confidence was a wafer-thin, puncturable envelope around him, threatened by his surroundings.
The Russian-built train sighed into the platform on rubber wheels, its lights and crowded faces slowing after the moment in which they had made his head jolt and spin. The crowd moved him forward into the carriage like a reluctant representative of some complaint they wished to voice. Godwin lumbered behind him.
The doors closed, the train jerked away from the platform. The walls of the tunnel were suddenly close — much too close — behind the row of faces opposite him. Faces with too little sleep, fed by basic, unvarying diets, older than they should have been; little make-up on any but the youngest of the women.
The light again, and the train slowing, coming to rest. Doors opening, Muzeum emblazoned on the hoardingless walls. Clean cream tiles, the face of Dvorak and other bearded Czechs from pre-history. The crowd moved him out of the carriage, Godwin behind him. Now, he resented their pressure against his back.
The platform emptied. The train rushed away. Hyde followed it with his eyes. He envisaged his body flattened against the tunnel wall, curving with the shape of its huge tube as a train rushed towards him, too close to the wall—
'What is it?' Godwin whispered hoarsely. The platform was almost empty. Two uniformed railwaymen, a cleaner with mop and bucket, perhaps a dozen passengers filtering along the platform.
'All right,' he said thickly. Nodding. 'All right.'
Beginning to be all right, he told himself as Godwin studied his pale, unshaven face. Beginning to be… Noticing people, eyes, distances—
'OK,' Godwin said at last, as if telepathically aware of Hyde's returning resolution. 'Let's go…' He began to stump away along the platform — now more crowded, where were the two uniforms? One there, the other vanished. Hyde followed and caught up with Godwin, absorbing the scene. The tunnel slowly-enlarged as they approached it. 'Distance?'
'Four hundred yards.'
'Cable?'
'Third from top.'
'Sequence?'
'Panel off — drill out lock… say three or four minutes… induction coil — next train — flip-flop transistor and battery, clock… before the next train.'
'OK. That's it. Set the timer for eight.' Hyde nodded. They had reached the end of the platform. Hyde glanced at the clock. A minute to the next train. The platform had filled. He could see no one in uniform. No one was looking in their direction. In his imagination, he saw his feet treading carefully in the pools of light from his torch, saw the hatch, the working of the drill, the rigging of the induction coil — then nodded again.
Godwin's face was tight and calm. A case officer's noncommittal expression. Then he grinned, nervously and boyishly. Hyde backed away from him. Could he hear the approach of the train? He reached the edge of the platform, hard against the wall. He stared for a moment at the live rail, and at a cigarette packet, crumpled into a ball, between it and the outer rail. He glanced up the platform. Faces turned to the far end. A quiet, distant rumble—?
Godwin had moved to the edge to mask him. He slipped his body off the edge of the platform. Aware of the sleepers and of his trouser-leg inches from the live rail. Then he strode swiftly but carefully into the tunnel. He heard no cry, no murmur of detection behind him. He flicked on his torch. The sleepers quivered beneath his feet and he heard the train enter the platform, come to a halt. He felt impelled to hurry, even to run. He flicked the torch-beam along the wall of the tunnel, back to the sleepers and his feet stepping into the pools of light, to the walls, counting the seconds. Torch on the wall, on his feet, aware of the fragility of ankles and the price of stumbling — seconds, wall, feet, breathing — noise, noise. The jerky sigh of acceleration, the quiver returning to the sleepers, the hiss of rubber wheels, the hum of current—
He stepped over the live rail and pressed himself into the inspection arch set in the tunnel wall. The train cried and bellowed past him, his lips quivered almost to the rhythm of the carriage lights splashing over him. He pressed his cheek to the rough brickwork. Silver blur of the flanks of the carriages, a solid rushing wall, a metal blizzard passing the shallow niche of the inspection shelter and the ventilation shaft that rose from it like a chimney above a fireplace.
Then silence, except that his ears rang with the noises of the train. A deafness into which the hum of the live rail insisted after a few moments. Seconds going. He pushed himself away from the wall, stepped over the live rail — five minutes now — and began to walk on weak, trembling limbs down the curving tunnel.
Second inspection shelter, third. Three hundred and fifty yards into the tunnel. He counted his measured paces, his legs marking distance and the passage of time. Each step a yard, each step a second—
He washed the thin light of the torch over the tunnel wall. Instructions, conduits, fuse boxes.
A heavy security lock.
The landlines that linked the terminals in the Hradcany with Moscow Centre had been buried in the tunnel walls of the metro system when it was constructed. Under KGB supervision. Just as the rock outcrop on which the Hradcany stood was bomb-proofing for the cellars of the computer room, so the deep tunnels of the metro afforded similar protection to the secure communications channels.
Hyde touched the lock, then removed a drill from his haversack. He waggled the torch beam until he located the heavy-duty power points and plugged in the drill. He switched on — and sensed the whine of the drill funnel along the darkness to reach the platform and alert—
He pressed the drill-tip against the door of the terminal box, felt it jump aside, pressed it with both hands and began to drill into the lock.
The torch nestled under his chin, jammed against his hunched shoulder. Its weak beam wavered, jumped, seemed tenuous. Hyde was aware of the darkness around him, around the metal box he was attacking. Aware of the hum of the live rail behind him. It was thirty yards along the tunnel to the next inspection shelter. He had to listen above the whine of the drill for the next train—
He stopped and dropped into a crouch, unstrapping his watch quickly from his wrist. Then he fished in the haversack at his side, withdrew a roll of black insulating tape, and straightened up. He held the door in the torch- beam and taped his watch to it. Its face hung there in the pale light. Two minutes forty-seven since he had stepped out onto the tracks behind the last train. Two minutes — two-nine before the next train. The second hand jerked across the face of the watch. He wedged the torch beneath his chin once more and placed the drill-tip against the lock. One hole, two, three — one minute-twenty left, one minute and ten — three, four holes. He punctured the metal, withdrawing the drill with a jerk before its tip could contact any of the cables inside the hatch. Then again — forty-five seconds. Five holes. Two more, three—?
Thirty seconds. Sweat was running down his cheeks and into his eyes, even though his breath clouded around him in the torch-light and damply misted the face of his watch. Clouded the metal of the door. He was wet with perspiration. Twenty-five seconds. He listened after the drill's noise had tailed away. The bend in the tunnel obscured the platform. He began to drill again.
Twenty, fifteen, ten.
Six holes, beginning the seventh. On schedule. Five seconds.
Train should be drawing into the station, time to begin to move—
He lowered the drill.
The sigh preceded the train, a rushing wind. He dropped the drill nervelessly. Light on the opposite wall, and a quiver in the sleepers. Hyde ran.
The train bellowed its way around the curve of the tunnel, pursuing him. He flicked the torch ahead of his feet, then to the tunnel wall, then his feet—
The shallow arch was caught in the torchlight. He threw himself into it, his back to the train as it yelled past him and the metal blizzard of its flanks roared inches away from him. Then it was gone, and he slumped against the brickwork. The train had been perhaps thirty seconds early.
Slowly, his breathing stetorious, he returned to the junction box and the drill. Flicking the torch with intense
