Russian Roulette by Bernard Knight

new quarters. The large room was high and airy, with one long window filling most of the outer wall. Rather Victorian in appearance, in spite of the modern writing desk and twisty wire table lamps, it had a bathroom in one corner, the door being in the L-shaped recess next to the corridor.
    The bed was large and soft; it had the usual continental super-eiderdown instead of sheets and blankets.
    He looked around uncomprehendingly – these solid signs of normality seemed to make the reality of his terrible position a dream. Yet here he was, a couple of thousand miles from home and God knows how many inside the Iron Curtain, with both a homicidal rival and possibly the Soviet secret police after his blood.
    He sighed but it ended in a shudder. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been sitting in fair contentment in that cafe in Helsinki – then reading that damned newspaper report about Kramer’s death seemed to have triggered off disaster.
    He touched his neck gingerly, to see how sore it really was. His voice was still hoarse, but the earlier tenderness over his Adam’s apple was much less. There were vague bruises there, hidden under a silk cravat, and the muscles creaked when he turned his head.
    â€˜Always thought there was loss of memory before unconsciousness,’ he muttered bitterly, ‘but I bloody well didn’t get it – I can still feel those fingers going around my throat.’
    He shuddered again. Thankfully he had been spared the memory of being tossed into the water and of being fished out of Helsinki harbour like a drowned rat … the first thing that had come back to him was staring up at a policeman from the floor of a Finnish police wagon on its way to hospital. From then on, his recovery had been rapid and, in spite of efforts by the police and casualty doctor to get him to hospital, he had resolutely insisted on being taken back to the Yuri Dolgorukiy . After a night in the sick bay, he had been well enough to walk ashore at Leningrad the next morning.
    All he felt now as he slumped in the chair was fatigue, not illness. Even the marathon walk around the corridors of the Hotel Metropol seemed calculated to increase his tiredness. He had stupidly insisted on carrying one of Elizabeth’s cases as well as his own, before finding that they had to trudge about half a mile around the fourth floor to get to their rooms. With unfathomable Russian logic, the management had blocked off the main corridor on one side of the lift, so that to reach the rooms immediately behind this partition, one had to walk around four sides of the enormous building to arrive within a dozen yards of the starting point.
    All these fatuous thoughts marched through his mind as if to keep out the main nagging fear – who had tried to kill him yesterday?
    If there was any silver lining to the black clouds now rolling in on him, it was that the Soviets were unlikely to be responsible – they had no need of back-alley assassination when they were going to get him deep inside their territory within a few hours.
    His frantic rationalising was interrupted by a rap on the door. Gilbert Bynge, finding it unlocked, poked his head inside, then bounced in after a quick glance as if to make sure that Simon didn’t have Elizabeth Treasure pinned to the bed.
    He trotted across the room, waving sheaves of paper.
    â€˜Here we are, meal tickets, programmes, maps, leaflets; all sorts of bumf with the compliments of Intourist – and some forms to sign.’
    He doled out the documents and then looked casually around the room, his receding chin and prominent nose making him look like a stage characterisation of the idiot English aristocrat.
    â€˜Everything OK? … damn nasty show about the fall you had … sure you don’t want me to get a quack to see you again – it’s all free; on the house in Russia!’
    Simon shook his head, slowly and painfully.
    â€˜No, I’m fine,