head.

'I'll open the door and chuck my gun out. Then Mr Quin will come out first.'

'Very well. Please do not delay.'

Quin was sitting upright now, and seemed to have sidled towards one corner of the room. His white, featureless face seemed to accuse Hyde in the room's dusk. Hyde bumped the edge of the table as he moved towards him.

'No —' Quin said feebly, putting his hands up in front of him, warding off Hyde like an evil presence.

'Sorry, mate. We don't have any choice. They're not going to do you any harm now, are they?' He reached down and pulled Quin roughly to his feet, embracing him as the man struggled halfheartedly. There was a mutuality of hatred and blame between them. Hyde sensed it in the tremble of Quin's arms.

He studied Quin's face. The man appeared as if he had been confined in some prison, with no hope of release or escape, for a long time. The prison had been his own mind, of his own making. No, Hyde corrected himself. The KGB had done that, created the stifling sense of the trap closing on him. And perhaps the DS, and even SIS and himself, should have been quicker, smarter, more thorough.

'We may have a chance if we go out now,' he said in a soothing, allaying voice. 'In here, we have none. You get hurt, Tricia gets hurt. I'm sorry, mate, but it's our only chance.'

'I don't want to —!' Quin almost wailed. 'They'll take me with them. It's not you they want, it's me!'

'I know that. For God's sake, I'm trying to help you!'

'I can't spend the rest of my life in Russia, heaven help me!'

'Better Red than dead,' Hyde offered, his shallow sympathy exhausted. Quin's fear and reluctance were now no more than irritants, slowing reaction, muddying thought. Quin would just have to accept his situation. Hyde no longer had time or energy to expend on his psychological condition.

'Now, as the patient said to the dentist as he grabbed his balls, “we're not going to hurt each other, are we?” Just wait until I give you the word, then walk slowly out of the door. Okay?' Quin slumped in resignation against Hyde. Hyde's mockery was expressed, incongruously, in a comforting tone of voice. 'A nice little plane ride across the Channel, then another ride to Moscow. You might even like it there. They'll like you, anyway.' He gripped Quin's arms as the man's body protested at his envisaged future. 'Nothing bad's going to happen. Just do as they say.'

He took Quin by one arm to the door, and opened it, keeping the scientist out of sight. He threw his gun in a high arc towards the knoll, away from his car so that it was easily visible.

'Excellent!' Petrunin confirmed. 'No other little toys?'

'I left my bloody death-ray in the car!'

'Very well. Come out, one at a time. Mr Quin to lead.'

'Right, off you go. Just walk straight towards the knoll, don't deviate, and don't run.'

Quin moaned. Immediately, the girl was at his side, holding his other arm. She shouted through the door.

'My father's not well. We're coming out together.' Without hesitation, she guided Quin through the open door. Hyde stood framed in the doorway for a moment, then he moved out into the dusk, his feet crunching on the gravel in front of the cottage. He raised his arms in the air, studying the knoll, waiting for the first head to appear. Unreality seized him, and he wanted to laugh. Captured by the KGB, in England! It was laughable, a joke for Queen Anne's Gate for years to come. Perhaps they'd use his urn on Aubrey's mantelpiece to knock their pipes out while they giggled at the story of his demise. As Aubrey would have said, It really was too bad—

Petrunin came down the slope of the grassy knoll towards them, a second man following him, carrying a rifle. Quin and Tricia stopped, awaiting him. A third man moved out of the shadow beneath a stand of firs towards Hyde, his rifle bearing on its target. Hyde felt weak, and sick. Petrunin stopped to examine Quin as carefully and as unemotionally as he might have done a consignment that had been delivered to his door. He ignored the girl. The third man had reached Hyde, studied him warily, and then moved in to touch-search him. When he had finished, he spoke to Petrunin.

'He's clean.'

'Good.' Petrunin approached Hyde. He was smiling with confidence and success. He was a bigger, taller man than the Australian, and this increased his confidence almost to a swagger. He paused before Hyde, hands on hips, appraising him.

'I know I don't look like much,' Hyde offered, 'but it's the public spending cuts. They're going in for smaller spies.'

'Aubrey's man, of course? Mm, I don't think you are the cheerful colonial idiot you pretend. Not that it matters. Thank you for leading us to Mr Quin.'

'Not my pleasure.'

'Quite. Very well,' he said, addressing his two companions, 'let us not waste time.' He looked at Hyde. 'Just a wound, I think,' he said with surgical precision and lack of concern. This incident is already too — significant. We mustn't create an international event from it.' He stepped aside. 'We don't want him going anywhere. Both legs, I think.'

'No —!' the girl shouted, but one of the riflemen knocked her down, swiping the barrel of his gun sideways into her ribs. Hyde remained quite still, tensing himself to accept the pain. He lowered his hands to his sides. The marksman stepped forward — the third man had moved away, Petrunin was still appraising him with an intent curiosity — and raised the gun to his shoulder. Hyde felt the tremble begin in his left leg, and could not control it. Knee, shin, thigh, calf, foot, ankle —

His imagination made the skin on his legs crawl. Hyde tried to concentrate on only one of his legs, letting awareness of the other one become numb. The blood rushed in his ears like a howl of protest.

Then the helicopter. Loud enough at once in the silence to be apparent even to Hyde. Petrunin glanced up at the cool evening sky, then his head whipped round as he located the source of the noise. Red lights beneath a shadowy belly, the racket of the rotors yelling down into the hollow in which the cottage lay.

Hyde's thoughts came out of shock, out of their mesmerised concentration on his still quivering left leg, and prompted him towards Quin and the girl, who were huddled together. The girl was on her feet but almost doubled over with pain and fright. Then a pain wracked him, and he fell to his knees, groaning as if he had been shot. His whole body was trembling, and he could not move, merely grip his stomach and retch drily again and again.

The noise of the helicopter beat down on him, and he heard a voice through a loud-hailer, yelling the same kind of authoritative noises over and over. The helicopter's down-draught distressed his hair, inflated his windcheater, but he could not straighten up. He waited for the sound of firing, but there was none.

Eventually, he rolled over on to his side. He saw scattering figures running, and Quin and his daughter clinging together. Then he heard shots. One of the marksmen — he saw with a fierce delight that it was the one who had been ordered to maim him — crumpled near Quin and Tricia. Other figures moved into, merged with, the trees, and were gone. The police helicopter settled heavily on to the grass below the knoll, comfortingly large, noisily business-like. It was over.

The girl was kneeling over him, one hand pressed against her ribs.

'All right?'

He nodded. 'Just scared stiff. You?'

'Bruised.'

'How's your father?'

'Mr Hyde?' A shadow loomed over them. A policeman in denims and a combat jacket.

'Yes.'

'Are you hurt?'

'Only my manly pride.' Hyde stretched and sat up. He rubbed his hand almost without thinking through the girl's hair. She did not seem to resent his touch.

'We're to get you on a plane at Manchester as soon as we can,' the police officer informed him.

'Right. What about my car?'

'One of my men will drive it down.'

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