'You've misread the situation. I killed these people for two million US dollars, one for me, one for my assistant.' Now he senses Romella staring at him. 'Don't you see, with these guys gone, I'm the only person on the planet who knows the process. You're my market, Yoshi. Silence me. Stuff my mouth with gold.'

Unexpectedly, the silence at the end of the line is broken by a peal of laughter. Findhorn holds the receiver away; startled faces around the table stare at the phone. When he has stopped laughing, Yoshi Matsumo says, 'What a magnificent liar you are, Mister Findhorn! I congratulate you on your ingenuity.' There is another long silence. Findhorn begins to wonder if the line has gone dead. Then: 'However, you do present me with an interesting quandary. Suppose that I kill you. Then if, as I believe, there is no message waiting to be broadcast, your death solves my problem. But now suppose that, implausible though it is, you are telling the truth. Then I fear that your death would quickly be followed by my disgrace, perhaps even my demise.'

'So make your pre-emptive sale and let us go.'

'Unfortunately, having sold the secret to me, you might then sell it all over again to someone else. Someone who might use the process and ruin my company. Therein lies my dilemma: alive or dead, you are a risk.'

Findhorn wipes an irritating drop of sweat from an eyebrow. The Korean, sensing an atmosphere, is now grinning and nodding, taunting Findhorn by pretending to shoot him with the gun. Matsumo continues: 'An idealist, or a clever buccaneer? That is the question. Return the phone to my assistant.'

Findhorn is beginning to feel a terrible tightness in his chest and jaw. He slides the telephone across the polished table back to Drindle. There is a brief conversation in Japanese and then, again, silence.

Drindle touches the barrel of the carbine. 'Still warm. It comes with telescopic sights but I removed them. They are just a nuisance at this range. He's consulting colleagues.'

Children's voices.

Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht… The carol drifts faintly up from another world, a world of innocence and love and goodness, of solid values and moral certainties. Findhorn looks into Drindle's eyes, tries to see through them into the man's soul, gives up.

Alles schlaft…

Big snow flakes are falling thickly past the window: soon they will all be snowed in, trapped together in the chalet. The logs are crackling quietly.

Einsam wacht…

They could be in a scene on a Christmas card, were it not for the three corpses, eyes half shut, mouths open, their blood staining the polished wooden floor.

And in the warm dining room, the living are as still as the corpses, sleeping in Heavenly peace. Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh…

A voice on the telephone. Drindle listens, his eyes expressionless, for some minutes. Then, again, he slides the telephone across to Findhorn, his face grim. Matsumo speaks like a judge pronouncing sentence: 'Mister Findhorn, I am convinced that you have put nothing on the Internet.'

Dive for the kitchen. Romella might get to the Korean.

'But then, why should I take even a slight chance with that? There is another way forward. Two million dollars is miniscule in relation to what is at stake. On some future occasion, when the money runs low, you might be tempted to talk. I must therefore make you a very rich man, in order to substantially reduce that temptation. I have opened an account for you in the Hofbahnstrasse in Zurich and arranged for twenty million dollars to be paid into it. You will be able to draw on this tomorrow morning when the bank opens.'

Findhorn has trouble taking it in: his mind is being hit simultaneously from several directions. He forces himself to speak calmly. 'Money like that would look like a drug transaction. What about the Swiss Banking Commission? Or even Interpol?'

'Do not concern yourself with such matters; we have mechanisms. Telephone my secretary at noon, Japanese time, that is in eight hours. Understand that, should you ever reveal the secret, or discuss our transaction, I will arrange to have you hunted down and exterminated even from beyond my grave. But that risk is one which, as a rich man, you will find no need to run. Does the solution strike you as satisfactory?'

'I think we have an understanding.'

There is a brief pause, longer than the travel time of radio between them. 'So, I have enjoyed our little game of kendo, Findhorn-san. We are both winners. You are now rich, and I have suppressed the energy secret. The game has been played with our wits rather than shinai — forgive me, I do not know the English word —'

'Bamboo sticks?'

'— and if you were Japanese rather than a gaijin, I would salute you as an equal.'

Stuff you, Findhorn thinks. He puts the telephone down and turns to Romella. 'We're out of here.'

The assassin's urbanity is becoming frayed. 'If I had my way things would go differently.'

'It's a matter of making the right call. Which is why Matsumo pulls the strings up above while you jerk about down below.'

Drindle picks up Petrosian's document. 'Your witty little barbs don't penetrate my skin, but my partner is a different matter. I can best describe his temperament as volcanic. And, since he is a stupid man, the issues are beyond his grasp.' He opens the front of the wood fire, throws the document onto the logs. The Korean says something in an angry voice. The pages curl, catch fire at the edges. Irrigated deserts, cheap superbombs, fertilizers from the air, social and financial chaos, roads to the back of beyond, all go up in flames. 'Get out. Take the Saab and leave it at the railway station.'

'What about you?' asks Findhorn, standing up. His legs, he finds, are hardly able to support him.

'We have a lot to do here. There are enough DNA samples in this house to gladden the hearts of policemen from the North Cape to Hong Kong. Now go, quickly.'

'May you die horribly some day soon,' Findhorn says.

The man in the white suit stands up, fearfully, edges towards the door, and then runs out; it would be comical in less deadly circumstances. Pitman follows, walking steadily. He seems about to say something to Findhorn, but then leaves without a word. The woman at the Christmas tree has opened her eyes but is sitting, motionless. She seems not to know what is happening. Romella walks over to her, takes her by the elbow, tries out a smile.

At the door, Findhorn glances back. Drindle has opened the cocktail cabinet and is pouring himself a red Martini. The Korean's eyes are flitting between Findhorn and Drindle. His fist is tightly clenched around the pistol. He is jerking it up and down as if it is a hammer. His face is almost comically angry.

The volcano is about to erupt.