by Craig Thomas
He had to go—
He knew he could not rest if he trusted in a message to Clara. He trusted her, but he did not trust himself to find peace of mind without himself putting the journal on the fire or tearing it into small pieces and flushing it away; destroying it. He had written the full and true account of the death of Robert Castleford because his accursed, punctilious conscience and overweening self-righteousness would not allow him to leave the truth unrecorded. It had been as if, one day far ahead, he expected to be asked to account for Castleford's murder — as now he had been.
But now, now he did not want the truth, had no use for it. The truth would be regarded as a lie, his motives overlooked or dismissed. Now, only the brute fact would have significance. Eldon would say, with triumph in his tone, "You did do it, then? We knew you had. As for the rest of it — mere nonsense. In your own handwriting, a confession of murder…"
He had to see those pages burning or flushing away! There was no other way, no help for it. He had to make the journey, escape from England.
Even that idea pained him; an indigestive, burning pain in his chest. He, having to escape from his own country, the country he had loyally served for most of his adult life, in war and peace, declared war and undeclared war.
He looked at the clock. Almost six. Heavy traffic outside, the flash of passing headlights on the ceiling of the darkened room.
Through the window, if he raised himself in his armchair to see it, Regent's Park had retreated into darkness. Beyond the park, the lights of Primrose Hill receded northwards into the distance beneath the orange-glowing winter sky. The first stars were out, hard and brittle. The room was warm yet he sat in the chair in his dark overcoat, hat resting on his lap, as if he could no longer afford his heating bills.
He was ready to leave. He needed only to find the nerve to begin, to take the first step. He had prepared for the moment, perhaps ever since they had confined him to the flat.
Compulsively, without definite purpose but with all his professional instincts, he had studied the surveillance teams; their characters, their routines, their weaknesses… most of all, their growing, inevitable complacency.
He had encouraged Mrs Grey, much against her will and much to her disgust, to begin to supply the various teams with cups of tea, cups of coffee. Then to warm the pies or fish and chips they had bought. To provide sandwiches on occasion. To mother them…
Stiffly, angrily, she had learned her part and softened into it. He, meanwhile, had watched their change-overs, especially those that came after dark. Especially this one at six. Every evening he had watched.
Sloppy. Complacent, lazy, sloppy — more so with each passing day and night. Only one old man to worry about upstairs… easy, cushy…
Tonight, it was curry from an Indian take-away. Mrs Grey had chilled the lager they drank with it, in her fridge. She had just taken it out to them, enough cans for the two teams, new and old. She would chat, in a motherly way, for a few moments, acting like a further sedative. Then, when she judged it safest, sensed the right moment, she would return to the front door and ring the bell, summoning him to begin his journey. There would be only a moment when he might slip undetected across the street to the darker park side of the terrace. Then he might reach the corner, then the Marylebone Road and the rush-hour and the taxis… They would not be expecting—
The doorbell sounded, shrill in the silent flat. Aubrey's body twitched as if electrocuted. His hands grabbed the arms of the chair. His hat fell to the carpet. Like an automaton, he pushed himself upright, bent to collect his hat, then moved stiffly to the door. He did not glance at the furniture, the emperor's new clothes that had been no more than an illusion, but left the flat almost unseeingly. He descended to the ground floor. The front door was slightly ajar. He could see Mrs Grey in the porch, hidden from the surveillance cars by deep shadow. She turned as his hand touched the latch. Aubrey could tell, by the startled look on her face and the immediate, worried frown, that his face must portray wildness and inadequacy. He patted her hand fumblingly like a very old and senile man. She appeared unreassured. He brushed past her. She had no idea where he was going, only abroad, escaping — what she did not know she could not mistakenly tell.
He let go of her hand, and his own hand fell to his side as if she had been taking the weight of it. His hand, then arm, then trunk, then legs, too, became heavy and slow and burdensome. He did not look either right or left, but crossed the road with a firm, blind, jerky step. He reached the opposite pavement. When he turned, the facades of the Nash houses gleamed orange-white in the light of the street-lamps. Aubrey began to walk away from the parked cars of the two surveillance teams. Mrs Grey had not even had time to tell him all four men were sitting in one car, eating. He strode on, a melodramatic actor in his dotage parodying a blind man's walk.
A woman with a dog spoke to him. He raised his hat without seeing or identifying her. There was the noise of a car behind him, but it did not evoke fear. He merely walked on until he reached the end of the terrace and turned right towards the Marylebone Road.
Lights, traffic. His legs felt weak, almost without energy, paralysed. His body had become very heavy now, glutinously restraining his emotional desire for speed, for flight. He forced his limbs to move. The noise of the traffic loudened. He reached the Marylebone Road.
Taxi, taxi, taxi—
It was cracking, like a mask upon the skin. As his resolve and his will dehydrated, the mask had begun to crack open.
The taxi stopped. "Where to, guv?"
The enquiry was like a gulp of reviving air. He fumbled with the door handle, murmuring "Victoria" in a choked voice. He almost fell forward into the taxi's interior, gaining the seat just before his legs gave away and a hot flush invested his entire body. He sighed, loosened his overcoat, lay back.
"Traffic's bad this evening," he heard someone say, presumably the cab driver, but he had no interest in replying. He merely wanted to rest now, and allow reaction and weakness their moment, then recover from them.
He had done it, he told himself. Blundered out of his captivity like a child or a blind man. He had done it.
* * *
Alison Shelley had become fascinated by the woman who sat opposite her in her lounge, still wearing her tweed coat and holding her hat in her twisting hands. The woman was perhaps ten years older than herself, distraught, pale from her various and contradictory fears, tired. Yet she possessed a calm, a sense of certainty, what could only be called an authority, that Alison envied. Margaret Massinger, by virtue of her upbringing, wealth and social milieu, had never had the slightest interest in, or need for, feminism, equality of opportunity, even the franchise. That much was obvious to her hostess.
She studied, too, her husband as he talked to Margaret Massinger. Peter was afraid and kept throwing sly little guilty looks in her direction, but some covert part of him was intrigued, mystified, prompted to action. Alison knew that he was on the point of throwing in his lot with the Massingers and she knew that she, reluctantly, would do the same with her husband. She would join because she knew his current sleeplessness and irritability all derived from his self-contempt and his inability to quell his loyalty.
"There's no other line, Mrs Massinger…" Peter was saying, spreading his hands helplessly. "I only wish there were. Your husband has had all the doors slammed in his face. That's the size of it, I'm afraid." Shelley looked as lugubriously regretful as a bloodhound.
"That's not a lot of help to Mrs Massinger," Alison observed quietly, studying her sherry glass and then Margaret's face. Margaret Massinger seemed grateful for her intervention, perhaps understanding her motives; granting permission for her husband to involve himself.
Peter Shelley's face was dubious, then his frown cleared. He, too, realised the purpose of her interjection, even though he could not act upon it. He shrugged. "I know it isn't," he said. "But it's also true, darling."
"Surely there's some way — I—?" Margaret began, lowering he
r eyes to the crumpled hat in her lap as her voice faltered. She was distraught, and evidently she felt inadequate to counter Shelley's expertise, his insider's experience. After a moment she added, not looking up: "Paul can't stay cooped up for ever, Mr Shelley."
"I — don't know what to say," was Shelley's only reply.
"Why can't we talk to Andrew Babbington—?" she blurted.
Shelley paused, then shook his head as he spoke. "We don't know," he said softly. "We don't know who it is. And whoever it is might get to hear — then…" He hurried on gloomily: "We don't have any proof, we wouldn't be believed."
"What about this man Hyde?"
"God alone knows where he is. He arrived in Pakistan — there's been no contact since."
"God, isn't there anything you can do?" Alison asked in a loud, strained voice. She got up, pacing the room in front of the glowing fire, her sherry glass catching its lights. "There must be something, Peter — surely to God? Mr Massinger's life's in danger. He's hiding in his flat like a criminal. He needs your help!"
"What can I do?" Shelley pleaded, resenting her interruption. He shifted on his chair almost with the squirm of an accused small boy.
"I can't tell you what to do, Peter…" she continued, now patrolling the borders of the lounge like an inexperienced, nervous guard. Sunday Times — Insight. "I don't know what to suggest…" The newspaper, remaining untidied from the previous day, lapped over the edges of a pink-upholstered reproduction chair. Sunday Times — Insight. Alison moved on from the exposed front page. Yesterday's news. She had pored over the articles more than once, deliberately and evidently, but after Peter had made his telephone calls he had been reluctant to discuss it. So she had abandoned the matter. But now there was this, the peculiar violence of Peter's secret world, brought to their lounge by—
She realised that Margaret Massinger was watching her expectantly. Alison had invited her attention by protest and movement; now she resented it, realising she had compromised Peter.
"Who else has been betrayed?" Heavy type, lower case letters. She had read that, too. She passed the fire, its warmth sudden against her calves, reminding her upper torso that it was chilly with indecision, helplessness. Peter was staring glumly through his interlaced fingers at the carpet in front of the sofa. Sideboard, standard lamp, door, bookshelves — Peter's English classics and books on sailing, her own biographical tastes — then the newspaper again. She had patrolled the room's border once again. 'Who else has been betrayed?' she read.
"Peter…?" she asked slowly.
"Yes?" he replied eagerly, sensing her tone. He had always admitted her intuition as a legitimate intellectual activity. He needed intuition in his work. Aubrey's was the intuition he really admired.
"1974," she announced slowly. Each syllable of the date was elongated, charged with a good-humoured, almost excited mystery. "That business in Bonn."
"I know," Shelley said. "What of it?"
"Is it just newspaper talk?" Her hand reached for the paper, but she merely rearranged it so that she did not have to read the front page upside-down. 1974 — Bonn — Gunther Guillaume, Willy Brandt's senior adviser, the East German spy — rumours of an attempt to warn, even get him away, by a British officer—
"No, it isn't. Hell of a flap at the time. Everyone was talking about it at the office today. Aubrey's the prime suspect now, of course, because he was in Bonn advising the Germans on anti-terrorist security for the World Cup — after that disaster at the Munich Games… it's rubbish, of course. But the mud will no doubt stick," he ended with a sigh.
Alison was standing in front of him. "Was there any truth in it?"
"We never admitted there was — MI5 did a job on us, just as we'd done a job on our own people. Nothing. Just a trace of woodsmoke, but definitely no fire." He smiled thinly, then shook his head. "Pity we can't ask Guillaume, now he's back with his own people."
"Isn't there anyone else?" Alison blurted in disappointment, half-afraid at the ease with which she had been drawn unresisting into the secret world. Her relationship with her husband now was as intimate as lovemaking, yet entirely cerebral. Her body was flushed with tension. She found she had placed herself beside the chair in which Margaret Massinger sat.
"To ask?" Shelley pondered. "I doubt it."
"If — if, Peter?" Alison pressed her empty glass against her forehead and ran her other hand through her thick hair. "No, just listen — I think I'm having one of Aubrey's intuitions—" Shelley smiled involuntarily. "Look, if there was someone in — a British agent working to help this Guillaume… couldn't he be the one who's helping to ruin Aubrey now?" She seemed unconvinced as her words tailed off.
"Yes…?" Shelley asked, evidently disappointed.
"You mean, just as they're blaming Mr Aubrey—" A small, pinched mouth signalled distaste, then Margaret continued: "If you assume his innocence…" She looked down, divided, then: "If you do, then, then — the someone who could have acted then, in 1974, could be the same one now. Do you see what we mean, Mr Shelley?"
Shelley rubbed his cheeks with his long fingers and was silent for a time. Eventually, when the tense breathing of both women was audible above the occasional spitting of logs on the fire, he looked up and said: "It's thin — it's almighty thin."
"Do you think Mr X existed in 1974?" Alison demanded.
"No, but I believe he exists now — and he isn't Kenneth Aubrey, Mrs Massinger—" She waved the assertion dismissively aside.
"I'm keeping his two guilts apart," she announced quietly, frostily. "It is this business which threatens Paul, not my father's murder."
Shelley nodded. "Very well."
"If he exists now, he would have to be high-up, wouldn't he?" Alison asked.
Once more, Shelley nodded, but this time it was in response to some inward image or realisation. "Yes, he would," he murmured. "He would indeed."
"If he's helping the Russians now — then couldn't he have been the one helping them in 1974?" Alison felt her hands clenching into fists at her sides, felt herself willing her intuition upon her husband. A fragmentary sense of Margaret Massinger's continuing problem, the identity of her father's murderer, was dismissed as soon as it appeared.
"He could… he could indeed," Shelley said, then: "It's a very long shot, though." He looked at Margaret. "But it would get Paul out of the country for a while — to Germany. He'd be safer there. Can you two do that?"
Margaret nodded, and said: "But, where? Why?"
"The German security service, BfV, cooperated with Aubrey and our people, later with the M15 investigation. They have files — and we have the man Paul can ask."
"Who?"
"A German—" He grinned like an adolescent. "Who owes Aubrey his innocence, his career, his respect… just about everything."
"Who?"
"Wolfgang Zimmerman."
"The man—?" Alison began.
"The man the KGB tried to frame as a double agent when the Berlin Treaty collapsed. He can repay Aubrey's efforts now. Time to call in the loan."
"But — didn't the previous Chancellor sack him?"
"He resigned."
Margaret was aware that Peter and Alison Shelley were oblivious to her. She envied them their easy communication, their intuitive, quick-minded cooperation. They represented an image that contrasted with her own past days, the rift that had yawned into a chasm between herself and Paul. She would take this chance now, go to Germany with him. Her father would have to wait — as he had waited beneath the ruins of that bombed house in Berlin for five years, decomposing…
She shook her head. Her companions did not notice as their talk bubbled and flew. She had to forget him. She had to help Paul, keep him alive. She could not bear the thought of his death, that new, utter, final loss; the loss of the man who had replaced her father-husband-lover-father Paul.
"Yes," Shelley was saying to his wife as she attended once more, "when the plot was exposed, the Chancellor wouldn't take him back on the payroll, but he appoi
nted him Special Adviser to the BfV. The man has a lot of power — he can get into the old files, rake them over for you… even arrange some protection for you."
"Can you do all this?" Margaret asked confusedly.
"Yes. I can talk to him. He'll do it. Ever since his own people informed him of the debt he owed Aubrey rather than themselves for being cleared, he's wanted the chance to clear the slate. He'll do it." Shelley's face darkened, then he added: "Who knows, Ally — we might find your Mr X this way. I think we may have just found another, hidden door into the fortress. A Judas-gate." He smiled directly, disarmingly at Margaret. "I should get packed for a trip — discreet departure, I think. You're probably being watched. The flat, certainly, will be under surveillance." He paused, then added: "Believe me, Mrs Massinger — you won't be helping the man who killed your father. Kenneth Aubrey couldn't have done that, not even for a personal motive. I swear he could not."
Margaret Massinger stood up abruptly. "Thank you, Mr Shelley. Thank you so much." From her eyes, it was evident she disbelieved Shelley's oath testifying to Aubrey's innnocence.
* * *
A burst of wailing pop music from an unlit upstairs window, further back down the alley; someone laughing, then a child's grizzling crying. The smell of food and dung and garbage. Even as the heavy tyres of the BTR-60 armoured personnel carrier squeaked as the vehicle trundled slowly into the square, Miandad was returned to his own childhood. All that was lacking from the familiarity of odours was the hot, foetid scent blowing off the mouths of the River Indus. Here, in Kabul, the night was colder, and the familiar smells changed to sharpness in his nostrils. In Karachi—