Uninformation, and a background to Slingshot that could make total nonsense of the understanding I thought I had of it: for all I knew I could be one unimportant component of a design so complex that only Parkis could make the changes necessary to remove that one component and render it harmless to the overall plan. My instructions were that the objective for this operation was Kirinski’s death, but who was Kirinski — the objective, or a reliable Bureau man with instructions that the objective for his operation was to kill me?

In this trade we see the world in mirrors and I’m used to that but when I go out it’s got to be someone from Moscow or Peking or Havana who finds me in the dark or pulls me into a trap or centres me in the crosshairs: someone in the opposition, not someone in London putting a small black cross at the point where the expendable executive is required to cease functioning, not someone I thought I could trust.

A final thought flashing through my head as I watched the man climbing the slope: You can’t trust Parkis.

When Kirinski was half-way from the road below I turned and moved towards the mouth of the nearest cave and the shot smashed into the rock close to my face.

“Rashidov!”

Even at this distance his voice was loud enough to echo in the cave as the second shot chipped fragments away and sent them whining past me. I went right inside now, and felt my way along the rock until faint light came into the darkness ahead of me: these weren’t isolated caves but a whole network tunnelling the hillside above the ledge, parts of it broken from above and blocked with boulders that had rolled down from the heights I’d lost my way when I’d come here before, and had to climb back up the slope to get out.

Light from the noon sky gave a leaden sheen to the ice that had formed below the snow mass, covering the walls where the arched roof had fallen in, and I moved again and noted distances and widths and gradients, listening for him as I went forward.

“Rashidov!”

It was the bellow of an animal, much closer now but impossible to locate because of the echoes. The cocaine was roaring in his veins and he would be feeling invincible and would behave accordingly. The heart-rate and breathing would be accelerated and the body temperature raised, with increased blood sugar and muscle tone; but it was the psychic effect of the drug that would give him the strength to deal with anything that got in his way and leave it broken behind him. Anything.

I picked up a stone and threw it against the angle of the rock face where I’d turned, and the light of the explosion flared as the shot crashed in the confines and left the mountain singing.

Three.

I moved again as the reek of cordite came on the air. There were faint regular sounds and I noted them as being less than immediately threatening, until I realized that my ears were still half deafened by the noise of the shot and that he could be much closer than he sounded.

The walls narrowed and the ground rose and I couldn’t see the light any more but there was no point in going back: he was close now and quiet, listening. I could be moving into a dead end but the risk had been calculated: to kill Kirinski I had to empty his gun and I couldn’t do that in the city streets and I couldn’t do it across open ground so I’d thought of the caves and I would have to do it here, where there’d be a chance of dodging him long enough to wear him down and come up on him from behind.

I didn’t think I could do that. I only thought there was a chance.

The ground was steep and I waited, keeping still. If I tried to go higher I might slip and he’d hear and fire. The silence was total except for the singing of the blood through the aural membrane. A minute later I heard a sound but it was brief and I had to examine it in retrospect; it had been sharp and metallic: he’d probably caught his gun against a jutting rock. I couldn’t hear his breathing, although he’d just climbed the slope from the road and was under the influence of the cocaine; but the acoustics in here were deceptive and I didn’t think he was far away.

He was waiting for me to move.

The retinal nerves were switching from cones to rods and a faint area of light was forming to my left, higher than where I stood, and as I watched it I could feel the gooseflesh reaction along the arms because if Kirinski was this side of the corner where I’d turned a minute ago he would see my silhouette forming gradually against the light. It was possible that I was part of the rock’s configuration and that he wouldn’t identify the human outline, so that if I kept still he wouldn’t shoot; but I couldn’t be sure of that. If in fact the outline was becoming recognizable he would now be selecting his target the head or the torso and tightening his finger, and I must move in the hope of distracting him. But if I moved I might present the target by showing him that this configuration was not rock.

I listened.

Silence.

The light became stronger as the retinae accommodated, and I watched it. I could have been alone here in the mountain, in the stillness, a single creature isolated and without movement; but I knew he was close.

Tidal breathing.

Heart-beat.

Nothing more.

He was waiting, and so was I.

“Rashidov!”

Explosion of light and sound and I flung myself down with my hands going out and as the echoes rang around the walls I went forward, pitching across the open space I’d seen when he’d fired, hands and knees and then running until my shoulder hit the rock and I bounced, spinning and going down and kicking upright as the dark burst into light again and the mountain boomed.

There was more room here and I rolled sideways and found rubble and lay there while he ran past me with his boots scattering stones and the sixth shot crashing somewhere ahead of me and numbing the ears. It was the cocaine: he was overwhelmingly confident and functioning without recourse to reason, hurling himself into the confines with the certainty I was there.

“Rashidov!”

Christ how he hated me… it was in his voice.

Stones scattered again and I lay with my face to the rock because my clothes were dark and he wouldn’t see me here unless he came back and I didn’t think he would do that because his mental process was unidirectional: he thought I was somewhere in front of him and therefore I would always be in front of him until he found me and killed me.

I could still see the faint area of light and the silhouette that was now moving across it, until suddenly his clear figure was standing there at the bottom of what must be a shaft open to the sky. He stood with his head cocked and his nose jutting, his feet spread apart and the gun moving in a slow arc as he looked for me.

“Rashidov! Where are you?”

The echoes ran from cave to cave and died away.

I couldn’t tell how much he was still capable of reasoning. Cocaine doesn’t dull the brain: it stimulates it, but to the point where confidence takes over from reason. He was standing there with a monumental arrogance expressed in his stance and the set of his head: he was omnipotent, lord of the mountain, and his question to me had been meant as a command I must come out of hiding and show myself, so that he could shoot and this time kill.

“Rashidov!”

He was getting impatient.

When he moved next I would know by how much he was capable of reasoning. If he moved away it would mean that he still thought I was somewhere in front of him; if he came back it would mean that his brain could still follow logic: the logic that if I had gone ahead of him he would have seen me passing through the light where he was standing now.

He called my name again and swung round, circling the gun, his black boots kicking at the stones under the snow. He was twenty feet away and I could see the light in his eyes, manic and obsessed, as he looked for the thing he was here to kill. I don’t think he’d meant to shoot again before he saw me, but the gun jerked and the shot glanced off the rock and whined across the shaft in a ricochet as the smoke rose in the light, clouding against him.