ADAM HALL - The Warsaw Document

And suddenly I knew that if I didn't do something quickly he'd break me down and I'd have to be taken to Foster in an ambulance. My arms were losing strength and their muscles burned. I couldn't shift his weight from across my legs.

For a long time, for two or three seconds, I let myself relax, bringing the strikes closer to give him confidence, then twisted and freed an elbow and drove it hard enough to disturb his rhythm and he shifted his weight and I went for a yoshida and brought it off but couldn't hold the full lock because he slipped it enough to sap the leverage and come in again with neck strikes so that I had to roll back and parry them. Light had begun flashing in my head.

A hokku and it threw him and 'I followed with the second stage of the lock but wasn't fast enough and his weight came back and I had to protect again because if only one of his strikes got through it would leave me paralysed. My head throbbed, pulsing to the rhythm of the flashing light, and breathing was difficult now. He fluttered above me, a vague dark shape whose weight increased and bore down and smothered my movements, and its snuffling became excited as the strikes hammered at the crossed shield of my arms and shifted their aim and hammered again and found the target protected but only clumsily now as I lost strength, and worse, lost science. Time was going, no more time. I needed time.

Sorry about that, old boy, but you shouldn't have chanced your arm, these chaps won't put up with it.

Relax and bring him closer. Get the breathing right or it's no go. Relax.

But I was a torch, a body burning, my own light blinding. His blows poured pain into me and the flames burst brighter. There was no time. Then let it be done without time. Now.

Twist. But he was ready and I had to try again and it didn't work but his aim was shifted and I moved the other way and felt purchase available as we rolled with my knee rising hard but not hard enough: it baulked his strikes but he went for a neck lock and I had to stop it because it was a musubi and we are frightened of that one, all of us. Lock and counter-lock and we lay still, the muscles alone engaged, contraction without kinetics, the hiss of our breathing the only sign of life. Then I felt purchase again: my foot had come into contact with the wall of the subway and when I used it he was surprised and the lock went slack and I had time and forced him over and we lay still again but the position was changed and I saw that there was a blow I could use if I worked very quickly.

But I hesitated. Morality came into this and the awareness of what I was going to do was holding me back. This was the jungle but even in the jungle there are laws: a male wolf, in combat with another and sensing mortal defeat, will pause and expose its neck and the jugular vein, tokening submission; and the victor will leave it.

Here the law didn't apply: a vulnerable point had been exposed by chance and morality was out of place because the organism was shouting it down, squealing for survival, and I put the last of my strength into the blow. It wasn't very hard because I was weakened now, but it was effective because it struck the point that Kimura had told us about.

Then I got up and leaned with my back to the wall, dragging air into my lungs while the nerve-light went on flashing in my head. A sound was somewhere, a rumbling, and I remembered where I was, in the railway station of a modern city where men could speak, and write with pens. It seemed a long time since I was here before: an act so primitive had brought a time shift and the past few minutes had been measured in millennia.

The rumbling became thunder overhead and its rhythm slowed: a train was stopping. I would have liked to rest but there'd soon be people here.

In the washroom I took his coat and kepi, putting them on. He was Piotr Rashidov, attached to the 4th Division of the Polish State Information Services on temporary duty, and his credentials carried the facsimile of the Communist Party seal. I sat him in the end cubicle where the hinges were still intact, locking the door and climbing over the partition, dropping and checking that his feet looked as they should.

Then I bathed my face, turning away from the mirror when I dried it. There's always the feeling of personal failure because it's an easy thing to do, and even when there's no choice it still has the look of a cheap trick.

There were more than I'd expected.

The train had pulled out and no one was in the middle platforms except for station staff and the M.O. patrols. Two of them were posted at the north end and that was the way I had to go because there were no ticket-barriers.

I walked steadily in the brown leather coat and kepi. My legs were all right. the punishment had been taken by the arms because his technique had forced me to shield. Head still throbbing and the throat raw though I'd drunk some water at the basin.

I looked at my watch. The glass was smashed and the dial twisted and the hands torn away and when I took it off there was its shape imprinted on my wrist, a purple weal. The clock over the main hall barriers showed 14:20 and it was no longer a question of hurrying but of cutting down the whole schedule and running it closer and hoping not to wreck it.

The two M.O. patrols weren't moving. They stood facing towards me, dark figures against the screen of drifting snow at the station's mouth. They were fifty feet away and there was no one between us along this stretch of platform. The snow looked easeful, whirling on the wind, and I felt a longing to walk in it and be lost in it. This place was a trap.

They'd want a report at the Bureau, was it necessary, what were the possible alternatives, was the person armed, so forth, and the sweat came on me again because they wanted too bloody much, they wanted you to go in and do the job and come out with your tie straight and your hair brushed and your hands clean, it was rather embarrassing for them, this kind of thing, and you had to be careful not to shout at them, yes I had to do it because I was losing consciousness and it was the last chance I'd get and it was his bad luck that the point he'd exposed was that one, not my fault, can happen to the best of us, what do you think things are like when a couple of ferrets go at it tooth and claw in a tunnel under the ground? Quite put them off their tea.

I was walking faster because of the anger and the distance had closed to thirty feet and when I'd gone another five I began calling out to them in Russian, pointing behind me — 'Who's meant to be manning the barriers down there, is it you?'

They didn't bloody well understand so I said it again in Polish, keeping the vowels flat and rounding the r's, and one of them came towards me with his paces circumspect.

'The two barriers this side of the hall — you think you can survey them at this distance without a pair of binoculars?'

He stood with his bright eyes hating me but all he could legitimately do was ask for identification, showing that just for a moment he had the upper hand by virtue of his uniform. I would even expect it of him: it was said that Dabrowski himself couldn't enter his own official residence without showing his papers.

'I must ask to see your credentials.'

Piotr Rashidov. The red seal was sufficient — and I didn't give him time to study the photograph.

'Answer my question.'

'Our orders are to guard this end of the platform.'

'And leave the barriers uncontrolled? Who is your officer?'

'There is a patrol on the other side of the barriers.'

'We shall see.'

I turned my back to him and began walking again the way I had come, looking to my left and to my right, watching for signs of inefficiency among the uniformed patrols at the flank exits.

My shoulders were stiffening and the glare of the lamps went through my eyes and ached inside my head. Walking in this direction, back into the trap and away from the healing and liberating snow, was retrogressive and irked me and to an increasing extent worried me because he'd be expected back at his post or back in the area he was controlling, say in five minutes, ten at the most.