"My former service. They mean to send me to trial, then?"
"Perhaps. Cooperation could forestall that…?"
"How can I cooperate? I do not know the script of the play!" Aubrey snapped, getting up from his chair and topping up his whisky. Babbington refused the proffered decanter.
"I see," he said.
"How far will they take this matter?" Aubrey asked, his back to Babbington, shoulders slightly hunched as if he were leaning heavily on the sideboard for support.
"I'm not sure — no one is at the moment."
"I don't want a trial. I don't think I could face that," Aubrey murmured.
"Then—"
"I have nothing to offer as cooperation!"
"Then — let me say this to you. There are elements — not necessarily in the majority — who consider a trial, in camera, of course, but certainly a prosecution before the law, could be useful. A cleaning of the stable, purification of the house — reconsecration, so to speak. Good for Security and Intelligence Directorate at its inception."
"And, of course, there is always the PM's stern, Noncomformist morality to deal with. The PM would be inclined to a trial, no doubt. After all of them, all the old bogeymen who've been let off, allowed to go free, brushed under the carpet, kicked upstairs and even honoured for treachery — the buck stops here!" He turned to face Babbington. His face was drawn and tired, but animated. "The wrong place at the wrong time. One traitor too many to stomach, mm?"
Babbington shrugged. "Perhaps…"
"And, of course, my background isn't quite what it might have been."
"That is nonsense—"
"Is it? Is it really?"
Aubrey appeared about to continue, but the telephone, ringing in the hall, silenced him. Babbington got up immediately.
"Probably for me. I gave them your number—"
Aubrey shrugged and Babbington crossed swiftly to the door, closing it behind him. It moved ajar slightly, but Aubrey had no desire to listen. There was no motive for suspicion. Babbington was keeping nothing secret from him. His end had been prescribed; etched in clean, deep lines. They were determined that he should be finished, and that he should be seen to be finished. The king must die. His ashes would fertilise the new seed — SAID. And Babbington, who would be Director-General of the new organisation, would then possess supreme power in his country's secret world.
Resentment died, to be replaced by a hollow, deflated feeling. Emptiness.
He realised that they had succeeded in taking his life from him. Not simply his past, or his reputation and credibility; not his achievements or his probity; not his rank or his honours. His life. More important even than his good name. He was not Othello. He could no longer do as he had always done, he could no longer involve himself, belong…
They had taken away his reason for living.
"I warned him — I warned him," Babbington was saying heavily in the hall. There was a brutal power in the man's voice; naked strength. Babbington was too strong an opponent and Aubrey had no will or allies with which to fight him. Kapustin had known all this, had known everything that would follow from the instigation of his damned Teardrop!
Aubrey's eyes were damp with rage and self-pity. Damn Kapustin. He had guessed correctly at every turn of the cards, every throw of the dice. Teardrop was cast-iron, watertight, unsinkable. There was nothing he could do.
"You've done that? Good," Babbington was saying. "Yes — oh, no, it was no coincidence. He went deliberately, to make contact. Yes. No risks. Yes."
The receiver clicked back onto its rest. Aubrey straightened his slumping tired old body, forcing it to replicate a former self.
Babbington entered the room again, his face dark with anger. A domestic tyrant facing a squeaking, fearful little rebellion from one of his children. Not endangered or unsettled, simply enraged at the enormity of defiant words or disobedience.
"Your friend Massinger—" he began, then swept his hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. "Why concern ourselves with him? The man is a fool!"
"A sentimentalist. They are only the same thing once in a while, usually over women or small animals. Paul is no fool."
"If he tries to help you, he is."
"Has he—?" Aubrey could not prevent himself from asking.
"Inadequately, yes. There's no comfort in it, though."
"No," Aubrey admitted.
Babbington crossed to his briefcase, and removed a buff file.
"Read these," he said, pressing them into Aubrey's hand. "They contain the details of your arranged escape from NKVD custody in Berlin, and Soviet instructions to ensure that you reached the British sector safely." The papers shook in Aubrey's grasp, and he could not prevent them doing so. Babbington seemed delighted.
"Your ambition's blinding you to everything except the surface…" Aubrey began.
"You had Castleford killed. You're a Russian agent — my God, to think what might have happened if we hadn't got hold of this! — and we'll have you for that. Especially for that." Babbington collected his briefcase, and made for the door. Looking at his watch, he said, "I'll send Eldon along in a little while. I'm sure you won't object to a late night? I doubt you could sleep, anyway."
"There. he's ready for you now." Cass inspected the dilated pupils of Karel Bayev, KGB Rezident in Vienna, as his plump, still fully-dressed form lolled in a deep armchair. The light of the room fell on Bayev's blank, dead-yet-alert features. The man looked capable of reason and speech at one moment, incapable even of movement at another. Massinger was disconcerted by proximity to such total imprisonment. "Try him out," Cass suggested as he filled another syringe with benzedrine. Hyde slipped silently back into the room through the door to the bedroom. Presumably, he had tied the girl and gagged her. A call from the Vice Squad had persuaded her to open the door, and shock had prevented her from having to be hurt or disabled as they pressed through. Hyde had gagged her with his hand and bundled her up the stairs in front of him. Bayev had been sitting idly drinking champagne, and at once called out to the girl as they opened the door of the lounge. He had recognised a type in Hyde almost immediately but Cass, holding Hyde's pistol, had quelled protest.
Simple preliminaries, Massinger reminded himself. Almost too easy. Now, begin—
Hyde had crossed to the window, almost unobserved. Bayev's pupils had not followed his progress. He was staring into some unknown middle distance.
Margaret—
Begin.
"Karel, old friend — so good to see you again!" Massinger exclaimed in Russian, attempting as close an impersonation of Pavel Koslov's ringing tones as he could. "Karel!" he tried again, catching in his memory the echo of Pavel's usual enthusiastic greeting. "It's Pavel — your old friend, Pavel!" He chuckled, imitating Pavel's delight, clear in his mind, from the darkened back of an opera box.
"Embrace him," Cass whispered. "Call his name again."
"Karel — come on, Karel!" Massinger bent forward and took Bayev by the sholders, kissing him on each cheek. "It's Pavel. I want you to show me Vienna, old man!"
Bayev seemed to snap into wakefulness. His eyes watched Massinger, who could not but believe that the fiction would be exposed in a moment, that Bayev would protest, attempt to rise from the chair, threaten, become frightened—
"Pavel — Pavel…"he muttered, his voice thick with phlegm.
"That'll clear in a minute," Cass observed nonchalantly. "Once the station's tuned in properly. Go on."
"I've four whole days in this beautiful city, and I'm ready for anything. Just like the school holidays, eh, old man? Tallinn — do you remember Tallinn? The girls?"
Cass was smiling broadly when Massinger glanced up at him. He nodded encouragingly. Hyde was also smiling, then he tossed his head towards the door and went out.