He continued to murmur into her hair, stroking her face and shoulder and upper arm gently. "I shouldn't have — my fault, getting you into this mess…" Did he believe that—? Yes, yes. "My, my — stupid, ridiculous shining armour, my — blindness, my stupidity…" He ground the words slowly out. "I had to try and help and I didn't think about you — forgive me for that. I didn't think about you…"
He continued to stare at the locked door, even as he sensed the desperation of her need for comfort. Her hands eventually opened and stilled against his back, pressing harder and harder, returning his close embrace. She swallowed. He could hear her breathing become more regular, quieter. He continued to stroke her hair and face.
Hyde distracted himself from Godwin's slow, noisy progress onto the escalator by glancing once more at the small picture in his hand. He stepped onto the escalator behind the hoarsely-breathing Godwin, hefting the haversack of tools on his shoulder. The snapshot was small, monochrome — a flashlight picture. Wiring flared behind an opened panel surrounded by darkness. Someone other than Godwin had scribbled with a ballpoint on the surface of the snap. The words in Czech near the bottom and an arrow pointing at one of the cables exposed to the camera.
The landline which linked the remote stations of the Hradcany's computer room with Moscow Centre.
He slipped the snapshot into the breast pocket of the oily overalls he was wearing over corduroy jeans and a check shirt. He had not shaved. Rubbing the stubble on his chin and cheeks, he reminded himself of his almost sleepless night. Like rubbing some legendary lamp, he evoked smoky fragments of the night's information — and quashed them by concentrating fiercely on his feet as he reached the bottom of the escalator and stepped off. Godwin readjusted his crutches and leaned his weight more assuredly on them. There was no time now to consider the coming afternoon and night…
People brushed past them, moving crowdedly into the warmly-lit underground concourse of the Mustek metro station. Snow shone wetly on their shoulders and hats and headscarves as it melted. The mosaics were stained with muddy footprints as the morning rush-hour crowds moved through the shop-lined concourse.
"All right?" Hyde muttered in Czech, leaning towards Godwin. Godwin merely grimaced and nodded.
Hyde adjusted the haversack on the shoulder of his dark-blue donkey jacket. Another manual worker on his way to his job. He joined the orderly procession to the platform, Godwin following him. Hyde felt the tension rising in him like sap; sensed the lack of reserves in himself — the lack of sleep that now prevented him from using his intelligence as if it were some separate part of him. His nerves affected his ability to think.
Godwin rested on his crutches beside him as they waited for the metro. One station down the line; Muzeum. At the other end of Wenceslas Square. Then a walk down a long tunnel to a sealed inspection hatch set in the wall. The distances came to him as measured paces as he stared at the track, at three rails, one of them live. A measured distance alongside a live rail. He could think of it in no other way. He glanced involuntarily towards the tunnel, where the lights disappeared and the live rail vanished into ambush. And shuddered.
"You all right?" Godwin hissed.
Hyde nodded violently. "Shut up," he snapped.
Timetables, distances, tools, the snapshot, the imagined noises of the tunnel tumbled together in his thoughts. He clenched one hand in his pocket, the other gripped the strap of the haversack tightly, so that his knuckles were white. He felt sick, despite the croissants and rolls and coffee Godwin had made him eat. Self-confidence was a wafer-thin, puncturable envelope around him, threatened by his surroundings.
The Russian-built train sighed into the platform on rubber wheels, its lights and crowded faces slowing after the moment in which they had made his head jolt and spin. The crowd moved him forward into the carriage like a reluctant representative of some complaint they wished to voice. Godwin lumbered behind him.
The doors closed, the train jerked away from the platform. The walls of the tunnel were suddenly close — much too close — behind the row of faces opposite him. Faces with too little sleep, fed by basic, unvarying diets, older than they should have been; little make-up on any but the youngest of the women.
The light again, and the train slowing, coming to rest. Doors opening, Muzeum emblazoned on the hoardingless walls. Clean cream tiles, the face of Dvorak and other bearded Czechs from pre-history. The crowd moved him out of the carriage, Godwin behind him. Now, he resented their pressure against his back.
The platform emptied. The train rushed away. Hyde followed it with his eyes. He envisaged his body flattened against the tunnel wall, curving with the shape of its huge tube as a train rushed towards him, too close to the wall—
"What is it?" Godwin whispered hoarsely. The platform was almost empty. Two uniformed railwaymen, a cleaner with mop and bucket, perhaps a dozen passengers filtering along the platform.
"All right," he said thickly. Nodding. "All right."
Beginning to be all right, he told himself as Godwin studied his pale, unshaven face. Beginning to be… Noticing people, eyes, distances—
"OK," Godwin said at last, as if telepathically aware of Hyde's returning resolution. "Let's go…" He began to stump away along the platform — now more crowded, where were the two uniforms? One there, the other vanished. Hyde followed and caught up with Godwin, absorbing the scene. The tunnel slowly-enlarged as they approached it. "Distance?"
"Four hundred yards."
"Cable?"
"Third from top."
"Sequence?"
"Panel off — drill out lock… say three or four minutes… induction coil — next train — flip-flop transistor and battery, clock… before the next train."
"OK. That's it. Set the timer for eight." Hyde nodded. They had reached the end of the platform. Hyde glanced at the clock. A minute to the next train. The platform had filled. He could see no one in uniform. No one was looking in their direction. In his imagination, he saw his feet treading carefully in the pools of light from his torch, saw the hatch, the working of the drill, the rigging of the induction coil — then nodded again.
Godwin's face was tight and calm. A case officer's noncommittal expression. Then he grinned, nervously and boyishly. Hyde backed away from him. Could he hear the approach of the train? He reached the edge of the platform, hard against the wall. He stared for a moment at the live rail, and at a cigarette packet, crumpled into a ball, between it and the outer rail. He glanced up the platform. Faces turned to the far end. A quiet, distant rumble—?
Godwin had moved to the edge to mask him. He slipped his body off the edge of the platform. Aware of the sleepers and of his trouser-leg inches from the live rail. Then he strode swiftly but carefully into the tunnel. He heard no cry, no murmur of detection behind him. He flicked on his torch. The sleepers quivered beneath his feet and he heard the train enter the platform, come to a halt. He felt impelled to hurry, even to run. He flicked the torch-beam along the wall of the tunnel, back to the sleepers and his feet stepping into the pools of light, to the walls, counting the seconds. Torch on the wall, on his feet, aware of the fragility of ankles and the price of stumbling — seconds, wall, feet, breathing — noise, noise. The jerky sigh of acceleration, the quiver returning to the sleepers, the hiss of rubber wheels, the hum of current—
The fireplace, the fireplace and the chimney—!