Ros snorted in derision and anxiety, then left the room. The cat squeezed through the door just behind her feet. Left alone, Shelley stood up and walked around the sofa to confront the unyielding map once more, the can of Foster's still in his fist. His other hand was thrust into his trouser pocket. He began toying with his car keys. The car was even parked two streets away, just in case. Alison had gone to stay with her mother in Hove — he'd taken that precaution immediately after Hyde's call from Peshawar. Arguing all the way to the coast — but he had managed to return to London without them.
He had used the excuse of having caught a cold in order to leave his office less than an hour after reporting that morning. He had returned to Hyde's flat to await his call from Rome and to tell him the damaging, possibly fatal news of Aubrey and Massinger. He had spent the greater part of the previous night on the telephone in his flat, and the last few hours before dawn trying to sleep in Hyde's bed, which he found too hard. He was camped out, homeless.
Hiding, he reminded himself. I'm on the run like Hyde. I am hiding. No one knows it yet, but I'm already on the run.
He studied the map once more, his eyes roaming at first over whole continents, then reading his notes attached to those embassies and consulates he considered most vulnerable to a penetration operation.
He'd run all kinds of penetration ops from Queen Anne's Gate and from Century House, plenty of times. But he'd never held Aubrey's safety in his hands before, and the concentration required to play this kind of esoteric chess — this war-game — would not come because the old man's face was always there at the back of his mind. He sighed and swallowed more beer. It was gassy. He belched politely. The room was warmer now, with the central heating turned up.
Come on, come on — make a beginning, he told himself. Alison was safe in Hove, perhaps walking their daughter, the dog, even her mother's spaniel along the beach. He, too, was safe for the moment.
Safe until he talked to someone. He could not approach Sir William without Hyde, without Margaret Massinger. Whatever he said would be transmitted directly to Babbington, and he would have endangered himself for nothing. Sir William was leaving for Washington that evening. If he spoke to him now, he would pass the matter to the Cabinet Office or JIC, and they would immediately inform Babbington. No — that way, Aubrey's final disappearance was certain, and time would run out for the Massingers…
He was Aubrey's only hope. He and the annotated, scrawled-upon map on the wall. He flinched at the responsibility, convinced as he now was that Aubrey would be shipped to Moscow as soon as it could be arranged. It made sense. A drugged, bewildered Aubrey would pose for pictures in Moscow, the world would believe his treachery, and Babbington would be safe.
Shame about poor Massinger, dying in that car crash… his wife was terribly upset — she committed suicide, you know… poor woman. It wouldn't take long, or much of an effort, to clean the stable and ensure the continuation of Babbington the Russian agent as controller of all British intelligence and security.
Pictures of Aubrey — Babbington must already have thought of it and needed only to arrange the delivery of the package to Moscow Centre… Aubrey wearing his new medals, Aubrey in his new Moscow flat— Before Aubrey died and was forgotten. Come on, come on—!
He moved closer to the map. London was out — too well-guarded, impenetrable. And he didn't have the people… Likewise Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Helsinki…
The Middle East — SIS were thin on the ground there, anyway. He'd dismissed Baghdad, Cairo, Amman almost at once… Far East — they wouldn't have the computer links to Moscow Centre in some places, in others they'd be too well guarded, too secure.
His long fingers touched, even caressed the map, smoothing it, stroking whole continents, countries. Nothing. All his notes, almost every one of them, registered hopelessness. The men he could trust were pitifully few, those he could still trust in senior posts even fewer. None of them promised the kind of expertise required in handling a computer terminal, gaining access using Petrunin's instructions, and coping satisfactorily with ingress and egress. And already, almost all of them would have accepted Babbington as DG, and the re-organisation of SIS into SAID. Aubrey was no more than an unfortunate part of their collective past.
An irrelevant sense of fastidiousness made him lift the bottom corner of the map and look to see whether he had marked the wall with his pins and jottings. Yes… stabs of felt pen, little stains, the pricks of pins — damn!
He cursed himself for evading his task. Looking behind the map—!
Map — curtain — map — Curtain… Curtain…
He had lifted the map like an old lady peering from behind her net curtains, glimpsing adultery or a marital quarrel or new furniture being moved into the house across the street. But the image of a political curtain, the idea of the capital letter — had come to him instead.
Behind the Curtain…
He'd noted one or two of their embassies in Eastern Europe already… a preliminary listing of Aubrey's people, the still loyal, the ones who would act word-of-mouth from him without official orders, without explanations… where?
He knelt at the coffee-table, a vague progression of thoughts unrolling in his mind, but shapeless and changing as soon as he examined them. So he moved with them, instinctively, quickly… where?
He shuffled the papers, casting them aside because they seemed no longer relevant; a foolish speculation. Yes, here it was. A handful of people — lower echelon as before, SIS personnel who owed everything to the old man, as he did.
Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Bucharest…
He had to look at them on the map. He got up, the sheet in his hand — locals, unofficial, businessmen, SIS officers, clerks and cleaners and secretaries — inside and outside the Soviet embassies.
Berlin… His pen tapped at the city, at head-height on the wall. Berlin… everything was kosher between the Russians and East Germans — the old pals act. East German Intelligence was used by the KGB, they shared lots of work, security would be sloppier…
Berlin. Babbington would have Berlin Head of Station on his side already — Macauley would see the main chance, a London posting to East Europe Desk — Shelley's own job… who else was there? Clerks, ciphers — might do, might not? Shelley didn't know the men and therefore couldn't risk trusting them. Plenty of cleaners and secretaries on SIS's books in and around the Soviet embassy but no field officer capable of being trusted with the job.
He sighed with disappointment. The shapeless, changing ideas scudded through his mind. It was only their movement, their suggestion of energy that he obeyed. He anticipated nothing.
Warsaw. Nothing, not since martial law. SIS people had been picked up in the nets that caught the Solidarity leaders and so had many of the locals SIS employed. Warsaw, he noted with grim acceptance, was a blank piece of paper which he ought to affix to the map.
Bucharest — no. Too far, too many unknowns — possibly no high-grade traffic with the Moscow Centre main computers. Budapest — now, Budapest…?
A network had been rolled up there six months before. It had never been re-established. An indiscreet junior minster had been on the hook, right inside the Interior Ministry. He gave the names of all the others, of his contact officer, of the occasional visiting field controller, and they'd all gone into the bag.
They'd got two back, three were still in prison — two businessmen and an exchange student — and the native Hungarians had all been shot. Budapest — blank sheet, then…
Belgrade. Tight, because of Yugoslavia's non-aligned status. Just like a foreign country to the KGB. Plenty of Yugoslavs, but little to show for their efforts.
Prague… another old pals act. The KGB used the STB, Czech Intelligence, as its messenger-boys, its hit-men on occasion. The heavy mob. That obscenity of a Czech embassy built of grey concrete and smoked glass in Kensington Palace Gardens carried more high-powered aerials and receiving dishes than the Soviet embassy itself. The KGB and the STB played footsie all the time with one another.
Shelley remembered a report from a low-grade source that much of the communications network used by the KGB in Prague now existed inside the Hradcany Castle rather than in the Soviet embassy. As he recalled the information, he remembered himself as a tourist, years before, on holiday in Prague, and immediately his mind was filled with images of the huge, looming cathedral of St Vitus, part of the Hradcany. He'd queued for hours to get into its garish, almost oriental interior — Cologne cathedral tarted up for a pop concert, Alison had said of it.
He'd seen — they'd both seen — the big black Russian saloons parked like a defensive barricade around the
