"The KGB tried to kill me—"
"What?" Wilkes was incredulous.
"It's their set-up, has to be. Teardrop was watching from the wings…" Wilkes was silent for a moment. Hyde added: "It's all Kapustin's game — the tape will prove that."
"What tape, Patrick?" Wilkes asked eagerly.
"Aubrey was wired—"
"Yes — we saw that. Where's the tape?"
"I dropped the bloody thing in the Belvedere."
"We'll take care of it!" It sounded like relief, even to the sigh that followed the words. Hyde was puzzled. Then Wilkes removed the impression as he said with urgent concern: "Come in, Patrick. This is just what the old man needs. We'll find that tape — you talk to Babbington."
"Have they arrested the old man?"
"Christ knows! The mutual embarrassment's like a fog in here. But everyone looks serious — deadly serious."
"OK."
"Where are you?"
For a moment Hyde studied the number on the dial of the telephone, and the location information. Another gust of laughter concussed the glass. He turned his head. Normal. Aubrey needed his information.
"OK," he said. "Small cafe, in the Goldschmidgasse, near the cathedral. I'll be inside."
"Hang on. We'll have a car there for you in ten minutes. Anyone suspicious in the area?"
"No. I wasn't followed, once I shook them off."
"Good. Thank God you're all right. Everyone was worried…"
"OK, Wilkes. Hurry."
"Ten minutes at the outside."
Hyde put down the receiver. The scrawled-upon mirror was cloudy, and the glass of the booth had become dulled with the raised temperature. He folded back the door and stepped into the cafe. Strangely, the laughter had a mocking rather than comforting ring. He shivered, and returned to his table. The notes had been collected. He left the pile of change and pulled his overcoat from the back of his chair. He hesitated with one arm thrust into a sleeve, because the cafe was warm and because he realised that all he had to do was to wait. A matter of a few minutes. Outside, there had already been sleet riding on a fresh wind when he entered the cafe. Then he continued to put on the coat because he felt shaken into wakefulness by his instincts. He should check the area around the cathedral square. Someone still wanted him dead. Someone who spoke accentless English. That unwelcome realisation bobbed out of the dark at the back of his mind, more real than the lights and the laughter and talk and the reassurances of Wilkes's voice.
He closed the door behind him. Sleet blew down the narrow Goldschmidgasse and through the halo of white light around a street-lamp in the Stephansplatz. The wind had strengthened, and it eased itself through his overcoat. He shivered, then turned towards the lights of the square, shoulders hunched, collar turned up, the melting sleet from his hair insinuating itself between his collar and skin. The west door of the Stephansdom was a gap of dark shadow in the sooty facade of the cathedral. Light burst from the metro entrance to his right. Hyde eased himself into the doorway of a shop and surveyed the square. Three minutes by his watch since he had put down the receiver. He had only to wait.
A group of people emerged from the mouth of the metro station, most of them young; noisy. He watched them bait each other, bait an old man, reel. One youth blundered against the shop's grilled window, pressing his nose flat as he tried to resolve the blurred souvenirs into distinct objects. Then he rolled on, bumping against Hyde before moving away. Hyde's body had flinched from the contact, and he was aware of his heightened nerves. The youth expelled beery breath and a hard laugh and almost returned to reproduce the fear he sensed, but then was towed by the laughter of his friends towards the north side of the cathedral. Couples drifted or were blown like black scraps across the square. Bodies crouched beneath umbrellas. Hyde's breathing returned to normal.
"Come on, come on," he murmured. Six minutes, and his feet were cold through the suede boots. His hands seemed numb in his pockets. "Come on…"
An old woman tottered down the steps into the metro station. The light coming from it appeared now like the open mouth of a furnace as Hyde became colder. He could wait there…?
He moved out of the doorway. Sleet slapped against his cheek. He hurried across the square, head bowed, into the darkness beneath the archway of the cathedral's west door. He pressed his back against the wood, then scanned the square once more.
And saw the first of them. Expected-unexpected. He had been looking for surveillance, something that might prevent him reaching the car. Someone stumbling upon him by chance. He found purpose. He found informed opinion — knowledge. The car in the Goldschmidgasse, coming from the far end of the narrow street, extinguished its lights perhaps seven seconds before it turned into a parking space. And the man he had seen on foot, moving from the Rotenturm towards the side street, had signalled to it. He shuddered, pressing his arms against his sides to still the quivering of his body. Overcoat, sports jacket, woolen shirt, skin. He was intensely aware of his vulnerability.
Second man, third man…
One had come out of the mouth of the metro station in a dark hat and overcoat. The other had come from the cathedral's south side, moving purposefully across the still-lit windows of a men's outfitters. Dark hat, dark overcoat. Dressed for the weather but umbrella-less in the sleet. Erect, unaware of the weather, heads turning like pieces of machinery; oiled, regular, thorough. Point of convergence, the Goldschmidgasse. The first man he had seen paused in the shop doorway where Hyde had first placed himself.
Eight minutes. These people had come for him — by arrangement.
Hyde could not bring himself to admit the idea, even though the accentless voice cried in his head, Kill him, kill him… He was able, just, to hold the idea of collusion simply as an unfamiliar word in his awareness. It did not burgeon into acts, arrangements, betrayals, pain, faces. Eight minutes thirty—
Move, he told himself. Go now. Fourth man. He scanned the Stephansplatz. A dark figure beneath a street-lamp, then another passing across the lights from a coffee-house window. Point of convergence, the Goldschmidgasse—
Then a knot of men appeared at the corner of the narrow street, moving urgently. The figures he had identified spread outwards, like seed cast from a hand. The net spread; men began running. In that moment, it was already too late. A second earlier, they had been evident by their immobility in the wind that hurried the innocent across the square like leaves; now, they were moving more swiftly, projectiles rather than detritus. Hyde was trapped in the doorway of the cathedral, the door locked against him.
His thoughts raced but held no form. Adrenalin offered itself, but with the crudeness of a one-swallow drink. Dark overcoat moving to the cathedral's north side, dark overcoat to the south side, skirting the square. Doorways checked. Two men coming across the square towards the west door and its concealing shadow, two more descending into the light of the metro station. Other, disregarded shapes drifted or hurried across the Stephansplatz, as unimportant as the sleet blown through the light of the lamps. Two men coming towards him, north side man closer than the man on the south side. Eight men altogether; nothing being left to chance. Substitution, collusion — now when he didn't want them the images came to accompany the word. Wilkes's voice, the accentless English in the palace grounds, Kapustin watching, Babbington arresting Aubrey for treason — the arrangement of his own capture and murder.
Now—
South side man perhaps thirty yards from him, the two men crossing the square, one taller than the other, broader, striding more quickly — they were fifteen yards, fourteen, twelve…