by Craig Thomas
His handshake was firm and hot. He pecked Margaret's cheek, and was gone. Massinger closed the door behind him. The noise of the party loudened. His head had begun to beat. Impulsively, he put his arms around Margaret and pulled her to him, holding her tightly against him.
Eventually, she pulled gently away, smiling. Glowing, he thought once more with black, ashy bitterness.
"Back to the party for you," she instructed humorously. "You're becoming much too self-indulgent."
She took his hand, and led him back towards the drawing-room.
God, he thought with the fervency of prayer, don't let me hurt her. Don't let me lose her — don't let me hurt or lose her…
* * *
"Hyde?"
The word seemed to hang somewhere in the air between London and Vienna. The static and distance seemed like eavesdroppers. Paul Massinger hunched over the telephone receiver in the woman's flat as if to conceal his voice and movements from prying ears and eyes.
The call from the woman, Ros, had come while he was shaving. The dressing-room extension had been nearest; the receiver of betrayals. He had picked it up fumblingly with a wet hand, the mouthpiece immediately whitened by his shaving foam. He had been aware, like a fear along his spine, of Margaret's still-sleeping presence in the bedroom. The call had not woken her.
The woman had persuaded Hyde to talk to Massinger, when could he come…? Would ten—? Hyde seemed nervous, on edge, wanted to talk to him urgently… He had swallowed all betrayals, all fears, and agreed to come to Earl's Court before ten.
… to sit in a large room decorated in deep warm colours, the walls of which were hung with prints of Australian landscapes, often bleached and bleak, his body already half-turned to the telephone beside the sofa, anticipating the call.
He had seen no blue Cortina; he had seen no other tail. They had accepted his surrender, they did not guess at this renewed rebellion. Betrayal…
Beyond this telephone call, Peter Shelley and the transcript of the Teardrop file lay ahead of him like an ambush in the bright, cold morning.
Then the call had come. Ros had answered, nodded and handed the receiver to him. He had taken it like a thing infected or booby-trapped. At the other end of the connection, Hyde waited like a malevolent destiny. He was certain of it; certain no good would come of it. Then he plunged.
"Hyde?" he repeated.
"Massinger? Is that phone bugged?"
Involuntarily, he looked up at Ros, and repeated Hyde's question. Ros stood like a guardian near the sofa, arms folded across her breasts. She shrugged, and then she said, "I'm just his landlady. He knows that, so do they."
Massinger nodded. "We don't think so — we're pretty sure."
"Who's we?" Hyde asked in a worryingly unnerved way, then he added: "Oh, Ros. OK. I've heard of you, Massinger. You were CIA, a long time ago, but you've been out of things since then. You're a teacher now. What's your angle?"
Hyde mirrored his own emotions, Massinger realised. He, too, anticipated exposure, capture, the death of something. In his case, his own demise. Why? Why was Hyde so evidently at the final extremity, in fear of his life? Damned, betraying professional instincts prompted him to reply. He was helpless to contain or suppress them.
"I'm trying to help Aubrey. Why are you afraid for your life, Hyde? Who's trying to kill you?"
Ros's large, plump hand covered her mouth, too late to hold in the gasp she had emitted. Her body seemed to quiver beneath the kaftan with a sudden chill.
"You don't know, do you?" Hyde replied. Massinger sensed that he, too, had come to a decision, but his had been made out of desperation.
"No, I don't."
"How is the old man?"
"Aubrey? Afraid — running out of hope, I think," he replied with deliberation.
"Aren't we all, sport?"
"Hyde — why can't you come in? It is a question of can't, isn't it?"
Hyde was silent for a moment. The morning spilled pale sunlight across the dark green carpet of Ros's lounge. It touched the back of the sleeping tortoiseshell cat. Massinger sensed immediately that the woman had brought Hyde's cat to her flat for safety — from what she would not have been able to explain.
Then Hyde blurted out: "I'm running from our side — comical, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean — collusion between the KGB and SIS. Look, Massinger, I'm as good as dead—!" Hyde's voice broke on the word, like a dinghy against a rock. Massinger sensed the utter weariness of the Australian, his collision with the brick-wall dead-end of hope and will. He was at the end of his tether.
"I don't understand you…"
"You don't fucking well understand?" Hyde yelled. His voice seemed to move closer, be in the room together with the scent of his fear and the desperation that must be on his face. "I don't give a fuck if you understand! Vienna Station tried to terminate me — terminate, as in finish, bump off, kill …!" Massinger heard Hyde's dry throat swallow, then: "I tried to come in… I knew the old man wanted help… I rang the Station, gave the proper idents…" There was no way in which Hyde could stop himself talking now. His boat was leaking, and he was drowning. He had lost control of his situation and himself, now that the faint possibility of escape had gleamed; help had whispered down the international telephone lines. "Ten minutes later, the KGB turned up, and they were loaded for 'roos. They wanted me dead — they must have wanted me silent on the subject of Kapustin's watching the whole arrest…"
Some dramatist's instinct warned Hyde that he had laid out sufficient of his mysterious wares for the present, and he left the sentence unfinished. Massinger could hear his harsh breathing down the line. The information whirled like sparks from a windblown bonfire in his mind.
Collusion… Kapustin… Vienna Station… collusion…
"I–I can't believe it, Hyde…" he managed to say at last.
"Then try," Hyde sneered.
"You must — must…"
"What? Stay alive? I want to! How can you help me to achieve my ambition?"
"Your papers?" They were in one of Ros's plump, beringed hands, clutched against her breast. She seemed to offer them towards Massinger. The cat stirred, then fell asleep once more, the tension in the room insufficient to disturb it.
"This city's sewn up — I need those if I'm to get out. Let me talk to Ros about that — where to send them."
Collusion — Kapustin — Vienna Station — KGB — SIS — collusion.
"I'll — bring them to you. I must talk to you," Massinger offered suddenly, surprising his rational, conscious brain, unnerving his objective self.
"You'll come…?" Hyde was suspicious, and relieved.
"I'll come. I'll bring them. We must talk."
"When?"
"Tomorrow, two days — I'll have to be — careful."
"They're onto you!" Hyde accused.
"No. I've been warned off Aubrey — nothing to do with you. There's no connection between us." He saw the blue Cortina parked in Philbeach Gardens very vividly in his imagination. "I — give me a little time to cover my tracks. I have to talk to Shelley anyway—"
"No—!"
"It's all right. I won't mention you. It's about Aubrey — the frame…"
"How have they done it — who's done it?"
"KGB — I don't know much more. Shelley has — some information for me."
"So have I. Watch yourself, for my sake. I said collusion and I meant it." Hyde had recovered something of himself; a patient who has been bled and is weakened but more clearheaded. A boil had been lanced, pressure eased, by his outburst. He would now last, perhaps, as long as it took Massinger to reach him in Vienna. "Watch your back. Someone wants me dead and Aubrey out of the game. It could be anyone. It's someone who can give termination orders concerning his own people and expect to be obeyed, and someone who has established two-way access between SIS and the KGB in Vienna. You understand?"
"I understand the implications," Massinger murmured. Blue Cortina, Aubr
ey framed, blue Cortina, collusion … The word pained him like a blow. A rumbling headache had begun in his left temple. He rubbed it. "I understand," he repeated,
"You're my only hope," Hyde said flatly.
"I know. Give me a little time. Ring — ring your landlady tomorrow, at the same time…" He looked up questioningly. Ros nodded. "At the same time," he repeated. "She'll have information for you. Try — try to stay out of trouble until then."
"Just believe it, mate." Hyde paused. The connection seemed distant, unreal, tense once more. "All right," he said finally, "I'll trust you. Everyone always said you were a bit too nice for our kind of work, but you're Aubrey's closest pal. All right — I trust you." Then he cackled in an ugly, fearful way. "After all, I can kill you when you get here, can't I?"
"You can — if I'm not what you need or expect."
The connection was broken at that point. The telephone purred. Hyde was gone, almost as surely as if the call had never been made; as surely as if he had been taken.
He gingerly put down the receiver. Ros was glaring at him, but her lips moved with a silent, involuntary fear.
"I'll try — as hard as I can, I'll try," he soothed. "Meanwhile, you know nothing. You have not heard from Hyde, you don't expect to. As his landlady, you're angry enough to let his flat to someone else. Understand?"
Slowly, uncertainly, Ros nodded. "OK."
"Good. Now, I must go." He glanced at his watch. Ten-twenty. He would have to hurry to meet Shelley. The sunlight lay chill and pale across the carpet, cold on the cat's fur. Massinger shuddered, as at an omen.
* * *
"What will you do?" Massinger asked.
"Hide the car and keep a look-out," Peter Shelley's breath curled around him like grey signals of distress.
"You say you lost the tail?"
"I lost one car by hiding in a coal merchant's yard," Shelley replied without amusement. "But I only spotted one car, I'm not Hyde — not a field man. I don't trust my judgment that much. Neither should you."
"Very well. To photocopy this—" He indicated the buff envelope, thickly filled with paper, that the younger man had given him. " — I'll need at least half an hour."
Shelley looked at his watch with a feverish little gesture, fumbling back the cuff of his dark overcoat. When he looked up again, his face seemed to Massinger even paler and more drawn than before.
"I have to have that file back at Century House by one," he pleaded. "The meeting is immediately after lunch — the copies will be collected…"He seemed to be damming a small flood of reluctance, excuses.
"Very well — I'll hurry," Massinger replied stiffly, and opened the car door, climbing out as quickly as he could from the bucket seat. He slammed the door of the BMW without looking back at Shelley.
Shelley watched him ascend the steps to the portico of the Imperial War Museum, its huge dome threatening to topple and crush him in the now grey, low-clouded morning. His slightly limping figure was dwarfed by the two fifteen-inch naval guns in front of the portico. Bedlam, Shelley thought. The Bethlem Royal Hospital for the Insane was what the building had once housed. It seemed an apt meeting place, after he had crossed the river and passed the weatherstained concrete of the South Bank buildings only to find a tailing red Vauxhall in the driving mirror. It had been a long time before he shook the tail. It was Bedlam. He had volunteered his own incarceration in this insane, dangerous situation.
Massinger entered the museum's doors in search of the photocopier in the Reference Library. In the moment of his disappearing, he was the image of the historian he really was. He fitted the place, would be anonymous and unregarded inside its doors. Yet he was old, he limped… he wasn't an agent, a professional.
Angrily, Shelley started and revved the car's engine. He paused for a few moments, foot hard down as if receiving the engine's determination into his body. He consciously had to use the gears, force himself to drive back towards the gates and Brook Drive. He had to make himself expose the car, leave it parked in the street so that his tail might pick it up again. He had to make himself want to see his tail.
He parked the car and left it, re-entering the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park towards the museum. He unfolded his copy of The Times on a cold, damp bench and sat on the newspaper. The chill struck through his overcoat and the trousers of his grey suit. He slid into a lounging position, his BMW visible through the railings of the park, and considered Paul Massinger.
Was he frightened, like himself? Frightened and old and weak like Aubrey? The huge weight of class, of social context, of his marriage and friendships. Massinger could lose patronage, friendship of a powerful, beneficial kind — even his identity. He could lose his wife because Aubrey was presumed to have betrayed her father. Shelley, too, could lose everything, take the same losses — his own marriage apart — if he continued this investment in Aubrey's cause.
He wanted to walk away from it. He saw a red Vauxhall almost immediately, hadn't really lost them, then. He feared that Massinger's present mood of resolution could not last and he would be left holding the grenade. Massinger vacillated, saw round things, into and through them. The red Vauxhall passed the gates, wrong car, then. His breath sighed smokily into the cold air. It was possible that Massinger was doing no more than marking time, making the appearance of an effort simply to assuage guilt and for friendship's sake — as he was himself…? Just doing a little bit, looking good, then dropping Aubrey like a live coal when things got rough.
He kicked at a stone in self-disgust. It narrowly missed a pigeon, which fluttered a few feet then settled to inspect the gravel once more.
The red Vauxhall was coming back, slowly. It stopped outside the gates. Shelley drew in his long legs, hunching into the cover of a bush growing beside the bench. He'd first spotted the red car as he crossed Waterloo Bridge, the Vivaldi on the cassette suddenly becoming more chilly, echoing coldly in a vacuous acoustic. He'd tried to shake the Vauxhall through the narrow, terraced, ugly Lambeth and Southwark streets, and then thought he had lost it after he had turned into the coalyard amid the blackened lorries. Now he suspected that there had been two cars, and a radio link.
He watched the red Vauxhall. A man in an overcoat — who? — got out and crossed to inspect the BMW. Almost at once, he turned and nodded to his driver. Then the passenger returned to the Vauxhall, climbed in, and the car pulled away, leaving the smoke of its exhaust to disperse in the chill, windless air. Shelley listened to its engine note retreat, slow, louden, and then stop. Parked. They would wait — who would wait? He shivered.
He had to get the file back to Century House — it was his most urgent priority — because the JIC meeting under Sir William's chairmanship scheduled for tomorrow had been brought forward to that afternoon. Shelley had been caught on the hop.
Who, in the red car who …?
MI5, SIS, KGB…?
He did not know. His body felt feverishly warm beneath his jacket and overcoat. When he had the file back, and had returned to his office, that would be that, wouldn't it? No more need for red Vauxhalls, no more need…
His nose would be clean. Very clean. Twelve-twenty. Come on, Massinger, come on…
There was weakness in Massinger, weakness in himself, too, for that matter. Weakness of the same kind, like cracks hidden behind heavy wallpaper, cracks that went down to the foundations and boded trouble.
Blue Cortina -
Massinger's blue Cortina, his tail—?
The blue Cortina stopped outside the BMW, then pulled forward and away. Shelley shivered violently and stood up, rubbing his arms and the backs of his thighs. He gazed towards the fasade of the War Museum almost with longing. There was no one on the steps. He crunched along the gravel, hands thrust into his pockets. They had him now. Perhaps they did not know why he had met Massinger — perhaps they had not followed the American… But they had him. He was under suspicion, under surveillance. His breath smoked around his head like a gauzy hood. He was breathing harshly, as if afraid or
spent. He hadn't recognised any of the faces in the two cars, which meant they were more likely to be MI5 than KGB — Babbington's troops. They had him, then.
Massinger emerged from the doors as he reached the top of the steps. Massinger turned to look back over the railings. He could distinguish the red Vauxhall, but there was no sign of the blue Cortina.
"Finished?" he asked eagerly.
"My God — yes, I've finished." Shelley snatched the buff envelope which contained the Teardrop transcript, its pages protected by stiff polythene. "I was careful, Peter. No one will realise it's been copied." He smiled, but some other emotion removed the expression from his lips almost at once. "I — just glances, you know. It's incredible. Even talking to Aubrey didn't prepare me for it. Nearly forty years of treachery documented there. Aubrey's being turned in 1946, being woken from his long sleep two years ago, the information he's passed, his promotion and the prospects and plans — dismantling SIS, turning it into… my God, it's so — so convincing!"
"Especially the last two years."
"But Hyde was there — most of the time he was there."
"And Aubrey often went off by myself — unlogged. Or he wasn't wired for sound, or he didn't make full reports of his contacts. Who could defend him adequately against this?" Shelley's face was set in a stony, lifeless expression. To Massinger, he looked young, afraid, vulnerable — unreliable.
"Any activity?" he asked, gesturing towards Brook Drive with the gloves he held in one hand.
"The Vauxhall's back with me," Shelley muttered, then he burst out: "Christ, I'm shit-scared at having anything to do with this!"
"What do we do?"
"Walk. I — can collect the car later. Lambeth's the nearest tube station in the other direction. OK?"
"OK. Who are they?"
"I — don't know."
"You suspect—?"
"Babbington's people."
"Damn — you're sure they're not KGB?"
"Not sure — not sure they are, either. Veering towards MI5." Shelley's voice was almost inaudible above the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel.