The Machine

in a prison, and if the other prisoners really wanted Williams, which Stone doubted, Stone didn’t rate the guy’s strategy too highly.

But if they wanted Stone? He couldn’t see why, but something was going down in that place. If some prisoners did come looking for him, Stone would be ready when they found him. He was better of out of the way of Williams though. Stone would look weak merely by association with the man. In a place like this, looking strong is nine parts of being strong. Better to keep that pathetic creature Williams out of it. Stone would leave the cell when he got the chance — and see who came looking for him.

Dinner was served in the cells. Stone ate his rice at the bars of the cell, eye-balling the shouters and plate- clangers from his cell. He wanted to see their eyes, to see who meant it. There were a couple of big Malaysian guys who were looking at him silently. They could mean trouble. On the other hand it could be anyone.

A couple of hours after dinner, the cell doors were finally opened and prisoners escorted out in turn to make their ablutions. This could be it.

A clear head is the best weapon. So many men, even big, strong, musclemen, feel stress going into a fight. They start the fight on a ninety-five percent stress level, which creates negative thoughts of what might happen. Unexpected stress points can cause a domino effect of negative thoughts. Inarticulate, looping, draining thoughts. Stress piles on stress, and each sight or sound can paralyse the mind. In fact it certainly will paralyse the mind. And if you’re not thinking, you’ve already lost.

The answer is obvious, but not easy to achieve. Keep a calm clear head, and put the stress onto the other guy.

The cell door clunked open. Stone turned to Williams and ordered him to stay in the cell. No explanation. As his cell door swung wide, Stone smiled at the warder and walked out. The prison guard avoided his eye. Did that mean anything? The Malaysians were giving Stone the stare, trying to look wolfish and hard, laughing to each other. But the laugh said they were nervous, distracting themselves. As the time approaches stressful thoughts would be coursing through them, distracting, making it all happen too fast. Ten, twenty, fifty stress impulses a second can cascade through the mind. Only the highly trained and the bone stupid can avoid it, and these Malaysians weren’t stupid. They’d likely been paid by one of Zhang's acolytes. Were they up to their task?

The entrance to the shower room was a low hole in the nauseous cream and shit brown of the prison wall. The prisoners had to stoop to get in and there was a press at the door. The Malaysians jostled to stay behind him. They would know the routine, the times when the warders weren’t looking.

Eight at a time went through to the showers and Stone found himself in the last bunch. He stayed back to wait for the Malaysians. Unfair not to give them an opportunity. As they went through, the inmates began to undress and to use the toilet, pissing like horses, glad not to have to use the latrines in the cells. Stone looked around. There were three Chinese warders with batons. The room was tiled white, floor to ceiling. Easy to clean away the blood — the perfect location. Stone began to undress, but stood tall, looking around, eyeing the Malaysians, keeping only the warders at his back.

Stone bent to take off his trousers — a moment of danger when he couldn’t jump out of the way. Here it came — Stone snatched the pants back up as one guy leaped for him. Stone raised his hands, but the Malaysian backed off, looking at something behind Stone. Stone’s head flicked round — too late. His arms were grabbed from behind. Two of them on him, behind his back. He couldn’t see them. He tried to kick out backwards, to trip them, up-end them on the wet tiled floor, but his trousers were round his thighs. It was all he could do to stay upright and whoever it was back there was strong. They had his upper arms pulled right back. Nothing he could do about it.

Was it Zhang who had planned this stunt? Whatever. Someone had definitely told the guards to disappear. There were three of them a second ago. Unless…

He tried to shove them sideways, to get them to fall. It would be a start. But his feet barely gripped the floor at all. The men behind held him up. They had a plan, these guys. He’d underestimated them, and it was about to get worse.

Boom! The first blow to his kidneys. Then another. Heavy blows, expertly applied. A few more blows like that and he was dead. Stone let himself vomit after the third, half-digested rice spilling down his chest to the tiles. He’d have to play dead — pretend to be finished, out of it. Not much of a plan, but…

Stone opened his eyes for a second. The prisoners were all gone. Whoever was left in that room was there to assist at an execution. Stone had been wrong about the Malaysians. They were nothing to do with it. Probably they’d wanted to warn him. Now they’d left him to his fate. Once again Stone had gone looking for one fight too many.

He let himself hang limp, felt himself dragged backwards towards the showers. He had to form a picture of what was happening before he could try anything. There were definitely two of them on him. A third would arrive any second. The executioner. Neither of these two was going release him. Someone else was going arrive for the deed. Shit. Stone realised who it would be.

Stone cursed himself for being taken in. Williams. That bastard had been crouched in the corner, cowering and snivelling to hide his appearance. Anyone who could contort himself like that must be seriously fit. Williams was no whining businessman. He was a trained hitman.

Stone made no move. He let his hands trail limply over the faces and shoulders of the men behind him, made himself a dead-weight, to force them to hold him beneath the shoulders — they wanted him upright for some reason. He looked through half-open eyes at his killer, and considered kicking out. Williams was shorter than Stone — about 1.80m — and had the fit, spare look of an infantryman about him. Short neat hair — he could just about pass as a civilian. He was a professional, Stone would give that. He wasted no time in gloating or taunting his victim. Williams intended to be out of there in seconds. He’d be ushered upstairs and a fast car to the airport. With twenty thousand dollars earned undramatically for his few minutes work.

‘Let’s get it done,’ said the New Zealander. He dragged Stone’s pants down. ‘Turn him around!’ Stone was swivelled to face the white wall of the shower cubicle, his face slammed against the tiles. Facial bruising to make it look realistic. Prisoners the world over die from internal bleeding after brutal male rapes. Stone was to be one small addition to that unhappy list. Unremarked, unnoticed, forgotten after a perfunctory enquiry to determine cause of death. What was Williams going to use, a mop or a broom handle?

Stone kept his nerve, stayed loose, his hands by the faces of his two assailants. He could hear Williams crouch down behind him, and then the noise of a wooden mop handle clattering on the side of the shower cubicle. ‘Go, go!’ shouted the one at his left shoulder to Williams. His accent wasn’t Chinese, and he wasn’t a guard. But he was nervous all right. Four of them were crammed in a shower cubicle, and there were three of them who didn’t want blood on their clothes. Stone had something else on his mind. He had to do it now.

Eyes or windpipe? Or both? His thumb was already jabbing hard into the eye of the man to his left. He felt the side of the eyeball squash as his thumb slid into the socket. A piercing shout, right by his ear. The guy let go, yanking the thumb from his face. Stone swivelled around, jabbing a short punch at the windpipe of the other, who collapsed, sliding down the tiles in a wheezing scream.

The crouching Williams had fallen over on his backside behind Stone. Slithering backwards away across the floor and turning for the door. Williams was aborting the mission, scrambling for the exit. His plan had failed and he was about to walk away. No twenty grand, but the fast car to the airport was still on offer. He’d be on a plane in two hours wearing a business suit.

Williams’ hand was almost on the steel door when the mop handle hit his skull. Stone swung the wooden handle a second time, breaking the New Zealander's fingers as he tried to protect himself, and then connecting with another vicious blow to the skull. The assassin went down, two ragged splits reddening on his short-cropped scalp. Scarlet liquid ran across the tiles. No point asking Williams who he was working for. He wouldn’t even know.

Stone grabbed his clothes and walked out of the shower room, jamming the mop handle under the door behind him. He went to the sink and washed before he went back to his cell. None of the three guys in that room were real prisoners and they wouldn’t be missed. There was silence as he strolled past the other cells, no warder in sight. The two Malaysian men gave him a thumbs-up sign.

Back in Stone’s cell, the bottom bed had been stripped. There was no evidence Williams had ever been there.