Quiller Barracuda

Fidel is praying, as he has prayed before; he kneels as if in his church, and of course appropriately, since he is about, in his mind, to meet the personification of infinity he calls God. Nicko is starting to lift the marlin spike, swinging it in an arc above his head. It is heavy. He is sweating copiously. He stinks.

Vicente is watching from the cabin, hands by his sides. He looks Italianate, as his name suggests. I think he is a cool man, confident in himself, and therefore dangerous. The other man is of course looking ahead of him across the milky moonlit sea, maintaining the diesels at something like a quarter throttle with the bows cutting the horizon. The night is warm as we sail on in brotherhood, sharing its warmth.

But that is not quite true. The night has no warmth for me, because when the fat man has split the head of the Cuban he will come for me and if I do anything to stop him they will shoot, the others, and risk calling attention.

I am not, however, forgetting you, my good friend, as you wait agog to perform this totally spectacular turn, or so my totally inexcusable degree of self-indulgence allows me to believe. The fourth thing to do, then, is to use the right arm in the same direction, again using centrifugal force, and yet again, if the right hand is formed, say, flat and with the palm upwards and the fingers closed to provide a cutting edge, it will offer an effective strike at the face or throat or clavicle, should you wish to defend yourself against attack. The two last requirements for the turn are not physical. The first is mental, the second almost spiritual. You have to think Get there, and finally you have to feel Be there.

He is lifting the heavy spike, Nicko, swinging it back and upwards, his small pink mouth puckered and the material of his expensive jacket going into folds at the shoulder, the single button pulling at the waist.

… Que Dios se acuerde lo bueno que he hecho en mi vida y se olvide lo malo…

The lips of Fidel are moving, though I don't see them from this angle; I know they are moving because I can hear the sibilants of his last prayer. Vicente is watching from the cabin; he hasn't moved. Time has slowed, as always happens when the mind, brought to a high degree of stress, becomes aware that time is a man-made artifact, and subject to contradiction by the infinite.

The marlin spike swings higher. I watch it.

The turn, yes, we must not forget the turn, the expression of my sense of lightness, of unreality as my life nears its seeming close. But you already have it all, my good friend, and you should practise each segment of the turn one after another, and you will find the speed increasing, and to the point where you are carried off balance – a sign of progress. Then you should put all those segments together, and let them happen at once, like an explosion, and in the instant of completion, tighten the abdomen to preserve the balance and land squarely at whatever degree you wish to – it doesn't have to be at two hundred and seventy, there's no magic in that number. The last requirement, to Be there, has to be made with the muscles relaxed and the mind in alpha waves, and this may not happen at the fiftieth turn of your practice, but could well happen at the hundredth.

The deck trembles a little beneath our feet. The lanyard slaps to the wind of our passage. The sibilants fall from the lips of the kneeling Cuban as the little fat man brings the marlin spike to the top of its arc and it comes fluting downwards to the Cuban's fragile skull and his executioner grunts with the effort.

It strikes. It strikes the skull.

Be there.

A whirl of lights as the city of Miami span across my vision field and the black was suddenly close to me and my right arm swung through the turn and the right hand lifted a degree to line up with his throat and even now the surprise was only just coming into his eyes and of course too late because the sword-hand was in contact with its target and begi

What I had started to do was over now and it had taken very little more than one half-second, though the pla

But there was nothing I could do now to control the moment. I would have to watch for a chance if ever it came and use it for what it was worth. A very great deal of data was coming in to the left hemisphere for analysis: the Cuban was collapsing onto the deck with his blood colouring the air as it flew from the site of the blow. I saw Nicko's face, saw the grimace, the mouth drawn back and the eyes widening in an expression I'd no time to interpret, though it was shock, I believe, perhaps because it was the first time the man had killed without using a gun, had killed personally, intimately, leaving blood on his hands that would not be easy to wash away.

In front of me was Roget, and he still hadn't pumped the gun, presumably because I had indeed reached his motor nerves in time. He was already dying as the blood began filling his windpipe and his body was begi

Began firing and I wasn't ready for it because I thought the moment had come and gone and all I could do was push at the barrel and he swung faster and the shots went raking across the cabin and the sound banged in the confines as glass shattered and the man at the helm was pitched across the controls and the diesels began racing at full throttle. Nicko was shouting something and I didn't know if he'd been hit. Vicente was tumbling down the three steps from the cabin with his eyes on me and his hands ready, not reaching for his gun.

Six shots, rapid fire, the last of them from a dead man's finger as Roget tilted backwards over the rail and I pushed the big Suzuki with him, stink of cordite on the warm night air and the deck keeling as the unma

'Get him.'

Vicente, as he reached us and Nicko got an arm round my neck and put pressure there until I found the thumb and broke it and he screamed and the other man came in close for me with a knife and I hadn't expected that, the glint of the blade in the glow from the cabin lights, hadn't expected it because he hadn't been reaching for anything when he'd started his run.

Tried an elbow-smash into Nicko's face but he was half-turned away from me and off-balance, going down and dragging me with him and I let him do it because there was a chance of a strike and I straightened one leg with the foot angled to make a blade and thrust hard for Vicente's groin and did some damage and felt him spin sideways and strike the deck with his head, not making a sound, a different breed from Nicko and therefore the more to be wary of.