Below the aircraft, the scene was colourless; grey and white. The waters of the Gulf of Finland were wrinkled like a shabby grey cloth, ending abruptly where the snow-covered shoreline of Helsinki became a sheet of white. Narrow lines of snow-ploughed roads and railway lines had been lightly traced, but the overwhelming the impression was of an uninhabited, hostile environment. Massinger turned away from the window at the recognition that the landscape and the sea lay below him like an image of his own state of mind; empty and somehow hopeless. He could not let go, he told himself once more, though, the precisely formed words in his mind echoed hollowly in a small, piping voice. Patriotism was ridiculous in him, an expatriate Bostonian, a cool-minded academic, especially the simple, emotional kind he seemed to be experiencing. Hyde did not have it, and he wondered whether even Aubrey possessed it. Somehow, he had a capacity for patriotism, like a capacity for love, and the object of that capacity could as well have been Afghanistan or the US or, as it plainly was, Great Britain. He found that he cared, almost despite himself, that his adopted country's intelligence service was being manipulated by the Soviet Union. It was intolerable.
Or was it merely his damnable sense of right and wrong? Was that at the bottom of his heated urge to solve the mystery, clear Aubrey, defeat his enemies? It might be, and he disapproved. It was a naive view of his character, and he desired not to be naive.
He had spoken to Margaret again, from the airport, looking out through tall windows onto a rainswept runway, a scene reduced to monochrome like the one below him now as the aircraft dropped towards Seutula airport. He had attempted to convince her that he was safe when the very reason he could not return to her, do as she asked and give it up, was because someone wanted him safely and incuriously dead. The conversation had been painful, pointless. The chasm was still there, merely emphasised by physical distance. She had settled into a routine of hatred towards Aubrey, totally believing in his guilt; it was an orthodoxy that nothing could soften or contradict. Therefore, while he aided Aubrey he was a heretic, and damned.
Yet he knew that her belief was tearing her in two, just as he was himself being pulled apart. He could not tell her he would never be safe, never, unless he could unravel the mystery — whatever the truth concerning her father and Kenneth Aubrey.
Lastly, he had told her — trusting her with his life, as he had wanted to do, felt he needed to do — that he would be coming back, that he would telephone, that he had to see her…
The telephone receiver in their flat had gone down on those protestations, on his pleading, on his need for her. The line had crackled with static and he had listened to the emptiness for a long time before putting down his receiver.
The rain had been cold on his face as he had crossed the tarmac to the Finnair flight to Helsinki.
The wing outside his window dipped, showing him the grey buildings and the runways of Seutula. The aircraft dropped its nose, straightened, then began its final approach, Massinger settled himself to thoughts of Phillipson and the immediate future.
In the growing darkness, Hyde caught glimpses of light-coloured cloth from blouses or turbans, even of dark shadowy forms against the snow, as the Pathan raiding party moved from rock to rock, from bush to stunted tree to straggling vegetation. On the ground, it was a scene in extreme slow-motion, the elapsed time so extended it was almost stilled. Above the defile of the narrow, knife-cut valley that cut through the border north of Parachinar, Russian helicopters moved like agitated insects; flies maddened and over-exerted by poison from an aerosol spray. Two kinds of time; patience and urgency, hunters and hunted. To Hyde, using night-glasses, it seemed that many were wounded, and by Miandad's guess the party was considerably reduced from that which had entered Afghanistan three days before.
The MiL gunships drove the valley again like airborne beaters of game, moving towards the high cleft in the rocks which concealed Hyde, Miandad and, a little away from them, Mohammed Jan and three or four of his trusted lieutenants; old, grey-bearded men with long, antique rifles. The noise from the helicopters was deafening. Then they turned, whirling as easily as dancers, the downdraught plucking at Hyde's hair and shoulders as the four MiL- 24s moved away. Hyde could distinguish the 57mm rocket pods beneath their stubby wings and the four-barrel machine-gun in the nose of each aircraft as they turned no more than two hundred feet above him. He shivered.
'There,' Miandad shouted above the din and its ricochet from the valley walls. 'There!'
Hyde lowered his night-glasses, following Miandad's extended arm, focusing the glasses beyond the retreating gunships. The faint redness in the lenses swam and cleared. The scene had little colour; a clear, bloodless monochrome. As the focus sharpened, it was as if something had entered an arena; something making everything else of less significance. A pike in a pool. A presence.
The helicopter must have been daubed some garish colour, Hyde guessed. Certainly, it was not camouflaged like the gunships that now seemed to bob and curtsey their way towards it.
'Red — blood-red,' Miandad murmured.
Hyde lowered the glasses for a moment, and looked at the Pakistani colonel. Miandad nodded. Hyde felt chilled, but he could not have explained his reaction. Petrunin—?
'Him?' he asked.
Miandad nodded. 'Him. You will find his style — more flamboyant?' Miandad's teeth gleamed white in the darkness of the cleft of rocks.
Hyde raised his glasses once more, again adjusting the focus slightly. The command helicopter which contained Petrunin was moving up the valley, though very slowly, as if engaged in some courtship ritual with the four MiL gunships. Its speed decreased further as it reached its four heavily-armed courtiers.
Hyde moved the glasses down, twiddling the focus. He was prompted by an inexplicable fear and urgency. Below him, in the narrow river-bed, the Pathans seemed to be moving with a similar sudden speed. Wounded men were being handled more roughly, pulled and even dragged. Small, bent figures scurried ahead of them. It was dark now, and they were no more than half a mile from Hyde's vantage-point. They had already crossed the border, even though that crossing was meaningless. Hyde returned his gaze to the black air above the valley — some stars beginning to appear, falsely bright in the night-glasses — and the five helicopters. The four gunships hovered and paid homage in a slow circling dance about the command aircraft.
Hyde heard Mohammed Jan issue orders. Men below them began to move swiftly towards the oncoming party and its wounded. Away down the valley, the noise of the helicopters was magnified by the valley walls.
Then the group dissolved. The four gunships wheeled, came into line, began to beat up the valley again. The command helicopter lagged behind; the armed sportsman waiting for the game to be terrified into flight. It was sinister in the extreme, especially to Hyde, who knew the occupant of the red MiL-24. The rescuers scuttled and weaved and ran towards the returning party; flickering white and light-coloured patches or swift shadows. The four MiLs closed above them, their noise a fearful clatter from the rocks. Hyde watched.
He winced as small black shapes detached themselves from the bellies of each of the MiLs; strings of laid eggs. He followed them down, watched some bounce, roll, jump, split. None of them exploded. His shoulders and stomach relaxed. He turned to Miandad, glancing into his grim face. The Pakistani shook his head slightly. Hyde returned his attention to the moving Pathans. The two parties had met; wounded men received extra, urgent support. The tempo of their progress increased. The four MiLs banked and turned. More black eggs fell. There were no explosions. Hyde found it difficult to breathe; impossible to understand.
The retreating MiLs passed over the moving men, their noise towed behind them like a net. Almost silence, out of which the separate and distinct noise of the command helicopter emerged, closing at a height of no more than two hundred feet. Its racket banged back from the cliffs above the valley floor. Hyde saw raised faces, bobbing, quick-moving turbans. He could begin to distinguish bodies, forms, figures. The party, augmented by the rescuers, was no more than a quarter of a mile away from his vantage point. A faint, silver-sheened mist was rising in the valley. It shone as if with dew or an inner light.
Mist—?
It was thin, gauzy, hardly opaque. Yet it glowed falsely.
The red helicopter — now Hyde could distinguish patches of other shades on its nose and flanks. Shark's mouth—? Grotesque faces—? Animal heads—? He could not tell. Something occult, almost, about the thing, as if it was not a piece of airborne technology but something much older.
It hovered. Men ran, scattered, limped or fell. Hunched, scuttling, they moved through the sheen of silver
