colour in patches and glimpses. There was nothing for her here—
Except the almost quiet, the almost stillness…
When she noticed that the choir and the organ had become silent, and that she was cold, despite her coat — her legs especially were chilly — she looked around her, then at her watch. It was almost six-thirty. Immediately, she thought of Paul, and she looked about anxiously, as if expecting to see him close at hand. She thought, too, of Aubrey, and of the written account he had promised her. She did not want it. She would tell him so. He could destroy it, if it helped him.
For the moment, she realised, she was drained of all feeling. She accepted her emptiness with gratitude. It was over, if only for that moment or that day. She would not anticipate its return. She stood up after chafing her cold legs. Then she turned towards the west door and left the cathedral.
The Stephensplatz was still busy. Crowds of people seemed to disappear into the maw of the metro entrance across the square. Homegoers hurried past her as she walked slowly back towards the shoe-shop and the archway and courtyard and apartment that she now felt she could confront.
She turned up her collar. The wind had not lessened. It flicked and whirled around her, lifting the skirt of her coat, as she passed under the archway. The fountain had become a weak, broken peacock's tail, and the green plants rattled in the wind. She pressed the bell.
And saw that the door was unlocked, not fully latched…
No one had answered the bell — she had not heard the catch released. The door had been open. She went in and up the stairs, rehearsing her manner towards Aubrey, especially towards Paul.
The double doors were open into the drawing-room, after the door at the head of the stairs had also been found ajar. Every door was open. The drawing-room was empty.
'Paul,' she called. Then, more loudly: 'Paul!' Finally, hoarse with suspicions-becoming-fears: 'Paul!'
The chair on which Clara Elsenreith had seated herself was overturned. The armchairs and the sofa still bore the imprints of their three bodies. There were glasses, and a smell of whisky spilt on the huge Chinese carpet. She bent down to pick up one of the tumblers, and her fingers were red when she clutched it. For an instant she imagined she had cut herself, and then she saw the patch of blood on the pattern of the rug, almost circular and dyeing its tight pile. There was a smear of it on the chair, too, and on the arm of the chair, as if someone wounded had slumped…
It was the chair where Paul had been sitting!
She heard a faint, distant knocking, muffled and unimportant. Paul—! Where was he? Where was Aubrey—? Blood—?
She heard footsteps coming quickly, lightly up the staircase.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
All Our Rubicons
The sunlight gleamed on the fins and flanks of the parked and taxiing aircraft at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport. It was a bright, springlike day after the cold and mountains of Afghanistan. Yet for Hyde it was, also, a scene viewed through too much glass, too visible. It prompted suggestions of the imminence of surveillance and discovery, even though before entering the telephone booth he had swept the main passenger lounge a dozen times and found it clean of everyone except airport security.
He was still wrapped tightly in his dark overcoat. They had handed it to him in Peshawar as if it formed a part of a new and enemy uniform. They had watched him with clever, sad, disapproving brown eyes and serious dark faces. Miandad's people, all of them disappointed, hurt that it was he who had come back, yet punctilious in carrying out their dead superior's orders. Medical attention, food, bath, shave, telephone provision with secure line, transport. Because he could not write with his bandaged, aching hands, they had given him the use of a portable tape-recorder and an empty room. Once ensconced and securely alone, he had dictated into the receiver every clearly recollected word Petrunin had spoken concerning the retrieval of
He had been bundled aboard a military jet to Karachi and put on the first commercial flight to Rome. He knew he was no more than luggage. Handled carefully and with respect because it was the property of a wealthy and powerful man, but it was nevertheless done in a remote and detached manner. His debriefing had been skeletal, concerned mainly with the way in which Miandad had met his death. Even the demise of Petrunin seemed of little interest to them. It seemed that nothing which had occurred was deemed worthy of the sacrifice of Colonel Miandad. Petrunin was the bane of the Pathans and the other mujahiddin. His death might console the families for the loss of Mohammed Jan and the others.
Thus, they had dispensed with his company as soon as they were able. Officially, he had never been in the country, had never crossed the border with Miandad. They had repeated many times during his period with them, Miandad's last words as reverently as if they had come from the Koran. Mr Hyde must be given every assistance, whatever the circumstances, whatever the outcome.
It was why their helicopter had spotted him, picked him up.
He had spent more than an hour on the telephone to Shelley, whom Ros had summoned to the flat in Earl's Court. He had been fully debriefed, even to reciting once more Petrunin's useless retrieval instructions. Shelley had been shocked by his revelations; bemused by the computer jargon; numbed by their incapacity to do anything against Babbington.
On the flight from Karachi, Hyde had slept because there was nothing else to do; nothing left to do. He knew, and his knowledge was useless to him, useless to Shelley. He had measured progress only by the decreasing pain in his hands and face.
Clumsily, with his bandaged right hand, he dialled the number of his flat, and waited for it to ring four times. Then he put down the receiver, picked it up and dialled again. On the third ring, Shelley picked up the receiver in Earl's Court.
'It's me,' Hyde announced. 'What's the news?'
'Catastrophic, Patrick — nothing sort of disastrous.' Over the telephone, Shelley sounded lugubrious in an almost comic way. Yet Hyde sensed shock and fear beneath the gloom.
'What?'
'Babbington's got the old man, and Massinger.'
'Christ, how? When? You didn't even know where they were yesterday.'
'Vienna—'
'Massinger went back there? The glass around him was acquiring the faint opaqueness of his tension. I don't believe it—!'
'I thought they were in Bonn, with Zimmermann, just as I told you yesterday. But, they got a lead on what happened to her father in 1946, in Berlin—'
'What the hell are they doing bothering with that, for Christ's sake?'
'His wife's obsessed by it — poor woman. But, the old man was there, too — in the apartment of a woman he knew in Berlin, and one Gastleford knew, too.' Shelley's voice was very quiet and distant, a long way away. 'I've spoken to her — got her number from Zimmermann… he's been suspended from his post, by the way. The word from on high—'
'So, Babbington got the lot of them? They all walked right into the cage. Christ, while I'm out in Apache country, the old man's revisiting one of his old flames and the bloody Massingers are worrying about dear dead Daddy's spotless reputation! What a fucking mess, Shelley! What a God-awful fucking cock-up!'
'Feel better now?' Shelley asked after a few moments of silence.
'What else is there?'
'They didn't get Massinger's wife, nor this Clara Elsenreith woman. Both of them were out of the apartment when the two men were taken. There was blood on the carpet, and the maid locked in a wardrobe. This Elsenreith woman's a hard one but she's scared, too. She knows what's at stake — Aubrey must have confided everything to
