'Maintain surveillance on both of them, until we can be certain what they're up to — if anything.'
'Sir.'
Hyde recognised that he had passed through both fear and the oppressive sense of isolation. They had worn themselves away, like an over-familiar lust. Finally, he was left with no more than a desire for action. It was his simplest emotion; whenever he encountered it, he felt he had arrived at a destination or a new beginning.
The rain slanted in the gusts of wind across the street. Car headlights glared onto the windscreen of the Volkswagen van, and brake lights splashed on the road like ruby paint. He had hired the van from a small backstreet garage and had borrowed the stained grey overalls he now wore. Almost six in the evening. He was waiting for Wilkes to leave the SIS offices on the Opernring. The van was parked beneath the trees, alongside the tramlines, thirty yards from the door of the office building. Wilkes had not yet left. Impatience filled Hyde, gratifyingly, in itself a signal of purposeful activity. His fingers drummed against the greasy touch of the steering wheel.
Wilkes would tell him the truth. Wilkes, the man who had sent the KGB for him in the cafe, in the cathedral square. The purposeful men in the heavy overcoats. Wilkes—
Wilkes stepped from the door, turning up his collar, glancing to left and right, crossing the pavement to his parked car. Hyde started the engine of the Volkswagen with a fierce tightness in his chest and throat. Now, now it begins, he could not avoid thinking.
Wilkes's Audi pulled out into the traffic flow, and Hyde slid into the line three vehicles behind it. Was he going home, back to his apartment? Going for a drink, meeting someone? To Hyde, it did not matter. Eventually, Wilkes would be alone, and then…
Hyde damped down the suddenly rising anger. He had not realised, until that first moment of secret surveillance as he pulled out into the traffic behind the unsuspecting Wilkes, how much he wanted to hurt him, make him talk. He had been too isolated, too endangered and for too long. Wilkes was going to repay him for that frightened, hunted, wasted time.
Wilkes's car turned off the Opernring, into Mariahilferstrasse, following a tram that flashed blue sparks from the wire above it. The Hofburg Palace loomed to Hyde's right for a moment, then they were passing the massive elegance of the Kunsthistoriscbes-museum. Audi, Mercedes, small Citroen, then the Volkswagen. Hyde considered moving up, anticipating being caught by one of the sets of traffic lights. He decided against it, however. There were sufficient sets of lights to keep Wilkes in sight, even if he missed one of them. Action itself assured him. He would not lose Wilkes. He was there, three cars away beyond the wipers and the slanting rain.
The centre of Vienna changed, the lights of modern shops obscuring then throwing into shadow the old buildings whose ground floors they had usurped. Side streets became narrower, the traffic lights less frequent. Wilkes had made no attempt to accelerate, or to turn off. He was still unaware.
The Citroen turned off, and Hyde moved up. Then the Mercedes disappeared, and he dropped back again. A Renault overtook him and filled the gap between the van and the Audi. The black, gleaming station roof of the West-Bahnhof lay beyond the grimy, streaked window of the Volkswagen, then Hyde turned into a wide cobbled street behind the Audi.
The Audi slowed, taking him by surprise. He drove past, consciously stopping the foot that had been about to transfer itself from accelerator to brake. He did not glance in the direction of Wilkes's car, but watched it stop, floating into his rear-view mirror. Its headlights dimmed, and then it was nothing more than a dark shape alongside the pavement. Hyde pulled in perhaps sixty or seventy yards further along the street, opposite a newspaper and tobacco kiosk set in the featureless ground floor wall of an apartment building. His eyes returned to the mirror. In a moment of quiet between passing cars, he heard Wilkes slam the car door. Hyde wound down his offside window, and craned his head to see Wilkes crossing the street towards high iron gates. One of the gates opened and Wilkes disappeared.
Hyde scrambled out of the Volkswagen, hurrying between oncoming traffic across the street. A childish and inappropriate sense of having been cheated filled his imagination. Somehow, the rules had been changed; Wilkes was engaged in his own mystery, rejecting his role as hunted victim. The rain, flung by a gust of wind, slapped across Hyde's face. His hand reassured itself for a moment on the butt of the Heckler & Koch beneath his arm.
A wrought scroll of iron set into the tall gates announced
He gripped the cold, wet iron of the gates with one hand, slipping the gun into the pocket of his overalls with the other. He listened. There was no sound of footsteps. The gates were unlocked. One of them groaned open as he pushed at it. He left it open.
Meat market. The old meat market. Why? Wilkes, here—?
The cobbles were pooled and rutted and treacherous beneath his feet. He stood, searching for light, for movement.
Nothing.
His left hand touched the barrel of the torch in his pocket. Then he moved forward, across the open, rainswept cobbles. Meat market. Empty. Wilkes had disappeared somewhere, into one of the warehouses. Why?
Traffic rumbled down the cobbled street behind him. One of the gates moved protestingly, pushed by a gust of wind. There were no other noises.
He moved towards his left. Flash of a torch—?
He could see an open door, sagging on its hinges. His feet splashed in a puddle of water. His hand touched the damp wood of the door. His hearing reached ahead of him, encountering Only silence. No torch, then…
He slipped silently through the open door, into the musty interior of the warehouse. He listened once more. Nothing. He moved lightly and carefully, his shins brushing against buckets or perhaps cans. Somewhere, a rat scuttled, startling him. When his hearing was able once more to move beyond his heartbeat, it encountered the same silence. He withdrew the torch from his pocket with the stealth of a weapon. The pistol, almost ignored, appeared in his right hand at the same moment.
The door shifted on old hinges, but did not close. No trap, then—
Where was Wilkes?
He listened for a car engine firing, the noise of Wilkes having thrown him off his tail. Faint whitewashed walls stretched back into darkness.
Empty—?
He flicked on the torch, pointing it directly ahead of him. Five yards away, a huge portrait of Lenin glared at him. The sight stunned him.
'Hello, Patrick,' he heard Wilkes say from the darkness away to his left.
He could not move.
CHAPTER THREE:
For the Record
His mind refused to release that image, caught in the beam of the torch. His thumb would not move the switch to turn off the light. He could not comprehend the voice — Wilkes's voice, he remembered dimly — coming from the darkness to his left. He could not move the torch in an arc to reveal the speaker, or move the pistol across his body to endanger Wilkes.
Trap.
But, Lenin—?
Joke?
He shivered, newly aware of the cold and wet. The shivering would not stop once it had commenced. He had stepped into some mad theatre, without his cue. He could only wait for his prompter…
