Jack Higgins - Year Of The Tiger

Chavasse shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong. We’re leaving you a horse and some food. You should be able to reach Rudok easily.”

Colonel Li’s lips twitched slightly and suddenly there was sweat on his forehead. “You mean you’re not going to shoot me?”

Chavasse shook his head. “There’s no need, Colonel. As our American friends would say, you’re all washed up.”

He started to get to his feet and a quiet voice said, “Not quite, Paul.”

He turned very slowly. Katya was standing on the other side of the fire facing all of them. In her hands, she held the machine pistol.

Hoffner was the first to speak. “Katya, for God’s sake! What does this mean?”

Her extreme pallor only made her more beautiful. The skin of her face was almost translucent and the dark sad eyes held a haunted expression Chavasse was to remember for the rest of his days.

He moved forward slightly, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his sheepskin coat, and smiled softly. “Tell him, angel. Tell him everything.”

Suddenly there was something that was almost horror in her eyes. “You knew,” she whispered. “You knew all the time. But if that’s true, why did you bring me with you?”

“My people would have found you a prize package. They don’t use the same methods as your side to extract information, but they’re even more successful. I’ve been waiting for you to show your hand ever since you recovered consciousness,” Chavasse said. “It was your boyfriend here who let you down, if you’re interested. When he exposed my little masquerade at Hoffner’s house that afternoon, he said that he and Kurbsky had run into each other at a village called Rangong a few days earlier. Unfortunately, Kurbsky had already told me they’d never met.”

“We all make mistakes,” she said.

“Not in this game – not if you want to stay alive, anyway,” he told her. “And the pair of you made two. When we were out riding, I told you I’d helped the Dalai Lama out of Tibet. I knew for a fact that Peking couldn’t have known I was involved and yet Colonel Li did. You were the only person who could have been his source of information. You certainly mix with the right people.”

“It wasn’t difficult – he is my brother,” she said proudly. “We know what we are doing and where we are going.”

“For God’s sake, don’t give me any more of that claptrap,” Chavasse said. “I’ve had my bellyful during the past few weeks. Would it be too much to ask why you were planted on the doctor?”

“He was important to us as a figurehead, because the people trusted him.” She shrugged. “It was necessary for some reliable person to share his confidences. This affair alone has proved the value of my presence in the house.”

“There’s one small point that has been bothering me for a long time,” he said. “When I tried to take a shot at your brother, my Walther jammed. I’ve never known them to do that before.”

“I’d taken the precaution of emptying the clip the previous night,” she said. “When you were asleep.”

“Most efficient of you.” He sighed. “You realize what will happen to us when you take us back? You know how we’ll be treated?”

“They will only do what is necessary for the good of the State,” she said. “Nothing more.”

“Katya!” There was pain in Hoffner’s voice. “Did I mean nothing more to you than that?”

“Nothing, Doctor,” she said flatly.

“I don’t believe you.”

He started round the fire towards her and she raised the machine pistol warningly. “Keep back, Doctor. I will shoot, I promise you.”

“And kill the brain,” Chavasse said mockingly.

“It is all in the briefcase,” she told him calmly. “I have nothing to lose.”

Hoffner kept on moving, a hand stretched out towards her. “Katya, please listen to me.”

“I warn you,” she said.

Chavasse had been watching her index finger curl around the trigger of the machine pistol, his own hand ready on Tsen’s automatic. As her knuckle whitened, he fired twice through the pocket of his sheepskin coat.

The force of the bullets lifted her back against the wall, and she dropped the machine pistol and slid down to the ground.

Hoffner gave an agonized cry, his hands going to his face, and Chavasse pushed him out of the way and knelt beside her. She stared up at him, that characteristic slight frown on her face, and then she choked as blood poured from her mouth. As he eased her down to the floor, the head lolled to one side.

Osman Sherif was already hustling his wife and their two children outside as Chavasse got to his feet and faced Hoffner.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know how much she meant to you.”

Hoffner shook his head slowly. “There was nothing else you could do. For the first time in my life I’m beginning to realize the strength of the opposition. I think we ought to do something about it.”

He picked up his briefcase and doctor’s bag and followed the others as Chavasse turned and looked down at Katya for the last time.

Colonel Li knelt beside her. After a moment, he got to his feet, and when he spoke, his voice seemed to belong to someone else.

“You are a hard man,” he said. “Harder than I ever imagined a man could be.”

“I’m a professional,” Chavasse told him. “That’s something you wouldn’t understand, but she would. She was one herself.”

He started to turn away and Li caught his arm. “Kill me, Paul!”

Chavasse jerked himself free without speaking and went outside. The sky was grey but already beginning to clear, and the snow was startlingly white.

The others were already mounted and Osman Sherif held a horse ready for him. Chavasse reached for the pommel of the high wooden saddle and pulled himself up. It was an effort, but he made it and they started to move forward.

He was aware that Colonel Li had stumbled out of the doorway to stand beside the tethered horse they had left him, but he didn’t bother to look back.

The effects of Hoffner’s injections were beginning to wear off and all of a sudden, he felt really tired. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that in some strange way, life was now beginning all over again.

It must have been an hour later when they reached the crest of the pass. From somewhere a thousand miles away he seemed to hear his name and he turned and looked for the last time at the small figure, black against the snow beside the customs hut. He urged his horse forward and rode after the others, down into Kashmir.

The fire was low now, the room quiet for several moments as Chavasse finished talking. It was Moro who spoke first.

“So, you crossed into India safely, you and Dr. Hoffner and the Kazakhs?”

“That’s right.”

“But what happened then? No further word of Hoffner, not anywhere. I’ve checked all sources.”

“The whole thing was handled with total secrecy, just as if he didn’t exist. It was all meant to fool Chinese intelligence, of course.”

“So he was taken to England?”

Chavasse nodded. “Moncrieff arranged everything. As I say, total secrecy. There was a safe house arranged in the countryside outside Cambridge where he was supposed to meet with Professor Craig from the Joint Space Research Programme at NATO.”

There was a pause. Moro said, “You said ‘was supposed to.’”

“Life playing its usual bad joke. Karl Hoffner died of a heart attack on his first night in the house. He was an old man, remember; that dreadful journey and all that stress proved too much for him. Since in a manner of speaking he didn’t officially exist, he had a very private cremation by the Bureau’s disposal unit.”