Psychomech Read Free Page A

mistake. Did you think I would come into this country, and having come here deliver myself into hands such as yours, without taking the greatest precaution? Herr Koenig here is that precaution, or a large part of it. His talent lies in thinking bad thoughts. Never good ones. In this way he has protected me personally for many years, since 1944. He is successful because he thinks his bad thoughts before others think them.’ He poured the contents of the deep spittoon over their bowed heads.
    The small fat man moaned but remained motionless. The thin one cursed and straightened up. Koenig had taken the man’s weapon back out of his pocket. Now he reached over and jammed its barrel hard against his upper lip below his scarred nose. He pressed his hand forward and up until the muzzle of the gun rested squarely in the orbit of an expanded left nostril. The Irishman, because of the bench which pressed against the back of his legs, could not move. He put up his hands before him and they were shaking.
    Koenig told him, ‘Herr Schroeder ordered you not to move—Paddy.’ His accent was thicker now and full of a sort of lust. The terrorist believed he knew the sort, and his hands fluttered like trapped birds. He wished he had not called the Germans names. But then Koenig drew back the gun from his face a little and allowed him to relax. He put down his hands and started to sit, attempting a tight smile through the slop and stale spittle dripping down his face. Koenig had expected some sort of bravado, had planned and prepared for it, had thought his bad thoughts. He had decided to kill this Irishman, if only as a lesson to the other one—and it might as well be now.
    He drove the gun forward again, his forearm rigid as a piston. The barrel sheared through lips, teeth and tongue, its foresight slicing along the roof of the Irishman’s mouth. He gagged, jerked, reared up again, coughed blood, the barrel still in his mouth. If it had been possible, he would have screamed with the pain.
    Koenig withdrew the barrel with a rapid, tearing motion, ripping the man’s mouth. At the same time he released his briefcase and grabbed his victim’s jacket, then struck him with the gun. Again and again and again. The blows were so fast and deadly that they seemed physically to slice the air; their whistle and chop could clearly be heard. The “final blow, delivered while the man was still straining up and away, smashed his Adam’s apple out of position and killed him. Down he went on to the bench, toppling, his nose torn, his right eye hanging by a thread.
    The fat man had seen it all. He had dared to lift his head an inch or two from the table. Now, fainting, he fell back again into the slops. And all of this occurring so rapidly—and in a sort of vacuum, a well of near-silence—that only the blows had made noise.
    Something of it had been heard, however—heard and misunderstood—and a harsh snigger sounded from the corridor. Then the low murmurings continued.
    Koenig moved from between bench and table, stooped and ripped the dead man’s jacket open. He tore off his shirt and turned to the fat man, roughly towelling his head and face dry and clean before slapping him awake. When the man’s eyes opened and his eyeballs rolled back into place Schroeder grabbed his beard and showed him his own gun.
    ‘You are coming with us,’ the industrialist told him. ‘Oh, and incidentally—you may call me Colonel. Herr Koenig here was the youngest Feldwebel in my rather special corps. You have seen why he was promoted so very young. If you should foolishly attempt to raise an alarm, he will kill you—or I will. I’m sure you understand that, don’t you?’
    The fat man nodded. He might have been about to smile but at the last moment thought better of it. Instead his lips trembled like jelly. ‘Control yourself,’ said Schroeder. ‘And act naturally. But please do not smile. Your teeth offend me. If you do smile I shall have Herr Koenig