The Striker Portfolio q-3

by Adam Hall

  They were salt-beef sandwiches so it wasn't any good trying to press the moisture out. I didn't even hide them under the bed: unlike thirst, hunger is containable.

  In the late evening I got up to make sure the taps were on but didn't actually do it this time. The will-power was coming into its own at this stage: the body had at last recognized that things were serious. They'd no more let someone stupid turn on the water from outside than they'd let him unlock the door. I would have to stop thinking wrongly.

  I re-checked before putting the light out: possibility of forcing the metal basin away from the wall and using the brackets or the basin itself to lever the bars apart, possibility of straining the rag-bolts of the bunk and climbing on it to reach the ceiling and break through the lathes and plaster. This was the third floor and there was no support-scaffolding outside the window so the bars weren't too important. There would be nothing higher than the raised width of the bunk to swing up on so a hole in the ceiling wouldn't do any good. The microphone, however muffled, would bring them here to see what I was doing.

  Before midnight by mental reckoning they came and woke me from fitful sleep. One stood near me with the black-jack. The other stayed in the doorway and poured water slowly from a jug into a glass and slowly drank it. I turned away as soon as I saw the idea but the sound brought sweat on me, wasting my reserves. Impotence expressed itself in anger surprisingly fast and I had to relax consciously so that I couldn't swing round on them and attack. Any effort of that sort would use up moisture and that was what they wanted.

  But when they had gone I couldn't sleep again for a long time because of the sound of the water.

  Hallucinations began towards the end 6f the second day, most of them aural. Sometimes they came to the door and opened the grille and poured water for me to hear but sometimes I knew they weren't there, only the noise, because the grille was shut.

  My tongue was shrinking now, the mouth a husk. One difficulty was in trying not to review the bodily processes that I knew were going on. Movement could be controlled, and I spent most of the day prone under the window where it was coldest, but breathing had to go on and I knew that every breath was passing moisture from the lungs to waste it on the air. Inactivity and the visual monotony of the walls and ceiling were inducing sleep and I forced wakefulness and concentrated on keeping tidal respiration to a minimum.

  They came again at midnight. One filled the glass and offered it to me and I took it at once: the body was avid and the mind careless. Then I smelt petrol and threw it against his face but he was expecting it and ducked and the glass smashed on the wall of the passage outside.

  Later I knew they had devised the stratagem so that I should be made to see the glass: being offered it, I wouldn't turn away as I had before. I had been made to see the cool liquidity of what I believed was water and the fact that it was petrol made no difference because I saw it still as they knew I would, shimmering in the dark against my eyes, and it had no smell and it was drinkable, infinitely desirable.

  By the evening of the third day I was ready.

  The initial shock-dose of saline had advanced the physical process critically and even though inactive, even though for most of the time inert, I had passed more than a gallon of moisture through the skin and lost an added amount from the lungs. The mental process had been advanced by the sight and sound of liquid and by the presence of the taps over the basin. Today I had had to tear the picnic-plate into halves and cover the taps so that they were hidden: because every time I woke it was there that I looked.

  I was ready this evening because earlier I had seen a damp patch forming on the wall below the metal basin and heard water trickling. Realizing that it was a leak I began gouging-at the plaster but found it was dry, perfectly dry. Memory came back from the far side of the miracle: pipes that are empty cannot leak.

  The body could go on for days before it died but the time was shorter for the mind. There had been seven hallucinations during last night and today, three of them visual, and the stage was approaching when I would tell them: Look, there's water on the wall, his name is Parkis, head of Whitehall 9. And it would seem reasonable to tell them, reason being gone.

  The danger was in proportion to the stake: you can gain more with less to lose. The stake was the Bureau.

  In the afternoon I had pulled the wad clear of the microphone and crushed the diaphram. The basin was difficult because I had lost a third of my strength but one of the brackets came away with it and it was a bracket I wanted: the pipes were plastic, not lead. It took an hour to free the bracket from the basin, flexing the bolt until it snapped.

  It was a poor weapon but the value of any weapon is increased when it's the only one you have. There was of course no chance of success: none. They always come in pairs and were armed and there were others in the building and the building was itself under guard. Barbed fencing. Whip-lamps. Dogs.

  But what I had to do, for pride's sake, before I turned to the final act of blotting it all out, was draw blood.

  By midnight they hadn't come.

  An hour ago the grille had been opened and closed. I had been standing within three feet of it, close enough to conceal the wall where I'd wrenched the basin away. But they didn't come in, and for this hour I had tormented myself because I could have waited against the door and driven the bracket through the grille: an eye for a withered tongue, with luck a death for a death.

  The central heating had gone off: the pipes ticked as they contracted, the water cooling, water, cool water.

  I left the light burning so that I could see objects that were real; in the dark I could see only fountains shining.

  In an hour they came, opening the door quietly without first looking through the grille. The lock turned so slowly that I had to put my hand against the panel and feel the movement of the mechanism, afraid that I imagined it.

  When he came in I used my bracket from left to right and starting low to drive upwards and across in a gouging swing to the face and saw surprise and heard his breath snatching as his head jerked back but the swing travelled on and struck nothing and I was off-balance and he knew it and hooked my leg behind the knee. The ceiling span. Somewhere the brain, cool, analytical, computer-quick, wryly reminded the poor fool body that fast action following prolonged inertia was crippled at the start. But we must do our best. He knew his locks: we were down and he worked for my throat and I knew how weak I was but he was worried and trying to speak and I wouldn't listen because they always lied: salt, petrol. Scissors now but he broke it and we rolled over and I worked for the throat again, my left hand flaring, the wound pulling open, rage moving my hands unscientifically and the knee coming up and missing — 'Freund' — and trying again and missing as he brought his arm across and T felt the lock coming on. 'Freund,' he grunted again. The light circled. They always lie. The lights flashed and I was under, and water trickled near me, and his breath was sawing, and I could do nothing. Trickling.

  He moved very fast and I looked up at him. He stood warily, watching. Water soaked into my hair. It was chill on my scalp. He was holding a flask. It had fallen when we went down, spilling. He nodded, holding the flask for me to take. I got up. The bracket had been lost and I swung an empty hand at the flask but he drew it back, surprised. I stood swaying in the tilting walls and heard warning that I should consider, re-assess, brain-think trying to overcome the animal need to injure the enemy, draw his blood.

  Carefully he held the flask towards me again and I considered. There was no petrol smell. This man was alone. They had always come in pairs. The flask was not empty because some had spilled on the floor, puddling beside my head.

  He nodded, holding the flask. I turned away. My left hand was growing heavy, the bandage filling. I moved as far as the window and he followed: I could hear him. My breath was like blades in my throat.

  'You must drink,' he said and I turned and he was holding the flask. I shook my head. He looked surprised.

  Belief began. Belief
in water. But if it wasn't, if I tried to drink and found it wasn't, I didn't know what I would do. I would rather not try. Not know.

  He seemed to understand and raised the flask and drank, holding it at a distance from his mouth so that I should see that it wasn't a trick. Drops ran down his chin and he wiped them away. He nodded again.

  It was an army flask, felt-covered metal with a strap for hitching to the belt. I took it from him and slopped the water into my mouth and tasted it and closed my eyes and drank till there was no more.

  ***

  He seemed to have some small authority because there was a guard in the hall and he told me to wait, and went down the last flight of stairs, speaking to the guard, who turned and went along the lower passage. A door closed in the distance.

  The building was quiet. Naked bulbs burned but the spotlights were dark. In a white-walled cellar he threw a high-voltage switch and led me to the top of some steps and into the chill night air.

  'Is there more?' I asked. 'More water?'

  I had emptied the flask but the thirst raged. It had been like a raindrop on a hot coal.

  'Later. There's no time now.'

  There were bushes, their leaves black against the sky. The moon swam beyond curdled cloud. Hs stood close to me, gripping my arm. 'Listen. Go through the fence. Do it quickly: the current is off but I must switch it on again soon. Then go across the ploughed field to the far side. Go straight across. And hurry.'

  He pushed me forward.

  The earth was frosty under my feet. I shook with cold. The field was wide and I lurched on, letting the weight of my body force me across the ruts. I was free but afraid it might not be true, just as I had been afraid that it might not be water. But the sky was above me and I was alone.

  It began when I was halfway across: the distant clamour of alarm-bells, voices and the cry of dogs. Light swept the trees at the far border of the field. Surely I should have learned by now that they always lied.

  Chapter Seventeen — THE GRAVE

  The thin beams of the whip-lamps pencilled across the trees. The balls had stopped but the dogs voiced their excitement, knowing that they would soon be released because that was what the sound of the bells had always meant.

  Perhaps Kohn had altered his decision or his advisers in Neueburg, Linsdorf, Hanover had counselled him that Martin had been operating alone with no back-up cell and was a subject for quick despatch rather than interrogation.

  The chill of the earth seeped into me. I lay face down.

  A car and then another drove fast to the gates, their sound shifting from left to right, behind me. They were military vehicles, heavy-engined, and the earth flickered under the side-wash of their searchlights.

  The policy would be circumspect, a reason forwarded to the relevant authority in the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands: a politically dangerous enemy of the State, shot while attempting to escape.

  The heavy engines raced, the wheels losing grip on frost-patches. Men shouted. Boots rang on metal footplates.

  I began crawling forward along my rut.

  Go to him and give him water and then set him running across open land, then alert the guards. Make him trust you or he may go for cover and we don't want difficulties.

  For three nights the moon had been bright through the window but now a nimbus layer filtered its light and at moments the land was almost dark. If I got up and ran for cover they might not see me but I suspected the thought: it could be the onset of panic.

  More vehicles were on the move.

  I need not go, now, in the direction he had told me. But it was the nearest cover. They would know I was going there, to the trees on the far edge of the field, but if I took another direction they would find me sooner: their lights were already closing in at the flank. I crawled faster.

  Men shouted to each other in the frosty night.

  Then panic came and all I knew was that my hands clawed earth away from under me and pain began spreading from their fingers into my arms as the hard clods broke away and the smell of moisture rose. The sound was the worst: the innermost core of reason, remote from the tumult of disordered thought, heard an animal burrowing. There is cunning of a kind in panic. Earth was falling across my back, across my legs. My hands shovelled at it, hurrying to make a grave for the living. The only sounds now were the grunt of my own breath and the scrabbling of my own hands: no one was near and this was my world here in the middle of ploughed land and there was work to be done, the quarry to be buried so that the hunters should be deceived as they swung their lights and looked for a running man and gave no thought for worm or mole or this lowly beast whose only shelter was the earth.

  Pain swamped my senses and I was lying still, drowning in an ebb and flow of light and dark while the bellows of my lungs reminded me that something was yet alive here, its breath rasping in the hollow of night. Then brilliance swept overhead and lit the ridge of clods my hands had churned. It swept again and I shut my eyes and the panic that had moved me to frenzy now held me paralysed.

  Clear thought began. The situation was reviewed. There was nothing more to do: the final decision would now be made by circumstance, by the direction of their lights and the ability of their eyes and the line of their reasoning: they had hunted me before and knew how best to go about it but their very confidence could count against them.

  The earth went bright, went dark. The engines throbbed. They turned and backed, sweeping the ploughed area with light, turning and driving on again to probe the trees. Then they sounded to be more distant and the field was dark. And I moved now because the threat in the air had become active: and this danger was the worst. The barking had changed in tone and was more widespread.

  They would have given them my coat to scent.

  The ruts ran in the direction I had first taken, away from the asylum and towards the thickest of the trees. I knew a road was there: the whole of the ploughed area was ringed. But there was no light showing ahead of me and I scattered earth as I rose and moved at a lurching trot, pitching twice, the horizon spinning, moving on and once halting in an attempt to steady my legs, control them. It was the uneven ground, that was all, the uneven ground: you're far from gone. Get on.

  The baying was behind me now and closer.

  Light arced across the land to my left and fixed on the low scrub there. The beam appeared to be bouncing but it was my own movement. The ground was bad for running: the frost had crusted the surface and my feet broke through and were caught by the soft earth beneath. I went down again and lay where I fell, listening to the dogs, awareness of their danger blunted by the body's reluctance to get up and go on: it wanted to lie here with its pain and hunger and thirst, to sleep, so as not to feel them.

  The dogs must be under the leash still, their handlers making sure it was a true scent before they slipped them, certain of a kill. They were close now.

  I was moving again in a drunken run for the dark, for the trees. Brilliance flooded the field's edge and I saw figures grouped. Men's voices mingled with the crying of the dogs.

  Somewhere near the trees I fell again, one shoulder hitting the metalled surface of a road. It was very dark here but the shape of the car was visible, massive above me: I had nearly run into it. It had been waiting here with its lights off so that I wouldn't see it. One of its doors swung open. She said: 'Get in.'

  Chapter Eighteen — HELDA

  My head was against the floor.

  We crawled in the dark and then stopped, backing and waiting. The sound of the dogs was muffled by the bodywork. We turned and there was faint light. I heard the snatch of the universals under the floor. Voices called.

  Then we accelerated and turned at speed, pulling up suddenly. The dogs were far away. We started off and settled down to cruising on our way back to the asylum. This was a definite move, a decision, writing off all the uncertainties, and my brain was satisfied and let oblivion come.

  'How long have I been out?'

  'Half an hour.'


  I hadn't moved. My head was still on the floor. I moved and lightning struck through me. I waited before trying again. I asked:

  'Where are we?'

  'Near Mulhausen.'

  'You're lying. You always lie.'

  I moved again, my teeth clenched. Faint light was inside the car, pulsing. She got out and opened the door at the back and I felt her hand supporting the side of my head. She knew her stuff: the head is the heaviest bit when you're trying to get off the floor, it's as bad as a ball and chain.

  'I don't want your bloody help.'

  She went on helping me so I put a lot of effort into it because I wanted to do it for myself. Millhausen was nowhere near the asylum. It was towards the Frontier. The lying bitch.

  I was sitting on the seat, head lolling about. She was trying to keep my head still so that I could drink. She had a flask. They always brought you a flask before they put you through the mincer. After three days they were suddenly lousy with the things. But I drank.

  'It's empty,' she said when I'd finished. As if I didn't know. But I suppose she said that because I was still hanging on to it.

  'Where are we?'

  'Near Mulhausen,' she said carefully. Towards the West German Frontier.'

  'Leave that alone.' She was trying to find the end of the bandage among all the mess. It was humiliating. I pulled my hand away.

  'Clench it,' she said. 'Keep it clenched. You've been losing blood.

  'What the hell've you brought me here for? Give the dogs a longer run?'

  The light from the dashboard had stopped pulsing. She was watching my face. 'How long can you hold out?'

  'A long time. I was thirsty, that's all.

  Who are you?' 'My name is Helda.'

  'I mean who are you?'