The Czech embassy in Kensington, amid all the old and graceful and corrupted buildings the ugliest and most modern.
He snapped the guard to attention, straightened his cap, wiped at his superficial injuries, and glared.
"Colonel Petrunin wants a report — now! Out of my way!" The guard's eyes lost suspicion a moment after his Kalashnikov bisected his features, at attention. Then his eyes became afraid, and Hyde realised how young he was. Like 1914 — the Russians were sending their youngest, their youth… "That's better," he snapped, passing the guard and making for the iron-railed, mock-marble stairs which had already begun to pull away from the wall alongside them. He sneered at his own heated image. None of these poor sods was in the Party, in all probability. Sending their best—? Don't be stupid—
He smelt burning paper. Someone had panicked and was already beginning to incinerate sensitive material, the incriminating files, as if a liberating army lay out there in the square. He remembered the SIS house-joke when the Ayatollah's mobs had climbed the US embassy fence in Tehran. The only prayer you could hear, so it ran, was for another box of matches…
He steadied himself at the turn of the stairs. The adrenalin was out of control, running like heady wine. He couldn't restrain his thoughts. That was Petrunin's doing. Even as he saw the sleeve of his uniform jacket, he envisaged the boy's broken, bleeding head — a small thin fount of blood — bang back against the rocks before the dead body slid into a heap. He rubbed his cheek, reminding himself of the stinging pain. Stop it, stop it—
His hand was quivering, his arm shaking as he gripped the cold iron banister. Counter-productive, he told himself. Out of control. He'll kill you in this state…
Helicopter noises, closing now outside—
Helicopters laying black eggs that opened to let out a mist that Petrunin had ignited — fifty men dead, charred like burnt biscuits in no more than a moment. A red helicopter that gloated its way back down the valley—
He could kill you in this state—
Two hard-faced men in civilian clothes passed him, their arms clutching bundles of files. They did not even glance at him. They were obeying an order to abandon ship that had not yet been given. The noise of the helicopter was louder still. He looked through the windows into the compound. One helicopter — only one so far, its lights smearing red-blue-white across the snow on the lawn, red-blue-white, as it descended.
In five minutes, Petrunin would be on his way back to army headquarters and be lost for good.
He clattered up the rest of the flight of steps, sprinted along the corridor, the plan of the building he had drawn for himself from the dead boy's description clear in his mind, as if he had summoned in onto a screen. Almost, in the heightened state of his senses and imagination, he could see himself like a moving dot on that screen. Other end of the building — this corner — empty corridor…
A narrow-skirted girl emerged from an office. Hyde sent her tumbling as he charged into and past her. He heard his boot crunch on her lost spectacles, heard her cry as he rounded another corner. Outside, now that the rotors of the first of the helicopters had slowed, he could hear the chatter of rifles on automatic, answered more distantly by the guns of the Pathans from the square.
He looked at his watch. Twelve minutes — less — remaining. Perhaps four minutes before the corridor in which he hesitated like a lost visitor was filled with rescuers, ready to escort Petrunin to that first helicopter in the company of the Soviet ambassador.
Guards in the next corridor. He could hear the nervous words flickering between them like gamblers' bids. He strode around the last corner. Carpet, suddenly, not linoleum. Petrunin's KGB suite of offices. He glanced out of the tinted windows along one wall of the corridor. The guards had their noses pressed against the glass like children at a fairground.
"Back to your posts!" he snapped.
Troops were running across the light-mossed, snowy lawn towards the main embassy building. One of them fell, killed by a bullet which could have come from either side. Other soldiers scuttled beneath the idling rotors of the MiL-8 transport towards the KGB building.
Three minutes.
The soldiers had already sullenly shuffled back to their posts, almost forming a ceremonial guard for inspection as he passed down the corridor to the main double doors at the end. One guard, two, three, four—
"Sir — there's no admittance," the fourth guard offered, unslinging his Kalashnikov from his shoulder.
Hyde turned and glared at him. He pointed at his forehead and cheek.
"Do you think I've come for the coffee?" he asked. "Comrade Colonel Petrunin wants a full report on the situation at the gates. I was at the gates, unlike you lucky bastards! Understand! You want to delay my report to the Comrade Colonel?"
"No, sir."
"Then step aside. And don't admit anyone else, not until you've seen the proper authority."
"Sir."
Hyde passed swiftly on before he could be asked for papers he did not possess. He knocked once, loudly and peremptorily, on the double doors then opened one of them and slipped into the ante-room, his hand fiddling with the holster flap over the butt of the Makarov pistol.
A male secretary on the telephone glanced up immediately, his only concern his inability to identify the features partially disguised by the cuts and bruising. One hand reached into the top drawer of his desk. His left hand still held the telephone. He continued his urgent request for more back-up.
Then the Stechkin automatic came above the level of the desk and the telephone was ignored, and Hyde shot him twice, the Makarov still pressed against his hip. The secretary ducked under the table, as if looking for coins he had dropped. The telephone receiver followed him with a clatter.
Hyde swiftly crossed the carpeted, comfortably furnished ante-room to Petrunin's door. Petrunin, in his present circumstances, would be as alert as a cat. How many of them were in the room, how many guns—?
He wrenched at the handle of the door, felt resistance, then flung his shoulder against it, aware of the hollow, soft stomach he presented to any bullet fired through the door. There was a muffled cry and he stepped through, closing the door behind him with his heel. It slammed shut like a call to attention.
Hyde's eyes took in the room.
Petrunin was alone. In uniform, looking much older, much more cunning. Spreadeagled by Hyde's thrust against the door, he had raised himself to a sitting position on a circular, rumpled Chinese rug. Highly polished wooden floor, Afghan, Persian, Indian rugs and wall-hangings. Exotic. Not Western.
Petrunin was looking at him. And at the Makarov levelled at his stomach by a young lieutenant with his back pressed against the door. There was something familiar…?
"Good morning, Comrade General Petrunin," Hyde said in English and he could not help, even though his body was shaking with reaction and his voice had quavered, indulging in an almost boyish grin.
"Hyde, Hyde." was all Petrunin said. And then once more:
CHAPTER NINE:
The Prisoners
"Hyde," Petrunin repeated once more, then added: "You've come a long way."
He exuded an easy, false confidence as he sat on the rug, almost as if welcoming a guest to some casual, even exotic party. Hyde remained with his back against the door. There was no sound from outside, but he was intensely aware of the dead body of the secretary behind his desk. Anyone who entered the outer room—
"Comrade General Petrunin," Hyde acknowledged, hearing the noise of a second helicopter approaching.
Through the long window behind Petrunin's desk, he could see people being hurried by greatcoated soldiers towards the first helicopter. The ambassador, a dark coat thrown over his pyjamas, waded through the patchy snow in large fur boots, a woman clutching a dressing-gown around her followed him. He had less than ten minutes by the timetable they had agreed before the raid. He had little more than a minute in this office before Petrunin's rescuers arrived.