The man who threw the object, however, is on his feet again, staggering with the blast, but unharmed. He shakes his head to set it in order, and is about to run. But before he does so he sees something which will remain with him on his return. It tells him what his own savage daring is up against. He also sees what has happened to the sentry, and the violence in him wrestles with another emotion that he cannot quite stomach while his ears are ringing, deafened by the explosion. But they were orders. He has only done what Stig charged him to do. And Stig had been given orders in his turn from a higher authority. Then he remembers how Stig’s moralizing had angered him. His veins are pounding. The joy of the hunt. But he cannot take that stain on the wall quite as easily as he had thought. The sentry was in some way different from the ones in the van, it seems to him. Well well, Stig might have shut up. But that’s what they’re like, these fellows in the cellars. It’s all over and he’s all in one piece, a wave of power is mounting up. Damnable that the door wasn’t destroyed as well.

All this passes through him as he gets to his feet and prepares to run across the open space and find cover – but then he also sees what Stig has to struggle against.

The instant the explosion dies away and the tinkling of glass ceases, alarm bells start ringing furiously inside. Lamps that have always been dead light up and start blinking. And at the same moment a new van glides into the open corridor: the exact counterpart of the other; all ready. It glides out through the open doorway. The steel door is not even scratched, it is so hard and solid, and even though no one is standing outside to play on the switches, the door starts to move all the same as soon as the van is through. It is being controlled from somewhere else. The door swings to and closes, and the van slithers out between the remains of the first one.

His brain whirls furiously as he watches. It all happens in a second. But he can take it with him. The only thing they have not made ready is something that could seize him and pin him down until they could get him. He runs like the wind. A shot rings out behind him from the blind van but without reaching him. He rounds a corner, passes through a closet he knows of, and disappears, underground, as has been planned.

The new van glides along the corridors, with the small sound that causes everything to vanish and fall silent in its wake.

9

High and Dry

Martin is sitting at his desk. Any spare surface is strewn with stamps. He is selecting them one by one for inspection under his strong magnifying glass, and making notes on his findings.