by Craig Thomas
Hyde jumped down from his stone perch. It was almost dark now, the time of maximum danger when everything was shadowy and confusing and suspicious. Sunset is a trap, someone had once told him. He picked out Wilkes in his ghostly trench coat, and two of the others. And no enemy activity. Teardrop could move about western cities much as he liked. That kind of seniority was what had made him such a valuable catch, the fish of the season.
And Aubrey had lost him, failed to land the catch…
"Goodbye, my friend."
"Goodbye."
The two men shook hands briefly and stiffly, and then Kapustin came down the steps and passed Hyde without a glance in his direction. Aubrey descended much more slowly, as if greatly tired. His face, in the frosty almost-dark, was abject with affront and failure.
"Sorry, sir—" Hyde began.
"God in Heaven, what's got into the man?" Aubrey exclaimed.
"Sex, that's all it is," Hyde replied with assumed disgust.
"I found the whole business — so hard to believe," Aubrey complained. "And kindly don't mock me, Patrick."
"Sorry, sir."
"But to have lost him—!" Aubrey burst out again as Wilkes approached. The senior field officer of Vienna Station backed away at the tone of Aubrey's voice. "Two years since he first approached us — two years of meetings, negotiations, arrangements, assurances — of courtship, dammit!"
"And then he dumps you for another woman," Hyde could not resist observing, immediately regretting that he had done so. Aubrey turned to face him, his eyes gleaming like chips of ice in the last of the light. Then the old man shrugged.
"If he had arranged the whole charade for my personal embarrassment," Aubrey remarked, "he could not have had more success. My enemies — on both sides of the Atlantic — will say of me that I am finally too old to cope. Washington contains few people I have worked with in — sensitive matters. They will be delighted at Langley with our success here!" Aubrey's pale features twisted in irony. "Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, Director-General of SIS, falls flat on his face. How pleased so many people will be to hear of it! The Cabinet Office and MI5 will have a field day…" He sighed as he choked off the sentence, then waved his hand towards Wilkes's hovering form, dismissing him. "Back to the hotel, Patrick," he murmured tiredly.
"OK, sir."
Their footsteps crunched on the gravel of the path as they moved down the slope towards the high hedges that bordered the more formal and enclosed part of the gardens. The huge ornamental pool in front of the Upper Belvedere was a sheet of glassy ice. A sliver of moon had appeared above the horizon, and the first stars were like gleams of frost. Hyde realised that Aubrey was still wired for sound. He could hear his breathing and his heartbeat faintly in his earpiece. He took the plug from his ear and thrust it and its cord into his pocket. Kapustin, usually so wary of recordings of his conversations with Aubrey, had seemed indifferent on this occasion. Doubtless, out of a sense of fair play, Aubrey would order him to wipe this tape. Kapustin was dead to Aubrey, the matter closed as finally as a mortuary drawer.
They reached a shorter flight of steps, then the tall hedges and trimmed firs and statuary of the lower gardens. Hyde touched Aubrey's elbow, offering him his support on the slippery steps. Aubrey did not refuse the assistance. The weight of his arm was birdlike, fragile. Wilkes was twenty yards away, on another gravel path, and his three men were farther off, forming a screen. Aubrey's breathing was almost like a crackle of static close to him…
The recorder clinked on the gravel as Hyde dropped it.
Crackle of static?
"Sorry, sir — dropped the bloody tape," Hyde said in an unnecessarily loud voice. Aubrey clicked his tongue in disapproval. Shut up, Hyde thought. Quiet…
Wilkes's shoes on gravel. Hyde scrabbled one hand over the path as if searching for the recorder which he had already retrieved from near his left knee. The gravel was sharp and cold through his corduroy trousers. His woolen scarf felt damp against his mouth as he held his breath.
"Come along, Patrick…" Aubrey sighed impatiently.
Shut up—
Crackle of static, and nearer than their own men…
Radio — two-way?
Aubrey took a step towards him — footsteps as Wilkes drew nearer. Other footsteps, a small party of men. Wilkes hurried close to Aubrey.
What—?
Where the hell had Kapustin gone? Hyde hadn't even watched him leave the gardens of the Belvedere. Damn—
Hyde's hand reached into his coat.
"Sir Kenneth? It's Andrew Babbington—" one of the approaching knot of men — four, no, five of them — called out.
"Babbington?" Aubrey replied confusedly, moving towards the group. "Babbington — Andrew, what are you doing here?"
Hyde remained on one knee, his hand gripping the butt of the Heckler & Koch the embassy had issued him that afternoon. Its shaped plastic was warm from his body. He could not ignore the crackle of static.
Then Aubrey said: "It is you — what is it?"
Crackle — legs, there, beneath the trees. He saw them through a diseased, thinned part of the hedge. Wilkes and the others had closed up now, forming a group of men in dark overcoats and light trench coats, surrounding Aubrey. Must be an emergency—? The legs he could see through the hedge rose to a dark, bulky coat. He could not see the man's face. Aubrey had been joined by the Director-General of MI5 and the Vienna Head of Station. It had to be an emergency — highest priority.
The legs remained still. Did the body have a familiar shape—?
Another pair of legs arrived silently. Two watchers. Hyde got to his feet and moved slowly and quietly off the gravel path. His hand held the recorder and its lead and the earpiece. He thrust the recorder into his pocket and the plug back into his ear.
"… it's extremely embarrassing, Sir Kenneth," someone was murmuring deferentially. Parrish, Head of Station in Vienna.
"I simply do not understand why you are here, Andrew," Aubrey snapped as Hyde again bent low by the hedge. The two watchers had not moved. Their stance betrayed their interest in the group on the path. They were unaware of him.
"Mr Babbington — I'm sorry, Sir Andrew has given me very precise instructions, Sir Kenneth. I'm very sorry…" Why wasn't Babbington speaking for himself? Why the hell was Babbington in Vienna anyway? MI5 was internal security, not intelligence. He was on Aubrey's patch. "I must ask you to accompany us, Sir Kenneth."
"Why, may I ask?" Aubrey asked waspishly. "And why won't you speak for yourself, Andrew? What is it? What is the matter?"
Hyde slipped along the grass verge, his back brushing the tall hedge. A statue loomed, and the hedge opened in decay behind it. He slipped through into the deeper darkness beneath the trees.
"… this is very awkward for me, Sir Kenneth," Parrish was protesting. "Very awkward for all of us…"
"Where is your man Hyde?" Babbington suddenly asked. Hyde was chilled by the tone of command, the sense of urgency. It was a palpable threat. He knew it as such and was unnerved by disbelief. Ahead of him, he could see the two watchers beneath the trees. They were perhaps thirty yards from the group on the path. Who were they—?
"I — have no idea where Hyde is," Aubrey said cunningly. "He was here a moment ago… What do you want of me, Andrew?"
"You'll return to London in our company, Kenneth — and there you will remain incommunicado at your flat until such time…"
"What?"
Hyde was rigid with shock, almost unaware of the watchers even though they were now moving in his general direction.
"Kenneth—" Babbington warned.
"What is it, man? What in the devil's name are you talking about?" Aubrey stormed.
"Treason, Sir Kenneth," Babbington replied coldly. Hyde gasped with incredulity. Aubrey—?
"What did you say?"
"Sir Kenneth, I must warn you that there are grounds for the strongest suspicion — there are matters which must be investigated…"
Footsteps to Hyde'
s left, coming through the trees. Noises on gravel, farther off.
Kapustin… Kapustin…
He recognised the man. He had been the first watcher he had spotted beneath the trees. He hadn't left the gardens — he had known…
Known it would happen.
Hyde's breath escaped in a cloud. Kapustin saw him then. Almost immediately, he bent his head to one side and whispered furiously into a small transceiver. Kapustin had known it would happen, that Aubrey would be…
Arrested.
Running footsteps, and the noises of Aubrey's group moving off, as if abandoning him.
"This is blatantly ridiculous," Aubrey was saying, his voice seeming to grow fainter. "You know why I'm here, what this is about."
Hyde was alone. Running footsteps on gravel, closing in. Kapustin watched him, expectant and confident. A body brushed through low fir branches, a slithering sound. Kapustin's transceiver suddenly crackled with voices. In his ear, Aubrey continued to protest, his voice and circumstances now irrelevant. Kapustin was about to speak. Hyde felt his legs become heavy. The adrenalin coursed in his veins, but he seemed powerless to employ it.
A body blundered against him, slipping on a patch of ice in a hollow in the leaf-mould and hard earth. The collision freed him. He tugged the pistol from his overcoat and struck out, catching the man across the temple. The KGB man staggered back, clutching at the sudden rush of blood. It seeped between his fingers, ran into his eyes. Hyde heaved him out of his path and ran.
He burst from beneath the trees, skidded on the frosty, sparkling gravel then recovered his balance and fled towards the Upper Belvedere, aware that he was moving away from Aubrey and the men who had arrested him. Then he was aware only of the sheen of snow on the gardens, the glint of the frozen pool, the sparkling steps, and his breath beginning to labour as he ran up the long slope towards the darkened, deserted palace.
The air was chilly against his cheeks, his mouth gasped at its coldness, tasting and wetting the wool of his scarf. He heard footsteps behind him. On the end of its lead, the earpiece of the recorder bounced like a fusillade of tiny pebbles against his shoulder.
He saw a form converging, racing across the moonlit white lawn, and he checked then heaved his frame against that of the running man. His breath exploded, and Hyde's shoulder lifted him off his feet, turning him into a face-down dark lump against the snow. Hyde staggered, lurched, felt the recorder drop from his pocket and heard it land on the gravel.
Then he heard a voice, seeming to come from the man on the ground, and for a moment he was unable to move.
"Stop him — kill him if you have to," in unaccented English. It was no Russian voice, yet it was coming from the pocket transceiver clipped to the lapel of the unconscious man's coat. The words were muffled by the man's body, but they were audible on the chilly air. English, spoken by a native. Collusion, he had time to register. MI5 and the KGB. Collusion.
His eyes cast about on the gravel, but he failed to locate the recorder. Distant figures were running towards him. The recorder—!
No time—!
His body began running again, even as he knew he ought to continue the search. Panic and survival controlled him. He mounted the last steps onto the terrace of the Belvedere. Again, the ghostly features of the sphinx grinned and smirked with superiority. His hand slapped against her stone hair as he regained his balance and looked behind him. Two men below, another two converging.
Kill him if you have to…
He still realised the collusion, but it was the threat that was now predominant. They wanted him dead. He had seen and heard. He must be eliminated. Not simply isolated, left alone, but eliminated. Driven and hounded by his own fear, he ran towards the gates onto the Prinz-Eugen strasse, towards Vienna.
Kill him if you have to…
His shoes pounded on the icy pavement. Lines of lights and parked cars stretched ahead of him down the hill towards the city. He ran on, the idea of collusion fading in his mind like the distanced noises and cries behind him.
PART ONE
FALL LIKE LUCIFER'S
'O how fall'n! how chang'd
From him, who in the happy Realms of Light
Cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright.'
— Milton: 'Paradise Lost', Bk.1
CHAPTER ONE:
After the Fall
PAUL MASSINGER BALANCED his whisky on the small table and then eased himself, left leg extended, into the deep armchair. His face creased into lines of irritated pain for a moment until he settled his arthritic hip to greater comfort. Ridiculous. Within his aging form, he had felt so much younger since his marriage to Margaret. He had belied his fifty-nine years; defeated them. Now his body persisted in its reminders of his physical age; it was pertinent yet false, just as the elegance of the Belgravia flat occasionally reminded him, falsely, how easily he, a mere American, could be charged with having married for money. In many eyes, he knew he had at first been — still was to some people — little better than a colonial buccaneer, a gold-digger. At least, that was what other gold-diggers said. None of it hurt or even affected him. Margaret had entered his long widowerhood firmly and purposefully, and opened a new door to this.
The Standard lay still folded on the arm of the chair. He dismissed the consideration that he must arrange to have an operation on his worsening hip — not yet, not yet — and pressed the button of the remote control handset. The television fluttered and grumbled to life. Margaret was not yet home. A sense of absence filled him to the accompaniment of the signature tune of the early evening news. Alistair Burnet's comfortable features filled the screen. He heard a key in the lock, and surrendered to the small, joyous sensation at her return. He turned in his chair in order to see her the moment she stepped into the drawing-room. There was an excited tightness in his chest. His hip twinged savagely, as if envious of his emotions and the object of his attention. In the same complex moment he was young and old.
The long fox fur coat and the matching fur hat; a high colour from the evening drop in temperature made her younger than her forty-three years. The confident, unselfconscious step… The smile faded from his lips. Alistair Burnet's voice was that of an intruder upon the scene. She had halted abruptly in mid-step, and the colour had blanched from her cheeks. One gloved hand played about her lips. Her eyes looked hurt, bruised. Massinger turned his head towards the television set, and gasped.
A grainy monochrome picture of a man of forty or so, fair hair lifted by a breeze; half-profile, lips parted in a smile, eyes pale and intent. Handsome. Massinger did not hear what Ailstair Burnet said to accompany the photograph. He did not need to hear the appalled, choked word that Margaret uttered:
"Father…!"
He knew it already. Robert Castleford, almost forty years dead.
Margaret dragged the fur hat from her head, dishevelling her fair hair. Her mouth was slightly open, as if there were other things she wished to say; lines she had forgotten.
Massinger said, stupidly, "Margaret, what's going on…?"
She moved to his chair but did not touch him, except to brush his hand as she snatched the remote control handset from the arm of the chair. Burnet's voice boomed in the drawing-room.
"… the accusations, said to have been made to the CIA by a Russian defector now in America, involve the circumstances surrounding the death in 1946 in Berlin…"
"Why?" was all Massinger could think to say. He looked up at his wife, but she was staring at the screen, her body slightly hunched like that of a child expecting to be struck.
"… the Foreign Office has declined to comment on the matter, and will neither confirm nor deny that any investigation of the head of the intelligence service is under way, as this evening's edition of the Standard newspaper claims…"
Her hand scrabbled near his sleeve like a trapped pet. The crackling of the folded newspaper was followed by a deep gasp that threatened to become a sob. Massinger, suddenly,
could not look at her.
D-Notice …? his mind asked irrelevantly, and answered itself almost casually, like a voice issuing from a deep club armchair of worn leather, The British have let it come out. For some reason, they want it known… Aubrey has enemies, then… He loathed his own detachment and wanted to clutch her hand. Alistair Burnet passed to another news story. Bombs in Beirut.
"What — what does it say?" he asked throatily. She did not reply. Aubrey, he thought. Aubrey knew Castleford in Berlin in 1946. But Castleford disappeared in Berlin… His remains were found in — in '5I, beneath the ruins of a house. He'd been murdered, but no one ever thought …
Aubrey?
"Darling," he said with ponderous, eager gentleness, "what does it say?"
She let the paper fall into his lap, and crossed the room to the sideboard. He heard a drink being poured, and breathing like that of someone close to death. Castleford's picture was alongside the headline WHERE is 'C'? Beneath that, a sub-heading, Intelligence Furore — Who Killed Who? He could feel the pain each word must have inflicted upon her, but he could not turn his attention from the article.
Exclusive. Arrest of the Head of Intelligence, 'C', expected at any moment… CIA sources in London… Whitehall refuses to… Soviet embassy sources angered by the accusations of complicity in Castleford's death… Castleford's background, senior and distinguished civil servant, brilliant university scholar, veteran of the Spanish Civil War, until now believed murdered for some undiscovered personal reason — or motivelessly done to death… information in our possession, fourth man, fifth man… Blunt and Long and the others all small fry…
Massinger checked back, tracing his finger up the column. The subject had changed. Aubrey was not merely suspected of Castleford's murder. Russian agent, Russian agent, he read… information in our possession, Russian defector in the US, CIA file delivered to MI5, MI5 to act… arrest of'C' expected at any moment, pending a full investigation of the charges…
He read on until he reached the demonic folk-lore, and the old devils of Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt came to occupy their familiar places. Then he threw the newspaper from him and it fluttered heavily to the pale blue velvet carpet. He turned to look at his wife.