A wrought scroll of iron set into the tall gates announced Altes Fleischmarkt. Through the gates, receding into an unlit darkness, Hyde could see a large cobbled expanse surrounded by decaying, lifeless sheds and warehouses.
He gripped the cold, wet iron of the gates with one hand, slipping the gun into the pocket of his overalls with the other. He listened. There was no sound of footsteps. The gates were unlocked. One of them groaned open as he pushed at it. He left it open.
Meat market. The old meat market. Why? Wilkes, here—?
The cobbles were pooled and rutted and treacherous beneath his feet. He stood, searching for light, for movement.
Nothing.
His left hand touched the barrel of the torch in his pocket. Then he moved forward, across the open, rainswept cobbles. Meat market. Empty. Wilkes had disappeared somewhere, into one of the warehouses. Why?
Traffic rumbled down the cobbled street behind him. One of the gates moved protestingly, pushed by a gust of wind. There were no other noises.
He moved towards his left. Flash of a torch—?
He could see an open door, sagging on its hinges. His feet splashed in a puddle of water. His hand touched the damp wood of the door. His hearing reached ahead of him, encountering Only silence. No torch, then…
He slipped silently through the open door, into the musty interior of the warehouse. He listened once more. Nothing. He moved lightly and carefully, his shins brushing against buckets or perhaps cans. Somewhere, a rat scuttled, startling him. When his hearing was able once more to move beyond his heartbeat, it encountered the same silence. He withdrew the torch from his pocket with the stealth of a weapon. The pistol, almost ignored, appeared in his right hand at the same moment.
The door shifted on old hinges, but did not close. No trap, then—
Where was Wilkes?
He listened for a car engine firing, the noise of Wilkes having thrown him off his tail. Faint whitewashed walls stretched back into darkness.
Empty—?
He flicked on the torch, pointing it directly ahead of him. Five yards away, a huge portrait of Lenin glared at him. The sight stunned him.
Lenin?
"Hello, Patrick," he heard Wilkes say from the darkness away to his left.
He could not move.
CHAPTER THREE:
For the Record
Lenin—?
His mind refused to release that image, caught in the beam of the torch. His thumb would not move the switch to turn off the light. He could not comprehend the voice — Wilkes's voice, he remembered dimly — coming from the darkness to his left. He could not move the torch in an arc to reveal the speaker, or move the pistol across his body to endanger Wilkes.
Trap.
But, Lenin—?
Joke?
He shivered, newly aware of the cold and wet. The shivering would not stop once it had commenced. He had stepped into some mad theatre, without his cue. He could only wait for his prompter…
"Hello, Patrick," Wilkes said again. Then the door moved on its hinges. Heat stung the back of his neck as he tried to overcome tight, frozen muscles to turn his head. The door slammed shut behind him. He imagined, almost immediately, that he could hear breathing in the darkness around him. Two, three, four pairs of lungs, his imagination counted. Trap. He knew they were there. He did not know how many, but they were plural; collective. They were a trap, and they had snapped shut on him. "OK, Patrick," Wilkes added confidently, almost amused, "put down the gun. There's a good chap."
Now—!
There was the single, elongated fraction of a moment in which his body would not come unfrozen, would not move — then the torch was out, and he leapt and rolled, and crashed into something which gave and then toppled upon him, winding him. Torch beams flashed and played about him, and someone cursed.
Not Wilkes's voice. He clung to something tapering and moulded or carved. A torch beam struck as he pushed it away. A model of one of the towers of the Kremlin.
Kremlin—?
He rolled away. No gunfire, only the searchlight beams of the torches and lamps licking across the dusty floor of the warehouse, seeking him. The embrace with the model had threatened the return of his paralysis, but since he could not explain it, he rejected it. He scrabbled. Others moved now, converging on the point where his light had been, where his collision with the model had taken place. He rolled under a bench, into a corner, hunching against the wall and trying to control his breathing.
Footsteps, like the slither and rush of rats. Flickering torchlight, orders—
Silence, filling the bowl of the warehouse. Some children's game, but played in the dark. Statues, was it? When Hyde looks, all stand still. Make a statue.
Lenin, model—?
"Patrick?" Wilkes said clearly, his voice whispering in the hollow acoustic. "Patrick. I think you ought to give it up as a bad job." Silence, then: "Oh, for your information, Clint Eastwood made a film here. You saw some of the set dressing, the props. A spy film. Very exciting, I believe."
"Where's the bloody main switch?" someone called out.
"In the office!" Wilkes snapped.
Someone collided with some cans or buckets, setting them rolling on the cobbled floor. As he moved under cover of the noise, Hyde heard the man cursing.
Then Wilkes was speaking again. His voice betrayed the subtle, arcane pleasure of having known it was Hyde tailing him in the Volkswagen, of having known his every move. Wilkes had trailed him behind his Audi like a kite.
"Come on, Patrick — there's nowhere to go. We'll have all the lights on in a minute. We shall all know and be known. Just don't be silly about it."
Rage enveloped Hyde.
"What the hell do you want with me, Wilkes?" he yelled, at the same time scurrying along the wall, deeper into the warehouse, almost on all fours. Weak moonlight seemed to drip with the rain from broken skylights in the roof above him. Something—?
Nothing.
Wilkes's voice pursued him, and there was movement from ahead of him. He crouched silently against the wall.
"We have our orders, Patrick. We have to render you harmless," Wilkes announced dispassionately.
Hyde was shuddering with exertion, damp, cold and terror.
"Why?" he yelled out in anguish. "Why?"
His body had given up, collapsing into spasm and chill numbness.
"You know why, Patrick. London says you're under suspicion." Wilkes's voice oozed insincerity. "Sorry. You've been a naughty boy." Then, as if slightly unsure of the endgame, Wilkes shouted: "Where are those bloody lights?"
Hyde's hand gripped the steel of a girder. Unwillingly, his eyes traced it aloft. It grew up the whitewashed wall like a tree. Part of the framework supporting the roof, some reinforcement of the original wooden structure.
"I've got them," he heard someone call distantly. "Ready when you are."
Hyde's other hand — stuffing the pistol into its holster — climbed up the girder, involuntarily. Then his left hand climbed, then right, so that he was standing upright, pressed against the wall. Right hand encountering a handhold, left foot a foothold, left hand, right foot, right hand…
He was climbing, past the lower crossbeam, up towards the roof. The noises he was making were like the scrabbling of rats, perhaps discountable by the men below him. The lower crossbeam was below him now, and the weak moonlight cast the faintest sheen. The black bar of the upper steel girder was still above him. If it was more than six feet below the broken skylight, he could never get out that way -