Vassiliev leaned towards him, eyes flicking over Hyde's shoulder towards the stage, as the pianist imitated a fanfare. Hyde could never decide whether Vassiliev's interest in the girls was genuinely naïve and crude, or merely a badge of his manhood, designed to be noticed by those in his company. The KGB regarded homosexuals in only one light — as victims; malleable, male prostitutes. If Vassiliev had any hidden proclivities towards men, then he was wise to hide them.
"You were wrong," he said.
It was the one statement Hyde had not expected to hear. It generated a mass of complex doubts, questions and fears in an instant. The woman on stage was young, breasts extended to unnatural size by injection and implant, face expressionless beneath the make-up. See-through negligée, towel and loofah, bar of soap. The trio vamped the only expectancy in the now darkened room. Hyde watched the stage, picking his way towards the appropriate degree of innocent surprise. "Dmitri, what do you mean I was wrong?"
"They have got Quin. They have him, but they want the girl." Vassiliev's sweat gave off the pungency of the body rub he used. It clashed with his after shave, with the girl's scent, the omnipresent cigarette smoke.
"I'm not wrong," Hyde began, but Vassiliev was already nodding eagerly. Hyde felt cold.
"Yes. Look, I risked everything this afternoon. There was no more gossip. I looked in the travel ledger. I went back and checked on the people who came in. They left with a third man — the next day. They flew to Paris in a light aircraft. I have the address, the booking. Three passengers —" He reached into his pocket, but Hyde grabbed his hand — it quivered in his grip, which was slippery against Vassiliev's skin, informing Hyde that his nerves were taking him over. The girl was testing the supposed temperature of the water in the bath, letting the negligée fall open almost to the crotch. None of the audience was watching their corner of the room.
"Three? Three? What proof's that? I don't believe you, Dmitri. I don't think you know," Hyde hissed at the Russian, still gripping the man's hand near his chest. The girl had stepped — with something less than elegance — over the side of the bath. Her negligée was drooping from one shoulder, tented by one enormous breast.
"You must believe me, you must!"
"I don't, Dmitri. Now, what bloody game are you playing?" The girl was obviously going to bath with tassels on her nipples. She slid down into the supposed water.
Then Vassiliev's eyes began moving, darting round the room. Hyde forced himself not to turn round. It did not mean there was someone in the room, only that there were others, either nearby or simply giving orders. Hyde gripped his thigh with his free hand, forcing the calm of angered puzzlement into his frame and face and voice. "What bloody game are you playing, mate?" The girl had divested herself of the" negligée, but not the tassels. She was stroking herself with the loofah.
"No game, Mr Hyde, no game!" Vassiliev was leaning towards him like a lover in the hot darkness, but he could not keep his eyes on Hyde's face. Escape, help, answers. He repeated the formula they had taught him. "Three men left in that plane for Paris. Yes, they want the girl, but they have Quin in Moscow — I'm certain of it."
"You don't know who the third man was. It couldn't have been Quin — " Hyde found himself engaged in an attempt to justify the suspicions he had voiced to Aubrey; as if he believed Vassiliev. The girl was on the point of engaging in intercourse with the loofah. Soon she would be dropping the soap. "No," he said, "you're lying, Dmitri. Why should they want you to lie?"
"They? What do you mean?" Too innocent.
"You weren't lying or mistaken at lunchtime. You knew, then. Now, you're working for them. Did they ask you how much you told me? Did they?" Hyde's face was close to Vassiliev. He could smell the man's last meal on his breath, and the brandy after dinner. Too much brandy — no, they wouldn't have allowed him more than one or two. "They knew about you all the time, but they didn't let on. Not until they realised you must have told me more than was good for me." He was shaking Vassiliev's hand, in anger and in community. The girl had dropped the soap, which did not slide across the stage. Her enormous breasts were hung over the side of the bath as she attempted to retrieve it. The trio was playing palm court music. The prissy, virginal sweetness of it assailed Hyde. "You were doing all right until you told me you thought they didn't have Quin. And you know it!"
"I — must go," Vassiliev said. Now the soap was back in the bath, but lost again. The girl was looking for it on her hands and knees. Snake-charmer music, and she rose to her feet, backside to the audience, buttocks proffered, swaying.
"You're going nowhere. Where are they?"
"Not here, not here!"
"You're coming in, Dmitri."
"No!"
"You have to. We'll take care of you. I can't behave as if I believe you. You're the one in danger now." Vassiliev had thought of it, but had ignored it. He shook his head, as if the idea was only a pain that would move, dissipate. The girl had the loofah again, standing up now, in profile to the room. The loofah was being energetically applied. "Come on," Hyde added.
"No! I can't leave with you, I can't!"
"Why not?"
"I can't!" He was pleading now. They were outside. If he emerged with Hyde, they would know Hyde had not swallowed the tale. The almost religious silence of the room was broken by hoarse cries of encouragement, underscored with what seemed like a communal giggle. The girl's body acknowledged the response to her performance.
"You can!" The gun, the gun — he'd left it at his flat, held it in his hand, almost amused, for a moment before stuffing it under a pile of shirts in a drawer. The gun —
"No, no, no — " Vassiliev was shaking his head vehemently.
"It's your only chance. Come on, the back way." Hyde got up, stood over the Russian, willing him to his feet. Vassiliev rose, and they shuffled through the tables towards the toilets. The door into the concrete, ill-lit corridor sighed shut behind them.
Vassiliev immediately turned to him. "No," he said.
“They concocted this story, right?" Vassiliev nodded, nerveless, directionless now. "Why?"
"I don't know. They told me they had known, that they had fed you the information about Quin through me, deliberately. Then yesterday happened, and while they were deciding what to do about me, we talked. I–I told them everything." A sense of shame, as sharp as a physical pain, crossed his features.
"It's all right, it's all right — was there anyone in the club?
Vassiliev shook his head. There was applause on the other side of the door. "Come on."
Hyde half-pushed Vassiliev towards the emergency exit beyond the toilet. He heaved at the bar, remembered letting in friends by similar doors in Wollongong cinemas just before the start of the main feature, then the door swung open. The windy night cried in the lightless alley. He paused momentarily, and looked at Vassiliev. Then he nodded.
They went through the door almost together, but even so the man with the gun must have been able to distinguish between them. Vassiliev cried out — Hyde hardly heard the brief plopping sound of the silenced gun before the Russian's murmured cry — then he slumped against Hyde, dragging at his clothes, smearing the front of the Australian's shirt with something dark and sticky. Then he fell back, for a moment his face green from the exit sign's light, then all of him was simply a barely distinguishable bundle of clothes on the other side of the alley. Hyde waited for the noise of footsteps above the wind's dry call, or the sound of another stone-into-water plop that would be the last sound he would ever hear.