'Would you like to sit down?'
'What? No.'
Watching me carefully, the man with the big black beard.
Four feet away, less, an inch or two less by my reckoning, go for it now, not the carotid-nerve thing, a heel-palm, drive the nosebone into the brain and take the other man as he came for me, not as difficult, then stay by the door and wait till they came in here and go for them in whatever way I had to, go for the kill to make it certain, done it before, do it again, but there's no future in that scenario, no future in it now, because he'd have more chance than I would, Trotter, getting Xingyu through to Beijing.
'I think we should sit down,' he was saying.
'What?' I made an effort to get him in focus.
'You look a little done-in,' Trotter said. 'Don't make things hard for yourself. Here,' he pulled the stool over for me.
Didn't sit down. 'How many people have you got?'
'People?'
'Men.'
'Oh, enough. But-'
'What sort of training have they had?'
'I'm sorry, but we've got to get on now. Dr Chen?'
The Chinese went over to the plinth and opened a black leather case, took out a few things and laid them near one end of the blankets where I'd been lying: hypodermic syringe, roll of needles, box with a picture on it — alcohol swabs, I suppose — small plastic tray with three glass phials.
Trotter turned back to me. 'What I would really like is for you to give me the information I need of your own free will, including the nature of what you call the «element». Are you willing to do that?'
Hate syringes, they're so bloody sinister, ritualistic, I'd been having a bad enough time with the insulin thing.
'I've got to telephone London,' I said.
He looked a bit sideways. 'I'm afraid you can't do that. I need-'
'Thing is, Trotter, you could have a point. You might get him through Gonggar better than I could. But not without the information and the «element». I think on the face of it I'm prepared to let you have them, give you a much greater chance. But it's a decision I can't make for myself; it means handing you the mission. But they might let me do it, if I spell things out for them, in London.'
He watched me, surprised. 'Why would you want to hand me your mission?'
'I've told you. I think you've got a better chance of flying him out.'
In a moment, 'It sounds a little altruistic.'
'Dirty word, I know. But I want that man in Beijing, and I don't care how I do it. Completes the mission for me, and you don't know what that means. It's the Holy Grail syndrome, completing the mission, risk our lives for it all the time, so I'm not-'
'Oh, I see,' he said. 'You're ready to make a deal for your life.'
'Not really. That's less important. I mean he's such a bloody good man, isn't he, and he could work miracles for all those people you love so much, if we could only get him to Beijing. I mean imagine the headlines — China Free — spectacular. I want to make it happen, you see.'
It wasn't absolutely certain they'd say no in London, not absolutely, you come up against the most bizarre situations in this trade.
'That's very touching.' Edge of sarcasm, but only an edge; I think he was a charitable man at heart, had a certain amount of compassion. 'But your life is surely one half of the deal.'
'Not essentially.'
There's an overweening confidence, as I've told you, in our own ability to look after ourselves. There could be a chance, somewhere along the line, for me to cut and run.
'You're an unusual man,' Trotter said.
'They broke the mould.'
'I would of course be tempted to accept your offer, Mr Locke; but there's no telephone here, and that would mean risking exposure in the street. And you'll give me the information I need in any case, and the name of the mysterious "element." They've made great advances in the field of psychiatric drugs, and unless you're willing to speak of your own volition, Dr Chen will induce your full cooperation. When I have what I need, he will ease your passage to the hereafter. There is of course no question of pain, except my own.' The reflection of the lamps behind me made a spark in each of his dark intelligent eyes; there was nothing I could see in them, no hostility, no enmity, perhaps if anything a hint, yes, of pain, reluctance. 'What do you say? Will you speak freely?', We'd come down to the wire rather fast and the sweat glands were reacting and I could feel the old familiar heat of adrenaline in the blood.
'I can't,' I said, 'without London's okay. I really mean that. Neither of us is joking, is he? There's so much in the balance. All I need is a telephone.'
He turned away for a moment, had his back to me, and the muscles pulled tight and I was set to go, already in the zone where all the mind has got to do is say yes and stand back and let it happen, the targets selected and different now because he'd got his back to me, a chudan mae keage to the coccyx to paralyze the legs and a heel-palm to the occipital area to produce concussion and deaden the optic nerve, but it still wasn't the answer: the organism had simply noted the chance when the opponent had turned his back, that was all, it had had enough training, God knows, to do things without being told.
Go for him.
No.
It's you or him and he's exposed, he's-
I think we can get London in if I work on him.
Kill him for God's sake before he kills you-
Shuddup.
It's his life or-
Bloody well shuddup.
Turning back, Trotter was turning back.
'You'll really have to listen to me,' I said. 'I can't offer you more than the mission, and it'd work, you'd get him through to Beijing.'
He didn't answer for a moment. His face had changed in some way, his eyes, his expression, because of whatever he'd been thinking about, I suppose, while he'd stood there with his back to me. There was a softness about him, and it worried me.
In a moment-
'My dear fellow, you still don't understand. I appreciate your thinking, but there's nothing you can offer me. It's for the taking.'
And then- 'Are you a Catholic, by any chance?'
Said no.
With hesitation- 'I thought you might, perhaps, be willing to give me… absolution.'
It was a moment before I got it. Absolution for taking my life.
'What the fuck are you talking about, I'm not a priest.' Shocked him, did me good. 'And if I were a priest I'd damn you to hell.'
Do you know what a rattlesnake does when it injects its venom? It's partly of course to paralyze the prey, to kill it, but it's partly to digest its body. I mean it's to start the process of assimilation, to soften and prepare the tissues. I suppose other snakes do it too, cobras, for that matter, but I happen to know rattlers, lived with them for a bit. But isn't that awful, don't you think, for something to start digesting you before you're even dead? It gives me the bloody creeps.
'I understand your feelings, of course,' his voice very quiet.
'You bloody well don't.'
There'd been fright in his eyes, I'd noticed, when I'd talked about damning him to hell. He took his faith seriously, perhaps I could work on that. I didn't like him now, forget the compassion bit, this bastard had started digesting me.
He didn't say anything more, looked at the Chinese and gave a little nod, and Chen started getting things ready, breaking a needle out of the packet and pressing it onto the syringe, and I didn't like that, I was beginning to wonder why Trotter hadn't made an honest approach, come to me earlier and put it on the table and tell me his ambition was the same as my own, instead of dodging me like a bloody espion and setting me up for an interrogation thing under the needle and then the final insult, what had he called it, easing your passage to the hereafter, bloody hypocrite, meant kill me, kill me like a dog and hadn't got the guts to say so, but there was this thought above all — I was prepared to believe he wanted to get Xingyu Baibing into Beijing but for the first time I was beginning to question why.