Guy Adams - The Clown Service

When I could get no answer from Krishnin on the telephone that day, I was torn. I will admit that I was tempted not to return to the warehouse. It struck me in that moment, in the gentle cold of an English winter, that I was in a position where I might run. Whatever was going to play out in that building would do so with or without me. I was not a deciding factor. Might I not, instead, just walk off into a new life, leave all that behind? Well, it’s obvious which decision I made.

By the time I was back at the warehouse, Krishnin had arrived. I hung back, hoping to observe but remain uninvolved. What a coward I sound. But there, it’s the truth.

Krishnin had got both Shining and the other man tied to chairs and was interrogating them. They were not stupid; they were aware that the moment they gave up their knowledge they would die.

My attention was immediately taken by Shining. He seemed out of place in that room, blood trickling from a wound in his forehead. An academic in a war zone. Perhaps that is what he always was. Though, like me, he learned how to fight soon enough. Perhaps that night was his first lesson.

‘I have no intention of telling you anything,’ he said. ‘Do what you like.’

You don’t mean that , I thought, or you wouldn’t, if you knew what this man is capable of .

‘Will you be still saying that,’ Krishnin replied evenly, ‘when your colleague has lost the first of his eyes?’

‘I doubt it will come to that,’ Shining said. ‘We’re not quite as vulnerable as we appear.’

‘Oh, really?’ Krishnin laughed at that and a couple of the other men joined in, sheep as always. ‘And what is your cunning plan of escape?’

‘Well,’ said Shining, ‘if I told you that, it would hardly be very “cunning” would it? But you’ll see soon enough.’

And then I saw the strangest thing.

Afterwards, I would hate myself for my inaction. I could have stopped what followed. I think it was guilt about that which spurred me in my later career and gave me the conviction I had previously lacked.

At the time I was simply confused. You could hardly blame me. Others were a good deal closer than I was, and if I could see what was happening, then why couldn’t they? Later, when working through some of our intelligence on Section 37 and its agents, the mystery of that night was solved. The reason nobody else saw the turning point in the situation is because they weren’t looking directly at it.

The prisoner whose eyes Krishnin had threatened was being all but ignored. His chair was facing Shining’s but some distance away.

Because of Shining’s statements, and his confidence, all eyes were on him . Nobody but me saw the small stranger simply walk up to the other man’s chair, cut the binding ropes with a knife and place a revolver in his hand. Because nobody ever did see Cyril Luckwood, did they? Not unless they were paying very close attention indeed.

What came next was so quick, so unbelievable, that I struggle now to describe it with any degree of accuracy. Perhaps that doesn’t matter, the important thing is the result not the action. Both Luckwood and the man he had just freed brought their guns to bear and, within a matter of seconds, the battle was over. There had been five men plus Krishnin, men I had known well. Men I had liked. Now there was just Krishnin, the smell of cordite in the air and a good deal of screaming.

There was little I could do; I was not armed. It is with no shame at all, therefore, that I admit that I hung back. I knew that I was as beneath their attention as Luckwood had been. Hidden in the shadows by the front door, I watched transfixed as the little drama concluded.

Shining was released. He took a gun from Luckwood and pointed it at Krishnin. But my employer had one last card to play. He possesses a singular skill – an ability that had kept him alive even when his superiors had all but lost faith in him, and the curse that I truly believe robbed him of his sanity. He began to fade, his body disappearing even as we looked on. In that moment, Shining had to make a choice: allow this man to vanish or take the opportunity presented. There was no time to consider how the disappearance might be possible – thoughts about that would come later.

He pulled the trigger.

I do not blame Shining for taking that course. I am aware that he still questions it, wonders if there had been another option. There was not. This man was clearly a deadly threat and Shining did what he needed to. He shot Krishnin at point blank range, unloaded a .44 cartridge right into the man’s chest even as he faded away completely. In moments, the only thing to show the man had ever been there was a patch of blood on the concrete floor. The body was never – could never – be found. Neither your service nor mine saw any reason to look. Not even Krishnin could survive a bullet wound of that calibre to the chest.

I dare say Shining’s superiors wrote his report off as delusional. Perhaps they assumed Krishnin had attempted to escape via the river, his body lost to the tides. My side simply didn’t care. Krishnin was gone, Operation Black Earth was stalled before it could even take effect. A potentially embarrassing situation was avoided. We were happy.

Me? I ran. Out into the night. Perhaps I never really stopped running until a few years ago.

a) Shad Thames, London

Tamar knew it was unlikely she would find August, but she had to occupy herself with trying. She was not someone who relished inactivity.

‘You’ll wear out your shoes,’ her mother had once said. ‘Burn them right off your feet. When will you learn just to sit still?’

The answer to that was: never. Something her mother would have grown to accept had she not been killed, like so many, by the aerial bombing during the war.

Tamar had been seven years old when a strafe run wiped out her village. She had her wandering feet to thank for her life. When the bombs fell, she had been up in the mountains, seeing how far she could climb and how far she could see. She had climbed high enough to be knocked off her feet by the slipstream of the planes as they soared past after dropping their cargo. It seemed as if she had been climbing back down ever since.

The next few months had been a mess. Living off the food she could find or steal, running from troops, running from everybody … Tamar found herself quite at odds with the world; it had nothing she wanted in it.

Picked up by Azerbaijani troops, she finally lost sight of herself altogether.

In the years that followed she still chose to shut away, a locked chest stuffed with a life nobody would choose to relive. Passed from camp to camp, she had been slave, then lover, then fighter. Eventually, the Azerbaijanis traded her to a group of Russians as part of a weapons’ sale. In her, the head of that Russian cartel found a potent weapon, an angry young woman who would sell sex or deal death, depending entirely on the whims of her new owner.

If she hadn’t met August Shining in the summer of 2006, she would almost certainly have died, by her own hand if need be. He had got her out. She had helped him with intelligence; he had found her a passport and a new life.

Seven years later and she still felt she owed him, despite his insistence otherwise. August was still the only thing in her life she chose to love. He couldn’t understand why she hadn’t completely left her old life behind, had begged her to give up the trade in her body that she conducted in her small flat above his office. He had tried to find her other work, even offered her a wage through Section 37. Tamar would not have it.

Her body meant little to her. It was a tool. One that had saved her life on a number of occasions. August assumed she continued to sell it because she felt worthy of nothing else. He assumed it was an act of self-punishment. August was very sweet, but he shouldn’t assume so much. Men always liked to get beneath the skin of women, some were just more obvious about it than others. She knew he meant well, and was just trying to understand, but she didn’t need his understanding, just his friendship.