"Perhaps just one," he said. There was an amusement in his eyes. Then he laughed. "No, I really must be going." He held out his hand. "Take care, my friend." The warning was precise. "Take good care of yourself. Good night, Margaret."
His handshake was firm and hot. He pecked Margaret's cheek, and was gone. Massinger closed the door behind him. The noise of the party loudened. His head had begun to beat. Impulsively, he put his arms around Margaret and pulled her to him, holding her tightly against him.
Eventually, she pulled gently away, smiling. Glowing, he thought once more with black, ashy bitterness.
"Back to the party for you," she instructed humorously. "You're becoming much too self-indulgent."
She took his hand, and led him back towards the drawing-room.
God, he thought with the fervency of prayer, don't let me hurt her. Don't let me lose her — don't let me hurt or lose her…
"Hyde?"
The word seemed to hang somewhere in the air between London and Vienna. The static and distance seemed like eavesdroppers. Paul Massinger hunched over the telephone receiver in the woman's flat as if to conceal his voice and movements from prying ears and eyes.
The call from the woman, Ros, had come while he was shaving. The dressing-room extension had been nearest; the receiver of betrayals. He had picked it up fumblingly with a wet hand, the mouthpiece immediately whitened by his shaving foam. He had been aware, like a fear along his spine, of Margaret's still-sleeping presence in the bedroom. The call had not woken her.
The woman had persuaded Hyde to talk to Massinger, when could he come…? Would ten—? Hyde seemed nervous, on edge, wanted to talk to him urgently… He had swallowed all betrayals, all fears, and agreed to come to Earl's Court before ten.
… to sit in a large room decorated in deep warm colours, the walls of which were hung with prints of Australian landscapes, often bleached and bleak, his body already half-turned to the telephone beside the sofa, anticipating the call.
He had seen no blue Cortina; he had seen no other tail. They had accepted his surrender, they did not guess at this renewed rebellion. Betrayal…
Beyond this telephone call, Peter Shelley and the transcript of the Teardrop file lay ahead of him like an ambush in the bright, cold morning.
Then the call had come. Ros had answered, nodded and handed the receiver to him. He had taken it like a thing infected or booby-trapped. At the other end of the connection, Hyde waited like a malevolent destiny. He was certain of it; certain no good would come of it. Then he plunged.
"Hyde?" he repeated.
"Massinger? Is that phone bugged?"
Involuntarily, he looked up at Ros, and repeated Hyde's question. Ros stood like a guardian near the sofa, arms folded across her breasts. She shrugged, and then she said, "I'm just his landlady. He knows that, so do they."
Massinger nodded. "We don't think so — we're pretty sure."
"Who's we?" Hyde asked in a worryingly unnerved way, then he added: "Oh, Ros. OK. I've heard of you, Massinger. You were CIA, a long time ago, but you've been out of things since then. You're a teacher now. What's your angle?"
Hyde mirrored his own emotions, Massinger realised. He, too, anticipated exposure, capture, the death of something. In his case, his own demise. Why? Why was Hyde so evidently at the final extremity, in fear of his life? Damned, betraying professional instincts prompted him to reply. He was helpless to contain or suppress them.
"I'm trying to help Aubrey. Why are you afraid for your life, Hyde? Who's trying to kill you?"
Ros's large, plump hand covered her mouth, too late to hold in the gasp she had emitted. Her body seemed to quiver beneath the kaftan with a sudden chill.
"You don't know, do you?" Hyde replied. Massinger sensed that he, too, had come to a decision, but his had been made out of desperation.
"No, I don't."
"How is the old man?"
"Aubrey? Afraid — running out of hope, I think," he replied with deliberation.
"Aren't we all, sport?"
"Hyde — why can't you come in? It is a question of can't, isn't it?"
Hyde was silent for a moment. The morning spilled pale sunlight across the dark green carpet of Ros's lounge. It touched the back of the sleeping tortoiseshell cat. Massinger sensed immediately that the woman had brought Hyde's cat to her flat for safety — from what she would not have been able to explain.
Then Hyde blurted out: "I'm running from our side — comical, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean — collusion between the KGB and SIS. Look, Massinger, I'm as good as dead—!" Hyde's voice broke on the word, like a dinghy against a rock. Massinger sensed the utter weariness of the Australian, his collision with the brick-wall dead-end of hope and will. He was at the end of his tether.
"I don't understand you…"
"You don't fucking well understand?" Hyde yelled. His voice seemed to move closer, be in the room together with the scent of his fear and the desperation that must be on his face. "I don't give a fuck if you understand! Vienna Station tried to terminate me — terminate, as in finish, bump off, kill …!" Massinger heard Hyde's dry throat swallow, then: "I tried to come in… I knew the old man wanted help… I rang the Station, gave the proper idents…" There was no way in which Hyde could stop himself talking now. His boat was leaking, and he was drowning. He had lost control of his situation and himself, now that the faint possibility of escape had gleamed; help had whispered down the international telephone lines. "Ten minutes later, the KGB turned up, and they were loaded for 'roos. They wanted me dead — they must have wanted me silent on the subject of Kapustin's watching the whole arrest…"
Some dramatist's instinct warned Hyde that he had laid out sufficient of his mysterious wares for the present, and he left the sentence unfinished. Massinger could hear his harsh breathing down the line. The information whirled like sparks from a windblown bonfire in his mind.
Collusion… Kapustin… Vienna Station… collusion…
"I–I can't believe it, Hyde…" he managed to say at last.
"Then try," Hyde sneered.
"You must — must…"
"What? Stay alive? I want to! How can you help me to achieve my ambition?"
"Your papers?" They were in one of Ros's plump, beringed hands, clutched against her breast. She seemed to offer them towards Massinger. The cat stirred, then fell asleep once more, the tension in the room insufficient to disturb it.
"This city's sewn up — I need those if I'm to get out. Let me talk to Ros about that — where to send them."
Collusion — Kapustin — Vienna Station — KGB — SIS — collusion.
"I'll — bring them to you. I must talk to you," Massinger offered suddenly, surprising his rational, conscious brain, unnerving his objective self.
"You'll come…?" Hyde was suspicious, and relieved.
"I'll come. I'll bring them. We must talk."
"When?"
"Tomorrow, two days — I'll have to be — careful."
"They're onto you!" Hyde accused.
"No. I've been warned off Aubrey — nothing to do with you. There's no connection between us." He saw the blue Cortina parked in Philbeach Gardens very vividly in his imagination. "I — give me a little time to cover my tracks. I have to talk to Shelley anyway—"
"No—!"
"It's all right. I won't mention you. It's about Aubrey — the frame…"
"How have they done it — who's done it?"
"KGB — I don't know much more. Shelley has — some information for me."
"So have I. Watch yourself, for my sake. I said collusion and I meant it." Hyde had recovered something of himself; a patient who has been bled and is weakened but more clearheaded. A boil had been lanced, pressure eased, by his outburst. He would now last, perhaps, as long as it took Massinger to reach him in Vienna. "Watch your back. Someone wants me dead and Aubrey out of the game. It could be anyone. It's someone who can give termination orders concerning his own people and expect to be obeyed, and someone who has established two-way access between SIS and the KGB in Vienna. You understand?"