He opened the street door slowly then peered round it. The small area of the Herrengasse he could see showed his car and one of the Russian vehicles. The driver was still behind the wheel but there were no passengers. He listened — was startled by a passing car which went on, past the Hofburg — and heard one set of slow footsteps echoing. Other side of the street—?
Moving away—?
There was too little sensory information, and the adrenalin was already dangerously underemployed.
'Come on!' he whispered fiercely, and they dragged Bayev into the street, moving across the pavement onto the cobbles as quickly as they could. Bayev's feet slipped and skidded and stumbled on the icy road.
'It's cold—!' he cried out, and Massinger squashed his hand over the man's mouth. His face winced with shock and the pain in his hip.
'Shit—' Hyde breathed. Bayev slipped heavily, almost bringing them down. Hyde felt the cold of the cobblestones through his trousers as he went down on one knee, Bayev's weight across his back until Massinger took the strain.
One man, two… three—
All now alerted by the brief Russian exclamation, two of them already certain of the small stationary group in the middle of the Herrengasse. The third man focused on them. Movement—
'Don't waste time, they know! Get him to the car as quick…' They rushed Bayev across the road, his toes dragging swerving lines like black snailtracks behind them. Hyde thrust the Russian against the boot of the Mercedes, then heaved open the door. 'Get the bugger in!'
Massinger began bundling Bayev into the back of the car, heaving at him as the man protested by kicking out, finally throwing himself, with a stifled groan at his own pain, on top of the Russian and wrestling him across the rear seat.
Closest man ten yards, running now, mouth open to shout—
Second and third coming fast, fourth even closer, but approaching warily, trying to outflank…
Hyde weighed it, then slammed the rear door and jumped into the driving seat, locking the door behind him.
'Lock the bloody doors or they'll—!' Massinger snapped down the locks.
Hyde started the engine. A face appeared at his side window, pressed flat, smearing the glass with his lips. A gun angled across the window, held by white knuckles, threatened them. Now they could shoot him, Hyde realised, without endangering the Rezident. The Russian outside the car straightened up and stepped back a pace from the window. Rear-view mirror, the second and third men closing — a bump as one of them skidded and collided with the boot of the Mercedes — now Massinger, too, was separable, easier to kill.
Hyde pressed his foot down on the accelerator, and spun the wheel. The car slid sideways, lurched, wheels spinning, and then shot away towards the Michaelerplatz and the Hofburg. The KGB man at Hyde's window staggered back and was left behind. A fourth man began running out into the Herrengasse, but Hyde swerved the car around him.
'It's all right, Karel — just some noisy drunks,' Massinger was saying as firmly and soothingly as possible in the back of the car.
'Who are you?' Bayev replied suspiciously. 'What are you doing!'
'For God's sake, stop struggling, Karel!' Massinger snapped. 'You must be having the DTs, old man!'
Hyde swung the wheel — two cars already moving in the Herrengasse, threatening shapes slipping in and out of the light of successive street-lamps — and the Mercedes turned ninety degrees and roared into the narrow, dark archway of the Hofburg's entrance, beneath the cupola. A pedestrian whisked out of their way, dragging a small dog on a leash behind him. The noise of the engine was magnified by the bowl of the cupola's roof, and then they were into the principal square of the palace leading to the Ring, with traffic lights ahead.
Red.
Mirror — first car turning into the archway already.
'Karel, Karel, wake up, old man! Do you feel better? Come on, you're not drunk, just tipsy!' Massinger was shaking Bayev gently, the two men now propped up on the back seat.
'I can't go back to the hotel,' Hyde said, 'not until I've shaken all three cars.'
'This is no good—' Massinger protested. 'He's totally disorientated.'
'I'll drive around.'
Green. The lights changed as they passed beneath the War Memorial, and Hyde turned right onto the Burgring, opposite the huge, dark, frosty bulks of the arts and natural history museums. Maybe only two of the cars would catch the light—?
Radio. They'd have radio. They were as vulnerable in the Mercedes as they had been in the girl's flat.
Two cars, yes. He accelerated. Karl Renner Ring, Karl Leuger Ring, each set of lights thankfully green.
'Where?' he asked.
'Anywhere!' Massinger snapped.
Schottenring. Red lights ahead, strung over the middle of the wide thoroughfare. The first car was no more than twenty yards behind them, in the thin traffic. The road was shining with frost.
Green filter.
Hyde swung the wheel hard to the left, and the Mercedes skidded, its back end floating away, then he accelerated and the car bounced heavily over tramlines and he was into a narrower street. He took the first right, then right again. The lights of the Schottenring were ahead of him. He turned into it a block further north from where he had left it, and accelerated again.
'Aubrey's people,' Massinger was saying loudly and firmly. 'Aubrey's people. He's fighting for his life, Karel. He's desperate. He hasn't got a chance!'
'No chance,' Bayev agreed, but there was something mechanical and listless about his voice. Massinger pressed him.
'We can't afford any slip-ups — the pair of us have to stay safe. After two years, we can't afford a cock-up now.'
Hyde turned the car onto the Franz-Josefs Kai, alongside the Danube Canal. The traffic was almost non- existent, the strung-bead lights of a bridge ten blocks away from them. Cross the canal, something told him. Into the narrow streets, the darker streets. Two cars still behind him. The third one would be hanging back, waiting for directions; for some pattern to be placed on the movements of the Mercedes, some possibility of a trap.
'Two years? You're a latecomer,' Bayev said in the same mechanical toy's voice. 'Pavel—'
'Thank God,' he heard Massinger breathe.
'Pavel, it's been a plan for maybe five years…' Hyde sensed that Bayev's drugged, confused awareness had slipped back into his drunk's role. His voice was slightly slurred, his tone confiding, nose-tapping. Bridge coming up.
Lights red—
He ran through them and a lorry loomed up on the right, the driver's face clearly visible as he stared down at the Mercedes rocking on its springs, leaning drunkenly to one side as Hyde spun the wheel. The car skidded, turned half-round, then reversed behind the lorry, finally pulling away from it and running across its path onto the bridge. The lorry's horn sounded angrily behind them as the car shuddered across the cobbles of the bridge and jolted along the tramlines.
'Five years — my God!' Massinger exclaimed, his voice still shaky from their encounter with the lorry. 'Five years. You're obviously a lot more trusted than I am, Karel.'
'Gossip — only gossip,' Bayev slurred. Then he yawned.
'Kapustin's always been in charge — yes?' Massinger pressed.
'Is all this on tape?' Hyde asked.
'Yes. It's still running. The recorder's in my hand.'
'Thank God.' He turned the Mercedes right. The rear-view mirror was clear for four seconds before the first of the pursuing cars appeared. He accelerated again. The kph climbed dramatically on the speedometer. Seventy miles an hour. 'We could be getting somewhere,' he murmured.
'Kapustin's always been in command,' Bayev repeated like a lesson he had learned.
'Brilliant — a brilliant plan. What a mind, what insight—!'
'Balls.'
