The Pekin Target

23: Shoot

It was only a short walk.

Tung Kuo-feng didn't come with us, probably because this was Sinitsin's show and they didn't like each other. Sinitsin himself led the way out of the stone-flagged hall, through one of the arches and along the narrow courtyard between the monastery and the ruined temple nearby. The two track-suited guards came forward and I recognised one them as Yang; apparently he knew Russian, because Sinitsin spoke a few words to him directly, without the interpreter's help, just saying I was to be executed immediately. Yang moved behind me and pushed the muzzle of his submachine gun into my spine; it wasn't necessary, because I couldn't run away; he was just expressing his feelings. They took me to the middle of the long wall between the Monastery and the little pagoda, opposite one of those carved stone Buddhas that were everywhere. Yang left me now, (swinging the gun barrel round and moving back to where the others stood, about thirty feet away.

I don't know what had changed Sinitsin's mind. I'd thought Tung had won his argument in there. Apparently not.

My eyes were getting used to the moonlight after the glare of the butane lamps in the hall where we'd been. The soft indigo haze across the mountains had lightened a little, and the tiles of the pagoda's curving roof had begun shimmering. The air was still, with the scent of woodsmoke in it. You could say it was a fine night.

Those present Colonel Igor Sinitsin, Major Alyev and Captain Samoteykin of the KGB, five North Koreans in Olympic strip, and the crippled interpreter. The three Koreans who had come up were probably members of the helicopter crews, invited to watch the show because they still felt badly about the man I'd killed. Tit for tat, so forth, c'est la vie. You can't have everything.

C'est la mort, also, of course; that you can have.

Moira.

One single rose, for Moira.

Listen, they can't do this. They -

Shuddup. Die like a brave ferret.

Records for Jade One: Executive replaced July 16th following final signal reporting extreme hazard. As far as it can be ascertained, first executive in the field deceased shortly afterwards, remains never discovered.

Sinitsin was coming towards me, his leather heels clicking across the stones.

The last I'd heard from Moira was that she was shooting some retakes near Paris. I suppose it would be some bloody little second assistant director stopping her as she left the set, Miss Sutherland, there're some flowers come for you in a box. Flower, you idiot, one flower, don't you understand, one rose, don't you know the difference? And don't let her think it's just from one of her fans, make her open it now.

No. Never let her open it. Throw it away somewhere.

There weren't any lamps out here in the courtyard; there was just the moonlight, gleaming on the curved tiles of the pagoda and the bell in the archway and Yang's gun.

They didn't need any more light than this. Yang was thirty feet away and he could blast me into Christendom with one sustained burst of fire, even if I tried running for my life. The only logical place to run would be straight into his gun, to get it over with.

What will she do with the rose? Will she clasp it tenderly in her slender hands, closing her amethyst eyes while the first hot tears begin falling? You don't know her, my friend. She'll just look at it and say Christ, he was always so bloody sentimental, I wish he'd sent a case of gin so I could get smashed out of my mind.

Throw it away. Don't let her know.

Executive deceased. Relevant records show -

Listen, there's time to run. You can't let them -

Shuddup, will you. Be brave, little man. You're dying for Queen, country, a stack of piratical death duties and the overweening arrogance that made you think you could run this one solo, so stop snivelling and let that be your epitaph.

Colonel Sinitsin stopped in front of me with his grey suede shoes neatly together. "Tung spoke a certain amount of logic in there. You could have been valuable as a disinformer; but we know your record and we know you can't be trusted to behave intelligently when it's all over. You'd only try something stupid, and I'm not going to have that."

I stared him back but didn't show any reaction. There was no point now in concealing the fact that I understood Russian, but it's the kind of thing we've been trained to do, in whatever circumstances: maintain the cover. Actually it's a bit like running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and I would much rather have told Sinitsin something to annoy him, Lenin was a silly shit, something simple enough for him to understand.

"So you can only blame yourself," he said, and gave a brief energetic nod, as he'd done earlier when I was introduced; then he turned his back on me and walked with his measured stride to where the others were standing, saying a word to Yang as he passed him; Yang was standing alone and slightly forward of the group, and I heard the interpreter catch the word from Sinitsin and translate it for him. Sinitsin had been walking with his back to me when he'd spoken, and I didn't hear what he was actually saying; I suppose it was something like "in your own time".

They say that we go through three phases in the last few moments of our life: we panic, then we get angry, then we accept. I had got through the first phase — Listen, there's time to run, so forth; and my thoughts about Moira must have been part of the acceptance. I didn't feel any anger, because in this branch of the trade you kill or get killed, and there's nothing personal. I was still in the final phase, the acceptance bit, because my mind was clear enough to wonder why Sinitsin had bothered to come up and speak to me. He believed I didn't understand Russian, or he wouldn't have wasted his time with all that palaver in there, with the cripple and Tung translating. Was it conscience, then? Wanting to go through the motions of addressing the condemned man, telling him he'd only got himself to blame? A KGB colonel from Department V with a conscience, yes, that would do all right if I wanted to go out with a funny story.

I watched Yang bring the submachine gun into the aim. There would be fifty rounds in that model and the stuff would be coming into me with the force of a pneumatic drill. If there were any humanity in him he would start with the head and work downwards through a series of a dozen shots, so that the brain would go first and not understand what was happening afterwards; but there wouldn't be any humanity in him; he'd just stand there and spread me all over the wall and leave it at that; or to put it another way he might have some humanity in him, but that marksman was either his brother or a good friend and he was very upset about him and he'd get a kick out of blowing me apart.

They were all standing very still now, watching me.

Physical reactions normal for the situation: sweat running down my sides, the pulse accelerated, a tightness of the chest and a reluctance to breathe in case it disturbed the delicate balance between a living body and a mess of disintegrating chemicals.

The muzzle of the gun was a small hole and I watched it, and the squat blockish shape of the magazine beyond it. He should be pumping that thing by now.

Everything very still, and the sweat trickling on my skin moonlight and indigo dark, and faces, and silence, and suddenly someone's voice, pitched in a shout.

"Come on then, you bastard! Shoot!"

My own voice, yes. Its echoes came back from the walls of the pagoda. Rather bad show of nerves, but too late now.

"Come on!"

Sweat pouring on my face; staring into the muzzle of the gun; breathing rapidly now and the heart thudding under the ribs, if you're going to do it, do it, if you're going to do it, do it —

"Shoot, damn your eyes!"

Shaking all over, the animal smell of fear, breath coming painfully, sawing in and out, only one thing to do, Mahomet, mountain, so forth, my legs weak as I began walking towards him, towards the gun, watching the small black hole where the flame would burst with its orange light puckering to the dark stitching shapes of the bullets -

"Shoot, fuck you! What are you waiting for?"

Walking into his gun.

Tung Kuo-feng was standing there in the shadows.

I had only just seen him.

And now I knew what they were waiting for. Page 97 of the GB Manual entitled Treatment of Prisoners and Hostages. The heading for Chapter IV reads: "Effectiveness of Fear Inducement".

This was Russian, and it was routine.

But the human body is a body and as I walked right into at bloody thing he didn't lower it, and I stood there with the muzzle against my stomach and the sweat still running on me because you can never be sure… you can never be absolutely sure that you're right, that they're just pulling your psyche apart to soften you up, to make you afraid, to make you obey. Because prisoners and hostages get shot dead every day all over the world and you can't simply stand here and whistle just because you've read their bloody manual half a dozen times in the Behaviour under Stress class at Norfolk.

Yang must be military, and under tight discipline; otherwise it would have been too much for him: he would have pumped that thing at me like an orgasm he couldn't stop.

I looked up from the gun into his dark burning eyes. He'd frightened me, and I felt the reaction developing inside me with the gathering force of an explosion and then I was working hard, my hands driving down against the barrel of the gun and smashing it away so fast that he could loose only a short burst before my half-fist went into his throat and he staggered back.

Hands grabbing me, dragging me away from him, that's all right, you frightened me, that's all, and I've got a rotten temper, not my bloody fault, I was born with it.