Three Seconds

– ammunition that together weighed no more than a gram.
    __________
    He had seen a person stop breathing in that godforsaken toilet far away in Ś winouj ś cie ferry terminal, the short barrel right up close to a petrified eye, the miniature revolver had killed with a single shot.
     
    __________
    Piet Hoffmann held it, raised it, aimed it at the dirty wall. Left index finger light on the trigger – there was just enough room with the trigger guard sawn off – slowly pull back, he watched the hammer follow the movement of the finger, a final squeeze and it leapt forwards, then the sound, the sharp click. It worked.
     
    __________
    He ripped apart the second book in the same way, revealing a hole in the left-hand margin, a detonator the size of a nail and a receiver the size of a penny. He ran the sewing machine screwdriver along the bottom edges of the book’s thick covers, front and back, cut open the glued hinge and pulled out two nine-metre-long pieces of pentyl fuse and an equally thin plastic envelope containing twenty-four centilitres of nitroglycerine.
     
    __________
    It was a few minutes past seven.
     
    He heard the wardens changing shift out in the corridor behind the locked door – night shift to day shift. One more hour. Then he would be collected and taken back.
    G2 left.
Back
. He was condemned to die there.
    He pressed the button on the wall.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I need a shit.’
    ‘You’ve got a hole beside the bed.’
    ‘It’s blocked. My puke from yesterday.’
    The single speaker crackled.
    ‘How urgent?’
    ‘As soon as possible.’
    ‘Five minutes.’
    Piet Hoffmann stood by the door, footsteps, several footsteps, two screws coming to get someone,
to the cell
, who unlocked the door and opened it,
toilet visit
, never two prisoners in the corridor at the same time,
get in your cell for Christ’s sake
. The revolver was resting in the palm of his hand – he opened the cylinder, counted the six bullets, pushed it to the bottom of one of the deep front pockets on his trousers and the coarse fabric hid it, just as it hid the detonator and receiver in the other pocket and the pentyl fuse and plastic envelope with nitroglycerine stuffed down his underpants.
    ‘Open for the prisoner in number nine.’
    The screw who had shouted was right outside his door. Hoffmann ran back to the bed, lay down and watched the square hatch opening and the guard looking in long enough to confirm that the prisoner was lying down precisely where he should be.
    The jangling of keys.
    ‘You wanted to go to the toilet. Get up and do it then.’
    One warden by the cell door. Another one further down the corridor. Two more out in the yard.
    Hoffmann looked over at the wardens’ room. The fifth one was sitting there. The older one, Jacobson, the principal officer, grey thinning hair and his back to the corridor.
    They’re too far apart from each other.
    He walked slowly towards the shower room and toilets, three screws inside,
they’re too far apart from each other.
    He sat down on the dirty plastic toilet seat, flushed, turned on the tap, breathed deeply, each breath from somewhere deep in his stomach, the calm that was down there, he needed it, he wasn’t going to die, not yet.
    ‘I’m ready. You can open again.’
    The warden opened the door and Piet Hoffmann launched himself forward, showed the mini revolver first and then held it hard to the bastard’s eye that stared at him through a hatch in the cell door.
    ‘Your colleague.’
    He whispered.
    ‘Get your colleague to come here.’
    The warden didn’t move. Maybe he didn’t understand. Maybe he was petrified.
    ‘
Now
. Get him to come here
now
.’
    Hoffmann kept his eye on the personal alarm hanging from the warden’s belt and pressed the muzzle of the gun even harder against the closed eyelid.
    ‘Erik?’
    He had understood. His voice was feeble, a careful wave of the hand.
    ‘Erik? Can you come here?’
    Piet Hoffmann saw the second warden come closer, then stop suddenly, realising that his colleague was standing stock-still with what looked like a piece of metal to his head.
    ‘Come here.’
    The warden who was called Erik hesitated then started to walk, casting a glance up at the camera that maybe someone was watching right now up in central security.
    ‘Once more and I’ll kill him. Kill.
Kill him
.’
    With one hand he pressed even harder against the eyelid and with the other he tore loose two pieces of plastic that were their only