by Craig Thomas
"Listen," Miandad said, his head cocked on one side. "I think the helicopters have returned."
Petrunin's eyes gleamed in the firelight as he raised his face to the darkening sky. Hyde listened, realising that Petrunin still expected, by some miracle, to be rescued. Mohammed Jan had appeared in the doorway, then turned and moved quickly away at the first sounds overhead. Hyde got to his feet. Most of the Pathans were alert now, standing or already moving back into the shadows at the corners of the room. Someone had kicked out the fire. Petrunin's smile was almost indistinguishable. Hyde drew the Makarov and nudged the Russian's side with its barrel. The noise of rotors was loud now, and Hyde leaned towards Petrunin's ear in order that the man would hear him.
"Back against the wall. Don't be stupid in your old age." Petrunin nodded and did as Hyde ordered. They pressed back into the shadows. Hyde thought he could distinguish a thin streamer of smoke ascending from the fire's scattered remains, but perhaps it was only the smell of the fire that remained. Snow began to lift and swirl from the floor and the corners and the rooms beyond. The rotor noise was deafening, very low and near.
"Look," he heard Miandad call out. Hyde raised his head.
The MiL gunship squatted above the roofless room. Involuntarily, Hyde's body began to shudder, as if the rotors were beating at the packed earth under his feet. The helicopter squatted on the air, toadlike, and they watched it like minnows from beneath clear water; a dark, ugly shape. The snow whirled up in the down-draught, coating their clothing, flicking against their skin and into their eyes. The room was foggy with the distressed, dusty snow. Hyde, looking up, realised that the helicopter was still descending. It was perhaps no more than fifty feet above the room in which they pressed against the chilly walls, and was slowly enlarging, as if the toad were inflating itself. The snow seemed sucked towards it through the open roof. Like a roof itself, the helicopter filled the space of evening sky.
Mohammed Jan appeared, sidling through the doorway, pressing against the wall. Then a white searchlight beam struck down into the room. Hyde froze. He heard Mohammed Jan shouting above the noise of the rotors, then Miandad crying out, too.
"Soldiers! The look-outs report troops moving up the hillside to encircle us!"
Hyde jabbed Petrunin with the barrel of the pistol. "No!" he warned. Petrunin seemed to shrug. The light spilled across the floor towards their feet. Pathans were already spilling out of the doorway, sidling along the walls. The snow funnel swirled and obscured, garishly lit by the searchlight. The sky had vanished above them. There was only the dark belly of the MiL around the halo of the light. "Move!" Hyde ordered. "Move, you bastard!" He pushed Petrunin along the wall.
Sky again. The light, like a waterfall, poured over the doorway and into the next room — then back. A Pathan fixed in its glare looked up, immobile and afraid. Hyde could discern the noise of other helicopters. There was shooting from outside, in the main courtyard of the fort, perhaps beyond the walls. Miandad moved ahead of the reluctant Petrunin. The light holding the Pathan spilled over them. The helicopter began to alter its angle of hover, and its belly light slipped away from them. Another light, presumably from a searchlight mounted beneath its nose, illuminated the room beyond.
"Now!" Miandad shouted. Hyde prodded Petrunin forward and they blundered past the transfixed Pathan into the cone of light from the nose of the MiL. Machine-gun bullets plucked and tore at the packed earth of the floor. Hyde heaved at Petrunin to make him run. They almost tripped over the Pathan's body. Bullets ricocheted from the stone walls.
They stumbled out into the courtyard which was washed by moving searchlights. Something dark tumbled from one wall of the fort. Machine-gun fire from two more MiL helicopters raked across the open space. Hyde saw fleeing figures, still forms.
Panic, noise, death. Three, four bodies — another Pathan falling, then the light fixed them, held them. Hyde, surprised, realised that Miandad was on his knees. He seemed to be coughing. A vertical cone of light, then a second, more glancing beam. It was as if the courtyard had become a stage, and the spotlights had focused upon the three tiny figures.
Petrunin was looking up into the light. His shadow was flung away across the courtyard by the noselight of the second helicopter, which shuffled closer through the dark air. There was more shooting. One half-ruined wall of the old fort bulged inwards, and Hyde glimpsed figures and lights moving up the suddenly exposed hillside towards them.
Petrunin was waving. Hyde was distracted by a wracking cough from Miandad. Snow whirled up around him, but the snow just in front of his hunched form was red in the hard light. A patch of bright crimson. Hyde moved to him. Petrunin was waving to the helicopter. Miandad looked up at him as he clutched his shoulders, tried to smile, coughed deeply, spraying the front of Hyde's sheepskin jacket with blood, dyeing his supporting hand. Then the Pakistani slumped against him, his eyes staring into the beam of the searchlight with dilated pupils. Hyde let the body fall gently to the ground. The helicopters hung over him. He could feel the beat of the rotors. He turned his head.
Petrunin was waving and shouting. The helicopter neared. Something blundered against Hyde, and fell. Mohammed Jan's green turban was blurred by its proximity, the man's dead face fell past him; a curved knife glittered in the snow. Hyde drew the Makarov, concealing it against his stomach.
Petrunin looked up into the open side door of the MiL, arms uplifted as if in prayer. He looked, too, into the muzzle of a Kalashnikov levelled at him. Hyde swung the Makarov, realising the entire situation subliminally, knowing without understanding. Petrunin stepped back a single pace. The marksman was bracing himself against the metal frame of the side door; the MiL was absolutely level, completely stationary. The Kalashnikov fired — Hyde saw the spit of flame — and then Hyde fired. The marksman fell through the open door, arms spread, rifle dropping ahead of him. His body thudded onto the snow.
Hyde ran. The MiL lurched away, bursting into flames. One of the surviving Pathans had used the rocket launcher, or else it was a lucky rifle shot. The MiL crashed into the wall of the fort, exploding. In the lurid light, its flames echoing on his retinae, Hyde turned over the body of Petrunin, realising that he had lost everything.
CHAPTER TEN:
The Journey to the Border
The block of luxury apartments was no more than a few years old and stood on the east bank of the Rhine, looking across the river towards the old city of Cologne. Even seated in a deep leather armchair, Massinger was still able to glimpse beyond the windows the tops of the cathedral's three spires, sooty and aspiring against the leaden sky. The whisky he had been offered on arrival had made his stomach rumble audibly, and his host had immediately offered to make sandwiches. The plate of neat, afternoon-tea triangles of bread and German sausage now lay between them on the long coffee-table.
Gerhardt Disch was ebullient, clever, alert. Recently retired, he had also become recently widowed. The pictures of his wife — mountains, ski-ing resorts, beaches, the Lower Manhattan skyline behind her — were rather more prominent on the walls and sideboards and cabinets than those of his children and grandchildren. The large, comfortable, warm room was overfilled with heavy furniture, much of it antique, an indication that he had once occupied more spacious premises. There was also an artificial, almost sparkling tidiness about the flat which denoted a fastidious man with too much time to fill. Only one or two concessions had been made to spontaneity, to the continuation of living. Massinger noticed particularly a very old sepiaed enlargement stuck at an angle into the frame of the ornate mirror above the gas fire. A young woman, presumably Disch's late wife, staring into the lens and into strong sunlight; squinting and smiling. Massinger suspected that Disch had found the old photograph when packing or unpacking during his recent move. What was it — first holiday together, honeymoon, just a day trip? Her dress was post-war. Disch himself was only a little over sixty; Massinger guessed his wife had been perhaps a few years younger.
He took one of the
tiny sandwiches and bit into it, nodding his compliments. Disch seemed inordinately pleased with the effect of his cuisine upon his guest.
"I believe that Herr Zimmermann has already spoken to you?" Massinger said when he had finished the sandwich.
Disch nodded. "That is correct." His English was good, his accent more pronounced than that of Zimmermann. His voice rumbled. "But only for a moment — and to ask if I would help you. I know Wolf Zimmermann for some years now… I was attached to the Chancellery Security Section, you understand?" Massinger nodded. "Of course, I am pleased if I am able to help." He shook his head lugubriously. "It is a sad thing, what they say of Mr Aubrey — my apologies, Sir Kenneth Aubrey — and, of course, it is ridiculous."
Massinger felt his heart pluck in his chest, as if uplifted by some great sense of relief. Doubt, however, immediately returned.
"Please go on," he said. "I understand you worked with Kenneth in Berlin, after the end of the war."
"Ah — that is what interests you?" Disch's eyes were bright with enquiry. Massinger felt himself studied, weighed. Retirement and bereavement had not dulled the man's professional instincts or abilities. "You are in some doubt about the matter?" Disch asked sharply. "I was not told this."
"I'm sorry, but I thought—" Massinger began. Disch was studying him with a bright, narrow suspiciousness in his eyes. The German raised his hand. "What did Herr Zimmermann say to you?" Massinger persisted.
"Only that you wished to speak to me. He explained who you were, of course. And that you were trying to help your friend, Sir Kenneth Aubrey."
Massinger felt hot with embarrassment; shame, too. Hesitantly, he said, "I am not here under false pretences, Herr Disch." Even to himself, it sounded priggish. He was surprised at the evident loyalty towards Aubrey evinced by the German. It was almost forty years old, and still it had not atrophied. With a cynical amusement, Massinger realised it was the same kind of loyalty that had made him visit Aubrey the morning after the fateful news bulletin.
"I wonder?" Disch said. He brushed his hand over his remaining strands of grey hair. His face was cherubic in complexion and shape, and now it appeared almost froglike with suppressed anger. "Yes, Herr Massinger, I wonder about your motives."
Massinger resisted an explanation, as if he felt the use of Margaret's name and situation would be an evasion. Yet he was not prepared to admit that it was his doubts that must be satisfied. His disloyalty…
"Please tell me about Berlin," he pleaded at last.
Disch continued to study him, then said carefully: "And this will help? It will help Sir Kenneth?" Massinger nodded, his features expressionless. "What will happen to him?" Disch asked then.
Massinger shrugged. "I don't know. With luck — with a great deal of luck, his name perhaps can be cleared. I don't know what will happen then."
"I see." Disch was like a man guarding a precious hoard, suspecting every caller of being a potential thief. He rubbed his round chin and pressed his jowls into froglike enlargements against his collar, as if he had bent his head to watch his visitor over half-glasses. "I see," he repeated softly.
Massinger quelled his irritation and his tension. He received a moment of insight. Behind the bonhomie and the good manners lay the cleverness and the professional training. And those elements of Disch's character were troubled. Massinger's questions posed some kind of threat. There was a secret, then. There was a suspicion hidden in Disch's mind. Of Aubrey…?
Yes. Of Aubrey. Disch had been disloyal in his own way, perhaps only since Zimmermann had spoken to him. Zimmermann had appeared confident, but Massinger had no idea as to Zimmermann's sense of morality. The man was in debt to Aubrey, and wished to repay. He had, perhaps, made allowances, given no weight to what Aubrey might have done in Berlin. But Disch had. Disch knew or suspected something to Aubrey's detriment.
"Please tell me," he prompted.
Disch shrugged expansively, and attempted a smile. "Very well," he said with something like relief. "But Sir Kenneth, I am certain, is innocent of these charges against him — he is not a Russian agent…" He hurried on: "I worked with him again in '74, when he was in Bonn. What the press here and in your country have suggested is nonsense!"
"But, about Berlin?"
Disch nodded, and swallowed. He was obviously burdened.
Massinger should have seen it earlier, played upon it. There was a confessional air about Disch, suddenly.
"Yes, yes," he said almost breathlessly.
"Kenneth was captured in East Berlin and held for some days — then he escaped."
"I believe that he did escape," Disch protested, angry and yet somehow relieved that he was under interrogation. "All other suggestions are nonsense."
"Why did he go to East Berlin? Wasn't it dangerous?" It was difficult to think of Aubrey as a young man, a field agent. It had been his job — a stupid question. "I have been told," he added, "that one of his networks was threatened?"
Disch nodded. "Yes," he said heavily, "we agreed to that."
"Agreed? It wasn't the truth, then?"
Disch shook his head vigorously. "I did not say that—"
"Who agreed?"
"Sir Kenneth — and the others — four of us."
The voice was laden with guilt. Massinger was appalled. What kind of conspiracy was this—?
"Why was it necessary to agree?"
"I do not mean — agree … I mean we — oh, how do you say, we were told by Sir Kenneth that this is why he had to go over… told to say that…" His voice tailed off. There had been turmoil, then. For how long? Forty years, or just since Zimmermann had spoken to Disch?
"Why?"
"For security reasons. It was a cover story — " Disch blurted. "There is nothing unusual in that. It was our cover story from the beginning."
"But why? Why did he go?"
Disch shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The leather squeaked in the tense, warm silence.
"Very well. I persist in believing—" Massinger waved the protestation aside gently. "Yes. The cover story, to protect the real reason for the operation, was that Sir Kenneth suspected a double agent in one of his networks in the Russian Sector…? "Massinger nodded. "You know we also searched for Nazis—?" Disch asked with apparent inconsequentiality.
"Yes."
"That was his real reason."
"But I don't understand, Herr Disch. Why did he need a cover story for such a mission? Everyone was looking for Nazis then."
"I agree. Also many Germans were involved in the hunt — like myself."
"Yes," Massinger admitted awkwardly.
Disch smiled. "You need not worry. My family was killed by the Russians during the bombardment of the city. All of them." He shook his head. "I was twenty-one, and starving. I burned my uniform, and went into hiding. I did not surrender to the Allies until the city had been divided into its four sectors. I was not a Nazi, nor a Communist — though my father was sympathetic until he saw what the Russians were doing to his country and his city. Sir Kenneth found me interned — he questioned me in case I was a Russian plant… then, because I had existed in the Russian Sector for a year, and I knew people, and places, he took me to work for him. He trained me well. Mine was the story of many people — not at all unusual."
"I see. Go on, please."
"The cover story — yes, it was necessary because we had been working — for a long time working — to discover how so many Nazis were still able to escape from Berlin, even from the Russian Zone of my country. Sir Kenneth believed that they received help from inside the Control Commission itself…"
Disch's voice tailed off. His face was red with embarrassment, guilt, suspicion. He wished to say no more.
"Who?" Massinger demanded in a thick voice.
Disch shook his head. "We did not know. But then Sir Kenneth had a message from one of our people in the Russian Sector — some news of the source of the assistance to escaping Nazis inside the Control Commission. The contact could not come over — Sir K
enneth made his arrangements immediately to enter the Russian Sector." Disch shook his head. "He told us when he returned that he had learned nothing. The signal had been no more than a clever trap for him."
Massinger said with disappointment, "Then there was nothing? You don't know anything?" Disch merely shrugged. Then he leaned forward and selected one of the tiny sandwiches. "But — what did Kenneth suspect before he went over?"
"That the man was British, and highly-placed," Disch said hurriedly, mumbling slightly through the bread and sausage in his mouth, using the sandwich as if it would help conceal the truth from Massinger.
Massinger opened his mouth to speak as the implications of Disch's statement struck him. Without the German's evasiveness and Massinger's certainty that the man had his own suspicions, the statement would have meant little or nothing to him.
"British?" he said at last.
Disch's eyes were little more than slits. He nodded. "He was highly-placed. But, Sir Kenneth told us he learned nothing in the Russian Sector, that it was only a trap for him—!"
"You don't believe that, Herr Disch—"
"I am certain that there is no connection—"
"But you do believe it! You think this highly-placed Nazi sympathiser was Castleford and that Aubrey murdered him on his return from the Russian Sector."
"No—!" Disch protested weakly.
"Oh my God, man — you do believe it! Ever since you spoke to Zimmermann, you've been thinking about it." Disch blanched, then nodded. "You do believe it, don't you? That Aubrey killed Castleford because he was helping Nazis to escape? Don't you?"
The central heating plopped in the silence. The room seemed hot. The cathedral spires rose against the grey sky, a sky as bleak and featureless as the landscape of Massinger's imagination.