17 : Midnight

'For God's sake leave me alone,' I told them. 'He's all right,' a voice said. 'Who is?' I hit out and felt an arm and heard something crash on to the floor. 'Steady,' someone said. It sounded like Bracken. 'Open your eyes.' This was in Russian, a woman's voice. I'd heard it before somewhere. 'Eyes?' Then I saw her, swaying from side to side, leaning over me, melting into some kind of shadow and taking shape again. I remembered her now. 'Can't you keep still?' I asked her. She laughed, deep in her throat. Raging thirst. 'Can he sit up?' I saw Bracken now. Place stank of chemicals. They helped me, but only on one side. The other side was peculiarly numb. 'Am I in bed, for God's sake?' 'Take it easy,' Bracken said. I let them pull me upright and when they weren't ready for it I swung my legs over and stood up and they caught me as the wall swung round and hit me full in the face.

'When was that?' I asked them. 'An hour ago.' Bracken was trying to sound cheerful. He was sitting hunched on a brown-painted crate below the window, his big blunt face lit by the street lamps outside and the glow of the stove. The woman was leaning against the wall watching me with her arms folded, black sweater and slacks, raven black hair, eyes like slow coals, Zoya, you are for safe keeping , a lot of it was coming back. 'I've got a thirst like a wooden god.' She laughed and swung a jug over a glass. The room looked like a hospital ward, bowls and towels and instruments all round the bed, a sickly stink in the air. I drank three glasses of tepid water .and lay back again and then the whole thing hit me. 'Bracken. Did you find him?' He shook his head slowly. 'No. But then we didn't expect to: I shut my eyes and something inside my head kept saying all that for nothing, all that for nothing. 'Why not?' I asked him. 'You phoned at 8.42. I got three men there by 8.57. He'd had fifteen minutes to get out, quite long enough.' 'Shit: 'You did your best.' My eyes came open. 'Time for epitaphs, is it?' There were half a dozen pillows and a couple of them rolled on to the floor but I kept moving and got my legs over the edge of the bed. She came at me fast but I said, 'Leave me alone for Christ's sake, I'm all right now.' My left arm was in a sling and I couldn't feel anything on that side. It didn't interest me; all I could think about was that bastard Schrenk. I'd nailed him at his base and now we were about as close to him as we'd been when I'd first got into Moscow. Why had I let him reach that gun? Because I hadn't wanted to kill him. I'd been holding off, taking things right to the brink, chancing my own life and trying to save his. Sometimes you learn the hard way. 'Take it easy,' Bracken said, and got off the crate to hold me up. 'Time is it now?' I asked him, and wobbled about, leaning on him when I had to. 'Nearly twelve.' 'Twelve what? Oh. Night.' 'He must rest,' Zoya said angrily. I suppose she was waiting for me to fall over, going to be right out of luck. Two lumps of metal lying on a bloodied swab in one of the basins, I said: 'What are those?' 'They both went into the same shoulder,' Bracken said. The woman began clearing the stuff away, obviously not prepared to speak to us any more. 'Did you find Ignatov?'