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Jumpy now, very on edge because of the adrenalin: I could have tossed a caber right out of the field or outrun a train, a taste in the mouth, familiar, the taste of cold steel, all the glands working overtime, triggered by the alarm that had hit the organism, calm down, there's a chance yet, the night is young.

'Is that George?'

'No.' I said, and he peered at me in the half-dark at the edge of the lawn, one of the doctors, moving off again, some kind of panic – he'd come at a trot from the psych-section, fumbling for something in his jacket, I assumed a syringe, rotten life when you come to think of it. He made haste along the verandah and said something to a man coming the other way, white coat again, dark skin, what had the first one told him, anything?

I turned my back on him and started walking into the darkness, making for the centre of the lawn, listening to his footsteps along the verandah, hearing them stop.

Not exactly: he hadn't stopped. He'd moved onto the grass, and I held my head to the right, lifting my feet and breathing tidally; silence, a pool of silence inside the four walls, cutting us off from the city outside, a pool of stillness cold enough to chill the nerves, deep enough to drown in.

I thought I caught the movement of a shadow thrown by one of the lamps, some way off to my right where the darkness bled away to a field of illumination by the verandah; I wasn't sure; I kept on walking slowly, floating feet down through the pool of silence, the ears straining, the hairs lifted on the skin, the organism brought to that pitch of alertness that will make the difference between life and death, between 'Dr Hawkins! She's up here!'

I span and saw them under the lamps, a nurse and the dark-skinned doctor and now the other one, coming back along the verandah with his white coat flapping.

'She's all right, doctor, but I think you should come.'

'Is she conscious?'

'Yes, she's sitting up.'

'Don't worry, then.'

Voices fading out and the slam of a door in the distance.

Sweat running as I came off the high, the organism lurching, trying to find its balance again, the onset of raging thirst. I walked quite fast to the verandah, my legs thrusting me forward, the whole of the musculature avid for movement. The nearest water was in the toilet in C Block and I headed that way, going through the swing-door and down the passage, Men. They normally left the lights on all night in the toilets but this one – oh my God.

26 Kishnar

We didn't move. We waited. When I'd gone in and found it was dark I turned to switch on the light and had my back to him and I heard a faint rustle of fabric as his arms came up and across my head and started down again past my face with his hands bunched and the wire between them and it was then that everything slowed down and as I brought my right arm rising in a jodan uchi uke it felt as if I were moving it through water, through quiet water, the forearm bone meeting the wire and my fist snapping back against the front of my skull as his two-handed force pressed it there and we began waiting.

The initial half-second of his attack was over and we needed time, a few tenths of a second, in which to make decisions. He was pulling back on the piano wire very hard, and if it had been brought across my throat it would have breached the skin and cut through the thyroid cartilage and the jugular vein and the carotid artery and he could have simply stepped back to avoid the blood and walked away, as I suppose he'd done so many times.

He succeed to kill always. Always.

Sayako.

It was very quiet, and a tap dripping in one of the handbasins made a kind of music, bringing us solace. It hadn't gone well for either of us. I'd made it too obvious, perhaps, waiting for him out there on the darkened lawn. He would have been confident, yes, arrogant even, certain of the kill because he'd never failed; but Mariko Shoda had singled me out as a special assignment, and a full hit team had been ordered in to prepare me for him, to find and fix so that he could strike. It would have told him that I wasn't just another agent, untrained in close-range issues, and so he'd decided to let me go through my charade and wait for me to develop a thirst in the warm night air. If I hadn't come in here he would have dogged me through the hours of darkness with the patience of the instinctive stalker who knows that time is not important, given the certitude of the kill.

He moved and I reacted. I'd made it obvious, then, and let him trap me; but so far I had survived. It hadn't gone well for him either, on this count, and it was possible that it was the first time he'd ever swung the wire across the victim's head and failed to bury it in the throat. That would have dismayed him, and changed his attitude a little, his attitude towards himself, his omnipotence, the natural order of things wherein he was preeminent, unsurpassed. The solace of the musical tap was not misplaced.

He moved and I reacted and a grunt came out of him because what he'd tried to do was drop the front of his knee into the back of mine and bring me down and it didn't work because I'd been expecting it: I'd have tried the same thing if I'd been where he was. The grunt came because I'd used his own force through his arms and the wire to let my head snap back against his face. I couldn't tell how much damage I'd done: the back of the head's insensitive.

I'd seen two iguanas once in Bali, their jaws locked together, their size equal, and for minutes on end they'd waited with the perfect stillness of the reptile, and then one or the other had brought its sinews to the point of explosion and the tails had thrashed and the great heads swung and shaken from side to side until their force was for a while exhausted.

He wasn't a big man, Kishnar; I hadn't expected it; but he was strong and fast, understandably. He smelled of something, of some kind of oil; either it was on his hair or he'd anointed himself in ritual before the act he was embarked on; it was a little like almonds, the faint smell on him. It wasn't gun-oiclass="underline" he wouldn't carry a gun.

The tap dripped, and I was aware of the thirst that had brought me here.

I let another second or two go by and then I twisted and brought the edge of my shoe down his shin but he stepped back so I brought my heel upwards, going for the groin but not connecting, and now we were on the move and the waiting was over for a time -1 used an elbow strike and found muscle and brought a hiss of pain from him and he slackened the wire and then dragged on it with a strength that bit through the flesh of my arm and into the bone and sent a flash of nerve-light blinding me for an instant, though it wasn't criticaclass="underline" there was nothing to see in here, the vague outlines and reflecting surfaces of the cubicles and basins and tiling and that was all; the door had swung shut and the only light was filtering through a small window somewhere.

I felt the need for a better stance to preserve balance so I shifted my weight and my foot moved something on the floor, small and light, one of his shoes I suppose: he would have taken them off before I'd come in here because ritual would have demanded it, and the need for silence. I found my balance again but he tensed and swung his body in a feint move and then swung the other way and I had to shift my stance again and we were both in motion suddenly, spinning together in a dance of death, faster now, the momentum taking us to the point where balance became critical. Both his hands were still on the ends of the wire and he daren't let it go; my right arm was useless, still thrust between the wire and my throat and with the ulnar nerve paralysed: it was keeping death away but couldn't move to make a strike, so as we went on spinning I used my left elbow again in a series of fast jabs, connecting and then losing him as he lurched away.