"What? You're crazy, Hyde… Babbington caught Aubrey. Handed him over for us to guard — and we buggered it up. Lost him. Understand? He's going back to Mother Russia, and good fucking riddance to him!"
"What's happening to the old man?" Hyde yelled into the telephone.
Rub the mirror clear. Smoking, drinking in the office. Heads lifted in laughter.
"He's already left for the airport — just had the report." Beach was calmer now, almost pleased.
"Then stop him!"
"Babbington's letting him go, Hyde. Your mate's not to be touched. Better for everyone. Even you—"
"Christ — don't you listen?" Mirror. Small, tight, relaxed group in the office. New cigarettes being lit. The sense at the other end of the line that someone else had taken — snatched? — the receiver.
A pause, then: "Hyde?" He recognised Wilkes's voice. "It's Wilkes, Patrick." Then: "OK, Beach, I'll deal with this. Get some coffee up here, will you?"
"Wilkes — where's the old man?"
"Where are you, Hyde?" Wilkes's tone was amused, certain.
"Never mind. I've got it all, Wilkes. Everything. Even his name. Of course, no one mentioned anyone as small-time as you."
"Everything, eh? Still in Czecho, are you? You won't get out, old son. That's certain."
Mirror—!
Group breaking up, one of the two policemen nearer the office's glass door, turning back to speak, hand outstretched to the ear-shaped handle of the door. Time—
No time. All over. Hyde ground his teeth audibly as he struggled to contain his rage.
"You know what I've got," he said, certain that Babbington already knew of his interference with the computer. They'd have tracked down and run Petrunin's programme themselves by now.
"You don't matter, Hyde. You're a dead man. You won't get out."
"And your boss is running for London already, is he? Wiping his shoes on Guest's doormat, full of the news that he's lost the old man to his Russian friends?"
"First businessman's flight this morning to Heathrow. Your pal Aubrey's just about to leave. He'll be in Moscow before it gets light." Wilkes chuckled.
One policeman through the door, the second replacing his cap and following. The manager's hand raised in farewell. Too late to move now. Wait until they get close—
"And then—?"
"He goes on show, old son. Press call — the whole shocking story. Terrible ordeal for the poor old sod. Can't say the same for the Yank and his wife, of course. They'll just disappear on arrival."
"I'll have Babbington, Wilkes. I swear it. And you. I don't care how long, or when and where. I'll have you both."
Both policemen near their car. One, hands on hips, staring towards the telephone booth. Cap pushed on the back of his head. Glance towards the Skoda, then back to Hyde—
"If you hurry, Hyde, you'll catch him before he boards the seven o'clock to Heathrow. First-class lounge, of course. I'll give him a call, shall I, tell him to be expecting you?" Wilkes laughed.
Seven o'clock. Heathrow arrival time, nine-thirty. He glanced at his watch as he cut off the call with his free hand. Retaining his grip on the receiver to allay suspicion. Policemen unmoving. Aubrey would be in Moscow even before Babbington's flight reached London.
Three fifty-five. Five and a half hours. Guest must be arriving from Washington on the early morning flight.
Mirror—
The patrol car's engine started, the car moved, rounding the pumps in a wide arc, heading towards him. His free hand moved to the lapel of his coat. The policeman in the passenger seat stared at him. The patrol car did not stop. Hyde felt the coin box hard against his side as he slumped in relief. The rear lights of the car moved off towards Karlovy Vary, climbed windingly up the hill, then dropped over the brow and disappeared.
Hyde slammed down the damp receiver and opened the fogged glass door. He hurried towards the Skoda. He fumbled in his pocket for the car keys. Dropped them, then scooped them out of a pool of petrol-rainbowed water on the point of freezing.
He wanted Babbington arrested as he got off the flight from Vienna. He wanted it. If he could talk to Guest, persuade him—
Before the old man disappered. Why should they put him on display at a press conference like an old bear at the zoo? That could backfire. Everyone knew the old man had been taken to Moscow. A few snaps of him getting off the plane would be enough.
He wrenched open the door, climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine. The windscreen clouded immediately. He rubbed it clear, turned the wheel, pulled away from the garage.
Aubrey wouldn't live. He knew that with a sick, inescapable certainty. Whatever Wilkes said or believed, the KGB wouldn't risk it. It could go wrong. The photographs of him getting off the aircraft, looking old and tired and ill, and then—
Heart attack. Eulogies in the papers, on Soviet TV and radio. Medal awarded posthumously. Much safer.
Aubrey was a dead man the moment he left the aircraft in Moscow.
Hyde accelerated. The lights of Karlovy Vary were spread out below him as he descended the hill towards the spa town. Four o'clock. He had five and a half hours. After that, Aubrey was lost; irrecoverable.
He had been surprisingly grateful when he saw the guard carrying his small suitcase containing the clothes Mrs Grey had purchased for him immediately before his flight from London. To dress in something that fitted, something uncreased and clean, delighted him. Strengthened his resolve. It wasn't until he reached Schwechat airport that he realised the image was part of Babbington's purpose.
The black limousine, accompanied by two similar cars, and the van containing the luggage, turned off the main road from Vienna, skirted the passenger terminal, and drew up at the gates leading to the cargo and airline hangars. It was evident they were expected. Politeness from the officers at the gates, some joviality. Aubrey watched Voronin casually hand over a bundle of diplomatic passports and visas. And felt himself watched by the man beside him. Sensed the unnecessary gun jutting near his own ribcage.
The Austrian officer passed down the queue formed by the three cars and the van. Aubrey tried to shrink back into the upholstery, but the man beside him, abandoning the gun he held, gripped his arm and forced his features into the hard light shining down from above the gates. A moment of hesitation without recognition, a glance at the appropriate false papers supplied by Voronin, and then he moved away. The grip on Aubrey's arm relaxed. The gun's barrel touched his side almost at once.
The officer would remember him. Yes, Kenneth Aubrey or a man answering his description was seen arriving at Schwechat, traveling under a Soviet diplomatic passport. Yes, yes, yes—
He glanced down at his suit, his modest tie, his dark overcoat. He would be remembered, as they intended. A man goes willingly in a well-pressed suit and a clean shirt. With false papers. He would step out of the aircraft at Cheremetievo — or at Domodedovo or Vnukovo, whichever airport the flight used — and he would be photographed in that same pressed suit and clean shirt and overcoat and hat, surrounded by smiling men who could be later identified as those who carried out his rescue and who were officers in the KGB. Evidence of his perfidy.
The gates opened, the cars moved forward. One of the officers touched the peak of his cap in a half-salute, as if conniving at his kidnap.
The cars followed the road towards a row of huge hangars. A tail-fin jutted from one of them, its symbol familiar, coincident with the Cyrillic lettering blazoned above the hangar. Aeroflot.
They turned alongside the Tupolev Tu-134 airliner. Aubrey glanced back at the night outside the glaring hangar almost with longing. It had been so easy—!