Adam Hall - Quiller Balalaika

In a moment he said, 'You've got the kind of madness in you that seems to have worked, historically. There are legends, aren't there, that pass on -'

'I'm not sure what you mean by madness.'

'Oh. No offence, but you tell me you can get me out of a place like this, where no one's escaped for twenty years, since the present CO took over. I mean -'

'I see, yes. But my mind is perfectly sound, so I haven't been concentrating on the difficulties, only on the solutions. You'll have to make a mental switch yourself there, in the next three days – that's our count-down period. But for now I need your answer to one question, and it's critical. You tell me you want to destroy Sakkas if I can get you to Moscow, and – as I've said – there are unpredictable risks. So here's the question, and I want you to take your time: exactly how much are you prepared to risk? What's the ultimate?'

I watched his eyes, the way they changed, grew darker, until in a moment or two he felt he was ready.

'Death,' he said, 'if you put it like that.'

I saw Alex again soon after midnight. He came to me at the rendezvous we'd arranged, in the gap between the garbage dumps and the wire on the west side.

'Last one,' he said, and thrust the sacking bundle into my hands.

'Took some getting.'

'I hung around.'

'You're a good friend.'

'It's an honour.'

He watched me in the light of the three-quarter moon, his young face pinched, his eyes bright, waiting for me to say something more, giving me the impression that whatever I said he'd listen to it, and take it to heart. Anything, anything, so that one fine day he could vanquish the monster of all his nightmares, break his pride, shatter his reputation, obliterate his face. Annihilate Gradov, in front of a hut full of men. God only knew what I'd started.

But I suppose it was the boy's readiness to listen to me, whatever I might say, that prompted me to wrap the whole thing up for him, because I wouldn't be seeing him the next day: I would be too busy.

'Listen, we've got to get our sleep.' We were extending the mine in the morning, twenty minutes for breakfast, only half an hour for the midday break. 'But first I want to add a bit to what we've been doing in training.'

'Okay.' The wind was rising a little, and he pulled the collar of his greatcoat tighter.

'Although this doesn't apply only to training. It applies to whatever you want to do in life, whatever you've got to do. It's the ultimate key to success, and it's the only one, so when you've found it, don't lose it.' It was coming out like an avuncular homily, but I couldn't help that. At the core it was sound, and that was what mattered.

The boy's eyes were brighter still as he locked them onto mine in the moonlight. 'Okay,' on a shiver of breath.

'We create our own reality, Alex. You've seen those bumper stickers in Moscow on the back of some of the trucks – Shit happens. And those people are dead right – that's what happens to them, because that's what they expect – they get what they're looking for, what they've created for themselves.'

I waited, hearing the snuffling beyond the wire, watching the coloured glint of eyes across the snow. We could see them on most nights when the weather was clear.

'On the other side of the coin there are the miracles. I'll bring it down to size for you, in terms of training. When you make a strike, any kind of strike, you look first to the physical needs – drive from the ball of the foot, bring the force in through the hips, attend to the bodywork. But there are two final requirements in making the strike a success. The first is psychological: as you commit yourself to the target, there's just the one thought you've got to hold in your mind, to the exclusion of all others. Get there.'

Alex nodded with little jerks of his head. 'Okay. Get there.'

'Right.' I noticed my voice sounded as if it were coming from a distance now, from well outside the aura, or perhaps it wasn't my voice, but someone else's, because things were going on that didn't really concern Alex, things that would concern me later, tomorrow, when the moon would be full and the choice taken and the bridges burned.

'The final requirement,' I said, 'is drawn from the field of the spiritual. It's not a thought, but a feeling. Be there.'

The wind rose again, fluting among the eaves of the huts, dying away.

'Okay,' Alex said. 'Be there. Okay.'

I don't think he'd really got it; it was a lot to ask of a man his age. But maybe he'd work on it, lying in his bunk in the quiet of the night.

'Right,' I said, and thought of the towering dark where tomorrow night the moon would be floating, of the towering odds against success, which could only be defeated if I could manage, during the torments of the trial by ordeal, not to lose the key.

By early afternoon a light snow had started, borne by an errant wind from the hills to the east of the camp. By 09:00, with dark down for the past six hours, it had thickened a little, enough to hide the big floodlit gates from the main hutment area.

I watched the snow continuously. Later it would become one of the critical factors involved.

By 11:45 I was standing in the lee of the gymnasium, shielded by the eaves on the west side. I had been there for ten minutes, making detours to cover my tracks in the new snowfall, and to avoid the sentries. The rear of the camp was never patrolled: it was a dead zone, the only foot traffic leading to and away from the gymnasium itself on the south side.

At 11:47 I heard a sound.

The timing was also critical. My watch was still out of kilter, and Igor had given me one he said he'd picked up from a prisoner in return for a favour. I think it was his own. Igor knew what I'd been setting up for the last three days, simply because I trusted him to know. Like Marius, he'd told me I was mad. But he and Alex had both let me have their goat-meat ration during the evening meals. Alex knew nothing, of course, had seen nothing even in my eyes. The idea would have fired him up, and he could have given me away without intention.

A faint clinking of metal, from somewhere close by. The moon was still behind the mountains to the east, but I could see well enough in the peripheral glow from the tall arched floodlights.

'Deadline.' A whisper from the shadows.

'Zero.' We synchronized watches. 'You've got all your stuff?'

'Of course.' He sounded impatient. Since I'd told him three days ago what we were going to do he'd been like that, his tone sometimes letting me know he wasn't an idiot, could be relied on, wouldn't screw things up. It was fear, that was all, and understandable.

I'd told him only what we would be doing, and how to prepare himself, what to collect, conceal, and bring with him tonight. I hadn't given him all the actual phases, details, minutiae: there'd been no point. He'd been told the essentials, and told to go over them in his mind day and night until mentally he was brief-perfect. I'd challenged him on some of them and he'd got them right every time, but there was this impatient tone that came out sometimes, and I'd learned it wasn't only his expression of fear. Marius had been running the Sakkas empire for three years, and had been used to a high order of respect and instant obedience from his aides and underlings, wasn't used to anyone but Sakkas himself dictating to him. I'd gone with this as best I could, deferring to him when possible; but it worried me that he might turn arrogant later, when I would need to be in total and absolute charge.

The snow was coming in flurries now and still thickening. That was all right, but if it increased to blizzard strength it could become deadly.