.
     Following the  ice  tracks  in  the snow, I  turned corners and  walked
around car  wrecks and  rusty  strollers until  the  house  came into  view.
Carpenter's BMW was no more than ninety feet  away. The other three vehicles
were  also still there, all with a thin layer of  ice forming on the windows
and top surfaces. One or two people were walking around, but just from block
to block, some accompanied by little dogs with knitted coats on.
     It was dark and cold enough for me not to be noticed as I  stood inside
what was left of one  of the  sheds,  leaning against  the wall with my head
down, my hands in  my jacket  pockets, the right one grasping the hammer.  I
felt no apprehension,  no emotion  at all  about what was coming.  Some kill
because  they have a  good reason. Others, like Carpenter, because they just
like it. For me it wasn't that deep. I did it only when I had to.
     Flexing my toes  in my boots to keep the circulation going, I  tried to
think of other options, but still couldn't come up with any. There were more
important  things at stake than this maniac's  life; I thought  back to  the
sobs from the  man in  the elevator in Helsinki  as he held his dying  wife.
Carpenter could fuck everything up if he discovered  I was here. I was still
pissed with myself for not switching on with Eight and asking for  a  change
of  meeting  place;  because of that fuckup I'd  got  myself into a position
where I could end up dead myself if I messed this up.
     One or two more dull yellow lights came on in the apartments. The noise
of a TV hung in the air as a car rattled along the road, then I heard a baby
screaming.  I  continued  with my trigger  on  the  door,  listening to  the
occasional bang of  pots and pans from behind steamed-up kitchen windows and
their  sagging,  dirty net  curtains.  Somewhere in  the  neighborhood, dogs
barked at each other, probably just out of boredom.
     No sign of movement or light came from the house. Lion King said it was
3:12.
     Still  I  watched  and waited,  feeling the cold attacking my  ears and
nose, wishing I'd made the effort and bought a replacement hat and gloves. I
got another four aspirin down me as my body started reminding me that it had
taken  a good kicking the night before. I spent  long minutes trying  to get
enough saliva in my mouth to swallow them.
     Another check of  Lion  King 3:58.1 hadn't even been here an hour  yet,
but it felt like six.  I always hated  the waiting. Another  thirty  minutes
crawled by, then there  was movement at the door, a  dull, yellowish glow at
the grill.
     Slowly I took  my hands from my  pockets. Taking  a  firm hold  of  the
hammerhead in my right hand,  I laid  the handle  along  my forearm, on  the
outside of my jacket.
     Two men were standing there smoking, waiting to  come  out  once they'd
opened the grill. In the glow from the cigarettes and the hall  light, their
breath vapor was indistinguishable from the smoke as it  rose above  them. I
couldn't make out if either  of them was Carpenter. I hoped not.  Taking  on
two  with a hammer would not  make for a good  night out, and  Carpenter was
bound to be armed.
     They continued  to talk as the grill squeaked open and one of them came
out onto the ice. The grill was then closed, leaving one
     of  them  on  each side. Maybe  it  was  going  to be okay. Whoever was
leaving had  a quick laugh  with his friend, who now  looked like a prisoner
behind  bars.  Then, as he  walked away, he pushed the  wooden  door closed,
rubbing his  hands together against the cold. From this distance  I couldn't
hear the bolts being thrown.
     I  could make  out  the shape of a  baseball  cap as he  moved  to  the
vehicles. I still couldn't tell if it was Carpenter.
     The man moved toward the 5 Series that was parked side-on to me, facing
the house, then there was a jangle of keys.
     I  still  couldn't identify him.  I would have to  get  closer. He'd be
there a while, scraping the ice from the windshield.
     My legs were  feeling rubbery after standing still so long. Stretching,
I moved out of the darkness, trying to pump a bit of blood around.
     There were only about sixty feet separating us, but as he neared the BM
I still couldn't be sure it was him.
     The car door opened and the  interior light shone across his back as he
leaned  in and started up the engine. Exhaust  fumes  filled  the air as  he
shoved one leg inside and  hit  the  gas.  Then he turned the headlights on.
They shone  brightly away  from both of us, but  silhouetted  his profile. I
recognized Carpenter at once.
     I took one last  look around me to make sure the  area  was clear. From
this moment  on  I'd be concentrating solely on the target, who was now  ten
meters away, hopefully with the engine noise hiding my movement.
     He  was focusing on  the windshield, his back to me still  as he leaned
over to clear the ice.
     My eyes never left his head as it moved back and forth in  a  cloud  of
breath.
     He must have heard me, and started to  turn. I was no more than fifteen
feet away but too far to react quickly. I just had  to keep walking, but now
veering slightly left, as if I was heading for the road. I got my head down,
not wanting to look at him as  I approached the  rear of the  car,  my hands
under my armpits, concealing my weapon. I had to assume that he was checking
out the dickhead who thought he could saunter around in this weather without
a hat and gloves.
     The focus of  my whole world was on this man, waiting to hear the noise
of  the  scraper again. I was nearly  past him, just  approaching  the  BM's
trunk, when it finally began again.
     Scrape scrape scrape.
     It was time to look up and find his head once again as it bobbed up and
down in time with the noise.
     Scrape, scrape, scrape.
     Supporting the hammerhead in my left hand I ran my hand down the handle
and gripped it hard.
     At that moment he looked up again, toward the road.
     I, too, saw the  four white DTTS Vitaras  screech to a halt outside  an
apartment buildings on the other side of  the  road. I  had no choice but to
keep walking past him as black-clad bodies  jumped out  of the  vehicles and
ran into the building,  leaving the drivers standing outside, nightsticks in
hand.
     I got to  the road and turned left toward the traffic circle,  not once
looking behind me. I could hear screams and  the sound of smashing  glass as
the DTTS team did whatever they did in apartment buildings in an afternoon.
     I was cursing to myself, but at the same time feeling lucky they hadn't
turned up a  few seconds later. What concerned me now was that  he  could be
there when I returned to the house for any kit I might need.
     I took the first opportunity to turn left again, off  the road and back
into the apartment building as the BM drove past me, heading for the traffic
circle.
     I drove cut of town, heading west and following signs along the Tallinn
road to  a  place  called  Kohtla-Jarve, about  twenty  miles away. The road
didn't  hold  any  surprises  for me.  The  car  bumped all over the  place,
slithering over the different levels of pavement under  the ice and slush. I
couldn't complain; I was just happy to have got the thing started again.
     I went  through a couple  of  small towns, trying to avoid the  bus and
truck drivers  who wanted me to join their death  race. This was supposed to
be  a  two-lane road, but  it  didn't work out  like that; everyone took the
center  of  the  road because that was  where  there  was less  ice and more
pavement.  Seeing  signs for  Voka, I made a  mental note of the  time since
leaving Narva. I'd be wanting that road later.
     The wipers were slapping away ineffectually against the shit that
     was being sprayed up by trucks and dumped on us smaller vehicles. I had
to  keep  stopping, using  the  newspaper from  the  back seat to  wipe  the
windows. At one stage, I even had  to piss over  the windshield to clear the
icy grime, trying to  avoid the splash as the  wipers did their stuff before
it froze once again.
     Kohtla-Jarve, it appeared,  was the home  of  the giant, brooding  slag
heaps and long  conveyor belts I'd seen from the  train. Bright  white light
spilled  from factories on either  side  of the  road  as I  dueled  with my
trucker  friends. They eventually dwindled with the industry, and soon there
was  complete  darkness, apart  from kamikaze trucks and  bus lights on full
beam, mixed with cars with only one light trying to overtake the lot of us.
     I  followed  the road  west for  about another twelve miles then turned
left,  heading south  for a place called Pussi.  I was in no  mood for gags,
otherwise I might have passed the time composing a limerick or two.
     In the  Lada's headlights I could see that the road was single lane and
hadn't been used or cleared for quite a while. There were just two tire rutt
worn into the snow. It was going be like riding on rails.
     It  was another twelve  miles further south to the target. There had to
be a  quicker way of doing it than driving a right-angled box, west and then
south, but  I didn't know  how accurate the maps were. Besides, I wanted  to
stay on the main  roads  as long as  possible, and then I could at least  be
sure of getting there.  I was feeling quite pleased with myself, considering
I had no map; one of the muggers in Tallinn was probably wiping his ass with
it right now.
     The  headlights reached  about five  to  thirty feet either side of me,
exposing banks of snow and the occasional ice-laden tree waiting to spark up
in the spring.
     I drove through Pussi, which looked like a small farming community. The
buildings were rundown shacks made of bare, unpainted wood and surrounded by
wrecked cars. The roofs were bowed in with age or bad construction. Most had
two lengths of wood, with strips going  across to form a ladder, permanently
attached as a means of getting the  snow off. Bythelookofitthe timbers would
have collapsed without them.
     I  reckoned  this was the place  for  Eight,  without a  doubt.  A hand
painted Lada would be the ultimate passion wagon in this neck of the woods.
     They had electricity,  because there was the occasional  glint of light
coming through the curtains of very small windows, and a dull bulb shone  in
the back of a barn. But there obviously wasn't running water because I  kept
seeing the sort  of communal  hand pump that Glint Eastwood used to strike a
match  on to light his panatela. These ones,  however,  were  wrapped  up in
tarpaulin and bits of rag to stop them freezing. The chimneys were going for
it big time. They must have been chopping logs all summer.
     There were no warning signs that I  was about to  bump over the railway
track  from Tallinn,  and after that  I  didn't see  a  single sign of human
activity.  The road got steadily worse. The Lada slid all over the place and
didn't enjoy the potholes one bit now  that my own personal snow railway had
come  to  an  end.  I  checked  the  odometer,  counting  down  to the  only
intersection, which, if I remembered correctly, was a couple of miles away.
     Once  there, I at last got help: a small  sign told me it was right  to
Tudu. I turned left, now knowing that the target would be the first building
on the left after one more mile.
     Just after  one  mile a high concrete  wall appeared  in my headlights,
about thirty feet in on the left-hand side. I drove slowly for another forty
yards or so, encountering a pair of large metal gates the same height as the
wall.  I  drove past them, and  the wall continued  for about another  forty
yards before it turned at a right angle into the darkness.
     The  second  building, just a bit further on and maybe thirty  yards in
length, resembled  a  large hangar. It  was  slightly closer to the road and
wasn't fenced  or walled in.  I  waited until I'd  rounded a  bend  and  was
physically  out of the line of  sight  of the target, then  I threw the Lada
into a little driveway on my left, stopping after a three-foot slide. It was
probably an entrance  to  a field or something, but it wasn't  as  if people
were going to be working on the land for a few more months.
     I closed the  door quietly  onto its first click, then the  second, and
used  the wipers  to  secure  a sheet  of  newspaper  over the windshield. I
started to walk back down the road, trying to keep warm by moving as fast as
I  could, and  sucking  to the  ice  that  had formed on  the  road to  keep
footprints to a minimum.
     I didn't have a clue what I was going to do yet.
        33
     After two  hours of straining my eyes  to see the road through a dirty,
smeared windshield, it was taking a while for my night vision to kick in.
     A bird screeched in the  distance, but there were no other sounds apart
from  my own breathing and the crunch of my boots on the ice. I  found I had
to step quite gingerly. So much for warming up.
     By  the  time I'd reached  the target the rods in my  eyes had realized
there was  no ambient light and they had  to  get to work. Not that  I could
miss  the first building, just off the road to  my right. The gap of fifteen
feet or so in  between  them was  knee-deep with  snow,  covering the fallen
brickwork that  had spilled out across the verge. It was, or had been, quite
a substantial building, though most  of  the masonry had collapsed, exposing
what I supposed was the  steel frame; I could  see  right through  it to the
field beyond. It was one story, lower than  the concrete wall further along,
but very wide and with a low-angled  pitched roof covered with a thick layer
of snow. A very tall chimney, resembling a ship's funnel,  soared out of the
roof on the right-hand side and disappeared into the darkness.
     Continuing  toward the concrete wall,  I crossed the thirty feet  or so
between the hangar and the target compound. As I approached, I began to make
out the dark shape of a normal-sized door set in the concrete wall. I'd have
loved to have gone and  tried  it, but I couldn't risk leaving tracks in the
deep snow.
     As I walked on toward the gates the front wall towered above me.
     There  was no light pushing  skyward from the compound, and no noise. I
tried looking for  CCTV cameras or intruder devices, but it was too dark and
the wall was too high and  far away. If there were any, I'd soon find out. A
depressing thought hit me: I hoped  they hadn't  changed location already. I
moved  the forty yards or so it took to  reach the point  where the compound
driveway joined the road.
     Turning  right,  I  started  to  walk to the gates.  It  was  pointless
skulking about,  I  just  had to get on with it. The depression  didn't lift
when I  failed to see  light  spilling out  from  under the gates  as  I got
closer.
     As I  slowly closed in on them, keeping within the right-hand tire rut,
I  began to see that  the wall was constructed  of enormous concrete blocks,
maybe twenty-five yards long and at least  three to fifteen feet high. There
must have been a fair thickness for them to rest on top of each  other  like
that; they looked as if they should be laid flat, end to end, to construct a
runway. I still couldn't see anything that even resembled CCTV or alarms.
     The two  large gates  were as high as  the wall itself. I  was right up
against them now and still couldn't hear  anything  on  the other  side. The
gates  were made of steel plate  with a  thick coating  of dark, anti  oxide
paint  which  was  smooth to  the touch, without  a trace  of  blistering or
flaking. I could also see white chalk  markings, the sort scored on to guide
the  welder. I gently pushed against  them both, but they  didn't move,  and
there were  no locks or chains I could see  holding  them in position.  They
were newly made, but judging by  the exposed  reinforcement rods jutting out
of the crumbling concrete, the wall wasn't.
     Set into the  right  gate was  a smaller,  pedestrian  door. It had two
locks, one a third of the way up from the bottom and another a third  of the
way down from the top. I gently pulled the  door handle, which of course was
also locked.
     The gap between gate  and  ground  was four  to six inches.  Lying down
slowly  on my side, and using the length of  the  tire  rut to avoid  making
prints  in  the snow either side of me, I pressed my eye against  the gap. I
could  feel the frozen ground under my  body as it made contact, but that no
longer mattered; there was light on the other side.
     I  became aware, too, of  the gentle hum  of  machinery. I couldn't  be
sure, but it was probably a generator.
     I  made out the  shapes  of two buildings about sixty  yards  away. The
smaller one on the left  had  two lights shining  from ground floor windows;
their  patterned curtains were drawn, but light still spilled  onto the snow
in front of  the building.  The  noise  must be a genny; there wasn't enough
wattage in this country to penetrate curtains. The building was too far away
for me  to notice anything else about it; it was just a dark shape on a dark
background.
     I  studied the  larger  building to the right. There was a dark area in
the middle front of the building, its rectangular shape, with a semicircular
top, suggesting  a  large  access.  Maybe  this  was where  they kept  their
vehicles. But where were the satellite dishes? Were they around the back? Or
was I doing a recce on the local beet boiling factory? And  where would they
have locked up Tom?
     What now?  I had the  same problem as at Microsoft HQ: too  much virgin
snow and not enough time. It would have been great to have been able to do a
full 360 of this place, but tough, I  couldn't. I even wondered about trying
to  climb up the outside of the hangar  funnel to get a better look  around,
but even if there was a climbing rail attached to it, I was likely  to leave
sign on the  roof  or on  the rungs, and anyway,  what would I  see  at that
distance?
     I lay there and reminded myself that when you are short of the two most
important  commodities,  time  and knowledge, sometimes the  only answer  on
target is P for Plenty of explosives.
     I stayed where I was,  visualizing how to defeat the wall and get in on
target, going through a mental checklist of the kit I'd  be needing. Some of
the stuff would have to come from Eight, because  it would be impossible for
me to  access it on my own in the time  available. If Eight couldn't get it,
plan B would have to  be to tie a suicide bandanna round my head and bang on
the gates making really rude threats. I  might as well; anything else  but P
for Plenty of  explosives would be futile, given the time scale. The rest of
the kit  I would get  myself to make sure  it  was  exactly  right; I  hated
depending on other people, but when  in Chad ... The  cold was getting to me
and  I  was starting to freeze. I had seen all I  was going to  see tonight.
Being careful not to disturb the snow on either side of the tire ruts, I got
up,  checking  with my hands  that  I hadn't dropped anything.  It was  just
habit, but a good one. Then  I slowly checked the snow on either side of the
rut  as I  moved  back to the road, getting ready to play repair man. If any
sign
     did need covering up I would have to collect snow from the  area around
the car and carry it over. Detail counts: There would be no point in picking
up snow from near the repair and just creating more sign.
     I  had warmed  up quite  a bit  by  the  time  I got back to the  Lada.
Unfortunately, the first thing  I had to do after lifting the hood was  take
off my  jacket and ram  it down onto the starter motor. I  didn't want Tom's
new friends to hear me when I battered it with the hammer.
     Ripping the newspaper from behind the windshield wipers I got into  the
driver's seat quicker than last time, now knowing how to play the door lock.
The engine fired third  time.  Keeping the revs low I drove away, not  going
past the target this time, but taking  a few lefts instead  to try  and  box
round and  get back on the main road to Narva. I got lost a couple of times,
but eventually found it and rejoined the death race.
        34
     I parked once  more  in the border-crossing  parking lot.  It was 9:24,
according  to  Lion King. There was no way I  was going to drive straight to
Eight's place; I wanted to check out the area  first, just in case Carpenter
had returned. If so, I would have to spend the night hanging around, waiting
for him to leave again.
     I  locked the car and  headed back  to the baar, hands in pockets, head
down. Approaching from the direction of the burned-out shed, I could see the
BM  hadn't returned,  and only  two of the other vehicles were  still there,
both now covered in thick ice.
     It was one of the Cherokee jeeps that was missing. What  did that mean?
Fuck it, I had no time to mess about. When would be  the right time to enter
the house? I'd just take my chances and go  for it. All  I wanted was to get
the kit together and make some money as soon as possible.
     I pressed  the intercom button and waited, but got no answer. I pressed
it again. A crackling  male voice answered, not the same  one as before, but
just as rough. I knew the routine  now and even a  little Russian.  "Vorsim.
Vorsim."
     The  static stopped, but I knew  to wait,  even  moving  out of the way
after a  minute or  two for the main door  to open.  Soon bolts  were  being
pulled on the inside.
     The door swung open and there stood Eight, still in his red sweatshirt.
As he unlocked the grill, he peered anxiously out into the parking lot.
     "My wheels?"
     I  walked in  and  waited as  he locked up  behind,  still  frantically
scanning the parking lot.
     "The car's fine. Is the guy with the BMW coming back?"
     He shrugged his shoulders as I started to climb the stairs behind him.
     "You'll need a pen and paper, Vorsim."
     "But what about my wheels?"
     I still hadn't answered when  we  entered the third-floor room. With no
natural light the TV room was  much darker, but  it still smelled  the same,
heavy with cigarette smoke. No one was here. Nothing had  changed apart from
the fact that next to  the plastic coated playing cards  on the table, there
was  now a  lamp, dimly glinting on the  Johnnie  Walker bottle,  which  was
three-quarters  empty. Three  ashtrays were full and spilling  butts  on the
once  highly polished table. The TV was  still on, throwing bursts of  light
around the  other  side  of the room. Through a  snow lens I  could see Kirk
Douglas playing a cowboy with the volume down  low; I  could  just hear  the
dialogue.
     "Yo, Nick. The table."
     He pointed at several  cheap  pens and sheets of lined  paper scattered
amongst the crap. Some had tally marks on.
     I sat down  and  started to write a  list,  wondering if the marks were
card-game scores or a record of today's deals.
     Eight pulled up a chair opposite  me. "Come  on, you play. Where's  the
car, man?"
     "Down the road."
     He searched my face. "It's okay?"
     "Yeah, yeah.  Just let me finish this." I wanted this kit organized and
to get the fuck out of there as quickly as I could. "Where is everybody?"
     He  moved  his  arms  around  like  a  break  dancer on  fast  forward.
"Business. You know, my man, business."
     I finished writing and pushed the sheet of paper over to him. He looked
at it and  didn't  appear fazed. I  was expecting lots  of  sucking  through
teeth, but the only question I got was, "Eight kilos?"
     "Yeah, eight  kilos."  They certainly  weren't  the sort  of  kilos  he
normally dealt with.
     "Eight kilos of what, Nikolai?" His shoulders went up and his face went
down. It was obvious he didn't understand anything I'd
     written apart from 8kg. He'd learned to speak English from the TV,  but
he  couldn't read it. Maybe he should have  spent more  time watching Sesame
Street and a bit less watching NYPD Blue.
     "Shall I just say what  I need and you write it down?" I didn't want to
embarrass him, and besides, anything to speed this up.
     He smiled now there was a way out. "Telling me would be cool, yeah."
     Halfway  through dictating  the  list I had to explain what a detonator
was. A few minutes later, when he'd stopped holding the pen in his fist like
a child and his tongue was  back in  his mouth,  he looked very pleased with
himself.
     "Okay. Cool." He jumped  out  of his  seat, studying  his handiwork and
feeling very important. "Wait here, Nikolai, my man." He disappeared through
the door near the fireplace.
     A few seconds later I heard a much older voice roaring with laughter. I
wasn't sure if that was good or bad. I didn't try to see who  it  was; if it
was the older voice who decided whether  I could have it, then spying on him
while he made that decision wasn't  going  to change  anything,  apart  from
pissing him off and making my life more difficult than it already was.
     The  sound  of  footsteps  echoed from  the  stairwell,  accompanied by
volleys of quick, aggressive talking, slowly getting louder  as  people came
up  the  stairs.  I told myself  not  to worry,  even  though  my  heartbeat
quickened as I listened for Carpenter.
     As the voices got louder I  still  couldn't work out whether they  were
angry or that was just the way they talked.
     The door burst open  and I  watched as the Good Fellas came  in  one by
one, ready to grip Johnnie Walker and use him over someone's head.
     There was no Carpenter.  It was the same four card players, taking  off
their leather jackets and  hats. The old one, shopping bag in hand, kept  on
his silver-gray fur Cossack-style number.
     I stayed put, my heart beating even  quicker with relief as  I crumbled
up the first list and put it in my pocket.
     They crossed the room toward me without any acknowledgment, except from
the fur-hatted older  one, who shouted and waved the back  of his hand at me
to get  the fuck  out of his  chair and away  from  the  table. I got up and
moved; no skin off my nose, I was there for other things, not to get macho.
     From  the window I watched the traffic lining up at the  checkpoint. It
looked even more like  a  movie  scene now that floodlights were soaking the
area in a brilliant white  glow. The same couldn't be said for the  lighting
this side of the river.
     All four  now  sat at the  table, pouring the last of the  whiskey  and
lighting  up.  There  was  a  lot  of talk  from them, which drowned out the
low-volume gunfight Kirk was winning on the opposite side  of the room.  The
old guy pulled packets of sausage and dark  rye bread from the  shopping bag
and  threw them  onto  the  table, while  the others tore  open the  plastic
protection around the sliced meat and ripped off lumps of bread.
     I watched, feeling a bit hungry myself, but I didn't imagine I'd  be on
the guest list.
     It became obvious, as  heads nodded  in my direction, mixed  with quick
glances,  that  I  was  the  subject  of conversation. One of the  boys said
something and they all looked  over.  There was a little joke said and a few
snickers. Then it all got serious again as they got back to eating.
     I kept pretending to look out of the window and be unaware of  what was
going on behind me.
     A chair scraped on the bare wooden floor and shoes echoed on the boards
as one of them came  toward me. I turned and  smiled  at  the old guy in his
hat, watching as the TV shone on him in the gloom when he passed the screen.
He was facing me, but talking back to the others, looking very serious. This
wasn't another leg pulling. An index finger started pointing at me as he got
closer, as  if to reinforce whatever he  was  jabbering off about. I  looked
down in submission and slightly turned back toward the window.
     From  less than a foot away  he began  to poke me in the back, shouting
very  close to my head. I turned and looked at him, confused and frightened,
then looked down,  just  like  Tom would have. I smelled garlic and alcohol,
and as  he continued  to rant  and poke, flecks of  sausage hit my face. His
face,  creased and leathered  and showing a day's  stubble,  was now no more
than a few inches away as the  fur from his hat brushed against my forehead.
He bellowed at me again.
     I wasn't going to react by moving or wiping away his shit from my face;
it might antagonize him even more. I  just stood and let him get on with it,
just like I'd done at school when teachers went ballistic.
     I was never scared;  I  knew  they  would finish  or get bored  with it
quickly, so fuck 'em, let them get on with their fun  so I could skip school
straight afterward. It was one of the attitudes that had fucked up my life.
     I moved my  left hand  to the  window  and supported myself,  as  I was
getting the four-finger poke now, my body jerking back with each jab.
     Glancing  across,  I  could  see the  other  three at  the table, their
cigarettes glowing in the semidarkness, enjoying the cabaret.
     The shouting and bad breath continued.
     Sounding as frightened  as I could I stammered, "I am here for Eight...
er ... Vv-vorsim."
     He mocked  me.  "V-v-v-orsim."  Turning  toward  the  table,  he  mimed
injecting his arm, laughing along with the other three.
     He turned back and gave me one last shove against the window. I took it
and  then steadied myself as he  headed back for more garlic sausage. He was
obviously talking  about me  as he pretended to take a  line from  his index
finger, to the accompaniment of further  laughter.  Let  them think it;  the
drama was over. Now where the fuck was Eight?
     I looked out  of  the window  again, slowly wiping all  the shit off my
face as the floorboards echoed toward me once more. He  was coming back  for
seconds.
     He got right up on me again and gave me  a push with both hands. He was
fucking with me; he was having some fun, maybe taking out  some frustration.
The others laughed as I rode the pushes and tried to lean against the window
frame, still showing no resistance, looking forlornly at the floor to appear
even less of a threat.
     He got more serious with each push and I began to get pissed. After one
particularly hard one I stumbled backward toward the television. He followed
me, the  pushes now punctuated  with the  odd slap round the head. I kept my
face down, not wanting him to see  in my eyes what I was really thinking. He
kept  repeating the same  word over and  over, then  he  started  gesturing,
rubbing  fingers  and  pointing  at my  boots.  Did  he  want  my  money and
Timberlands? Money I could understand, but boots?
     This  was getting out of control. If I was right he would be  getting a
lot  more than  he  bargained for if my boots  came off. I couldn't let that
happen.
     I held my hands up in submission. "Stop! Stop! Stop!"
     He did, and waited for his cash.
     I slowly  reached into the inside pocket of the  jacket and  pulled out
the insurance policy, still inside  its protection.  He looked at the condom
and then at me, his eyes narrowing.
     Untying the knot at the end, I probed inside with two fingers.
     He barked a question at me, then, shouting something  at the others, he
grabbed the condom and roughly  fished  inside.  Opening the  thin paper and
partly  tearing  it in  the process, he turned to the table and waved  it at
them, as if sharing the lucky prediction in a fortune cookie.
     Bending down into the  light given off by Kirk on  his horse, he pushed
the note in  front of the  screen.  His  laughter subsided as  he started to
read. Then it stopped completely.  Whatever the  bit of paper said,  it  was
doing the business.
     He walked over to the  others, looking extremely pissed as he muttered,
"Ignaty. Ignaty."
     I hadn't a clue  what that meant and I didn't really care. They all had
a read,  and it  had the same effect  on everyone. They  slowly turned their
heads and stared at me across the room. I brought my hands together in front
of me, not wanting to appear  a threat. It was good  the policy  had worked,
but it  meant I might have to put up with their  loss  of face.  Some people
have the fuck-it  factor when this sort of thing happens,  and regardless of
the  possible fallout  they'll still retaliate because their pride  has been
hurt.  I  couldn't  afford to fuel that  by appearing at all cocky; I  still
wasn't out of the woods. Walking over to the table, my face full of respect,
I put out my  left hand,  making sure  that  Lion  King wasn't  exposed.  It
wouldn't exactly help me maintain my new standing. I nodded  at the sheet of
paper. "Please."
     He may  not  have  understood the word, but he knew  what it meant.  He
handed it back, hating every second of it, and I folded it carefully and put
it in my pocket. Now wasn't the time to start putting it back into a condom.
"Thank you." I gave a  little bow of the head  and, with my heart pumping as
hard as if it was forcing crude oil through my arteries, I turned my back to
them and walked to the TV.
     Sitting  as  casually as  I  could  in the  chair facing the screen,  I
watched Kirk still taming the Wild West, leaning forward to hear
     what was happening  out there in the  desert. My pulse was  louder than
the TV.
     I could tell that once I was out of earshot there was going to be  some
very  loud  shouting, but  for now there was just low, disgruntled murmuring
behind me.  Where  the fuck was Eight? Not wanting  to  turn or  look in any
other direction than the screen, I sat like  a  child who thinks he can't be
seen at bedtime if he just concentrates hard and doesn't move.
     They carried  on mumbling  as glasses were banged with the neck of  the
whiskey bottle to drown their anger. My eyes were on the screen  and my ears
were on them.
     Five minutes later, just as Kirk was about to save the girl, Eight came
back into the room. I didn't understand what he was saying as he fought with
the zip on his leatherette  jacket, but by the look of it, we were  leaving.
Muttering a silent prayer of thanks, I got to my feet and  tried not to show
my relief.
     As Eight went to the door and I passed the table, they got a respectful
bow from me before I followed him downstairs at the speed of sound.
        35
     Eight was a happy camper the moment he caught sight of his beloved Lada
in the noisy parking lot.
     "Where do we go now, Vorsim?"
     "An apartment." He already had the Lada's hood open.
     I heard  two  metallic  bangs as the starter motor got a reminder as to
what it did for a living.
     The  Lada eventually fired up and he drove us  both out  of the parking
lot and turned right, toward the traffic circle. The "komfort baars" all had
enormous doormen standing under their flashing neon to control the evening's
trade. Turning left this time at the traffic circle, away from the river, we
drove past even more establishments and parked trucks.
     The baars' lights slowly  disappeared and the darkness took over again.
Now apartment and industrial buildings lined the road, in between electrical
towers and shells of crumbling masonry.
     Fighting with two trucks that were trying to overtake  each other, both
throwing up waves of ice and  snow, we turned left without  indicating, then
left again down a narrow street, with apartments to the left and a tall wall
to the right.
     Eight threw  the Lada into the side  of the  road and jumped out. "Wait
here, my man."
     Skirting the inevitable tower leg, he headed  for the main door of  one
of the buildings. He stopped and  checked the stenciling, gave me the thumbs
up, then turned back toward the Lada to lock up. I got out and waited.
     The  loud,  constant noise of machinery came from behind the  wall as I
entered a very cold, dimly lit hallway, so narrow I could easily have put my
arms  out and touched  both walls. It stank  of  boiled cabbage.  Tiles were
missing  from the  floor and  the  walls were painted  blue,  apart from the
places where big  chunks  of plaster had fallen to  the  ground.  Nobody had
bothered to sweep them up. The apartment doors,  which  were one-piece sheet
metal with  three locks  and  a spy hole, looked  so low  that you'd have to
stoop when entering.
     We waited for  the  elevator by rows of wooden mailboxes.  Most of  the
doors had been ripped from their hinges and  the others were just left open.
I'd have felt more comfortable walking into a South American jail.
     The  wall  by the  elevator  was covered  with a mass  of  hand painted
instructions,  all in  Russian.  It gave  me something to  look  at while we
listened to the motor groaning inside the shaft.
     The machinery  stopped  with a loud shudder and  the  doors opened.  We
entered an aluminum box, its paneling dented everywhere it was  possible for
boots to have connected. It reeked  of urine.  Eight hit the button  for the
fourth floor and we lurched upward, the elevator stopping suddenly every few
feet, then starting again, as if it had forgotten where to go. Eventually we
reached the  fourth  floor and the doors opened into semidarkness. I let him
step  out ahead  of me.  Turning  left, Eight stumbled, and as  I followed I
found out why: a young kid was curled up on the floor.
     As  the  doors slammed  shut again, cutting  out even  more of the  dim
light, I  bent down  to examine his small body, bulked  out by two  or three
badly knitted  sweaters. By his  head  lay two empty  chip bags, and  thick,
dried  snot  hung from  his nostrils to his mouth.  He  was breathing and he
wasn't bleeding, but even in  the feeble light from  the ceiling bulb it was
obvious that he was  in shit state.  Zits covered the area  around his mouth
and saliva dribbled from his lips. He was about  the same  age as  Kelly;  I
suddenly thought of her and felt a surge of emotion. As long as I was around
she would never be exposed to this kind of shit. As long as I was around ...
I could see the expression on Dr. Hughes' face.
     Eight looked  down  at the boy  with  total disinterest. He  kicked the
bags, turned away, and carried on walking. I dragged the local glue head out
of the way of the elevator and followed.
     We turned left along a hall, Eight singing some Russian rap song
     and pulling a  string of keys from his jacket. Reaching the door  right
at the end, he  messed about, trying to work out which  key went where until
finally it opened, then groping for the light switch.
     The room we entered definitely wasn't  the source of the boiled cabbage
stench.  I could smell the heavy odor of  wooden crates and gun oil; I would
have  known  that  smell  anywhere. Proust's  friend's childhood might  have
rushed back to him when he caught a whiff of madeleine cakes;  this one took
me straight back to  the age of  sixteen and the very first day I joined the
army as a boy soldier in '76. Cakes would have been better.
     The inevitable single bulb  lit up a very  small hall, no  more than  a
couple of feet square. There were  two doors leading off; Eight went through
the  one  on the left  and I followed,  closing the front door behind me and
throwing all the locks. Only one of the four  bulbs  worked  in  the ceiling
cluster that any 1960s family would have been  proud of. The  small room was
stacked  with wooden  crates,  waxed  cardboard  boxes,  and loose explosive
ordnance,  all  stenciled with Cyrillic  script. The whole  lot  looked very
Chad--Chad that was dangerously past its use-by date.
     Nearest to  me was a stack  of brown wooden crates  with  rope handles.
Lifting  the lid off the top one, I recognized the dull  green bedpan shapes
at  once. Eight,  grinning from ear  to ear, made the noise of an explosion,
his hands flying everywhere. He  seemed to know  they  were land  mines too.
"See, my man, I get what you want. Guarantee of satisfaction, yes?"
     I  just  nodded as  I looked around some  more. Piles of other  kit lay
wrapped in brown military wax paper. Elsewhere, damp cardboard boxes stacked
on  top  of  each  other  had collapsed,  spilling their  contents  onto the
floorboards. Lying  in  a corner  were half  a  dozen  electric  detonators,
aluminum  tubes  about  the  size of  a  quarter-smoked cigarette  with  two
eighteen-inch silver wire leads coming out of one end. The silver leads were
loose, not twisted together, which was frightening stuff: it meant they were
ready to act as antennae for any stray extraneous electricity--a radio wave,
say,  or  energy from a mobile phone--to set  them  off and probably all the
rest of  the shit in  there, too. This place was a nightmare. It  seemed the
Russians hadn't been too  fussed about  where this kind of stuff ended up in
the early nineties.
     Picking up the detonators one by one, I twisted the leads
     together to  close the circuit, then checked out the rest  of  the kit,
ripping open cardboard boxes. Eight did the same, either to make me think he
knew what he was doing or just out of curiosity. I gripped his arm and shook
my head, not wanting him to play with anything. It would be nice  to get out
of here with all my bits and without him losing any more fingers.
     He looked hurt,  so  once I'd  finished  sorting  the dets  out and had
stored them  in an  empty  ammo  box,  I pulled out the  policy  to give him
something  to do. "What does this say, Vorsim?" I presumed he could read his
own language.
     As he moved  under the light,  I spotted  some dark-green det cord.  It
wasn't in its handy 200-yard reel as  I would have liked; there seemed to be
two yards here, another ten  yards there, but then I  saw a partly used reel
with maybe eighty or ninety yards left, which would certainly do the trick.
     I put the reel of det cord  to  one side  and  went to  check the other
rooms.  That was  easy  enough because each  was about the size of  a  broom
closet; there  was a tiny kitchen-cum-bathroom cum-toilet  arrangement and a
bedroom that was even smaller. What I was looking for was plastic explosive,
but there wasn't any. The only PE around here was in the antitank mines, and
there were certainly enough of those to give me P for Plenty.
     I returned to the main room and lifted one of them  from  the open box.
These were either TM 40s or 46s, I could never remember which was which; all
I knew was  that one was made of metal and the other  of plastic. These ones
were metal,  about a foot in diameter and  weighed  around twenty pounds, of
which over twelve pounds was  PE.  They were shaped like old-fashioned brass
bed warmers,  the sort that  hang on  stone fireplaces, alongside  the horse
brasses, in country inns. Instead of the long broomstick, these things had a
swiveling carry handle, like on the side of a mess tin.
     It was going to be a pain in the ass to get the PE out of these things,
but what was I expecting?
     Placing the  mine  on the bare floorboards, I tried to unscrew the cap,
which was in the center of the top. Before laying  it, all you had to do was
replace  the  cap with a detonation  device--normally a fuse  and  detonator
combination--then stand well back and wait for a tank.
     When it eventually started to move, shifting the years of grime
     that had formed a seal, I knew at once that it was really old ordnance.
The  smell  of marzipan hit  my nostrils.  The greenish explosive had become
obsolete in  recent  years.  It  still  worked,  it  did  the  job,  but the
nitroglycerine fucked  up not  only  armor,  but also  the  head and skin of
anyone  preparing  it. You were guaranteed a fearsome headache if you worked
with it in  a confined space  and extreme pain if you got it on a cut. I was
taking enough aspirin already without having to deal with that.
     Eight sparked up. "Hey, Nikolai, this paper is really cool."
     "What does it say?"
     "First  of  all, his name  is Ignaty.  Then it  says, you are  his man.
Whatever you need must be yours. He protects  you, my man." He looked at me.
"It gets heavy.  It says, "If you do not  help my friend,  I will kill  your
wife; and then, after you  have  been crying for two weeks, I will kill your
children.  Two weeks after  that,  I  will  kill you." That's heavy shit, my
man."
     "Who is Ignaty?"
     He gave a shrug. "He's your guy, am I right?"
     No he wasn't,  he was Val's.  The card players had certainly recognized
the name, that was for sure. I took the policy from Eight's hands and put it
back in my jacket pocket. Now I knew what Liv meant about Tom  receiving the
kind of  threat that made the Brits look a bit weak by comparison. No wonder
he'd kept his mouth shut and just done his time.
     Between us we  carried several boxes  down to the car, passing the  kid
still  lying where  I'd left him. On the last trip down, Eight locked up the
apartment and we stood by the Lada  with the hum and groan of the factory in
the background. He was going to walk from there as he wanted to go and see a
friend.
     I said goodbye, feeling more than a bit  sorry for him. Like everything
else in this place, he, too, was just fucked over.
     "Thanks a lot, mate, and I'll bring the car back in about two days."
     I  shook his cold  hand and then  grabbed the door handle as he  walked
away.
     He  called  after me.  "Yo,  Nikolai. Hey  ..." There  was  suddenly  a
less-confident  tone in  his  voice. "Can  I ... can  I come to England with
you?"
     I didn't look back, just wanting to get on my way. "Why?"
     "I can work for you. My English is cool."
     I could  hear him  getting closer. "Let me go with you, man. Everything
will be cool. I want to go to England and then I will go to America."
     "Tell you what, I'll be back soon and we'll talk about it, okay?"
     "When?"
     "Like I said, two days."
     He  shook  my  hand again with all the fingers he had left. "Cool. I'll
see you soon, Nikolai. It'll be cool. I will sell  my car,  and .. . and get
new clothes."
     He virtually skipped back up the road, waving at me, thinking about his
new life as I gave the starter  motor  some  encouragement, fired it up, and
did  a three-point turn  to back out  onto the street, passing Eight on  the
way.
     I'd  only driven  a  hundred  yards when  I stopped  and put the car in
reverse. Fuck it, I couldn't do this.
     As I drew alongside and  wound down the window he greeted me with a big
smile. "What's up, my man?"
     "I'm sorry, Vorsim, I can't take you" I corrected myself "will not take
you to England."
     His shoulders and face slumped. "Why not, man.  Why not? You just said,
man ..."
     I  felt  an asshole. "They won't let you in.  You're Russian. You  need
visas  and  all that  stuff. And even if they  do, you won't be able to stay
with me. I don't have a house and I haven't got any work I can give you. I'm
really sorry, but I can't  and I won't do it. That's it, mate. I'll drop the
car off in two days."
     And that was it. I wound the window up and  headed back into the center
of town, so I knew where I was and could pick up the main Narva-Tallinn drag
again.
     I could have lied to him, but I remembered as  a kid all the trips that
my  parents were going to take me  on,  all the  presents  I was going to be
given,  all the promises of nice vacations and all the rest of the shit that
had  never happened. It was just said to keep me quiet. I  couldn't have let
Eight get  all psyched up, burning  bridges, and  all  for nothing. Liv  was
right: Sometimes it's better to fuck people off with the truth.
     I found my bearings in town and headed west. My destination was a hotel
room where I could prepare all the shit I had in the trunk.
     I was still feeling quite sorry for Eight; not for dumping him, because
I knew it was the right thing to do, but because of what the future held for
him. Absolute jack shit.
     A gas station  appeared, exactly the  same as the one in  Tallinn, very
blue,  and as  clean,  bright, and out of  place  as  an alien spacecraft. I
pulled in and filled up. Parking off to one side of the building, I went  to
pay just  as the two staff had started to think  they had their first runner
of the night.
     I was the only customer they had.  There was  a small section in  their
shop that actually  sold car parts; the rest of the space was given  over to
beer, chocolate, and sausages. I picked up five blue  nylon tow ropes--their
entire stock--and  all  eight  rolls of  black  insulation tape  on display,
together with a  cheap multi tool  set that would probably break  the second
time  it  was  used. Finally,  I  picked up a  flashlight  and two  sets  of
batteries, and two of the  small  rectangular ones with terminals on  top. I
couldn't think of anything else I needed just now, apart from some chocolate
and meat and a couple of cans of orange soda.
     The guy who took my money had more zits on his head than brain cells in
it. He was trying to work out the change, even though the  register had told
him.  Eventually  he handed  me  my shopping  bags; I  wanted some more  and
pointed. "More? More?" It took a few seconds of miming and a couple of small
coins, but I came out with half a dozen spares.
     It was sausage  and chocolate time. I  sat in the car  with  the engine
running, stuffing my face as I looked out at the main drag. Beyond  it was a
massive poster site showing me the wonders of  Fuji film, covering the whole
side of  a building as the trucks screamed past.  I didn't blame them; I was
in a hurry to get out of town, too.
     Feeling sick after  eating everything I'd bought, I rejoined the mayhem
on the road. My destination was Voka,  a coastal  town to the north, between
Narva and Kohtla-Jarve, where I was going to prepare for the attack tomorrow
afternoon. I had chosen Voka for no other reason than that I liked the name,
and  that, since it was on the coast,  there was probably a better chance of
finding a room.
     Voka turned out to  be just  what I was expecting,  a small  beach town
with one main drag. Maybe it had been  a bit of a hot spot during the Soviet
era, but  from what I could see  of  it in my headlights  and the occasional
functioning streetlight,  it was  now  very  tired and  flaky,  the Estonian
equivalent   of  those  Victorian  places  in  Britain  that  reached  their
expiration date in the seventies  when everyone started getting on planes to
Spain.  When the Russians had  packed their bags a  few years  earlier, this
place, too, must have rolled over and died. There was no one about; everyone
was probably at home watching the end of another Kirk Douglas movie.
     I drove slowly along the coast road with the Baltic on  my left and the
car rocking with the wind off the sea.  There weren't many lights on  in the
apartments to my right, just the glow now and then of a
        TV.
     Eventually  I  found a  hotel  with a sea view. At first glance it  had
looked  more like a four-story  apartment building,  until I saw the  small,
flickering neon sign to the left of its double glass  doors. As I locked the
Lada, waves crashed onto whatever sort of beach was  behind me, and the wind
buffeted my jacket and hair.
     The fluorescent lights  in the  hallway nearly  blinded me. It was like
walking into  a  television  studio,  and almost as hot. A  TV  blared  away
somewhere in Russian. I was starting to catch the intonation quite well.
     The  sound came from  in front of me. I  walked along the hall  until I
found its source. At the bottom of a flight of stairs, a sliding
     window  was set  chest high into the wall. Behind  it sat an old woman,
glued to the screen of an old black-and-white TV.
     There  was plenty of  time  to study her while  trying  to  attract her
attention.  She  wore  thick  woolen tights  and slippers,  a  chunky  black
cardigan, a gaudy flowery dress, and crocheted woolen hat. While she watched
the TV,  she spooned lumpy soup  out of what looked like a large salad bowl.
The  TV had  a coat hanger for an antenna that seemed  to  be the law around
here. It reminded me of the times I  had to  dance  around the room with  an
indoor antenna in my hand so my stepdad could follow the horse racing.
     She  finally  noticed me, but didn't  bother with a greeting or  asking
what I wanted. Nodding politely and smiling,  I pointed at a sheet  of paper
taped to the window, which I presumed was the rate.
     "Can I have a room, please?" I asked in my  favorite Australian accent.
I was getting rather fond of my Crocodile  Dundee impression. It was  wasted
on her.
     There was a clatter of footsteps from the wooden staircase and a couple
appeared, both dressed in long overcoats. He  was a small, skinny guy in his
late forties, slightly balding on top, but with the rest of his hair greased
back in  the  style that  Eastern Europeans,  for some reason,  think  looks
marvelous, and a big droopy mustache. They walked past without  giving me or
the old woman a second  glance. The woman, I  noticed,  was  at least twenty
years younger  than  Baldy, and considerably less smelly. He had a body odor
that no deodorant could tame.
     The old woman handed me a towel  the size of a tea  cloth  and a set of
what had once been white sheets. Muttering something, she held one finger in
the air, then two. I guessed she meant number of nights. I showed her one.
     She nodded,  writing  down some numbers  which I took to  be the price.
EEK150 for the night about $10. A bargain.  I couldn't wait to see the room.
I gave her  the money and she put the key, attached to  a six-inch length of
2x4, on top of the sheets and got back to  her soup and TV. I didn't get  to
learn the Estonian for "have a nice day."
     I  walked up  the  stairs  and  found  Room 4. It  was bigger than  I'd
expected, but every  bit as  drab.  There was  a  dark  veneered  chip board
wardrobe,  three brown  furry  nylon blankets  on  the stained, multicolored
mattress, and a pair of old, saliva-stained pillows. I was surprised to find
a small fridge in the corner. When I checked I
     found  it wasn't plugged in, but it was still probably  worth  an extra
sur from the Estonian Tourist Board. Next to it, sitting on a brown veneered
table, was a seventies-style TV, also  unplugged.  The carpet was made up of
two different colors  of hard-wearing  office-type stuff, in dark  brown and
what might once have been  cream. The wallpaper was bubbling in places, with
brown damp stains rounding off  the decor. But the piece de resistance was a
cushioned corner unit and coffee table, set off by a large, triangular thick
glass ashtray.  The  beige nylon seating  was heavily soiled  and the coffee
table had  cigarette burns all around the edge. The room was cold and it was
obviously up to the guest to put the heaters on.
     To  the right  of the main door  was  the bathroom.  I'd check that out
later. First, I bent over one of  the two electric heaters.  It was a small,
square three-bar thing on the door side of the bed. Plugging it in,  I threw
the switch and  the elements  started to heat up, filling  the air with  the
acrid smell of burning dust.
     The second heater, nearer the window, was a more elaborate,  decorative
model, with two long bars and, above that, a black plastic log effect with a
red  background.  I  hadn't seen one since  I was at my  auntie's house, age
seven. I plugged it in, too, and watched as its red bulb lit  up beneath the
plastic and a disc started  to spin  above it  to provide a flame effect. It
was almost better than the TV.
     I went into the bathroom. Its walls and floor were tiled, mostly brown,
but others, blues and reds, had replaced some of the broken ones in the days
when  broken  ones  were  replaced.  The management's  policy had  evidently
changed in recent years.
     There was another two-bar electric heater on the wall above  the  bath,
as well  as an ancient, oval-shaped gas  water heater  with  a visible pilot
light  and a long steel tap which swiveled so you could fill either the bath
or the sink. I was expecting  the  worst, but when I  turned the tap  on the
pilot  light  became  a  raging flame,  with  sound effects to match. I  was
jealous. I  wanted one in my house. The water  was  instantly hot, which was
good news; I'd be needing a  lot  of that  soon. Turning it off, I went back
into the bedroom, where the heaters were starting to do their stuff. Pulling
the curtain aside, I had a look out to sea. I couldn't see  a  thing, except
snow swirling in the light spilling from the window.
     I  closed the curtains and went  down to unload the  car, starting with
two mines in a box and the my purchases from the gas station.
     The old woman never looked up once  as I came and went,  either because
she  knew better than to enquire into a customer's business,  or because she
was genuinely gripped by the dubbed version of the sixties Batman TV series.
     Once back in the room I started running the bath, slowing the flow to a
steamy trickle.  I used a screwdriver from the multi tool set to help remove
the two mine  caps and could  smell the green PE  the moment  the first came
off.
     Holding each mine in turn under the tap until it filled with hot water,
I then  lowered them into  the bath, still letting the  water run so that it
would  eventually  cover them. Then I  went down  to  the car and  collected
another two. They were heavy and I didn't want the drama of dropping one. It
took three trips in all to get everything upstairs. On the final trip I took
another newspaper from the back seat and covered the windshield.
     I kept  unscrewing mine caps  until all six  were  in  the bath in  two
layers, representing a total of over  seventy pounds of PE. Molten explosive
would have been injected into the dull green casings at the factory and left
to set to  an almost  plastic state; I'd  have to wait for the hot water  to
soften it again before I could scrape it out.
     Back in  the bedroom I turned on the  television  in time to see Batman
and  Robin  tied together  in  a  giant coffee  cup,  an  animated  American
voice-over telling me I'd have to wait until next week for the next exciting
instalment, followed  by  the Russian  translation which  said  they  really
couldn't give a fuck what happened.
     I  got hold of the reel of  det  cord,  which looked just like a  green
clothesline,  except that  instead of  string inside  the  plastic covering,
there was  high explosive.  This stuff  would have the job of initiating the
two charges I was going  to construct with the PE once I'd got it out of the
mines.  I cut off  about the first  foot of cord with  my Leatherman; it was
probable  that  the  explosive  core  had  been  affected  by  the  climatic
conditions and/or age, but if so, the contamination  normally wouldn't  have
penetrated further than six inches. The reel then went to the window side of
the bed; only prepared kit would  go this side from now on.  That way things
wouldn't get confusing as I became more tired.
     Without  any  announcement, Charlie's  Angels suddenly  burst  onto the
screen. I hoped it was the series with Cheryl Ladd. Farrah Fawcett never did
it for me when I was a kid. As the monotone
     Russian translation started up I went back into the bathroom. The water
level still  had a way to go as the steaming water trickled out of the water
heater.
     Time  to check the  batteries.  They were normal rectangular 9volt ones
with press-stud tops for the positive and  negative terminals, the sort that
are used  in smoke detectors  or  toys. One of them would be  the initiation
device, providing  the  electrical  charge that  would run along the  firing
cable, which I still  had to  obtain. It would then initiate the  detonator,
which would fire up the det cord, and, in turn, the charges.  All this could
only happen if the power from the battery was strong enough to  overcome the
resistance from the firing cable and  det. You attach  the firing cable to a
flashlight bulb; if it lights up when you transmit power along the length of
firing cable, you've got enough juice to make the thing go bang.
     It  was getting warm enough  to take my jacket  off  now.  I  took  the
insurance policy out of  the inside pocket;  it was looking a bit  the worse
for wear, so I folded it neatly, fished around for the condom, and  stuck it
into the small key pocket on the front right-hand side of my jeans.
     Next, I pulled the plug off the bedside  lamp and ripped the  other end
of the cord out of  the lamp base, ending up with  about five feet of firing
cable--not enough.  I needed to be close to the explosion, but five feet was
suicidally close. The fridge cord gave me another five.
     The bath ought to have been almost full by now. I went and checked just
as  Charlie's Angels,  dressed  up  as  old  women  but  still looking  very
glamorous  and without a hair out of place, were about  to infiltrate an old
folks' home on some secret mission.
     All the mines were covered with  hot water, so I turned off the faucet.
I  couldn't  see  a toilet brush anywhere,  but  there was a rubber plunger.
Using its handle to prod the  PE in one of the mines, I found  it  was still
too hard.
     Footsteps  in the hall signaled  that the  hotel  had some new  guests.
There was a female giggle and lusty Russian male talk as they passed, then I
heard the  door next  to mine  bang shut. Stretched out  on the bed watching
Charlie's Angels free the world of evil, I connected the two lengths of flex
and taped them up.
     Ten  feet  of  firing  cable was  still not enough.  The trouble was, I
wouldn't know how much I needed until I was on target, and I'd
     have to err on the side of safety. I wished I had about a hundred yards
of the stuff, but where would I find some  at  this time  of night? Tomorrow
would be too late; I wouldn't have enough time to mess around  looking for a
hardware store. I had to make more of my own, so it was bye-bye, Cheryl. Due
to the positioning of the wall outlet, the  power  line for the TV was quite
long; in total I ended up with about eighteen feet of cable.
     With the  TV now off  I could  hear the  romance developing next  door.
There  were  plenty  of oohs and aahs, a bit  of giggling and a few slaps on
bare flesh. I didn't need the dubbing.
     I joined the  last  section of wire  together using  the Western  Union
pigtail method. Chinese laborers used it to repair downed telegraph lines in
the  Wild  West; it's basically a  reef  knot  with  the  tail ends  twisted
together. It  not only guarantees conductivity, but makes  it  unlikely  the
connection will get pulled apart.
     The three lengths were all of different thicknesses and metals, but  as
long  as they  conducted  electricity  that  was  all I was worried about. I
wrapped the copper wires at one end around the flashlight bulb  and taped it
in place. Now  all I had to do  was complete the  circuit with the two steel
wires  at the  other end of  the cable on the  battery terminals  and  bang,
perfect, the bulb glowed.
     I repeated the process with the other battery, and both worked for now.
If  they both  failed on  target and I didn't  get detonation,  I'd  have to
switch to plan B and put on the bandanna.
     Untaping  the wire  from  the  bulb, I  twisted  the two  copper  wires
together, then the  two steel wires at the other end, and earthed it against
the back  of the fridge. That would take away  any electricity  still in the
cable; the last thing I wanted  was to connect the wires to a  detonator and
have the thing explode immediately. That wouldn't be a good day out.
     The coil  of firing cable joined the det cord on the window side of the
bed and  I placed the  two  batteries on top  of  the TV. You never keep the
initiation  device  with the detonators or  the rest of  the equipment;  the
fuckup factor is never far  away, and I wasn't taking any chances. The  only
time  all  the  equipment  should  come together is when  you  are going  to
detonate the  charges, a lesson one or two Provisional IRA boys learned  the
hard way back in the eighties.
     The foreplay was over next door and they were getting down to
     the heavy stuff. Either she was really enjoying it or she was going for
an Oscar as  the bed tried  to  bang itself  through the  wall  and into  my
bathroom.
     When I checked the mines,  the water in the bath was rippling  with the
vibrations coming through the wall. There was still a while to  go  before I
could start digging out the PE; to use the time productively, I took a sheet
of toilet paper with me, put my jacket back on and walked out into the hall.
The  shag fest reached a rousing crescendo as I  placed a small strip of the
toilet paper by the bottom hinge  and closed the door on it, checking  there
was  just  enough  paper  to be seen.  Silence fell next  door  as I left my
neighbors  to  their cigarettes  and Charlie's Angels  and  headed  for  the
stairs.
     The old woman was still glued to her TV. Frozen air clawed at  my lungs
as I peeled the newspaper  off the Lada's windshield. The engine turned over
sluggishly after I'd zapped the starter motor, but eventually it sparked up.
I knew how it felt.
        37
     I cruised slowly  around  town  looking  for the materials  I needed to
construct the explosive charges, attacking  another four aspirin to sort out
the headache that I'd developed after playing with the mines.
     Spotting a row of dumpsters behind a small parade of shops, I pulled in
and sifted through the old bits of cardboard packaging, tins and rags. There
was  nothing that would do  for me, apart from a partly broken wooden pallet
resting against the wall.  Three sections, each about a yard long, were soon
in the  back of the car while a dog, cooped up  in one of the shops,  barked
its head off in frustration at not being  able to get at me. One section was
going to help me  get over the wall, the other two were  going to  prop  the
charges in place on target.
     Lights were off and curtains were drawn as I left the area in search of
more  stuff, driving through  the  heavy mist that rolled  in from the  sea.
After ten minutes of  patrolling  the  ghost town I  saw a building that was
worth a closer look. Trash was piled up outside it, but it was the structure
itself that made me curious.
     It  turned out to be an air-raid shelter,  built in  the days when they
were expecting Uncle Sam's hairy-assed B-52 bombers to come and dump on them
big time.  There was a  concrete  stairwell down to below ground level and a
thick metal door,  which was padlocked. The stairwell was full of wind-blown
litter  and heavier stuff that  had been fly-tipped, and it was in among all
this that I found some expanded styrofoam packaging. I selected two  pieces,
each just
     under a yard square. The corners were higher than the middle, which was
contoured to fit the shape of whatever it had been made to protect; here and
there holes had been punched  to  save material and give the structure a bit
more  strength. I  now had  the frames for  the charges.  It  reminded me of
having to make  claymore antipersonnel mines out of ice-cream cartons before
going into Iraq during the Gulf War.
     The  last item  I needed was a brick, and in a place like this I didn't
have to look far for one.
     Back  at the hDtel, the  old woman had deserted her post and the TV was
running what looked like a Russian talk  show,  with the host and his guests
talking at each other very  glumly. It looked as  though they were trying to
decide which one of them should commit suicide first.
     I walked up the stairs with my finds in my arms, feeling pleased that I
had everything I needed for the attack and could now sit tight.
     The  old  woman had just  come  out of the  door next to  mine and  was
heading  along the  hall  away from me with rumpled  sheets in her arms. The
room was probably rented  by  the hour, and  she  was cleaning up after  the
latest event.
     With  the faint sound of the talk  show in  the distance, I checked the
telltale. It hadn't moved. I opened the door and  waited for the heat to hit
me.
     As  I took the first step inside, I  knew straight away  that something
wasn't right.  The plastic log-effect fire  wasn't dancing round  the walls,
but it had been when I left.
     I  dropped the stuff I was carrying.  The brick hit  the  carpet  as  I
started to step back into the hall. And that was the last  thing I did for a
while, apart from trying to get off the bedroom floor, only to get a blow to
the kidneys  that put me back  down.  It was  grit-theteethandcurl-up  time.
There was no  time to  draw  breath.  I was roughly turned over and a weapon
muzzle was pushed  hard into my face. I felt my jacket being pulled  up as a
hand frisked me.
     Once I had curled up again  and played nearly dead, I risked opening my
eyes. The oldest of the Good Fellas towered above me, wearing his silver fur
hat and black leather coat.
     I could also see another pair of legs belonging to someone else,
     also in black. The two  men  stood on either side of me now, whispering
aggressively to each other with lots of  arm movement  and pointing  at  the
dickhead on the floor.
     I made the  most of this time while they waffled, trying  to take  long
deep breaths but finding  I couldn't. It was  too  painful. I had to  get by
with short, sharp gasps, trying to minimize the pain in my stomach.
     Then I looked up and saw Carpenter. Our eyes locked and he  spat at me.
I wasn't scared, I  was just depressed that this should be happening to  me,
so much so that I couldn't even  be bothered to wipe the mucus from my face.
I just lay there not really caring. How had Carpenter even known I was here?
Fuck it, who cared?  I'd  been dropped by  two very  pissed-off people and I
didn't know if I was ever going to leave the room alive.
     They pulled  me up by my armpits, one man  on each side, and propped me
up on the end  of the bed. Pushing my hands into my armpits, I tried to bend
forward and get my head down  onto my thighs to  protect myself,  to be  the
damaged gray man that was no threat to anybody.
     It wasn't going to happen. I took a blow  on the right side of my face,
which took me straight down onto  the bed. I didn't  need to pretend; it had
done me some damage.
     Expecting more, I curled  up on my  side. Starbursts did their best  to
black me out as pain scorched through  my body. I could feel myself starting
to lose it, and I really couldn't let that happen.  I worked hard to keep my
eyes open.  I  was  a bag  of shit, but  I knew that  I  had to  pull myself
together or I'd be dead.
     The two  of them were  still talking, arguing I couldn't tell which  in
the  background  somewhere. I just  lay there taking  short,  sharp breaths,
keeping my eyes open and coughing blood onto the furry blanket.
     My  jaw  joint  was grinding  on itself.  I probed with  my  tongue and
discovered one of my  side teeth moving as a numb, swollen feeling developed
on the right  side of my  face. I felt as if I'd just  had a session with  a
psychopathic dentist.
     With my head  on  the  bed, I  was  level and in a direct line with the
coffee table. My fuzzy vision locked on to the large glass ashtray.
     I switched my attention to Carpenter and the  old guy. They didn't even
stop their waffle as a couple of people passed our door,
     heading toward the end of  the  hall. The older guy had a pistol in his
hand; Carpenter had his  weapon  in a shoulder holster, which I could see as
he put his hands  on his hips and pulled back on  his  unzipped jacket. They
were both pointing at me. Carpenter seemed to be explaining who I was, or at
least what I had done.
     I could also see now  what the  older  guy had hit  me with. His  hands
could have done the job just as well, judging by the  size of them, but he'd
opted  for  a  leather  strop that looked  like a big  dildo, and  which was
probably filled with ball bearings.
     The two of them  were a  couple of  yards to one  side  of  me, and the
ashtray was  one  yard to the other. Both men were still more interested  in
their argument than in me,  but would no doubt come to  a decision very soon
as to  how to kill me  probably slowly if Carpenter  had anything to do with
it.
     I had to act, but I also knew that first I had to take a few seconds to
sort  myself out. I was still fazed; I'd have to break my actions down  into
stages in my head or I was going to fuck up and get killed.
     I squinted at  the heavy lump of glass on  the table that might save my
life and, taking a deep breath,  I sprang off the bed. Keeping my head down,
I charged at  the two black shapes in front of  me. All I needed  was to get
them  off balance  to give  me just  a  few seconds. Holding  out my arms, I
bulldozed into the two lots of black leather and,  not waiting  to see  what
happened to them, I swung my head round and looked for the ashtray. A wheezy
gasp came from behind me as they made contact with the wall.
     Eyes still fixed on the glass shape on the table, my body pivoted as my
legs started to move toward it. Muffled shouts came from behind. That didn't
matter,  the ashtray did. If  they were fast enough to recover, or I was too
slow to react, I would never know about it.
     Slapping down my palm, as if swatting a fly, I gripped the ashtray.  My
body  was  still facing the table with  the two guys behind me.  Swinging my
head round, I focused on the old guy's now hatless head. My body turned as I
took the three paces toward him, brandishing the fistful of glass in the air
like a knife.
     I closed in,  ignoring Carpenter as he came toward  me from  the right.
The one I wanted was the old guy, the one with the pistol in his hand.
     His face didn't register  surprise  or  fear, just anger,  as he pushed
himself off the wall and raised his weapon.
     My eyes were fixed on his face as I swung the ashtray downward,  making
contact above his  cheekbone.  His skin folded over just below his eye, then
split open. He fell with  a scream, his body banging against my  legs on the
way down. Stage three was complete.
     I heard, rather than saw, the black shape from the right, almost on top
of me.
     I didn't have a stage four. It was open  house  now. Not even bothering
to turn  and look  at Carpenter, I just lashed out wildly.  The  thick glass
hammered against his skull twice on his way down, both times with such force
that my arm jarred to a halt as I made contact.
     I jumped onto his chest and continued to rain blows onto the top of his
head. Somewhere  in the back of  my  mind I knew I'd lost it, but  I  didn't
care. I was just remembering the way this fucker had kept firing rounds into
the woman  in  the elevator,  and the bastards who'd ruined Kelly's life  by
hosing down her family in Washington.
     Three  times there  was  a  crunching, cracking sound as his skull gave
way.
     I  raised  my hand,  ready to hit again, but stopped  myself.  I'd done
enough. Thick, almost brown blood oozed from his  head wounds. He  had  lost
function in his eyes and  had a vacant  stare, wide  open and  dull,  pupils
fully  dilated. The blood  spread onto  the carpet, which  soaked it up like
blotting paper.
     Still  sitting  astride  him I rested  both hands  on  his  chest,  not
enjoying the fact that  I'd  lost control. To survive, you sometimes have to
get really revved up, but losing it completely, I didn't like that.
     I turned to check  the old guy. The strop and the  handgun were on  the
floor, and  so  was he, curled  up, holding his hat against  his face like a
dressing and moaning to himself. His legs flailed weakly on the carpet.
     Slowly hauling myself  to my feet, I kicked away both weapons. The  gun
looked like a  .38 special revolver,  the short-barreled sort used by  1930s
American gangsters.
     Pulling  his  jacket off his  shoulders and  midway  down  his arms,  I
dragged  him over the top of Carpenter  and  into  the bathroom, leaving his
bloodstained fur hat behind. It was obvious now why he always wore  it: only
a few wisps of hair covered his head.
     He was still moaning and probably feeling quite sorry for  himself, but
he was alive and that meant he was a threat. My jaw was
     aching as I jolted up and down with  the effort of dragging him, but at
least  my heart rate was starting to calm. There was no other option, he had
to die. I wasn't happy about it, but I couldn't  leave him here alive when I
set off for the Maliskia compound tomorrow. He could compromise everything I
was here for.
     I let go of him and he slumped  onto the tiled bathroom floor. I turned
on the hot water and the water hearter surged into action.
     The extent of the  injury to his face was  now clear to me.  A two inch
furrow was gouged  in his cheek, wide enough to put a couple of fingers  in.
Beneath the mess of torn flesh gleamed an area of exposed white cheekbone.
     A check of his wallet as he lay and groaned to himself revealed all the
normal stuff.  Only the money  was  of interest, both Russian  and Estonian;
once that was tucked into my jeans I went back into the bedroom.
     Stepping  back over Carpenter,  I  picked up the  .38 special from  the
floor and one of the furry blankets.
     I pulled back  the  hammer  so the weapon  was cocked.  When  I came to
squeeze the trigger I didn't want the hammer moving  all the way back before
coming forward to fire the round; it might get caught in the blanket.
     I walked back into  the bathroom and, not even looking at  his  face in
case his eyes  were  on  me, I unceremoniously  jammed the  muzzle into  the
blanket and onto his head, quickly wrapped the furry nylon around the weapon
and fired.
     There was a dull thud and then a crack as the round exited his head and
shattered the tile  beneath it. I  let the blanket fall and cover  his face,
and listened. There  was no apparent reaction to  the round from outside the
room; this was the sort  of  place where you didn't ask too many  questions,
even if there was a gang fuck going on next door. The only things  my senses
picked up were the noise of the water heater and the smell of burned nylon.
     I  turned  the water off and the  water heater died as I moved into the
bedroom.  I dug  out Carpenter's wallet and tucked his money into  my jeans,
too. His weapon was still in its shoulder holster, but only just. I realized
how lucky I had been. Another fraction of a  second and it could have been a
totally different story. The pistol  was a Makharov, a Russian copy of James
Bond's Walther PPK, and only good as a close-up, personal protection weapon,
perfect for when
     someone got in  a huff with you in  a komfort  baar. At longer range it
would be more lethal to throw the  thing at them. No wonder its nickname  in
certain quarters was "the disco gun." I decided to keep this one. The pistol
grip on  these Russian versions was bulky, making  it awkward to get  a firm
hold first time  when drawing down with small  hands like mine, but  it  was
more use than the .38 special.
     Carpenter's blood was thickening on the carpet,  which couldn't  absorb
the amount leaking out of him. Pulling another blanket off the  bed,  I trod
it down around his head to  try and stop it seeping through the floorboards.
I ended up grabbing his head and wrapping it in the blanket.
     I opened the main door into the hall, checked  left and right, then had
a  look  at the intact telltale. Why had  it failed me, why was it  still in
place? I could see the  answer at once: It was stuck to  the door frame. The
sponge-strip draft  protector must have been  put there soon after the stuff
was invented; it was now brown and gooey with age. Lesson learned. Don't mix
telltales with old draft protectors.
     Switching the fire back on, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
        38
     I  used  the toilet-plunger handle again  to  prevent burning my hands,
wedging  it into a mine cap and fishing it out,  then turning it upside down
to drain.
     I carried it like that into the bedroom, slipping on the  old man's hat
on the way. The blood hadn't  soaked in as much as it had into the carpet or
blanket,   which  probably  meant  the  fur  was   real  and  was  resisting
penetration.
     Laying  the mine on the coffee table, I crossed the  room  to open  the
window, letting  in the cold sea  air big time. Waves  were  breaking on the
other side of the road.
     The explosive, which had been more or less  rigid plastic, was now soft
enough to extract and manipulate.  I  began  to  scoop,  having  first put a
shopping  bag  over each  hand to  prevent the  nitro from entering my blood
stream via  cuts  on  my  hands or  straightforward  absorption. It wouldn't
kill--hospitals  use nitroglycerine  on  heart-attack victims--but it  would
give me a massive fuck-off headache.
     By the time I'd finished the room stank of marzipan, and in front of me
on the table was ten pounds of what looked  like green, lumpy plasticine. It
had hardened a little as it cooled, but I knew that once I played with it in
my hands a bit it would become quite pliable again. The remaining two pounds
or so of PE were stubbornly sticking  to the sides of the mine and  were too
difficult to get out, so I just left it.
     With the bags rustling on my hands I worked away at it as if
     kneading dough, trying to  keep my head turned so the fumes  didn't get
to me so quickly. Even so,  it  made me feel dizzy and nauseous, though that
might also have something to do with the way  Carpenter and the old guy  had
greeted me at the door.
     Once I'd got it  all nice  and malleable in  three equal-sized balls, I
pulled off the rubber part of the  plunger and used the  handle as a rolling
pin to flatten them out. The smell of marzipan reminded me of being a kid at
Christmas,  skipping the icing sugar and going straight for the yellow stuff
underneath.
     As I kept quiet, the room  adjacent to my bedroom was about to become a
love nest. There was  the rattle of a key,  the door  opened  and closed and
then I heard voices, but this  wasn't fun sex talk, this was heavy,  serious
stuff.
     I kept  rolling as the hooker ran through  her  repertoire of moans and
sighs,  though not  giggly  ones, like before;  this sounded more like grand
opera. The sounds  of  male  grunting  and rhythmic  humping started  almost
straight away; poor girl, she probably hadn't  even had time to put down her
order of fries.
     When the dough was about a quarter of an inch thick and the diameter of
a medium-sized pizza, I used the ice scraper to  cut strips about two inches
wide, getting six  per  base. That  done,  I  stepped over the head  in  the
blood-soaked  blanket, went into the bathroom, and pulled the plug to refill
the bath with more hot water.
     The old man's  eyes were  fixed  open in an astonished stare. I ignored
him as I turned on  the tap and  tested  the water, as if for a baby's bath,
wishing I could stay in here because the water heater noise drowned out  the
duet next door, but there were five more mines to be dealt with. Leaving the
bath  still  running,  I  went back  to  the bedroom with  another piece  of
dripping Soviet war machinery hanging off the plunger.
     It was now so  cold in the room  that my  nose  was beginning to  drip.
Wiping it carefully on  my jacket sleeve  to make  sure  I got  none of  the
marzipan  on my exposed  skin, I sat  back down with more PEin-a-can and set
about digging out the contents.
     Plastic  explosive  is  nothing  more  than  a  substance  which,  when
detonated, undergoes almost instantaneous  decomposition. Until that moment,
most  forms of the compound are harmless and waterproof.  You can even  burn
some types of PE and it won't explode; it'll just help you make a pot of tea
very quickly. When detonated,
     however, it delivers a shattering blow known as brisance, and  that  is
why it can be used to cut through materials as strong as steel.
     I still had  another four mines to empty  and was gagging for that tea,
but I  didn't think they did  room service  here;  not  the kind  I  wanted,
anyway.  I just  got on with  it,  gouging  out the PE, rolling  and cutting
two-inch-wide strips, serenaded by the bear next door, who sounded as though
he was heading for his  final grunt. I hoped he might follow it with a spell
of hibernation.
     An hour or so later,  with all of the  PE now in strips,  I opened  the
knife blade of the Leatherman  and rested it over the hot bar of the heater.
I then laid the first piece  of foam  on  the bed, base down.  Carpenter was
pissing me off, as I had to keep stepping over him, so I pulled at his feet,
his head making a dull thud as it hit the thin carpet as it moved out of the
blanket, and  dragged him closer  to the  door. Once there, I rearranged the
sodden  blanket once more  around  his head and wiped my hands on his  black
crew neck.
     Using the towel  as an oven glove, I lifted the hot Leatherman from the
heater  and  quickly sliced  off  all the little  lumps, bumps,  and  molded
corners from the  upper  side of the foam.  What I was left with  was a yard
square, one side naturally  flat, the other cut more or  less  level. Next I
used the hot  blade to mark out a  two-inch wide channel all the  way round,
following  the line of the square and  about three inches in from the  edge.
The smell of burning Styrofoam was even more overpowering than the marzipan.
     Holding the  blade at an angle, I  started  cutting an inverted Vin the
channel,  ending up  with  what  looked  like a  trench all  around the foam
square, with  four very  long bars of Toblerone lying in the  bottom of  it,
peaks upward. The strips of explosive would be laid along the sides  of  the
Toblerone, and when the frame charge was complete, it would be the flat side
that would ultimately be placed against the target.
     You can't drop a bridge by just dangling big sticks of dynamite against
it.  To  cut  through  whatever you're trying to destroy concrete, brick, or
steel with  the least amount  of PE and maximum effect, you have  to channel
the brisance by using  the Munroe Effect. Because of the thirty-degree angle
made  by the  peak  of  the Toblerone facing the target, the majority of the
detonation  force would surge toward the  imaginary chocolate bar's base and
beyond. Had the Toblerone been made of copper, the brisance would be
     able to penetrate  many inches  of steel, because  the detonation would
melt the copper and take most of the  molten flow  forward with it,  cutting
through the target.  I  didn't  have  copper, just  styrofoam, but there was
enough force in the PE alone to do the job required of it.
     My  nitro  headache  was really pounding  now.  I  downed  another four
aspirin; only four more left.
     As I went back to my cutting, the sound of an argument between  two men
filtered through from the hall. They were soon joined by a woman, who seemed
to be charming them down.
     The  door  opposite  mine opened  and closed and there  was silence.  I
waited for the customary sound  effects to  start in  the room opposite, but
all I got was  more argument, the woman now chipping in her two EEKs' worth.
When  I'd  finished cutting  the  Toblerone  shape all  the  way  round  the
styrofoam, the base  of the triangle  was just over an inch and a half  from
the base of the foam. This  was the "stand-off," which would give the Munroe
Effect space to gather enough force to cut through the target's brickwork.
     Now all  I  had to do was  lay  the  explosive along  each side  of the
Toblerone and over its  peak,  making sure the strips  were molded  together
seamlessly to make one big charge. Protecting my hands with the plastic bags
once more, I  started placing,  pressing and  pinching,  as  if shaping  and
joining pastry. The three-way argument was still going on opposite; I didn't
mind, it was nice to have neighbors who were talking instead of grunting and
throwing the bed around.
     Once the Toblerone was covered by two layers of PE, I got some det cord
and cut off  two lengths, one about  three feet long, the  other about five.
Putting two knots  into one end of each length, I pressed  these into the PE
that  lay over the Toblerone, on two opposite  sides  of the square. To keep
the knots in place, two off cuts of PE were pressed down on top so the knots
were well and truly molded into the charge.
     The reason for having two  sites for the det cord was that I needed the
detonation to come from two directions simultaneously so the charge was more
efficient.  To  make  sure that happened, I tightly  taped  together, over a
distance of about six inches, the two different lengths of det cord so that,
from the binding to the
     charge, they were both of equal length.  Trailing from the site  of the
binding was the two-foot surplus from the longer piece; that bit was  called
the det tail. As the shock wave traveled along the det  tail and reached the
binding, it would also detonate the second, shorter  length of det cord. The
two shock waves would  then travel down toward  the charge at the same speed
and  distance,  therefore  reaching  the Toblerones  on two  opposing  sides
simultaneously.  The Munroe  Effect would direct the force of the detonation
toward  the base of the Toblerone, gathering energy as  it traveled the inch
and a bit through the foam before impacting  the target. All  being well,  I
should be left with  a gaping hole about a  yard square  in  the wall of the
target house.
     I was still in the  process of taping over the  Toblerone to keep it in
the foam  when two male voices, drunk  and laughing, came up  the stairs and
passed my door, going into the room on the other side of the bathroom.
     I still  had another charge  to make,  so I  put  the knife back on the
heater as  my two new neighbors laughed, joked, and turned the TV on loudly.
At least it drowned out the three still entertaining themselves opposite.
     It took me thirty minutes  to  complete  the second charge, done to the
accompaniment of  an  American  comedy, dubbed, of  course.  I preferred the
jokes in Russian.
     To  make  them  easier to  carry,  I  sandwiched  both  sets of charges
together so the Toblerone peaks were facing each other, storing the attached
det cord in between. I  wrapped one of the tow  ropes  around to keep it all
together, then slid two of the pallet sections, taken from behind the shops,
under the rope. I'd also secured the reel of unused  det cord to the pack by
running the rope through  its center while wrapping it round. Everything I'd
be needing on target  was  now together, and the whole thing  looked  like a
badly packed Boy Scout's knapsack.
     There were one or two other little jobs to do before I could get out of
here.  Gathering  together the remaining blue nylon  tow  ropes, I tied them
together  until  there was one  rope about thirty yards  long, adding  extra
knots so that there was one every yard. One end was then tied onto the rope,
which had been wrapped around the charges.
     Next I picked up the third length of pallet wood. It was MI9 time
     again as I cut a groove all  round one  end, about three inches in from
the top, around which I secured  the free end  of the  rope  attached to the
charges. Holding the brick against the un roped end of the wood, so that its
longest edge was parallel  to the plank's, I  wrapped the towel  around both
and secured it with yards  of  insulating tape.  All the  equipment was  now
prepared.
     The Lion King told me it was  3:28, in theory too early to leave, but I
didn't know who  else knew that Carpenter and the old man had come to visit.
The threesome started  arguing yet again, this  time probably about payment,
as I took the charges, draped in a blanket, down to the car.
        39
     Saturday. December 18,1999
     In the pitch-dark  of the afternoon I drove west toward Tallinn  on the
main drag, turned left to Pussi and headed once again over the railway track
and toward the target, passing the sad shacks where people were holed up for
the winter.
     In  the twelve hours since leaving the hotel I'd been  cruising around,
stopping only a couple  of times  to  fill up with gas. Anything to keep the
heater going.
     On  my way out I'd  paid the old woman for another two  nights, so with
any luck there should be no need for her to come and check the room.
     Tented  stalls  were dotted  along the  roads  like  miniature  service
stations, the  steam  that poured  from their  vents making them  look  like
refugee-camp field  kitchens. When I stopped to buy coffee and pastries,  it
actually  helped  to  have a swollen mouth with visible  bruising, because I
could  get  away with  just  mumbling and pointing. The problem came when  I
tried to eat and drink; my tooth was killing me and these places didn't sell
Ibuprofen. My last four aspirins had gone hours ago.
     I'd kept Carpenter's weapon on me, and the .38 special was in the glove
compartment. Neither of them had spare rounds.
     Now, sliding slowly along the single-lane road, my headlights picked up
the  concrete  wall  of  the target  on  my  left.  Nothing appeared to have
changed; there were still no lights or movement
     and  the  gates  were still  closed. Parking in the  same  driveway  as
before,  I turned off the engine  and sat for a while in the rapidly cooling
car, running through the plan one  last time.  It  didn't take long, because
there wasn't really much of a plan.
     Forcing  myself out into the cold, now wearing the old guy's gloves and
bloodstained fur hat, I covered the  driver's side  of  the windshield  with
newspaper before taking the charges out of the trunk.  The tow rope  wrapped
around  them  made a handy  shoulder  strap. Finally I hid the key under the
rear  right  wheel.  If I got  caught  by the  Maliskia, then at  least they
wouldn't have my keys if I managed to escape.  What was more, I  could  tell
Tom if I linked up with  him, and he would also have  a means of escape if I
didn't make it to the car.
     I  wasn't going to kill him. I owed him  that much after what he'd done
by the fence at the Finns' house. What was more,  I didn't want his death on
my  conscience, as well as Kelly's  illness. At first I'd put my  change  of
heart down to the fact that I  wasn't thinking of saving Tom's skin  as much
as my own.  He would be  the only one  who could back up my story to Lynn if
this  whole  thing  went  completely  to  rat shit.  And  why  shouldn't it?
Everything else  had so far. But then, much  as  I hated the idea, I had  to
admit  to  myself that I'd come to like  the chubby-cheeked fucker. He might
not be the sort of guy  I was used to  associating with,  and  we  certainly
wouldn't  be seeing each other for coffee mornings, but he was all right and
he needed a break as much  as I did. I'd been  toying with the idea since  I
lay in  my  cheap  hotel room  in  Helsinki.  That  was why I'd brought  his
passport with me, just in case I decided.
     It was as cold as ever, but as I walked along the road I tied up my new
fur  hat earflaps so I could  listen. Drawing level with the  hangar and its
funnel, I still couldn't hear any noise from inside the compound. I  reached
the driveway leading to the  large steel-plate  gates, turned and took a few
paces toward  them.  Then  I stopped  and  listened. Now that I knew it  was
there,  I  could just make out the generator churning  away in the distance.
Apart from that I could hear nothing.
     I tested the gates, but they  weren't open. I tried the small  door set
into the larger right-hand one,  but again they were still  locked. I wasn't
expecting it to be that  easy, but I'd have felt like a real dickhead if I'd
gone  to all the trouble of climbing over the wall when  all I had to do was
stroll in through the front gate.
     Lying down in the  right-hand tire  rut, with the charges behind  me, I
pressed my eye  to  the  gap beneath.  Nothing that  side of  the  gate  had
changed; there were still two lights  on  the ground  floor and  the  larger
building to the right was just as dark. I wasn't sure if what  I was looking
at was good or bad; not that it mattered that much, I was still going to get
among it and destroy the place, and hopefully find Tom.
     Once  on  my  feet again,  with  the Boy Scout knapsack reshouldered, I
started back in  the direction of the car, but about seventy or eighty yards
past  the hangar  I stepped left off the road and into the high snow. My aim
was to  walk out into the fields, turn left and approach the hangar from the
rear. I couldn't prevent  leaving a trail in the snow, but at  least I could
try to keep most of it out of sight of the road.
     The snow had a thin layer of ice  on top and varied in depth from  calf
to  thigh  height. As I pressed my foot down on the not-so deep stuff, there
was initial  resistance,  then my  weight  pushed through  it. In the deeper
drifts I felt like an icebreaker in the Baltic.
     I labored on, my jeans soaking and my legs starting to freeze. At least
there wasn't much cloud and my night vision was adjusting to the starlight.
     The rear of the hangar loomed in front of me and I climbed inside.  The
floor  was concrete  and  the  steel structure  supported what  looked  like
corrugated  asbestos. Moving  slowly and  carefully  toward the wall  of the
compound, after about twenty paces I began to make out the dark shape of the
doorway.  When I reached the edge of the hangar, I stood still and listened.
Not a sound, just the gentle moan of the wind.
     Wading across the eight or nine feet of snow between the two buildings,
I  realized  as  soon  as  I  reached  the  door  that  I was  going  to  be
disappointed. The metal was a lot older than the front gates and was flaking
with rust. The door itself was solid, with no hinges  or locks this side  of
it. I pushed, but there wasn't a hint of movement.
     Turning right, I followed the wall and waded fifteen yards further away
from the road. Hopefully  I  was now  facing  the  gable  end  of the larger
building on the other side of the concrete.
     Placing  the charges on the snow, I unraveled the rope attached  to the
plank with the brick at the end. With just two or three feet of
     slack,  I started swinging it around me like  a hammer thrower, finally
letting go with upward momentum to make the plank clear the wall.
     I'd never make the Olympics. The whole lot  fell  back down in front of
me. I was just sorting out  the  rope for  another  try when  vehicle lights
raked the wall of the compound.
     I  dropped to  my  knees,  ready to  bury myself  in the  snow.  Then I
realized that on my knees I was buried in it.
     The lights got stronger, disappearing for  half a second as the vehicle
dipped in the road, only to light up the sky before settling  down again. As
it got  closer  the inside  of the hangar was lit up and moving shadows were
cast by the steel supports.
     The ponderous chug of  a  big diesel told me that a tractor was heading
in my direction. I felt good about that: if the Maliskia were coming for me,
I doubted they'd be riding a John Deere.
     The  noise  got  louder  and the  light even stronger until the tractor
burst into view in  the gap between  the  compound wall and  the  hangar. It
looked like  some  old  relic  from  a  Soviet  collective,  with  far  more
silhouettes  in  the cab than the thing was  designed for. Maybe  the  local
karaoke fanatics were  heading down to the Hammer and Sickle for a few pints
of vodka.
     The lights and noise gradually faded and I got on with my task. It took
me two more tries, but I eventually got the plank to sail over the wall, the
charge  end firmly anchored  in  my  hands. The  rope  jerked  as  the plank
finished its  flight, probably ending  up dangling about three or  four feet
over the target side. Gently, I started pulling it back, waiting for the bit
of resistance that  would tell me that the point where  the rope was wrapped
around the plank had  connected  with the far top edge of  the wall. The way
this thing  worked  was that the  counterweight of the brick made the top of
the plank anchor itself against an  angled wall. It's one of the reasons why
prisons have a large oval shape made of smooth metal on top of their  walls,
so  that contraptions like this don't have anything  to  bite  into. MI9 had
done it again.
     Maintaining  the tension  in the rope,  and half expecting the plank to
come plummeting back  down onto  my head at any second, I slowly let it take
my whole body weight. The cheap nylon rope  stretched and protested but held
secure.  With my  feet against  the wall,  and  using the pitted sections as
toeholds and knots I'd placed along the rope, I started to climb.
     It  didn't take long to reach  the top,  and I scrambled up  and rested
along its three-foot width. The large  building blocked most of  my view  of
the target beyond; all I  could see was the light from the windows, where it
hit  the  snow.  The  generator  now  provided  a  constant  rumble  in  the
foreground.
     Snow and ice cascaded from the wall as I  swiveled round on my stomach,
turning to face the way I'd come. With my legs now  dangling down the target
side, I began to pull the charges carefully up the wall. It wasn't the noise
I was worried about, I didn't want to damage them.
     When  I'd  finally got the  charges up on top with me, I swiveled round
again  and lowered  them  gently down  the target side. It was now simply  a
question  of moving the plank to  the othe