The doctor was waiting in the darkness of the wharf, hands clasped behind his back. “You said those goodbyes?” he asked.
Shinobu cowered behind Kita. “Who’s this?” she asked, warily sizing him up.
“This is where we have to part, Shinobu. This man’s a killer, and he’s injected me with poison. If I don’t do as he says, he’ll kill me any way he likes. So this is the end of our kidnap act. Go back to Tokyo now and leave me here.”
Shinobu glared up at him. “I’m coming with you,” she declared. Kita wavered. It would be next to impossible to escape, and whatever they did from now on the killer would be with them. If they didn’t part now, they were doomed to a much more difficult parting later. But he wouldn’t be around by then, he decided, so there was nothing to lose by giving in to the impulse of the moment and going with his instincts. Besides, he’d just got himself a very handy little instrument.
“Right. We’ll go it together.” Kita put his arm around her shoulders, and they set off walking towards the streetlights in the distance. Behind them trudged the killer, lugging his heavy bag.
“Kita, that guy still seems to want us,” Shinobu said worriedly.
Kita quickened his pace. “Ignore him. He’ll disappear before long.”
The killer seemed upset at being spurned like this. He addressed Kita’s back. “You’ll die if I don’t inject you with an antidote to that poison, you know.”
“Fine by me. I’m sick of worrying about it all. Just leave me alone.”
The killer drew a deep breath through his nose, squatted down, and began to remove something from his bag. A round box emerged. Kita drew out the pistol from the bag that had contained the ice creams, and pointed it at the doctor, who froze for a moment still half-squatting, then went on rummaging in his bag, his eyes on Kita.
“Give the bag here,” said Kita.
“You wouldn’t know which of these is the antidote,” the doctor muttered.
“Just give me the bag.”
“I’m afraid I must refuse. I have an obligation to save your life.”
“Make up your mind. Are you a murderer, or a doctor?”
“Both. I may have been a murderer just now, but right now I’m a doctor. You two can’t get away, you realize. As soon as you get out into the light, everyone’ll be after you. You’re on stage wherever you go now.”
Kita wavered again. Everything the doctor said was true, and it was getting on his nerves.
“Go on Kita, kill him. This guy’s shot you full of poison, after all. Why not get your own back by shooting him full of lead?”
There was no way for either of them to know if the pistol Kita was holding was real. He couldn’t trust Siberian Electrics and Valkewpin, Kita told himself. It could well be a toy, for all he knew. Meanwhile, the doctor looked perfectly happy to have a bullet put through him.
“I didn’t have a chance to test this thing,” said Kita, shifting his aim to the Boston bag and putting his finger on the trigger.
The doctor put his hands in the air. “It doesn’t have a silencer,” he argued lamely. “There’ll be a big bang that’ll bring the police running. Don’t do it.”
OK, thought Kita, I’ll use that dense loaf of black Russian bread for silencing it. He pulled out the bread and held it to the end of the gun.
“You’re really going to kill him, Kita? Wow! You’re going to kill a killer! Don’t do it. OK, I tried to stop you. I give up.”
“Fine. Killers need to get a taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end.”
The doctor was kneeling on the ground, his mouth half open, gazing at Kita.
“How does it feel, eh?”
The doctor didn’t answer, but simply gazed out to sea. He may have been betting on Kita not pulling the trigger, and simply waiting to see which way things went. Or he may have been recalling a previous experience like this.
“Got any final words?”
The doctor seemed to have grown tired of kneeling, for he sank to the ground and crossed his legs. Then he drew a breath in through his nose, closed his eyes, and began to chuckle.
“Come on, then, shoot. I’ve already killed you, so now it’s your turn.” He sounded utterly calm – his voice didn’t so much as quiver.
“I’m not dead yet.”
“I may be the first to die, but you were the first to get killed. Do you know a guy called George Markov? He was a Bulgarian exile who was assassinated with the tip of an umbrella used as a bacterial syringe. He died twenty-four hours after his thigh was injected by the umbrella tip at a railway station. Well, you’ve got a germ called purulent streptococcus in your bloodstream. You’re going to die of septicaemia like Markov did. You’re as good as dead, see. But there’s a way to save you. There’s still time.”
“I don’t believe this talk about germs. I bet that was just Vitamin C you injected me with. If you want to save yourself you’d better come clean.”
“You’re the one who needs to save yourself. Mind you, I can understand why you’re not inclined to trust doctors. We could be friends, you and me. We’re in the same boat.”
“What? You’re saying you want to die too?”
“I just have a vague yearning to die. Just like all the others out there, except you.”
“I have the same yearning, you know.”
“But you’re being impelled by something you can’t control, aren’t you? There’s nothing like that in my case. That’s why I go on living like this. But I’m beginning to change my mind because of you. I’d like you to hang around. Just in case you happen to decide not to die, if nothing else.”
Shinobu tugged at Kita’s sleeve. “What’s this freak going on about?” she said, glaring at the doctor with undisguised disgust.
“Oh well, I’ll just have to kidnap him too,” Kita announced. Shinobu shrieked in horror. She had still been planning on continuing her one-on-one date with Kita. The doctor seemed to concur with Kita’s plan, however, for he held out his heavy Boston bag. Kita put his pistol into it, handed Shinobu the carrier bag containing the caviar, vodka and bread, and together they set off to hail a taxi. The doctor followed a few paces behind, avoiding treading on their shadows.
“Let’s take the taxi straight to my hotel and pick up my rented car,” he said. “After that you can go wherever the fancy takes you.”
They took the doctor’s suggestion, and all three piled into the rented car. The first thing Kita did was accept an injection of the antidote, which brought to a halt the proliferation of the streptococcus in his system.
Kita couldn’t detect any recent physical change. If anything, he felt better than usual. Perhaps that “streptococcus” really had been vitamin C, he thought. They decided to head back to Tokyo. The doctor drove, while Shinobu and Kita sat in the back seat, taking it in turns to doze. They enjoyed a round of Russian-style vodka toasts celebrating the success of the abduction, with the caviar and black bread as side dish. Still, it was a little difficult to decide who was the abductor and who the victim at this point. The TV news had claimed that the kidnapper’s identity was still unknown, and there was much talk of desperate fears for the safety of the victim. What liars the media were!
“What it comes down to, Kita, is that you’ve kidnapped me and a killer.” Shinobu was toying with the pistol, shifting it from hand to hand to feel its weight, in a way that made both the killer and Kita nervous. In this situation, whoever held the pistol got to be the kidnapper. As for the assassin, he could only be seen as having blown it big-time – far from kidnapping the kidnapper, he’d actually saved the life of the man he should have murdered.