Mzytryk was too seasoned to consider rushing him, the distance too far. In his side pocket was an automatic but before he could get it out he was sure that Armstrong’s teeth would crush the capsule and three seconds left was not nearly enough time for vengeance. His only hope was that Armstrong’s pain would make him faint, or lose concentration. He leaned back against the other table and cursed him.
When the stretcher bearers had tightened Armstrong’s straps in the darkness of the ambulance, he had instinctively used his strength against the straps to give himself just enough space to pull out his arm - in case the pain became too much for him. Another capsule was secreted in his shirt collar. He had trembled through Hashemi’s dying, thanking God for the respite that had allowed him to drag his arm free, the effort terrible. But once he had touched the capsule, his terror had left him and with it, much of his pain. He had made peace with himself at the edge of death where life is so utterly sublime.
“We’re… we’re professionals,” he said. “We didn’t murder your… your son. He was alive when… when General Janan took him away for Pahmudi.” “Liar!” Mzytryk heard the weakness in the voice and knew he would not have to wait much longer. He readied.
“Read the official… official documents… SAVAMA must have made some… and those of your God-cursed KGB.”
“You think I’m such a fool you can set me against Pahmudi before you die?” “Read the reports, ask questions, you could get the truth. But you KGB bastards never like the truth. I tell you he was alive when SAVAMA took him.”
Mzytryk was put off balance. It wouldn’t be normal for a professional like Armstrong - near death, one way or another, to waste time suggesting such an investigation without being certain of the outcome. “Where are the tapes?” he said, watching him carefully, seeing the eyes beginning to flicker, great tiredness from loss of blood. Any second now. “Where are the tapes?”
“There weren’t any. Not… not from the third level.” Armstrong’s strength was ebbing. The pain had gone now - along with time. It took a bigger and bigger effort every second to concentrate. But the tapes must be protected, a copy already safely en route to London along with a special report. “Your son was brave and strong and gave away nothing to us. What… what Pahmudi hacked… hacked out of him I don’t know… Pahmudi’s thugs… it was them or your own scum. He was al… alive when your lot took him. Pahmudi told Hashemi.”
That’s possible, Mzytryk thought uneasily. Those motherless shiteaters in Tehran messed up Iran, misread the Shah for years, and befouled our work of generations. “I’ll find out. By my son’s head I’ll find out but that won’t help you - comrade!”
“One favor deserves … one deserves ano… another. You knocked off Roger, Roger Crosse, eh?”
Mzytryk laughed, happy to taunt him and exploit the waiting. “I arranged it, yes. And AMG, remember him? And Talbot, but I told Pahmudi to use this shiteater Fazir for that 16/a.” He watched the cold blue eyes narrow and wondered what was behind them.
Armstrong was searching his memory. AMG? Ah, yes, Alan Medford Grant, bom 1905, dean of counterintelligence agents. In 1963, as Ian Dunross’s secret informant, he fingered a mole in the Noble House. And another in my Special Branch who turned out to be my best friend. “Liar! AMG was killed in a motorcycle accident in ‘63.”
“It was assisted. We’d had a 16/a out on that traitor for a year or more - and his Jap wife.” “He wasn’t married.”
“You bastards know nothing. Special Branch? Turd heads. She was Jap Intelligence. She had an accident in Sydney the same year.” Armstrong allowed himself a little smile. The AMG motorcycle “accident” had been organized by the KGB but had been re-staged by MI6. The death certificate was genuine, someone else’s, and Alan Medford Grant still operates successfully though with a different face and different cover that even I don’t know. But a wife? Japanese? Was that another smoke screen, or another secret? Wheels within wheels within…
The past beckoned Armstrong. With an effort he put his mind on what he truly wanted to know, to check if he was right or wrong, no time to waste anymore, none. “Who’s the fourth man - our arch traitor?”
The question hung in the cellar. Mzytryk was startled and then he smiled, for Armstrong had given him the key to have his revenge psychologically. He told him the name and saw the shock. And the name of the fifth man, even the sixth. “MI6’s riddled with our agents, not just moles, so’s MI5, most of your trade unions - Ted Everly’s one of ours, Broadhurst and Lord Grey - remember him from Hong Kong? - and not just Labour though they’re our best seeding ground. Names?” he said gloating, knowing he was safe. “Look in Who’s Who! High up in the banks, the City, in the Foreign Office - Henley’s another of ours and I’ve already had a copy of your report - up to Cabinet, perhaps even into Downing Street. We’ve half a thousand professionals of our own in Britain, not counting your own traitors.” His laugh was cruel. “And Smedley-Taylor?”
“Oh, yes, him too an - ” Abruptly Mzytryk’s gloating ceased, his guard slammed shut. “How do you know about him? If you know about him… Eh?” Armstrong was satisfied. Fedor Rakoczy had not lied. All those names on the tapes already gone, already safe, Henley never trusted, not even Talbot. He was content and sad, sorry that he would not be around to catch them himself. Someone will. AMG will.
His eyes fluttered, his hand slid away from his coat lapel. Instantly Mzytryk rushed the space, moving very fast for such a big man, and pinioned the arm between the table and his leg, ripped the lapel away, and now Armstrong was powerless and at his mercy. “Wake up, matyeryebyets!” he said exultantly, the penknife out. “How did you know about Smedley?” But Armstrong did not answer. Death had come quietly.
Mzytryk was enraged, his heart thundering. “Never mind, he’s gone, no need to waste time,” he muttered out loud. The mother-eating bastard went into hell knowing he was the tool of traitors, some of them. But how did he know about Smedley-Taylor? To hell with him, what if he told the truth about my son?
In the corner of the cellar was a can of kerosene. He began to slop it over the bodies, his rage dissipating. “Ishmael!” he called up the stairs. When he had finished with the kerosene he threw the can into the comer. Ishmael and another man came down into the cellar. “Are you ready to leave?” Mzytryk asked them.
“Yes, with the Help of God.”
“And with the help of ourselves too,” Mzytryk said lightly. He wiped his hands, tired but satisfied with the way the day and the night had gone. Now just a short ride to the outskirts of Tabriz to his helicopter. An hour - less - to the Tbilisi dacha and Vertinskya. In a few weeks the young puppy Hakim will arrive, with or without my pishkesh, Azadeh. If it’s without, it will be expensive for him. “Start the fire,” he said crisply, “and we’ll be going.”
“Here, Comrade General!” Cheerfully Ishmael threw him some matches. “It’s your privilege to finish that which you began.”
Mzytryk had caught the matches. “Good,” he said. The first did not light. Nor the second. The third did. He backed to the stairs and carefully threw it. Flames gushed to the ceiling and to the wooden rafters. Then Ishmael’s foot went into his back and sent him sprawling, headfirst, into the outskirts of the fire. In panic Mzytryk screamed and beat at the flames and he whirled and scuttled on his blackening hands and knees back toward the stairs, stopped a moment beating at his fur lapels, coughing and choking in the billowing black smoke and smell of burning flesh. Somehow he lurched to his feet. The first bullet smashed his kneecap, he howled and reeled backward into the fire, the second broke his other leg and hurled him down. Impotently he beat at the flames, his screams drowned by the gathering roar of the inferno. And he became a torch.