by Craig Thomas
The lights glared as the BMW hit the final, slush-filled rut in the track and dirty, half-frozen water splashed the windscreen. Then, out of the lights and the action of the wipers, knowledge emerged.
From what Babbington had said, his scheme had the attractions of simplicity and effectiveness. Everyone would see the KGB recapture their supposed agent. The Massingers would go with him to Moscow…
A fault there—
Aubrey swallowed drily. No fault, only ruthlessness. Whoever was detailed to guard them at the Vienna Station safe house when they were handed over was to die. The Massingers would not be accounted for. The dead bodies would be irrefutable proof that the KGB took back their own. As for the Massingers, there were no witnesses to the fact that they had ever been in Aubrey's company.
And even if someone were to survive, no doubt Babbington's explanation to Parrish as Head of Station — and to Guest and anyone and everyone else — would be that the KGB took away the Massingers to silence them. Innocents — victims of circumstance.
It did not even have to be tidy, loose ends could remain. No one would regard them as significant once the bodies were counted and Aubrey had vanished in company with his friends from the KGB—!
He clenched his hands into useless fists and swallowed the hard lump of bilious anger with difficulty, as he might have done a lodged chicken-bone.
He closed his eyes. They were out of the village now, and the oncoming evening headlights hurt his eyes. An image of Elsenreith smiled in the flaring darkness, as if his face were outlined by the explosions of an artillery barrage. Clara appeared more faintly behind him, her face thin, undernourished waif-like, as he had first seen her. And, because of Clara — love? Yes, perhaps. Certainly regard, friendship unlike with any other woman…
Because Clara, Castleford.
He glimpsed the flicker of constant oncoming lights through his pressed shut lids. They had turned onto the autobahn. He opened his eyes, confirming his guess. Glimpsed then the two silhouetted heads in the leading car, leaning together like dummies or the heads of two dead bodies—
He shrugged, almost expecting their heads to loll away from one another in death and disappear from the rear window of the Mercedes. He closed his eyes once more.
Elsenreith, Clara, Castleford.
He had never felt as defeated, as alone and without hope while in East Berlin — the Russian Zone as it was then called, he pedantically announced to himself. The Russian Zone. Not as helpless as now, not as bereft of expectation. Hopeless—
His people had got him out — dragging him from the back of the car after they'd crashed a small truck into it as he was being transferred from one prison to another — moving up the ladder of interrogation and torture…
He had not expected them to rescue him, but even so he had hoped. Now, he did not, could not.
Castleford's face. His whining, pleading, ashamed face— then his slow-cunning, wary, treacherous, dangerous face. Then his dead face, lying in a spreading pool of blood on the floor of his apartment.
His face in the bombed cellar — no, first his face lolling slackly and abruptly out of the back seat of the car — then his face in the weak torchlight in the bombed-out, ruined cellar as Aubrey obscured it with shovelfuls of rubble. Aubrey remembered the effort, the strain, of levering the fragment of wall so that it fell into the hole of the cellar, burying Castleford's stiff, white, staring face.
They were traveling north-east through the Landstrasse district of Vienna, towards the Danube. Clara had been in Vienna, they had met once more, he'd helped establish her there in business and—
Memory disallowed success. Instead, he heard Castleford's broken voice, confessing. Voicing the trap that had closed about him when one of the bright, scintillating, glamorous young men, now with broken fingernails and a starved look about him, had pleaded to be saved from the authorities. Then another of the group Castleford had know at Cliveden and other great houses during the thirties had come, and then a third
And then Elsenreith had come and announced the conditions of Castleford's new employment. And he had done the work because there was no alternative; helping war criminals escape, evade justice and revenge.
The trap had closed on Aubrey now just as certainly as it had shut upon Castleford.
The Massingers — he glimpsed their shadowy heads once more as the cars crossed the river by the Praterbrücke — had achieved their calm, all passion spent, and for that, too, he envied them. It would be better to lie down and wait quietly for the inevitable — would be better…
In a matter of hours, a few hours at most, they would come for him. Killing those left, duped, to guard them at the safe house. Or leaving one survivor, like Ishmael, to tell the tale. And he and the Massingers would board the flight to Moscow before dawn.
The river gleamed with lights and then the BMW left the bridge and turned north. He began to watch the passing buildings, the oncoming lights. Numbing his mind with fleeting sensations.
* * *
In the darkness, Hyde held the luminous dial of his watch close to his face; it clouded with his breath. He wiped the glass to read the passage of time. Suk, the supervising cleaner, had been gone too long — far too long. The sour smell of drying mops, of half-closed old polish tins, of dust and cold, was the room's only reality.
The odour of detergent was strong and acrid. His stomach was watery. He had been waiting too long for a report from Suk, waiting too long to be taken down to the lower levels of the building… the penetration operation was on the point of being aborted…
However often he tried to dismiss that idea, it returned insidiously, always with greater strength. He was nothing more than a child hiding in an old dark house, playing sardines. But the game was long over, no one had come to find him and the darkness was growing more and more intense—
He shook his head, almost vehemently, clearing it. Around him lay the now unseen shipwreck of a hardware shop. Old vacuum cleaners, mops, brooms, buckets, tea-chests, shelving. The pistol lay near his thigh as he sat with his back against the wall.
He looked again at his watch. Time was running away. Suk had been gone three-quarters of an hour now on his scouting job… it should have been fifteen minutes maximum before he came back to report. The engineer would have been in the Hradcany computer room for more than half an hour by now, perhaps more than an hour… Where was Suk?
The corridor outside was silent, empty.
Suk had buggered it up, got himself suspected, caught… even chickened out. Delaying until it was too late, anyway.
It isn't going to happen, he heard his mind announce with solemn clarity. It isn't going to work.
It isn't going to work — and you're trapped…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
In the Labyrinth
Light switched on—
Hyde, startled into movement, slid upright against the wall, the gun coming up immediately, the barrel quivering slightly from reaction until he stilled it, aiming it at—
— at Suk's stomach. Suk's stomach—!
His legs felt weak. Suk's face mirrored his own shock and relief.
"For Christ's sake—!" Hyde hissed venomously. "Where the fucking hell have you been?"
"Come, come quickly," Suk urged, pressing his thin, stooping form against the door he had closed furtively behind him. "Please—"
"It's over an hour since you — Christ, man, where were you?"
"You must come at once, please, you must come now—!" the supervising cleaner pleaded.
Hyde moved on stiff legs.
"Why? What's gone wrong?"
Suk shook his head vehemently. "No, nothing is wrong… I—"
"What?"
"It — it was difficult for me to approach, to know… eventually, I–I did not tell you this, but when I came last, the engineer…"
"Yes?"
"He had already arrived — I did not know how long before — I had to find out, I could not come sooner—"
"
And?"
Suk seemed to stoop to Hyde's height, as if to diminish himself as a target for blame or blows. He was sweating. Hyde smelt him, too, intruding upon the smells that had filled his nostrils for the past hours.
"Only ten minutes before — I swear it, only ten—!" Suk cowered.
Hyde nodded, then looked at his watch.
"One hour and twenty — OK, take me down." He stared at Suk, but a threat seemed superfluous, even wrong. And his own tension threatened to interfere with his articulation, and he merely added: "Come on, Suk — take me down."
Hyde climbed into the white lab coat Suk had provided, clipping the ID card with his name, photograph and details enclosed in clear plastic, to the breast pocket. He pocketed the pistol, and tested the weight of his briefcase filled with files and forms in his left hand. Then his right hand fiddled for the other documents in his pocket. The cover seemed as thin and unprotective as the white coat. Joke scientist — did they really expect him in that guise? Godwin nodded, smiling sardonically in his mind. Suk opened the door with exaggerated caution, almost comically. Then slipped through the crack into the corridor. Hyde followed.
Suk's whisper enticed him like the tune of a snake-charmer along the corridors, down the flights of stairs to the cellars of the Chancellery building where the KGB had installed their high-security computer room, protected by the rock of the high Hradcany ridge.
Now, the man wanted to talk, to babble away tension, letting it leak out in words.
"The engineer was delayed by a job outside Prague — a military installation, I think… complained much, but I did not think he was coming, sorry, but I missed him… I have glimpsed the room only once since his arrival… it seems he is still occupied…"
Hyde wanted to order him to keep quiet, but was afraid of a crack in his voice. Suk's words were like a strong light, making the weave of the operation transparent and fragile. Shut up, man, shut up—
Then, the last flight of steps. The shoulder of a uniformed guard at the bottom, jutting beyond a turn in the corridor. Hyde dodged back out of sight, feeling Suk's shallow, quick breathing on his neck and cheek. He shivered, turning to face the supervising cleaner.
Then looked at his watch.
"He was delayed?" Suk nodded. Already, the beads of perspiration on his pale forehead were drying. He had completed his role. In a moment, he would be able to retreat from this location, this tension. Count the money—
"Then the fault on the computer should have disappeared by now," Hyde said. He remembered turning the hands and setting the clock in the darkness of the metro tunnel.
He saw the shoulder of the guard, the first obstacle of his course. Even if he passed him, there would be others; beyond them, he might only find that the engineer had already left, the fault had vanished, his presence unnecessary and immediately suspicious. The guard's shoulder twitched like an organ of sense detecting something amiss. Hyde gripped the material of Suk's suit above the breastbone.
"I'm walking into a trap because you couldn't do your fucking job properly!" he hissed, leaning his lips to the man's ear. He heard Suk's ragged breathing, loud as an alarm signal, and immediately released the thin, coarse material of the jacket. Suk was vigorously shaking his head, and sweating once more.
"No…"he protested.
"Get lost."
He shrugged Suk aside. The man backed away like some cowed, theatrical servant, then muttered in a whisper: "I — will wait…"
Way out, exit, his mind warned, and he placated Suk with a nod. Then dismissed him from his thoughts. He heard the hesitant footsteps vaguely; something that did not concern him.
Down the green wall to the next basement level, parallel with the handrail of the stairs, was painted a red stripe. It signified an area of maximum security. They had passed stripes along every wall, down every set of steps. They had gone from green to yellow to blue and now to red. Indications of growing security, of greater and greater restrictions to access. Increased warnings to Hyde of his danger, of the distance back from the computer room to the castle above.
Red stripe. Absolutely no unauthorised personnel. Strictly no admittance without the correct papers and identification. He looked again at the guard's shoulder. The red stripe down the wall was at the level of the marksman's badge on his upper sleeve. The tip of his rifle barrel jutted beyond his shoulder, as if searching for him; waiting.
Twelve steps — then he had only the ID clipped to his breast pocket and the other papers with which to confront this first guard. And, if he passed him, he would be between the rifle-tip he could see and the Kalashnikov of the next guard further along the corridor. In a crossfire if they so much as suspected…
Twelve steps.
He took the first step, body steady, temperature endurable, legs OK, breathing controlled.
His left foot fumbled at the third step. Already, the guard's shoulder-flashes and arm-badges were more significant, larger in his vision. It was as if he were on the point of tripping, of stumbling the short distance to a collision with the uniform. He hesitated, felt the perspiration beneath his shirt, then almost at once he was two-thirds of the way down the striped wall towards the guard's shoulder. He felt light-headed, as if with fresh, chill air. Better. Under control. Better.
His foot touched the bottom step and the guard, startled, turned to him. Hyde stared into the young, freckled, open features, knowing that if anything went wrong, if he were suspected or even exposed, he would have to kill this guard in order to get out. The narrow corridor and the flight of stairs were the only exit he knew from the cellars of the Chancellery.
Marksman's flashes, KGB stripe. "Good evening, Comrade," Hyde said casually, presenting his breast-pocket ID for inspection, airily waving his other documents in his right hand, as if beginning the theatrical hypnosis of the young guard.
He waited on the edge of the precipitous moment. The guard took his papers, read them carefully, compared face with picture with face with picture clipped on his pocket…
And nodded. Hyde's hand — fingers, at least — had touched the small of his back where the pistol was now concealed in his waistband. The guard looked down, incongruously, at the faded denims and the three-striped training shoes he was wearing. And seemed more than ever convinced. Hyde's right hand regained his side, then touched the square briefcase, flicking the catch. The guard peered. His ear was close to Hyde's face, as if expecting a whispered confession. His fingers — bitten nails, but clean — riffled the folded sheets of continuous paper, the pamphlets and reference books, the ring-bound notebooks, the manuals.
"Thank you, Comrade," the guard announced at last with a slight, familiar deference. Members of the same side, the same club. Russians in Czechoslovakia — KGB Russians. Godwin had said the papers would stand up to inspection. They had.
Hyde said, "I hope this doesn't take all night."
"I'm off at twelve," the guard replied with complacency and a grin.
"Lucky sod. I won't be out before then—" He almost wanted to cross his fingers as he said that.
He ambled with studied indifference down the red-striped corridor towards the guard at the end of it, a man relaxed by his observation of the first guard's inspection of his papers. Already, there was the smell of ozone and air-conditioning. There were staircases running down further into the cellar complex. The corridor ended, opening out into a glass-panelled area with chairs and a vending machine. An incongruous rubber plant and magazines on a glass-topped table. The reception area of a new company out to impress visitors. Beyond more glass panelling, which reached to the high ceiling, lay the computer rooms. Men in white coats and foot-coverings, No Smoking signs, security warnings — the guard.
A flick of the papers, a glance at the breast-pocket ID, and the guard stood aside from the door. Hyde felt breath and heartbeat hesitate, even though he hardly paused in his stride as he pushed the first door open and passed through. Ten fifty-three, he saw, glancing at his watch as he pushed open the second door
then let it close behind him. Constant temperature, high level of noise — chatter rather than hum of the machinery. Perhaps three people mincing and sliding between the metal cabinets — one carrying a clear plastic disc pack, loading it onto one of the computers. The shift manager and an operator were watching the job stream unfold on a console. The night shift.
High ceiling, a long room retreating beneath bright white lighting. Rows of VDUs and terminals. Controlled air came up near his legs through one of the hundred grilles set in the suspended floor. Thick bouquets of cable and wiring emerged from the floor directly into the boxes which stood like ranks of filing cabinets, most of them orange and bearing the legend ICL. Just as Godwin had said. British computers.
"Where's the post office engineer, Comrade?" he called out. A bearded young man looked up from a sheaf of print-outs, pencil held daggerlike in his teeth. He merely nodded in acknowledgement of what he guessed to be Hyde's role and business and waved an arm vaguely. Hyde followed the direction, moving more quickly now. If the fault had disappeared because the short-life battery had run down, if the engineer had called the Soviet embassy and requested a system test and the genuine tester was on his way, if, if, if—
Someone glanced at him without interest, assuming his business there. The noise of the room was almost unnerving. The temperature was dry, dead like the air. Carpet, wiring, air-ducts and grilles, glass walls, racks of tapes and discs, printers, VDUs. Hyde moved through an alien, mechanical landscape towards the highest security area. He saw guards, relaxed though in uniform, armed only with holstered pistols, an officer, and one man in overalls, incongruous as a plumber might have been in those aseptic surroundings.
A guard moved, glanced at his ID, and nodded. "Still giving trouble?" Hyde asked the post office engineer's back as he bent over an oscilloscope-like sophometric measuring set, toolbox open beside his swivel-chair. The man waved him to silence. Hyde shrugged, someone grinned and indicated the importance of the telephone call in which the engineer was engaged.