The Source

Simonov tried to bring his gun to bear. Useless - there was no feeling in his hand, which flopped like a speared fish. The Russian hunched over him, dripped blood on him, changed his grip to Simonov's throat and drew back his axe menacingly.

'Karl!' came a voice from the shadows of other boulders. 'We want him alive!'

'How much alive?' Karl choked the words out, spitting blood. But in the next moment he dropped the axe and instead drove a fist hard as iron to Simonov's forehead. The spy went out like a light, almost gladly.

A third Russian figure came out of the night, went to his knees beside Simonov's prone form. He felt the unconscious man's pulse, said: 'Are you all right, Karl? If so, please see to Boris. I think this one put a couple of bullets into him!'

'Think? Well, I was closer than you and I can assure you he did!' Karl growled. Gingerly touching his broken face with trembling fingertips, he went to where Boris lay spread-eagled.

'Dead?' the man on his knees beside Simonov enquired, his voice low.

'As a side of beef,' Karl grunted. 'Dead as that one should be,' he pointed an accusing finger at Simonov. 'He's killed Boris, messed up my face - you should let me twist his fucking head off!'

'Hardly original, Karl,' the other tut-tutted. He stood up.

He was tall, this leader, but slender as a rod even in his bulky parka. His face was pale and thin-lipped, sardonic in the moonlight, but his sunken eyes were bright as dark jewels. His name was Chingiz Khuv and he was a Major - but in his specialized branch of the KGB the wearing of uniforms and the use of titles and rank were to be avoided. Anonymity increased productivity, ensured longevity. Khuv forgot who'd said that, but he agreed wholeheartedly: anonymity did both of those things. But at the same time one must make sure it did not detract from authority.

'He's an enemy, isn't he?' Karl growled.

'Oh, yes, he's that all right - but he's only one and our enemies are many. I agree it would be very satisfying to squeeze his throat, and who knows but that you'll get your chance - but not until I've squeezed his brain.'

'I need attention.' Karl held snow tenderly to his face.

'So does he,' Khuv nodded at Simonov. 'And so does poor Boris.' He went back to his hiding place in the rocks and brought out a pocket radio. Extending its aerial, he spoke into the mouthpiece, saying: 'Zero, this is Khuv. Get the rescue chopper up here at once. We're a kilometer up-river from the Projekt, on top of the eastern ridge. The pilot will see my torch... Over.'

'Zero: at once, Comrade - out,' came back the answer, ti

Teeth marks!' Khuv nodded.

'Eh?' Karl mumbled. He had come to see what Khuv was doing. He spoke through a handful of bloody snow with which he staunched the wounds to his nose and lips. 'What? Did you say teeth marks?'

Khuv showed him the rubber. 'It's a makeshift gum-shield,' he informed. 'I'd guess he puts it in at night - to keep from grinding his teeth!'

They got down on their knees beside Simonov where Karl could work on his jaws. The unconscious man groaned and twitched a little but finally succumbed to the pressure of the Russian's huge hands. Karl forced his mouth wide open, said: 'There's a pencil torch in my top pocket.' Khuv fumbled the torch out of the other's pocket, shone it into Simonov's mouth. Lower left, at the back, second forward from the wisdom tooth - there it was. A capped tooth at first glance, but on closer inspection a hollow tooth containing a tiny cylinder. Part of the enamel had worn away, showing bright metal underneath.

'Cyanide?' Karl wondered.

'No, they've got a lot better stuff than that these days,' Khuv answered. 'Instantaneous, totally painless. We'd better get it out before he wakes up. You never know, he might just want to be a hero!'

'Turn his face left-side down on the ground,' Karl grunted. He had put both Simonov's and Boris's guns in a huge pocket; now he took them out and used the butt of Simonov's weapon as a wedge between his jaws. His dead comrade's gun had a barrel that was long and slender. This is not going to hurt me more than it hurts him!' Karl grunted. 'I think Boris would like it that I'm using his gun.'

'What?' Khuv almost shouted. 'You'd shoot it out? You'll ruin his face and the shock might kill him!'

'I would love to shoot it out,' Karl answered, 'but that isn't my intention.' He poised the heel of his free hand over the weapon's butt.

Khuv looked away. This part of it was for such as Karl. Khuv liked to think he stood a little above sheer animal brutality. He looked out over the rim of the ridge, gritted his own teeth in a sort of morbid empathy as he heard Karl's hammer hand come down with a smack on the butt of the gun. And:

There!' said Karl with some satisfaction. 'Done!' In fact he'd got two teeth, whole, the one with the cylinder and its neighbour. Now he used a grimy finger to hook them out of Simonov's bloody mouth. 'All done,' Karl said again, 'and I didn't break the cylinder. See, the cap's still secure on the top. He was just about to wake up, I think, but that bit of additional pain should keep him under.'

'Well done,' said Khuv with a small shudder. 'Pack some snow in his mouth - but not too much!' He inclined his head, added, 'Here they come.'

Dim, artificial light washed up from the gorge like the pulse of a far false dawn. It brightened rapidly. With it came the slicing whup, whup, whup, of a helicopter's rotors...

Jazz Simmons was falling, falling, falling. He'd been on top of a mountain and had somehow fallen off. It was a very high mountain and it was taking him a long time to hit the bottom. Indeed, he'd been falling for so long that the motion now seemed like floating. Floating in air, frog-shaped, free-falling like an expert parachutist waiting for the right moment to open his chute. Except Jazz had no chute. Also, he must have hit his face on something as he fell, for his mouth was full of blood.

Nausea and vomiting woke him up from nightmare to nightmarish reality. He was falling! In the next moment, remembering everything, the thought flashed through his mind:

God! They've tossed me into the ravine!

But he wasn't falling, only floating. At least that part of his dream was real. And now as his brain got in gear and shock receded a little, so he felt the tight grip of his harness and the down-draft of the helicopter's great fan overhead. He craned his neck and twisted his body, and somehow managed to look up. Way up there a chopper, its spotlights probing the depths of the ravine, but directly overhead...

Directly overhead a dead man twirled slowly on a second line, a hook through his belt, his arms and legs loosely dangling. His dead eyes were open and each time he came round they stared into Jazz's eyes. From the splashes of crimson on his white parka Jazz supposed it was the man he'd shot.

Then-

Shock returned with a vengeance, weightlessness and vertigo and cold, blasting air and noise combining to put him down a second time. The last thing he remembered as he fell into another ravine, the night-black pit of merciful oblivion, was to wonder why his mouth was full of blood and what had happened to his teeth.