15 : Pendulum

The clock ticked. We listened to it. No one spoke. He liked clocks. He liked the measured inevitability of time and the events it would bring. He liked watching fuses burn: I'd seen him do that. He liked mechanics-automatic relays, timed release units, delayed detonation devices. Even to bridge the philosophical gap between Lubyanka and Children's World he'd had to invent a mechanical toy. It might be logical, though dangerously mistaken, to think he was therefore predictable, so that one knew what he was going to do next. Where was the telephone? He dragged on his cigarette, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs: he needed it more than food; he needed it more than life, because he was dying of it. But he'd got things to do first, and I was in his way. He'd need a telephone. Ignatov and Misha were absolutely quiet. They hadn't understood what Schrenk had said to me, but they had seen what an effort it had cost him to say it, and they had seen his head go down like that as he had quietly offered the executioner's apology. Sorry. 'There is a way,' I said, 'I could stop you.' I could leave them both dead and the girl in shock when I left here. 'No,' he said, 'there isn't. But we don't have to go into that.' Would he need a telephone, though? Ignatov might not be his only contact: he might have a dozen of them, one in the next apartment, one in the apartment opposite, any number of them. There was something he had to do and he might have got a whole cell established to help him do it. 'They're hunting pretty hard,' I said, 'for you too.' He got up impatiently, twisting his body upright and holding it stiffly for a moment before he started pacing the worn carpet. 'But that isn't the position, is it? You're not going to have me picked up - your objective is to keep me out of their hands: 'I didn't mean that. I meant that you might not have much longer before they find you anyway. You must have left a trail and this isn't a safe-house - you can get a knock on the door any minute.' I tried to forget what this man had done to me and what he was going to do again if I couldn't stop him. 'I came out here to get you safely home, and with a bit of luck I can do it. You don't need Moscow any more.' He came up to me quietly, one thin leg swinging slightly more than the other as he tried not to hobble, and looked into my face and said with his eyes bright: 'But Moscow needs me.' It was the first indication I'd had that his mind had been affected, that there was more going on inside him than a hurricane of rage. It stopped me dead. 'Come on home,' I said. 'You're too dose to it all. You can always come back if you want to.' 'Humouring me?' with his eyes burning. Oh my God, yes, that fitted too: they hate it when you refuse to believe they're Napoleon. 'Not really,' I said. He watched me with his bright eyes for a moment, his small gnome's head on one side. 'You have to go now,' he said, and hobbled away from me across the threadbare carpet. 'He's leaving,' he told Ignatov in Russian. 'Don't do anything. Stay where you are.' 'Yes, Viktor.' Where was the telephone? There'd be one in the front hallway, a pay phone. If I went through there I could pull out the wire. But Schrenk knew I'd think of that because he'd think of it himself. This wasn't a half-trained novitiate I was having to deal with. 'I think you're making a mistake,' I told him. 'One more won't do me any harm.' 'You're relying on me not to get you picked up the minute they arrest me.' Ignatov was halfway between the door and the window, nursing his temple. The girl was over by the stove. I began noting other things, because the trap was closing now and the organism was aware of the need to escape; but I didn't think I was going to be able to do that: Schrenk was a professional and he knew he had the advantage.