healing skin was still tender. The palms and backs of his hands were still lightly bandaged. It was a reminder of fragility and, strangely, of isolation. He turned his head, watching the plume of the Ford's exhaust disappearing into the hazy grey morning. When he returned his gaze to Bratislava, it seemed in the snow-threatening air that the castle had crept closer to the river, like a guard anticipating his attempt to cross the border.
Hyde shivered, opened the door, kicked the slush from his boots against the car, then climbed into the driving seat. He started the engine. The pole began to swing up. An armed guard waved the queuing cars forward. He rubbed the clouded rear mirror. There was no longer any sign of the Ford. Briefly, he was aware of Margaret Massinger as another person, real like himself, at risk like himself with her instructions and the camera and film they had bought — then she retreated in his mind. He gripped the driving wheel, pressing his palms down upon it to pain them. He shuddered. He could not shake off the sense of impending failure or ignore the hurried desperation that had impelled him to this border crossing.
The arrangements had been easy. A call to Zimmermann, an address in a quiet old Viennese street, Margaret Massinger watching him intently while the lights glared in his eyes and his passport photographs were taken, the hours of work, the fake stamps — the resulting Austrian passport and the new identity. The skis and sticks, the goggles, the winter clothing, the boots…
The clockwork, hectic rush for a surprise holiday or business trip.
To end here, he thought, putting the Volkswagen into gear and letting off the handbrake. Bratislava looked as cold and inhospitable as the Danube beneath the cloudy, snow-filled sky. He revved the engine and shuffled the car forward in the queue. To end here — nerves frayed, confidence ebbed like a tide. Dry like a riverbed, he told himself. He was in poor shape. Everything depended upon him. The weight of that dependence pressed down on him.
The back wheels of the Beetle slithered in the rutted slush at the end of the sliproad, then he was passing beneath the raised pole. He glanced up at it, then down to look through the windscreen. Steeples had joined the castle on the lumpy, indistinct horizon. They appeared like up thrust rifles or spears. Hyde felt there was no comfort to be derived from his papers, from the ease of his passage, from the car awaiting him in Bratislava, a gun taped to the underside of its chassis in a waterproof bag. No comfort. The thing was hopeless from the beginning…
The river slid beneath the bridge, its surface like dirty glass, yet suggesting movement as quick and dangerous as the body of some great snake.
They had beaten Massinger savagely about the head with the barrels of their pistols, and when he did not slump immediately to the floor but still clung to them, struggling desperately, they, had shot him in the leg. Perhaps the gun had discharged accidentally — certainly Wilkes had been enraged by the noise and the blood — but they seemed determined to punish Massinger. Heaping on him, Aubrey thought, all blame for the frustration of their schemes.
Thirty-six and more hours later, it was easy to believe that Paul Massinger was dying, even dead. It was hard to recall the semiconscious man thrust beside him in the rear of the large Mercedes without imagining that the mask of blood he wore and the red-stained scarf tightened around his thigh were exact prophecies of the American's death. He had not been allowed to see Massinger since their arrival at the safe house. Aubrey, during the entire time, had found his thoughts obsessed by what Massinger had been murmuring in pain and semi-delirium in the back of the car. That, too, suggested an approaching death — the American's desperate attempts to whisper his suspicions to Aubrey before it was too late.
Stop it, stop it, he instructed himself. Massinger isn't dying, Massinger
Not from those wounds, he began to assure himself, but the phrase became imprecise in his thoughts; became not yet — won't die yet.
Because Massinger certainly would die. They would both die. To make the books balance, to keep matters neat and tidy, they would be disposed of.
Aubrey, hunched over the hands he clasped in his lap, nodded agreement with his conclusions as he sat on the edge of the hard bed, the curtains at the barred window still drawn, the light of the lamp a sickly yellow that fell upon his head and shoulders; upon his crumpled, collarless shirt and unshaven cheeks and ruffled, tufted remains of hair. He shivered, though the room was warm. His thoughts had conspired with the efficient but noisy radiators to keep him awake during most of the night; continually lurching him back to semi-consciousness, back to images of the gun barrels descending on Massinger, back to the deafening noise of the gun detonating in the high-ceilinged room. Back, too, to the doors bursting open, the immediate sense of attack and capture; then the struggle, then the stairs, the cold dusk, the back seat of the car, Massinger's moans and pain interrupting his whispered suspicions, and the name—
The one name, which did not surprise him because it matched the cleverness of the whole
Babbington.
Massinger did not know. The real suspicions belonged to Wolfgang Zimmermann, but Aubrey believed them. He knew those suspicions were correct. He rubbed his arm, noticing a tiny red spot in the crease of his bent elbow. Only then did he associate the dry, ugly taste in his mouth with the administration of a sedative; only then, perhaps two hours after rising from the bed, did he remember the needle and Wilkes's smirking features. They had drugged him to keep him quiet.
Then had he dreamed all those half-waking moments during the night? Had he dreamed the clunking of the radiators, the heat of the narrow room? He rubbed his unshaven cheeks warily and with apprehension. It unnerved and frightened him, that sudden and new sense of vulnerability. His hands shook and he could not still them. He felt saliva dribble down his chin and wiped at it viciously. His hands shook as he studied them. Babbington, Wilkes, others, may have watched him sleeping, may have been there…
One of the radiators clunked. The noise made him stand up stiffly and walk to the corner of the room and a wash-basin fitted to the wall. He avoided the mirror's image of himself, bending his head, swallowing tepid water from his cupped hand, then bathing his eyes and cheeks and forehead as the water ran colder. Icy.
He looked round for a towel. Thin, striped, much-used. He dried his face gratefully.
The door opened. Wilkes held it ajar. Babbington stepped into the room, shaven, his cologne preceding him, his dark suit uncreased. His lips smiled. Aubrey was unsurprised. He had known the man would come.
I was not asleep, he told himself. I did keep waking. The sedative did not work — not effectively. I was almost awake. Yet he knew that Babbington had stood over the bed at some time during the evening or night. The man's smile betrayed it.
'Kenneth,' he said softly, silkily.
'How is Massinger?' Aubrey snapped, deliberately folding and hanging the towel.
'Alive.'
'Recovering, I trust?'
'Yes, I think we can say he is recovering very well…'
'Every blow — every blow was delivered by you — your malice was in all of it!' Aubrey raged, surprised by his own outburst. His body quivered. 'Because he tried to help me—!'
'I'm sorry you feel that, Kenneth,' Babbington murmured. 'Please sit down — my dear Kenneth, do sit down.' He indicated one of the two narrow armchairs, and the bed. 'Please,' he soothed.
Aubrey watched the man's eyes. Did he know—? Was he here to learn—?
Babbington sat in one of the chairs. Wilkes tugged aside the curtains. The daylight was grey and snowy. 'Bring Sir Kenneth his breakfast, Wilkes,' Babbington instructed. Before Aubrey could say anything, Wilkes had left the room. Aubrey sank into the depression in the bedclothes he had previously made. Babbington leaned forward in the chair, hands touching as if at the commencement of prayer. 'Believe me, Kenneth, I am sorry about Massinger — but, he brought the whole thing upon himself. You realise that, surely—?'
'They clubbed him down and enjoyed doing so.'
Babbington flicked one hand impatiently, then it returned to accompany its twin in further prayer. 'I have said I'm sorry, Kenneth. Zeal — and anger. Yes, justified anger, perhaps. Your American friend has caused us a great deal of inconvenience—'
'I see.'
'Good.'
