Hyde lounged against a lamp-post while Mohammed Jan and Miandad began haggling with a rug-vendor who had set up his stall on a small, grassless island amid the traffic, opposite the embassy gates. As they bargained, Hyde knew they would be assessing distances, firing positions, angles, cover. Their knowledge of Kabul and of killing Russians was compendious and successful. For himself, he was for the moment, simply the sightseer. His work lay beyond the black railings, wearing Azimov's uniform. Cars and buses swirled between Hyde and the railings of the embassy. The square was noisy behind him.
The Pathan chieftain had guaranteed to get them out of the city once Hyde had completed the capture of Petrunin. And Hyde had repeated his promise while the adrenalin of Azimov's murder still prompted him. 'I will give you Petrunin, for your justice — damn you, I'll give you Petrunin! You didn't need this poor sod — I'll give you the man himself!' Miandad had not bothered to translate, and Mohammed Jan, without loss of face or dignity, had turned his back on him and descended the slope to the road. Hyde had watched him in a mood that was angry, jumpy and uncertain.
Hyde surreptitiously glanced at the watch concealed by the baggy sleeve of his blouse. Four. The air was darkening. Behind the embassy buildings, where the plain ended and the mountains of the Hindu Kush loomed forty foreshortened miles north of the city, the snow-covered peaks glowed pink while the mountain flanks displayed a dull gleam already dying into darkness. He came at this time usually, the boy had said.
Dear Sasha …
Not Darling Sasha, only the more formal acquaintanceship claimed by Dear — Dear Sir…
Dear Sasha… Nadia wouldn't even get the letter and the snapshot back — unless they returned them after removing them from his body, not Sasha's stripped and rock-hidden corpse. She would never know exactly what happened. She would, undoubtedly, fear the worst.
Unnoticed, Mohammed Jan was at his side. Hyde jumped as the Pathan spoke.
'Your promise?' he asked lightly in very accented English, a parody of Miandad, who appeared on the Pathan's other side.
'It still holds,' Hyde replied.
'Can you do it?' Miandad asked a moment later, translating now from Mohammed Jan's Pushtu.
'Can he cause enough confusion, once I've got past the gates?' Hyde replied belligerently, staring into the chieftain's face. 'You can operate the rocket launcher — can you hit the embassy from here and kill the guards in that concrete bunker? Can you pin down the Russians for fifteen minutes afterwards? Because if you two can't do what's needed, then all my promises won't be worth a light, will they? Just bear that in mind— I'm the one who's taking the risk, walking in there and relying on you two. Remind Gunga Din of that little fact, will you?'
Hyde turned away as Miandad began to translate. He itched with nerves, his skin crawling with his increasing tension, with little prickly outbreaks of sweat, even as the temperature dropped towards zero. He knew he would be all right; he'd be able to cope, get through it. He had to, anyway. It would be some kind of compensation, an apologetic risk to prove that he didn't always kill unarmed boys to save them from torture and mutilation.
Now, Petrunin and the thought and memory of him no longer made him afraid. It was Petrunin, after all, who was really to blame for the boy's death on the chilly, dawn-lit hillside. It was Petrunin who was really to blame for what had happened to Aubrey. It was Petrunin who was really, really to blame for Hyde's danger, for his presence in this alien country, and to blame for the fact that even his own side would kill him if they found him. Thus, he wanted Petrunin very badly.
The curfew began at ten. Darkness fell before five.
The black car was escorted by motorcycle outriders with Kalashnikovs across their backs, and by two other black saloons before and behind it. The windows of all three cars were tinted and dark. The cars were heavy, ponderous, armour-plated, even on the underside of the chassis by the look of it, to prevent injury from a rolled grenade or a landmine: It was the arrival, or so it seemed to Hyde of some hated local despot or potentate. It was Petrunin.
The barrier swung up, the gates opened electronically. With little hesitation or slowing of its speed, the small motorcade swept through into the embassy compound. Hyde watched the cars until they halted outside the ugly extension, then his gaze transferred to the forest of aerials on the roof of the new building, then finally to the windows of the third floor. He counted.
Petrunin's suite of offices. The boy did not know how many guards, what alarms, what booby-traps. There, once inside the building, he would be alone, on his own, isolated and without assistance.
'Have you seen enough?' Miandad asked softly. There were flecks of snow in the darkening air. 'We have settled our matters.'
Hyde nodded. 'Yes, I've seen enough.'
Massinger stopped the car and switched off the engine. The curve of Wilton Crescent had lost most of its snow. He had parked almost directly opposite his own flat. As he looked up, he almost expected to see Margaret at one of the windows — dining-room, drawing-room, any one of the tall windows.
He kept his hands on the wheel of the rented Ford Granada, afraid that they would display a tremor he could not control the moment he freed them. It was past midday. He had been driving around central London, simply driving without purpose or destination, in the heavy Monday traffic for perhaps an hour. His mind had been filled with black and bitter recriminations. He blamed Aubrey and, more, he blamed himself. He viewed the past days, since that morning he had first visited Aubrey, as a kind of delirium; something heightened, feverish, unreal. A lost week, a period out of time; days stolen from his life.
Aubrey had been the thief of his time. Aubrey the murderer.
Not that he was convinced… No, he was not convinced, he told himself once more, not nearly convinced. But, he could not rid himself of the suspicion that it was true, might be true, could possibly be true…
Massinger shook his head like an old, tormented animal smelling the already spilled blood of the herd.
He knew, with a bleak certainty, that he had begun the process of moving towards a conviction of Aubrey's guilt. And for the moment, relief that it was over, relief that he could take up his life at the point where he had put it down like a parcel — all that was less important than the creeping horror that Aubrey had murdered Margaret's father. Had done, had done it—
Even the thought that he and Margaret would be as they had been — before all this business, before his visit to Aubrey — paled into insignificance beside the betrayal that Aubrey's probable guilt represented. Aubrey — of all people, of all crimes, Aubrey—?
He could not move from the car. Wearily, with limbs weighted with the gravity of some huge, malignant planet, he wiped at the clouded windscreen.
Hyde, he thought, but the thought lost shape, tailed off. Hyde—?
Probably dead.
The traitor—?
Unidentified.
Himself—?
He saw the concepts as words, and they appeared to him as clearly and as robbed of significance as if they had flickered onto a computer screen. And his answers were similarly robbed of importance. They were the mechanical answers of a computer.
Himself—?
Safe…
Yes, safe. He could cross the crescent, enter his flat, greet his wife, eat lunch after a dry sherry, then ring Babbington with a clear, satisfied conscience.
A few minutes, many words, an honourable draw. Everyone satisfied. No shame to him — Aubrey probably had done it, for whatever mad and jealous reasons.
Margaret would take him back. That was another of Massinger's certainties.
Then, get out of the car…
