She said, ‘Glove.’

I complied. I bit the glove off and tossed it after the jacket.

‘Shoes and socks.’

I hopped from foot to foot and leaned back against the wall to steady myself and undid my laces and eased my shoes off and peeled my socks down. I threw them one after the other towards the pile.

Lila said, ‘Take your shirt off.’

I said, ‘I will if you will.’

She dropped her arm ten degrees and put another round into the floor between my feet. The bang of the silencer, the splintering wood, the smoke, the hard tinkle of the spent case.

Four left.

Lila said, ‘Next time I’ll shoot you in the leg.’

Svetlana said, ‘Your shirt.’

So for the second time in five hours I peeled my T-shirt off at a woman’s request. I kept my back against the wall and threw the shirt overhand into the pile. Lila and Svetlana spent a moment looking at my scars. They seemed to like them. Especially the shrapnel wound. The tip of Lila’s tongue came out, pink and moist and pointed between her lips.

Svetlana said, ‘Now your pants.’

I looked at Lila and said, ‘I think your gun is empty.’

She said, ‘It isn’t. I have four left. Two legs and two arms.’

Svetlana said, ‘Take your pants off.’

I unbuttoned. I unzipped. I pushed the stiff denim down. I stepped out. I kept my back against the wall and kicked the pants towards the pile. Svetlana picked them up. Went through the pockets. Made a mound of my possessions on the kitchen counter next to the nine loose rounds and the roll of tape. My cash, plus a few coins. My old expired passport. My ATM card. My subway card. Theresa Lee’s NYPD business card. And my clip-together toothbrush.

‘Not much,’ Svetlana said.

‘Everything I need,’ I said. ‘Nothing I don’t.’

‘You’re a poor man.’

‘No, I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.’

‘The American dream, then. To die rich.

‘Opportunity for all.’

‘We have more than you, where we come from.’

‘I don’t like goats.’

The room went quiet. It felt damp and cold. I stood there in nothing except my new white boxers. The P220 was rock steady in Lila’s hand. Muscles like thin cords stood out in her arm. Next to the bathroom the dead guy continued to leak. Outside the window it was five o’clock in the morning and the city was starting to stir.

Svetlana bustled about and balled up my gun and my shoes and my clothes into a tidy bundle and threw it behind the kitchen counter. She followed it with the two hard chairs. She picked up my phone, and shut it off, and tossed it away. She was clearing the space. She was emptying it. The living room part of the studio was about twenty feet by twelve. I was backed up against the centre of one of the long walls. Lila tracked around in front of me, keeping her distance, pointing the gun. She stopped in the far corner, by the window. Now she was facing me at a shallow angle.

Svetlana went into the kitchen. I heard a drawer rattle open. Heard it close. Saw Svetlana come back.

With two knives.

They were long butcher’s tools. For gutting or filleting or boning. They had black handles. Steel blades. Wicked wafer-thin cutting edges. Svetlana threw one of them to Lila. She caught it expertly by the handle with her free hand. Svetlana moved to the corner opposite her. They had me triangulated. Lila was forty-five degrees to my left, Svetlana was forty-five degrees to my right.

Lila twisted her upper body and jammed the P220’s silencer hard into the angle where the front wall met the side. She found the catch at the heel of the butt with her thumb and dropped the magazine. It fell out and hit the floor in the corner of the room. Three rounds showed in the slot. Therefore one was still chambered. She threw the gun itself into the other corner, behind Svetlana. The gun and the magazine were now twenty feet apart, one behind one woman, and the other behind the other.

‘Like a treasure hunt,’ Lila said. ‘The gun won’t fire without the magazine in place. To prevent an accidental discharge if a round is mistakenly left in the chamber. The Swiss are very cautious people. So you need to pick up the gun, and then pick up the magazine. Or vice versa. But first, of course, you need to get past us.’

I said nothing.

She said, ‘If you should succeed, in a mad wounded scramble, then I recommend you use the first round on yourself.’

And then she smiled, and stepped forward a pace. Svetlana did the same. They held their knives low, fingers below the handle, thumbs above. Like street fighters. Like experts.

The long blades winked in the light.

I stood still.

Lila said, ‘We’re going to enjoy this more than you could possibly imagine.’

I did nothing.

Lila said, ‘A delay is good. It heightens the anticipation.’

I stood still.

Lila said, ‘But if we get bored waiting, we’ll come and get you.’

I said nothing. Stood still.

Then I reached behind me and came out with my Benchmade 3300, from where it had been duct-taped to the small of my back.

EIGHTY-THREE

I THUMBED THE RELEASE AND THE BLADE SNAPPED OUT with a sound that was halfway between a click and a thump. A loud sound, in the silent room. And an unhappy sound. I don’t like knives. I never have. I have no real talent with them.

But I have as much of an instinct for self-preservation as any guy.

Maybe more than most.

And by that point I had been scuffling since the age of five, and all of my defeats had been minor. And I’m the kind of guy who watches and learns. I had seen knife fights all over the world. The Far East, Europe, the hardscrabble scrublands outside army bases in the southern United States, in streets, in alleys, outside bars and pool halls.

First rule: don’t get cut early. Nothing weakens you faster than blood loss.

Svetlana was more than a foot shorter than me and she was thick and wide and her arms were proportional. Lila was taller, more loose-limbed, more graceful. But all in all I figured that even against blades six inches longer than mine, I still had the advantage.

Plus I had just changed the game, and they were still dealing with the surprise.

Plus they were fighting for fun, and I was fighting for my life.

I wanted to get to the kitchen, so I danced towards Svetlana, who was between me and it. She was up on her toes, knife down at her knees, feinting left, feinting right. I kept my blade down low, to match hers. She swung. I arched back. Her blade hissed past my thigh. I jammed my ass back and my shoulders forward and clubbed her with an overarm left hook. It grazed her eyebrow and then caught her full on the side of the nose.

She looked astonished. Like most knife fighters she thought it was all about the steel. She forgot that people have two hands.

She rocked back on her heels and Lila came in from my left. Blade low. Darting, jabbing. Mouth open in an ugly grimace. Concentrating hard. She understood. This was no longer a game. No longer fun. She ducked in, she ducked out, feinting, backing off, always working. For a time we all danced like that. Frantic, breathless, abrupt abbreviated movements, dust and sweat and fear in the air, their eyes locked on my blade, mine switching constantly between theirs.

Svetlana stepped in. Stepped out. Lila came at me, balanced, up on her toes. I kept my hips back and my shoulders forward. I swung my blade hard for Lila’s face. Huge. Convulsive. Like I was aiming to throw a ball four hundred feet. Lila ducked back. She knew the swing was going to miss, because she was going to make it miss. Svetlana knew it was going to miss, because she trusted Lila.

I knew it was going to miss, because I planned not to let it hit. I stopped the violent manoeuvre halfway through and reversed direction and aimed a vicious surprise backhand straight at Svetlana. I sliced her forehead. A solid blow. I felt the blade hit bone. A lock of her hair hit her chest. The Benchmade worked exactly the way it should. D2 steel. You could have dropped a ten-dollar bill on it and gotten two fives in exchange. I put a six-inch horizontal gash halfway down Svetlana’s hairline and her eyebrows. Open to the bone.