In a pause in the halting, almost embarrassed explanation, Aubrey exploded with anger. Hyde had never heard him so enraged, so undiplomatic, so unreserved before.
"You cannot tell me now that you refuse to come over?" his voice asked in mocking, venomous disbelief. "After more than two years, you simply cannot mean that!"
The silence hummed. The KGB Deputy Chairman, Teardrop, was backing away. Hyde had known it for more than half an hour now, ever since the first moments of the meeting. Almost from the moment Kapustin had greeted Aubrey and Hyde had drifted to a more useful surveillance distance, he had sensed a new and even more reluctant mood.
And it was a woman. An inducement to remain in the Soviet Union that Aubrey would be incapable of understanding or accepting.
"I–I do mean that, my friend," Kapustin explained. "I — am sorry, but I can say it in no other way. I — cannot come with you."
"Everything is arranged!" Aubrey stormed. "You agreed everything at our last meeting. It was to be next week, dammit!"
Hyde watched the two almost indiscernible figures reach the far end of the terrace, turn and begin towards him again. The orange colour of the windows was now uniform, as if the early sunset had stalked after them along the terrace. Hyde saw the pale blotch of Wilkes's trench coat drifting like a patch of fog behind the two men. He and the rest of Vienna Station were in control of security. Once more Hyde felt himself, as Aubrey's traveling companion and minder, flatteringly unused; wasted. He rubbed his ungloved hands. His breath smoked in the last of the light. To the east, the pale sky darkened towards purple. The gardens of the Belvedere glittered with yesterday's snow.
"But, this woman—" Aubrey persisted. "You say you have known her only for a matter of a few months…"
"That is correct."
"Then, then — then I do not understand!"
"You have never been moved by such a passion, my friend?"
"Bring her with you!" Aubrey blurted out. Listening, Hyde shook his head.
"I cannot. She — has a family. I do not need to tell you what former colleagues of mine would do to them, with them, were the two of us to emerge in the West. No, my friend, it cannot be…"
"Dammit, you're sixty-one—!"
Hyde smiled and tossed his head. Aubrey, the man devoid of sexual passion, simply could not comprehend. Deputy Chairman Kapustin would not come out to play, now or ever. To Hyde, it was a matter of indifference. The cold impinged more keenly. Only for the loss of Aubrey's coup was he regretful. And even that wasn't important — Aubrey already had it all; knighthood, director-generalship, honour and glory, world without end…
And perhaps after this he would return Hyde to the field, to proper work.
"And should know better?" Kapustin asked mockingly. "Evidently I do not."
"You could be blown—"
"I do not think so. And you, my friend, you would not betray me just for disappointing you. I am truly sorry. There is much in the West that I still covet, and much at home that sickens and disgusts me. But — I am in love…"
Hyde heard Aubrey's snort of derision and saw Kapustin spread his arms in a gesture of pleasurable hopelessness. Aubrey's stunted figure beside him, now that they were close again, looked feeble and old and bemused.
"Then this is our last meeting. We have nothing more to say to one another." Aubrey's voice was still hurtfully contemptuous.
"It would appear so. You have been patient and you have been secure. When I came to you, I asked a high price. You have, eventually, granted it. You have satisfied me in the matter of a new identity, a new life. And now that I have everything, it means nothing to me. I can no longer go down these steps—" They were standing just above Hyde now, at the head of a flight of stone steps. Hyde's sphinx seemed to smirk with superiority and a sense of power in the gloom. Frost had begun to glitter on her face. " — with you, or get into one of your cars parked outside the palace gates. London is an impossible distance away. Washington is another planet — for me, at least."
"Very well. I shall report the matter…"
"Ah, yes. You will give a most withering description of my sudden — weakness?" Kapustin laughed. To Hyde, the KGB Deputy Chairman sounded like an actor, overplaying his role.
"I — it's simply that I do not understand," Aubrey admitted.
Hyde jumped down from his stone perch. It was almost dark now, the time of maximum danger when everything was shadowy and confusing and suspicious. Sunset is a trap, someone had once told him. He picked out Wilkes in his ghostly trench coat, and two of the others. And no enemy activity. Teardrop could move about western cities much as he liked. That kind of seniority was what had made him such a valuable catch, the fish of the season.
And Aubrey had lost him, failed to land the catch…
"Goodbye, my friend."
"Goodbye."
The two men shook hands briefly and stiffly, and then Kapustin came down the steps and passed Hyde without a glance in his direction. Aubrey descended much more slowly, as if greatly tired. His face, in the frosty almost-dark, was abject with affront and failure.
"Sorry, sir—" Hyde began.
"God in Heaven, what's got into the man?" Aubrey exclaimed.
"Sex, that's all it is," Hyde replied with assumed disgust.
"I found the whole business — so hard to believe," Aubrey complained. "And kindly don't mock me, Patrick."
"Sorry, sir."
"But to have lost him—!" Aubrey burst out again as Wilkes approached. The senior field officer of Vienna Station backed away at the tone of Aubrey's voice. "Two years since he first approached us — two years of meetings, negotiations, arrangements, assurances — of courtship, dammit!"
"And then he dumps you for another woman," Hyde could not resist observing, immediately regretting that he had done so. Aubrey turned to face him, his eyes gleaming like chips of ice in the last of the light. Then the old man shrugged.
"If he had arranged the whole charade for my personal embarrassment," Aubrey remarked, "he could not have had more success. My enemies — on both sides of the Atlantic — will say of me that I am finally too old to cope. Washington contains few people I have worked with in — sensitive matters. They will be delighted at Langley with our success here!" Aubrey's pale features twisted in irony. "Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, Director-General of SIS, falls flat on his face. How pleased so many people will be to hear of it! The Cabinet Office and MI5 will have a field day…" He sighed as he choked off the sentence, then waved his hand towards Wilkes's hovering form, dismissing him. "Back to the hotel, Patrick," he murmured tiredly.
"OK, sir."
Their footsteps crunched on the gravel of the path as they moved down the slope towards the high hedges that bordered the more formal and enclosed part of the gardens. The huge ornamental pool in front of the Upper Belvedere was a sheet of glassy ice. A sliver of moon had appeared above the horizon, and the first stars were like gleams of frost. Hyde realised that Aubrey was still wired for sound. He could hear his breathing and his heartbeat faintly in his earpiece. He took the plug from his ear and thrust it and its cord into his pocket. Kapustin, usually so wary of recordings of his conversations with Aubrey, had seemed indifferent on this occasion. Doubtless, out of a sense of fair play, Aubrey would order him to wipe this tape. Kapustin was dead to Aubrey, the matter closed as finally as a mortuary drawer.