'Poor Castleford. I'm quite sure he deserved to die — however, we pay for our sins, Kenneth. At least, you will.'
Babbington smirked, and opened the door quickly. He went out, but the door did not close. Instead, Wilkes appeared, carrying a tray. Aubrey smelt tempting bacon, toast, marmalade, almost as if his sense of smell was artificially heightened. He glared at Wilkes.
'Take that away and get out!' he cried. Wilkes grinned, shrugged, and left the room, hooking the door shut with his foot. Someone else must have locked it, for Aubrey heard the key turn almost at once.
He listened to the retreating footsteps, then to other noises. A distant car buzzed like an insect. A dog barked. He remained sitting on the bed, head slumped on his chest, utterly weary. He was too drained by defeat to feel anger, or resentment at Babbington for his present captivity and his brief and violent future. Nor was there any professional regret regarding the fate of British Intelligence headed and controlled by Moscow's man.
The first face that came at him out of the darkness behind his closed eyelids was that of Castleford, as he knew it would be. The man was smiling in his habitually, infernally superior way. Aubrey shuddered at what he had come to, absorbed with self while Babbington trampled upon his service and his country. Yet he could not consider that. There was only Castleford's face from forty years ago, grinning at the prospect of his rival's demise.
Hyde had watched the brown Skoda for almost an hour. It was parked in the Zidovska, almost at the Danube end of the street, loomed over by the Gothic tower of St Martin's Cathedral. Through the steamed-up window of the small, cramped bar, he had an uninterrupted view of both sides of the street and of the cathedral square. Snow fell desultorily into the Bratislava street. People trudged through rutted brown slush on the pavements. Passing cars splashed the dirty flank of the Skoda with grey-brown, half-melted snow.
He had parked the Volkswagen, skis hidden beneath the car, in an underground car-park. It would reside there, dirty and anonymous, until he returned from Prague. It was his escape route. He would simply be returning from his ski-ing trip when he left Czechoslovakia.
In a strange, almost hallucinatory way, he was certain that Kenneth Aubrey was slouched, legs wrapped in a tartan blanket, in the rear seat of the Skoda, waiting for him to climb into the driving seat. The clarity and insistence of his imagination unsettled Hyde. The pressures of his task were mounting. He was unable to close his mind to the background, to the necessity of a successful outcome. Aubrey had assumed an almost physical presence, and he was nervous of crossing the street to the Skoda. He knew by now that it was not being watched, that the STB were not waiting for him. Yet he clung to the safety of the fuggy, murmurous bar.
If I stay here, if I don't get into the car… don't get into the car…
He was was warm, hunched into the padded anorak, his chin still half-hidden by his scarf. The dark Czech beer was numbing. The brown Skoda, anonymous and drab, was like a parcel which might — did — contain a bomb.
Don't get into the car…
Aubrey was there. It was as if the old man might open the passenger door and beckon him at any moment. The detonator. The wires and explosives were the travel visas, the false identity papers, car licence and the other documents that waited beneath the driver's seat. And the pistol taped to the underside of the chassis. He would have to stop on the outskirts of the city and untape the gun — safer. With the gun in the glove compartment — much safer, just in case—
The dark beer slopped near the rim of the glass. He gingerly put it down on the shelf beneath the window. He studied his hands. They were quivering. He glanced helplessly at his gloves beside the beer glass, as if they might assist him. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his anorak.
He knew the car was clean. No tail, no watchers. Whatever they had gleaned from his flat, and from anything Shelley had left lying around, they had no idea where, or why. He was ahead of them — they simply would not think of his scenario—!
Don't—
Go, he told himself. Go now.
He glanced around the bar. Cigarette smoke, grey as the sky beyond the fuggy windows. Pale, lined faces. Laughter and sombre, striking loneliness. The barmaid looked tired — washed-out fair hair and deep stains beneath her eyes. For yourself, he told his clenched hands, still pocketed. Told his legs, which seemed watery and a long way below his mind. For yourself.
Or run forever.
He did not wish to dramatise, would have despised it in others; in himself had he thought or uttered the words in other circumstances. But it was true. Nowhere would be safe, ever.
Unless—
He snatched up his gloves, sending an ashtray spinning with a clatter to the floor. It startled him into a hasty exit from the bar almost before people glanced up at the noise. He saw that the pipe-smoking dominoes players near the door remained oblivious to him, then he was in the street, the door creaking shut behind him, his feet suddenly betrayed into uncertainty by the pavement's slush. He stepped warily to the kerb. A bulky, almost shapeless woman in an old check coat bumped into him, then moved on without glancing at him. Hyde shivered. He glanced up and down the Zidovska, judging the traffic. The cathedral's black steeple against the heavy, smoky grey sky intruded itself behind the overhead traffic lights as they changed from red to green.
He hurried to the car. The back seat was empty. He urged his hand to the driver's door handle, opened the door, bent his head and shoulders, aware of the space between his shoulder-blades, almost anticipating the heavy descent of someone's hand.
The home-knitted cardigan, reindeer on the pockets. As Shelley had promised. He'd seen it first, on the front passenger seat, an hour ago; identifying the car. Now—?
The
Hyde grinned. Aubrey's spectre was banished from the car. He felt warmer now, safer. The memory signalled a returning self-awareness. He was the priority, his life was at stake. On those terms, he could cope.
He climbed into the driving seat, felt underneath it for the wrapped package of papers — yes. Was aware of the gun taped beneath the car, protected by polythene from the slush. He knew it would be there, just as he knew Godwin would be waiting at a bus stop on the outskirts of Prague.
He had two hundred and fifty miles to cover. He started the engine.
He described himself as the Deputy Rezident, temporarily fulfilling the office of the dead Bayev, shot while being interrogated by Hyde and Massinger. Yet to Babbington he had about him something akin to prison pallor, the sense of having newly emerged from Moscow Centre. He was evidently Kapustin's man, and Babbington despised himself as he hastened to reassure, moved and spoke briskly from bluff rather than authority. The young man's eyes were chilly, intent, clever, and he said very little, forcing Babbington to fill the cold silences with ever more exaggerated expressions of confidence.
The gardens of the Belvedere — had this man, on Kapustin's orders, deliberately chosen the meeting place? Aubrey had been arrested here. Was this a reminder of that and a call to duty? Or a demand for payment, for results? The paths were slippery, glazed with the hard frost. The hedges were stiff and thick with rime and the lawns — whenever they emerged from one of the hedge-lined avenues — smooth white carpets. The statuary seemed lighter than stone against the grey sky.
The young man, whose name was Voronin, kept pace with Babbington, while Wilkes and the young man's principal bodyguard walked a few paces behind them. Voronin looked curiously old-fashioned in his brown trilby and heavy dark overcoat; but not innocuous. Babbington was aware of the dampness of his scarf as it lay upon his chin and throat. His smoky breath had condensed like cold perspiration. Other watchers moved to the right and left of them, also ahead and behind them. Babbington, however, felt the open nakedness of the Belvedere gardens. Was he intended to? Anyone might see him here… Yet the young man had insisted on this outdoor meeting.
'It still does not answer the question of the woman, and of Hyde,' Voronin pointed out, without rancour or impatience. The voice of a not unkindly pedagogue. Babbington heard Kapustin's tones, even those of Nikitin,
