The Night Manager

And that was the cue for Jonathan to drive their two heads together with more force than he had ever commanded in his life. The power began in his leap as he seemed to rise in flight from the hole where they had chained him. It swarmed through his shoulders as he flung wide his arms, then closed them in one huge and terrible handclap, then a second: temple against temple, face against face, ear against ear, skull against skull. It ran through his body as he thrust the two men away from him, then hurled them onto the deck and with the side of his right foot kicked each head in turn, one scything blow for each, then a second to the throat. Then he stepped forward, stripping the plaster from his face as he advanced on Roper, who was giving him orders, the way he had at Meister's.

"Pine. Shouldn't have done that. Don't come any nearer. Corks, show him your gun. Putting you ashore. Both of you. Done your job and failed. Total waste of time, whole stupid game."

Jonathan had found a length of ship's railing and was clutching it with both hands. But he was only resting. He wasn't weakening. He was giving his secret reinforcements time to group.

"Stuff's all delivered, Pine. Tossed 'em a boat or two, couple of arrests ― what the hell? You don't think I do this kind of thing alone, do you?" Then he repeated what he had told Jed. "This isn't crime. This is politics. No good being high-and-mighty. Way of the world."

Jonathan had started toward him again, though his steps were wide and faltering. Corkoran cocked his gun.

"You can go home, Pine. No, you can't. London's pulled the rug from under. There's a warrant out for you in England too. Shoot him, Corks. Do it now. Head shot."

"Jonathan, stop!"

Was it Jed or Sophie calling him? Plain walking was no longer easy for him. He wished he could get back to the handrail, but he had reached the centre of the deck. He was wading. The deck was swaying. His knees were failing. Yet the will in him would not let go. He was determined to grapple with the unreachable, put blood on Roper's beautiful white dinner jacket, smash his dolphin smile, make him scream I kill, I do wrong, there is good and bad and I am bad!

Roper was counting, the way Corkoran had liked to count.

Either he was counting awfully slowly or Jonathan's sense of time was failing. He heard one and he heard two, but he didn't hear three, and he wondered whether this was another way of dying: they shoot you, but you go on with your life exactly as before; it's just that no one knows you're there. Then he heard Jed's voice, and it had the authoritarian ring that had always particularly annoyed him:

"Jonathan, for Christ's sake, look!"

Roper's voice came back, like a faraway radio station picked up by chance. "Yes, look," he agreed. "Look here, Pine. Look what I've got. I'm doing a Daniel on her, Pine. But this time it isn't a game."

He managed to look, though things were getting hazy for him. And he saw that Roper, like a good commanding officer, had taken one step forward of his adjutant and was standing pretty much at attention in his smart white jacket, except that with one hand he was holding Jed by her chestnut hair and with the other he was holding Corkoran's pistol to her temple ― typical of old Corky to sport an honest-to-God army-issue nine-millimetre Browning. Then Jonathan lay down, or fell down, and this time he heard Sophie and Jed in chorus, yelling at him to stay awake.

* * *

They had found a blanket for him, and when Jed and Corkoran had lifted him to his feet, Jed wrapped it round his shoulders. in that nursy way she had demonstrated at Crystal. With Jed and Corkoran holding him, and Roper still in command of the gun in case of a second resurgence, they hauled him to the ship's side, passing what was left of Frisky and Tabby on their way.

Corkoran made Jed go first, then between them they helped Jonathan down the steps, while Gus in the launch was offering his hand. But Jonathan refused it and nearly fell into the water in consequence, which struck Jed as typical of his stubbornness, just when everyone was trying to help him. Corkoran was saying something interfering about the island being Venezuelan, but Jed told him to shut up, and he did. Gus was trying to give her instructions about the outboard, but she knew quite as well as he did about outboards and told him so. Jonathan, shrouded like a monk in his blanket, was crouching in the middle of the boat, trimming it out of instinct. His eyes, hardly visible inside their swellings, were raised to the Pasha, which towered over them like a skyscraper.