nearest neighbour. Eldon could remember occasions when Babbington, the aspiring acolyte in the secret world, would not have merited such a secluded corner of the dining-room. The memory amused him. In some small part, the audacity of Aubrey's escape amused him, too; just as it enraged him morally to see the man escape his trial and conviction.
'Very well. As long as Kenneth's found, there will be no recriminations. Shelley obviously wasn't involved. Kenneth ran out of luck, and nerve, and time. But, Eldon, on this matter of SAID—?' The tone had an element of seduction in it.
'Yes, Sir Andrew?'
'I want you as Deputy Director-General. Second Deputy, of course. I shall have to promote Worthington — temporarily.'
'I understand, Sir Andrew. Thank you.' Eldon sliced at his lamb cutlet. Babbington sipped at his claret. 'I did not expect—' Eldon felt obliged to offer, surprised at his own lack of excitement.
'You never do, do you, Eldon?' Babbington almost sneered. 'You seem quite without proper ambition, at times.'
'I'm sorry, Sir Andrew,' Eldon replied calmly, chewing on the piece of lamb, his gaze level and untroubled. Babbington was irritated by his subordinate's self-possession. His own delight was tarnished by Aubrey's disappearance, but only on the grounds that its ease reflected on himself. Aubrey, per se, did not matter any longer. He had lost, was lost.
'Very well, Eldon,' Babbington snapped, irritated by the lack of surprise and pleasure in Eldon, then dismissing the emotions. Eldon was good, reliable, efficient, unambitious — a perfect DDG 2. There was a wife somewhere in Hampshire who would, no doubt, see the promotion in cruder, more pleasurable terms than had her husband. 'Where do you think dear Kenneth is now?'
Eldon studied the claret as if its vintage and origins were no more than a cover story. Then he sipped it, and nodded. 'On his way East, Sir Andrew. He'll pop up in Moscow, no doubt, in due course — for the medal ceremony.' Eldon seemed to be speaking without irony.
'I suppose so,' Babbington agreed. 'A damned nuisance, all the same.'
'Perhaps tidier,' Eldon murmured.
'Root and branch now, Eldon. Your first job. All Aubrey's old cronies, his lackeys and appointments and time-servers. I want them all out.'
'Of course. It makes sense.'
A waiter approached as Babbington was about to reply. A silver tray was offered. Babbington took the sealed envelope. He opened it with the proffered paper-knife, levering up the red, embossed wax, then waved the waiter away. Eldon watched him as he read; watched, too, his own emotions. Studied the lack of pleasure, remembered the Sunday lunch he had shared with Aubrey, and sensed an unwilling and surprising comparison of Babbington and Aubrey in his emotions. Babbington was without charm, except when he chose to exercise it. Aubrey was — charming. Gifted, intuitive, and he would have said upright before events proved that idea no more than a sham. Aubrey was what Eldon might have fancied himself to be — except that Aubrey was a proven traitor. Eldon had no wish, however, to be Babbington.
He watched Babbington's heavy features. Brutally handsome, perhaps. Elaine would have admired the strength of character they displayed, even in growing anger, as now. Fear, too, he thought quickly, even as he inwardly smiled at his wife's impressionability with regard to the superfices of human character. It was as if he had married, with subconscious deliberation, someone who could never rival or imitate his own capacity for insight.
Fear, too—?
Why?
Babbington caught Eldon's gaze, and there was only anger. Eldon maintained a calm expressionless exterior. Babbington screwed the paper into a ball in his fist.
'A message from the Continent,' he announced with heavy irony. 'Massinger has been seen in Bonn.'
'One of the first fruits of SAID,' Eldon observed.
'It isn't a joking matter, Eldon!'
'I'm sorry—'
'What in hell's name is Massinger doing in Bonn?' Eldon thought he detected an element of bluff, or subterfuge in the puzzlement. As if Babbington knew the answer…? Eldon dismissed his guess. Better to be like Elaine on some occasions, he warned himself. Interrogator's paranoia. 'Why the devil can't he drop this damn business?' Babbington continued. 'He must be stopped.'
'Does it matter? May I?' Eldon held out his hand. Babbington reluctantly passed him the ball of paper. Eldon smoothed it on the tablecloth, and read. Eventually, he said: 'I don't see what we can do, since he's with Zimmermann. Ask politely, I suppose?'
'So do it. And — find Aubrey. I want him to stand trial — I want Aubrey in the dock at the Old Bailey!'
Eldon glimpsed the fear once more, lurking beneath the anger like a serpent beneath a flower. Eldon, too, squeezed the sheet of notepaper into a ball in his fist.
To have reached the abandoned Afghan fort before darkness seemed to Hyde like a race that had been won. The day had exhausted him. Not because of the distance so much as the tensions that surrounded himself and his prisoner. There were eleven Pathans still alive, including Mohammed Jan, and all of them coveted Petrunin as certainly as if he were encrusted with precious stones. Even now, in the shadows of the fort's empty, windswept rooms — a wind that plucked little drifts of snow from the corners and floors of the rooms and whirled them like new showers — Hyde could sense their eyes turning continually towards the Russian, their hunger evident. Miandad sensed some kind of approaching crisis, too, for he had positioned himself near Hyde and Petrunin, his small frame crouched and alert with tension. Mohammed Jan, after posting his look-outs, paced through the fort like a magnate who had acquired a mansion requiring extensive renovation. There was about him both an urgent need for change and a sure sense of possession. Petrunin was his, his stance and movements declared. His by right, his to take.
They had left the truck to continue its journey to Jalalabad less than five miles from the place where they had ambushed the patrol and Hyde had killed Lieutenant Azimov. The Pathans who had slipped out of Kabul in wagons, on bicycles, by bus and even on foot, rendezvoused with them before midday. Hyde was shocked to discover how few in number they were. There had been no time at the rug maker's to ask Miandad anything as the Pakistani had hurried him into the back of the truck with the now conscious Petrunin, then joined the driver in the cab. The staff car was driven away by one of the rug-maker's sons and presumably dumped.
The truck had not been searched. They had evaded the net, perhaps by no more than ten or fifteen minutes. Confusion still aided them, and Petrunin might not yet have been missed.
The afternoon had been filled with the noise of helicopters, after they had taken to the hills — their noise and the sharklike shapes of MiL gunships dark against the snow-clad hillsides. The Pathans had protected Petrunin like their dearest possession; which he was, Hyde admitted. He was the purse that held the coinage of their hatred and their revenge. Bright gold coins. They had avoided detection with what had seemed like ease, threading through narrow defiles or using hidden, hair-thin tracks that clung to the sheer sides of the hills, until they reached the fort where Hyde and Miandad had rested two days before.
After nightfall, they would continue their journey. Miandad expected them to cross the border into Pakistan before dawn. Hyde associated the crossing, and the hours before it, only with crisis, not with safety at the journey's end.
Hatred. Even in that sub-zero temperature, its effects heated Hyde's body. Almost three-quarters of the Pathans had died for this man's capture, the last of them in the square, buried by rocket-loosened masonry or raked by bullets. Some of them might yet die of wounds, exhaustion or gangrene. Their efforts and their losses demanded the mutilation of Petrunin and his slow death as recompense. To satisfy their hatred, they would risk capture and death by remaining here for two or three days just to kill him slowly and with infinite pleasure.
Above all, Petrunin had burned fifty of Mohammed Jan's men; burned two of his sons.
'My friend,' Miandad murmured on the other side of the apparently sleeping Petrunin, 'what will you do? Have you decided?'
The wind whipped snow from one corner of the roofless room in which they huddled around a small, flickering fire, creating a tiny blizzard which lasted no more than a moment. The arms of Petrunin's greatcoat were
