could not tell. Perhaps even hope. She had made a final move in the game. Left herself open to checkmate. Her hands flitted at her bruised jaw, at her quivering lips. She'd lost everything, everything—
It had been ridiculous to assume she could alter events. Ridiculous from the first. All that mattered, really mattered, had been Paul's life. And he was alive. Babbington had given him back. She looked up as Babbington addressed her.
'Now, you must see your husband, Margaret.' He rubbed his hands lightly together, dusting them. 'I'm sorry for — well, that's in the past. I had to trick you, even hit you, to save time. I do not have that much to spare. However—' He was buoyant with triumph now, and his cold munificence chilled her more than the streak of sadism and vengeful rage he had earlier shown. ' — perhaps now there is a little more time…' He took her arm and helped her from the chair. She felt unreal, a sacklike object being moved. 'A pity you know nothing of Hyde's exact whereabouts or his motives — , but I believe you don't know. He's clever enough not to have trusted you.' Babbington smiled. They were at the door. She flinched as if anticipating that the dog lurked beyond it. Babbington opened the door. The corridor was empty. 'Come,' he said. 'I'll take you to Paul.'
She clung to that statement, blotting out the scene that preceded it. The voice had been almost warm, the hand that held her arm supported rather than imprisoned her. She moved into the fragile fiction with each step on the polished floorboards. She felt her body lean against Babbington for support.
She bit her tongue, as if she had voiced the words aloud. Her father's face, Aubrey's face, Babbington's face — twisted in cruel satisfaction — Paul's face…
Grainy picture. The skull separated from its skeleton by a workman's spade. The skull blown open by Aubrey's accidental bullet. She shuddered and pulled away from Babbington.
'No—' she murmured.
'But here we are,' Babbington announced with mocking breeziness. There was someone else there, an armed guard. 'This is Paul's room — open the door.' The guard turned a key and threw the door ajar. 'A pleasant reunion, Margaret, my dear,' Babbington said and thrust her forward. The door closed loudly behind her.
Massinger looked up distractedly, as if a stranger had burst in upon some scene of ordinary domesticity. The paperback remained in his hand. The small transistor radio they had provided continued to play. It wasn't food, not the right time for supper, or for the one large Scotch they served him late in the evening.
What, then—?
He felt the shock of recognition. Beneath it, a further shock of his imprisonment was made real to him again. He saw the bruises in the same moment that he observed the open mouth and wild eyes.
Margaret stood by the door, trembling. Pain stabbed in his thigh and hip as he tried to move his injured leg and climb awkwardly from the low bed. He dropped the novel he was reading and heaved himself to his feet, tottering erect.
She moved towards him then. The Handel on the radio changed inappropriately from andante to allegro. Sliding into something that might have been gay. He was disconcerted. She was murmuring, one word over and over again, even as he pressed her against him and felt her whole frame shaking.
'Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…'
He did not understand the need for apology—
And then did, as he brushed her hair, as his hand moved gently to her cheek and she winced at the thought of further inflicted pain. She, too, was a prisoner. She had — yes, she had come to find him. Reckless, narrow- minded,
He knew, with a sick certainty, that she had told Babbington everything she knew.
He lifted her face and kissed her very carefully and softly. Resenting the stubble that might pain her bruised jaw. She was looking at him with the face of a child. He sensed her body through the material of his shirt as his arms enclosed her. The fur jacket was wet with melted snow. For a moment, he almost wanted to thrust her away. To make her stand apart from him while he told her what a fool, what a mistake, what a fatal error…
But, she knew it. All.
She had ceased murmuring her apology and simply clung to him, her face against his chest. He looked over her blonde hair at the closed, locked door of the small room. It was as if he could quite clearly see the armed guard posted outside. He brushed absently at her hair, even at the shoulder of the fur coat. Stroking a small animal that could not be blamed.
'It's all right now, it's all right now, my darling,' he began softly, gripping her more tightly in the circle of his arms. 'It's all right… you're safe. I've been out of my mind with worry about you. It's all right, it's all right…' What she had done, she had done out of love. Killing herself as well as he. He swallowed. 'It's all right now, everything's OK…' She was sobbing softly, and swallowed continually. He had to ease her guilt away. 'Don't worry. It just got messed up, but — everything you've done, everything you've said or felt, has been honest. Don't blame yourself… it's all right now, all right…'
He continued to murmur into her hair, stroking her face and shoulder and upper arm gently. 'I shouldn't have — my fault, getting you into this mess…' Did he believe that—? Yes, yes. 'My, my — stupid, ridiculous shining armour, my — blindness, my stupidity…' He ground the words slowly out. 'I had to try and help and I didn't think about you — forgive me for that. I didn't think about you…'
He continued to stare at the locked door, even as he sensed the desperation of her need for comfort. Her hands eventually opened and stilled against his back, pressing harder and harder, returning his close embrace. She swallowed. He could hear her breathing become more regular, quieter. He continued to stroke her hair and face.
Hyde distracted himself from Godwin's slow, noisy progress onto the escalator by glancing once more at the small picture in his hand. He stepped onto the escalator behind the hoarsely-breathing Godwin, hefting the haversack of tools on his shoulder. The snapshot was small, monochrome — a flashlight picture. Wiring flared behind an opened panel surrounded by darkness. Someone other than Godwin had scribbled with a ballpoint on the surface of the snap. The words in Czech near the bottom and an arrow pointing at one of the cables exposed to the camera.
The landline which linked the remote stations of the Hradcany's computer room with Moscow Centre.
He slipped the snapshot into the breast pocket of the oily overalls he was wearing over corduroy jeans and a check shirt. He had not shaved. Rubbing the stubble on his chin and cheeks, he reminded himself of his almost sleepless night. Like rubbing some legendary lamp, he evoked smoky fragments of the night's information — and quashed them by concentrating fiercely on his feet as he reached the bottom of the escalator and stepped off. Godwin readjusted his crutches and leaned his weight more assuredly on them. There was no time now to consider the coming afternoon and night…
People brushed past them, moving crowdedly into the warmly-lit underground concourse of the Mustek metro station. Snow shone wetly on their shoulders and hats and headscarves as it melted. The mosaics were stained with muddy footprints as the morning rush-hour crowds moved through the shop-lined concourse.
'All right?' Hyde muttered in Czech, leaning towards Godwin. Godwin merely grimaced and nodded.
Hyde adjusted the haversack on the shoulder of his dark-blue donkey jacket. Another manual worker on his way to his job. He joined the orderly procession to the platform, Godwin following him. Hyde felt the tension rising in him like sap; sensed the lack of reserves in himself — the lack of sleep that now prevented him from using his intelligence as if it were some separate part of him. His nerves affected his ability to think.
Godwin rested on his crutches beside him as they waited for the metro. One station down the line; Muzeum. At the other end of Wenceslas Square. Then a walk down a long tunnel to a sealed inspection hatch set in the wall. The distances came to him as measured paces as he stared at the track, at three rails, one of them live. A measured distance alongside a live rail. He could think of it in no other way. He glanced involuntarily towards the tunnel, where the lights disappeared and the live rail vanished into ambush. And shuddered.
'You all right?' Godwin hissed.
Hyde nodded violently. 'Shut up,' he snapped.
Timetables, distances, tools, the snapshot, the imagined noises of the tunnel tumbled together in his thoughts. He clenched one hand in his pocket, the other gripped the strap of the haversack tightly, so that his knuckles were white. He felt sick, despite the croissants and rolls and coffee Godwin had made him eat. Self-
