foot of the steps to the apartment block. What had JoJo said on the phone. A week? Perhaps a fortnight? It was not possible.
He took the steps at a run, and paused in front of the double row of letter-boxes along one side of the hall. «Grzybowski' read one. «Flat 23.»
He decided to take the stairs since it was only on the second floor.
Flat 23 had a door like the others. It had a bell push with a little white card on a slot beside it, with the word Grzybowski typed on it. The door stood at the end of the corridor, flanked by the doors of flats 22 and 24. He pressed the bell. The door in front of him opened and the lounging pickaxe handle swung out of the gap and down towards his forehead.
The blow split the skin but bounced off the bone with a dull 'thunk'. One each side of the Pole the doors of flats 22 and 24 opened inwards and men surged out. It all happened in less than half a second. In the same time Kowalski went berserk. Although slow thinking in most ways, the Pole knew one technique perfectly, that of fighting.
In the narrow confines of the corridor his size and strength were useless to him. Because of his height the pickaxe handle had not reached the full momentum of its downward swing before hitting his head. Through the blood spurting over his eyes he discerned there were two men in the door in front of him and two others on each side. He needed room to move, so he charged forward into flat 23.
The man directly in front of him staggered back under the impact; those behind closed in, hands reached for his collar and jacket. Inside the room he drew the Colt from under his armpit, turned once and fired back into the doorway. As he did so another stave slammed down on his wrist, jerking the aim downwards.
The bullet ripped the kneecap off one of his assailants who went down with a thin screech. Then the gun was out of his hand, the fingers rendered nerveless from another blow on the wrist. A second later he was overwhelmed as the five men hurled themselves at him. The fight lasted three minutes. A doctor later estimated he must have taken a score of blows to the head from the leather-wrapped coshes before he finally passed out. A part of one of his ears was slashed off by a glancing blow, the nose was broken and the face was a deep-red mask. Most of his fighting was by reflex action. Twice he almost reached his gun, until a flying foot sent it spinning to the other end of the sitting room. When he did finally go down on to his face there were only three attackers left standing to put the boot in.
When they had done and the enormous body on the floor was insensible, only a trickle of blood from the slashed scalp indicating that it was still alive, the three survivors stood back swearing viciously, chests heaving. Of the others, the man shot in the leg was curled against the wall by the door, white-faced, glistening red hands clutching his wrecked knee, a long monotonous scream of obscenities coming through pain-grey lips. Another was on his knees, rocking slowly back and forwards, hands thrust deep into the torn groin. The last lay down on the carpet not far from the Pole, a dull bruise discolouring his left temple where one of Kowalski's haymakers had caught him at full force.
The leader of the group rolled Kowalski over on to his back and flicked up one of the closed eyelids. He crossed to the telephone near the window, dialled a local number and waited.
He was still breathing hard. When the phone was answered he told the person at the other end «We got him… Fought? Of course he bloody fought… He got off one bullet, Guerini's lost a kneecap. Capetti took one in the balls and Vissart is out cold… What? Yes, the Pole's alive, those were the orders weren't they? Otherwise he wouldn't have done all this damage… Well, he's hurt, all right. Dunno, he's unconscious… Look, we don't want a salad basket [police van] we want a couple of ambulances. And make it quick.»
He slammed the receiver down and muttered «Cons' to the world in general. Round the room the fragments of shattered furniture lay about like firewood, which was all they would be good for. They had all thought the Pole would go down in the passage outside. None of the furniture had been stacked in a neighbouring room, and it had got in the way. He himself had stopped an armchair thrown by Kowalski with one hand full in the chest, and it hurt. Bloody Pole, he thought, the sods at head office hadn't said what he was like.
Fifteen minutes later two Citroen ambulances slid into the road outside the block and the doctor came up. He spent five minutes examining Kowalski. Finally he drew back the unconscious man's sleeve and gave him an injection. As the two stretcher-bearers staggered away towards the lift with the Pole, the doctor turned to the wounded Corsican who had been regarding him balefully from his pool of blood beside the wall.
He prised the man's hands away from his knee, took a look and whistled.
«Right. Morphine and the hospital. I'm going to give you a knock-out shot. There's nothing I can do here. Anyway, mom petit, your career in this line is over.»
Guerini answered him with a stream of obscenities as the needle went in.
Vissart was sitting up with his hands to his head, a dazed expression on his face. Capetti was upright by now, leaning against the wall retching dry. Two of his colleagues gripped him under the armpits and led him hobbling from the flat into the corridor. The leader helped Vissart to his feet as the stretcher-bearers from the second ambulance carried the inert form of Guerini away.
Out in the corridor the leader of the six took a last look back into the desolated room. The doctor stood beside him.
«Quite a mess, hein?» said the doctor.
«The local office can clean it up,» said the leader. «It's their bloody flat.»
With that he closed the door. The doors of flat 22 and 24 were also open, but the interiors were untouched. He pulled both doors closed.
«No neighbours?» asked the doctor.
«No neighbours,» said the Corsican, «we took the whole floor.»
Preceded by the doctor, he helped the still dazed Vissart down the stairs to the waiting cars.
Twelve hours later, after a fast drive the length of France, Insert p 140-3
It was an envelope postmarked in Rome and bore the message «Your friend can be contacted at MOLITOR 5901. Introduce yourself with the words 'Ici Chacal'. Reply will be 'Ici Valmy'. Good luck.»
It was not until the morning of the 11th that the letter from Zurich arrived. He grinned openly as he read the confirmation that, come what may, provided he remained alive, he was a wealthy man for the rest of his life. If his forthcoming operation was successful, he would be even richer. He had no doubts that he would succeed. Nothing had been left to chance.
He spent the rest of that morning on the telephone booking air passages, and fixed his departure for the following morning, August 12th.
The cellar was silent except for the sound of breathing, heavy but controlled from the five men behind the table, a rasping rattle from the man strapped to the heavy oaken chair in front of it. One could not tell how big the cellar was, nor what was the colour of the walls. There was only one pool of light in the whole place and it encircled the oak chair and the prisoner. It was a standard table lamp such as is often used for reading, but its bulb was of great power and brightness, adding to the overpowering warmth of the cellar. The lamp was clipped to the left-hand edge of the cable and the adjustable shade was turned so that it shone straight at the chair six feet away.
Part of the circle of light swept across the stained wood of the table, illuminating here and there the tips of a set of fingers, a hand and a wrist, a clipped cigarette sending a thin stream of blue smoke upwards.
So bright was the light that by contrast the rest of the cellar was in darkness. The torsos and shoulders of the five men behind the table in a row were invisible to the prisoner. The only way he could have seen his questioners would have been to leave his chair and move to the side, so that the indirect glow from the light picked out their silhouettes.
This he could not do. Padded straps pinned his ankles firmly against the legs of the chair. From each of these legs, front and back, an L shaped steel bracket was bolted into the floor. The chair had arms, and the wrists of the prisoner were secured to these also by padded straps. Another strap ran round his waist and a third round his massive hairy chest. The padding of each was drenched with sweat.
Apart from the quiescent hands, the top of the table was almost bare. Its only other decoration was a slit bordered in brass and marked along one side with figures. Out of the slit protruded a narrow brass arm with a bakelite knob on the top which could be moved backwards and forwards up and down the slit. Beside this was a simple on/off switch. The right hand of the man on the end of the table rested negligently close to the controls. Little black hairs crawled along the back of the hand.
