Jazz had meanwhile been stripped of his packs, his weapons, but not of his pride. Strangely, now that he was down to his combat suit he felt safer; he knew he wouldn’t be shot for fear of the havoc he might wreak with his awesome weapons. At least he could stand man to man now. Even if he couldn’t understand all of Arlek’s words – and even though many that he could understand rang true – still he didn’t like Arlek’s tone of voice when he spoke to Zek like that. He caught the Gypsy’s shoulder, spun him round face to face. ‘You’re good at making loud noises at women,’ he said.
Arlek looked at Jazz’s hand bunching his jacket and his eyes opened wide. ‘You’ve a lot to learn, “free man”,’ he hissed – and he lashed out at Jazz’s face with his clenched fist. His reaction had been telegraphed; Jazz ducked his blow easily; it was like fighting with a clumsy, untrained schoolboy. No one in Arlek’s world had ever heard of unarmed combat, judo, karate. Jazz struck him with two near simultaneous blows and stretched him out. And for his troubles he in turn was stretched out! From the side, one of the Gypsies had smacked him on the side of the head with the butt of his own gun.
Passing out, he heard Zek cry: ‘Don’t kill him! Don’t harm him in any way! He may be the one answer to all your troubles, the only man who can bring you peace!’ Then for a moment he felt her cool, slender fingers on his burning face, and after that . . . . . . there was only the cold, creeping darkness . . .
Andrei Roborov and Nikolai Rublev were lesser KGB lights. Both of them had been seconded to Chingiz Khuv at the Perchorsk Projekt – known as a punishment posting – for over-zealousness in their work; namely, Western journalists had snapped them beating-up on a pair of black-market Muscovites. The ‘criminals’ in the case had been an aged man-and-wife team, selling farm produce from their garden in the suburbs. In short, Roborov and Rublev were thugs. And on this occasion they were thugs in serious trouble.
Khuv had sent them to ‘talk’ to Kazimir Kirescu; it was to be their last opportunity to interrogate the old man before he went on a course of truth-drugs. It would be best if he could be persuaded to volunteer the required information (on Western and Romanian links) for the drugs weren’t too good for a man’s heart. The older the man, the worse their effect. Khuv had wanted information before Kirescu died, for afterwards it would be too late. This might seem perfectly obvious, but to members of the Soviet E-Branch things were rarely as obvious as they seemed. In the old days when a person died without releasing his information, then they would have called in the necromancer Boris Dragosani, but Dragosani was no more. As it happened, neither was Kazimir Kirescu.
Approaching the old man’s cell to see how his men were making out, Khuv was in time to discover the two just making their exit. Both wore the clear plastic capes or ponchos of the professional torturer, but Rublev’s cape was spattered with blood. Too much blood. His rubber gloves, too, where he stripped them from shaking hands. His face was deathly white, which Khuv knew was sometimes the reaction with this sort of man when he’d done a job too well, or enjoyed it too much. Or when he feared the consequences of a gross error.
As the two turned from locking the door, Khuv met them face to face. His eyes narrowed as they took in Rublev’s shaken condition, and the condition of his protective clothing. ‘Nikolai,’ he said. ‘Nikolai.’
‘Comrade Major,’ the other blurted, his fat lower lip beginning to tremble. ‘I -‘
Khuv shoved him aside. ‘Open that door,’ he snapped at Roborov. ‘Have you sent for help?’
Roborov backed off a pace, shook his long, angular head. Too late for that, Comrade Major.’ He turned and opened up the door anyway. Khuv stepped inside the cell, took a long, hard look, came out again. His dark eyes blazed their fury. He grabbed the two by the fronts of their smocks, shook them unresistingly.