"Two years — two years I survived it… God — do you know how much I learned about killing, about slaughter, about mutilation—! And the rebels taught me everything. I threw up the first time I saw a patrol of ours that had been attacked by rebels…" No coughing; nothing but a loud, choking swallow. "Napalm, burn them like rats, like dark things in corners, like lice… you can burn them all if you can find them…"
"Jesus wept," Hyde breathed, but it might have been no more than impatience which prompted him. Snow flurried in a quicker wind and dusted them. Hyde tasted it, then smeared it across his face as if to wash, to freshen himself. His beard rasped. Its growth seemed more than a mere stubble; a change of identity. Petrunin, too, had suffered change. Yes, they had known what they were doing when they sent him into exile, to Kabul.
"You could burn them all if you could find them, if you had enough napalm," Petrunin repeated. "Kapustin — I can see his cunning peasant's face now — sitting on Nikitin's left, telling me I had overreached myself…" His English was more regular now; its tone more clipped, educated, as if the man were reverting to some former, more urbane self as he died.
"Come on," Hyde whispered. The snow-curtain swayed, flickered, swayed, fell.
Overreached… even then, he must have been patting Teardrop on the head like a newly-adopted son… even then — peasant. His hissing voice was interrupted by coughing. Hyde almost covered his mouth with the bloodstained piece of shirt, suppressing the spillage. Hyde's lips moved silently, as if he were praying. Eventually, Petrunin's heaving chest subsided. When Hyde removed the cloth, the Russian's cheeks and chin were smeared with darker patches and stripes; an animal mask resembling the symbols that had decorated his blood-red helicopter as it hovered over the burning tribesmen. Hyde sat back, and almost at once his weariness made him close his eyes. He jolted back to wakefulness, his eyes staring at the falling snow. His boots and trousers were covered by a thin white blanket. He heard Petrunin's teeth chattering, and knew he could not let the man wander in the landscape of his self-pity any longer.
In Russian, he said with studied deference: "They did badly by you, Comrade General — those Party hacks." The words were out almost before he could consider and weigh them; yet he knew they were right. He remembered Massinger's voice from the rear of the Mercedes, interrogating the Vienna Rezident. Something like that — a last delusion for the dying man, drugged by his wound. "You're right, sir — peasants, all of them."
There was a long silence, then he heard Petrunin's remote, quiet voice. "You want to know, don't you?" he said. "Hyde? You're here to find out — aren't you?"
"Yes," Hyde could not help admitting. Somehow, the proximity of Petrunin's death disarmed him.
Petrunin laughed; coughed, so that Hyde plucked up the piece of cloth at once; continued to laugh. His amusement seemed as deep as his bitterness, as deep as his inhumanity.
"Why not?" he said finally. "Why not?" Then, after a long pause: "Why not indeed?"
Hyde glanced up at the overhang of the rock as if at the sky. His hands clenched at his sides with the relief of tension.
"It had to be your idea," he said. "So bloody devious."
"You didn't know — you found out, but you didn't guess?"
"No."
"Good. But yes, it was my idea. I created Teardrop. Kapustin merely stole it. After he failed to rescue me — let me drown in front of Nikitin in the juice of my failure — he simply came along and picked the whole thing up."
"Why?"
"Why? Because the time was right, that's why. Aubrey was head of the service — the time was right. For everyone in Moscow Centre, the time was right. And sweet…" The tone of Petrunin's voice was thin and faint, like the distant sounds of a boy treble rising from a hidden choir. Unearthly. Yet there was a satisfaction that even his closeness to death could not diminish. His scheme had ended Aubrey's career in disgrace. Petrunin's revenge was complete. The high faint tone of the voice was like a long amen. Petrunin seemed at peace.
"But — just for revenge? You created it just for Aubrey's disgrace?" Hyde's words resonated with disappointment.
"Not Aubrey — sweet, though. Anyone. The Director-General of the time… there were other scenarios… but the best, the best belonged to Aubrey. Everything fitted… and 1946 was a bonus. Oh, I was an avid reader of Aubrey's biography. I know more about him than anyone on earth — even himself, perhaps. Sweet…"
"Why? What was the real reason?" Hyde persisted. The curtain of snow seemed lighter now, almost transparent. Petrunin was silent for a long time. Hyde felt very cold, especially numbed in his left arm and shoulder. Then he realised that it was Petrunin's weight leaning against his side. The man's eyes were closed, his jaw was slack, and his lips hung open amid the stripes and stains of the smeared, dried blood. Hyde groaned aloud; almost a wail. He shook the body by the shoulders, but Petrunin's eyelids did not flicker.
Then Hyde heard the distant noise of a helicopter.
Wolfgang Zimmermann felt a curious gratitude that Margaret Massinger seemed so willing to immerse herself in the sheafs of reports and surveillance digests he had given her. He was aware that the woman was somehow keeping herself in check, as if turning her past lightly page by page, an album of old photographs to which she gave hardly any of her attention; someone else's snapshots, another person's history. She seemed determined that the work should occupy her.
Zimmermann felt that Margaret understood he did not believe Aubrey to be innocent of the death of her father. He had struggled to conceal the truth of his guesses and suspicions when she questioned him about Disch, but the woman was perceptive, keen-eyed for proof of Aubrey's guilt. He did not think he had masked his intuitions sufficiently to deceive her. He did not wish to believe Aubrey guilty, but Castleford's execution as a closet Nazi helping war criminals to escape did not contradict his knowledge of Aubrey's character. He surreptitiously glanced at his watch. They had been working for almost two hours since lunch, and Massinger still had not returned. Zimmermann almost dreaded his arrival.
Margaret saw, from the corner of her eye, Zimmermann's tiny movements as he turned his wrist to check his watch. She did not look up. Paul — what had Paul learned? Was he afraid to come back? Did he know—? She ground her teeth, certain that the noise was audible, and pressed all thought of her father into the back of her mind. Most of the time — especially whenever she reminded herself of the danger that threatened Paul — she was able to believe that concern over the truth of her father's death had become less important to her. But, at moments when she was off-guard, as when Zimmermann consulted his watch, it leapt at her with unabated strength. Yet she had to suppress it, had to—
"I — excuse me, Wolf…" Zimmermann looked up and smiled. Her German was grammatical, stiff, well-learned, and recently unused. "I–I've made a list of what you could call — absences without leave during the period from February to April '74. There are a lot of them."