This was the scene. This was the scene of the execution.

We were moving at less than cruising speed and there was less noise from the diesels. The wake bannered from the stern across the sea towards Miami. There was a vessel a mile off, perhaps less; it was difficult to judge distances by moonlight on a reflecting surface. The vessel was marked only by its riding lights. Two or three more stood off our port quarter, farther away, one of them with lights shining on deck and from a line of portholes below. Another looked as if it had way on, and showed both red and green lights. It was heading obliquely in our direction but wouldn't pass close, no closer than half a mile.

Water slapped below the bows; the night was peaceful.

The man Vicente was still turned towards us in the cabin, looking at Nicko. Fidel the Cuban wasn't aware of the moment; he sat humped against the bulwark nursing his pain, his eyes closed and his head on his chest. Across from him, five feet from where I was standing, Roget the black leaned in a crouch to keep the profile of the big Suzuki below the rail. He also was looking at Nicko. The fifth man was at the helm, his back to us. Above the cabin roof the radar scanner-swung, and a penant flew against the stars.

This was the scene.

Nicko pulled his gun.

'Fidel.'

Kicked the Cuban's foot to get him conscious. Fidel lifted his head and looked up into Nicko's bright little eyes, and shrank.

'Get up.'

Didn't move. He couldn't look away from the man above him. His lips began forming words that made no sound.

'Get up!'

It took a little time, a few seconds, because he was in a lot of pain; but he got to his feet and Nicko looked into his face.

Turn around.'

We rose on a crest and there was Miami again, jewel-bright in the distance, riding out the night. I wished Fidel could have turned his head and seen it, because it was so pretty. It might have reminded him of Juanita.

'Kneel. On your knees.'

Somewhere a lanyard was slapping timber to the wind of our passage, strumming in the quietness, passing the time. Flotsam drifted past, a cement bag, I think, or a life-jacket.

'Nicko. Not with the gun.' Vicente, from the cabin.

Nicko turned with a jerk. 'Jesus Christ, we're miles -'

'Not with the gun.'

The tone almost quiet, but with a lot of emphasis, a lot of authority.

Fidel didn't hear them, or didn't follow the meaning; he knelt facing the bulwark, his back to Nicko, praying softly in Spanish. There was nothing I could do for him and I don't think that in any case it would have been wise. If anything happened he would be in the way, fatally, perhaps, in the way.

'Listen, for Christ's sake, one shot won't make any -'

'Nicko. If you use a gun, Mr Toufexis is going to know. He is going to know from me. You've seen Mr Toufexis with people, Nicko. He will be like that with you. So do it now, and not with a gun.'

'Jesus Christ.' But in capitulation.

I suppose Vicente was thinking in terms of numbers, physical numbers. If he didn't want anyone to make a noise there was no point in Roget's holding the big Suzuki on me any more. He'd be better off putting it down and getting his hands ready in case I tried to do anything. Fidel wouldn't do anything: he wasn't in Vicente's reckoning. The way he was working his numbers out, there were four men against one, and that would be enough in the event of trouble.

'Do it, Nicko. Now.'

I don't think Vicente had thought about Roget and the Suzuki yet. He was too concerned with Nicko and the need to get this over soon, at once. He watched Nicko go to the chain locker and come back with a marlin spike.

'Christ sake,' he said, looking up at Vicente in the cabin. 'Think of the fucking mess.'

I thought his tone was interesting. To take a gun away from a man like this, a man who cleans it, loads it, wears it wherever he goes, is like taking his clothes off him. It feels like a different world to him, a world in which he feels exposed. And I believe there was another thing. Nicko was squeamish. To shoot another man from a distance, however short, is to enjoy the remoteness of the act, the technical sophistication of moving the safety catch off, of aiming, holding still, and moving the trigger against the spring. But to take a man's life with the bare hands or with some crude instrument as an extension of the hands is an act of intimacy, of an intimacy greater by far than the act of love, involving as it does the plundering of life itself.

He stood there, Nicko, holding the spike, not sure how he was going to do this without getting blood on his expensive khaki suit. He was holding the thing in both hands, in the horrible semblance of a golfer about to make a stroke.

'Time, Nicko,' from the cabin, 'you're wasting time. Do it.'

I thought I heard Roget's teeth chattering, on my left. Perhaps he didn't really like the act of slaughtering when it came to it; or perhaps he was excited, I don't know.

'Nicko,' I said, 'let the poor little bastard jump overboard, give him a chance to swim. He won't steal again, after this.'

Nicko turned his head to look at me, and the look was murderous, I think because I'd offered him a get-out he couldn't take.

'Fucking shuddup.'

His fat little face shone with sweat. I could smell him from where I stood. Then he looked back at the man kneeling in front of him, at the back of his head.

The timing wasn't right: I couldn't make a move. If I tried making a move the timing would have to be perfect, and I would need to use Fidel the Cuban and I would need to use him in the moment of his death.

'Nicko.' From the cabin. 'You want me to come and do it, Nicko?'

I think Vicente knew the fat man well enough to know that he would be stung by that, would feel unbrave, unable to kill a man without his gun.

Do you know how to turn?

The swell moved under us all, lifting and letting us fall as if to the rhythm of our mother's bosom, the bosom of Mother Earth, as if we were brothers, Nicko, Vicente, Roget, Fidel and the man at the helm whose name I didn't know, as if they were my brothers.

Very fast? Do you know how to turn very fast?

Which in a way I suppose they were, my brothers, born with me on this little piece of interstellar rock, to be nurtured by the same essences of water and of air, the same magnetic waves, the same vibrations, and then to die. But I was not going to think about that.

He stood there holding the marlin spike, my little fat brother, smelling of sweat, mine own executioner.

It might amuse you, my good friend, if I tell you how to make a very fast turn, in case you don't already know. It will make an interesting digression in my stream of consciousness, because I always feel a certain lightheadedness when faced with the prospect of mortality; it has happened before.

Well, then, let us to the matter. It is performed sometimes in Shotokan karate, in Heian Shodan, when one moves from zenkutsu-dachi to kokutsu-dachi, turning completely through two hundred and seventy degrees. There are six things to do, each of them making the turn faster and faster, and it doesn't make any difference whether you're in zenkutsu-dachi or standing normally, though it's better if you have one foot forward a little, say the right foot, because this will be the pivot for the turn.

The lights swing upwards into view, brightly bedecking the night's horizon over there as we fall away to a hollow in the sea.

Nicko stands tensely now. He is very tense, his knuckles white as he grips the heavy spike. Only a second has gone by since Vicente spoke to him, daring him, though it seems much longer.

The right foot, yes, will provide the pivot, and the first thing you have to do is push off with the left one, if you are turning backwards to the left. The second thing is to swing the hips in that direction, to be conscious only of the hips in this millisecond of our little game, and the third thing to do is to swing the left arm in the same direction, to lend centrifugal force, and here it is worth mentioning that the left arm and hand provide a potent weapon at the end of the turn, if, say, the hand forms a fist with the knuckles vertical and the thumb uppermost.