"Now!" Hyde whispered fiercely into Petrunin's ear.
He pushed the man forward with the Makarov, through the main doors. The cold was more intense now that the helicopter fire was dying down. There was still some firing at the gates, their ruin almost blocked by the BMP slewed across them. Hyde saw the vehicle launch a Sagger missile. There were dozens of soldiers near the gates now, and two trucks and a personnel carrier. In the hard-lit square, buildings appeared to be burning.
They reached the staff car. Hyde opened the door. Guards watched them from the steps, undecided. Petrunin looked back at them, then at Hyde. He shook his head.
"In," Hyde said, gesturing with the gun.
Guards, suspicious now or concerned for Petrunin's safety, had begun to descend the steps. Petrunin sensed the moment, and raised his head as if to summon them. A small explosion at the gates distracted him and distracted the guards. Hyde struck Petrunin across the temple with the barrel of the Makarov and shoved his crumpling body into the rear of the staff car, arranging it as carefully as he could on the deep rear seat. Then he climbed into the driving seat. The keys were in the ignition of the Zil, and he switched on the engine. The noise brought the attention of the guards back to him. He waved them away, and accelerated towards the gates, the rear wheels slewing then biting into the gravel of the drive.
In the driving mirror, the guards seemed to accept the situation. The escort detail was busy emptying the MiL of its unwanted passengers while still more of the embassy staff — many of them obviously half-dressed or still in their nightclothes — streamed towards the helicopter as to a shrine. Petrunin sat propped and unconscious behind him.
Many of the Russian troops had moved beyond the gates now. Hyde glanced at his watch. His time had run out; the Pathans were beginning to withdraw and he was now racing to overtake them. He swerved around a truck, then edged the staff car alongside the green, high flank of the BMP, its cannon pumping shells into the square. He looked up, seeing flat Soviet helmets above the flank of the vehicle. Kalashnikovs on automatic were creating a dense field of fire ahead of the BMP, which had begun to move into the square.
The nearside wheels of the staff car jolted over one of the ruined gates. An infantry officer suddenly appeared and bent to glance into the car, then indicated that Hyde should wind down the window. Two soldiers barred the car's path. The BMP moved away, letting the lights in the square glare on Hyde, like a curtain being drawn. The concrete bunker was still smouldering and there were a number of bodies near the gates. Most of the square was littered with wreckage and clumps of flame and smoke. Hyde wound down the window. The lieutenant had checked the identity of the passenger. Hyde saw distaste disfigure the man's features.
"This bastard's been wounded — I'm getting him out!" Hyde explained, gambling.
"Pity he isn't dead — bastard's right. Where's your escort?"
"We were going to use the chopper — but there's panic back there. Everyone wants to get on. They'll be shooting each other for a place in a couple of minutes!"
"Fucking KGB!"
"He's too afraid of getting shot by one of his own — he wants to get out the quiet way. If they've got a launcher out there they could pick him off… Come on, man! If I don't deliver him, I might as well shoot myself!"
"Too right. Running like a rat, is he?"
"You've got it. Can I go, then?"
"OK — out of the way, you two!" The lieutenant waved Hyde on. He slid the car through the wreckage around the gates, jolting it over rubble and bodies. Petrunin slid slowly to one side behind him until he was lying slumped on the seat. Hyde ignored him. The BMP was ahead of him, its field of fire concentrated towards the shadowy streets beyond the lights. There seemed to be no return of fire. Infantry followed the BMP on foot, armed, afraid and cautious. Through the still open window, above the noise of flames and firing, he could hear the approach of other helicopters. He pressed the accelerator after assuring himself that Petrunin was still unconscious, turning the car into the narrow street at the corner of which Miandad had crouched with the RPG-7 and opened the way in for him. The staff car bounced on uneven cobbles. In the driving mirror, the small sliver of the square that he could see was filled with soldiers and light. The attack had been beaten off.
He unbuttoned his tunic and reached into its inside pocket for the map of Kabul they had given him. He stopped the car in the narrow, silent street that was little more than an alley, and switched on the courtesy light over his head. He studied the river, the warren of narrow streets, the broad Soviet-Western thoroughfares, the suburbs, the road to Jalalabad.
A helicopter beat low over the buildings that lined the street, startling him. His finger twitched on the map where it had been tapping the location of the bazaar, his point of rendezvous with the Pathans and Miandad.
The narrow street was grey now, not black. Hanging lines of washing emerged from the featureless profiles of blocks of flats. Many windows were lit. A helicopter made another pass over the street in the direction of the square. He laid the map on the passenger seat, checked Petrunin's unconsciousness once again, and accelerated. The visualised map of the city's network of avenues, streets and alleys unrolled in his head. He reached for the red light, to attach it to the roof, and looked for the switch for the staff car's siren. It would be easy. He would move in the direction of army headquarters, only turning into the warren of the bazaar district at the last moment, doubling back through the chilly, vile, winding alleys and packed-earth streets to the rug maker's shop.
He reached out of the window and clamped the red light to the roof. New York, he thought. Playing cops. Behind him, Petrunin murmured and Hyde turned, startled into a sense of danger once more. The hand that still held the red light twitched, then let go of the seeming-toy that had reminded him of celluloid policemen and blank cartridges. He stopped the car at the end of the alley and turned in his seat to look at the Russian, as if for the first time.
The man was still unconscious. In the faint grey light of the first of the dawn, his features appeared sickly, unfed. There were deep lines in his cheeks and brow and beside his lips. He looked much older; he looked vulnerable and alone and someone who had become superannuated and unable to frighten Hyde any longer. Yet this was only a sleeper's mask. Hyde had been shocked by the changes he had seen in Petrunin's face the moment he had slammed shut the door of his office. Older, cunning, the eyes haunted, even totally empty until they filled with a transitory fear and then with a violent urge towards self-preservation. He had come face to face with a savage, degenerate man, someone who had taken lives indiscriminately and often — and had learned to enjoy that power; desiring and needing it. He had been certain of that from the moment the red helicopter had hovered, watching the incineration of fifty tribesmen in the narrow, snow-covered valley. Petrunin's altered, corrupted face had confirmed Hyde's certainty.
Hyde shook his head. He rubbed his throat where the uniform collar had chafed his skin after the loose robes of his Pathan disguise. Disguise — the clothes had smelt, but it wasn't that, either. He hated, had come to hate, the way they implied a common identity between himself and someone like Mohammed Jan. He dismissed the Pathan's image and returned his consideration to the unconscious Petrunin. He had become a wild, dangerous animal, instead of a senior KGB officer bound by the unwritten rules governing the conflicts between intelligence services. Like the Pathans he pursued and destroyed, he was without emotion and mercy.