Run Around by Brian Freemantle

cutting edge, but Zenin considered anything makeshift easier to defend himself against. Of course they were personally denied him, because it was essential for his killing not to appear a killing at all. He found three containers of oil and emptied them into pans and lighted a high gas beneath each. Noise was important so he stood back, ensuring it was loud enough. Satisfied, Zenin returned to the main room and sank to his haunches by the window, with a perfect view of the outside street.
    The Ukrainian, whose name was Barabanov, had entered the warehouse at precisely the same time as Zenin but through a door diametrically opposite. And like Zenin he had gone immediately to ground, although not with so much caution, only bothering to check the immediate room in which he concealed himself in the apartment block, careless of others around it, which Zenin would not have been.
    Barabanov was a giant of a man physically hardened by ten years of existence in the most punitive of the penal colonies in the Soviet Union and mentally reduced even beyond his clinical psychosis to animalistic violence by the need during those ten years to survive, someone who instinctively fought with boot and teeth and knee and gouging fingers, overwhelming anyone in his path. And he was determined to survive by killing whoever it was being pitted against him.
    Like Zenin, he had been given the time limit of an hour for some contact to be made, although he had been told his failure would result in his return to his life sentence in Potma. Almost half an hour elapsed before uncertainty began to twitch through him and after forty minutes he decided he had to move. There were tables and chairs in the room in which he crouched. Barabanov chose one of the heavier chairs, easily splitting off a moulded rear leg, hefting it in his hand, leaving a cross-rail in place because it gave him added grip.
    He took one final, hopeful look through the window out into the deserted and fake street and then carefully opened the door, not the rear one through which he had entered but one at the front, which was his first mistake.
    Zenin saw him instantly he emerged. There was no fear at the man’s overpowering size nor at knowing, from his awareness of Barabanov’s criminal record for murder, how the man could use such obvious strength. Zenin had been graded to senior instructor level in two different styles of martial art but decided it would still be a mistake to confront the man openly, because it was essential that he survived without any obvious mark or injury. Zenin checked the time, seeing that he had twelve minutes in which to kill the man if he were not to have any points deducted, which he was determined against. As he turned back into the café Zenin shook his head in disgust at Barabanov’s clumsy amateurism.
    In the kitchen the oil was bubbling, near to boiling after so long over the burners, and the sound was louder now, which was important. Zenin checked, briefly, to ensure it could be heard in the customer area, and then went directly to the stove, gauging the distance between the door and the stove, guessing that he would only have seconds but confident that was all he would need.
    Just seven minutes left, he saw.
    Back at the window, Zenin watched for Barabanov’s exit from an apartment house opposite, purposely opening and quickly closing, so that it slammed, the door leading out. He was still able to look through the window and see the man’s awareness, which was the intention. As Barabanov started across the street, Zenin hurried into the kitchen, leaving the door ajar for the gas and oil bubbling sounds to be more obvious.
    He was standing by the stove, waiting expectantly, when Barabanov pushed open the door, at first cautiously but at the last moment violently, hoping to instill the fear to which he was accustomed. For a moment the two men stared at each other. And then, with the snarl of the animal he was, Barabanov hurled