The Nosferatu Scroll

38

When anybody asked him if he knew any of the martial arts, Bronson normally told them he had a black belt in origami – it amused him to see the conflicting emotions this statement usually produced. In fact, he’d trained to an intermediate level in aikido.

Perhaps the most unusual, and certainly the least known, of the oriental fighting techniques, aikido is purely defensive. No master of aikido could attack anyone using the art, because no offensive moves exist. But once an aikido practitioner is attacked, his or her response to that attack can easily prove fatal to the assailant. It relies heavily on unbalancing the opponent, essentially using the attacker’s own weight and speed and aggression against him.

Bronson’s tutor, a Japanese man barely five feet five inches tall and aged sixty-three, had told him years before that an aikido master could take on as many as three masters in any of the other martial arts, at the same time, and still expect to be standing when the dust settled.

Bronson frankly hadn’t believed him, but one evening when the two of them had left the dojo and were walking over to where Bronson had parked his car, a gang of six scarf-wearing football supporters, high on drink or drugs, had streamed out of an alleyway directly in front of them, looking for trouble, and ideally searching for a soft target.

Bronson had stepped forward to face them, but with a courteous bow the old Japanese man had motioned him back, taken two paces forward and just stood waiting. His harmless appearance and placid stance had seemed to enrage the youths, and they’d spent ten seconds shouting abuse before launching themselves at him.

What happened then had had all the appearance to Bronson of magic. It was as if each youth encountered something akin to a catapult: the faster they slammed into the old man, the faster they were tossed aside. In a little under twenty seconds the six youths were lying broken and bleeding on the ground, and throughout the entire time the old man barely seemed to have moved, and when he stepped over the legs of the nearest youth to rejoin Bronson, he hadn’t even been breathing hard.

‘Now do you believe me, Mr Bronson?’ he had asked, and all Bronson had been able to do was nod.

And now that training was going to save his life. Bronson swayed backwards, and the blackjack whistled viciously through the air a bare inch in front of his face. Then he stepped towards his attacker, turning as he did so, and seized the man’s right arm. He pulled him forward so that he was off balance, and continued to turn his body so that his back was towards his assailant. Then he bent forward, still pulling on the man’s right arm, and his attacker flew over his back to land – hard – on the ground directly in front of him.

Bronson hadn’t practised Aikido for some time but, much like riding a bike, his brain still retained the moves and his body responded with the actions he’d practised so many times in the past. The throw he’d just completed was one of the first and most basic of the moves he’d learned, and he finished it off in exactly the way he’d been taught, by tugging on the man’s arm at the instant before he landed, dislocating his shoulder.

The man screamed in pain as the bone was wrenched from its socket, the blackjack tumbling from his hand on to the ground. He was hurt, but Bronson knew he wasn’t immobilized, not yet, and this was something he needed to attend to. He snatched up the blackjack, and swung it as hard as he could against the man’s skull. His attacker flinched and raised his left arm in a futile defence, but there was no way he could avoid the blow. The impact jarred Bronson’s arm, but had the desired effect on his target. The man slumped backwards, instantly knocked unconscious.

Bronson was certain he’d recognized his assailant – and this meant that the two men by the tomb, only some twenty yards away, were surely part of the same gang.

Standing up, he turned towards the tomb of the twin angels and took a couple of steps forward. Then he dropped down, because one of the men had just swung round to face him, and was brandishing a semi-automatic pistol in his hand.

The sound of the shot was shockingly loud amid the tranquillity of the ancient cemetery, echoing off the walls of the church and the tombs all around him. The bullet just missed Bronson as he dived for cover, smashing into a tall stone cross behind him and sending stone chips flying in all directions.

The pistol added a whole new dimension to the situation. Bronson would have had no qualms about tackling the two men. As he’d just demonstrated, he was proficient in unarmed combat, and his whole body burned with fury against the men who’d snatched Angela. Taking on two Italian thugs and beating them to a pulp might well have helped him find her, but no level of anger or competence in hand-to-hand combat would help against a man carrying a gun. This radically altered the dynamics of the situation.

For perhaps a second, he remained crouched down behind another of the tombs, weighing his options and figuring the angles. He couldn’t run, not even if he’d dodged and weaved from side to side, because nobody can out run a bullet. And he couldn’t hide, either, because the other men knew where he was.

He had exactly one chance, and it all depended on the unconscious man lying on the ground a few feet behind him. Keeping as low as he could, he scuttled over to the unmoving figure, and crouched down beside him. He pulled open the man’s jacket, searching desperately for a shoulder holster and a weapon he could use to save his life. But there was nothing, no sign of a pistol under either arm.

Bronson looked over to the tomb of the twin angels. The two men seemed to have separated: one had ducked back behind the tomb, and was keeping low, but Bronson couldn’t see the second man, the one who’d fired the pistol.

Then another shot cracked out, the bullet again missing Bronson, but only barely. The second man had moved around to the east, to get a better shot at him, and was standing only about fifteen yards away in the classic target-shooting stance: feet apart, the pistol held in his right hand, and his left hand supporting his right wrist.

The next shot, Bronson knew, would probably be the last thing he would know in this world, because from that range the man couldn’t possibly miss him.