Sea Leopard

by Craig Thomas

  "Listen to me," he whispered, "just listen to me without struggling, will you?" His voice was almost petulant rather than threatening, and it's tone struck her. Her eyes widened, and he took his hand from her mouth carefully. "Okay, will you listen? You'd have broken your bloody neck if you'd jumped from that window."

  "We're on the ground floor," she remarked in a superior tone. "What do you want?" she pulled down her T-shirt — a pointing hand in white, black background, the legend Keep your eyes on the face, sonny — and then tugged her cardigan straight on her narrow shoulders. She looked vulnerable, intelligent, arrogant, and somehow old-fashioned, out of date. A flower-child who had wandered into the wrong decade. "Well, what do you want? Or was it all for a quick feel in the dark?"

  Hyde studied his hands, then looked up. Slowly, slowly, he instructed himself. In his broadest Strine he drawled, "I like "em with bigger tits, girlie."

  Her face narrowed in anger, then she seemed more puzzled than anything else. "You're very persistent, aren't you?"

  "And you're very elusive." He stepped forward, hands raised in a signal of harmlessness, and righted the chair he had knocked over. He sat down. "Give me five minutes of your time — just listen to me. I'll try to make you an offer you can't refuse."

  "You don't have anything with which to trade, do you?"

  "Maybe not. Sit down, anyway."

  Tricia Quin slumped untidily, sullenly into a sagging armchair. "All right. Talk."

  "I know your mates will be back in a couple of minutes — they're almost finished with “No Way Back” —" The girl's eyes narrowed with cunning. "So, I'll be brief. There are Russian agents — no don't sneer and don't laugh and don't get clever — outside. The real McCoy. They're interested in contacting your father, and they're sure you know where he is."

  "They're just like you."

  "No." Hyde bit down on his rising temper. The band murmured beyond the door, close to the climax of the suite. Perhaps no more than a minute. "At this moment, there are a hundred lives at risk under the Barents Sea because of your dad."

  "What?"

  "The submarine, girlie. Shit, the little old submarine with your old man's wonderful piece of machinery on board, the one everyone wants to know all about." Hyde's voice was scornful, carefully modulated. The band sounded louder, closer to the finish. "Only it isn't working so bloody well at the moment. The Russians have damaged our side's submarine, and your father's bloody expensive equipment isn't working properly. Keeps going on and off like Radio Caroline in the old days."

  "I — what am I supposed to do about it?" She was attempting to regain her composure, and she was listening to the sounds from beyond the door.

  "Let me talk to your dad — tell him what's what." The girl was already shaking her head. "A telephone number —you ring him, I won't watch." Tricia Quin examined the offer for its concealed booby-trap. "No trick," Hyde added.

  Alletson walked into their intent silence. Whiteman's tumultuous keyboard playing could be heard through the open door. Alletson's tight-curled hair was wet with perspiration, his damp shirt open to the waist.

  "What the hell do you want?" he asked.

  "What's up, Jon?" Hyde heard someone in the corridor ask. The lead guitarist, Howarth, pushed into the room carrying two cans of lager. "Who's he?"

  "The secret agent I told you about." Tricia Quin explained with laden sarcasm. "The spy."

  "What's he want — you?"

  "If you're coming in, close the bloody door," Hyde said lightly, "there's a bloody draught."

  Howarth closed the door, and leant against it, still holding the cans of lager. He studied the guitar lying near Hyde's feet with a silent malevolence. Hyde turned on his chair and looked up at Alletson.

  "Jon-boy," he said, "tell her to piss off, tell her you don't love her any more, tell her she's a bloody nuisance who could ruin the tour — tell her anything, but persuade her to come with me."

  "Why should I do that? She's afraid of you."

  "You should see the other side, mate. They frighten me." Alletson grinned despite himself. "See, I'm not such a bad bloke after all." He stopped smiling. "I" ve told her why I have to find her father — "

  "You're probably lying." she remarked.

  Hyde turned back to her. "I'm not as it happens. Your father's bloody marvellous invention has dropped a hundred blokes in the shit! Now, will you call him and let me tell him?"

  It was evident the girl was on the point of shaking her head, when Alletson said quietly, "Why not, Trish?" She stared at him, at first in disbelief then with a narrow, bright vehemence, sharp as a knife. "Look, Trish," Alletson persisted, "go and call him; we'll keep James Bond —" Hyde laughed aloud — "here while you do it. Ask your father if he wants to talk to Don Bradman."

  The girl screwed up her face in concentration. She looked very young, indecisive; an air of failure, inability, lack of capacity emanated from her. She irritated Hyde as he watched her.

  "All right," she said finally, resenting Alletson for making the suggestion, the capitulation, in the first place. Hyde also noticed that in a more obscure way she accepted the role forced upon her. Perhaps she was tired of running, tired of keeping her father's secrets. Alletson had made a decision for her that she could not entirely resent. "Make sure he stays here," she added. Hyde controlled his sudden fear, and made no effort to follow her. She pushed past Howarth, and closed the door behind her.

  Hyde studied Alletson. The man was nervous of him now, had accepted that he could do no more to protect Tricia Quin.

  "Sorry — about last night," Alletson. said eventually.

  Hyde shrugged. "I don't blame you, mate," he said, raised palms facing outwards. "Pax. I will help her," he added.

  "I told you, Jon, we ought to dump her — " Howarth began but Alletson. turned on him.

  "Piss off. For old times" sake. It was for old times" sake."

  "How's the tour going so far?" Hyde asked pleasantly, wondering whether Tricia Quin had taken the opportunity to bolt again. He did not think she had, but the closed door at Howarth's back troubled him.

  "You're interested?" Howarth asked in disbelief.

  "I'm old enough to remember your first album."

  "Thanks."

  "Why is she running?" Alletson asked, looking almost guilty.

  "Her father's paranoid about security. She's caught the infection."

  "It is all real, then?"

  Hyde nodded. "Oh, yes. Silly, but real. The Russians want her dad, or her, or both, because he's invented a purple deathray which will give world domination to whoever possesses its deadly secret. I'm Flash Gordon, no less."

  "That's about what we thought," Alletson admitted, grinning in a puzzled way. Then he looked at his watch. "We're back on. You — you'll take care of her?" Hyde nodded.

  Alletson and Howarth left the room, Howarth picking up the acoustic guitar lying on the floor at Hyde's feet before he went. Then Tricia Quin was standing in the open doorway as Whiteman's final keyboard crescendo echoed down the corridor. Her face was white. She looked guilty and afraid.

  "Okay?"

  She nodded. "Yes. Yes, he's very tired. He'll talk to you, but only to you. I think he's got a gun." He words were a warning, and an attempt to excuse her own and her father's capitulation. "He's been worried about me."

  "He's still safe?"

  "Yes."

  "Where?"

  "I'll tell you when we" ve left here."

  "Luggage?" She shook her head. "Let's go, then." She looked up sharply at the tone of his voice. Hyde had remembered the KGB irregular lying unconscious in a windy shop doorway on mosaic tiles. He hadn't reported in—

  His hand patted the pocket of his windcheater in which he had placed the tiny transceiver. As if he had triggered it, it began bleeping. Tricia Quin's face blanched, her hand flew to her mouth. Hyde cursed.

  "It's one of their radios," he explained, getting up quickly. His chair clattered over, and she began to back into the corner
of the room, as if he had threatened her with violence. The transceiver continued to bleep, its volume seeming to increase. Her eyes darted between Hyde's face and the door she had left defencelessly open. "Come on, let's get moving!" She was opening her mouth, all capitulation forgotten, betrayal seeping into her features. Hyde bellowed at her. "It's no time to change your mind, you stupid, mixed-up cow! Shift your bloody arse!" She reached for her jacket.

  He grabbed her arm and propelled her towards the door. The corridor was empty. At the back of his mind, Hyde could see the Russians fitfully on a dim screen; wondering, worrying, beginning to move, guessing, knowing —

  He could hand her over now to the police, to the Branch, and she would be safe. If he did, they'd spend days trying to find out where Quin was hiding. She'd be in a catatonic suspicion, comatosed with her secret. If he went with her, alone —

  "You're hurting — " she said meekly as he bundled her down the corridor through the door. He released her arm, and paused to listen, holding his hand in front of her face, indicating silence. He could hear her ragged breathing, like the last ineffectual plucking of his mother's lungs at the hot Sydney air in the darkened room. The day she died.

  "Shut up!" he whispered fiercely.

  "Sorry—"

  He strained to hear. Nothing. The dim music from inside, the murmur of a radio in one of the trucks, traffic muted in the distance.

  "Come on." He propelled her down the steps, reached for her hand — she allowed him to hold it, it was inanimate and cold in his grip — and they moved swiftly across the yard. The transceiver in his pocket became silent. Moving; fearful, angry, quick, closing in —

  The same police constable was on the gate, and he acknowledged their appearance with a nod. He did not seem surprised to see the girl.

  "Everything all right, sir?"

  Tricia Quin seemed reassured by the manner of his addressing Hyde.

  "I think so, constable " Nothing in the narrow, dimly-lit street, but he could not see the baker's shop from the gate. They could be there already. Petrunin might already be out of his car, his minions much closer than that. There was little point in the constable being involved. "Nip inside, constable. Now I" ve got her, we can start sniffing them out."

  "Very good, sir. I'll just report in."

  "When you get inside." He realised he was still holding the girl's hand, and he squeezed it. "Come on. My car's only round the corner." Probably with someone very unfriendly in it, he added to himself.

  A curious but unfamiliar elation seized him. His chest seemed expanded with some lighter-than-air gas like helium, and his head was very clear. One of his Vick moments, as he had once described them. Every thing clear, cold, sharp. The TR7 was behind the Midland Hotel, in the old railway station that had become, without redecoration or conversion, a huge car park. He jiggled her arm, and they began running up the narrow street, away from the rear of the Free Trade Hall and the baker's doorway. Sensuous information flooded in, his brain sifting it swiftly, unerringly.

  Light from around the corner — Peter Street. Their footsteps, the girl's padding lighter in flat, crepe-soled shoes, the rubbing of her arm against her borrowed, too-big jacket, the spillage of music — Brahms — from an upstairs window, the splash of one foot in a puddle, the gun cold and noticeable in the small of his back, thrust into his waistband. The emptiness of the end of the street, no shadow against the lights of Peter Street. He was grateful.

  The Midland Hotel was across the bright, traffic-filled street. It was a moment before Hyde remembered that Petrunin's car was parked in the square in front of the hotel.

  "Okay?" he asked the girl. She was gulping air, but she nodded and tried to smile shakily. "Keep going, then, shall we?"

  Pavement. Pedestrians crossing. Normality. Red man, traffic swooping past them and round into the square or into Oxford Street or Moseley Street. Central Library, Midland Hotel. Forget it, don't turn your head, stop searching for them. You either fully pretend or not at all —

  Red man. Green man, traffic stopping. Walk. He tugged at her hand. One pace, two, you can hurry a little here, people always do on zebra crossings.

  They were almost across the street before he heard the first shout, the answering call, and sensed the acceleration of the pursuit. On the pavement, he turned. A man waved to him, as if to call him back over a matter of a dropped book or wallet, or an unpaid bill. He stepped off the opposite pavement. Petrunin himself. He'd been the closest, most experienced, sharpest mind. He'd guessed and just strolled round the square from his car, and seen them emerge. Petrunin, who knew him, knew the girl's face, no mistake —

  "Is that one of them?" the girl asked, as if facing some extremely difficult task of recollection or recognition.

  That's him." Petrunin was almost smiling. Green man still. Two others, running put into Peter Street from the rear of the Free Trade Hall. Not the man in the doorway, two others who had found him and come running. 'ready?" Hyde asked.

  "Yes." Her hand trembled in his.

  Red man. Petrunin, three paces on to the zebra crossing, paused so that the others could catch up with him. The sound of an impatient horn, then the blare of another and revving engines. Petrunin skipped back on to the opposite pavement.

  'Now!'

  They raced down the shadowy side-street alongside the bulk of the Midland Hotel. The illuminated facade of the old railway station was ahead of them, the car park barrier like a border to be crossed into a safe country. Hyde pulled at the girl's arm, urging her on, sensing that she was flagging.

  The squeal of brakes behind them, the bellow of a car horn. Petrunin wasn't waiting for the green light. They ran together across the road, up the slope to the barrier. A black face was behind the glass of the booth. Hyde looked behind him. All three men were across Peter Street and running towards them. Hyde inwardly cursed the bravado of his isolation with the girl. There were police in the square, in Peter Street, Watson Street, in the Free Trade Hall, and he had chosen to run with the girl, making Manchester as alien and dangerous as Prague or Warsaw or Moscow. He slapped notes and change on to the counter of the booth, together with his ticket.

  He swallowed saliva, said 'I'm in a hurry. Keep the change. Open the barrier when I drive out — yellow TR7. Got it?' Then his hand was in his pocket and he was waving the shorthand of the CID warrant card. The Indian nodded.

  Hyde ran on, the girl ahead of him now, but slowing because there seemed no safety amid the cars under the cracked, glassless station roof.

  'Where?' she said.

  'Over there,' he said, pointing.

  One or two weak lights revealed the massed, hunched, beetle-like shells of car bonnets and roofs. The girl stared around her wildly. Hyde glanced back. Petrunin and the other two had slowed their pace, almost strolling past the barrier, confident but wary, imitating legitimacy. Seconds between them. Hyde ran out on to the platform with the girl. Dully gleaming, crustaceous cars; silence. The wind soughing thinly in the shell of the station. The three Russians were past the barrier and had paused on the threshold of the station itself. Hyde ducked down, pulling the girl into a crouch, and began weaving awkwardly between parked cars.

  He paused, listened, then moved on. They came to the edge of the platform, and he dropped down. He reached up and the girl surrendered to his grasp on her waist. He lifted her down. A row of cars, one of them yellow.

  'Mr Hyde?'

  He thought for the moment it was the girl speaking, because of the light, interrogative tone. But it was Petrunin — accent and authority seeping into Hyde's awareness just behind the words. He gestured to the girl to remain silent, and they moved, crouching, along the rear bumpers of cars until they were leaning against the TR7. He heard the girl's ragged breathing again, but not like his mother's now; too alive for that, too much wanting to live. Hyde fished the car keys from his pocket and reached up to unlock the door.

  'Mr Hyde?' Then whispered instructions above the girl's breathing, the shuffle of footste
ps as the three men spread out. Petrunin was confident. He hadn't left anyone at the barrier. 'Mr Hyde.' A sharper tone, impatient.

  Hyde eased open the door of the TR7, and indicated that the girl should climb in. They'd be looking for the yellow car. He crept round to the driver's door, unlocked it, clambered into the low hard seat. He eased the door shut on the footsteps that were coming closer. Steel-tipped heels to the heavy shoes. He slipped the key into the ignition, and pulled out the choke. He looked at Tricia Quin. Hair damp on her forehead, face pale, cheeks quivering.

  'Which way?'

  'North,' she said, hugging herself as if to keep warm; trying to retreat from her danger.

  Hyde breathed in deeply, then turned the key. Cough, chatter of the ignition, cough, firing of the engine, drowning a surprised and delighted cry from up on the platform. He thrust the gears into reverse, screeched out of his parking place, heaving on the wheel. The TR7 skidded, almost stalled, and then the car was bucking over the uneven ground.

  He reached the end of the platform, and swung the car left, across the hard-packed earth where the tracks had once been, until he mounted the platform ramp at the other side of the station. He had heard no gunfire, nothing after that shout of discovery. The engine whined, the tyres screeched as he roared along the platform, then turned again on to what had been the concourse, heading for the entrance.

  One man, stepping out from behind a car, gun levelled. Hesitation, a slight turning of his head — a cry of protest from Petrunin? Then the TR7 was almost on top of him, a spit of flame from the shadowy bulk of the man before he flicked aside like a matador, between two cars. The bullet's path was a groove in the thin metal of the roof, directly above Hyde's head. He screeched the car round and through the entrance to the station, and the barrier was going up, very slowly. Another man was entering the booth alongside the barrier — barrier going up, making a chopping motion as it reached the peak of its swing, beginning to descend almost immediately. The TR7 raced beneath it, bounced over cobbles, and squealed into the road behind the Midland Hotel.