"You can't!" he felt obliged to say.
"At least we can try, man!"
"And this KGB senior staffer — he'll just answer your questions politely?"
"No. Which is why we will need pentathol and a man with a needle."
"What—?"
"You control East Europe Desk, Peter. You must have someone, somewhere in Europe, someone you can still trust, who can inject the necessary drugs? There must be someone…?"
Shelley felt himself mocked. More, he felt himself endangered. Too close to the bone, to vital organs. Massinger was in the process of flinging him over a precipice.
"I — can't do what you ask," he murmured. "It's too risky, leaks like a sieve…"
"My God, man — don't you realise that your precious job may not exist if this goes on much longer!" Massinger stormed through clenched teeth. It was a superior, cold anger. "There is collusion between elements in your service and the KGB. Everything we know and everything that has happened to Hyde tells us that much. You must want to know who, and why — you have to try and stop it. We must establish the truth, Peter. We must discover what this awful co-operation means, how far it extends — what and who is behind it. It's your job, for God's sake!"
Shelley half turned away, his hands flapping feebly at his sides. "I don't want to realise that," he muttered.
"But it's necessary — crucial. It's the reality of this business."
"I know. It's standing beside you like a bloody shadow. Duty. God, Queen and Country. I know I have to. I know it." Shelley's lips twisted in a sneer.
Massinger looked at his watch. "You'd better get that file back, Peter," he instructed gently. "And the other material — can you get it for me today?"
"Today?"
"Hyde is in constant danger. Your people in Vienna Station threw him to the wolves. He's running and he's afraid. He may have even less time available than we do."
Shelley nodded in accompaniment to Massinger's grave words. Then he looked up from the pavement and his shuffling feet, and said: "I'll try. I'll try, and call you tonight?" He left the statement as a question and studied Massinger's face. The American glanced at the buff envelope under Shelley's arm, then nodded.
"Yes. Do that. I — we have to go on with it — whatever."
"Yes. Now, I have to go."
Shelley turned away abruptly, and entered the tube station, leaving Massinger staring at the cigarette hoarding across the street.
"You're certain it was massinger?"
"No, sir — not certain."
"But Shelley — yes?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you lost them?"
"They shook us off, sir. Didn't use the car."
"Where are they now?"
"Massinger's at home. Shelley's at Century House. He's been there since a little after one."
"Why did they meet? I don't see the significance of the War Museum."
"Sorry, sir — can't tell you."
"Why did they meet?"
"Sorry, sir — didn't quite catch—"
"It doesn't matter. It can't add up to anything much. Old loyalties having a day trip, chickens scratching around in the dust. Mm. Shelley will have to be watched more closely. I'm certain Massinger doesn't have the stomach for this — he'll run out of steam fairly soon."
"I see, sir."
"Maintain surveillance on both of them, until we can be certain what they're up to — if anything."
"Sir."
Hyde recognised that he had passed through both fear and the oppressive sense of isolation. They had worn themselves away, like an over-familiar lust. Finally, he was left with no more than a desire for action. It was his simplest emotion; whenever he encountered it, he felt he had arrived at a destination or a new beginning.
The rain slanted in the gusts of wind across the street. Car headlights glared onto the windscreen of the Volkswagen van, and brake lights splashed on the road like ruby paint. He had hired the van from a small backstreet garage and had borrowed the stained grey overalls he now wore. Almost six in the evening. He was waiting for Wilkes to leave the SIS offices on the Opernring. The van was parked beneath the trees, alongside the tramlines, thirty yards from the door of the office building. Wilkes had not yet left. Impatience filled Hyde, gratifyingly, in itself a signal of purposeful activity. His fingers drummed against the greasy touch of the steering wheel.
Wilkes would tell him the truth. Wilkes, the man who had sent the KGB for him in the cafe, in the cathedral square. The purposeful men in the heavy overcoats. Wilkes—
Wilkes stepped from the door, turning up his collar, glancing to left and right, crossing the pavement to his parked car. Hyde started the engine of the Volkswagen with a fierce tightness in his chest and throat. Now, now it begins, he could not avoid thinking.
Wilkes's Audi pulled out into the traffic flow, and Hyde slid into the line three vehicles behind it. Was he going home, back to his apartment? Going for a drink, meeting someone? To Hyde, it did not matter. Eventually, Wilkes would be alone, and then…
Hyde damped down the suddenly rising anger. He had not realised, until that first moment of secret surveillance as he pulled out into the traffic behind the unsuspecting Wilkes, how much he wanted to hurt him, make him talk. He had been too isolated, too endangered and for too long. Wilkes was going to repay him for that frightened, hunted, wasted time.
Wilkes's car turned off the Opernring, into Mariahilferstrasse, following a tram that flashed blue sparks from the wire above it. The Hofburg Palace loomed to Hyde's right for a moment, then they were passing the massive elegance of the Kunsthistoriscbes-museum. Audi, Mercedes, small Citroen, then the Volkswagen. Hyde considered moving up, anticipating being caught by one of the sets of traffic lights. He decided against it, however. There were sufficient sets of lights to keep Wilkes in sight, even if he missed one of them. Action itself assured him. He would not lose Wilkes. He was there, three cars away beyond the wipers and the slanting rain.
The centre of Vienna changed, the lights of modern shops obscuring then throwing into shadow the old buildings whose ground floors they had usurped. Side streets became narrower, the traffic lights less frequent. Wilkes had made no attempt to accelerate, or to turn off. He was still unaware.
The Citroen turned off, and Hyde moved up. Then the Mercedes disappeared, and he dropped back again. A Renault overtook him and filled the gap between the van and the Audi. The black, gleaming station roof of the West-Bahnhof lay beyond the grimy, streaked window of the Volkswagen, then Hyde turned into a wide cobbled street behind the Audi.
The Audi slowed, taking him by surprise. He drove past, consciously stopping the foot that had been about to transfer itself from accelerator to brake. He did not glance in the direction of Wilkes's car, but watched it stop, floating into his rear-view mirror. Its headlights dimmed, and then it was nothing more than a dark shape alongside the pavement. Hyde pulled in perhaps sixty or seventy yards further along the street, opposite a newspaper and tobacco kiosk set in the featureless ground floor wall of an apartment building. His eyes returned to the mirror. In a moment of quiet between passing cars, he heard Wilkes slam the car door. Hyde wound down his offside window, and craned his head to see Wilkes crossing the street towards high iron gates. One of the gates opened and Wilkes disappeared.
Hyde scrambled out of the Volkswagen, hurrying between oncoming traffic across the street. A childish and inappropriate sense of having been cheated filled his imagination. Somehow, the rules had been changed; Wilkes was engaged in his own mystery, rejecting his role as hunted victim. The rain, flung by a gust of wind, slapped across Hyde's face. His hand reassured itself for a moment on the butt of the Heckler & Koch beneath his arm.