silence and lack of interruption to his meditations, even though there was an impatience about his flinty features that made him appear both older, and much younger.
'The weather's worsening, sir,' Ardenyev said finally. 'But of course you know that.' Ardenyev grinned as he brushed his hair back into place.
'It isn't that bad, Valery,' Dolohov replied with a touch of acid.
'Not yet. I'll have to study the reports, and the predictions.'
'You have doubts?'
'Not yet, sir. Not yet.'
'We' ve eighteen hours, Valery.'
'We have to transfer to the salvage vessel long before that, sir. By helicopter.'
Dolohov gripped his arm. 'Valery — it will be all right,' He was instructing Ardenyev, even the weather. Commanding them both. 'It will be. We'll have her.' He turned to Sergei, his aide, whose position within the small group of the rear-admiral's team seemed an obscure insubordination to Dolohov. 'Sergei, get me an up-to-the- minute weather report for our area of interest. And get me
'If it's possible, sir, it will be. I promise you that.'
The rear-admiral, observing the dialogue, conceived the idea that Ardenyev was not without calculation and guile. Dolohov responded by grabbing the younger man's arm, and pressing it with gratitude and what appeared to be affection. The rear-admiral recalled gossip concerning the way in which Ardenyev's career had been jealously promoted by the admiral. Some connection with Ardenyev's father, even grandfather, he had heard. For his own part, the rear-admiral had risen by loyalty to the Party, and distrusted this Soviet version of what the British called the 'old boy network'. And he distrusted young naval officers in civilian dress with easy manners and obvious self- confidence. Elitist adventurers.
The rear-admiral withdrew to the other side of the control room, to await the updated satellite surveillance information. A small hope that Dolohov was precipitate, even mistaken, he nourished in his stomach like the warmth of a drink.
The College of Education was a new one, built in the grounds of a Victorian magnate's former residence in the suburb of Edgbaston. The original house, having fallen into disrepair both before and after the compulsory purchase of the grounds, had disappeared. A tower block hall of residence stood on the site, bearing the same name as the grandiose house that one of Birmingham's Ozymandiases of trade or industry had erected to his own glorification. Two or three small, supposedly exclusive housing developments encroached on the perimeters of the college campus.
Hyde parked his car outside the tower block and sat for a moment considering his forthcoming interview with Tricia Quin's flatmate, Sara Morrison. Birmingham CID had talked to her the day the Quin girl appeared and disappeared, and had described her as unhelpful. Hyde had checked with the interviewing DC, who had amplified his observation by referring to the Morrison girl as a 'Lefty cow, anti-police, good background — isn't it usually the case', and wished Hyde the best of luck with her. A moment of futility as dispiriting as weariness overcame Hyde, then he got out of the car and slammed the door.
The sky was overcast, sombre with rain. The downpour that it threatened was postponed only by the strong, gusty wind that swept paper and dust and old leaves across the grass and the concrete walks around the hall of residence; hurried and chafed the few figures he could see. An overriding impression of concrete and glass and greyness, a modern factory complex. He hurried up the steps into the foyer of the tower block.
A porter, uniformed and officious, emerged from a cubicle, wiping his lips. Hyde showed him the CID warrant card which avoided explanations, and asked for Tricia Quin's flat. The porter, evidently unimpressed by the length of Hyde's hair and his casual dress, begrudgingly supplied the number, and the information that Sara Morrison was in the flat at that moment. He had seen her return from a lecture half-an-hour before. Hyde went up in the lift, unamused by the mock-intellectual graffiti that decorated its walls. He gathered, however, that punk rock had achieved the status both of an art form and a political weapon.
A long corridor, blank, veneered doors. The carpet was marked and already worn, the plaster on the walls evincing settlement cracks. He knocked on the door of 405.
The girl who opened the door wore her hair in tight curls. Her face was instantly suspicious rather than intrigued or helpful. A mouth that pulled down into a scowl almost naturally, it seemed. Sallow skin, no make-up, a creased blouse and uniform denims. Her feet were bare.
'Yes?' A middle-class, south-east accent, overlain with the drawl of the fashionable urban. 'What d' you want?'
'Sara Morrison?' She nodded. 'Could we have a word about Tricia Quin. I believe —' the warrant card was in his hand, his shoulder against the door as she tried to shut it. 'I believe she shares this flat with you.'
The girl resigned herself to not being able to close the door on him.
'Past tense,' she said, her eyes bright with calculation.
'Really?'
'You're Australian.'
Too right.' He grinned disarmingly, but the girl did not respond.
'In Birmingham?' she mocked. 'An Australian pig, in Birmingham?'
'Could be. It's not only politics that travel distances. May I come in?'
The girl shrugged and released the door. He opened it on an untidy, cramped room with two single beds against opposite walls. A window in the end wall overlooked the campus car-park. Clothes draped over a functional chair, books spread across a small, cheap desk. Posters on the wall — Mao, Lenin, Sex Pistols, a
'What do you want?' the girl demanded belligerently as he observed the door leading off, bathroom and toilet. 'She isn't here, you know.' Her accent wavered between the glassy superiority of her background and undoubted money, and the urban snarl she felt he deserved.
'I suppose not. Someone would have seen her. The porter for instance?'
'Beria, you mean?'
Hyde laughed. 'May I sit down?' The girl swept her clothes off the single chair, and squatted on the edge of her bed, feet drawn up beneath her, signalling indifference. Hyde sat down. The girl studied him.
'A trendy pig.'
'We try, darling — we try.'
'You fail — or should I have said, try and condemn?' She parted her lips in a mirthless grin, flashing her cleverness in that precise visual signal.
'A hit, I do confess. Can we talk about your erstwhile girlfriend?'
'What is there to say? She isn't here. End of story.'
'Not her story. You know she's been seen. Have you seen her?' The girl shook her head, her face betraying nothing. 'Sure?'
'I told your thick mate from CID that I hadn't seen her. Don't you believe me?'
'Not if I asked you for the right time. What would I get — the time in Moscow, or Peking?'
'Cuba,' Sara Morrison replied without expression.
Hyde looked up at the ennobled poster of Fidel Castro. 'He's a bit out of style, isn't he? Even Arthur Scargill's heard of him.'
The girl applauded ironically. 'Very funny — oh, too witty for words.'
'Blimey, thanks, darling,' he replied in his broadest accent. 'Now we' ve both tried on backgrounds we never came from.' He leaned forward in his chair. Unexpectedly, the girl flinched. He said, “This isn't France or South America, darling. Or Nazi Germany or Kampuchea or the Soviet Union. I could have you down the station, true, but your daddy would get you out by tea-time, I should think,' The girl's face wrinkled into contempt, then smoothed to indifference again, as if she had revealed too much of herself. 'Always too busy at the office, was he? Chased other women? Self-made man?'
'Fuck off.' The obscenity came almost primly from her lips.
