The Last Raven

The Last Raven

A Kenneth Aubrey and Patrick Hyde Novel

Craig Thomas

For

Eddie and June

—for the fun

NAMED CHARACTERS

British intelligence (Secret Intelligence Service)

Sir Kenneth Aubrey: Chairman of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee

Phil Cass: SIS agent in Rawalpindi

Terry Chambers: Investigator seconded from the Defence Service

Evans: Investigator

Tony Godwin: Investigator, seconded to JIC Office

Patrick Hyde: Field agent

Mallory: British Consulate in Los Angeles

Miles: SIS Deputy at the British Embassy, Rawalpindi

Julian Gaines: British Embassy, Kabul

Other British characters

Robin Blantyre: Ex SAS hitman, under the employ of Malan

Mrs Grey: Kenneth Aubrey’s housekeeper

Gwen: Kenneth Aubrey’s secretary

John Hughes: Assistant Librarian, British Library

Patricia Knowle: Solicitor for Hughes

Lescombe: Former employee of Reid Electronics

Geoffrey Longmead: Cabinet Secretary

Sir James Melstead: Retiring Permanent Secretary to the DTI and old friend of Kenneth Aubrey

Clive Orrell: Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister

General Giles Pyott: Ministry of Defence

David Reid: Former owner, shareholder of Reid Instruments; Secretary of State for Trade and Industry of the UK Government

Ros Woode: Friend of Patrick Hyde

CIA officers and employees

Paul Anders: Director, Direct Action Staff, CIA

Robert Harrell, Frank Doggett, David Becker, Blake, Evans, Barney:

Other American characters

John Calvin: US President

Kathryn Aubrey: Kenneth Aubrey’s niece

John Frascati: FAA aircraft investigator

Shapiro: Kathryn’s Aubrey’s employer, President of Shapiro Instruments

Russian characters

Chevrikov: Chairman of the KGB

Pyotr Yurievich Didenko: Russian politician, member of the Politburo

Lidichev: Member of the Politburo

Marshal Kharkov: Minister of Defence

Aleksandr Nikitin: General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party

Irena Nikitina: Russian Minister of Culture and Nikitin’s wife

General Dmitri Priabin: KGB, London Rezident

Yuri Valenkov: Russian politician, Member of the Politburo

Others

Nur: Tajik mujahideen fighter

Paulus Malan: Businessman and entrepreneur

Two Ravens sit on Odin’s shoulders and bring to his ears all the news they see and hear; their names are Thought and Memory. Odin sends them out with each dawn to fly over the world, in order he may learn everything that happens.

Always, he fears that the raven named Thought may not return, but every day his deepest concern is for Memory.

SNORRI STURLUSON (1179–1241)

The Deluding of Gylfi

(translated from the Icelandic)

PRELUDES

Why, to find one raven is lucky, ‘tis true;

But ‘tis certain misfortune to light on two

And meeting with three is the devil.

MATTHEW LEWIS (1775–1818): Ballad of Bill Jones (Bill Jones, a Tale of Wonder)

Retrieved from The British Literary Ballads Archive: https//literayballadarchive.com

Early November

There had been that awkward, hesitant moment as he was helped off with his overcoat—the momentary, reminiscent pain in his arm, still in a sling—and his umbrella dripping on the carpet before it was thrust into a stand made from an elephant’s foot. He thought of Longmead’s insensitivity in allowing that monstrosity of Empire to remain there. Then he was being ushered into the Cabinet Secretary’s office where the net-curtained windows looked over Downing Street and they were all present and all smiling—and he was back; certainly returned, promoted and congratulated and with work, real work to do!

He brushed his remaining hair flat and tempered the smirk of satisfaction on his face. His thoughts rushed warmly. Everywhere, on every face—Geoffrey Longmead’s, Clive Orrell’s, the PM’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Peter Shelley’s—there was satisfaction and amnesia. He was to be welcomed back as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, not as a former outcast or pariah. He might have left his leper’s bell in the elephant’s foot together with his umbrella.

‘Kenneth—my dear Kenneth!’ Longmead, hand extended, came towards him, beaming, the lights glinting from his heavily-rimmed spectacles, his waistcoat bulging just above his trousers. Aubrey took the hand offered him and, smiling inwardly, observed that he did not bite it. He wanted to be back!

He glanced beyond the Cabinet Secretary’s shoulder but, no, there were no sullen, loyal souls who resented the prodigal’s return and the killing of the fatted calf. They were all consummate actors … except perhaps Peter Shelley, whose pleasure seemed alloyed. The look in Peter’s eyes disturbed the wholehearted pretence of the room. Aubrey realised that the cancellation of his appointment with the Prime Minister, and his being offered his new post by the Foreign Secretary instead, was not the only small cloud in the sky of his inwardly sunny day …

… Patrick, of course. Aubrey discovered a flush of guilt that enveloped his body, hearing once more in his head—as he had done repeatedly in the car all the way from Earls Court—Ros’ shrill and vulgar blame yelled through her Entryphone as he stood in Philbeach Gardens in the rain. Accusing him of having as good as killed Patrick Hyde; at best creating the circumstances of Hyde’s death by his indifference. But it simply couldn’t be true—!

Peter Shelley’s face confirmed it was. Patrick, to whom he owed his life and his probity, had been killed in some God-forsaken corner of Afghanistan because …

… because of him, he admitted bitterly. He had loaned him out to anyone who cared to use him, like a book he had already read and recommended to others.

He had called at Hyde’s flat on his way from the airport just as a courtesy, simply wishing to make certain, now that he had returned from Nepal, that Patrick was all right. Ros’s accusations had exploded like a parcel he had been opening in all innocence. Patrick Hyde was—dead.

‘Thank you, Geoffrey,’ he murmured, shaking Longmead’s hand, smiling into his face, into the other faces there. Early evening lights sprang out along Downing Street and leaked from Whitehall. His place—his place. A whisky was being pressed into his hand, its soda fizzing. As Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Aubrey was the most powerful individual in the room, with the exception of the Cabinet Secretary. Even Orrell realised it and was hastening to make his peace. And yet Hyde … he sipped the whisky, toast-like to the room, and again heard Ros’ strident Australian voice.

The whisky went sharp and cheap on his palate and his stomach lurched. His arm ached, too, reminding him of other things, recent dangers, making a pattern of it all. Hyde was—

—dead. Shelley’s look had not given the lie to it. ‘All right, Kenneth?’ Longmead murmured, holding his elbow firmly, impatient to guide him into the centre of the room, the centre of attention.

‘What?’ he all but snapped. Ros’ accusations echoed overlappingly in his head like some tricksy recording. Then: ‘Oh, yes, Geoffrey—a little overwhelmed.’ He smiled disarmingly and moved forward with Longmead.

Shook hands with Orrell, who was deferential in a minuscule, important way, then there was a brief exchange with the PM’s PPS, whose lugubrious young face displayed the probationary reality of Aubrey’s new appointment its perhaps unfortunate necessity. Which, no doubt, was why the PM had not seen him personally. She had landed the Foreign Secretary with the task at the last moment. Evidently, her Puritan sensibilities, her inflexible rectitude, caused her to retain some smidgeon of mistrust as far as he was concerned.

He greeted Giles Pyott warmly. ‘Giles!’

‘My dear, dear old boy!’ Pyott returned, his eyes actually misty with pleasure. Aubrey looked up at the tall, erect soldier as his arm was pumped up and down. A real friend … reluctant, less imaginative, but there was always a debt of gratitude towards Giles.

Yes, he decided, continuing pleasantries with Giles, with Longmead, with Orrell and even with the PPS, the PM regarded him as something of a card-sharp, a conjurer. Clever, but don’t hand over a ten-pound note and allow him to tear or secrete it! Too clever by half. The irony of it all was that he trusted her!

Shelley seemed reluctant to join the group in the centre of the Cabinet Secretary’s faded, intricate Persian carpet. His features had something of the grave lack of indulgence of some of the Victorian Prime Ministers who looked down on them from the walls. Aubrey smiled and nodded and chaffed and demurred, all the while aware that Shelley was at the edge of this new, beaming, content circle. Then, soon after his second whisky and soda was handed to him, Shelley was there as Giles Pyott moved aside, in conversation with Longmead.

‘Peter …’ Aubrey could not conceal the hesitant guilt in his tone. His glass masked the weak, loose expression on his lips.

‘Sir Kenneth.’ Shelley, he realised, was as reluctant as he to begin, as if it was a dangerous journey that confronted them rather than a conversation. ‘I’m—delighted at, you know, the Chairmanship …’

There was a community of guilt, Aubrey decided. And Shelley, having known for longer than he, had already encountered something akin to loss, even grief. Patrick just wouldn’t be there anymore.

He blurted: ‘Is it true?’ His voice was shocked, maidenly prim.

Shelley nodded, his face lengthening. ‘I—I’m afraid so. Alison’s very upset. I didn’t think she even liked him much. You—want to know, of course.’

‘But how? Patrick…? I mean—’ Now, the others seemed to be studiously ignoring them, even providing a background of jollity and raised, lubricated voices. Cabinet changes flew in the air, money supply figures, matters in a dozen countries. His attention returned to the narrow, darker business of Hyde’s death.

‘His whole group was wiped out. Look, I know they haven’t recovered the body, but no one’s really in any doubt. I shouldn’t hold out any hope, frankly.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘He was with one of the mujahideen groups, inside the USSR. It was just surveillance, a monitoring operation, nothing more.’ Shelley shrugged.

‘Where, precisely?’

‘Only just across the Soviet border, reporting to Langley as well as to us. As things are in the Moslem Republics of the—’

‘It had nothing to do with that other business?’ Aubrey blurted, lurid headlines filling his imagination. That aircraft accident with the subterranean impact of an earthquake shivering around the world.

‘You mean—? No. Hyde might have been in the area—I suppose he might have been caught by the increased army presence there.’ Shelley rubbed his chin, then became angry in his attempt to shuffle off guilt. ‘Look, Sir Kenneth, he was on loan. He was familiar with Afghanistan. He was monitoring the volatile situation in Tajikistan—it just happened.’ His cheeks were flushed. Behind him, Orrell was approaching, conciliation on his features like a large-scale map. Suddenly, Aubrey wanted the distraction of talking to Orrell, talking business—anything but this.

‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘The CIA know nothing more?’

‘No more than they’ve told us—I’ve told you.’

Shelley seemed to sense that the conversation was all but concluded and appeared relieved.

It was easy, so easy, for an agent to have lost his life in the violent, unsettled circumstances of the Afghan border after the Soviet withdrawal. So easy.

‘Excuse me, Peter—I want a word with Kenneth,’ Orrell interposed, smiling, exuding affability like an actor with a new script from which he was still learning.

‘Oh, yes,’ Shelley mumbled.

‘Thank you, Peter,’ Aubrey said heavily. He at once beamed up at Orrell, even took his arm like someone hurrying a companion away from unpleasantness. ‘I think we must have lunch as soon as possible, don’t you?’

Aubrey deliberately turned aside from Shelley’s reproachful look. The conversations seemed to surround him quickly and they proved narcotic; he was able to fend off the admission that Hyde was dead.

PART ONE

THE KILLING OF THE DOVE

‘Censure acquits the raven,

but pursues the dove.’

JUVENAL (c.50/65—after 130 CE): Satires

ONE

Return of the Jedi?

Late October.

He began crying helplessly with huge, shuddering sobs, his body quivering with its now-perpetual weariness. He stared at the Sony Walkman in his shivering hands, cursing it. His tears fell on his hands, on the portable cassette player. His shoulders heaved. Fucking thing, fucking bloody useless thing!

He stood up shakily, sniffing loudly, wiping his grimy, stubbled face with the sleeve of his loose, filthy shirt. He stared down into the narrow knife-cut of the valley, down to where the river was stony-grey. The wind buffeted and chilled. His cheeks hurt where his tears were drying. He stared once more at the Walkman which he had broken presumably when diving for cover earlier that day or perhaps the previous day—or week. It was broken. He could neither suppress nor control his exaggerated reactions, the tears and shuddering, the weakness, even a thin anguish. Its being broken seemed to signify something as huge as the loss of his remaining sanity. It was another fingerhold on reality gone. With a bellow, he lifted his arm and threw the Walkman, its headphones still attached, in an arc out over the valley, then watched it descend until it was too small to distinguish. The small canvas bag filled with cassettes followed, accompanied by a second enraged cry. Then he slumped once more into a hunched, sitting position, his spine curved against a rock, his head bowed as his hands made constant, hard, washing movements over his face and hair and neck.

Patrick Hyde knew he was without reserves, close to collapse. At any moment, he might break, as easily as the cassette player had, against some slight, future impact. The impact of anything that belonged here, to this! Dead Petrunin had called it a shithouse and he was right. This had been Petrunin’s heart of darkness … fucking useless bloody useless fucking thing, he went on mindlessly repeating somewhere in the dark back of his head, as if he kept an idiot twin locked up there. Aware that he might have been describing himself … useless fucking thing. He was buggered, finished, close to breakdown. He needed to get out. Christ, how he needed to get out!

It was days ago he’d realised he could no longer control his temper, that his judgement was suspect, irrational; more than a week ago he’d started smoking the hashish the mujahideen always carried with them. Its effects were hardly noticeable. The tranquillisers he’d been issued were all gone. He squeezed his eyes shut. He did not want to look at the place, not at any part of it. Fucking mountains! There was no noise of helicopters or jets on the wind. They were in the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan, but the bloody place was identical to bloody Afghanistan. Heart of darkness.

The weary repetition of the same expletives tightened his throat, made his forehead thud. If he reached out his arms to each side, long before they were at full stretch his palms would encounter the limits of his cage. He knew that with a sick, churning certainty. So he hunched closer into himself, shoulders bowed, arms wrapped across his stomach, legs drawn up. The wind plucked and niggled at the thick sleeves of his shirt, ruffled the sheepskin lining of his jacket where it showed at shoulders and hem. Flapped the loose trousers he wore. He wasn’t even dressed as himself; he wasn’t himself in any way. The distance to London, even to Peshawar, was to be measured in light years rather than miles.

He had been used … that didn’t matter. It was being used up he hated. The knowledge that he was all but finished. This shithouse of a place, the hundreds of legless children, the chemically-attacked faces and limbs of men and women, the empty, bombed or flame-throwered villages. The whole catalogue of horrors. He was an inventory-man. He’d seen everything they’d done to each other, Afghan and Russian, logged it all, noted, reported, itemised. Now, he had sickened of it; not merely sick of it, that had happened months ago. He was sickened of it, was ill because of it. This heart-of-darkness shithouse that had gone quiet and unbloody for maybe six months, then simply folded its tents and moved north; so that Russian soldiers burned and bombed and exploded and gassed and poisoned and booby-trapped their own Muslims now, inside the great and glorious USSR! He laid his forehead on his forearms as if in supplication or apology.

And the Soviet Moslems in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan had learned or were learning: Shoot down the helicopters; disembowel the prisoners, use the Stingers and other missiles … fight! Jihad. The Moslem Holy War against the infidel had come north over the border, into the Soviet Union; as Brezhnev might even have suspected, in 1979. The mosques were full, the armouries and the bomb-caches were full. The mullahs were urging. There was even Hezbollah, the Party of God, because the Iranians were involved—prompting, whispering, backing, sending money and missiles.

Find out, he’d been told. Keep watch. Report back.

Tell us the truth, what’s really going on …

…. we know Kabul’s involved, we know what the Russians think, there may be a timetable … give us the facts!

So, he had watched and noted and reported, learned and inwardly digested … and it had infected him. All those bodies without hands, the corpses with dicks cut off and shoved in their grinning mouths as if they enjoyed the idea, the kids on crutches and the silent, cloaked women, the starvation and the old people left behind to be rounded up and executed. Oh, Jesus Christ! He realised his eyes were leaking again as the wind began to freeze-dry his tears before they reached his chin and throat. Oh, sweet-Jesus-Christ, get me away from here!

It would be another Afghanistan, going on for another decade at least—unless the Russians stopped it by nuking the Moslems out of existence, turning their own southern Asian border into a wasteland.

It was time to go.

They didn’t trust him, not even this pro-Western group he was with. They knew he was on the edge, maybe over it, and he’d lost whatever respect and trust they’d ever given him. It was time to go, before they began regarding him as a risk, and put an end to him. The wind was icy, the valley below funnelling it, and the mountain to his left throwing the cold air up towards him. He shivered; his teeth chattered but still he did not move. Hardly looked up at the voice hailing him. Slowly, it penetrated his awareness. His name. But when he looked up, he saw only the mountains. The Pamir, snow-covered, stretching away coldly to the east, into China, the Alay range to the north. The roof of the world, the arsehole of the world. With difficulty, he snapped away and slowly felt the insidious, always-present cold sunk deep in him. He rubbed his arms and stiff legs, watching the mujahideen with his flat, pancake-like cap climbing the last few yards towards him, Chinese-made Kalashnikov slung across his chest. One of Masood’s people, from the Panjshir Valley. Hyde shrugged indifferently. Perhaps if the regime hadn’t at last succeeded in killing Masood, things might have been different. Unlikely, but possible. A few less bodies.

‘What is it?’ he asked in awkward Pashto, which the man would understand despite not being Pathan.

Once, they would have made him learn it in school. His lean, dark features were excited, his eyes gleaming. ‘Hyde—’ There was no respect, but they still used his name and came to him with reports. ‘Less than two miles—’ He was pointing with the rifle. ‘Russians.’

‘Coming this way?’

‘No. They remain where they are.’

‘How many?’ The mountains loomed and stretched away in a seemingly endless, diminishing perspective of snow and lifelessness. ‘What are they doing?’ he added, indifferent.·

‘They are at ease—though busy.’ The man had switched to an English that was fractured and strangely bookish. ‘About thirty. A perimeter of guards. A vehicle. And one gunship—’ He spat, as if blaspheming. ‘One big helicopter … transport.’

‘What is it transporting?’

‘One big truck.’ The Afghan shrugged. ‘It carries a small aircraft.’ Then he added: ‘There is an American with them. You know him.’

Hyde felt puzzlement sting like a half-regarded insect, then his feeble concentration focused once more on the man now squatting in front of him. Like most from the Panjshir, the man, called Nur, was Tajik. Like the Moslems this side of the Soviet border. In the aftermath of Masood’s death, his people had adhered to the Americans, even to the British, because there was a debt of weapons between them. Masood’s fame as a mujahideen leader had ensured the supply of Stingers and Blowpipes and guns. The Afghan Tajiks were looking for a cause, seeking to extend the war against the Russians inside the Soviet Union. People like Nur already resented being used by people like himself. They wanted to fight the Russians again, not observe them. Once they found a new Masood, their assistance would end, long after Hyde’s demise. He knew that, quite certainly. As Nur did. The mark was on him, his fatal error was waiting around the next turning on the next goat-trail. And he didn’t much care.

‘What do you mean, a small aircraft?’ he asked, knowing he should be concerned. A truck carrying an aircraft? An American he would recognise? He groaned, expelling the air from his lungs in a huge sigh, shaking his head, rubbing his hair, then his sunken cheeks. ‘What American?’ he asked, concentrating.

‘He has been in the Panjshir—also Peshawar. He supplied missiles. I forget his name.’

‘CIA?’ Nur nodded.

‘With Russians? Bullshit!’

Nur shrugged and tugged at his short beard. Hyde could smell the man’s unwashed skin and clothes. His eyes gleamed with offence, but he murmured: ‘It is as I say.’

‘Have you taken photographs—with the long lens?’ ‘That is your task,’ Nur replied.

Hyde felt his concentration slip once more and the persistent weariness slide over him like a cloak. His awareness was like a loose electrical contact lighting something. Flashes of weak light, periods of darkness. ‘Shit,’ he muttered. He rubbed his face once more, then looked up as keenly as he could. ‘You’re certain? You’ve seen this bloke before and he’s CIA? He’s with Russian soldiers now?’

Nur nodded slowly, patiently, as if conversing with a child.

‘OK.—OK! Get the others ready!’

Nur nodded one final time and rose to his feet. It was as if he had left a door wide open, through which the wind sprang with renewed energy. Hyde looked at his quivering hands, with their dirt and broken nails, and at once clutched them against the gun in his waistband.

Nur scrambled sideways like a crab down the scree slope to where the other seven in the group were eating. He did not look back at Hyde. The sky was shredding into cloud and blue because of the wind, like cloth being torn. The high vapour trail of an aircraft, heading for Tashkent or even Moscow, drew a thread across the largest patch of blue. The mountain flanks gleamed suddenly gold as the chilly sun emerged from cloud. The landscape did not warm, merely shone more icily. Ponderously, Hyde got to his feet. His legs were weak and aching. Movement nauseated him, because it was the first small step towards more killing. Going with the Tajiks, observing the Russians, taking photographs, identifying the American and what the truck carried, all brought the killing nearer.

Young soldiers, mere children, these Panjshiris below him …

The high vapour-trail was dragged out of shape, pushed into a vague cloud by the wind. He scrabbled his way down the steep scree slope, pebbles and dust rising away from him, rolling ahead. When he reached the narrow, twisting goat-track, they were already waiting for him. Eight of them, dressed like motley extras for a cheap movie; turbans, pancake caps, a leather Soviet paratrooper’s helmet from God knew where or who. Baggy trousers or Afghan army fatigues; sheepskin jackets, combat jackets, bandoliers, grenades, Panjshiri scarves of blue and white. Bearded, silent, watchful. They were ready for more killing. Nur’s report of an American in Russian company, across the border, made that certain. He sensed their impatience, like the Sting of ice against his skin. If he did not respond, now, they might even begin with him. They were—tired of him. They’d leave at best, leave his body at worst, and head back to the Panjshir valley

… or link up with Tadjik mujahideen on the Soviet side of the border.

With a vast effort, he checked the Kalashnikov one of them handed him. The safety was off. They never applied the safety catches to their weapons, which was unnerving in itself. Someone offered him a hashish cigarette and he shook his head. The Afghan was unimpressed.

‘You’re sure you’ve seen this American before?’ he asked Nur.

‘Yes. In the Panjshir, two, three years ago. In Peshawar also.’

Hyde nodded and arranged his features to suggest deliberation, then finally decision.

‘OK, let’s go.’ He hefted the backpack so that it rode more comfortably on his shoulders. ‘Nur, you lead the way.’ The Afghans moved off immediately, eager as children seeking a game. The wind bullied about Hyde, slapping him into half-wakeful attention to his situation as he trudged along the narrow, rock-strewn track behind them, back bent, eyes narrowed against blown dust.

American…? It was as if he understood for the first time as someone in Intelligence might and should. An American—CIA. Consorting with Russian soldiers. He sighed, slowly realising that his interest was not professional at all. The presence of the American might be enough to keep him going for another day, two days … but it wasn’t that. He shook his head. With photographs, he could get out of Tajikistan straight away. He would not have to endure the week that remained before this patrol was scheduled to return. He could go back tomorrow.

The idea moved in his bloodstream like a sluggish stimulant. He could get out of this sodding, awful place.

The apartments overlooking the Kutuzovsky Prospekt were by no means modest. Luxurious, Pyotr Didenko confirmed to himself with a habitual nod as one of the KGB bodyguards helped him out of his overcoat and took it away somewhere. Nikitin was standing in the doorway of the main drawing-room, the gilded handle of a door in each large hand. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Nikitin, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. There was a delicate, glowing ikon near his head on the flock-papered wall. Didenko paused, waiting for his irritation at the luxury to subside. It did not really matter, he told himself, and gradually the sharp little moment of contempt and suspicion faded. Most of this luxury was Irena’s doing, after all. Even Pravda ridiculed her for it. Krokodil, now available on the streets, always called her the Tsarina. Ikons, delicate, gilded, carved tables, paintings she had borrowed in Moscow and even from the Hermitage, thick carpets, flowers. Nikitin ushered him into the drawing-room, then closed the double doors behind them.

‘Sit down, Pyotr. A drink? Of course … Scotch?’ Nikitin was grinning, as if he could see the mental lip-pursing of Didenko’s momentary reaction. Didenko wondered why he felt that their reforms should always bear the seal of approval of some dreadful Puritanism. Vodka not Scotch, plain wooden tables, threadbare rugs. Why did he imagine—still imagine—revolutions needed austere, even impoverished surroundings? He did not doubt Nikitin’s sincerity, not for a moment. ‘There!’ Nikitin handed him a tumbler all but full. ‘Drink up—your best health, as always, Pyotr!’ Even Nikitin’s habitual bluff heartiness seemed at odds with glasnost, their bloodless revolution. How to turn the clock forward, as Nikitin phrased it. The unremarkable hero as Pravda had dubbed him, meaning unlikely!

Nikitin swallowed half his glass of cognac. A nervous tic began in Didenko’s wrist as if to turn the face of his plain watch towards his glance. He resisted looking at the time. Nikitin was smiling, his glass raised as if Didenko had forgotten a toast.

‘To Irena’s success,’ Didenko blurted, raising his tumbler. Its facets caught the autumnal brightness from outside, flashing specks of light on the ceiling. Nikitin nodded and murmured Irena almost under his breath. He emptied his glass and refilled it.

With his back to Didenko, he said, ‘What are her chances, Pyotr? Honestly, now!’ The last words were almost growled. Again, there was that sense in Didenko’s mind of pretence or role-playing, something he found distressing, unforgivable. It did not matter how clever Irena was and how led Nikitin! It was happening. Things were changing. Their reforms were embedded—transplanted and flowering. They could begin to claim that they would succeed. The conservatives were on the retreat, everywhere. Nikitin, as the American newspapers said of him, meant business.

‘I thought you wished to talk about the Central Committee,’ he began, but Nikitin was already shaking his large head. Wisps of hair—too little for a man in his fifties, too little for a hero, Krokodil had observed!

—fell across his forehead. Nikitin brushed them away and sat down opposite Didenko, his armchair sighing luxuriously as he did so.

‘Come on, Pyotr—you’re one of less than a dozen who know and the only one whose judgement I trust absolutely! Do you think Irena’s stuck her neck too far out, expecting agreement from Kabul?’ He had almost finished his second large cognac. The bottle was dated and of plain glass. Another of the countless, mocked little luxuries.

Didenko put down his own glass and spread his hands on his thighs. Then he looked up.

‘I—I’m not certain what to think, Aleksandr. I want to say no, she hasn’t …’

‘But?’

‘But … He looked up at the high ceiling with its ornate frieze and plaster ceiling-rose above the crystal chandelier. There was nothing more than the faintest hum of traffic along the Kutuzovsky Prospekt coming through the double-glazed windows and tall French doors leading on to two balconies. He looked down … again at Nikitin. ‘But I can’t see the mullahs backing down!’ he rushed out, waving his hands. ‘There are hardly any moderates left, apart from the King himself—and he’s virtually a figurehead. They’ve listened to the beguiling noises from Tehran and they like what’s happening in our Moslem Republics!’ He sighed, then shrugged, shaking his head mournfully. ‘I wish I could be more optimistic, Aleksandr.’

Nikitin looked grimly at him, staring into a truthful but unflattering mirror, it seemed. He was nodding silently. He stared at his empty glass, then at the side-board and its bottles, and put down his glass. A circle of reflected light appeared on the pale blue of the ceiling. Nikitin leaned back heavily in his chair.

‘I wish I didn’t agree with you, my friend … but Irena—!’ He threw up his hands. ‘She definitely thinks she has a chance of calming the situation.’ His face darkened. ‘Which has to be done, otherwise we’ll have a bloody civil war to accompany our quiet little revolution! I don’t want that. The adventure in Nepal I was persuaded into, against my better judgement …’ He looked for reproach. Didenko smoothed his features and merely nodded. ‘I don’t want the army making a second Afghanistan out of parts of the Soviet Union! That would finish our plans. But I just can’t see what Irena expects, even with the concessions we’ve made, the promises of aid. I don’t think those fanatics will listen to her!’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘But she has to succeed, doesn’t she? Unless I can show the Politburo and the army something conclusive, then I’m going to have to agree to at least increase the pressure to the level of a limited offensive in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan …’ His eyes gleamed. ‘And don’t remind me it wouldn’t be the first time in Soviet history we’ve put down internal religious dissent, either, because it won’t make the pill any sweeter to swallow!’ At once, he lapsed into a profound silence, gloomy and introspective. His face was grey as his eyes roamed the carpet near his feet. His shoulders were slumped, defeated.

‘I agree,’ Didenko offered. ‘It must not happen. It’s unthinkable … it will ruin everything.’

‘Now you know why I agreed to let Irena go to Kabul with a list of promises, like a schoolgirl with an imposition! Why I made myself at least half-believe her idea.’ Again, his hands were raised in a kind of surrender. With justification. The remaining conservative faction on the Politburo would pressure him, the army would offer him a solution he could not ignore, and a suspicious, half-hearted, half-convinced Soviet public would begin to stop believing in Nikitin and glasnost and the reality of recent change. Together with the rest of the world, which had accepted Nikitin’s apology over the Nepal fiasco. Two loaded military transports had accidentally wandered off-course and been forced to make an emergency landing. Regrettable, even tragic in the outcome. Certain army generals had been retired, the world had shrugged and looked the other way. Nikitin did not intend to make a similar mistake or trust the army’s answers to problems again. He wouldn’t let them shit on his own doorstep!

Yet here was Irena off on another of her secret visits to Kabul, that new hotbed of Moslem fundamentalist fervour ever since the mujahideen had finally brought down the Kabul communist regime. Could even she snatch something out of the fire? Didenko did not know. The ‘Tsarina’ was clever, strong. None of the mockery, the satire, the suspicion when Nikitin made her Minister of Culture had dented her confidence or determination. But this…? This was something even she might fail to bring off—

‘What time does her flight arrive in Kabul?’ he asked, deflecting Nikitin’s intent stare.

‘Oh.’ The General Secretary looked at his gold Rolex watch? Again, for Didenko, there was that ingrained, habitual mental tic, as if he had clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in disapproval. ‘In just over an hour.’ The afternoon sun had dulled towards evening beyond the pale shimmer of the lowered net curtains. The traffic breathed homewards outside. Nikitin rubbed his forehead and sighed loudly. ‘She has to succeed!’ he growled. ‘She has to bring something back this time, some agreement not to interfere in our internal affairs.’ He paused, then snapped: ‘Brezhnev’s precious legacy, eh? Everything we’re doing here might very well rest on the whim of the mullahs in Kabul! We have to placate the bloody Afghans!’

The Afghan’s bent back quivered like that of an animal held on a leash, then stilled. Hyde rested the long, bloated lens of the camera across the hardly-more-than-boy’s spine and adjusted the focus. The scene emerged more starkly and more monochromatically than through the binoculars. He moved the camera, the view sliding like something submerged beneath clean oil.

The tip of Communism Peak in the northern distance was bright gold, lower mountain tips and flanks surrounding it white-to-grey with permanent snow. A glacier loomed fuzzily. The riverbed was salty-white below them, the two helicopters like dark-green insects, the group of men tiny—he stretched and rubbed his eyes, then refocused. The men sprang closer through the big lens, the helicopters were bulky. The truck was … it looked like an old V-1 flying bomb on the back of a furniture van. Or a toy aeroplane. The truck and its crew waited beside the hurrying, narrowing river. There were men wearing padded jackets working on the rotor head of the Hind gunship. The other helicopter was huge, its shape skeletal, cartoon-like, the huge rotors sagging and quivering in the wind. Its landing gear was exaggeratedly tall. A Mil-flying crane. It had brought the truck and its cargo to this roadless, empty part of Tajikistan.

Why?

As he took his eye away from the camera, waterfalls became dribbles once more, the machines tiny and the men insignificant. He was more aware of the wind. He motioned the Afghan to get up. He had used up the first roll of film on the tableau below. He rubbed his eyes. Why? The question did not insist, rather nagged, like a piffling task requiring to be done before sleep. Once he was no longer using either the camera or the glasses, he became aware of the proximity of the Afghans, their movements and scents and tension. Now that they were watching their enemy down there, in the army duvet jackets and boots and greatcoats with caps and shoulder boards indicating senior rank, he was just another white face, another heathen and atheist like the Soviets.

The single American …

He did recognise him. That was the burr irritating old habits and instincts. His name was Harrell. He was CIA, ostensibly based in Peshawar before the Soviet withdrawal, then much later he’d been posted back to Kabul. Assistant Station Chief. Harrell. The name, the recognised features, rubbed saltily against his worn curiosity, stinging it. Harrell’s presence was like aversion therapy, shocking Hyde out of his numb, weary self-absorption.

Why was he here, with Red Army and KGB officers—including, by their shoulder boards, two colonels and a general-lieutenant? Why? Whatever it was, it was important.

He lifted the binoculars to his eyes, adjusting the focus. There was activity around the truck and its toy aeroplane. Harrell had moved across the rock-strewn riverbank and was next to it, together with the—yes—most senior KGB officer and the army general. Arms gesticulating, charts being consulted, glances above the mountain flanks towards the deepening blue of the late afternoon sky. Cloud massed to the west. The long van was unmarked, daubed with desert-style camouflage. The small, winged machine sitting on its back, on what was presumably a short—too short?—launch rail, was unidentifiable, strange. There were footprints and small, rotor-blown creases in the salty flat sand beside the river.

They were still working with a controlled furiousness on the Hind’s rotor head. Evidently, the thing couldn’t fly, for the moment. The transport helicopter, sketchy as an early Disney cartoon, squatted by the water, oblivious. The truck had become the focus of the scene. He picked up the camera again, reloaded it, refocused, and felt that the group of men which included Harrell had become speeded-up in their gestures, comic and purposeful. Harrell in good profile despite the light … speed of the film to balance that—the Russian faces, the gestures of urgency, the sense of quarrel … debate

… agreement. He picked off their faces like a sniper. Eventually, the second roll of film was exhausted. He reloaded quickly, obeying the tempo they seemed to be setting against the white salt-sand beside the river. Nur watched him, assessing him, while the others watched the enemy. He felt their collective shiver of anticipation as clearly as the excitement and nerves running through the Afghan’s spine when he first rested the camera lens across it. The boy glanced at him and dropped on to all fours once more when he nodded. The lens rested like a black cannon on the curve of his spine. Hyde checked the light and opened the aperture further. The gold had dimmed on the flanks of Communist Peak. The clouds were hurrying from the west, eating the darkening blue sky.

Men climbed into the truck. It was really most like an armoured security van with drab-and-yellow daubs on its sides. The toy aeroplane was insignificant, modest. Yet Harrell was watching a duvet-jacketed soldier tinkering with it, fussing over it. Then the soldier jumped down from the back of the truck.

Aerials now. Jutting from the white sand, little dishes, long waving fronds. Men set them down, wired them up. Hyde became absorbed, occasionally operating the camera. Quicker tempo. The launch rail rose from the back of the van, angling up-towards the sky. More men, fiddling, checking. Plumes of vapour from the toy aeroplane … fire.

It was enveloped with smoke, then appeared, tiny and unimportant, beyond the launch rail and the van, higher and rising quickly. The glow of orange was from some kind of jet assistance. It rose rapidly. Hyde dropped the camera, moved the bent-backed boy, picked up the glasses. The Afghans muttered, as if envying some new weapon. He trained the glasses, sweeping them across sky and cloud and dark mountain flank.

He picked out the toy aeroplane, diminishing, rising. Up, up, smaller, smaller, tiny … an eagle, a crow, a sparrow, then a dot before it disappeared into the already failing light. He thought he caught it once reflecting sunlight like an ice crystal, then returned his attention to the floor of the narrow river valley.

Men with headphones, the little dishes of the radars being adjusted, a dish aerial jutting now from the roof of the van, the launch-rail retracted. He glanced at Nur. Puzzled now, the Afghan had reacquired respect. Hyde grinned cynically, contemptuously. What the hell were they doing?

The Afghans seemed pressed close, even though spread along the rock-strewn ledge in separate concealment. His skin prickled despite the cold; his cheeks quivered with more than tiredness. An unmanned vehicle, something remotely piloted, operated from inside the van, monitored by the dish aerials, signalled to by the waving fronds of other aerials. That’s what the bloody thing was! A Remotely Piloted Vehicle with camera on board, able to stooge around at anything up to twenty thousand feet, perhaps for four or five hours on its tiny motor.

Looking for what?

It did not explain the presence of Harrell; only the van beside which he was now standing, headphone pressed against the side of his head, the general sharing the set, head bent, face set. Hyde reloaded the camera, focused, judged the light, and the motor began whirring. Their urgency was infectious, his puzzlement prompted like the sting of memory. Eventually, he would understand.

He looked up at the sky, as they did frequently. He could hardly smell the Afghans now; their voices did not impinge. There was nothing visible up there. It must be twenty thousand feet, maybe more. Then he remembered, the Russians did not have that kind of compact, truck-launched RPV. Harrell was explained. His presence, at least. It was an American RPV, on loan.

Why?

What did it have under surveillance?

He returned his attention to the men on the riverbank. The Hind was still under repair, the flying crane was immobile and comic, the van was anonymous. The general and Harrell and the two colonels were all using binoculars now. There were powerful cameras focused upwards, too, and a big portable telescope. The fronds and dishes of aerials seemed to twitch like the noses of dogs. The scene, as the glasses slipped over it, making it jumpy like his nerves, expressed tension, expectation. Almost reluctantly, he raised his glasses and swept their focus across the empty, birdless, machine-less sky, across the dulling glow of mountains. Another high vapour trail, turning pink in the late afternoon. Delicate and out of place. Heading south towards Afghanistan or even India. A silver fleck. Probably Russian, possibly an Ilyushin; he had no idea whether civilian or military. The trail extended across the faded blue of the upper atmosphere, soporifically, confidently.

He glanced down at the valley floor. Dark figures against the salt-sand that seemed even whiter. Van, gunship, flying crane, men, radars. Tension—he looked up, as they still did. In time to see the silver speck turn orange and spread, the vapour trail interrupted and changed into smoke that billowed, rolled. He looked down. Hands raised, vibrant emotions of pleasure on the shadowy faces—up again. Smoke, flame, the sagging of something out of the sky, the broken vapour trail, the thin stream of smoke coming from the orange tear in the sky. A tear that moved like a sullen bird, leaving the long rip of smoke behind it. The rip slowly became a spiral as the aircraft lost height and momentum and began to whirl like a slow sycamore leaf.

He focused on the men again. They believed they had caused it. They were congratulating each other, urgent rather than tense. The van was on the move towards the flying crane. Men scattered to collect the aerials.

Up again. Searching for a few seconds then finding the ruin of the vapour trail, the spiral of descending smoke. It was coming almost straight down—near …

… mere thousands of feet, dropping out of the sky … how? Nothing had been fired, no missile, there was no other aircraft up there!

Van … RPV. Not a camera … A warhead. It had stooged around up there waiting for the aircraft to pass, then homed in, directed by—

—them, down there, scurrying to get away now, happy as children knocking a crow out of a tree with catapults. The crane’s rotors were already turning. The greatcoated officers were arguing near the gunship as if over the destination of a bus. Mechanics protested from atop the blunt, ugly machine. Harrell was placatory—

—up again. Coming down fast, spiralling, its smoke trail a fingerprint on the pale sky. He could hear it now. The Afghans were insecure in their excitement. To them, it did not matter who had killed the aircraft, only the effectiveness with which it had been done. Harrell and the Russians and an American RPV had killed it.

Its noise came back out of the steep-sided valley like the roar of a wounded animal. Hyde could see the broken fuselage now—Russian military flight … military?—with flame and smoke streaming behind it. It levelled, no more than a thousand feet up, still dropping helplessly, passing south-east, towards the lake. He swung the glasses after it as it dodged a mountainside like a toy and disappeared.

Down again.

No time for self—or the Afghans.

Harrell was arguing with the general, pointing towards the flying crane which now hovered like some great black spider above the van, which was being attached by a sling to its belly. Reluctantly, almost dragged by the two KGB officers, the soldier moved towards the flying crane, which set down again, harnessed to the van as if it had trapped it. Harrell was still waving them—explosion!

He felt and heard it a moment later. Close. The splash of orange against a reflecting glacier, then the new light dulled. Harrell was ushering the flying crane away, shooing it like a chicken. Then he was berating the mechanics on the gunship. Lurching heavily, the flying crane helicopter rose into the air, dragging the van after it. It swung like a watch-fob beneath a dark belly. Upwards, then levelling along the valley, heading north, away from the crash site. Scuttling guiltily away. Harrell and one of the KGB colonels remained beside the gunship, with three armed soldiers or KGB men. He couldn’t distinguish uniforms any longer in the failing light. The flying crane’s noise diminished, its size a speck, before it turned a bend in the river and disappeared. Harrell and the colonel continued to berate the mechanics atop the Hind. He had the illusion of hearing thin, distant, angry voices.

It couldn’t fly, not now, not yet. He gripped Nur’s arm, making the man wince. Hyde’s teeth ground together and he felt the skin on his face tighten.

‘Get them moving, Nur!’ he growled. ‘On your feet, the bloody lot of you!’ There was a sensation of huge, cold shadows and departing daylight urging him on more than any other factor. A retinal memory of the flash of light from the airliner’s impact gleamed on the map that he tugged from inside his thick shirt. His finger, dirty-nailed and grubby, traced across the map’s contours … There. His finger tapped. Nur glanced at the map, then up at the landscape, and nodded. ‘It must have crashed in or near the lake—now, let’s get on with it before they repair that fucking gunship down there!’ There was a reaffirmed and temporary subordination in Nur’s eyes, the respect of fear.

Hyde held the Afghan’s gaze for a moment, then forced a narrow smile. As he rebuttoned his shirt after thrusting the map back against his chest, he felt drawn by the crash into an old, familiar pattern. It was a magnet; he was being reshaped like iron filings. The self-pity—he saw it only as that now—and the weariness were still controllable. What the hell was Harrell doing, playing footsie with the KGB and the Red Army, inside the Soviet Union?

‘Come on, you buggers,’ he snapped, thrusting his arms through the straps of his pack and adjusting its weight across his shoulders, ‘get bloody moving!’

Dmitri Priabin’s mood of wellbeing, supported by memories of the previous evening’s Covent Garden performance of Tannhaüser, dissipated at the first chirrup from the telephone on his desk. His hand slid across that morning’s Times to reach for the receiver. The music correspondent had been caustic about the production, but Priabin had rather enjoyed it, despite some of the shadows of painful memories evoked by the death of the heroine. The telephone call was expected, and, he suspected, unwelcome. The call had assumed an importance much like that of a patch of slippery oil, or a banana skin, on which he might at any moment set his foot, only to go tumbling down from his upright career. His mentor, Kapustin, was in trouble in Moscow, and the man was both his promoter and protector. Bad news now from Stockholm—Aubrey’s people had been over there for days, goaded on by that cripple, Godwin. Would he go down with Kapustin?

An autumnal wind was pulling and tearing at the leaves of the trees along Kensington Palace Gardens. In his large, first floor office, despite the double-glazing, he coldly heard the creaking of the branches outside.

‘Yes?’ he snapped. He had been, he admitted, a prey to hundreds of small, nagging doubts over the past weeks. Perhaps—he hoped so devoutly at that moment—he gave too much credence to Aubrey’s efficiency. But then Kapustin, who knew Aubrey well, had warned him against the man. A terrier, he’d said. A small dog, but a vicious one that hangs on to your trouser legs, whatever you do to kick it away.

It was Stockholm on the line. ‘Yes, Boris—good to hear you, yes!’ Would it be, though? The pleasantry with which Boris followed his greeting was hollow. ‘Yes, well … restaurants, opera, the usual bore,’ Priabin replied, forcing himself to laughter. ‘And you? The family well? Good … and our business?’

‘The shipment got away on Aeroflot, no problem about that.’ But—?’ he asked, too quickly, aware of the reservation in his counterpart’s tone.

‘… arrests—sorry about that, but they were right on their tails—no, no one important, but with definite links to us. I’m on the first plane home, to explain, I’m afraid. The people they got shows they know the whole set-up, how we’ve been doing it from start to finish. I’m sorry, but I think the game’s up as far as using Stockholm as a staging-post is concerned.’

‘They got that close?’

‘That close. They obviously understand how the pipeline works and they probably know who the others are. Maybe even who you’ve got inside—maybe you’d better warn your man—?’

‘I’ll consider it.’ A terrier, Kapustin had said.

Priabin’s secretary entered and placed a decoded signal on his desk, together with the transcript of the original message and that day’s one-time pad. He rarely checked for mistakes. He nodded. It was from Moscow Centre. He did not wish to read it, for the moment.

‘Damn it,’ he murmured. ‘You’re certain we can’t go on using Sweden?’

‘That’s what I’m telling the Centre, anyway:’

‘Takes some of the heat off you, doesn’t it?’ he sneered.

‘Maybe.’ There was a shrug in Boris’ voice, and a knowingness. Priabin willed himself not to read his coded signal, and swivelled his leather chair with a slight, branchlike creaking so that he was staring out the window at the swaying boughs and the torn-off leaves. Earlier vandalism was compounded by the wind as leaves were scuttled across the lawns of the Embassy.

‘That bastard on crutches, Godwin—is it? Well, he was out at the airport, pointing the finger, almost shaking his fist at the flight as it took off—’

‘How far back down the pipeline do you think the British can reach?’ Priabin interrupted.

‘No idea. A long way, is my guess. As far as back into the factories?’

‘No doubt you’ll tell Kapustin that, as well!’

‘Not if I don’t have to. It depends how nasty he gets in his turn. I’m not carrying the slop-out pail for anyone else, Dmitri, you can be assured of that.’

‘No. I’m sorry, no reason why you should. But I’m going to have to know how awkward it’s going to get over here,