'Yes. Quite correct. Well done it is.'
'Well, there it is — Castle Dracula. You all right?'
'Stakes and garlic — check.'
'Just walk straight in through the gates, past the guards. Just like that bus-load of schoolkids.'
'Bit late, isn't it — getting dark?'
'Never too late for a bit of Party history.'
'Christ — they're forming up in a crocodile, and I can't hear any noise! Something to be said for the Party after all.'
'Make sure you buy the official guide book to the Hradcany. From the Cedok office in the First Courtyard. Then you can wander through the Second and Third Courtyards to the cathedral. Across the courtyard from the cathedral is the President's Chancellery. Down below the building and the courtyard are, among other things, the computer rooms. Wander over for a closer look at the architecture — you'll be looked for and spotted.'
'The supervising cleaner?'
'That's him. He'll use your name — no, he knows nothing else about you, only the name. Then he'll conceal you until tonight.'
'You're certain he'll know—?'
'When the post office engineer arrives — yes. When an hour has passed, he'll come and tip you off. Then you're on — the big finale, all singing, all dancing.'
'Why is he doing it?'
'Oh, he wants to be bit better off financially… well, he's bitter as well. He used to be an electrical engineer until he signed the Charter one night when he was pissed out of his mind. Now, he supervises the Mrs Mops in the Hradcany. Someone's idea of a joke. But, he wouldn't do it without the money — it's also true you can trust him…'
'And I get out this way?'
'Your Soviet ID's OK — I double-checked. And the guards will change at about ten. When you come out, they won't expect to have checked you in — they'll be new.'
'OK — I'm off.'
'Good luck, Hyde. I mean it.'
'Don't go cold on your brilliant planning now, Godwin — that's all I need!'
'I'm not cold on it — it'll work, if you keep your head.'
'I intend to.'
'And remember — Moscow Centre will expect to hear from you before you start testing — and maybe during. If they ring you — at any time — you've got to be able to bluff it out. You have to convince them that you're doing nothing wrong, that you need to access the information you've requested to check the system thoroughly. If you don't, they could isolate your terminal at any time they choose, just like that—! Your screen will go blank, the terminal will shut down, and you'll never get hold of
'Sure. Here's another bus-load of kids for the funfair. I'm off.'
'I'll be here, waiting for you. You'll be finished before midnight and on your way to Bratislava, with any luck. You could be back across the border before daylight.'
'Let's hope it's soon enough.'
'Good luck.'
'Sure.'
Babbington's bruise-dyed knuckles as he thrust his right hand into the black glove; Margaret Massinger's swollen lips and crooked, reluctant smile; Massinger's limp and his own weariness; all confirmed his growing realisation of the complete, successful power of an implacable opponent. Margaret's hurt mouth and jaw were like badges of ownership placed on them all by Babbington.
Then they were outside — Massinger shivered immediately in the thin raincoat he wore over his shirt. Margaret hunched into her fur jacket. Aubrey felt the wind whip at his sparse hair, blow coldly around his collar. The sky was bright with stars where racing clouds did not obscure them. Gravel crunched beneath their feet — dragged in the case of the limping Massinger. Margaret supported his weight as well as she was able. Their guards walked beside them, unworried. Aubrey felt his attention drawn towards the moving, changing, unreal clouds. His thoughts drifted.
He ducked into the rear of the black BMW, and a guard followed him. In the headlights, he saw haloes of breath like signals of distress around Massinger's head as the others were put into a Mercedes for the drive to the safe house. Then the driver slipped into his seat, and Babbington settled heavily into the front passenger seat, obscuring Aubrey's view of the other car.
Babbington ordered the driver to move off. The BMW bucked down the narrow track towards the road through the village, headlights swaying and jolting; illuminating the Massingers' heads in silhouette pressed almost together in the leading car. Reconciled, accepting.
Aubrey was envious, and angry. Babbington's head obscured his view of the other car when he sat back in his seat. The guard was silent at his side, hardly watchful, already assured of the old man's harmlessness.
Yes, the Massingers — he'd known it the moment he had first seen them together, seen it through the shock of her presence at the lodge — had achieved acceptance; had settled for the consolation of their reunion. It was to be envied, for he, after all, would die alone.
The lights glared as the BMW hit the final, slush-filled rut in the track and dirty, half-frozen water splashed the windscreen. Then, out of the lights and the action of the wipers, knowledge emerged.
From what Babbington had said, his scheme had the attractions of simplicity and effectiveness. Everyone would see the KGB recapture their supposed agent. The Massingers would go with him to Moscow…
A fault there—
Aubrey swallowed drily. No fault, only ruthlessness. Whoever was detailed to guard them at the Vienna Station safe house when they were handed over was to die. The Massingers would not be accounted for. The dead bodies would be irrefutable proof that the KGB took back their own. As for the Massingers, there were no witnesses to the fact that they had ever been in Aubrey's company.
And even if someone were to survive, no doubt Babbington's explanation to Parrish as Head of Station — and to Guest and anyone and everyone else — would be that the KGB took away the Massingers to silence them. Innocents — victims of circumstance.
It did not even have to be tidy, loose ends could remain. No one would regard them as significant once the bodies were counted and Aubrey had vanished in company with his friends from the KGB—!
He clenched his hands into useless fists and swallowed the hard lump of bilious anger with difficulty, as he might have done a lodged chicken-bone.
He closed his eyes. They were out of the village now, and the oncoming evening headlights hurt his eyes. An image of Elsenreith smiled in the flaring darkness, as if his face were outlined by the explosions of an artillery barrage. Clara appeared more faintly behind him, her face thin, undernourished waif-like, as he had first seen her. And, because of Clara — love? Yes, perhaps. Certainly regard, friendship unlike with any other woman…
Because Clara, Castleford.
He glimpsed the flicker of constant oncoming lights through his pressed shut lids. They had turned onto the autobahn. He opened his eyes, confirming his guess. Glimpsed then the two silhouetted heads in the leading car, leaning together like dummies or the heads of two dead bodies—
He shrugged, almost expecting their heads to loll away from one another in death and disappear from the rear window of the Mercedes. He closed his eyes once more.
Elsenreith, Clara, Castleford.
He had never felt as defeated, as alone and without hope while in East Berlin — the Russian Zone as it was then called, he pedantically announced to himself. The Russian Zone. Not as helpless as now, not as bereft of expectation. Hopeless—
His people had got him out — dragging him from the back of the car after they'd crashed a small truck into it as he was being transferred from one prison to another — moving up the ladder of interrogation and torture…
He had not expected them to rescue him, but even so he had hoped. Now, he did not, could not.
