"Come on, Karel, old man — you've had one too many, again!"
Hyde raised his eyebrows in what might have been a compliment as Massinger laughed and patted Bayev on the shoulder-blades. They shrugged him into his overcoat.
"Right — weight on you, please," Hyde instructed, loosening the pistol in its shoulder holster. "Just in case."
"Come on, Karel — you need a breath of fresh air!"
"It's cold!" Bayev exclaimed like a child.
"Where did he get that from?" Hyde murmured as they slipped sideways through the door into the apartment's small hallway. "Is he coming round?"
"I don't know — damn! The benzedrine syringe. I've forgotten it — wait here, old man! Haven't paid the bill!" Bayev sagged against Hyde and did not move, as if once more switched off. Hyde watched the front door of the flat, hand hovering near the breast of his overcoat. Massinger reappeared, thrusting a small black case into his pocket.
As soon as Bayev saw the second figure in the hall, he said, "It's cold, Pavel — bloody cold out there!"
"You need to wake up, old man. Come on!"
"Keep the bloody noise down when we hit the street. Put your hand over his mouth if you have to. Right?"
"Right."
Hyde leaned forward and unlatched the door. He levered it open with one foot. The narrow staircase was empty.
"Right, then. Quick as you can, down the little wooden hill."
"Forward march, Karel old man!"
They bundled Bayev down the stairs, Hyde leading, the weight of the Russian across his shoulder and back, while Massinger leaned backwards, taking the strain. He tried to ignore the stabbing pain in his arthritic hip. Bayev seemed drunk in his inability to negotiate the individual stairs, stumbling and giggling. He had evidently accepted the suggestion that he had drunk too much, and Massinger inwardly cursed this further complication. They leaned heavily against the front door to the street, breathing hard. Bayev was still giggling. Massinger's hip was burning with pain.
"Straight across the street to the car. The drunk act might just fool them, but don't let him start bawling in Russian. Don't stop, don't even hesitate — they won't shoot if they do recognise us, not with him between us. Ready?"
"Ready."
Hyde drew the Heckler & Koch. The plastic of the butt was warm from his chest and arm. He levered a round into the chamber, and then nodded.
"OK, here goes…"
He opened the street door slowly then peered round it. The small area of the Herrengasse he could see showed his car and one of the Russian vehicles. The driver was still behind the wheel but there were no passengers. He listened — was startled by a passing car which went on, past the Hofburg — and heard one set of slow footsteps echoing. Other side of the street—?
Moving away—?
There was too little sensory information, and the adrenalin was already dangerously underemployed.
"Come on!" he whispered fiercely, and they dragged Bayev into the street, moving across the pavement onto the cobbles as quickly as they could. Bayev's feet slipped and skidded and stumbled on the icy road.
"It's cold—!" he cried out, and Massinger squashed his hand over the man's mouth. His face winced with shock and the pain in his hip.
"Shit—" Hyde breathed. Bayev slipped heavily, almost bringing them down. Hyde felt the cold of the cobblestones through his trousers as he went down on one knee, Bayev's weight across his back until Massinger took the strain.
One man, two… three—
All now alerted by the brief Russian exclamation, two of them already certain of the small stationary group in the middle of the Herrengasse. The third man focused on them. Movement—
"Don't waste time, they know! Get him to the car as quick…" They rushed Bayev across the road, his toes dragging swerving lines like black snailtracks behind them. Hyde thrust the Russian against the boot of the Mercedes, then heaved open the door. "Get the bugger in!"
Massinger began bundling Bayev into the back of the car, heaving at him as the man protested by kicking out, finally throwing himself, with a stifled groan at his own pain, on top of the Russian and wrestling him across the rear seat.
Closest man ten yards, running now, mouth open to shout—
Second and third coming fast, fourth even closer, but approaching warily, trying to outflank…
Hyde weighed it, then slammed the rear door and jumped into the driving seat, locking the door behind him.
"Lock the bloody doors or they'll—!" Massinger snapped down the locks.
Hyde started the engine. A face appeared at his side window, pressed flat, smearing the glass with his lips. A gun angled across the window, held by white knuckles, threatened them. Now they could shoot him, Hyde realised, without endangering the Rezident. The Russian outside the car straightened up and stepped back a pace from the window. Rear-view mirror, the second and third men closing — a bump as one of them skidded and collided with the boot of the Mercedes — now Massinger, too, was separable, easier to kill.
Hyde pressed his foot down on the accelerator, and spun the wheel. The car slid sideways, lurched, wheels spinning, and then shot away towards the Michaelerplatz and the Hofburg. The KGB man at Hyde's window staggered back and was left behind. A fourth man began running out into the Herrengasse, but Hyde swerved the car around him.
"It's all right, Karel — just some noisy drunks," Massinger was saying as firmly and soothingly as possible in the back of the car.
"Who are you?" Bayev replied suspiciously. "What are you doing!"
"For God's sake, stop struggling, Karel!" Massinger snapped. "You must be having the DTs, old man!"
Hyde swung the wheel — two cars already moving in the Herrengasse, threatening shapes slipping in and out of the light of successive street-lamps — and the Mercedes turned ninety degrees and roared into the narrow, dark archway of the Hofburg's entrance, beneath the cupola. A pedestrian whisked out of their way, dragging a small dog on a leash behind him. The noise of the engine was magnified by the bowl of the cupola's roof, and then they were into the principal square of the palace leading to the Ring, with traffic lights ahead.
Red.
Mirror — first car turning into the archway already.
"Karel, Karel, wake up, old man! Do you feel better? Come on, you're not drunk, just tipsy!" Massinger was shaking Bayev gently, the two men now propped up on the back seat.
"I can't go back to the hotel," Hyde said, "not until I've shaken all three cars."
"This is no good—" Massinger protested. "He's totally disorientated."
"I'll drive around."
Green. The lights changed as they passed beneath the War Memorial, and Hyde turned right onto the Burgring, opposite the huge, dark, frosty bulks of the arts and natural history museums. Maybe only two of the cars would catch the light—?
Radio. They'd have radio. They were as vulnerable in the Mercedes as they had been in the girl's flat.
Two cars, yes. He accelerated. Karl Renner Ring, Karl Leuger Ring, each set of lights thankfully green.
"Where?" he asked.
"Anywhere!" Massinger snapped.
Schottenring. Red lights ahead, strung over the middle of the wide thoroughfare. The first car was no more than twenty yards behind them, in the thin traffic. The road was shining with frost.
Green filter.
Hyde swung the wheel hard to the left, and the Mercedes skidded, its back end floating away, then he accelerated and the car bounced heavily over tramlines and he was into a narrower street. He took the first right, then right again. The lights of the Schottenring were ahead of him. He turned into it a block further north from where he had left it, and accelerated again.
"Aubrey's people," Massinger was saying loudly and firmly. "Aubrey's people. He's fighting for his life, Karel. He's desperate. He hasn't got a chance!"