But there was something about the unforced confidence in Rossiter’s face as he waded forward, the relentless determination, that set off an alarm in Purkiss’s mind.
They closed in, and it hit Purkiss at the last instant.
He’s got a knife.
The tip of the blade bit deeply into Purkiss’s right thigh, in the meat of the quadriceps muscle near the top. The pain was exquisite, surreal, almost, heightened as it was rather than numbed by the cold of the water.
The blade struck where it did only because Purkiss reflexively brought his leg inwards. If it had met its intended mark, it would have pierced the femoral artery on the inner aspect of the thigh, and Purkiss’s life would have ebbed into the water in short order.
Purkiss rammed the heel of his hand into Rossiter’s slightly lowered face.
The blow rocked Rossiter backwards, only the support of the water keeping him upright. Purkiss followed with a hammer strike to the upper arm in an attempt to numb the limb and cause the hand to open and drop the knife.
But Rossiter was fast, and he tensed and raised his arm and Purkiss’s fist glanced off the point of his elbow.
Rossiter lunged in, sliding his other arm around Purkiss’s neck and jabbing the knife upwards. Purkiss caught the wrist and applied torque.
They hung like that, partially submerged, the honed tip of the blade quivering slickly, inches from Purkiss’s face.
He twisted the wrist, but Rossiter hung on, and the blade barely moved.
The man’s cheek was pressed against Purkiss’s. He felt the rasp of stubble.
Purkiss turned his head a fraction and sank his teeth into the side of Rossiter’s lower jaw.
The weakest man, Purkiss had learned, could demonstrate an awe-inspiring amount of force with a bite. There was no freeing oneself once a human being’s teeth had sunk into the flesh. No way of avoiding injury.
A berserker’s roar erupted from Rossiter’s throat and he wrenched his head sideways and Purkiss felt the skin tear between his clamped teeth.
The knife had angled away, and was pointing directly upwards.
Blood flooded Purkiss’s mouth — his own blood, and Rossiter’s — and he felt himself about to gag. He relaxed his jaws a fraction and Rossiter pulled himself loose.
Purkiss punched his fist into the man’s exposed larynx.
With a hoarse, atavistic moan, Rossiter flailed backwards, the knife dropping from his grip and disappearing beneath the water. He clasped his hands to his throat, his eyes trying to focus on Purkiss but rolling involuntarily.
Purkiss lunged at him in a crawl stroke, grabbing his shoulder. He slipped his hands around Rossiter’s neck and thrust his thumbs under the man’s hands and found the carotid artery pulse points.
He began to apply pressure.
One of Rossiter’s hands broke free from his shattered tracheal cartilage and slapped at Purkiss’s head. Purkiss twitched away, as though shaking off an insect at a summer picnic.
He bent his thumbs and increased the pressure.
At the same time, he bore down, so that he was pushing Rossiter ever lower into the water.
He leaned over the man, looking down into his eyes. Even in the darkness, he could see the suffusion of the conjunctivae, as the whites were replaced by an expanding web of burst capillaries.
He stared at the eyes.
He saw Yulia Saburova. Purkiss had no idea how she’d come to be involved with Rossiter. But, at the last, as she lay broken and dying on the train platform, he’d understood that she wasn’t like him.
He saw Abby, his friend, whom he’d let down, bloodied and twisted after the guns had done their work.
He saw Claire. His lover. His fiancee. Corrupted and made treacherous.
The water was at the level of Rossiter’s ears. He was bent backwards so that he lay supine.
As his face sank beneath the surface, his eyes blinked, once.
Purkiss thought he saw something in the simple movement of the lids.
Not regret, or repentance, certainly. Not even defiance.
But something approaching acknowledgement.
Purkiss stared down at the pale face for a long time. The features were blurred beneath the foot of water covering it.
Briefly, he thought he’d stood like that until dawn. But he realised that the light illuminating the water around him came from the torches that were being shone down on the water.
A hand gripped his arm.
He heard voices, around and above him.
We’ve contained it. The situation’s clear. All hostiles have been neutralised.
Purkiss opened his fists, and let Rossiter go.
Twenty-nine
Purkiss was ushered through the security measures with something approaching deference.
He found Vale and Rupesh Gar waiting for him on the other side. Each man studied him in his own way: Vale with an air of slightly diffident, slightly hangdog, but completely genuine concern, Gar with the blank, appraising eyes of a pathologist examining an autopsy specimen.
There was nothing to be said, at this point.
Purkiss let them escort him up into the immense heart of the building. He didn’t stumble along the way, but he felt the weight of fatigue bear down on him like a sodden shroud.
Sir Peter Waring-Jones stood in the middle of his office, a glass in his hand. Behind him, the view from the picture window was even more magnificent than it had been in daylight, the river and the south bank lit up like a celebration.
Gar hung back. It was Vale who kept in step with Purkiss as he approached Waring-Jones. The Director looked haggard, the lateness of the hour unnatural for a man of his age, whatever his job. Vale himself had new lines of weariness etched in his face. They were old men, and Purkiss felt old, too.
He’d changed into clean and dry clothes on the journey back. It was a civilian aircraft that had picked them up, Purkiss and the three paratroopers. The fourth man had taken a direct hit from the Eurocopter’s machine gun and had been killed instantly, and he was being returned by separate transport. Purkiss had learned that the two crewmen in the helicopter had been shot dead, as had the four remaining members of Rossiter’s staff inside the shelter carved into the base of the hillock.
Waring-Jones stood before Purkiss, watching him in silence. The ice in his glass ticked as it liquefied, degree by tiny degree.
He said, quietly, ‘Mr Purkiss. Words cannot express the debt this country owes you.’
Purkiss returned his gaze.
He said: ‘Then this country needs to take a long, hard look at whom it chooses as its creditors.’
Waring-Jones’s nostrils flared in puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I made an elementary mistake,’ said Purkiss. ‘When Vodovos told me that Mossberg shook Rossiter’s hand, when he revealed that Mossberg had been expecting to be rescued, and was in on the operation all the time… Vodovos believed his own government was behind the entire thing. And I wouldn’t put it past the Russians, frankly.’
Purkiss turned and walked slowly over to the window.
With his back to the rest of them, he said: ‘I didn’t know if his theory was right or wrong. But I didn’t consider that he might be correct in the general details, but wrong about the particulars.’
He turned back from the window.
‘No. Bad choice of words. I did consider it. I just didn’t want to believe it. And that’s unprofessional. Shamefully so.’
Waring-Jones played with his glass, his long fingers rotating the rim of the crystal. His brow was creased in interest.
‘With hindsight, it’s obvious,’ said Purkiss. ‘But we’re not supposed to deal in hindsight. We’re supposed to be the ones who anticipate. Who spot the clues as they’re presented to us.’