One of the Frenchmen who shared his compartment had removed his shoes and stretched his legs. His socks smelt in the over-warm, dry atmosphere. The sleeping child in the farthest corner of the compartment murmured, shifted. Her mother adjusted her arms about her. The express was less than an hour from Strasbourg. He would be in Vienna the following day.
The French newspapers carried nothing concerning his disappearance from England. Evidently, it had not been made public. There were stories, of course; peculiar and witty Gallic cruelties regarding himself, British Intelligence, Britain itself. But nothing of his current whereabouts. The secrecy did not comfort him. Instead, he saw it as a signpost on the road towards his inevitable disappearance into another identity. Already, the press had lost sight of him, and that was only the beginning. Unlike the traitors, for him there wasn't even a Moscow where he could arrive in safety and remain himself.
All he was able to do was to destroy the written evidence of his guilt. There was nothing better or more or greater to hope for. The early edition of France-Soir, which he had bought in Paris, lay still opened on his lap. Mitterand was in London to see the PM concerning the EEC budget and the CAP — again. He could read the headline and the caption to the photograph suddenly in the brief, fleeting lights of a country station. The tired familiarity of the wrangle hurt with a physical sensation of pain in his chest. He — he, Kenneth Aubrey, might have been calling to brief the PM not an hour after the talks with Mitterand had ended — or the next day, or the day after that…
Now, he would never do that again.
He did not love power — no, he resisted that insinuating accusation that popped out of the darkness at the back of his mind. No… but it had been forty-five years since he had begun to serve his country, since he had begun to be the person he thought himself to be. Now, he had to relinquish that country, that person.
Brainwashing experiments, he thought suddenly in an irrational, unnerving way. Suspension of the body from buoyant slings in tepid water. In no more than days, one was left with a clean sheet. The utter absence of physical sensation completely erased the personality. No memory, no opinions, no person. It had begun to happen to him.
The express rattled over points, swayed, then clicked on into the winter night. The lights of another country station. A railway employee — some guard or porter or station-master or signalman — had watched the train pass. Aubrey recognised that he might become that anonymous man past whom the world would rush and disappear into the distance.
Tears pricked his tired eyes. Sleep would not come. The odour of the Frenchman's socks mingled with that of half-melted sweets from the opposite corner of the compartment.
Petrunin's eyes opened. They seemed, impossibly, to fall open rather than be revealed by the raising of the eyelids. The man's face was drawn and grey, but the only visible blood on his face was old and dry. Hyde's breath escaped in a ragged, elongated moan of relief. The noise of the helicopter had returned and then had faded once more as he had sat hunched against the man he thought was dead, his head listening for some betraying heartbeat against the wetness of Petrunin's blouse. It had almost stopped snowing. Hyde could see the black sticks of the nearest stunted trees against the whiteness of the ground. But Petrunin was alive — just.
"Why?" Hyde said at once, seeing that the Russian's eyes remained unfocused, inward-staring. "What was the reason for it?"
Petrunin was silent for a long time. The wind whispered, puffing snow under the lee of the overhang. Hyde was numb with cold. Then the Russian muttered in the remote voice that had become familiar to Hyde: "I don't — want to be remembered as the butcher of Kabul." It was uninflected, passionless yet full of self-pity. Hyde had not reached the place where what remained of Petrunin had retreated. "I don't want to be remembered as the butcher of Kabul," Petrunin repeated exactly. Hyde did not think it was even a nickname he had been given. He was describing the state of his self-knowledge.
"Why?" Hyde shouted. "Why did you need Teardrop?"
"I was being used, even then," Petrunin said, disconcerting Hyde. "In 1941, during the nine hundred days…" His voice tailed off. Hyde had no idea what he meant. "Even then, scouting, carrying messages… I was no more than a boy — thirteen when the war began… they've had me in their pockets since I was thirteen… since Leningrad…"
Hyde was chilled by this glimpse into Petrunin's past. As little more than a boy, he had experienced the privations and terrors of the German siege of Leningrad which had last nine hundred days.
"Yes," he said.
"In their pockets… their man, their thing …"
"But — why?"
Something reminded Hyde to attend to the reality beyond the tiny huddle of himself and Petrunin. Silence, except for the quiet soughing of the wind. The snow was still falling, but more lightly. He could not hear the helicopter's rotors.
Petrunin did not answer his question. Instead, his cold, remote voice said, "Leningrad…" It was a sigh. Its meaning had become a talisman for Petrunin which perhaps protected him against memories of the more recent past. Hyde felt himself totally identified with the Russian, a fellow-conspirator in a world of enemies. The identification was so close that Hyde could not envisage the border or foresee his escape.
"Why?" he asked again softly and without hope of any reply.
"Why?" Petrunin repeated. "Why?" He spoke in English once more, a sharper, more amused tone in his voice. "To place him — to place our man at the apex, the pinnacle… whenever we wished. When the time…" A slight cough interrupted Petrunin. His eyes closed as if to eradicate pain. Hyde looked at him. Only minutes now. Then Petrunin seemed to gather a new, urgent strength. "The time was right," he announced. "Sir William was the — the Chairman of JIC, he had your Prime Minister's ear… your new service, combining intelligence and security, could be set up now—! The time was right… and sweet…" He coughed, then added: "For our man…"
Hyde heard only that last phrase, as Petrunin's voice faded like a poor radio signal.
Their man. Hyde felt himself shivering uncontrollably. The answer was a moment, one more sentence away, and the realisation of its proximity made him understand his surroundings and his situation more deeply. Once he had the knowledge, he had to stay alive, get out—
"Who?" he asked, but before he received an answer he had pressed his palm against Petrunin's mouth. The Russian's eyes widened. Hyde could not be certain the Russian could see the soldier moving slowly across the snow, forty yards from them, clothed in winter combat camouflage, Kalashnikov carried across his chest, snowshoes lifting and clumping and flattening the snow.
Hyde felt Petrunin's lips moving against the cold flesh of his palm. It might have been the name of the traitor, it might have been a protest at being gagged. It might have been some last, futile epithet. Hyde clamped his hand more firmly over Petrunin's mouth as the soldier continued to pass across their field of vision.
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
Arriving
Two more soldiers came out of the stunted trees, bobbing into view as they climbed the last of the shallow slope. Both of them, rifles angled across their white-clad chests, appeared to be walking straight towards Hyde and Petrunin, able to make out their huddled shapes beneath the overhang. Petrunin's body slumped against Hyde once more, almost into an embrace, and Hyde knew the man was still alive because his lips kept murmuring soundlessly against his palm. His hand was warmed by the faint breathing of the Russian, but it was a fitful breeze, threatening to disappear each time it tickled his palm.