"I'm getting stiff," Hyde announced. "Let's walk."
They left, passing through other rooms that might once have been offices — a broken chair, sagging wooden shelves — until they stood in the main courtyard of the fort. The snow-laden pines stretched away up the mountain slope until they petered out at the treeline. The scene was almost colourless; hostile and lonely.
They paced the courtyard of hardened earth, ridged by old cartwheels or the ancient wheels of gun carriages. Hyde flapped his arms against his sides for warmth.
"It is a deadly game, my friend," Miandad said after a long silence filled only by the wind and their stamping footsteps.
"I know that."
"He will hold you responsible if you do not—"
"I know that!" Hyde snapped. He halted, turning to Miandad. "My life isn't worth a spit anywhere in the world unless I get hold of Petrunin and get the truth from him. In those circumstances, mate, it's easy to make extravagant promises and put your balls in the scales!"
"Very well. But, how will you prevent Mohammed Jan from putting your Russian to death immediately he is captured — always supposing he is captured alive in the first place."
"Shoot the bugger, if I have to — Christ, I don't know! Just hope, I suppose. Or threaten to kill Petrunin myself unless they let me talk to him."
"And how will you get Petrunin to talk?"
"Christ knows! Offer him a way out? Let's face it, some bugger's going to be disappointed with the outcome — let's just hope it isn't us!"
"Very well."
"You'll be safe?"
Miandad nodded. "Oh, yes. Mohammed Jan will not harm me. You see, I represent the possibility of guns and ammunition, and shelter."
"God, I wish I knew what the hell to do!"
"Perhaps you should ask Allah for inspiration? Or your own god?"
"Who? Janus of the two faces? Some hope."
"My friend, do not despair. If we find a patrol, and we can capture some of the Russian soldiers, they will talk easily enough. They will know Petrunin — he is a legend among them, one of the few they have. They will know, perhaps, his movements and his timetable. Then an idea may come to you."
Hyde looked up at the climbing pines and the white mountains against the pale sky. He could not shake off his abiding sense of the alienness of this country. His mission was doomed to failure. Had he not been desperate himself, he would never have considered it. He would never have crossed the border.
A voice called out in Pushtu. They turned swiftly, Hyde bringing the Russian Kalashnikov to bear. A turbanned Pathan waved urgently to them from the main gate.
Miandad said, "They've found a patrol. We are ordered to make haste." He looked at the sky. "No more than two hours of daylight left. The patrol ought to be returning to Jalalabad or Kabul very soon. Come, my friend. Let's hope there are plenty of new guns, even a rocket launcher. Mohammed Jan will be mollified if the haul is a good one."
"Then there is nothing else you can do — you must get out of it." Shelley's face was grim as Massinger looked up. He had been staring at Hyde's telephone ever since he had replaced the receiver. He could still hear, more stridently and more affectingly than any of Shelley's prognostications and fears, Margaret's almost hysterical refusal to see him, to believe him, to care what happened to him. He was numbed by the fact that she could abandon him.
"How can I?" he asked bleakly.
"How can you? Drop it — drop the whole thing, man!" It was evident that Shelley was pleading with him for their mutual safety. The tortoiseshell cat roused itself, as if the electricity of their fears disturbed and shocked its fur. Then it settled back into its hollow in the sofa next to Massinger. "You'll have to bluff your way out."
"You've already thought this through, haven't you?" Massinger asked. He made it sound like an accusation, and Shelley lowered his eyes as he replied.
"Yes, I have." He looked up again, defiantly. Massinger thought perhaps his eyes had caught the front page of The Sunday Times and he had been reminded that he was abandoning Aubrey. His old chiefs fate seemed settled, inexorable. Perhaps there was nothing that could be done.
He squashed the thought like an irritating insect, half-afraid of it as of some exotic, corrupt sexual temptation. He could not simply abandon Aubrey. He shook his head. "I can't."
"You have to! Look, I've given this a lot of thought. Whoever is running this show has closed all the doors against you. Good God, don't you realise that what happened in Helsinki means that someone knew what I'd been doing almost before I did it. I made a couple of telephone calls, I met you in Calais — and it's as if we carried placards announcing our intentions." Shelley's voice was urgent and afraid. "It's time to face the truth. There's nothing we can do. We can't keep anything hidden from them. Sooner or later, they're going to get tired of us, like buzzing flies, then — splat! You, me — families…" Shelley's voice tailed off.
Massinger patted the young man's knee roughly, and said in a low voice: "Even if I did, how could I make them believe me?" He felt almost as if Aubrey could hear every word he spoke. Yet Margaret remained the light at the end of the tunnel. She would see him, come back to him, let him come back.
"It's easy!" Shelley said quickly. Massinger recognised that the conspiracy was agreed between them. "You have to convince them that you're interested in the truth of this—" His finger tapped the newspaper. Aubrey's face stared at them. Shelley's damp fingertip became smudged with print from the picture and the headline — The meaning of treason? Shelley rubbed his finger on his denims. "Don't remain in hiding — don't just skulk here. Go to Babbington, even, and ask him all about this. Ask to talk to this man living in Guernsey who's quoted here — what's his name, Murdoch? Convince them that all you're interested in, all you've ever wanted to discover, is whether or not Aubrey murdered Castleford. If you can do that, you can walk away from this mess." Shelley's voice ended on a low, seductive note.
Massinger knew it would work. Babbington would accept it, and so would Margaret. The Sunday Times had opened a route to the border of the wild country in which he had found himself. He could be across that border by nightfall; safe.
"And the traitor?" Massinger murmured.
"Forget him."
"But we know he exists!" Massinger began.
"And we can do nothing!" Shelley snapped at him. "We have to stay alive. I want to stay alive, anyway. So do you, I suspect."
"But—"
"You don't know where to begin. You have nothing to offer, no influence, no power, no knowledge, and no leverage. You can't even protect yourself. Give it up!"
He could be dining with his wife that evening. He could be holding her in his arms within a matter of hours.
Safe. The route to the border was open. Safe—
"And you?" he asked.
"I'll ring this man in Guernsey — on your behalf. A halfhearted final gesture, for form's sake. Then I can go back to the office with a clean sheet." Two spots of shame had appeared on Shelley's cheeks, but it was evident that he was determined. He had abandoned Aubrey and was already learning to live with the amputation of a small part of his conscience. "As for you," he added, "why not go and see one or two of these people I've dug up who were in Berlin in '46? It will make for conviction, mm?" Shelley picked up some sheets of paper from the coffee-table. "Yes, why not? See one or two of them, and then you call Babbington. Ask to see him — seem to want to be convinced. Sound as if you want to believe everything you read in the papers." Shelley's forced jocularity was evidently acted. He was assuming his new role, and Massinger desperately wanted to do the same. "When you've spoken to Babbington, all you have to do is convince him that you're satisfied. Aubrey killed Castleford. They have to be made to believe that you beheve it. Who knows — perhaps the old man did, in a fit of passion—?"