26 KISHNAR.

We didn't move. We waited. When I'd gone in and found it was dark I turned to switch on the light and had my back to him and I heard a faint rustle of fabric as his arms came up and across my head and started down again past my face with his hands bunched and the wire between them and it was then that everything slowed down and as I brought my right arm rising in a jodan uchi uke it felt as if I were moving it through water, through quiet water, the forearm bone meeting the wire and my fist snapping back against the front of my skull as his two-handed force pressed it there and we began waiting.

The initial half-second of his attack was over and we needed time, a few tenths of a second, in which to make decisions. He was pulling back on the piano wire very hard, and if it had been brought across my throat it would have breached the skin and cut through the thyroid cartilage and the jugular vein and the carotid artery and he could have simply stepped back to avoid the blood and walked away, as I suppose he'd done so many times.

He succeed to kill always. Always.

Sayako.

It was very quiet, and a tap dripping in one of the handbasins made a kind of music, bringing us solace. It hadn't gone well for either of us. I'd made it too obvious, perhaps, waiting for him out there on the darkened lawn. He would have been confident, yes, arrogant even, certain of the kill because he'd never failed; but Mariko Shoda had singled me out as a special assignment, and a full hit team had been ordered in to prepare me for him, to find and fix so that he could strike. It would have told him that I wasn't just another agent, untrained in close-range issues, and so he'd decided to let me go through my charade and wait for me to develop a thirst in the warm night air. If I hadn't come in here he would have dogged me through the hours of darkness with the patience of the instinctive stalker who knows that time is not important, given the certitude of the kill.

He moved and I reacted. I'd made it obvious, then, and let him trap me; but so far I had survived. It hadn't gone well for him either, on this count, and it was possible that it was the first time he'd ever swung the wire across the victim's head and failed to bury it in the throat. That would have dismayed him, and changed his attitude a little, his attitude towards himself, his omnipotence, the natural order of things wherein he was preeminent, unsurpassed. The solace of the musical tap was not misplaced.

He moved and I reacted and a grunt came out of him because what he'd tried to do was drop the front of his knee into the back of mine and bring me down and it didn't work because I'd been expecting it: I'd have tried the same thing if I'd been where he was. The grunt came because I'd used his own force through his arms and the wire to let my head snap back against his face. I couldn't tell how much damage I'd done: the back of the head's insensitive.

I'd seen two iguanas once in Bali, their jaws locked together, their size equal, and for minutes on end they'd waited with the perfect stillness of the reptile, and then one or the other had brought its sinews to the point of explosion and the tails had thrashed and the great heads swung and shaken from side to side until their force was for a while exhausted.

He wasn't a big man, Kishnar; I hadn't expected it; but he was strong and fast, understandably. He smelled of something, of some kind of oil; either it was on his hair or he'd anointed himself in ritual before the act he was embarked on; it was a little like almonds, the faint smell on him. It wasn't gun-oil: he wouldn't carry a gun.

The tap dripped, and I was aware of the thirst that had brought me here.

I let another second or two go by and then I twisted and brought the edge of my shoe down his shin but he stepped back so I brought my heel upwards, going for the groin but not connecting, and now we were on the move and the waiting was over for a time -1 used an elbow strike and found muscle and brought a hiss of pain from him and he slackened the wire and then dragged on it with a strength that bit through the flesh of my arm and into the bone and sent a flash of nerve-light blinding me for an instant, though it wasn't critical: there was nothing to see in here, the vague outlines and reflecting surfaces of the cubicles and basins and tiling and that was all; the door had swung shut and the only light was filtering through a small window somewhere.

I felt the need for a better stance to preserve balance so I shifted my weight and my foot moved something on the floor, small and light, one of his shoes I suppose: he would have taken them off before I'd come in here because ritual would have demanded it, and the need for silence. I found my balance again but he tensed and swung his body in a feint move and then swung the other way and I had to shift my stance again and we were both in motion suddenly, spinning together in a dance of death, faster now, the momentum taking us to the point where balance became critical. Both his hands were still on the ends of the wire and he daren't let it go; my right arm was useless, still thrust between the wire and my throat and with the ulnar nerve paralysed: it was keeping death away but couldn't move to make a strike, so as we went on spinning I used my left elbow again in a series of fast jabs, connecting and then losing him as he lurched away.

We were relying on our feet to give us some kind of decision but the danse macabre went on and we span together until I tried the first throw and timed it right and he lurched and pitched sideways and took me with him, a shoulder smashing against something and my right foot finding an instant's purchase and letting me thrust hard away from him but the wire was there and it didn't slacken and what happened was that his body was flung out feet-first with my trapped forearm as the pivot and a screaming began and glass smashed, the mirror, the fragments cascading to the floor as we lay there still locked by the wire.

Fatigue setting in now, and I didn't like the noise, didn't know what it was because conscious thought had blanked out and there was a dangerous degree of disorientation clouding the mind as the screaming went on and the dragon's breath blew hot against my face, imagination bringing me a flash from a fable. We lay on the floor among the shards of mirror glass like drunks, or lovers, each of us just this side of death and each knowing it, while the screaming Stopped. Hand-drier, yes, I'd hit something with my shoulder as we'd gone pitching down.

I didn't know what he was thinking. Our heads were close together but that was all: there was no transference, no communication. The infinitely complex process of conscious thought was going on inside the skull, brilliant with the flash of synaptic interchange, presenting images, projections, options and alternatives while far distant in the organism was the grosser interplay of emotions, the urge to survive overriding the contemplation of extinction.

Who are you, Kishnar, where were you born, how old are you, my brother under the skin, being of this earthly clime and of similar mould with a head and a face and hands and feet, and how was it through the course of our complicated lives we came finally to lie here on the floor of a lavatory whose doorway would allow only one of us exit?

I suppose he didn't want to let go of the wire because it was the weapon he was used to. That was a weakness in him; it's the same thing when a man carries a gun: he begins to rely on it and feels naked without it, lost, vulnerable; it's why I prefer my hands: you can't forget them or leave them somewhere, and at close quarters they can be just as deadly. If this man, Kishnar, let go of the wire he'd have both hands free and that would give him a critical advantage because I could use only one: the nerve in the right arm was paralysed and I couldn't feel my fingers on that side; the fist was bunched against my forehead and that was all I knew.

But he wouldn't let go. I wasn't going to persuade him.

The fatigue was setting in because we couldn't take this appalling tension off: there was no respite. We weren't like boxers who could punch and relax, punch and relax; we were locked together like those two iguanas in a monumental exercise in isometrics, the muscles beginning to tremble now and the sweat trickling, while the left brain went through a thousand potential moves and the right brain drifted into the imagery of potential death, the passing over of one of these two souls to a new dimension, and the overall sense of loss, of having failed the challenge and been found wanting.

Voices.

Oh Christ I wasn't ready for that - he'd jerked the wire upwards and down again in the hope of my arm falling away and leaving the throat exposed but it didn't work and I felt an explosion of rage and used my free hand, driving an eye-gouge against his face again and again and he jerked his head away every time, no go, so I drove a half-fist against him, lower, targeting the neck, the carotid artery, but he twisted clear and light flashed under my eyelids, the first warning of exhaustion, listen, something will have to be done, and soon, because if he brings his cultural mysticism into play, shifting into the zone where fatigue is controlled and overcome for as long as life demands, I shan't have an answer, well yes, but not as arcane as his, not as practised, and not enough to tip the balance.

Voices outside, one of them saying they thought they'd heard glass breaking somewhere.

He moved again and I reacted and the tails thrashed and the heads swung, shaking, the scales flashing in the hot sun as I sat watching from the rock, my interest caught because it was a contest to the death, and if they Watch it, you 're on the edge of hallucinating, watch it, for Christ's sake.

Dehydration taking its toll, a progressive lack of electrolytes - I'd been thirsty before I'd even got here and now it was fire in the mouth.

They were outside now, talking about the glass breaking, might come in here, but what could they do, throw water over us?

He'd kill ten men, Kishnar, if they got in his way.

We were lying on our sides and my free hand moved over the shards of mirror glass, feeling them for size, for sharpness, as careful as the hand of a jeweller assessing the angularity of a diamond's facets, for there were gems here more priceless, offering more than profit or loss in the marketplace or the envy of a duchess at the opera, feeling them tenderly, the fingertips appraising while under the eyelids the light flashed to the pulsing of my blood.

His knee came up and I blocked it with my thigh and the pain burst, swelled and diminished to numbness: he was very strong, well-trained, not your thug from the dusty streets with throats to cut for a penny.

I want his head, do you understand?

Bitch! I used my own knee and insisted, presenting strike after strike and going beyond the matter of physical force and adding the strength of zen and two or three times his breath was caught in his throat and I knew I'd given pain and perhaps with any luck had found a nerve, the femoral or the rectus femoris, inducing paralysis, but the effort had been appalling because of the tension already there in the muscles and I brought it down, dangerously, to the point where I could recover a small measure of the strength I'd need when the final effort had to be made, a half-second or a minute from now, no later than a minute because fatigue moves into a steepening curve towards the point of total exhaustion.

The voices had gone away; there was just the music of the dripping tap, each drop worth a diamond in my mouth but each one wasted.

I listened for sounds from him, from Kishnar, for a loss of controlled breathing, for a slackening of the muscles, however slight, that would tell me that if I could exert and endure this amount of tension I might yet prevail. But there was no sign from him that he was weakening. I would have said at this stage that his game plan was simply to wear me out, to tire me to the point where I could no longer parry a blow from the knee, where pain so ferocious could be induced that the whole organism would be paralysed if only for a second, giving him time to lift the wire and smash my arm aside and come in again to the throat.

I think that was his game plan, and the decision was close now.

A longing for water, for peace, for the sinews to grow slack and lie quiet, a longing for cessation, for a conclusion, one way or another, even for death, and a rose for Moira.

Then he brought his knee up and smashed it into the thigh-bone and the light burst in the dark and I twisted to avoid a second strike but he connected again and the breath blocked in my throat and something drove through my spirit like a cold wind and that frightened me because I wasn't ready yet to go but he struck again and I twisted again but this was as far as I could move, struck again and I rolled, sliding my leg downwards and trying to find his neck in the half-light, his throat, but I was losing strength and he sensed it and came in for the kill, hurling away the wire and rearing for an instant and then plunging with both hands for my neck as I turned just enough to do the only thing I could do while everything slowed down again and I saw my left hand moving an inch, two inches until the shard of mirror glass was correctly placed so that as he came down against me it went into his throat, and for a moment it seemed that nothing was happening, until his hands began closing on my neck, strong hands reaching confidently for my death, and they would have found it but for the sliver of glass - it had pierced his windpipe and begun to weaken him as he sucked in air, once, twice, before he began sucking on blood, his hands leaving me and reaching up to try to do something; but there is nothing to be done when the breath of life itself is compromised, and I lay waiting; just this side of consciousness, as his blood began trickling onto me, onto my face, its hot touch bringing me back to full awareness and reminding me that it was now honoured, the unspoken pact between us that one or the other should come to see his life vouchsafed or vanquished, so be it, let it now abide.

I twisted from under him and lurched to the line of handbasins and span a tap, wrenching at it until it gushed, then bowed my head and drank like a beast at a waterhole.

27 PINK PANTIES.

A lot of noise. 'Keep them away.' Not loud noise, but a lot, voices, feet shuffling, the ring of metal.

'But I have to know -'

'Keep everyone else away, for your own sake.'

Sounded like Pepperidge.

They'd put the lights on, too bright, half-blinding me, I was lying on my back.

'All right,' someone said, 'you can dress it.'

My hand was burning. She was a Chinese, the nurse, her eyes intent.

'Just take my word for it. I know what I'm doing and I know what's best for you, for the clinic, believe me.'

Pepperidge, yes. Someone had come in while I was still at the waterhole and I'd told him to phone this number, nothing is the matter, just go and phone him now and tell him to come here, my name is Jordan, for Christ's sake don't just stand there, go and phone.

'Don't move, please,' the nurse said. Her young face was puckered, queasy, I turned my head, remembering, and saw him lying there, Kishnar, my brother in blood, in blood indeed, it was everywhere.