The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  "I thought a great deal about this last night," Massinger murmured as they passed out of the gates, heading towards the Kennington Road. Massinger recollected Margaret's quietly-breathing form next to him throughout the night. The awareness of it was vivid, almost a physical sensation against his arm and side. The memory pained him deeply. He turned his head, but no red car appeared to be moving.

  "And—?" Shelley replied reluctantly, listening to the older man's hard breathing and the tap of his stick on the pavement. Both noises were dispiriting.

  "I spoke to Pavel Koslov, the KGB Rezident, last evening."

  "Where?"

  "He was at the flat. A social occasion."

  "And?"

  They passed an eighteenth-century house with a grand door and an iron balcony to the first and second floors. It appeared aloofly unaware of the neighbouring launderette and Indian restaurant. Shelley seemed distracted by the odours of Tandoori cooking.

  "He let something slip — drunk, of course. He knew exactly what was going on. That it was a frame. He even knew what had happened in Vienna. It amused him. His opposite number there had told him the whole story of Aubrey's arrest."

  "What can we do about it?" The question surprised Shelley himself.

  Massinger halted, and the two men faced one another. Shelley knew he was being weighed and was affronted and sick with uncertainty. Why had he said that? Why hadn't he been able to walk away? He had to get the file back, that was what really mattered.

  "Do you mean that?" Massinger asked finally. A turbaned Sikh brushed lightly and apologetically against them. A shopping trolley dragged behind a large woman banged painfully against Shelley's ankle. Behind Massinger, a car showroom burst from the ground floor of a once-elegant house like a mutant, leaving the upper storeys stranded in the past. A Labour Party poster glared from one window, as if to proclaim the entirety of change throughout the house.

  "Yes," Shelley replied reluctantly, unable to prevent the answer he gave, shrinking from it even as he did so.

  "Good man."

  "But what can we do—?" Shelley protested as they walked on.

  Massinger slipped on a patch of ice and Shelley steadied him. Foreboding overwhelmed him.

  "Do you realise we have no time left?" Massinger asked. "Already, we're both under surveillance — if it is MI5, then we have no time at all, and if it's Pavel who's set the dogs on us, then we may have even less time. Pavel wouldn't hesitate…"

  "I know!" Shelley snapped. "There is no need to scrawl the message on the wall. So? What hope is there?"

  They had reached the entrance to the tube station. Massinger paused, facing Westminster Bridge Road. On the other side of the thoroughfare, whitewashed racist slogans had been daubed on a wall beside the poster of a cowboy smoking his favourite brand of cigarette, a packet of which obscured the grandeur of Monument Valley. Massinger received a fleeting image of John Wayne lying prostrate on the roof of a racing stage-coach, of a crowded, child-noisy movie theatre. His youth.

  "I realise Pavel's too well protected — and on guard," he murmured. Shelley had to bend his head to hear distinctly. "There'd be a God-awful stink if anything happened to him. But we have no time!. There are the three of us, and one of us is trapped in Vienna with no hope of getting out. The agent — our field agent — cannot come to us. I have to go to him."

  "What then?"

  "Someone may be planning to stop us because of what we've already done. If we can do something quickly, something decisive — then maybe we can win. Slowly means we lose — altogether."

  "I realise that. But what—?"

  "Bear with me, Peter. We need Hyde, and that means going to him. Which means Vienna. I want everything Registry has on the KGB Rezident in Vienna — the Rezident and his senior staffers."

  "Why?"

  "Will you get it for me?" Massinger's eyes gleamed with daring rather than reason.

  "Why?" Shelley repeated.

  "If we could make him talk — if we had proof!"

  "The — Rezident, in Vienna… madness." Shelley's anger was fuelled by fear. "It's absolutely insane!"

  "It's quick. Speed is our only hope."

  "That's not hope, it's lunacy."

  "And the entirely unexpected. Get me everything on the current Rezident. There must be something, some time when he's virtually alone, unattended, off his guard… a moment in which we can — talk to him?" Massinger's smile matched his eyes. Shelley quailed. It was the most desperate, monstrous lunacy, a four-in-the-morning solution to the problem. It should have dispersed in the light of day.

  "You can't!" he felt obliged to say.

  "At least we can try, man!"

  "And this KGB senior staffer — he'll just answer your questions politely?"

  "No. Which is why we will need pentathol and a man with a needle."

  "What—?"

  "You control East Europe Desk, Peter. You must have someone, somewhere in Europe, someone you can still trust, who can inject the necessary drugs? There must be someone…?"

  Shelley felt himself mocked. More, he felt himself endangered. Too close to the bone, to vital organs. Massinger was in the process of flinging him over a precipice.

  "I — can't do what you ask," he murmured. "It's too risky, leaks like a sieve…"

  "My God, man — don't you realise that your precious job may not exist if this goes on much longer!" Massinger stormed through clenched teeth. It was a superior, cold anger. "There is collusion between elements in your service and the KGB. Everything we know and everything that has happened to Hyde tells us that much. You must want to know who, and why — you have to try and stop it. We must establish the truth, Peter. We must discover what this awful co-operation means, how far it extends — what and who is behind it. It's your job, for God's sake!"

  Shelley half turned away, his hands flapping feebly at his sides. "I don't want to realise that," he muttered.

  "But it's necessary — crucial. It's the reality of this business."

  "I know. It's standing beside you like a bloody shadow. Duty. God, Queen and Country. I know I have to. I know it." Shelley's lips twisted in a sneer.

  Massinger looked at his watch. "You'd better get that file back, Peter," he instructed gently. "And the other material — can you get it for me today?"

  "Today?"

  "Hyde is in constant danger. Your people in Vienna Station threw him to the wolves. He's running and he's afraid. He may have even less time available than we do."

  Shelley nodded in accompaniment to Massinger's grave words. Then he looked up from the pavement and his shuffling feet, and said: "I'll try. I'll try, and call you tonight?" He left the statement as a question and studied Massinger's face. The American glanced at the buff envelope under Shelley's arm, then nodded.

  "Yes. Do that. I — we have to go on with it — whatever."

  "Yes. Now, I have to go."

  Shelley turned away abruptly, and entered the tube station, leaving Massinger staring at the cigarette hoarding across the street.

  * * *

  "You're certain it was massinger?"

  "No, sir — not certain."

  "But Shelley — yes?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And you lost them?"

  "They shook us off, sir. Didn't use the car."

  "Where are they now?"

  "Massinger's at home. Shelley's at Century House. He's been there since a little after one."

  "Why did they meet? I don't see the significance of the War Museum."

  "Sorry, sir — can't tell you."

  "Why did they meet?"

  "Sorry, sir — didn't quite catch—"

  "It doesn't matter. It can't add up to anything much. Old loyalties having a day trip, chickens scratching around in the dust. Mm. Shelley will have to be watched more closely. I'm certain Massinger doesn't have the stomach for this — he'll run out of steam fairly soon."

  "I see, sir."

  "Maintain surveillance on both of them, until we
can be certain what they're up to — if anything."

  "Sir."

  * * *

  Hyde recognised that he had passed through both fear and the oppressive sense of isolation. They had worn themselves away, like an over-familiar lust. Finally, he was left with no more than a desire for action. It was his simplest emotion; whenever he encountered it, he felt he had arrived at a destination or a new beginning.

  The rain slanted in the gusts of wind across the street. Car headlights glared onto the windscreen of the Volkswagen van, and brake lights splashed on the road like ruby paint. He had hired the van from a small backstreet garage and had borrowed the stained grey overalls he now wore. Almost six in the evening. He was waiting for Wilkes to leave the SIS offices on the Opernring. The van was parked beneath the trees, alongside the tramlines, thirty yards from the door of the office building. Wilkes had not yet left. Impatience filled Hyde, gratifyingly, in itself a signal of purposeful activity. His fingers drummed against the greasy touch of the steering wheel.

  Wilkes would tell him the truth. Wilkes, the man who had sent the KGB for him in the cafe, in the cathedral square. The purposeful men in the heavy overcoats. Wilkes—

  Wilkes stepped from the door, turning up his collar, glancing to left and right, crossing the pavement to his parked car. Hyde started the engine of the Volkswagen with a fierce tightness in his chest and throat. Now, now it begins, he could not avoid thinking.

  Wilkes's Audi pulled out into the traffic flow, and Hyde slid into the line three vehicles behind it. Was he going home, back to his apartment? Going for a drink, meeting someone? To Hyde, it did not matter. Eventually, Wilkes would be alone, and then…

  Hyde damped down the suddenly rising anger. He had not realised, until that first moment of secret surveillance as he pulled out into the traffic behind the unsuspecting Wilkes, how much he wanted to hurt him, make him talk. He had been too isolated, too endangered and for too long. Wilkes was going to repay him for that frightened, hunted, wasted time.

  Wilkes's car turned off the Opernring, into Mariahilferstrasse, following a tram that flashed blue sparks from the wire above it. The Hofburg Palace loomed to Hyde's right for a moment, then they were passing the massive elegance of the Kunsthistoriscbes-museum. Audi, Mercedes, small Citroen, then the Volkswagen. Hyde considered moving up, anticipating being caught by one of the sets of traffic lights. He decided against it, however. There were sufficient sets of lights to keep Wilkes in sight, even if he missed one of them. Action itself assured him. He would not lose Wilkes. He was there, three cars away beyond the wipers and the slanting rain.

  The centre of Vienna changed, the lights of modern shops obscuring then throwing into shadow the old buildings whose ground floors they had usurped. Side streets became narrower, the traffic lights less frequent. Wilkes had made no attempt to accelerate, or to turn off. He was still unaware.

  The Citroen turned off, and Hyde moved up. Then the Mercedes disappeared, and he dropped back again. A Renault overtook him and filled the gap between the van and the Audi. The black, gleaming station roof of the West-Bahnhof lay beyond the grimy, streaked window of the Volkswagen, then Hyde turned into a wide cobbled street behind the Audi.

  The Audi slowed, taking him by surprise. He drove past, consciously stopping the foot that had been about to transfer itself from accelerator to brake. He did not glance in the direction of Wilkes's car, but watched it stop, floating into his rear-view mirror. Its headlights dimmed, and then it was nothing more than a dark shape alongside the pavement. Hyde pulled in perhaps sixty or seventy yards further along the street, opposite a newspaper and tobacco kiosk set in the featureless ground floor wall of an apartment building. His eyes returned to the mirror. In a moment of quiet between passing cars, he heard Wilkes slam the car door. Hyde wound down his offside window, and craned his head to see Wilkes crossing the street towards high iron gates. One of the gates opened and Wilkes disappeared.

  Hyde scrambled out of the Volkswagen, hurrying between oncoming traffic across the street. A childish and inappropriate sense of having been cheated filled his imagination. Somehow, the rules had been changed; Wilkes was engaged in his own mystery, rejecting his role as hunted victim. The rain, flung by a gust of wind, slapped across Hyde's face. His hand reassured itself for a moment on the butt of the Heckler & Koch beneath his arm.

  A wrought scroll of iron set into the tall gates announced Altes Fleischmarkt. Through the gates, receding into an unlit darkness, Hyde could see a large cobbled expanse surrounded by decaying, lifeless sheds and warehouses.

  He gripped the cold, wet iron of the gates with one hand, slipping the gun into the pocket of his overalls with the other. He listened. There was no sound of footsteps. The gates were unlocked. One of them groaned open as he pushed at it. He left it open.

  Meat market. The old meat market. Why? Wilkes, here—?

  The cobbles were pooled and rutted and treacherous beneath his feet. He stood, searching for light, for movement.

  Nothing.

  His left hand touched the barrel of the torch in his pocket. Then he moved forward, across the open, rainswept cobbles. Meat market. Empty. Wilkes had disappeared somewhere, into one of the warehouses. Why?

  Traffic rumbled down the cobbled street behind him. One of the gates moved protestingly, pushed by a gust of wind. There were no other noises.

  He moved towards his left. Flash of a torch—?

  He could see an open door, sagging on its hinges. His feet splashed in a puddle of water. His hand touched the damp wood of the door. His hearing reached ahead of him, encountering Only silence. No torch, then…

  He slipped silently through the open door, into the musty interior of the warehouse. He listened once more. Nothing. He moved lightly and carefully, his shins brushing against buckets or perhaps cans. Somewhere, a rat scuttled, startling him. When his hearing was able once more to move beyond his heartbeat, it encountered the same silence. He withdrew the torch from his pocket with the stealth of a weapon. The pistol, almost ignored, appeared in his right hand at the same moment.

  The door shifted on old hinges, but did not close. No trap, then—

  Where was Wilkes?

  He listened for a car engine firing, the noise of Wilkes having thrown him off his tail. Faint whitewashed walls stretched back into darkness.

  Empty—?

  He flicked on the torch, pointing it directly ahead of him. Five yards away, a huge portrait of Lenin glared at him. The sight stunned him.

  Lenin?

  "Hello, Patrick," he heard Wilkes say from the darkness away to his left.

  He could not move.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  For the Record

  Lenin—?

  His mind refused to release that image, caught in the beam of the torch. His thumb would not move the switch to turn off the light. He could not comprehend the voice — Wilkes's voice, he remembered dimly — coming from the darkness to his left. He could not move the torch in an arc to reveal the speaker, or move the pistol across his body to endanger Wilkes.

  Trap.

  But, Lenin—?

  Joke?

  He shivered, newly aware of the cold and wet. The shivering would not stop once it had commenced. He had stepped into some mad theatre, without his cue. He could only wait for his prompter…

  "Hello, Patrick," Wilkes said again. Then the door moved on its hinges. Heat stung the back of his neck as he tried to overcome tight, frozen muscles to turn his head. The door slammed shut behind him. He imagined, almost immediately, that he could hear breathing in the darkness around him. Two, three, four pairs of lungs, his imagination counted. Trap. He knew they were there. He did not know how many, but they were plural; collective. They were a trap, and they had snapped shut on him. "OK, Patrick," Wilkes added confidently, almost amused, "put down the gun. There's a good chap."

  Now—!

  There was the single, elongated fraction of a moment in which his body would not come unfrozen, would n
ot move — then the torch was out, and he leapt and rolled, and crashed into something which gave and then toppled upon him, winding him. Torch beams flashed and played about him, and someone cursed.

  Not Wilkes's voice. He clung to something tapering and moulded or carved. A torch beam struck as he pushed it away. A model of one of the towers of the Kremlin.

  Kremlin—?

  He rolled away. No gunfire, only the searchlight beams of the torches and lamps licking across the dusty floor of the warehouse, seeking him. The embrace with the model had threatened the return of his paralysis, but since he could not explain it, he rejected it. He scrabbled. Others moved now, converging on the point where his light had been, where his collision with the model had taken place. He rolled under a bench, into a corner, hunching against the wall and trying to control his breathing.

  Footsteps, like the slither and rush of rats. Flickering torchlight, orders—

  Silence, filling the bowl of the warehouse. Some children's game, but played in the dark. Statues, was it? When Hyde looks, all stand still. Make a statue.

  Lenin, model—?

  "Patrick?" Wilkes said clearly, his voice whispering in the hollow acoustic. "Patrick. I think you ought to give it up as a bad job." Silence, then: "Oh, for your information, Clint Eastwood made a film here. You saw some of the set dressing, the props. A spy film. Very exciting, I believe."

  "Where's the bloody main switch?" someone called out.

  "In the office!" Wilkes snapped.

  Someone collided with some cans or buckets, setting them rolling on the cobbled floor. As he moved under cover of the noise, Hyde heard the man cursing.

  Then Wilkes was speaking again. His voice betrayed the subtle, arcane pleasure of having known it was Hyde tailing him in the Volkswagen, of having known his every move. Wilkes had trailed him behind his Audi like a kite.

  "Come on, Patrick — there's nowhere to go. We'll have all the lights on in a minute. We shall all know and be known. Just don't be silly about it."

  Rage enveloped Hyde.