Not that it's a foregone conclusion, my friends – don't think that. I've slipped the executioner a dozen times and he's brought the axe down on the bloody block with an oath I didn't stay to listen to. I'm strong; I'm trained; I'm ready for the moment of truth.
Do you hear the sound of whistling in the dark?
I do.
Because it wasn't going to be one against one. Even if I pulled off an overkill with Manif Kishnar they'd finish me off, the peons, if they had to. Those would be the orders from Shoda: this time it is to be certain.
The smell of the rain came through the doors as someone opened them, the smell of the rain, of the fruit lying squashed in the gutters, and on a different level of consciousness the smell of the world outside, of the death-bringer.
Telephone.
I didn't move.
'Red Orchid Hotel.'
The man who'd come in stood dripping by the desk on the other side of the archway, a shapeless bag by his feet.
'Oh, hi! You bet. How are things with you?'
I checked my watch at 19:34 and thought that would be unfortunate, wouldn't it, if Pepperidge finally called me and heard only the engaged tone while Al was asking about his girlfriend's health or his aunt's or whoever the hell it was on the other end, my chest's easier but there's still this cough, and the doctor says I do not care what the doctor says, just get off the line.
'Look, Betsy, I have to go now, there's a guy at the desk, okay?'
Works like magic: you just go into zen and concentrate and create your own reality, get people off the telephone, get people to call you no matter how great the distance – Pepperidge, are you listening, damn your eyes?
Watch it.
Centre, yes. Centre again.
The chair-leather creaked. Felt better, much better. If he came in now with his bloody cheese-wire I.would rip the heart out of his body and throw it to the dogs.
'Sure, I'll see you get some extra towels, guess it caught you when you weren't ready.' Noting the time in the register, 7.35 p.m. 'Happens all the time like that – one minute there's a clear sky and the next minute you're trying to find a canoe.'
Or, in the terminology of international chronometers, 19:35, now 36 because time, like life, has its rendezvous to meet.
As do I.
The adrenalin was still seeping into the bloodstream even though I was spending most of the time in alpha now and coasting along in the philosophical dimension below full consciousness, and I tried to go lower still because the conclusion wouldn't be made in thirty-five minutes from now, that was when he would arrive, and he'd have to take me into the dark to do what he wanted and that could happen at any time, at midnight or beyond.
'You bet.'
His footsteps came through the archway and across to the bar behind me; I knew Al's footsteps.
Well, if Mary was so upset about it why didn't she call me?
Maybe she just didn't want to bother you.
Look, she knows I'm always ready to help, Cindy.
'You don't ever watch this stuff?'
Turned my head. 'I like watching the rain.'
'Makes a whole lot more sense, I guess. You okay there, you need another of those specials?'
Said not just now.
For fifteen minutes I brought the waves back into beta and went through the building again, reinforcing the memory and testing out some of the options; there was one that worried me: the drop from the roof to the top platform of the fire-escape at the rear. It was chancy enough in dry conditions, seven or eight feet and at an angle, but tonight the tiles would be wet and so would the fire-escape and it was five floors and a stone courtyard below and in any case they'd cover that area and even if I did the drop and nit it right they'd be waiting for me below, on any of the four landings below. Cancel that one, then; yes, cancel it. If I was forced onto the roof I'd stay there till they came for me.
Not they. Him. Kishnar. On the dark rooftop.
Early this morning the body of a man was found lying at the rear of the Red Orchid, a hotel in the Chinese quarter. His identity is being withheld until relatives have been informed.
19:59.
Sweat starting on the flanks, and the adrenalin pumping -the very lack of control was frightening and I asked questions. I'd been in a red sector before and I'd always been able to hold back the defence mode until it was needed, minutes or even seconds before the attack, but tonight I was ready too soon, much too soon – I felt primed, galvanised, invincible. I think it was because of the timing, the gradual nearing of the deadline, the need to wait, and do nothing, to wait in the trap for the hunter to come in his own good time with his bright skinning-knife. And there was something else.
Shoda.
Shoda, my deadly succuba.
I could smell the fear on my skin.
Because she had a long reach, sending her finely-tuned vibrations across time and space, to stroke insidiously the tender membrane of the psyche, soft as the searching touch of the black widow as she seeks the area where her bite will most easily penetrate and her poison most quickly kill.
He'd be at my throat but Shoda was already in my soul.
In Kuala Lumpur today, a top National Front leader, addressing his party's annual convention, demanded that the ugly encroachment of corruption at high levels be halted as soon as possible.
Eight o'clock news.
Datuk Dr Lim Keng Yaik also referred to the matter of Malaysia's threatened economy, stressing the- Sex symbol of the fifties. She was fifty-seven.
Al didn't go for politics.
Touching down now, with plumes of smoke curling back from the landing-wheels, and I got up quickly because the only way to get rid of the excess adrenalin was to exercise the body and there was a staircase out there with four flights I could use. If I Telephone and Al took it and said yes he's here and then called out to me and I went over to the bar and took the phone from him.
'Hello?'
'Mr Jordan?'
'Yes.'
'He has landed in Singapore.'
Sayako.
'What is he wearing?'
'He is wearing dark business suit, head is bare.'
'He'll need a raincoat. Is he carrying one?'
'He carry only briefcase.'
What had they asked him, at the security check in Bangkok, about the coil of piano-wire on the X-ray screen?
'Is there anything else you can tell me, Sayako-san?'
It might not have shown up, it would be very thin.
'There is nothing else, Mr Jordan. But I will help if I can. You must be very careful, and leave hotel if is possible. I pray for you now.'
Line went dead.
Pray for me, yes, Sayako-san, as Shoda is praying for me now.
She prays before she kills.
I put the receiver back.
Steady rain in the street and Al sitting hunched on his stool behind the bar and three men coming in from the stairs, Asians, I'd seen them before in here and heard them talking, they were waiting for a shipment of silk to come in from Laos, important to them but not important to me because Kishnar was here in the city and the deadline for Pepperidge to call was past and the last-chance thing was blown away and what I must do now was try to contain the body's preparedness, try to damp down the effusions of life-preserving hormones as the glands obeyed the panic mode of the mind.
Start with the stairs, then, bring the muscles into play.
'Mr Jordan!' Al caught me on the first landing and I looked down. 'You got another call.'
Impossible.
Kishnar would never phone me.
But he'd just landed and was coming through the terminal building in a dark business suit, not some hessian rag with a headband and a knife in his teeth – he would have style: Shoda would expect style in a man close to her in her organisation, a man who had despatched nine of her top competitors in the drug trade, her top competitors, warlords like Khun Sa whose income was in the billions of dollars, so that each time he'd hit one of them it would have increased Shoda's own fortune by the same figure. He'd be a millionaire, then, himself, Manif Kishnar, the executioner, one of the elite, stepping off one of his employer's private executive jets and walking through the airport past all the telephones – yes he might call me.