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
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.
'Quick!' Ustinov shouted over the frantic questioning of the attendants and the yelling of security guards as they came clattering over the cobbles. 'You, driver, get us away from here at once, before the whole place goes up!' There was little fear of that happening, but it would guarantee some action. And it would get Ustinov out of harm's way, for the moment anyway. The hell of it was that he couldn't be sure any of them back there were dead. If they were he would have plenty of time to construct his story; if not he was done for. Only time would tell.
He flopped into the back of the ambulance as its engine roared into life, followed by the attendants who at once began to peel off his outer garments. Doors flapping, the vehicle pulled away across the courtyard, passed under a high stone archway and onto a track leading to the perimeter wall.
'Keep going,' Ustinov yelled. 'Get us away!' The driver hunched down over the wheel and put his foot down.
Back in the courtyard the security men and the helicop ter pilot hopped and skittered on the cobbles, coughing in the streamers of acrid smoke from the hanging door. The fire, what little of it there had been, had died in the smoke. And now, out from behind that dense, reeking wall of smoke staggered an ashen nightmare figure: Dra gosani, naked still, black-streaked over grey and gore-spattered flesh, carried a bellowing Gregor Borowitz draped in a fireman's lift across his shoulders.
'What?' the General shouted between coughs and splut ters.
As the security men lifted Borowitz down from Drago sani's bowed back, one of them breathlessly told him: 'Comrade Ustinov was wounded, sir. He went off in the ambulance.'
'Comrade?
He turned his wolfs face up to the tower, yelled: 'You there — do you see the ambulance?'
'Yes, Comrade General. It approaches the outer wall.'
'Stop it!' Borowitz screamed, clutching at his shattered shoulder.
'But — '
'Blow it to hell!' the General raged.
The marksman in the tower slid his night-sight binocu lars into a groove in the butt of the Kalashnikov, slapped home a mixed clip of tracers and explosive bullets. Kneeling, he picked up the vehicle again in the crosshairs of the night-sights, aimed at the cab and bonnet. The ambulance was slowing down as it approached one of the archways through the perimeter wall, but the marksman knew it would never get there. Jamming his weapon between his shoulder and the parapet wall, he squeezed the trigger and kept it squeezed. The hosepipe of fire reached out from the tower, fell short of the vehicle by a few yards, then jumped the gap and struck the target.
The front end of the ambulance burst into white fire, exploded and hurled blazing petrol in all directions. Blown off the track, turned on its side, the vehicle ploughed to a halt in torn-up turf. Someone in white crawled away from it on hands and knees as it burned; someone else, wearing an open, flapping shirt and carrying a dark overcoat, cowered back from the flames and limped in the direction of the covered exit.
Unable to see out of the courtyard from where he stood supported by the security men, Borowitz eagerly shouted up to the tower, 'Did you stop it?'
'Yes, sir. Two men at least are alive. One is ambulance crew, and I think the other is — '
'I know who the other is,' Borowitz screamed. 'He's a traitor! To me, to the branch, to Russia. Cut him down!'
The marksman gulped, aimed, fired. Tracers and bul lets reached out, chewed up the earth at Ustinov's heels, caught up with him and blew him apart in blazing phos phorus and exploding steel.
It was the first time the man in the tower had killed.
Now he put down his gun, leaned shakily against the balcony wall and called down, 'It's done, sir.' In the lull, his voice seemed very small.
'Very well,' Borowitz shouted back. 'Now stay where you are for the moment and keep your eyes open.' He groaned and clutched at his shoulder again where blood seeped through the material of his overcoat.
One of the security men said, 'Sir, you're hurt.'
'Of course I'm hurt, fool! It can wait a little while. But for now I want everyone called in. I want to speak to them. And for the moment none of this is to be reported outside these walls. How many bloody KGB men do we have here?'
'Two, sir,' the same security man told him. 'One in there — '
'He's dead,' growled Borowitz, uncaring.
'Then only one, sir. Out there, in the woods. The rest of us are branch operatives.'
'Good! But… does the one in the woods have a radio?'
'No, sir.'
'Even better. Very well, bring him in and lock him up for now — on my authority.'
'Right, sir.'
'And don't let anyone worry,' Borowitz continued. 'All of this is on my shoulders — which are very broad, as you well know. I'm not trying to hide anything, but I want to break it in my own time. This could be our chance to get the KGB off our backs once and for all. Right, let's see some action around here! You — ' he turned to the helicopter pilot. 'Get yourself airborne. I need a doctor — the branch doctor. Bring him in at once.'
'Yes, Comrade General. At once.' The pilot ran for his machine, the security men for their car where it was parked outside the courtyard. Borowitz watched them go, leaned on Dragosani's arm and said:
'Boris, are you good for anything else?'
'I'm still in one piece, if that's what you mean,' the other answered. 'I just had time to shelter in the anteroom before the grenade exploded.'
Borowitz grinned wolfishly despite the terrible burning in his shoulder. 'Good!' he said. Then get back in there
