He motioned with the gun and Georgi backed away and resumed his sitting position. Its yoga-like posture was reinforced as he placed both hands behind his head. Some compressed Buddhist statue or penitent.
Hyde flicked open the streamer's drive door and snatched out the data cassette. He gripped its clear plastic tightly in his hand like an award for effort, for winning. He turned, then, and looked down the long, bright tunnel of the outer room. Two or three individuals in white lab coats, immobilised and confused by the alarm. No figures in uniform — not yet. Time…
Time was looping out ahead of him, too thin to become a lifeline, but something to cling to — or to follow out of the labyrinth. He stood up, and his legs did not feel weak, only cramped by tension. He stamped his feet, as at the beginning of a race.
Then, uniforms. At the far end of the long room.
He thrust the cassette into the pocket of his lab coat. Fished in the briefcase and, after unclipping the plastic cover of a narrow compartment, withdrew what might have been an aluminium rod shaped like a small, thin truncheon. He jammed the pistol into his belt in the small of his back, patted the cassette, and walked to the door of the inner security room. Georgi remained silent and unmoving behind him. He opened the door, passed through, and the alarms assaulted him as he closed the door behind him. The noise of the computers in the main room was louder.
The guards, three of them, had halted. Seeing him in his lab coat, they appeared, even at the distance of half the length of the huge room, disarmed, unconcerned. One of them was already questioning one of the operators, who was pointing towards Hyde and the highest security area. Hyde glanced behind him. There was no sign of Georgi. Playing safe—
Hyde began walking slowly down the room, glancing from side to side — not too casually, the alarms
Bin — yes. Full — almost. Fuse-box — no, no… yes… He gripped the tube in his pocket more tightly, levering open the small, hinged handgrip with his fingers. The guard was twenty feet away and already demanding his ID. Hyde smiled disarmingly and stroked the barrel of the Flammpatrone, Hand DM 34. Touched the handgrip, touched the now-freed trigger. Apart from the Czech pistol, it was the only weapon Godwin had given him, with precise instructions on its use —
Hyde reached carefully into his pocket and withdrew his papers. Georgi opened the door and shouted a warning. The two distant guards turned to him, absorbing the information that he was their target. The guard in front of him moved the vz.61 Skorpion machine-pistol towards Hyde's stomach. Hyde drew and fired the flame- cartridge launcher over the guard's head, towards the fuse- box on the wall.
The guard's surprised expression became a small round hole through which his breath was punched as Hyde bulled into him, heaving him aside and down. Then he ducked behind one of the orange ICL cabinets as the incendiary charge struck the fuse-box.
Dark — light — light glaring from the walls, the hissing of a shower of fragments at 1300 degrees Centigrade, cries of shock and temporary blindness. Hyde scuttled through the ranks of cabinets towards the scarred wall where the burning, molten remains of the fuse-box, a damaged computer cabinet with sparks leaping and crying, and the burning droplets of cartridge formed an untidy, brilliant bonfire almost obscured by the smoke generated by the charge.
He crouched, face averted, behind a wheeled waste-bin, then heaved it ahead of him. It gathered speed as he ran. Shots flicked off the wall after murdering his growing-diminishing-leaping shadow, until he twisted and heaved the bin over. Its contents, great bundles and sheafs of print-out paper, spilled towards the burning fragments — then scorched, curled, ignited. Bullets from a Skorpion chipped a ragged contour across the wall above his head. Plaster dusted his hair. The print-out sheafs were well alight. Within the smoke, gouts of orange flame were rearing towards the ceiling, sinuous as snakes. He doubled back the way he had come, moving in a swift, aching crouch, using his hands often as if four-legged to speed his progress and keep his balance. He weaved through the cabinets and the ranks of computer equipment. A printer chattered as he passed it like some look-out bird alerting the guards. The whole of the room was full of long, glaring, melting and reforming shadows. The lights had fused. Sparks protested from some of the cabinets. The guards shouted.
He glanced across the room and saw the billow of CO2 from an extinguisher, the thin spurt of inert foam from another. The whole of the waste-bin's contents were fully alight. The fuse-box dripped molten fragments down the charred wall. The smoke was rolling, dense and clinging. Guards moved near it, through it. He had less than thirty seconds before the steel shutters locked all of them in the room. Already, the air-conditioning system would have automatically shut down. In — nineteen seconds — no, sixteen now, no more… the room would be pumped full of an inert gas which would stifle the fire. And kill him and the guards as it forced every particle of oxygen from the computer room. In seconds, the guards themselves would hurry out…
Hyde regained his bearings and moved swiftly towards the doors and the corridor—
And the guards, and reinforcements and fire-fighters and civilian staff and security men. Stepanov and Georgi would be running by now, desperate to get out before the steel shutters slammed down, locking them in—
He straightened up. The smoke persisted, seemed even thicker. He felt it in his throat now, unnoticed before. He heard coughing, and an order to get out, leave the fire — shutters, he heard in a high voice, a panicky warning. Gas—
Go now—! He had only seconds before they would block his escape, or be no more than a pace behind him. Flame spurted and coiled, CO2 puffed and hissed, smoke rolled thick and heavy.
He brushed at his lab coat — smeared with greasy dirt, scorched in one or two places — and touched the cassette in his pocket. Then he burst through the glass doors, adopting a wild, frightened look, his arm extended to indicate the chaos behind him.
No one — no one…
In disbelief, he hurried through the reception area. Incongruously, a small green watering-can stood beside the pot in which the rubber plant was growing. He pushed open the outer door. The corridor was empty—
No. A guard at the corner, at the bottom of the stairs. His guard. The alarms beat their noise down at his head, shrilled away like startled, fleeing birds down the corridor. Take the stairs to his left, downwards—?
No, not deeper—
He hurried towards the guard, already shouting in panic at the top of his voice: 'For God's sake, man, isn't there any organised response to a
The young guard's mouth opened. His rifle was held slackly across his chest. The stairs were empty. Hyde hit him in the stomach, then across the chin, then on the side of the neck as the man fell away from him. He kicked the guard's legs after him, thrusting them out of sight from the stairs. The rifle had slid away down the corridor, but he did not want it anyway. It declared his violence, obviated bluff of any kind. The adrenalin coursed. He dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time—
To be confronted by uniforms, white coats, suits, extinguishers, rifles, a fireman's helmet. Slow, slow—
'It's chaos in there!' he screamed. 'Absolute
He leaned against the wall to let the group pass. One man snapped at him, 'What about the security breach? The security alarm sounded first!'
Hyde shrugged. 'I don't know — all I know is — the fuse-box blew — fire everywhere…' He coughed, for effect, hanging his head in weariness, his eyes fixed on the man's groin as he awaited the necessity for violence.
'How many still inside? Quickly, man! How many?'
'God knows — two, three… security personnel, not computer—'
'Warn security control of casualties. I want a manual override on the shutters and the gas until everyone's out! Quickly!'
Hyde heard a bellowed reference to a security telephone, and then they had passed him on their way towards the computer room.
He turned and ran, before they discovered the unconscious, obviously beaten guard at the bottom of the stairs.
