reinforcements.
'Down?'
'Yes, down. They're not eager to follow. Come on.'
Massinger moved ahead of Hyde, who walked carefully backwards, his heels seeking the ruts and frozen puddles. A goods wagon's couplings clanked in the fog, startling him. He could hear Massinger moving away, limping, sighing with effort.
The cautious footsteps of the two Russians reached him, too. Then the sound of a car arriving, braking hard.
'Hurry it up,' he called to Massinger. 'The cavalry's arrived.'
He turned his back, caught up with Massinger, and took his arm. He studied the man's face. Tired and lined, hardly handsome any longer. He nodded.
'I'm all right—' Massinger protested.
'No you're not. Just doing all right. We're going to have to hurry.'
He forced Massinger to break into a limping jogtrot. The American used his stick like a drunken, uncertain third leg, and he groaned once or twice; but he did not attempt to slow Hyde until they reached the bottom of the incline. A gate in a wooden fence, then the tracks on either side and ahead disappeared into the fog. A locomotive was moving slowly somewhere in it like a circling, invisible shark. Its headlight flashed occasionally, and its passage made the fog roll and billow. Hyde shuddered with cold.
'All right?'
Massinger nodded, recovering his breath. 'I'm OK, Hyde. I'm just angry as hell.'
'Never mind. They'll be consulting and planning for a couple of minutes. There's time enough.'
'What do we do now?'
'Get out of Vienna. There's nothing else we can do.' He pushed open the unlocked gate. Warning signs forbade them to cross the tracks. Massinger passed through the gate and Hyde closed it behind them. The incline retreated into the fog. Hyde could not see the Mercedes or the body in front of it, but nothing appeared to be moving on the slope. 'OK. Be careful — I don't know whether there are any live rails or whether it's all electrified overhead. Just watch where you put your feet.'
Massinger was aware of the momentary confidence in Hyde's voice. He was a hundred yards ahead of the pursuit and shrouded by the fog. It was enough, apparently, to satisfy him. Massinger recognised Hyde's quality. He'd controlled only a few men like him all those years ago. One or two, but very few. The nerve-enders, the jack- in-the-boxes. Good field agents.
He crossed the first set of tracks, listening attentively. Scrapings, clanks, the roll of flanged wheels, the movement of locomotives. Strangely, a cow lowed somewhere in the fog and was answered by other cattle. It was unnerving for an instant, then became comfortingly innocent.
A line of goods wagons loomed out of the fog.
'Underneath and through,' Hyde instructed.
Massinger grasped the icy buffer of a wagon, then bent down into a crouch. His hip protested as he waddled forward. It hurt badly, and at the centre of the pain was a light, almost floating feeling of weakness, as if he had little more than air or a vacuum to rely upon. He was afraid that his hip might give out at any moment. He straightened up with great difficulty, and his breath escaped in a misty, smoky gasp.
'You OK?' Hyde asked anxiously.
'I'm all right, damn you!' he replied fiercely, leaning on his stick, watching Hyde with a twisted, angry face. 'I'm all right.'
'OK.' Hyde shrugged. 'Let's keep moving.'
Four more sets of tracks, snaking towards their feet and slithering, so it seemed, away again into the chill-lit whiteness of the fog.
'Hold it!' Hyde snapped suddenly.
Noise of a locomotive, coming towards them. Massinger studied his feet, his heart racing. Between tracks—? Beyond, between—? The fog swirled, writhed, then parted to admit a looming black shape with a headlight struggling to cut a swathe through the curtain. Massinger leaned away, feeling the rush of the air and the bulk of the engine and the thudding of it through his shoes. He could see Hydenowhere.Wagons clanked past, allowing little slats of white light to appear between them.
The noise was deafening.
Eventually, it had gone and the fog had closed in behind the guard's van and the dim red light it carried.
'Hyde?' Massinger asked fearfully into the fog.
'Keep your voice down! Come on.'
Three, four, five more sets of tracks. Sheds, repair and maintenance shops, points, gantries, lights. Then a high stone wall with frost thickly riming weeds and ivy, and the dim glow of street-lamps above and beyond it.
'Look for some steps,' Hyde instructed. 'And be careful.'
The flight of steps was two hundred yards away, towards Lassallestrasse. Hyde climbed it first, then waved to Massinger to follow him. At the top, a gate barred their exit to the street. It was unlocked. Hyde gestured Massinger through.
Icy puddles, poor street-lights, blank-faced warehouses. A narrow, grubby, cobbled street empty of people and cars.
'Can you walk a bit more?' Hyde asked defensively, his hands raised, palms outwards.
'Yes. How far?'
'The station. We'll get a taxi back to the hotel. Just take it easy and stay alert.'
As they walked, Massinger's stick tapped the cobbles and echoed from the blank walls and doors of the warehouses. The noise of it reminded Hyde of the American's age, his infirmity, and his determination. Nevertheless, he could not avoid the feeling that he was carrying the older man; even though Massinger had adopted the role of his field controller almost naturally and by right. Massinger would make the decisions, but he would be left to carry them out; put himself in jeopardy.
'Have we got anything out of that?' he asked.
'Mm?' Massinger was silent. No, no, no, his stick tapped out in the fog, then echoed its negative. 'Tell me about this Petrunin,' he said eventually. 'You know him, don't you?'
'Too well.'
'Sorry—?'
'One-time London Rezident. Later, he tried to screw me again in Australia and Spain. We don't get on — quarrel all the time!' Behind the banter, there was a quiver in his voice that Hyde could not eradicate.
'He's a field man?' Massinger asked in surprise.
'No. He's been a general in his time.'
'In his time.'
'Word is, he got demoted back to colonel last year…'
'Because of you?'
'No. But I helped. He couldn't keep the lid on something.'
'Part of the lid being your death?'
'Right.'
'His scheme, apparently, wasn't discredited with him,' Massinger commented bitterly.
Hyde stopped the American then moved ahead and checked the well-lit street that lay ahead of them. Cars passed now, moving slowly in the fog, there were one or two pedestrians, dog-walkers or night-shift workers. It felt to Massinger both safe and dangerous at the same moment. More, he sensed an excitement in himself. Dangerous, foolish, desperate. Hyde returned.
'It's clear, as far as I can tell. I don't imagine they've given up, but it's a big area down there behind us. They may not be covering the station yet. But be careful. If I move, you move. I shan't wait for you. OK?'
'OK,' Massinger nodded.
'The station's just a couple of hundred yards down the street,' Hyde continued. 'What do we do when we get back to the hotel and the car you hired?'
'Take the autobahn to Linz, and then maybe Munich. We can get there by morning, with luck. Unless this fog lasts all the way.'
