The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  "Well?" she said in a tight, strained voice. He sensed the malevolence in her tone.

  "Well?" he could only repeat hopelessly.

  "It is Aubrey they're talking about, isn't it? Your friend Aubrey?" He could do no more than nod in admission. "To think that he's been here! Here! Sat here with us, with you…!" Evidently, she believed every word of the report.

  "Darling…" he began, hoisting himself out of his chair with the aid of his stick. When he looked up, her face wore an appalled expression, as if his movements were some further species of betrayal. "I can't defend him," he said shakily, moving towards her. She seemed to back, away slightly along the sideboard. Her large cuff slid against the crystal of a decanter, and her gold bracelets rattled against the glass. "I can't tell you anything, anything at all…"

  "You've known him… for years you've known him—!"

  "Not then…"

  "He's your friend!"

  "Yes."

  "He murdered my father!" Her face was young, urchin-like, abandoned.

  "They say he betrayed your father to the NKVD… I don't know what to say to you — it's no more than a rumour."

  They wanted it known, he reminded himself, and the future became clear to him in a moment of insight; it loomed over him like a cloud — no, more solid than that, like a great stone that would crush him if he could not learn to carry it. "Only a rumour," he repeated huskily. They wanted it known. The Joint Intelligence Committee, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Secretary, even the PM — they've all allowed the witch-hunt. Everyone must want Aubrey's head. Then, he realised the truth… They believe it. They believe Aubrey's guilty… they even believe he's a Russian agent.

  He opened his arms. She moved into them with the sullen step of reluctant surrender. Her body heaved with sobs. His neck was wet from her tears. Thirty-five years late, she possessed the emotions of a child or a teenage daughter. Her world, her certainties, had been altered and thrown into shadow.

  His eyes roamed the large room. He noticed, as if for the first time, the number of framed photographs of her father that almost littered the walls, the sideboard, the occasional tables. As if the place were some weird kind of roadside shrine to a little-known saint. A portrait of the young Castleford stared down at him from one of the walls. Castleford was sacrosanct. Margaret's mother, of course, had been mostly responsible for the veneration her daughter still felt; the unalloyed, immutable admiration of a child remained with her even now. Especially now—

  Margaret had been flung back down some time-tunnel to the moment when Castleford had first disappeared, to the moment he had died.

  "There, there…"he breathed, stroking her hair from crown to neck. "There, my darling, my darling…"

  "After all this time," she murmured, sniffing. He felt her swallow hard, and then her voice was firmer. "I wasn't prepared for anything like this — his face on the screen, suddenly to know that he had been betrayed, not just murdered, but betrayed deliberately…"

  He continued to stroke her hair gently. "I know, I know…" He glanced up, into the mirror behind them. He saw a face that had been quickly, and perhaps permanently aged. Deep lines, hunted eyes. His own features. His hip ached with the premonition of effort. He was unready, it was unfair, grossly unfair.

  He knew it was false. All of it. Not Aubrey. Aubrey could not be a Russian agent. Never.

  But Margaret…?

  He could not answer to the siren-call of that priority, even though his whole heart and body required it of him. Her body was against his, asserting its pre-eminence, but a chilly, clear part of his mind held it at a distance. He had to help Aubrey. At whatever cost, he had to help Aubrey now.

  At least, he had to offer…

  * * *

  Hyde finished the last mouthful of Wiener Schnitzel and washed it down with a glass of thin red Austrian wine. The cafe was noisier now, more crowded with regulars interested only in wine and beer and coffee. He was almost the last person to have ordered a meal. Now, his stomach was full and his mind had slowed to a half-amused, cynical walking pace. He could no longer seriously accept the idea of collusion between Kapustin and MI5. It was patently ridiculous, even after only a small carafe of wine. Someone had wanted him dead, yes…

  But that had been because it was a set-up. Kapustin's game-plan depended upon getting rid of Hyde. Leaving Aubrey alone to face the music. It was neat, clear, hard-edged in his mind, like a piece of coloured glass. No witnesses, no corroboration for Aubrey from the one man who had been at most of the meetings with Teardrop. Efficiency.

  He wiped his lips with the soft paper napkin, studied the remaining few sauteed potatoes, and decided against them. He was replete, calm; certain. He looked at his watch. Just after ten. Almost time to call in, arrange to be picked up by the embassy.

  Aubrey was accused of treachery. Kapustin was cast, no doubt, as his control. A clever KGB set-up, one which Aubrey had danced along with for two years. Babbington and MI5 had swallowed the story. Clever; specious, but clever. Aubrey had enough enemies in MI5 and JIC and the Cabinet Office for it to tip the scales against him; a cloud was all they needed, not a prosecution.

  He must recover the recording of Aubrey's conversation with Kapustin. It would prove that it was the Russian who was refusing to come over, that Aubrey had been engaged in a proposed defection by Kapustin to the West. He must find it — Vienna Station must find it—

  He studied the bill, counted notes onto the table, and then moved towards the back of the cafe and the telephones. Now, he was possessed by an urgent curiosity to discover how clever the KGB had been, to talk to Aubrey and even to Babbington. Also, part of him wanted to see Aubrey wriggle and scratch his way out of his dilemma.

  He dialled the Vienna Station number and, when the switchboard answered, he supplied the current code-identification. Almost immediately, he heard Wilkes's voice, breathy and urgent, at the other end of the line.

  "Patrick — ? Where have you been, man?" Wilkes exclaimed, his urgency creating a ringing suspicion in Hyde's awareness that was immediately subdued by the man's next words. "The old man's been crying out in his sleep for you! Where the hell did you get to?"

  "I — a little local difficulty," Hyde replied, reading the felt-pen graffiti on the mirror in the phone booth. Punk rock, the inevitable swastika, telephone numbers promising sodomites paradise. He closed the door of the booth against a burst of laughter from the cafe. Outside, in hard-and-shadowed lighting, tipsy jollity suggested normality. He had been stupid. Even in danger of his life, he had been stupid.

  "He's all right?" he asked.

  "Furious — you know him," Wilkes replied confidentially. There was a chuckle in his voice. So normal—

  A gale of laughter from the cafe was like a concussion against the glass. A waitress passed the booth in a check apron that matched the row of tablecloths.

  "What's going on?"

  "Christ — Babbington and his merry men haven't confided in me. They're in a huddle with Aubrey now. All sorts of charges are flying around."

  "The KGB tried to kill me—"

  "What?" Wilkes was incredulous.

  "It's their set-up, has to be. Teardrop was watching from the wings…" Wilkes was silent for a moment. Hyde added: "It's all Kapustin's game — the tape will prove that."

  "What tape, Patrick?" Wilkes asked eagerly.

  "Aubrey was wired—"

  "Yes — we saw that. Where's the tape?"

  "I dropped the bloody thing in the Belvedere."

  "We'll take care of it!" It sounded like relief, even to the sigh that followed the words. Hyde was puzzled. Then Wilkes removed the impression as he said with urgent concern: "Come in, Patrick. This is just what the old man needs. We'll find that tape — you talk to Babbington."

  "Have they arrested the old man?"

  "Christ knows! The mutual embarrassment's like a fog in here. But everyone looks serious — deadly serious."

  "OK."

  "Where are you?"


  For a moment Hyde studied the number on the dial of the telephone, and the location information. Another gust of laughter concussed the glass. He turned his head. Normal. Aubrey needed his information.

  "OK," he said. "Small cafe, in the Goldschmidgasse, near the cathedral. I'll be inside."

  "Hang on. We'll have a car there for you in ten minutes. Anyone suspicious in the area?"

  "No. I wasn't followed, once I shook them off."

  "Good. Thank God you're all right. Everyone was worried…"

  "OK, Wilkes. Hurry."

  "Ten minutes at the outside."

  Hyde put down the receiver. The scrawled-upon mirror was cloudy, and the glass of the booth had become dulled with the raised temperature. He folded back the door and stepped into the cafe. Strangely, the laughter had a mocking rather than comforting ring. He shivered, and returned to his table. The notes had been collected. He left the pile of change and pulled his overcoat from the back of his chair. He hesitated with one arm thrust into a sleeve, because the cafe was warm and because he realised that all he had to do was to wait. A matter of a few minutes. Outside, there had already been sleet riding on a fresh wind when he entered the cafe. Then he continued to put on the coat because he felt shaken into wakefulness by his instincts. He should check the area around the cathedral square. Someone still wanted him dead. Someone who spoke accentless English. That unwelcome realisation bobbed out of the dark at the back of his mind, more real than the lights and the laughter and talk and the reassurances of Wilkes's voice.

  He closed the door behind him. Sleet blew down the narrow Goldschmidgasse and through the halo of white light around a street-lamp in the Stephansplatz. The wind had strengthened, and it eased itself through his overcoat. He shivered, then turned towards the lights of the square, shoulders hunched, collar turned up, the melting sleet from his hair insinuating itself between his collar and skin. The west door of the Stephansdom was a gap of dark shadow in the sooty facade of the cathedral. Light burst from the metro entrance to his right. Hyde eased himself into the doorway of a shop and surveyed the square. Three minutes by his watch since he had put down the receiver. He had only to wait.

  A group of people emerged from the mouth of the metro station, most of them young; noisy. He watched them bait each other, bait an old man, reel. One youth blundered against the shop's grilled window, pressing his nose flat as he tried to resolve the blurred souvenirs into distinct objects. Then he rolled on, bumping against Hyde before moving away. Hyde's body had flinched from the contact, and he was aware of his heightened nerves. The youth expelled beery breath and a hard laugh and almost returned to reproduce the fear he sensed, but then was towed by the laughter of his friends towards the north side of the cathedral. Couples drifted or were blown like black scraps across the square. Bodies crouched beneath umbrellas. Hyde's breathing returned to normal.

  "Come on, come on," he murmured. Six minutes, and his feet were cold through the suede boots. His hands seemed numb in his pockets. "Come on…"

  An old woman tottered down the steps into the metro station. The light coming from it appeared now like the open mouth of a furnace as Hyde became colder. He could wait there…?

  He moved out of the doorway. Sleet slapped against his cheek. He hurried across the square, head bowed, into the darkness beneath the archway of the cathedral's west door. He pressed his back against the wood, then scanned the square once more.

  And saw the first of them. Expected-unexpected. He had been looking for surveillance, something that might prevent him reaching the car. Someone stumbling upon him by chance. He found purpose. He found informed opinion — knowledge. The car in the Goldschmidgasse, coming from the far end of the narrow street, extinguished its lights perhaps seven seconds before it turned into a parking space. And the man he had seen on foot, moving from the Rotenturm towards the side street, had signalled to it. He shuddered, pressing his arms against his sides to still the quivering of his body. Overcoat, sports jacket, woolen shirt, skin. He was intensely aware of his vulnerability.

  Second man, third man…

  One had come out of the mouth of the metro station in a dark hat and overcoat. The other had come from the cathedral's south side, moving purposefully across the still-lit windows of a men's outfitters. Dark hat, dark overcoat. Dressed for the weather but umbrella-less in the sleet. Erect, unaware of the weather, heads turning like pieces of machinery; oiled, regular, thorough. Point of convergence, the Goldschmidgasse. The first man he had seen paused in the shop doorway where Hyde had first placed himself.

  Eight minutes. These people had come for him — by arrangement.

  Hyde could not bring himself to admit the idea, even though the accentless voice cried in his head, Kill him, kill him… He was able, just, to hold the idea of collusion simply as an unfamiliar word in his awareness. It did not burgeon into acts, arrangements, betrayals, pain, faces. Eight minutes thirty—

  Move, he told himself. Go now. Fourth man. He scanned the Stephansplatz. A dark figure beneath a street-lamp, then another passing across the lights from a coffee-house window. Point of convergence, the Goldschmidgasse—

  Then a knot of men appeared at the corner of the narrow street, moving urgently. The figures he had identified spread outwards, like seed cast from a hand. The net spread; men began running. In that moment, it was already too late. A second earlier, they had been evident by their immobility in the wind that hurried the innocent across the square like leaves; now, they were moving more swiftly, projectiles rather than detritus. Hyde was trapped in the doorway of the cathedral, the door locked against him.

  His thoughts raced but held no form. Adrenalin offered itself, but with the crudeness of a one-swallow drink. Dark overcoat moving to the cathedral's north side, dark overcoat to the south side, skirting the square. Doorways checked. Two men coming across the square towards the west door and its concealing shadow, two more descending into the light of the metro station. Other, disregarded shapes drifted or hurried across the Stephansplatz, as unimportant as the sleet blown through the light of the lamps. Two men coming towards him, north side man closer than the man on the south side. Eight men altogether; nothing being left to chance. Substitution, collusion — now when he didn't want them the images came to accompany the word. Wilkes's voice, the accentless English in the palace grounds, Kapustin watching, Babbington arresting Aubrey for treason — the arrangement of his own capture and murder.

  Now—

  South side man perhaps thirty yards from him, the two men crossing the square, one taller than the other, broader, striding more quickly — they were fifteen yards, fourteen, twelve…

  He ran.

  Hyde's boots skidded on the little accumulation of sleety snow on the bottom step, then he turned to his left, thrust away from the sooty, crumbling stonework, head down. A shout, other shouts like answering hunting horns. The south-side man hurrying almost at once, without noticeable shock-delay. Hyde rounded the west facade into deeper shadow, hearing the footsteps behind him over the pounding of his heart; over the drumming realisation that he was running into a narrowing canyon behind the cathedral where the pedestrianised streets on the north and south sides converged. At that instant, men were running along the north side, beneath the unfinished, capped tower of the Stephansdom, to head him off. It was a race. There would be no doubling back, no luck of deception. Point of convergence — himself. He would have to outrun them.

  Lights from fashionable, expensive apartments above fashionable, expensive shops. Shoes gleamed and primped in a soft-lit window. A couple huddled in a chilly passion in the shop's doorway. The shadows along the cathedral wall were deep, almost alive. Hyde skidded again, and his hand rubbed against cold stone as he righted himself. He could hear the beat of footsteps ahead and behind him.

  Shop window, doorway, couple, dark side street…

  He turned, saw the three men bearing down on him, and then fled down the narrow street, away from the cathedral. Their pursuit resounded from
the blank, grey walls of the tall houses. Left into a narrow alley with light at the other end, then right and across the street, hearing a car moving away from him and the sudden, chilling screech of a cat, then another alley, then a lightless street after the loom of a church.

  He paused and listened. The car's noise had faded. There was the noise of someone blundering into a dustbin, music from an upstairs window, and the beat of footsteps — splitting up, the noises moving away. He crossed the street and walked swiftly, hands in his pockets. A man emerged from the alley into the dark street. He was alone, and no more than a shadowy lump. Then he moved off in the opposite direction.

  Sausages hung in the unlit window of a delicatessen; fat, ripe, Daliesque. His dark, narrow features stared out at him in reflection. He looked abandoned, inadequate. He had no cover, no luggage, no hotel, no back-up. Wilkes had set the KGB on him.

  A Mercedes roared past, startling him, making his hand reach instinctively into the breast of his overcoat where the butt of the gun felt damp with his exertions. Then he relaxed, and looked again at his slight, hunched figure and the sallow reflection of his face. He began walking slowly on, with no purpose other than to conceal himself.

  * * *

  "Is this to be the beginning or the end of this — lunacy?"

  Sir Andrew Babbington, Director-General of MI5, lowered himself with studied casualness into the armchair opposite Aubrey, and then looked up into the older man's face as if assessing the visible symptoms of a disease. Aubrey waved his glance aside with an angry gesture that underlined his enraged question.

  "Kenneth—"

  "Babbington, I asked you a question. Pray do me the courtesy of replying."

  "This is Colonel Eldon," Babbington said, indicating his companion, "of our Counter-espionage Branch." His smile indicated that he considered he had answered Aubrey's enquiry. Eldon nodded.