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.
It wasn't necessarily for the benefit of his beloved Chinese. He could be selling Dr Xingyu Baibing down the river in some way, and I didn't like that, Xingyu was mine, he was under my protection, he was the whole of the mission, Bamboo, and I didn't trust this man anymore, this man Trotter, and he went down but he'd seen it coming and swung away, very fast for such a big man, took only half the weight of the strike and was still conscious, shouting the place down, and I didn't have time to follow up with the killer because they were in here now, three of them, coming at the double with their guns out and I took the first one head on and heard the bone go, heard the bone go driving upward into the brain and he screamed very briefly and then it was cut off as he died, the second one coming but I wasn't quite ready because the whole weight of my body had gone into the strike and the momentum was still trying to carry me forward and I needed to recover, wasn't correctly set up-
'Zhua zhu ta! Bie kai qiang!'
Trotter, shouting again as the second man came at me and I did what I could, broke his arm but it didn't stop his momentum, his gun went clattering across the floor but he wouldn't have used it anyway, none of them could, Trotter wanted a live brain lying there under the needle and they knew that, he would have told them, instructed them, one of his hands trying to get a grip on my triceps and I smashed a hammerfist down but the target was too insensitive and he hung on and another man began locking my legs at the ankle and all I could do was try for an eye gouge and got it half right, got another scream but it didn't mean anything useful, they were hanging on me like dogs on a fox, Trotter's face somewhere above me, blood shining on it because I'd raked the skin open with the strike, his eyes frightened, because if he lost me now he'd lose the whole thing, tried one more strike, a strong hiji-uchi with enough force behind it to break whatever it hit, but it didn't connect because I was on the floor now and Trotter was up there, huge, dripping with blood, while they wrapped something around my ankles and he lifted me by the shoulders and they took my feet and between them they laid me on the blankets, on the plinth where I'd been before, got in a quick tiger-claw and drew blood again but technically it was ineffective, simply an attempt to save face.
They held me down, the three of them, Trotter and the two surviving Chinese, while Dr Chen broke open the top of one of the little phials and wiped it with an alcohol swab, from habit I suppose, there wouldn't be time for me to get any kind of infection, would there, the head throbbing a lot now because one of them had opened the wound under the bandage when we'd been milling about, I watched the Chinese, Dr Chen, as he pushed some air into the phial and tilted it and began suction with the plunger, they've made great advances in the field of psychiatric drugs, I could believe that, Trotter was an intelligent man, would know what he was doing, the weight of his huge hands on my shoulders keeping me down, I've never had to deal with anyone so strong, blood on his black beard, his eyes watching the syringe, the plunger still drawing the stuff in, quite a lot of it, we were nearing the 5cc mark on the barrel, I hate these bloody things.
One of the hit men was snivelling a bit because of the eye gouge I'd used on him, didn't look pretty, mucus dripping from his nose, couldn't wipe it away, had to keep both his hands on my legs, I tried a last essay, jerking my knees to connect with his face but it was no go, they'd been waiting for me to do something, didn't trust me anymore, bloody shame, my eyes closing against the flickering light of the lamp over there, watch it, yes, God's sake stay with it, yes indeed, one must remain conscious, mustn't one, opened my eyes again and slowed the breathing, deepened it, sought prana, drew it into the lungs, felt better, a little better now, he was stopping at 5cc, pulled the needle out of the phial and tilted the syringe, pressed the air out and got another swab, asking one of them to pull my sleeve higher, wiped my arm and dropped the swab and brought the syringe into position and I said, 'Trotter, you'd better listen to this.'
Chen looked across at him but Trotter shook his head, keep going, I suppose it meant.
'When I got him through Hong Kong and Chengdu and Gonggar,' I said, 'it was because he was wearing a mask. The «element». I couldn't have got him through without it. You won't get him through to Beijing without it either.'
'Zhan zhu.'
Dr Chen was holding the syringe like a dart, ready to stab, but he didn't move now, watched Trotter.
I said, 'Listen, if this stuff is as good as you say it is, I'll tell you where the mask is, but it won't do you any good because you won't know how to put it on his face. It requires skill and experience, takes nearly an hour, and you haven't been trained, and I have. I'm the only one who can put that mask on, Trotter, so you'd better tell the good doctor, hadn't you, to put that bloody thing away.'
I suppose Trotter would have given it some thought but there wasn't time because the doors of the temple blew open and the whole place shuddered and I saw the light of the explosion on his face before the air blast reached the lamps and blew them out and I twisted and rolled and dropped and got onto my feet and began running through the dark toward the patch of moonlight where the doors had been.
'In there,' I told Chong and he lobbed the next one into the Buddha room and the force came in a wave and I went down under the blast and hit something with my shoulder and spun away and got up again, a few seconds of darkness after the flash and then the moonlight came back, filtering through the smoke where the roof had blown out.