Who?

His wife or a friend or a woman, anyone, it could be anyone, telling them he was going to be a little late tonight because of the snow. Ignore.

At 5.47 he slowed and took a side street and slowed again and I held back until he turned sharply into the entrance of an underground car park. It was alongside an apartment block and I drove straight past to make a check and then came back and stopped and doused the lights and got out and started walking fast over the snow. Halfway along the street I heard an engine die and a door open as I reached the black mouth of the entrance and went down the ramp, breaking into a run across the dry concrete because it wouldn't matter if he heard me coming.

The place was cavernous, with concrete columns standing at intervals, their pattern merging into the darkness. The slam of a car door came but the echoes bounced the sound from wall to wall and I couldn't locate it. Then a flashlight came on and its beam swung and focused on my eyes, blinding me. I began walking into the beam but it went out and I stopped dead, waiting for the dazzling after-image to clear. I think he was some fifty feet ahead of me, midway between two of the columns; I heard movement but it wasn't distinct enough to get a fix on.

I waited ten seconds, but there was only silence now.

'Ignatov,' I said. 'I need to talk to you.'

He didn't answer. I couldn't tell if he had a gun: it was pitch dark in this area and the click of a safety catch wouldn't necessarily carry this distance. If he had a gun and wanted to hold me off, he would have to put his flashlight on again to take aim. If he decided I was too dangerous then he would simply fire, but he'd have to use the flashlight even to do that, because the entrance was no longer behind me and I wasn't showing a silhouette.

I stood listening, perfectly still except for my head. I was turning my head to the left, until my right ear was facing Ignatov's last estimated position; the right ear feeds aural input to the left hemisphere of the brain where the logical analysis of crude sound is made. I picked up nothing at all. After thirty seconds something drove past the entrance along the street, and the sound came into the cavernous dark and set up diminishing vibrations: the acoustics were strange in here, with the concrete columns breaking up the sound patterns and reflecting their remnants.

I thought some kind of movement had been made, when the sound had come down from the street. I wasn't sure.

'Ignatov. We need to talk.'

My own voice sounded odd, its echoes overlapping. I went forward, using tai-chi steps, long and infinitely slow, keeping my feet slightly tilted to avoid the sound of flat contact, sole to floor. I took ten paces and stopped. I thought he was somewhere between where I stood now and forty feet away: a few minutes ago I'd estimated his distance from me as fifty feet and I'd just moved thirty, allowing for a margin of error of twenty and doubling it. Then he moved and I heard him and span into the fighting-horse stance and waited.

Total silence. I went on waiting. I thought I was close to him now, perhaps very close. In the far distance I could see the rectangular patch of light made by the street lamps above ground, but there was no light here. If I could move to one side and work round him in a half circle I could bring his silhouette in line between me and the entrance; but he might be trying to do that himself, and might be succeeding: at any time now the shot would come, if he were going to shoot.

My scalp was drawn tight and I could feel the slight lifting of the hair on my head. Ignatov could be within an inch of me now, and might detect me first. I didn't know what kind of training he had, whether he knew how to strike lethally, working by touch alone.

It was difficult to move now with any safety^: the dark itself felt hazardous. A degree of sensory deprivation was setting in, and my nerves heard movement where there was none. A few seconds ago I had heard the faintest rustling to my left, and I had moved one hand out in the hope of making contact and identifying his attitude and striking before he could. But he wasn't there. It wasn't any good listening for his breathing: he'd be controlling it, as I was controlling mine.

I moved again, with the underwater slowness of tai-chi, and took two paces before I felt something touching my elbow.

It was to my left. If it was Ignatov standing beside me he would make his move at once so I threw up a guard and used a very short controlled knife-edge with the left foot and struck solid, bruising it. Flat of my left hand — yes, a concrete column. I hit the floor immediately, doubling in silence, in case he was close enough to use the sounds I'd made as a bearing.

I began thinking he must have gone. He wore rubber-soled shoes: there'd been no footsteps just before he'd switched on the flashlight. He could have gone far enough, during the passage of the vehicle in the street, to move out of earshot. But that was dangerous thinking. I got up slowly, watching the rectangle of light in the distance in case he moved across it.

Silence.

I took two paces, slowly, undulating, and stopped. Then I heard him draw breath suddenly beside me because of the shock of proximity — I'd come up on him in the total darkness and a grunt sounded as he stifled a shout and I clawed with my left hand to find the shape of the target and felt softness, the curled wool of his coat, all I needed. He struck out with the flashlight and it grazed my head before I brought him down with a crescent sweep and caught him before he hit the ground. He didn't learn anything from this: he thought there was still a chance and tried to unbalance me and I stopped him with a low-power sword-hand against the carotid.

'Don't do anything,' I told him. 'We need to talk.'

He didn't say anything. I found the flashlight and switched it on, lighting his face. He was still in shock and his head was lolling, so I helped him upright and he stood swaying a little, dazzled by the light. I moved it down, out of his eyes, but he still didn't seem to understand the position because he jerked suddenly and hooked for my face with his stubby fingers, putting a lot of force into it and getting close before I blocked with a jodan and centre-knuckled the medial nerve with enough depth to paralyse.

'Ignatov,' I said, 'don't do that.'

He was quiet again, sagging against me for a time with the local paralysis affecting his system through the nervous meridians. When I was sure he understood the position I raised the flashlight to shine full on his face and looked round.

'Well?' I asked.

'No,' Bracken said from the shadows. 'I've never seen him before. He's not in my cell. He's not the Judas.'

13: SHADOW

Then who was?

He was very difficult to work with: he kept trying to get away and I had to trip him and catch him before he could hit the ground or the concrete column that was somewhere near us. If I didn't catch him each time he was going to hurt himself because he had absolutely no idea how to fall.

'What did you tell them?' I asked him again.

He wouldn't answer, and that was another thing that made it difficult. I had to ask him everything two or three times and then work on a nerve until he got the message. But even then I didn't know when he was lying. I've never met anybody so difficult.

'What did you tell them, when you went into that phone box?'

'It was to tell my wife I would be late.'

'Not that time. I mean two days ago, on Wednesday. You phoned the police and they tried to pick me up. What did you tell them?'

'I didn't tell them anything. I — '

'Oh come on, Ignatov!' Used a centre-knuckle on the medial: he hated that. 'What did you tell them?'