Make it good, he thought. Make it convincing, he remembered.
Where was his instructor now, from which Oxford Street window would he be watching this? Then Metkin saw a flicker of recognition on the face of one of the Americans. His shadow had given himself away. The light suit moved towards him, and a strong brown hand grabbed his arm. The man's other hand began reaching into the breast of his jacket. A second American had moved swiftly towards the doors. Metkin could smell the frying onions again. He felt nauseous.
"Come on, come on," the American urged. Men in patterned shirts, all highly-coloured, moved towards himself and the CIA officer. The necessary counter-activity, the threat that the prize might yet be snatched away. The American bustled him to the doors, his right hand still inside his jacket as if seeking a missing wallet. "Come on—"
Sunlight, hard and dusty, collided with Metkin as he emerged. He bumped into an Arab woman and knocked over her child. He recognised that he would possess all the necessary emotions to recall under debriefing interrogation. A cry from behind them. Three suits, one next to him and two guarding the black limousine. The real door was opened. He was bundled in like a bag of washing. The American who had pushed him, the one in the light suit, slid into the seat next to him.
Look around, look frightened, he remembered. He saw the sweating, angry faces gather on the pavement. The Arab woman picked up, dusted off her child. The patterned shirts retreated, then disappeared as the car turned out of Oxford Street. The Americans were arguing.
"Neither of you picked those guys up — neither of you!"
"Sorry—"
Thank them, he remembered, thank them profusely…
"Thank you! Thank you!" he exclaimed breathily, feeling the sweat run freely beneath his arms, on his chest. "Oh, thank you, thank you…"
The American next to him smiled, then nodded. "You're safe now, pal. Safe."
And suddenly, ahead of the car, the weather stained white concrete of the US Embassy, surmounted by the eagle with its spread wings. To Metkin, it possessed the appearance of a prison and the associations of a minefield. Safe? His danger was only just beginning—
Their hands moved in and out of the pool of light that fell upon the desk, making skirmishes at the heap of photographic blowups. The ceiling of the darkened room was washed with pale light, much of it filtering through the uncurtained windows from the moonlit snow lying deep on that part of the Virginia countryside. Their shadows bobbed and swelled and lessened on the ceiling.
"How much of this can you verify?" The Deputy Director of the CIA sounded reluctant to believe and yet equally reluctant to adopt a skeptical attitude.
"A lot of it."
"From Metkin, our defecting friend?"
"No. He knows nothing about this. He grabbed it as a bargaining lever. It was too secret for him to handle. But, look here—" Hands shuffled the gleaming, frequently over-exposed pictures, then tapped one of them. "We know this style of classification and secrecy grading has never been used by the KGB. It belonged to the NKVD, at least thirty years ago. And this…" The hands shuffled once more. The Deputy Director was struck by their confident, trained movements. The hands were indeed dealing cards — a bad hand. "… this is his handwriting all right. It's been checked again and again. A lot of experts have seen it. It's been scanned and examined by computer. It may be almost forty years old, but it's his handwriting."
"I see." The Deputy Director looked into the shadowy corners of his spacious office, then at the silvery snowgleam on the ceiling. His shadow and that of his companion seemed hunched and diminished and sinister, crouching over the photographs on his rosewood desk. He could smell his cigar butts still in the ashtray — no, they were on the pile carpet, upended there by a movement of the sheaf of blow-ups. "I see," he repeated, at a loss.
"The history fits, too. As far as we can check, all these 1946 dates can be corroborated."
"What about the recent dates — the last two years?"
"It all checks out. At least, as far as we can go without asking London direct."
"Then all this was garbage about a KGB Deputy Chairman wanting to defect…?"
"We think so."
"What else do you think?"
"Aubrey's been a sleeper for more than thirty-five years. Two years ago, when he was within an ace of the top job, they woke him up."
"You say you haven't talked to London?"
"No, sir. We need to talk to Babbington — to MI5, sure — but that's the Director's decision, not ours."
"OK." The Deputy Director's finger tapped at the blow-up of the file's summary sheet, near the bottom. On the ceiling, his shoulders seemed to move spasmodically in unison, as if he were vomiting. "You believe this defector — and this?"
"We've tried him every way. Even under drugs and hypnosis. He comes up smelling of roses every time. Same story. As a cipher clerk, he'd heard the rumours everyone else had heard. Important files about to be incinerated — topmost secrecy. He knew it could be his ticket on the first-class gravy train, so he took his Japanese camera to work — and found Teardrop."
"Aubrey's an old man now…"
"And he's just become Director-General of British Intelligence."
"Dammit, Bill, I know that…"
"Well, sir?"
The Deputy Director's large hands once more rearranged the sheaf of photographs, but this time irresolutely. "Hell, I don't know — I just don't know!"
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on the fact that Teardrop is a genuine highest security file from Moscow Centre. More than that, these reference numbers on the cover show that it has been transferred to their main security computer. Also, access is limited to the Chairman and six Deputy Chairmen of the KGB. No one else, with the exception of Nikitin himself, can get to see it. These pictures come up genuine under every test we can make. The story they tell — however appalling — holds up under investigation…" Once more, the pictures were dealt like cards, fanned open across the whole desk. One or two slid to the carpet, out of the pool of strong white light. "And it all means that Kenneth Aubrey is a Soviet agent. It means he's the Soviet agent of all time!"
"And he's just been made head of British Intelligence." The Deputy Director sighed once, but the sound became a stifled belch. "OK — we'll take this to the Director first thing in the morning."
"Very well, Kapustin. Let it begin in earnest. The destruction of Kenneth Aubrey — and with him, the destruction of British Intelligence… I use Comrade President Nikitin's own words, Kapustin. Does he exaggerate?"
"He does not, Comrade Chairman."
"You promise that such claims will not have been exaggerated, in the outcome?"
"I do, Comrade Chairman. President Nikitin was right, as you were, to place Teardrop in my hands. It will work. I give you both my word on that."
"Then let's drink to it, mm?"
"A pleasure."
"We will wish Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, a Happy New Year — eh? A very Happy New Year!"
One by one, the rows of windows of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna turned from bronze to orange in the setting afternoon sun, as if invisible servants were going from room to room lighting great chandeliers. Kenneth Aubrey and the Russian were almost in darkness as they patrolled the terrace of the Upper Belvedere beneath the great windows; two shadowy, unsubstantial and isolated figures. Patrick Hyde sat perched on the stone plinth beneath the enigmatic, crouching statue of a sphinx. Its companions ranged away from him along the terrace, each of them staring out of Maria Theresa faces and from beneath eighteenth-century hair down towards the city. Hyde looked up at his sphinx as Kapustin continued his explanation to Aubrey. Yes, the smile on that face was alluring as much as mysterious; lewd, even, as it retreated into cold winter darkness. Appropriate to the conversation that he could tinnily hear through the earpiece of the portable recorder in the pocket of his dark overcoat. This time, Aubrey was wired for sound and Kapustin seemed unworried at the prospect.