In the twilight the blast was blinding and the shockwave brought debris up from the ground and hurled it across the truck and for a couple of seconds I stayed where I was, sprawled across the clinkers with snow against my face and stones still ringing on the girders of the footbridge and pattering down. I heard Karasov screaming but I couldn't see where he was: he'd been thrown clear of the truck and was somewhere in the snow that had drifted against the bank. Then the first shot came and I got up and began running because at least one of them was still alive and had a gun and there was no point in staying put. I didn't know why he was firing but I supposed it was because Karasov was on his feet and running too.
There was a lot of smoke drifting across the ground by now and I went for the freight office and dropped behind it, crawling for a while and finding new cover behind sand-bins alongside the train. It wasn't until I was under the train that I saw what was happening over there: Karasov was running for the ramp leading to the road above and he tripped and fell and that was when the last shot went into him. He didn't get up.
You know when a record's playing and a fuse blows and the record-player slows down and stops? That was how Northlight ended, in my mind, as I crouched under the train with blood seeping into my shoe from the gash in my leg and the flash of the explosion still bright on the retinae whenever I blinked, that was how the mission wound down, like a slowing record, the rhythm broken and the music dying to a medley of strange moans before the silence came and I closed my eyes and watched the bright flare of the explosion again until that too died away and left the dark.
After a long time, perhaps a few seconds, I heard a man shouting in the distance of the freight-yards — 'You bloody fool?
I opened my eyes. From this distance I couldn't see clearly what was going on at the bottom of the ramp. I could see one of them tugging at Karasov, pulling him over onto his back, but I couldn't see whether he was dead or not. I didn't need to.
'You bloody fool?
It was a scream of rage, and that was how I knew that Karasov was dead. It was the senior KGB officer yelling at the man whose shot had gone in. They would have had strict orders to take Karasov alive. The man who had shot him had made a mistake, that was alclass="underline" he'd tried to stop his run by firing at the legs, but after the explosion it wouldn't have been easy to achieve any kind of accuracy.
It had taken me an hour to crawl half the length of the train, because a lot of people were running across the freight-yards from the station to see what had happened, and I had to wait for a chance to crawl over the sleepers between one carriage and the next before I could climb again and swing my way along the framework. I'd assumed they'd search for me under the train because it was the nearest effective cover and I wanted to make as much distance as I could before the search began; but nobody came. I think they were too worried about Karasov, about his death, to take much notice of anything else. As the agent running with him I'd been incidental. Karasov was the man they'd been hunting for the past seven days and now they'd found him and their mission too was over.
I sat with my eyes closed against the foetid turbulence. The air blew in a freezing gale from the front of the train and the wheels broke it up into gusts and eddies, sending sparks and chips of stone flying, one of them cutting my face and drawing blood, not a good thing because a mark like that can give you away when the hunt's up, it won't matter how good your papers are.
But I didn't think there was going to be any hunt for me now; Karasov had been the shared objective for both missions: the Bureau and the KGB had both wanted him, and wanted him alive. Now he was dead, and it was over. The KGB would show a mild interest in finding the agent who had been operating against them on their own soil and who had flushed Karasov under their own guns, but it would be mainly out of frustration, out of spite. They would feel a bit better if they could put me against a wall or send me to break stones in the penitentiaries for the rest of my life, but that was alclass="underline" they wouldn't mount a dragnet as they'd done for Karasov.
And even if they did, they'd draw blank. They might find my body, but there'd be no identification that would tell them I was an agent. Because this was the way it was going to be, I knew that now. My body would be found along the railway, churned by that spinning steel below me and torn later by whatever beasts of prey could find me first and use me for sustenance, gorging their fill amid the winter's frozen dearth.
That would be all right. The idea of piecemeal extinction under the busy claw and beak has never troubled me; I would be there to share the celebration of ongoing life as my blood and sinew passed into different creaturehood, sustaining the ecology. The show must go on, so forth. Better that than be shovelled up by a sanitation squad and strapped into a cardboard box and dropped into the ground by an indifferent and very minor civil servant for the worms to feed on. I can't stand those bloody things.
But it isn't all right. You can't. Shuddup.
You can't just give up. I don't want to the. I don't- Are you sure of that? Are you quite sure?
You've got to hold on. Wake up and hold on.
Wheels thundering below.
You've got to get your senses back, or. In this cold? In this cold?
Sparks flew up and a stone skinned my skull.
Wake up. Wake up.
The huge shape of the train swung me through the dark.
Yes, wake up, I suppose. But this cold was. You'll pass out if you don't wake up.
I thought yes that's probably true but when I moved one hand I lost my balance and my foot slipped off the beam and oh my God they're so murderous they're like a mincer they'll drag me under and flay me alive and spew me out like a red rag. Hanging on. I was hanging on. Awake now and hanging on with the fingers of one hand while my body swung above the void of dizzying movement below me, one foot still lodged on the edge of the metal beam and the other hanging down, the ankle burning from the onslaught of flying gravel. My fingers were slipping because the metal was smooth and covered with a film of oily soot, and as they went on sliding I could feel the edge of a rivet, round and smooth, its shape changing under the tactile recognition of my fingertips and changing so fast that I knew that to hang here like this wouldn't be enough. I would have to swing my leg up and get the foot lodged alongside the other one so that I wasn't swinging in the void — but to do that would put extra strain on my fingers and they were already on fire with fatigue.
There wasn't, in the end, much choice. My senses were numbed now by the freezing air-rush and my lungs dragged at smoke; the thundering of the great steel wheels was dying away as my eardrums failed at last to register vibrations, and I closed my eyes and saw nothing different, only the dark, until a little while later my fingers reached the edge of the metal beam and came away and I began falling.
20 SHUTDOWN
'Fifty roses, yes.'
'What colour, sir?'
'I don't mind. Red. No, not red. Anything but red.'
She stared at me. 'Not red. Of course.'
Colour of blood.