He did not know. His body felt feverishly warm beneath his jacket and overcoat. When he had the file back, and had returned to his office, that would be that, wouldn't it? No more need for red Vauxhalls, no more need…
His nose would be clean. Very clean. Twelve-twenty. Come on, Massinger, come on…
There was weakness in Massinger, weakness in himself, too, for that matter. Weakness of the same kind, like cracks hidden behind heavy wallpaper, cracks that went down to the foundations and boded trouble.
Blue Cortina -
Massinger's blue Cortina, his tail—?
The blue Cortina stopped outside the BMW, then pulled forward and away. Shelley shivered violently and stood up, rubbing his arms and the backs of his thighs. He gazed towards the fasade of the War Museum almost with longing. There was no one on the steps. He crunched along the gravel, hands thrust into his pockets. They had him now. Perhaps they did not know why he had met Massinger — perhaps they had not followed the American… But they had him. He was under suspicion, under surveillance. His breath smoked around his head like a gauzy hood. He was breathing harshly, as if afraid or spent. He hadn't recognised any of the faces in the two cars, which meant they were more likely to be MI5 than KGB — Babbington's troops. They had him, then.
Massinger emerged from the doors as he reached the top of the steps. Massinger turned to look back over the railings. He could distinguish the red Vauxhall, but there was no sign of the blue Cortina.
"Finished?" he asked eagerly.
"My God — yes, I've finished." Shelley snatched the buff envelope which contained the Teardrop transcript, its pages protected by stiff polythene. "I was careful, Peter. No one will realise it's been copied." He smiled, but some other emotion removed the expression from his lips almost at once. "I — just glances, you know. It's incredible. Even talking to Aubrey didn't prepare me for it. Nearly forty years of treachery documented there. Aubrey's being turned in 1946, being woken from his long sleep two years ago, the information he's passed, his promotion and the prospects and plans — dismantling SIS, turning it into… my God, it's so — so convincing!"
"Especially the last two years."
"But Hyde was there — most of the time he was there."
"And Aubrey often went off by myself — unlogged. Or he wasn't wired for sound, or he didn't make full reports of his contacts. Who could defend him adequately against this?" Shelley's face was set in a stony, lifeless expression. To Massinger, he looked young, afraid, vulnerable — unreliable.
"Any activity?" he asked, gesturing towards Brook Drive with the gloves he held in one hand.
"The Vauxhall's back with me," Shelley muttered, then he burst out: "Christ, I'm shit-scared at having anything to do with this!"
"What do we do?"
"Walk. I — can collect the car later. Lambeth's the nearest tube station in the other direction. OK?"
"OK. Who are they?"
"I — don't know."
"You suspect—?"
"Babbington's people."
"Damn — you're sure they're not KGB?"
"Not sure — not sure they are, either. Veering towards MI5." Shelley's voice was almost inaudible above the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel.
"I thought a great deal about this last night," Massinger murmured as they passed out of the gates, heading towards the Kennington Road. Massinger recollected Margaret's quietly-breathing form next to him throughout the night. The awareness of it was vivid, almost a physical sensation against his arm and side. The memory pained him deeply. He turned his head, but no red car appeared to be moving.
"And—?" Shelley replied reluctantly, listening to the older man's hard breathing and the tap of his stick on the pavement. Both noises were dispiriting.
"I spoke to Pavel Koslov, the KGB Rezident, last evening."
"Where?"
"He was at the flat. A social occasion."
"And?"
They passed an eighteenth-century house with a grand door and an iron balcony to the first and second floors. It appeared aloofly unaware of the neighbouring launderette and Indian restaurant. Shelley seemed distracted by the odours of Tandoori cooking.
"He let something slip — drunk, of course. He knew exactly what was going on. That it was a frame. He even knew what had happened in Vienna. It amused him. His opposite number there had told him the whole story of Aubrey's arrest."
"What can we do about it?" The question surprised Shelley himself.
Massinger halted, and the two men faced one another. Shelley knew he was being weighed and was affronted and sick with uncertainty. Why had he said that? Why hadn't he been able to walk away? He had to get the file back, that was what really mattered.
"Do you mean that?" Massinger asked finally. A turbaned Sikh brushed lightly and apologetically against them. A shopping trolley dragged behind a large woman banged painfully against Shelley's ankle. Behind Massinger, a car showroom burst from the ground floor of a once-elegant house like a mutant, leaving the upper storeys stranded in the past. A Labour Party poster glared from one window, as if to proclaim the entirety of change throughout the house.
"Yes," Shelley replied reluctantly, unable to prevent the answer he gave, shrinking from it even as he did so.
"Good man."
"But what can we do—?" Shelley protested as they walked on.
Massinger slipped on a patch of ice and Shelley steadied him. Foreboding overwhelmed him.
"Do you realise we have no time left?" Massinger asked. "Already, we're both under surveillance — if it is MI5, then we have no time at all, and if it's Pavel who's set the dogs on us, then we may have even less time. Pavel wouldn't hesitate…"
"I know!" Shelley snapped. "There is no need to scrawl the message on the wall. So? What hope is there?"
They had reached the entrance to the tube station. Massinger paused, facing Westminster Bridge Road. On the other side of the thoroughfare, whitewashed racist slogans had been daubed on a wall beside the poster of a cowboy smoking his favourite brand of cigarette, a packet of which obscured the grandeur of Monument Valley. Massinger received a fleeting image of John Wayne lying prostrate on the roof of a racing stage-coach, of a crowded, child-noisy movie theatre. His youth.
"I realise Pavel's too well protected — and on guard," he murmured. Shelley had to bend his head to hear distinctly. "There'd be a God-awful stink if anything happened to him. But we have no time!. There are the three of us, and one of us is trapped in Vienna with no hope of getting out. The agent — our field agent — cannot come to us. I have to go to him."
"What then?"
"Someone may be planning to stop us because of what we've already done. If we can do something quickly, something decisive — then maybe we can win. Slowly means we lose — altogether."
"I realise that. But what—?"
"Bear with me, Peter. We need Hyde, and that means going to him. Which means Vienna. I want everything Registry has on the KGB Rezident in Vienna — the Rezident and his senior staffers."
"Why?"
"Will you get it for me?" Massinger's eyes gleamed with daring rather than reason.
"Why?" Shelley repeated.
"If we could make him talk — if we had proof!"
"The — Rezident, in Vienna… madness." Shelley's anger was fuelled by fear. "It's absolutely insane!"
"It's quick. Speed is our only hope."
"That's not hope, it's lunacy."
"And the entirely unexpected. Get me everything on the current Rezident. There must be something, some time when he's virtually alone, unattended, off his guard… a moment in which we can — talk to him?" Massinger's smile matched his eyes. Shelley quailed. It was the most desperate, monstrous lunacy, a four-in-the-morning solution to the problem. It should have dispersed in the light of day.