by Craig Thomas
The roar of the hillside being torn by another missile, the chatter of a machine gun. Then the noise of only one of the two cannons and a newer, brighter source of light within the cloud of smoke and dust.
Miandad nudged him, leaning his head towards him. "It is time for us to make a move!" he yelled. "Otherwise, there will be no one left alive to question!"
Hyde blanched as he looked down into the boiling, dense cloud garishly lit by flame. He could not, for a moment, shake off the distance between himself and the action below. Then he nodded. Together, they scrambled down the loose-surfaced slope, entering the cloud of smoke and dust. Hyde wound his scarf around his face, coughing violently, his eyes watering. He could see Miandad only as a shadow beside him.
"Where?" he shouted, inhaling a mouthful of acrid smoke. He could smell burning petrol, cordite, and flesh. He clambered out of the ditch — he could hear the screaming now — blundered against a Pathan tribesman, and then he was on the road, crunching over the rubble of metal and rock.
"This way!" Miandad grabbed his arm and pulled him to his left. Hyde followed the Pakistani. A gout of flame shot up somewhere ahead of them and he felt its heat against his skin. Other Pathans slipped past them, a uniform blundered near, but it was alight and Hyde ignored it. Only minutes, and he began to think it was already too late. "The other side of the road, yes?" Miandad shouted against his ear. Hyde nodded.
The leading scout car was wrecked and on its side. A body spilled out of its forward trapdoor like a leakage of fuel. Miandad bent by the meaningless form, then looked up. Hyde could see his eyes gleaming, their whites intense.
"What—?" he yelled.
"Some got out — some must have got out!"
"Where?"
A burst of machine-gun fire from close to them whined off the overturned body of the scout car.
"There!" Miandad yelled.
A deep, rumbling explosion, followed by the clatter of hot fragments and slivers of metal on the road around them. One piece sliced and burned Hyde's sheepskin jacket, another scorched his hand. One of the BMPs had exploded. There couldn't be many left now. A turbanned Pathan staggered against the scout car and fell on top of Miandad. The Pakistani almost fastidiously pushed the body away. In a moment of silence, Hyde heard someone screaming like a rabbit. Then the machine gun opened up again, raking the road away to their left. Evidently, the officer who commanded it had decided that anyone still likely to come out of the maelstrom of smoke and dust would be an enemy. And if not, better to take no chances just for the sake of one or two raw conscripts.
"Come!"
Miandad moved away to the right and Hyde followed him in an awkward crouch, moving as swiftly as he could. The edge of the road appeared, grey changing to earthen brown sand and filthy slush. Then they were in the wet ditch, the snow soaking through Hyde's baggy trousers and sleeves.
To his left, Hyde could see — in the moment when he heard its renewed chatter — the flickering flame at the muzzle of the light machine gun. There was little other firing now. Sufficient lack of concussive noise to make movement audible; screaming audible, too.
Dying men everywhere—
Close.
Hyde grabbed Miandad's arm in a panic of fear. Ahead of them, no more than twenty yards away, the machine gun had stopped firing. The cloud, too, seemed to thin. Struggling men. The group who commanded the machine gun had been found, were being killed—
Hyde ran, Miandad a pace behind him, both of them blundering along the uneven, rock-strewn ditch. A blank-eyed face stared up at them from the edge of the road. Hyde did not even register consciously that there was little that remained of any human shape below the shoulders. Then he was among the struggling group. Someone knocked him aside. He saw a military bayonet flicker like silver, then a curved knife at its business. Miandad blundered against him, then seemed to dart to one side. Hyde's head moved from side to side in growing desperation. He was looking for something as small, as insignificant, as collar tabs or shoulder boards. He needed an officer.
Miandad was struggling with something on the ground, dragging it along the ditch, resting it against the roadside slope. He bent to lift the unmoving legs, and as he did so a Pathan emerged from the thinning cloud, rifle at his side, knife in his hand. He hesitated only for an instant as he saw Miandad struggling with the Russian's limp legs, and then he raised his knife. Hyde did not know whether the man assumed Miandad was being attacked — a fellow Pathan — or whether he did not care. He had time only to move a single pace and swing the butt of the Kalashnikov. Its rigid plastic stock struck the Pathan just above the left eye, and he fell away from Miandad and the Russian, dropping his knife as he did so.
"Quickly!" Miandad demanded, looking up.
Visibility was improving quickly now. Hyde could see perhaps a dozen Pathan tribesmen moving among the wreckage and the bodies. He saw one Russian soldier's body buck and twist as his hands were cut off. The man did not scream because he was already unconscious.
"Help me get this one away into the rocks!" Miandad added.
Hyde shouldered his rifle, and together they dragged the Russian — collar tabs, young unconscious face, bruise on his temple, slight burns on his cheeks and jaw, officer! — out of the ditch and down the slope towards the river.
They splashed through the shallow water, the Russian officer supported between them, and gained the cover of the rocks at the foot of the steep cliffs. Hyde's breath was coming in huge gulps, and he was bent almost double, resting on his knees as if vomiting. Miandad's hand rested on his arm. The sky above was pale and blue. They were out of the dust and smoke, which was now dispersing, exposing like the retreat of some tide the wreckage on the shore of the highway.
Miandad pointed towards a clutter of broken rocks.
"Help me get him over there," he said. Hyde realised he was no longer shouting. There was no longer any need. The gorge echoed now only with screaming of a decreasing intensity and horror, and the occasional rifle shot. A burst of startling fire as some ammunition exploded, then only the screaming, which had begun to sound more like the noises of carrion birds than those of dying or mutilated men. Hyde nodded. "You don't have much time," Miandad added, tossing his head back towards the road.
"OK. Let's go."
They dragged the Russian, who groaned once in a boyish hurt way, towards and behind the rocks. They were perhaps seventy or eighty yards up the slope and a hundred yards from the road.
"Work quickly!" Miandad commanded, tilting a silver flask to the young Russian's lips. The boy coughed, and his eyes opened.
Opened and became fearful at the same moment as he saw Hyde's turbanned head in front of him.
"Be quiet!" Hyde snapped in Russian. The boy's eyes widened further, in surprise and shock. He turned his head and saw Miandad's narrow dark features. "Now," Hyde continued, "if you want to go on living, keep your voice down — lieutenant," he added, glancing at the collar tabs and shoulder boards.
"Who are you?" Hyde could not be certain of the accent, but it sounded Ukrainian. The lieutenant was little more than twenty or twenty-one.
"It doesn't matter. You're my prisoner, not the Pathans'. You understand the difference?" The lieutenant nodded, swallowing the fear that bobbed in his throat. "Good. Give me your papers — quickly!"
The lieutenant hesitated, as if the documents were somehow talismanic, then he reached into his jacket and removed them. His hand shook as he passed them to Hyde. There was a high-pitched scream, and his whole body twitched in an echo of the agony of the man on the road. Hyde opened the ID folder. A tiny monochrome picture of the young officer, unsmiling and perhaps a little pompous. The official stamps, the public details. Lieutenant Azimov. Yes, from Kiev in the Ukraine. Commissioned two years before, after leaving military academy. Afghanistan had been his first posting. Sergei Azimov. A white, scorched, bruised face, foreign-looking in an alien place.
A sheet of paper, much folded and unfolded, drifted to the ground. The youn
g man's eyes followed it hungrily. Hyde picked it up. There was a snapshot, too, in the little bundle of papers which had been tucked inside a battered wallet which might once have been the boy's father's property, almost an heirloom. Hyde read the letter.
Dear Sasha,
I love and miss you so much. We have spent such a little time
together. It is very hard for me to think about my work, about
anything but you. I worry for your safety all the time…
Hyde stopped reading. The girl was round-faced, unmemorably pretty, her hair tied back. Azimov's wife, Nadia. Hyde felt he had pried. He hurriedly passed the letter and the snapshot to the lieutenant, who pressed them against the breast of his uniform jacket. He was shivering now, with after-shock and the cold.
"Right, Lieutenant Azimov — you can stay alive if you tell me what I want to know — understand?" A solitary scream, hardly human, worked like a stimulant on Azimov. "You understand?" Azimov nodded. "Good. I want to know about Colonel Petrunin — understand? Colonel Tamas Petrunin. Everything you know, everything you can remember. I want to know where he is now, what his routine is, where he can be found. Help me, and I'll save your life."
You lying bastard, Hyde told himself. It is the cause — shit on it, then…
Miandad tilted the flask again. The boy swallowed, cleared his throat and said, "Thank you, thank you…" Hyde merely nodded. The boy evidently had no interest in who he was, in the loyalties dictated by his uniform, in anything but the fiction that he would go on living. Hyde raised his head and peered over the rocks down towards the road. The cloud had dispersed. Cold sunlight was edging like a spent wave across the grey road. The river gleamed like polished steel. The mutilated bodies had been flung into the ditches on either side of the road. The Pathans were gathering weapons and ammunition — machine guns, rifles, the RPG rocket launcher, a Pathan waving that jubilantly above his head, boxes of ammunition dragged from the burning wrecks. Two men were even dismantling the machine gun from its mounting on the overturned scout car.
They had perhaps ten minutes.
He had already begun to lose interest in the young officer, possessed as he suddenly was by an idea. The rocket launcher, with luck complete with night-sight, capable of penetrating more than twelve and a half inches of armour — or a solid wall…
Uniform, confusion, disguise…?
"Ask him," he instructed Miandad. "Ask him everything. If-if he's…" His excitement was evident. He snapped at the officer: "Where is Petrunin now — today, tomorrow? Do you know? Can you tell me where he is?"
"That bastard," the young officer muttered.
"Yes, that bastard. Where is he?" He was almost shouting at Azimov, who flinched at the noise and urgency of his voice.
"He's in the embassy…"
"Military headquarters, you mean?"
"No, the embassy. He's KGB, remember. He won't use military communications — too insecure for him."
"Why the embassy?" Hyde snapped.
"Who knows? Who cares? Some purge of the civil service in the wind, of the government, of the army. Who gives a toss why? He'll be there all week, so I hear."
Yes, yes, yes…
"What is it?" Miandad asked, standing up beside him.
"Find out everything. Get him to draw you a map of the embassy. I'll stall Mohammed Jan for as long as I can."
"You have a plan?"
"I think so. If he knows as much as he seems to. Find out. I'll keep them away from you." The RPG-7 launcher was being handed almost reverently to Mohammed Jan, who accepted it like some symbol of authority. Yes, Hyde thought fiercely, yes—
"I speak very little Russian, you speak no Pushtu. I'll stall for you while you question the boy."
Hyde hesitated, then nodded. "OK. Give me ten minutes."
"I'll try." Miandad turned away, then looked back at Hyde. "You realise," he said softly, his eyes focused beyond Hyde, on Azimov, "you can't allow him to go, or to remain here in hiding. If a helicopter comes, he knows too much." Hyde nodded, expressionless. "And you can't hand him over to—" Hyde shook his head. "You realise, then…?"
"Yes," Hyde said in a whisper. "I'll shoot him when he's told me what I want to know. In this God-forsaken place, a quick, clean death is tantamount to a mercy killing!"
CHAPTER EIGHT:
The Capture
Miss Catherine Dawson bobbed and fussed about the bird table in her garden much like one of the tiny creatures she was attempting to preserve with bacon fat, bread and bags of peanuts. She wore gumboots, an old fawn coat, and her grey hair was wispy as it escaped from her headscarf. The snow drifted down gently from a uniformly grey morning sky. Miss Dawson seemed well able to contain her impatience, if she possessed any, with regard to her visitor.
Massinger guessed she was almost seventy, which would have made her a woman in her late twenties, perhaps as much as thirty, when she was posted to Berlin as a Control Commission translator and interpreter immediately the war in Europe ended. She had been a member of Castleford's staff for more than a year before the man disappeared.
Massinger had first telephoned the previous afternoon. There had been no reply. He had rung repeatedly, obtaining an answer from Miss Dawson only late in the evening. She had been visiting friends for the day. Yes, he might certainly call the following morning. At ten? Certainly. Thus, Massinger had remained at Hyde's flat overnight. He realised that, while he possessed a safe route across the border, it was crucial to his continuing safety that he appear both convincing and convinced when he surrendered his quest for the truth. He needed to talk to this woman, perhaps to other survivors, before he could lay down his self-imposed task and declare himself satisfied with his discoveries and the fact of Aubrey's murderous guilt.
He had slept little. He was ashamed that impatience to be with Margaret had troubled him more than guilt at abandoning his friend. Now, at a little after ten in the morning — Terry Wogan had been making his farewells on the transistor radio as he had passed through the kitchen behind Miss Dawson — he was at the rear of a modernised cottage in an Oxfordshire village, pursuing the charade that might save his marriage and his life. Despite his lack of sleep, he felt fresh; impatient, too, and increasingly optimistic. A lighter, shallower person, perhaps, than he had felt himself to be for some considerable time. He could, however, sense himself putting clocks back, reordering pleasure and happiness like additional supplies for a hopeful expedition. The soft, large flakes of snow fell on his uncovered head, melted on the shoulders of his raincoat. They were chilly, pleasurably so, against his clean-shaven cheeks. He almost wanted to put out his tongue to taste the snowflakes like a child.
"It's very good of you to take the time to see me," he offered again to Miss Dawson's bobbing back. "I realise I must be intruding."
"Must you?" Miss Dawson replied, turning to face him. "What could you imagine so occupies me that a visitor would be unwelcome?" Her blue eyes twinkled. Her dentures were falsely white, but displayed in a genuine, almost mischievous smile. He wondered whether it would be wrong, even patronising, to feel regret for her that she had never married.
"I'm sorry," he murmured.
She completed her ministrations at the bird table and came towards him. Almost at once, a robin appeared on the table. Two yellow-breasted tits followed it, dangling at once from the slightly swinging bag of nuts. A red plastic mesh. Sparrows landed. Miss Dawson turned and contemplated the scene for a moment like a satisfied Saviour, then ushered him indoors as if she had only that moment realised it was snowing and he was bareheaded.
"Coffee — cocoa?" she asked, gesturing him to one of the upright kitchen chairs. He lowered himself onto it, aware of his hip. Its aching, its stabs of pain had returned with renewed vigour, it seemed, since his decision to rehabilitate himself with his wife and Babbington; as if he wore his conscience in a holster on that hip.
"Coffee would be fine," he said. Miss Dawson had studied his awkward movements.
"You should hav
e the operation," she murmured, fussing with a non-stick saucepan at the stove. "I did — both hips."
"Yes, I should," he replied. The conversation aged him — something did, at least. "Maybe after the summer…"
She poured milk into the saucepan. The gas plopped alight. She removed her gumboots and coat and headscarf, patting her grey hair into shape. Her eyes were bright and sharp.
"You want to talk about dear Robert Castleford — presumably because of the newspapers yesterday?" He nodded. He was wary of the incisive tone in her voice. "I feel so sorry for your wife," she added like a warning. "How can I help you?"
He was silent for a moment, then spread his hands on the surface of the kitchen table. A check cloth which matched the curtains. Then he blurted, only partly acting: "I–I have to know the truth. You see, I have been a friend of — of Kenneth Aubrey for some time — married to Castleford's daughter, you can imagine my dilemma…?" He looked up into her face, which was pursed and narrow and studious.
"I see. You're an American, Mr Massinger?" she asked with what seemed like keen relevance.
"Yes."
"A dilemma?" She seemed contemptuous. "I don't see why. What does your wife say?"
"She — doesn't know what to think."
"You can tell her from me, then, that your friend Kenneth Aubrey probably — almost certainly — did murder her father!"
Massinger was startled by the wizened, malevolent look on Miss Dawson's face. It was as if she had thrown off some harmless disguise with her scarf and boots. Now she was the wicked queen with the poisoned apple, not the old woman with the sweet voice. Massinger guessed she had carried some kind of torch for Castleford; one evidently still burning.
"How — how can you be certain of that?" he asked. "So certain after all this time?" Miss Dawson had her back to him, lifting the milk from the stove, pouring it into two round, daubed mugs.
