Borowitz nodded. 'You shall have your explanation in good time,' he rumbled. 'Meanwhile I agree with you — I, too, would prefer not to throw up!'
Dragosani had taken up what looked like a hollow silver chisel in one hand, and a small copper-jacketed mallet in the other. He placed the chisel in the centre of the corpse's forehead, brought the mallet sharply down and drove the chisel home. As the mallet bounced following the blow, so a little brain fluid was vented through the chisel's hollow stem. That was enough for Mikhail; he gulped once, then returned to his corner and stood there trembling, his face averted. The man called Andrei remained where he was, stood there as if frozen, but Borowitz noted how he clenched and unclenched his fists where they hung at his sides.
Now Dragosani stood back from the corpse, crouched down, stared fixedly at the chisel where it stood up from the pierced cranium. He nodded slowly, then sprang erect and stepped to the table with the case of instruments. Dropping the mallet on to the tough floor tiles, he snatched up a slender steel straw and dropped it expertly, with hardly a glance, into the chisel's cavity. The fine steel tube sank slowly, pneumatically down through the body of the chisel until just its mouthpiece projected.
'Mouthpiece!' Andrei suddenly croaked, turning away and stumbling blindly across the floor of the observation cell. 'My God, my God — the mouthpiece!'
Borowitz closed his eyes. Tough as he was he could not watch. He had seen it all before and remembered it only too well.
Moments passed: Mikhail in his corner, trembling — Andrei across the room, his back to the screen — and their superior with his eyes tightly shut, squeezed down in his chair. Then -
The scream that came over the speaker was one to shatter the strongest nerves, indeed a scream to raise the dead. It was full of horror, full of monstrous knowledge, full of… outrage? Yes, outrage — the cry of a wounded carnivore, a vengeful beast. And hot on its heels — chaos!
As the scream subsided Borowitz's eyes shot open, his heavy eyebrows forming a peaked tent over them. For an instant he sat there, a startled owl, nerves jumping, fingers clawing at the arms of his chair. Then he gave a hoarse shout, threw up an arm before his face, hurled his heavy body backward. His chair crashed over, allowing him to roll clear, protected by the chair to the left, as the screen caved inward in a shower of glass and small, buckling strips of lead. A large hole had appeared in the screen, with the legs of the steel chair from the other room protruding half-way through. The chair was snatched back out of sight — and again driven forward, smashing out the rest of the small panes and sending fragments of glass flying everywhere.
'Swine!' Dragosani's shriek came from both the speaker and the shattered screen. 'Oh, you swine, Gregor Borow itz! You poisoned him — an agent to rot his brain — and now, you bastard, now I have tasted that same poison'
From behind the outraged, hate-filled voice came Dra gosani himself, to stand outlined for a moment in a frame of jagged, dangling glass teeth, before hurling himself across the table and tumbled chairs at Borowitz where he floundered on the floor. In his hand something glittered, silver against the grey of his flesh.
'No!' Borowitz boomed, his bullfrog voice loud with terror in the confines of the small room. 'No, Boris, you're mistaken. You're not poisoned, man!'
'Liar! I read it in his dead brain. I felt his pain as he died. And now that stuff is in me!' Dragosani leapt on to Borowitz where he fought to struggle to his feet, bore him down again, raised high the sickle shape of silver in his clenched fist.
The man called Mikhail had been flapping in the background like a wind-torn scarecrow, but now he came forward, his hand reaching inside his overcoat. He caught Dragosani's wrist just as it commenced its downward sweep. Expert with a cosh, Mikhail applied it at precisely the correct point, just hard enough to stun. The bright steel flew from Dragosani's nerveless fingers and he fell face down across Borowitz, who managed to roll half out of the way. Then Mikhail was helping the older man to his feet, while Borowitz cursed and raved, kicking once or twice at the naked man where he lay groaning. Up on his feet, he pushed his junior away and began to dust himself down — but in the next moment he saw the cosh in Mikhail's hand and understood what had happened. His eyes flew open in shock and sudden anxiety.
'What?' he said, his mouth falling open. 'You struck him? You used that on him? Fool!'
'But Comrade Borowitz, General, he — '
Borowitz cut him off with a snarl, pushed with both hands at Mikhail's chest and sent him staggering. 'Dolt! Idiot! Pray he is unharmed. If there's any god you believe in, just pray you haven't permanently damaged this man. Didn't I tell you he's unique?' He went down on one knee, grunting as he turned the stunned man over on to his back. Colour was returning to Dragosani's face, the normal colour of a man, but a large lump was growing where the back of his skull met his neck. His eyelids fluttered as Borowitz anxiously scanned his face.
'Lights!' the old General snapped then. 'Let's have them up full. Andrei, don't just stand there like — ' he paused, stared about the room as Mikhail turned up the lights. Andrei was not to be seen and the door of the room stood ajar. 'Cowardly dog!' Borowitz growled.
'Perhaps he has gone for help,' Mikhail gulped. And continued: 'Comrade General, if I had not hit Dragosani he would have — '
'I know, I know,' Borowitz growled impatiently. 'Never mind that now. Help me get him into a chair.'
As they lifted Dragosani up and lowered him into a chair he shook his head, groaned loudly and opened his eyes. They focused on Borowitz's face, narrowing in accusation. 'You!' he hissed, trying to straighten up but failing.
, 'Take it easy,' said Borowitz. 'And don't be a fool, if you're not poisoned. Man, do you think I would so readily dispose of my most valuable asset?' 'But he was poisoned!' Dragosani rasped. 'Only four days ago. It burned his brain out and he died in agony, thinking his head was melting. And now the same stuff is tin me! I need to be sick, quickly! I have to be sick!' He struggled frantically to get up.
Borowitz nodded, held him down with a heavy hand, grinned like a Siberian wolf. He brushed back his central Streak of jet-black hair and said, 'Yes, that is how he died — but not you, Boris, not you. The poison was something special, a Bulgarian brew. It acts rapidly… and dis perses just as rapidly. It voids itself in a few hours, leaves no trace, becomes undetectable. Like a dagger of ice, it strikes then melts away.'
Mikhail was staring, gaping like a man who hears something he can't believe. 'What is this?' he asked. 'How can he possibly know that we poisoned the Second in Command of the — '
'Be quietagain Borowitz rounded on him. 'That loose tongue of yours will choke you yet, Mikhail Gerkhov!'
'But — '
'Man, are you blind? Have you learned nothing?'
The other shrugged, fell silent. It was all beyond him, completely over his head. He had seen many strange things since he'd been transferred into the branch three years ago — seen and heard things he would never have believed possible — but this was so far removed from anything else he'd experienced that it defied reason.
Borowitz had turned back to Dragosani, had clasped his neck where it joined his shoulder. The naked man was merely pale now, neither leaden grey nor fleshy pink but pale. He shivered as Borowitz asked him: 'Boris, did you get his name? Think now, for it's very important.'
'His name?' Dragosani looked up, looked sick.
'You said he was close to me, the man who plotted my assassination with that gutted dog in there. Who is he, Boris? Who?'
Dragosani nodded, narrowed his eyes, said: 'Close to you, yes. His name is… Ustinov!'
'Wha-?' Borowitz straightened up, realisation dawning.
'Ustinov?' Mikhail Gerkhov gasped. 'Andrei Ustinov? Is that possible?'
'Very possible,' said a familiar voice from the doorway. Ustinov stepped through it, his thin face lined and drawn, a submachine-gun cradled in his arms. He directed the weapon's muzzle ahead of him, carelessly aimed it at the other three. 'Definitely possible.'
'But why?' said Borowitz.
"But isn't that obvious, "Comrade General"? Wouldn't any man who'd been with you as long as I have, want to see you dead? Too many long years, Gregor, I've suffered your tantrums and rages, all your petty little intrigues and stupid bullying. Yes, and I served you loyally — until now. But you never liked me, never let me in on anything. What have I been — what am I even now but a cipher of J yourself, a despised appendage? Well, you'll be pleased to note that I am, after all, an apt pupil. But your deputy? No, I was never that. And I should step aside for this upstart?' he nodded sneeringly towards Gerkhov.
Borowitz's face clearly showed his disgust. 'And you were the one I would have chosen!' he snorted. 'Hah!No fool like an old fool…'
Dragosani groaned and lifted a hand to his head. He made as if to stand, fell out of the chair on to his knees, sprawled face down on the glass-littered floor. Borowitz made to kneel beside him.
'Stay where you are!' Ustinov snapped. 'You can't help him now. He's a dead man. You're all dead men.'
'You'll never carry it off,' Borowitz said, but the colour was draining from his face and his voice was little more than a dry rustle.
'Of course I will,' Ustinov sneered. 'In all this mayhem, this madness? Oh, I'll tell a good tale, be sure — of you, a raving lunatic, and of the worse than crazy people you employ — and who will there be to say any different?' He stepped forward, the ugly weapon in his hands making a harsh ch-ching as he cocked it.
On the floor at his feet, Boris Dragosani was not unconscious. His collapse had simply been a ploy to put him within reach of a weapon. Now his fingers closed on the bone handle of the small, scythe-like surgical knife where it had fallen. Ustinov stepped closer, grinned as he quickly reversed his weapon, slamming its butt into Borowitz's unsuspecting face. As the Head of ESP Branch flew backwards, blood smearing his crushed mouth, so Ustinov adjusted his grip on the gun and squeezed the trigger.
The first burst caught Borowitz high on the right shoulder, spun him like a top and tossed him down. It also lifted Gerkhov off his feet, drove him across the room and slammed him into the wall. He hung there for a second like a man crucified, then took a single step forward, spat out a stream of blood and fell face down. The wall was scarlet where his back had pressed against it.
Borowitz scrambled backwards, trailing his right arm along the floor, until his shoulders brought up against the wall. Unable to go any farther, he hunched himself up and sat there, waiting for it to happen. Ustinov drew his lips back from his teeth like a great shark before it strikes. He aimed at Borowitz's belly, closing his finger on the trigger. At the same time Dragosani lunged upward, his knife not quite hamstringing Ustinov behind his left knee. Ustinov screamed, Borowitz too, as bullets chewed up the wall just over his head.
Hanging onto Ustinov's coat, Dragosani hauled himself to his knees, sliced blindly upward a second time. His sickle blade cut through overcoat, jacket, shirt and flesh. It carved Ustinov's upper right arm to the bone and his useless fingers dropped the gun. Almost as a reflex action, he kneed Dragosani in the face.
Gasping his pain and terror, knowing he was badly cut, Andrei Ustinov, traitor, hobbled out of the door and slammed it shut. Another moment saw him pass through a tiny anteroom and out into the corridor. There he closed the soundproof door more quietly behind him, stepped over the body of the KGB man where it lay with lolling tongue and caved-in skull. The killing of this one was unfortunate, but it had been necessary.
Cursing and gasping his pain, Ustinov hobbled down the corridor leaving a trail of blood. He had almost reached the door to the courtyard when a sound behind him brought him up short. Turning, he brought out a compact fragmentation grenade from his inside pocket, pulled the pin. He saw Dragosani step out into the corridor, stumble over the body sprawled there and go to his knees. Then, as their eyes met, he lobbed the grenade. After that there was nothing to do but get out of there. With the grenade's bouncing ringing in his ears, and Dragosani's hiss of snatched breath, he opened the steel door to the courtyard, stepped through it and pulled it firmly shut behind him.
Out in the night, Ustinov mentally ticked off the seconds as he limped towards the two white-coated attendants at the rear of the ambulance. 'Help!' he croaked. 'I'm cut — badly! It's Dragosani, one of our special operatives. He's gone mad, killed Borowitz, Gerkhov, and a KGB man.'
From behind him, lending his words definition, there came a muffled detonation. The steel door gonged as if someone had struck it with a sledgehammer; it bowed outward a little and broke a hinge, then was sucked back and open to slam against the corridor wall. Smoke, heat and a lick of red flame billowed out, all bearing the heavy stench of high explosives.