by Adam Hall
Cannot locate references in mission report to actual train journey Bydgoszcz-Warsaw therefore question amount of 130 zlotys paid at Dworzec Warszawa Glowna 12:50 hours Tuesday 19. Silly bitch.
I heard them coming.
At first one man, and I listened for clues: the cleaner might be a woman, her steps lighter, but this was a man; the cleaner would be older, possibly, than an M.O. officer, thus might shuffle, could detect no shuffle. Then suddenly there were the others and within a minute the confines were sharp with echoes: they came from all directions, down the double staircases and from each end of the subway in a blanket operation designed to remove the risk inherent in a simple wave motion: a wave coverage moving from one end of the subway to the other could drive the quarry in front of it and allow him a chance of finding an exit.
All the exits were simultaneously blocked.
They were civil police in uniform, their boots metalled and their pace regular. None of them spoke. Their sound filled the passage.
I had to be quick getting into the cupboard because some of them were coming down the twin staircases close to the washroom and they would be here in a few seconds. The metal bucket was a hazard, its sound alien to the background, and I was careful. The locking of the door gave no trouble since the tumblers came within the same aural range as footsteps on stonework.
The earlier patrol had smashed the hinges of three cubicle doors in kicking them open but I’d left the other five closed so that these people would find something to do that would take their attention from the cupboard. The mind of one policeman becomes much like another’s: they’re trained to work as a group and their imagination is corporate. The earlier patrol had gone for the obvious - the cubicles - and had given the cupboard only token attention. It was possible that these would do the same.
Two of them came into the washroom. The others went past.
One began on the cubicles, his boot crashing at the doors. He would be standing back as he kicked, his gun out of its holster and prepared to shoot and to shoot first. The aim would be low: Foster would have given orders that I was to be taken alive. The other had noticed the cupboard.
He wrenched three times at the handle. I felt its movement against my sleeve. Then he crossed to the cubicles and used his boot. The noise of the doors crashing open was very loud, overwhelming the sounds coming from the subway. The smell of the cleansing fluid had become stronger because my sense of sight was frustrated and the others were compensating, stimulated by a crisis situation.
They finished with the cubicles and turned and came past the cupboard on their way out.
‘What about that?’
‘I’ve tried it.’
‘Is it locked?’
‘Yes’
The handle moved again.
‘We’ll have to make sure.’
The explosion made me think he was firing at the lock but it was his boot against the panels.
‘That’s no good, it opens outwards, look.’
‘Have to force it, then.’
‘What with?’
‘We’ll have to find something.!
‘Shoot round it?’
‘Round what?’
‘The lock.’
‘We’d bring the others.’
‘What about it?’
‘They’ll think we’ve got him. Finish up looking silly.’
‘How can anyone be in there if the door’s locked?’
‘We’ve got to make sure. You know what the Captain said, turn every stone.’
‘Ask someone where the key is, then.’
‘Take all day. You stay here and I’ll fetch an axe or something.’
The sound of his boots faded.
So there was only one of them but the conditions were zero because the instant I turned the key he’d hear it and get ready and I’d run into close-range shots.
He crossed to the far side and urinated at the stalls.
The main groups were leaving the subway and when the last of the echoes died they left total silence. He moved again, passing the cupboard, his feet idling, going through the entrance and then halting, looking along the subway.
I had already raised my palm upwards and with the fingertips leading, and touched nothing. Now I felt for the damp rag and found it and folded it into an oblong and draped it across the end of the broomhandle and began raising it by degrees. The risk was high because there was so little room to work in: I’d removed the key after locking the door but the handle and the metal bucket remained dangerous; in total darkness I had to steer the broomhead past them both and touch neither, keeping my elbow clear of the doorhandle as the arm was extended.
I had to work quickly and it was impossible, discount need for speed and concentrate on need for silence.
Sweat had begun creeping close to my eyes. Heartbeat audible, the pulse fast. Another inch, raise it another inch. The end of the rag brushed across my face, clammy and smelling of mould. Another inch.
He kicked at something, perhaps a cigarette end, flicking it with the toe of his boot, taking a pace, stopping.
The broomhead passed my face. I lifted it higher
The sound was loud and came from below me and I froze all movement and stood with the nerves reacting. It was certain that he’d heard and would turn and come back into the washroom and stand listening but he didn’t do that and it took a full second for the forebrain to bring logic to bear. The rag was half-saturated and the moisture had started draining towards the ends and the first drip had hit the bucket and the sound was magnified by the funnel acoustics and to my ears it had been startling but to his it had been a strictly normal sound associated with plumbing and cisterns.
Raising the broom I tilted it, bringing the rag directly over my head, because any sound, however closely associated with the environs, would increase his alertness. Silence, lacking aural stimulus, is an overall sense-depressant in non-crisis conditions. For him there was no crisis.
He moved again, coming back into the washroom and pacing there, turning, halting. Possibly he was looking at himself in the mirror as sometimes we do when we are alone, seeking a reaffirmation of our identity. He had begun whistling through his teeth.
The broom was as high as I could raise it. I began bringing it down. ,
The second drip fell, hitting my shoulder.
It would take time, lowering the broom: it would take as long as it had taken to raise it because the hazards were the same. I had made progress: was nearer, by a broom’s length, to completing the mission; but that didn’t allow me to hurry. I couldn’t know how many more minutes I had left. Three or with luck five ,but not more than that because they’d be as quick about this as they could: their group-sense would be disturbing them since the others had gone ahead and left them isolated.
I didn’t think I could do it in three minutes but I thought I could do it in five.
Footsteps.
No go.
‘Have you got something?’
It would take thirty seconds with a crowbar, sixty with an axe. That wasn’t enough.
‘No.’
‘Then what the hell have you -‘
There’s a ganger on his way here with something. He’s fetching it from the tool store.’
‘Christ, we’ll be all day.’
‘He won’t be long.’
Down an inch, another inch.
The rag dripped, this time on to my head.
The thick coat was a hazard, deadening the nerves of the skin: there’d be no warning before the folds at the elbow caught the doorhandle.
Lower. Smell of the rag stronger.
‘See anything of the others up there?’
‘They’re working towards the end of the platforms.’
Stop.
A soft sound had begun near my feet and when I stopped moving the sound stopped too. I moved the broom again, downwards, a quarter of an inch, and the sound came back. It was the bristles, touching the rim of the bucket. I didn’t know it was so close
, so dangerous. Down an inch, keep it clear.
The nerves were reacting and suddenly anger came, anger with him, with what he’d say, told me they found you in the station lav, old boy, sorry about that, they’ve got no sense of privacy, those chaps.
He’d enjoy saying that. My break would have frightened him and he’d want to take it out on me.
Sweat inside my hands because of the anger.
The head of the broom touched the floor.
‘Beats me, you know.’
‘Eh?’
‘First we get orders to take things quiet so as not to alarm the visitors, next thing there’s half a brigade of us turnin’ Warsaw Central upside down.’
It would be easier with the coat off but I couldn’t take it off without knocking against the doorhandle. I stood the broom against the back wall.
‘Who’s that?’
‘The ganger.’
I heard the footsteps coming.
Do it now or stand here like a bloody fool because you think there isn’t time, sorry about that, old boy, don’t let him say it, do it now.
‘Come on then, we’re in a hurry!’
‘Been quick as I could.’
‘Let’s have it then.’
Sweat on the palms wipe it off.
The cupboard was small but not small enough for me to use a foot on each side of the side walls and I had to brace them both against the wall in front of me with my back pressed to the one behind but the chimneying action would be just as efficient and I began when they put the end of the crowbar into the jamb and started prising with it. Sound-factor to my advantage, their greater noise covering mine. Splinters were coming away. Unknown datum was the exact height of the ceiling but I knew it was at least thirteen feet, shoulder-height plus arm’s length plus handle of broom and therefore six feet higher than the top of the door.
Press. Slide. Press.
‘It’s coming.’
‘Give me a bit of room, then.’
The door was shaking but the sound was below me now.. a crackle of splitting timber.
Back-muscles signalling strain, ignore, the body will do what you mean it to do when it senses you won’t take refusal. Press. Press harder.
‘This time.’
Shoulders on fire, nerve-lights flashing under the lids. Harder. Higher. Press…
Explosion of sound as the lock went, the door banging back.
Stop.
Flood of light below but here I was in gloom. ‘All right.’
‘Wasted our time.’
‘No, we had to make sure.’
I listened to their boots, to the echoes fading. When it was silent I came down.
I gave them one hour.
The cadre left in place at key points would probably comprise special M.O. patrols with a handful of Policia Ubespieczenia manning the public exits, civilian dress.
I must go but the hazard was critical: they knew my image, knew that I was now bareheaded.
A train had been through and some people had come into the washroom and it wouldn’t have been difficult to talk one of them into selling he his kepi but that would have been fatal. They’d have stopped him at the exit, where is your hat, I sold it to a man in the Toaleta. Fatal.
But I had to go now and take the hazard with me.
It was quiet here. Distant sounds: shunting in the freight area, voice on the P.A. system, background of street traffic.
I went into the subway and turned left for the nearest staircase and we met face to face at the comer because the sound of his footsteps had been covered by my own.
Chapter 17
COMBAT
He was one of Foster’s men.
It worried me because he ought not to be down here in the subway: an hour had been quite long enough for half a brigade to deal with the station area and the main search should have been called off by now, leaving only the exits under observation. He shouldn’t be so close to the centre as this and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t see where I’d made the mistake.
Then I got the answer and it was very simple: he was in fact manning one of the peripheral points but had needed to come down to the lavatory. It was reassuring to know I hadn’t made a mistake.
I knew he was one of Foster’s men because his face showed immediate recognition: my image was the known image and he was responding by reflex. His actual features didn’t mean anything to me but he had a brown leather coat on and I’d seen that two of them had been wearing coats that colour.
He was going very fast for his gun but I had to wait because if I engaged right away the thing would have to stay where it was and he’d be able to get at it later if I got into an awkward position and I didn’t want that to happen.
He had the eyes of an Alsatian in the instant of attack, wide open and with the pupils dark and enlarged, the gold irises glittering: his teeth were bared and this too gave him the look of a trained killer dog. Even so he appeared to need his gun and I had to wait several fractions of a second before it was in his hand.
At close quarters a gun is highly dangerous. The danger is present before it leaves the holster, since it gives a feeling of power, of superiority, thus leading to false confidence and the impression that no serious effort has to be made, that the conflict has already been won. The danger increases tenfold once the gun is in the hand because only one hand is left free for useful work; at the same time the psychological danger remains present: it is felt that the mere sight of the gun will intimidate the opponent to the extent of rendering him powerless, quite incapable of movement. If, at this stage, the opponent decides to move, the danger becomes so great that it dominates the situation and can no longer be averted. The simple act of moving confounds the strongly held belief that no movement will in fact be made, and the surprise has the proportions of severe psychological shock.
Kimura’s first rule is grilled into new trainees until they’re sick of it but later it saves their lives: when threatened by an armed man, do nothing until he comes into close quarters.
It’s usually easy enough because he likes to frisk you and then you can go to work. In this case I was lucky because we’d walked into each other and the distance was perfect. The gun was in his hand but that was all: his index hadn’t settled inside the trigger guard and he was nowhere near horizontal aim. In another tenth of a second I would have had to use the routine deflection drill designed to get the body clear of the bullet but I didn’t wait for that because the noise would alert the nearest patrols.
I chopped upwards against the wrist-nerve and the force swung him partly round as the gun spun high and hit the glazed tiles of the ceiling and that was all right but he was already hooking for a kite blow and I knew I’d been wrong: he hadn’t been relying a hundred per cent on his gun - he’d just thought it might be the most convenient way.
I went down first and he dropped and tried for the throat so I used the knee and he rolled and corrected and I thought it was probably kaminari, a bastardised form of kung fu, because he got very busy and couldn’t relax the tensions so it was easy until the speed of the blows began foxing me and I had to go for a straight classic hand-edge for the shoulder hoping to numb and not succeeding the first time and not getting the chance to do it again because he was on to it and pulling clear and coming in again with a series of horribly fast kites that burned at the muscles while I hooked at what I could reach: windpipe, groin, plexus, trying for blows and then for locks and not getting them as I should.
Specialised disciplines are effective within their range but none of them are flexible enough: their patterns are too formalised. Pure karate can stop any amateur attack because it has the answer to every move in the book but there are one or two others and some of the kaminari blows have never been fully understood in the West so that an element of the unknown enters the conflict and there’s no time to rethink on the established techniques because this form of attack is tense and fast and accumulative: the aim is to break down the opponent before he’s had time to work
for any kind of finalising strike or lock.
That’s why karate has never been taught at Norfolk. They teach something different there.
I still couldn’t use it. His energy was appalling and the blows came chopping wickedly fast for the vulnerable points and I knew that if I left only one of them unprotected for a half-second he’d be in there and finish me. His attack was animal: I couldn’t believe that this creature could ever, short of killing it, be tamed; or that, once tamed, it could speak or write with a pen in a human hand. His breathing was like a wolf’s, his frenzy producing grunts through the teeth and nostrils, a bestial snuffling, and somewhere in my mind there was surprise that these weren’t claws ripping at me, that I touched no fur. Yet his blows were infinitely disciplined.
And suddenly I knew that if I didn’t do something quickly he’d break me down and I’d have to be taken to Foster in an ambulance. My arms were losing strength and their muscles burned. I couldn’t shift his weight from across my legs.
For a long time, for two or three seconds, I let myself relax, bringing the strikes closer to give him confidence, then twisted and freed an elbow and drove it hard enough to disturb his rhythm and he shifted his weight and I went for a yoshida and brought it off but couldn’t hold the full lock because he slipped it enough to sap the leverage and come in again with neck strikes so that I had to roll back and parry them. Light had begun flashing in my head.
A hokku and it threw him and ‘I followed with the second stage of the lock but wasn’t fast enough and his weight came back and I had to protect again because if only one of his strikes got through it would leave me paralysed. My head throbbed, pulsing to the rhythm of the flashing light, and breathing was difficult now. He fluttered above me, a vague dark shape whose weight increased and bore down and smothered my movements, and its snuffling became excited as the strikes hammered at the crossed shield of my arms and shifted their aim and hammered again and found the target protected but only clumsily now as I lost strength, and worse, lost science. Time was going, no more time. I needed time.
Sorry about that, old boy, but you shouldn’t have chanced your arm, these chaps won’t put up with it.
