Kyril stood frozen at the centre of a huge, intricate web. Silence and shadows had isolated him completely from the tangible world outside. Only tiny tingling sensations on the extremities of the strands which he had woven round himself revealed that he was still alive. First his hearing went, worn out with the strain of listening for sounds which did not happen. Now his sight was failing with the short winter twilight. Soon all the systems of his body would shut down, night would come, and he would be dead…
He shook himself angrily. Think.
From his vantage point on the bedside chair he could see the old-new skyline of Athens through the broad tunnel of his bedroom: a maze of aerials and high-tension cables linking the uneven roofs, beyond them a hill topped by stately ruined columns. Earlier in the afternoon the hillside had been the colour of washed sand; now it was ground ginger; soon it would become black, indistinguishable from the surrounding night.
By standing on the chair he was able to look down into Kaningos Square without approaching the window. The two men were still there, talking, every so often directing a swift glance towards the hotel. One of the men operated a souvlaki stall with some pretence to efficiency; Kyril acknowledged that the Athens referentura had improved its standards over the last nine years. In some ways.
The hotel had been unnaturally silent for more than an hour. None of the usual sounds rose from the kitchen, no porter whistled aimlessly as he carted crates of empty, rattling bottles through the hall. They were inside, then. Somewhere in the corridor, in the room next door, on the terrace above him, men were waiting patiently for the next move.
Kyril’s heart beat faster than usual and his palms were sweating, but he could detect no signs of internal panic. The old training still held. It was not as though anything which had happened today was unexpected; Stanov had promised him all this. But Kyril had left it so very late. He had slipped up, once. Nothing in his impassive face or his quiet, controlled movements disclosed that he had been thrust willy-nilly into the most nerve-wracking crisis of his career.
Below him in the dusty square, one of the two men detached himself from the souvlaki stall and began to walk towards the hotel. A three-wheeler van hooted aggressively; the man faltered, advanced again, and was lost from Kyril’s sight.
It was not the city he remembered. More cracked walls, dirt, empty building-sites. Fewer taxis. No quick ‘deals’ by virtue only of having the language. The smell, that was the same: hot oil, carbon monoxide, red dust, air-cured tobacco, wine. Salt, a dash of the sea. Everything else was changed.
The friendly lorry-driver had dropped him in Omonia Square and watched for a moment of amusement as the ‘German teacher’, doing Greece on the cheap off-season, withstood the first shock of downtown Athens. The hooting, hustling roar of the cars hurtling five abreast down the broad avenues, the vendors, the crowds… the first point of familiarity, of contact: a man dressed in a grey, short-sleeved shirt over black slacks, an attaché case under his arm, stopping to buy Papastratos cigarettes at the kiosk. Kyril’s eyes began to focus. Suddenly he knew where he was.
He shifted his weight gingerly on the chair and stood still again, listening. Nothing disturbed the eerie quiet of the hotel. With the thumb of his right hand he eased the safety-catch of the Stechkin to ‘off’ while at the same time his forefinger curled round the trigger, testing the pressure. He forgot he had once had to learn that simple movement in far-off days when it still seemed clumsy and unnatural. Only his body and its well-trained muscles remembered.
By turning his head a fraction he could see part of the corridor through the skylight over the door. No awkward shadows. No diminution of light. No sounds. Nothing.
Through the window the far hillside had dissolved into a smoke-laden mist. Nightfall was minutes away. Neon lights flickered outside and a Greek boy shouted before gunning his motorbike and zooming down a side-street. Kyril could hear bazouki music coming from a nearby taverna. Athens was changing into its evening attire. The siesta was over. Soon there would be enough noise in the street to mask any unpleasantness which might occur on the upper floor of a small hotel.
He had selected this hotel from working files on possibly useful ‘stations’, buildings recognised by the KGB as having operational potential but not yet tested by them. The ‘Silenus’ occupied a narrow site in one corner of the triangular ‘square’, with its tiny patch of green in the centre and a mish-mash of cafés spilled on to the pavement. The hotel overlooked a busy intersection with excellent sightlines and ready access to neighbouring apartment-blocks at the rear. In March he was able to obtain a top-storey room at the front without difficulty, paying for a day’s lodging in advance. He allowed himself one hour in the roof-top open bar, already balmy in the pre-spring, drinking Hellas and smoking Benson & Hedges, before lunch and a short rest. Then work.
It was the first chance he had had to think since leaving Moscow. He discovered he quite enjoyed his role – for the moment. It could not last, of course: sooner or later he would find an executioner on his tail, someone determined to see he did not fall into the hands of his own side alive, and then the fun would be over, but for the present he could cope. A magnet, that was what Stanov had called him, and the image appealed to Kyril. Everything depended on him. If he snapped his fingers on the street somebody, somewhere, perhaps thousands of miles away, knew about it and acted accordingly. Kyril liked that. In its way it represented more power than he had ever known.
He wondered whether they had found the diary yet. They should have done. Would it fool anyone? Kyril shook his head, the old doubts returning. Would the traitor fall into the trap of believing that a comparatively junior officer like Ivan Bucharensky had discovered his secret when all others had failed? He might. Kyril appreciated the possibility. If his nerves were already on edge, if he were sufficiently near the brink, then the diary might just instil a doubt… and it would have served its purpose.
After lunch he lay on his bed for an hour, but could not sleep. The weather was mild and overcast. He took a taxi to the intersection of the two main arteries, Leoforas Alexandras and Vassilissis Sofias, then walked slowly south along the latter until he had passed the American embassy. He kept going. After a while Vassilissis Sofias became Vassileos Konstantinou, and he turned right into Stisikhorou, which took him behind the Russian embassy before pointing the way back towards his hotel. One last call, the Odos Stadiou branch of the National Bank of Greece, there to collect his nest-egg from the deposit-box where it had languished for the past nine years, and he was ready to go home. It was a long route but Kyril did not hurry; he wasn’t used to walking and his feet ached. Even at the end, when he realised with a stab of unease that the KGB were ahead of him and on either side, he did not break his stride.
For the next half hour he enjoyed himself, glad to be back in the old game again. Stores with rear exits, taxis stuck in traffic-jams, entrances to the subway; all the techniques came flooding back. As he entered his hotel he was smiling at the ease with which he had shaken off the tail. The rest of the schedule was easy: collect his things, make for the station, double-check for tails, hitch a lift, change cars every three miles for the first leg of the journey, then… disappear. He was still smiling when he took a final glance out of the window of his bedroom, and saw the two men outside, waiting.
Kyril held his luminous-faced watch up to his eyes. He could hear nothing, but his instincts now told him that between his room and the stairs someone waited: unseen, soundless, but there.
He padded across to the telephone and lifted the receiver. A room-waiter would disrupt anyone loitering, or at least identify his precise location. Becoming impatient he jiggled the cradle up and down. Nothing. They weren’t answering.
Kyril took a fold of skin from his forefinger between his teeth and bit, not so hard that the pain distracted him but enough to pump the blood a little faster, sharpen his reflexes. Now he was ready.
He felt along the bottom seam of his rucksack. Tucked into a fold of the lining, as if to save it from a casual thief, was a thin platinum cigarette-lighter. He unscrewed the fuel cap and extracted an inch-long bullet-like tube from the lighter. He placed it carefully on the bed. Then he began to pile things over it: his German passport, detected by the feel of its cover and the embossed lettering; the American Express card with a notch in the left-hand corner; a letter of credit also with a notch in the left-hand corner, all now expendable. He pulled the bedspread over the little pile. As an afterthought he placed on top of that a newspaper which he had bought that morning, and his room key.
He shouldered the rucksack, tightening the straps until they would go no further. He did not need light to tell him that he had forgotten nothing; his memory was as sharp as ever.
For the moment all was still in the corridor. Kyril padded over to the sash window and eased it up, silently cursing the noise made by the heavy counter-weight chains. Other ears must have heard it too, for suddenly a shadow flitted across the strip of light from the oriel. Kyril didn’t wait to investigate.
Once on the narrow ledge outside his room he turned to face the wall and scrabbled upwards with crooked fingers. Sure enough, there was the parapet, above it the open-air terrace bar where he had sat drinking earlier in the day. He hauled himself quickly upwards. The two men in the square might see but he didn’t care any longer; it could even be turned to his advantage.
Below him he could hear voices in the bedroom he had just left. He glanced quickly around. The bar was unlit and deserted; nobody wanted to drink out in the open on a March night in Athens. Kyril grinned. Two men at least in the bedroom, talking increasingly loudly in Russian. Very careless. He would advise Stanov to shake out the Greek Resident on his return…
Kyril held up the slim platinum lighter and flicked the lever. The impulse leapt forth. There was a muffled boom as the silver nitrate and potassium bomb exploded on the bed in the room below, a scream and a sudden waft of hot air over the parapet. Kyril smiled and pocketed the lighter. Suddenly he froze. A hand was coming over the edge, garishly illuminated by a flashing neon sign above. Before he could move a man was up on the ledge of the bar, crouched low in order to minimise the target. His other hand was coming up level. Kyril knew what was in it.
For a split second he deliberated. The assassin’s hold was precarious; if Kyril could only get close enough he could push him over the edge. But that meant running into range. In the dark, with a hand gun, the chances were that the man would miss a target moving away from him. Before the split second was up Kyril was pivoting on his toes and racing for the far end of the terrace.
Earlier that day he had stood on this very spot, calculating distances, some professional part of him alive to potential danger. Kyril knew that five metres separated the terrace from the roof-top of the adjacent building and there was a drop of one and a half metres to allow for as well. His stride never faltered. Using every scrap of momentum he could gather he sped along the patio until, at the far end, he hopped on to the low ledge and propelled himself into the darkness. A whirl of light far below him, a sick feeling in his stomach and then his right knee and left forearm crashed into concrete, the breath went out of him and he lay there, winded but alive.
The ‘ping’ of the bullet roused him. He rolled rapidly to one side, seeking desperately for cover. Another ‘ping’ – the gunman was using a silencer, bad for accuracy but still dangerously close. A third ‘ping’ spattered concrete chips over his head; at the same moment he saw the skylight and launched his way towards it, praying for a soft landing. A second before impact he punched forward with both hands, letting them take the brunt of the broken glass and protect his head. Another sickening fall into darkness, then a soft bump and scream, this time a woman’s. A dim bedside light went on. He had landed on top of a girl, very beautiful he noticed – and not alone. Details began to penetrate: bare breasts, a hairy chest… surely not the girl’s, no not the girl’s…
‘Lipomai, kyrie. Kalinikta sas.’
Kyril fled. One or two curious heads peered out of partly opened doors as he emerged on to the landing. He ran uncaring until he was down the stairs and out the back door among the dustbins, a passageway ahead of him, and escape.
He was in a side-street, dimly lit and deserted. Nothing moved. He did a swift damage-check. It was bad. Blood everywhere, crystals of splintered glass, a knee that was beginning to seize up in spasms of pain. Hide? No… He had to get out of town while the evening crowds still thronged the streets, then he could rest.
It was a long, painful night. Several times he nearly blundered into the bright lights of a busy avenue, and once he thought he was being followed. It was an illusion, but after the scare he put on more speed. Dawn found him on the road to Aharne, well away from any route he could be expected to take, bruised and shaken but alert. His wounds had been bathed in cold spring water; a clean shirt and a new identity from the rucksack had done wonders.
He consulted his map. Athens Station had tried to stop him, but he had got away. There was no doubt in his mind that they had not intended him to escape completely. From now on the schedule would be tight. If he was to arrive in Brussels in accordance with Stanov’s carefully timed plan he would have to cut corners, take chances.
He looked up sharply. Far off to the south he could see a cloud of reddish dust rising from the road. It was a local delivery van.
Kyril hesitated for only a moment, then folded the map, shouldered his burden, stepped on to the highway and lifted his thumb.
As the cloud of dust grew closer his tired brain began to register details. An old van coated with layers of grease and grime, its gear-box crunching… typically Greek. No, not typical. Something was different.
Kyril lowered his thumb. He had to make a quick decision. The van was okay, he told himself, desperate to believe it; nothing was wrong.
The windscreen was just a black rectangle. Soon he would be able to see the driver.
The windscreen…
Suddenly he knew what was wrong. Every Greek driver plasters the inside of his windscreen with brightly coloured postcards, slogans, trinkets… this van had none of them.
Kyril flung himself off the road and began to run.
‘Stand still!’
The van had drawn up by the side of the road. Kyril did not look back. Not even the sound of an English voice made him falter.
‘I’m warning you…’
Kyril began to weave right and left. Already some part of him knew it was hopeless. He was miles from the nearest cover. When the first spray of bullets hit the ground within inches of his racing feet he stumbled, fell and lay perfectly still.