by Craig Thomas
Schottenring. Red lights ahead, strung over the middle of the wide thoroughfare. The first car was no more than twenty yards behind them, in the thin traffic. The road was shining with frost.
Green filter.
Hyde swung the wheel hard to the left, and the Mercedes skidded, its back end floating away, then he accelerated and the car bounced heavily over tramlines and he was into a narrower street. He took the first right, then right again. The lights of the Schottenring were ahead of him. He turned into it a block further north from where he had left it, and accelerated again.
"Aubrey's people," Massinger was saying loudly and firmly. "Aubrey's people. He's fighting for his life, Karel. He's desperate. He hasn't got a chance!"
"No chance," Bayev agreed, but there was something mechanical and listless about his voice. Massinger pressed him.
"We can't afford any slip-ups — the pair of us have to stay safe. After two years, we can't afford a cock-up now."
Hyde turned the car onto the Franz-Josefs Kai, alongside the Danube Canal. The traffic was almost non-existent, the strung-bead lights of a bridge ten blocks away from them. Cross the canal, something told him. Into the narrow streets, the darker streets. Two cars still behind him. The third one would be hanging back, waiting for directions; for some pattern to be placed on the movements of the Mercedes, some possibility of a trap.
"Two years? You're a latecomer," Bayev said in the same mechanical toy's voice. "Pavel—"
"Thank God," he heard Massinger breathe.
"Pavel, it's been a plan for maybe five years…" Hyde sensed that Bayev's drugged, confused awareness had slipped back into his drunk's role. His voice was slightly slurred, his tone confiding, nose-tapping. Bridge coming up.
Lights red—
He ran through them and a lorry loomed up on the right, the driver's face clearly visible as he stared down at the Mercedes rocking on its springs, leaning drunkenly to one side as Hyde spun the wheel. The car skidded, turned half-round, then reversed behind the lorry, finally pulling away from it and running across its path onto the bridge. The lorry's horn sounded angrily behind them as the car shuddered across the cobbles of the bridge and jolted along the tramlines.
"Five years — my God!" Massinger exclaimed, his voice still shaky from their encounter with the lorry. "Five years. You're obviously a lot more trusted than I am, Karel."
"Gossip — only gossip," Bayev slurred. Then he yawned.
"Kapustin's always been in charge — yes?" Massinger pressed.
"Is all this on tape?" Hyde asked.
"Yes. It's still running. The recorder's in my hand."
"Thank God." He turned the Mercedes right. The rear-view mirror was clear for four seconds before the first of the pursuing cars appeared. He accelerated again. The kph climbed dramatically on the speedometer. Seventy miles an hour. "We could be getting somewhere," he murmured.
"Kapustin's always been in command," Bayev repeated like a lesson he had learned.
"Brilliant — a brilliant plan. What a mind, what insight—!"
"Balls."
"What—?"
"Kapustin — balls, Pavel! Kapustin's just the operator, the controller. It's not his plan. Just 'cause you're sucking up to him at the moment, looking to stay in London…" Bayev belched, so convinced was he of his own drunkenness. He was argumentative now, restless, and he moved himself into the corner of the Mercedes. His arms waved slowly once more like windmill sails. "Oh, yes, I know you. You'd kiss anybody's arse to stay in London."
"Karel, old man—" Massinger protested.
"It's not Kapustin's scheme, you ponced-up fart!" Bayev screamed, as if at an enemy. He was now in a violent, enraged, heightened mood, for no reason other than the effects of the drugs. "Petrunin created it! Bloody Petrunin — who's a better man than you any day — he created it!" Bayev was screaming at the top of his voice.
"Who?" Massinger murmured in the ensuing silence.
Two cars in the mirror, slowly closing the gap. The dark, ugly hump of the Nordbahnhof rose to their left. Hyde shuddered. Glaring, cold lights over the massive freight-yards beyond the station.
"Petrunin. Tamas Petrunin," Hyde said, unnerved. "That clever bastard."
* * *
"Shelley?"
"Yes."
Peter Shelley indicated to his wife to turn down the television set. Alison Shelley pressed the remote control handset. Laughter at a repeat of Porridge softened. Ronnie Barker was being berated by the short, dapper martinet prison officer. Shelley was still smiling at the last remark he had heard when he realised it was Babbington's voice at the other end of the line. Immediately, he was intensely aware of the back of his wife's head as she sat on the sofa, of the television beyond her, of the bay window still revealing the moonlit, snow-covered back garden. The images pressed upon him accusingly; claiming their rights.
"Shelley — I won't beat about the bush, not with one of my senior men," Babbington began, and then paused for effect before adding: "You've been working unofficially, Shelley. You have provided confidential information for people without security clearance."
Shelley drew in his breath sharply. Alison's shoulders twitched, as at the shock of static electricity in the room.
"I'm — sorry, sir…?"
"Don't play games, Shelley. Massinger asked you for certain information and you provided it, from Registry."
"Sir—"
Alison looked round at the tone of his voice. Her face was immediately concerned. He waved a hand to suggest there was no necessity for concern. But there was—
"You're a good man, Shelley. I prefer to consider you've been misguided in this matter. Old loyalties, all that." There was a bluff forgiveness in Babbington's voice that made Shelley hopeful, yet suspicious. Babbington wore the voice like an ill-fitting mask. "You'll take a week's leave entitlement, beginning at once. When you come back to East Europe Desk, things will be different…" Alison was still watching his face intently, her brow lined with guesses and intuitions. "… a great many things will be different. I expect you to fit into the new organisation. Understood?"
"Yes, sir. Sir, I'm—"
But Babbington was gone.
"What was that?" Alison asked.
"A very severe letting-off, I think," Shelley said ruefully, rubbing his chin. He put down the receiver, and sighed with relief.
"Mm?"
"A ballocking, but not the sack. As long as I keep my nose clean."
"Aubrey?"
"Partly. Partly to do with Paul Massinger — providing him with some information…" Shelley straightened his legs out in front of him and rubbed his thighs. "God, Babbington's got eyes and ears everywhere. I was careful—"
"Is that the end of it?"
"I've got a week's leave."
"Good."
"While they get on with their shake-up of the service. When I get back, I won't recognise the old place. I wonder what Massinger's doing now?"
"Do you still want to know?"
Shelley looked up. "I don't know."
"Then you'd better make up your mind, Peter. I'm not giving all this up—" Alison indicated the room around them, dwelling with unconscious humour on the coal fire. " — without a very good reason."
"Mm?"
"If you're going to be dragged into this thing again, you'd better do it because you really want to — or I shall be very annoyed!"
Alison looked very serious, he thought, but her brow was clear and untroubled. She was giving him permission to go ahead, she wanted only proof of his commitment.
But, was he committed? Did he, after all, really want to risk everything for Aubrey? Babbington had let him off the hook. Shouldn't he accept that gratefully?
"I don't know, darling," he murmured. "I don't know what I really want."
* * *
The freight-yards. Hard, cold lights, each haloed by the beginnings of a freezing fog. Power lines, overhead cables and telephone wires were already thickened and white-leaved with frost.
The Mercedes was parked on a sloping track that led down to the finger-spread of tracks and gantries and signals that constituted the Frachtenbahnhof Wien-Nord. It huddled amid a few dozen cars presumably owned by railway employees at work in the freight-yards.
Hyde had driven them into the lightless, deserted Prater Park, beneath Harry Lime's ferris wheel, the Reisenrad, where memories of the film had chilled Hyde… if one of those dots down there stopped moving, Holly old man… because he was one of those insect-like dots. The Prater had been too empty, too exposed to stop the car for any length of time. And Massinger needed time; quiet and time.
He'd lost the two cars somewhere in the Prater, bewildering them amid the fairground and the numerous roads and tracks that crossed the pleasure park. Since he knew they would waste time searching, he immediately left the park, passing the railway station again and finding the goods yard and its string of parked cars along the track down to the railway lines. Massinger had been pressing him to stop. He considered they were still too close to the pursuit but Massinger had priorities of his own.
Hyde watched him roll up Bayev's sleeve and inject ten milligrams of benzedrine. There appeared to be no effect on the Russian. He was still slumped in one corner of the car, wet marks on his cheeks where he had been weeping openly before becoming unconscious, his eyes still open but sightless.
"Well?"
"It doesn't look good, I'll admit," Massinger said drily.
"Will he come round?"
"God only knows. It's been a rough ride for him." Bayev's face appeared a deathly colour in the floodlighting falling on the freight-yards. One thing that might put the KGB off the scent — it was too light to suggest itself as a place of concealment.
"His eyes rolled then," Hyde said eagerly.
Bayev appeared to be watching him. His face was disgruntled, mean.
"Karel," Massinger murmured softly in Russian. "Are you all right, old man? God, you gave us a turn, then. Passing out like that. You haven't done that since you were in school — remember, all nose-bleeds and fainting fits?" Hyde looked at Massinger, baffled, but the American merely shrugged. Lies and truth, perhaps, no longer mattered. Only detail, building-blocks of the fictitious, drug-perceived situation. "We used to think your periods would start any time!"
"That wasn't me, that was that little squirt Voris — Vos — Vorisenko!" Bayev snapped back. "Bloody fairy in the making, he was!"
"Yes, poor old Vorisenko," Massinger laughed. "Are you all right now?"
"Headache."
"Just the drink, I expect."
The fog was thickening around the floodlights, so that they became sheets of white light, no longer glaring circles hung in bunches. The windscreen of the Mercedes was misting over outside and Hyde switched on the wipers. Through the cleared arc, he could see no one moving.
"Shut up," Bayev grumbled. "Shut up, Pavel. I'm sick of your bloody voice, sick of the sound of it. I want to sleep."
"Kapustin would be pleased with you, Karel. You must be getting old."
"Piss off. Let me sleep."
God, Massinger thought, he's slipping away. The next ten milligrams won't bring him back. He's exhausted. What could he do—?
"All right?" Hyde murmured.
"I don't think we've got long."
"Christ, get on with it, then."
"How?"
"Give him a ballocking — that always works with the KGB. They're all scared of some big Red chief sitting on their necks."
"How can I? I'm Pavel Koslov — same rank, same function. His friend."
"Tell him you're talking on behalf of someone else—"
"Kapustin?"
Hyde shrugged. "Why not? Why not Petrunin, even…?" Hyde's face twisted in dislike.
"I'll try Kapustin." He turned to Bayev, leaning closer to him. "Karel, the reason I came to Vienna…"
"Shut up. I'm tired."
"Kapustin especially asked me to come. As a friend of yours, he thought it might be easier for me to tell you…" Massinger's tone was insinuating, even sinister.
A goods train shunted below them, its lamps enlarged by the thickening fog. The wagons rattled and grumbled together.
"Tell me? Tell me what?" The first spots of fear, forerunners of the infection, had appeared in Bayev's tone.
"Kapustin's disappointed…"
"With what? In me?" Bayev was sitting upright now, his eyes wide and alarmed, though even now they remained unfocused. "What do you mean?" His reluctance, his weariness were both gone for the moment. He was tensely alert within the fictitious situation.
"I'm afraid so. You've been letting the British control too much here in Vienna." Massinger saw, from the edge of his vision, Hyde's knuckles whiten on the back of his seat as he watched them. He could hear the Australian's breathing, hard and urgent. "He doesn't want the British in control here."
"They're not in control."
"They are — the man running it, the link man… oh, what's—"
"Wilkes doesn't run anything. We liaise, that's all. Wilkes does as we want. That's always been the understanding."
"What understanding?"
"How the hell do I know? Kapustin doesn't confide in me! I deal with Wilkes. What else goes on I know nothing about."
"Shit," Hyde murmured slowly.
"Why haven't you got hold of this Englishman, Hyde? Kapustin wants to know that. What are you playing about at?"
"Wilkes wanted to handle that. I thought everyone agreed they'd do it!" Bayev protested. "It isn't my fault," he whined. "He must understand that…" His voice had begun to slur, and Massinger looked at Hyde, shaking his head.
"Nothing more."
"Ask him why, dammit!"
"What's behind it all, Karel?" Massinger demanded, still maintaining the voice but not the person of Pavel Koslov. Bayev was evidently confused. His head wobbled slowly in puzzlement on his shoulders. His body was already sliding slowly back into the seat. Massinger realised that he was slipping away once more, and that this time he would, in all probability, remain unconscious and unreachable, despite benzedrine.
Hyde glanced at the windscreen. Like the side windows, it was misting over again. He reached for the wiper stalk. The car was silent, isolated, almost unreal. In the goods yard, couplings clanked weirdly.
"What's behind it, Karel?" Massinger persisted. "Why are we running our tails off? What are we doing it all for?"
"Who knows…?" Bayev replied faintly.
Hyde tensed, staring at the Rezident. His hands gripped — the back of his seat, squeezing the plastic hard. Come on, come on…
"Why? Karel — why, man, why?" Massinger shouted.
"Who knows… who — knows… Petrun… runin… i-i-i-n- n…"
His head lolled forward. Instantly, they heard him snoring.
"Damn—" Massinger groaned.
Hyde cursed aloud and snapped down the wiper stalk. The blades slithered frostily across the windscreen.
"He didn't know — he bloody didn't know!" Hyde yelled accusingly. "Oh, fuck it, he didn't know!"
He turned in his seat. Through the cleared windscreen, he could see the bulk of the approaching man, no more than a few yards from the car. His hand came out of his overcoat and he had fired two shots through the windscreen even before Hyde began reaching for his pistol.
* * *
"You simply cannot continue to deny everything, Sir Kenneth," Eldon admonished him in a voice that was reproving, wise and sinister. "You have admitted your signature, you have admitted your capture, your imprisonment in the Russian sector, your interrogation at the hands of Colonel Zalozny, whose methods and successes are well-documented…" Eldon paused, passing his hands like a magician over the papers on his lap. Self-evident, the gesture repeated. Conclusions, proofs are here…
Aubrey could no longer disguise his signals of frailty and hopelessness. Wearily, he rubbed one hand across his forehead, as if he intended soothing some fierce ache.
"You think not?"
he replied softly. The tone was pale, lifeless.
"It would, of course, assist everyone — including yourself, Sir Kenneth — if you would confirm the accounts presented in these documents?"
"I can't."
"I see."
"No, you do not see. Keeping me from my bed, agitating my nerves, giving me violent indigestion — none of these things can extract additional, confirmatory information which I do not possess." Aubrey's voice soothed him. Calm, quiet, soft; as if he retained control of the situation.
"Very well, Sir Kenneth — let us go back to the coincidence of events — the fact that Robert Castleford was last seen alive on the very day, the very evening, that you made your successful return to the British sector of Berlin, mm?"
"Yes. Yes. By the time I had — recovered from my imprisonment, he was missing. No trace of him. The morning after I returned, apparently, he was not to be found."
"Did you lead the NKVD to him?"
"No."
"But you told them where to find him?"
"No."
"But—?"
"Despite what it says above my forged signature there, I did not place the onus of SIS secret operations against the NKVD in Berlin and the Russian Zone of Germany at Castleford's door. Castleford was a wealthy, brilliant, ambitious civil servant making the most of his posting to the Control Commission. He aimed very high. I did not like him, we did not get on together. I did not betray him — I did not have him killed.",
"But — you would agree, would you not, that if you had painted this colourful picture of Castleford as some kind of masterspy, the NKVD would have had very good reason to — cause Castleford to suspend operations against them?"
"If I had, then yes. If they thought of him in that way, then yes. None of it, however, is true."
"When did you last see Robert Castleford?"
"I–I'm not certain—"
Eldon consulted his notebook. The tape-recorder on the coffee table continued to hum in the room's lamplit silence. Shadows and soft light. Aubrey could not rid himself of a persistent sense of menace. Eldon looked up once more.
"There was a meeting between you the day before you entered the Russian sector — in pursuit, as you claim, of your double agent."
"Was there? Perhaps there was. I don't remember it."