was as if he were running across a tightrope of snow. On either side of the ridge, the mountain fell away — forty feet or more to his left, thousands of feet to his right. He wobbled forward, terrified of slowing, of losing his balance.
He was climbing again, the ridge broadening like a flying-buttress at its point of closure with the cathedral. He spurred his numb, leaden legs to more effort. One, two, three, four, climbing more steeply now, he remembered this section, the ridge and beyond it the narrow path across the cliff-face, then a winding, slow climb up to the fold in the mountain which concealed the entrance to the long, narrow valley where Petrunin had burned the Pathans to death.
Ten, eleven, twelve…
His left leg blundered deeply into the snow, up to his groin. His right leg bent, balanced him, and he thrust with it, toppling himself to his left, over the edge of the ridge, the snow pouring like a waterfall with him as he fell, his head spinning — stars, snow, greyness, snow, snow in his eyes and nostrils, in every opening and crack in his clothing. He tried to reach for the gun, then like a vessel out of control he struck against a rock submerged in snow and lay winded, consciousness coming and going, his body incapable of further effort.
He paused in the secret darkness on the narrow staircase, and wondered whether the ghost of the old maiden aunt had observed his arrival. Not even a maiden aunt, he reminded himself. At the top of the staircase was a flat that had belonged to a reclusive, aged spinster without living family. She had died entirely alone. Her death had been unmourned, even unrecorded. Her property had never been sold. The cat and the canaries, of course, had been disposed of. The flat provided an ideal meeting-place; a safe house. On the ground floor were the offices of a small and unsuccessful importer of plastic novelties from the Far East for inclusion in Christmas crackers. A KGB cover.
Already, he could smell the mustiness of the little used flat reaching down the stairs towards him. Mothballs, the long-ago urinations of successive cat companions, the smell of unchanged and uncleaned bird-cages, the smell of mothballs in old tweed skirts and out-of-date dresses and rubbed-bare, patchy fur coats. Yet he waited on the stairs. Upstairs, his contact would be waiting. It was not that he was reluctant to begin the meeting — far from it. Pausing for a moment between the noise of traffic from the street outside and the pervading old-maid scents from above, Babbington was confident. Of course, treachery was like an old, wounded elephant. Threatened, it had to blunder to its own defence, unable to move quickly or decisively. The cut-outs, the drops, the contacts, the letter- boxes, all the subtle means of contact, prevented speed and decisiveness. Security — the security designed to protect him — was a wound when speed was required. Yet it needed only locomotion; a few moments for the elephant to gather its strength in order to make its enemies instead of itself seem puny and wounded. There had been shock-delay, of course.
And the fact that Petrunin's scheme had been too clever. He had warned them about that. Dazzlingly clever. Aubrey, solitary as he was, had never lacked friends, willing hands. Which had brought the Massingers into the game, and Hyde and Shelley, and now Zimmermann.
And yet, it had taken the work of only a few hours — would he admit to the sweaty, uncertain, tense nature of those hours, now he was safe again? Perhaps yes, just a little unnerving, but only a few hours to right the balance, to restore the fortunes of the board. The Massingers were in Bonn with Zimmermann — the woman, Clara Elsenreith, was in Vienna. If he read Massinger's stupid, caring American character aright, he and his wife would go to the woman. Vienna Station, in all important respects, was his. They would be walking into a neat and certain trap; the conclusion of their enquiries. Full stop. Period, as Massinger might put it.
Babbington smiled to himself in the darkness. The wallpaper was old, pregnant in a dozen places with damp and time. Zimmermann would hold back so long as one frightened him sufficiently. And Aubrey — yes, Aubrey, too, might make for Vienna, for that woman with whom he had once been involved…?
Babbington shook his head. That was, perhaps, too optimistic a view. Whatever, Aubrey would be found soon — And silenced.
It would be well, all manner of things would be well, just as long as he acted quickly. And he had done so.
He looked up towards the head of the stairs, the landing, and the door into the musty passageway of the flat. Oleg would be there, the irritating portable cassette-player in his lap, narrow headphones at his ears, passing the time with Mahler and modern jazz while he awaited his arrival; a man sitting in self-contained silence in a barely furnished room in need of decoration. Babbington shook off the clinging lack of importance and status about the room and Oleg.
The KGB were standing back on this, of course, and for two good reasons. Firstly, they had no wish to compromise or even expose him by violent response. And secondly, they regarded it as a test for him. Could he cope with this emergency? Now their man possessed the power, could he use it to protect himself.
Babbington again smiled to himself, moving one or two steps nearer the head of the staircase. Moscow Centre was nothing if not pragmatic. Even he could be risked in order to test his quality. Well, he'd done it. This little crisis, just a hiccough, would last no more than another twenty-four hours — especially if they killed Petrunin and Hyde in Afghanistan, as should have been done with Petrunin in the first place.
He'd liked Tamas Petrunin when he had been London Rezident. He was the sort of KGB staff officer one could admire, admit as an equal in mind and taste and dedication. Unlike the peasant Kapustin. Nevertheless, sentiment would not have interfered. The moment
Babbington reached the head of the staircase and looked back. There were muted noises from the traffic outside, and a ratlike scrabbling from some ground floor storeroom behind the importer's offices. Otherwise, silence. All would be well… There was no real emergency, only individuals; stings, not a swarm. Pieces of little value to be removed from the board; a small matter with the power he now possessed.
Moscow Centre would assume him satisfied now. He had reached the pinnacle. What they had never understood was his motive. He had joined them in the wake of Suez. 1956. They assumed, as they always did when ideology and money were not involved — as they were not in his case — that power was the answer. The secret, convoluted, game-playing power that Philby and Blunt and the others had enjoyed, whatever their ideological protestations. Their gratification was not his. His was subtler, more refined.
The warmth of self-congratulation spread through his strong frame. He would indulge it, keep Oleg waiting a moment longer.
It was to avoid being powerful simply and only in a third-rate way. To avoid being no more than a secret, powerful cog in the machinery of a third-rate world power. He despised the pinnacle of secret power on a mountain-top where those who ruled felt the appropriate and glorious last move in the Great Game was the reinvasion of the Falkland Islands. The brouhaha of that incident had nauseated him — even made him shiver with self-regarding embarrassment now, as he stood at the head of the stairs — and left him more than ever confirmed in his chosen secret path.
He might never have been a traitor, as they termed it, had he been born a century earlier. England would then have been able to offer him everything he wanted. He would have been vital, crucial, to a first-rate power, to the world power…
In the 'fifties, he could not turn to America — had they been the enemy in whose ranks he could have secretly enlisted, he would have done so — and thus he had turned East, to Moscow. To the Soviet Union, to the KGB, he was as important as Kapustin, as important as the Chairman, almost as important as First Secretary Nikitin. For that secret pinnacle, for that value to be placed upon him, he had waited for almost thirty years. For that he had worked, for that he had made his original choice, treachery rather than loyalty. He was one of the most important figures in the hierarchy of a superpower. England, now bankrupt and laughable as she was, proved every day to his immense satisfaction that he had chosen wisely.
He crossed the narrow, linoleumed landing almost blithely, and opened the door. The musty passageway was unlit, but there was a dim light from the lounge beyond. Yes, Oleg would be sitting there with his silly little headphones on, his foot perhaps tapping in rhythm to some unheard jazz.
Babbington smiled. Twenty-four hours, no more than that. That is what Oleg would want to hear, and that is what Babbington felt himself able to guarantee.
'Babbington played a very uncharacteristically minor role in the ensuing investigations… His absences, his
