At the road junction ahead Lu indicated first left, then right and said: ‘That way to the casino, on the river, that way to St Paul’s church and the fort.’
Charlie, whose feet dictated that tours were for tourists, never for him, said: ‘Which is nearest?’
‘The church and the fort.’
‘The church and the fort,’ Charlie decided. For all the interest that Irena was showing, they might just have well stayed at the hotel and watched incomprehensible Chinese television, piped in from Hong Kong. Time soon to stop for a drink, thank Christ.
Olga stopped, at their pause. It had to be now, somehow: there wouldn’t be another opportunity so good. The shaking wouldn’t stop and the sickness had come back: she swallowed, again and again, fighting the need to retch, and the perspiration worsened, leaking from her. The gun was silent, any faint discharge hiss certain to be lost in the babble of the street hawkers: all she had to do was get slightly nearer — not more than a yard or two — and fire. It doesn’t matter where you hit, Yuri had said: the poison will do the rest. Just fire then, lose herself momentarily in one of the open-fronted, labyrinthine stalls and then melt away, in the confusion. Easy. Now, then. She pressed forward through the separating people, getting to the edge of the squabbling, gabbling family. Irena Kozlov appeared magnified, bigger than she really was. Small things registered, as if they were important. Olga could see how the faint wind had ruffled the other woman’s hair, creating a gap at the back. The suit had a pink flower motif on a brown background, some sort of woollen cloth and too well made to have been bought in the Soviet Union and the handbag looked foreign, too, well thumbed to the point of blackness in places but still good leather, like her shoes. The left heel was badly worn, needing repair. Close enough now; she couldn’t miss. Olga turned her own handbag, its length hiding the weapon, easing it up so the muzzle was unimpeded, wet finger around the trigger.
They moved.
It wasn’t abrupt but it appeared to be, to Olga. They’d been waiting for a break in the congested traffic and Lu saw it and walked through, leading the woman forward: one moment Irena had been no more than five feet away, the next she was twisting through the traffic block and the chance had gone. Olga sagged against the corner stall, oblivious of the immediate bargaining approaching from the salesman, whom she vaguely saw to be a child, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. She backed away, shaking her head in refusal.
The steps leading up to the facade of St Paul’s were shallow but there were a lot of them, and Charlie looked dolefully at the huge castle alongside that they still had to tour and wished now he’d gone to the casino. This whole expedition was definitely a bloody great mistake.
Trying to avoid the castle, he said to Lu: ‘What time you going back?’
‘There’s a hydrofoil at three,’ said the other man.
‘Back where?’ intruded Irena, at once.
‘Hong Kong,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s got things to arrange.’
‘For me?’
‘Naturally.’
‘For tomorrow?’
Charlie hesitated, momentarily forgetting his hotel room lie. ‘Right,’ he said, remembering and repeating it. ‘Tomorrow.’ He had things to do, as welclass="underline" link up with Cartright and contact the signals station, to discover what the Director had arranged. Most definitely too much to tramp around a bloody great castle he just knew would smell of a lot of quick pees and have walls covered with ‘John loves Jane’ graffiti records stretching back practically to the time when the Portugese fought off a Dutch take-over from its battlements.
There were protective stalls at the beginning of the steps but the huge walkway was entirely open, with no cover whatsoever, and Olga realized the other woman only needed to turn, to gain a view from the top of the promontory, to identify her.
There weren’t even enough tourists to give her cover, just an occasional straggle, groups of no more than two or three. She got behind the biggest party, five but not together, just co-incidently ascending at the same time, tensed against a new but actual collapse this time. Irena and the two men were at the entrance now but their figures were blurred, and Olga blinked against the sudden surge of faintness. Mustn’t collapse: fall down so that she would be discovered. Too close to fail.
‘There’s nothing here!’ protested Irena. She stood just inside but to the left of the enormous front wall of the church, all that remained apart from the stone-flagged floor through which weeds and even flowers were tufted.
‘It got sacked, then fell down over the years,’ said Lu, almost apologetically. He gestured towards the solitary remaining wall. ‘It’s still quite a monument: very old.’
He’d been right about the graffiti, Charlie saw: there was even a John and Jane who’d left their mark. At least, with so much openness, there wasn’t any urine smell. He agreed with Irena. There didn’t seem a lot of purpose in bothering to preserve just one walclass="underline" God — as well as Kilroy — had been here but hadn’t stayed.
They were further away than they had been on the street corner below but still very obvious from where Olga hid, tight against the slight snag of masonry that had once been the continuing right-hand wall of the surviving front. She squeezed in there from the front without having to go through the only entrance, and was glad she hadn’t tried because they were just to one side and she would again have been immediately visible, to Irena. But not here. Here she was absolutely concealed, the stone against which she was pressing her head for its coolness in front, tangled undergrowth and stunted trees at her back, shielding her perfectly from the fort. Olga took the primed pistol from its encompassing bag and laid it against the stonework, which formed a solid, unmoving support practically in line with her eye. She scrubbed her hands dry against a handkerchief this time, blinking again to clear her vision. Suddenly she was cold, no longer worried by the perspiration, and her eyes were focussed, too. The impression of enlarged detail came once more, of them alclass="underline" Irena in that pink patterned suit and the scruffy man with a shoulder bag and those strange, spread-apart shoes and the neater one, European but sallow skinned, who appeared to be doing most of the talking. Olga crouched slightly, sighting. Only Irena now filling her vision, in the very centre of the V-piece, big, very big, big enough to hit: anywhere, it didn’t matter providing she was hit. There was no slack in the trigger, tight at once against her finger, and Olga blinked for the last time, surprised now the moment had come how calm she felt, knowing she could do it.
And she did.
At which precise moment Harry Lu said: ‘We might as well go,’ and turned, cupping Irena’s elbow, putting himself directly into the line of fire.
He said: ‘Oh!’ more in surprise than pain, and because there had been no sound of a shot neither the woman nor Charlie immediately realized what had happened. Lu slumped, falling against her and Irena said: ‘What the …!’ and Charlie became aware of the man falling and a lifetime’s expertise and experience made the reaction split-second instinctive.
Charlie actually managed to catch Lu, taking the weight to bring him down against the wall. As he did so Charlie saw the wound, the hole where Lu’s eye had been but wasn’t any more.
Charlie’s physical response was quite separate from his immediate thoughts.
Before Lu finally reached the ground Charlie was searching for the heartbeat, wrist first, then against the chest, confirming that there was none, but he was thinking of an excited man with a wife and a kid in a party frock planning a life in a place with a stupid name like Cockfosters and how they’d got drunk together when Edith had been alive, and that Harry Lu had been a professional and there weren’t a lot of those, not real professionals. And then he promised himself there would be the balance and that he would see to it himself, and then that lifetime of expertise and experience refused any more personal reaction, because if he were to balance the books he had to be alive to do it.