Survive.
Go down the stairs and through the boiler room and tell those gallant soldiers out there that they can take me in charge, blow Meridian off the signals board and survive, but tell one of them they really ought to pop in there and tell the grand architects of the new world order that if they don't watch it they'll go through that bloody roof.
I started moving towards the staircase, might be time, there might be time, the scalp tight and a lightness in the chest, everything still slowing down, and then I saw him.
Chapter 24: CURTAIN-CALL
He was in shadow, on the gallery below.
I'd expected him to be there but had still missed him, earlier, perhaps because of the angle of view. I was watching him between two uprights of the balustrade.
Sound of vehicles outside.
He was sitting at one of the little tables near some bookshelves, watching the delegates below. Not waiting, then, in the SAAB. Waiting in here.
The vehicles were nearing the building, snow-chains ringing, voices, orders shouted, the slamming of doors.
We have just learned that Marshal Trushin should be arriving very soon — his plane was delayed by bad weather.
The thudding of boots on the marble outside, a door banging open.
I used the background noise to move quite fast along the gallery until I was immediately above Talyzin, the bomber. There was light on my face but no one was looking upwards; they were watching Marshal Trushin and his aides making their entrance.
He was sitting at his ease, Talyzin, and on the little table beside him was the detonator.
The time gap narrowed with a slam and I knew precisely when he would reach out and press the button. It would be when Marshal Trushin sat down with the others. But it couldn't be a suicide run — there was no need for that. Talyzin could go outside if he wanted to the way he'd come, and make a run through the guards and press that thing before they could take him. They wouldn't know what he'd got in his hand; they'd go for him because he was running, that was all; but he'd use the remote and they'd be too busy watching the building go up to feel like running after him.
But he wasn't going to do that. He was comfortable here. The electric shock treatment and the sensory deprivation chambers and the other tricks they'd used on him inside the psychiatric hospital had left him just a teeny bit skewed in his skull, still cunning enough but skewed, and now that he'd got all these old friends of his together he was ready to give them the message: they shouldn't have done what they did to him, it wasn't fair.
And he wanted to see it happen.
Boots banging again down there, snow coming away from their and glistening on the parquet floor, chairs scraping back and people getting up.
'Marshal Trushin, let me present Marshal Jia Chongwu of the Chinese Red Army…'
He wanted to be there when it happened. He wanted to watch us all for those few milliseconds as the big ornate desk blew apart one the men around it began jerking backwards in a reflex action before the edge of the blast wave reached them and their uniforms began wrinkling, he wanted to watch everything he could before he could see no more.
And since time has a way of slowing down when our attention is locked in with reality he might be given quite a show, two or three minutes, even, as each minuscule stage of the explosion followed the last, an hour, even, long enough to start a mini-series.
'… Major-general Yang Zhen…'
Salutes, bows, handshakes, while Talyzin watched them from above, a puppet master with their last curtain-call in his hands.
He hadn't moved the detonator, or reached for it yet. He would wait for them to sit down. He wanted them to be comfortable too.
'… Lieutenant-general Zou Xinxiong…'
The voice of General Kovalenko drifted upwards into the great dome of the rotunda, left echoes rippling.
'… Colonel Rui Zhong… Colonel Wang Yongchang…'
Then they were moving towards the chairs, ushering gestures the order of the day as the senior ranks were given precedence and Marshal Trushin was invited to sit at the ornate redwood desk in the place of the Chinese.
I cleared the balustrade and dropped.
Talyzin had been directly below me on the lower gallery but I went down in a slight arc because of the balustrade and caught his shoulder, spinning him round on the chair as his hand went out for the detonator. He reacted with great strength, empowered by shock, rage, dementia, and smashed his knee into my ribcage as we went down together, the breath coming out of me in a soft explosion as I twisted over and felt for a target, not in the killing area because I didn't think it would be necessary, just in the nerve-centres to incapacitate.
Heard shouts from below, boots on the staircase, Talyzin's hand on my throat and squeezing strongly, triggering reflex and freeing my arm for an elbow strike that reached the side of his head and he lurched and went down and I thought it was over but he came up suddenly like a diver surfacing and went for the table and got his hand on the detonator and I couldn't reach it, went for the throat, for the kill, the fastest way, the only way to get the strength out of his arm, out of his fingers as his weight dropped and the table crashed over and the detonator hit the floor and he reached for it again but his arm was exposed and I doubled it backwards at the elbow and heard it snap, dropped him against the bookshelves and picked up the detonator and backed off as the first two guards reached the top of the stairs and aimed their rifles, shouting.
Talyzin didn't move.
'One of you look after this man,' I told the guards.' He's injured but watch him. I want the other one to follow me down the stairs — now move!'
There were more of them waiting for me in the well of the chamber but I told them to get back, called out to the generals. 'You know what this is?' Held the thing up.
It seemed to fox them, understandably. Here they were planning the creation of the new world order and suddenly there was a dishevelled-looking clown standing in front of them holding up a remote control for their TV set.
No one said anything, didn't matter, I'd spell it out for them. 'Marshal Trushin, this is a remote-control detonator for the bomb. installed in the desk you're sitting at now.' I gave it a couple of beats to let him think about it, and they woke up, all of them, I could hear the body movements going on, the rustle of uniforms as they shifted on their chairs, reacting.' I am not going to detonate that bomb if you agree to follow my instructions. Do you agree to follow my instructions, Marshal Trushin?'
In a moment he asked in a flat voice, 'Who are you?'
'Do you agree?'
Trying to get my breath back under control, I think he broke a rib up there, Talyzin, with that knee strike, the lung didn't feel as if it had much room on that side.
I waited.
If the marshal didn't agree, I was done for. I couldn't detonate that bloody thing anyway, I wasn't tired of life and we'd still got a mission running, I wanted information out of these people, the information that Kovalenko had told the Chinese delegates he'd give them later.
But all he would need to say, Trushin, was Take that man, and there'd be nothing I could do.
Behind me I heard the guard coming down the staircase, his boots thudding laboriously under a weight: Talyzin. I didn't know if the killing strike I'd made had got right through to the larynx; he'd moved a little after I'd made it, tried to reach the detonator. I took four paces back to bring him into sight; he was hanging across the guard's shoulder, the broken arm dangling.