The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  "I — excuse me, Wolf…" Zimmermann looked up and smiled. Her German was grammatical, stiff, well-learned, and recently unused. "I–I've made a list of what you could call — absences without leave during the period from February to April '74. There are a lot of them."

  She stretched forward, arm extended. Zimmermann, too, leaned towards the coffee-table, and took the sheet of notepaper. He inspected it, nodding and shaking his head in turn. Then he looked up.

  "I agree. It is a poor comment on the protection we offered our guests. Yes, I'm afraid there was a great deal of time unaccounted for by SIS personnel during those weeks." He sighed. "A pity — whether we can check very much of it after so much time, I'm not sure." He pondered, then asked: "Do you detect a pattern here?"

  Margaret shook her head. "Some were greater offenders than others — I've starred their names. Mostly night-times are unaccounted for." She smiled. "Might it mean anything?"

  "Possibly. We must try."

  "And you? Have you found anything?" Her gaze was direct, almost fierce. Guiltily, he glanced down at the heap of files balanced on his lap. He had kept Aubrey's material for his own examination — his movements, contacts, debriefing, subsequent debriefmgs of those assigned to his protection from the BfV. In it, as he had expected, he had found nothing. He shook his head gently, wisely. Margaret's features pursed at the patronising mannerism.

  "No, I have not. I did not expect to," Zimmermann said coldly in response to her expression. The woman's suspicions were suddenly irritating, stupid. "What may or may not have happened in 1946 has nothing to do with 1974, or with now," he said pedantically. "I am certain of that. There is nothing here to link Aubrey with Guillaume or anyone else."

  "Do you say that only because you are in his debt, Herr Zimmermann?"

  "I do not," he replied angrily. "I am in his debt, greatly so. That is true. But it is not true to make it an accusation. Do you forget that you and your husband are perhaps both in danger? He certainly is. The man is here somewhere, in this maze, in all this old paper. Your father is dead — he had been dead for almost forty years… your husband is alive."

  Margaret's face had reddened. She clenched her hands in her lap. "You don't have to lecture me, Herr Zimmermann."

  "My apologies."

  "I–I'm sorry…it — it's just that it's so hard to help the man who might have killed my father—!"

  "Then help your husband!"

  "Very well! What do you want me to do?"

  Zimmermann stood up, clutching the sheaf of files in both hands. He threw them onto the sofa beside her. "Here! You think that man killed your father — you find something against him. I can't! The reason I can't is that there is nothing to find." Zimmermann was visibly trembling as he stood in front of her. She confronted a passion for truth as fierce as her own.

  She disregarded the files on Aubrey. "I'm sorry — I'll carry on with — with my own work, here…"

  "As you wish," Zimmermann observed coldly, turning away from her and walking to the window. The snow had stopped, but more threatened from the heavy sky. Zimmermann was angry with himself for losing his temper. Margaret Massinger was under a great strain.

  He almost turned to apologise, but could not. Better to leave her, for the moment, to recover herself. He heard her shuffling through papers, and knew that she would not now look, even glance, at the Aubrey material. In a moment, he should get back to it—

  Where was Massinger?

  He prevented himself from looking once more at his watch. It was already beginning to get dark outside. The barges were like long black slugs on the grey path of the Rhine. No, there was one with washing hung out even in this dreary, freezing weather — a line of it like naval signals of greeting or distress.

  Where was Massinger?

  Nerves took hold of Zimmermann, unformed but gathering fears. He should have provided the man with an escort, with protection.

  Margaret Massinger was speaking.

  "What—?" he asked abruptly.

  "I didn't realise that Andrew Babbington was in Bonn during that period," she repeated, undisturbed by his tone.

  "Oh — yes, he headed the team of interrogating officers that MI5 sent over, a few days after Guillaume was arrested," Zimmermann replied absently, watching the barge, flying its signals of colourful washing, move upriver towards the Kennedybrücke.

  "No, he was here before that," Margaret continued. "Some internal investigation in the Chancery section of the British embassy — misappropriation of funds, it says here."

  Zimmermann turned from the window. "That is not unusual…" he began with heavy humour.

  The door opened, and Paul appeared.

  "Well?" Margaret asked breathlessly, almost at once. Zimmermann saw the certainty on Massinger's face, and quailed inwardly. He doubted he could help save Aubrey by helping them. Massinger believed in Aubrey's guilt, that much was evident; just as it was evident he wished to conceal that conviction from his wife. "What did you find out?" she asked ominously.

  Massinger laid his raincoat across the back of a chair and sat beside her. The man seemed to have no masks left; Zimmermann could see that any effort at deception would fail miserably.

  "It's no more than speculation," he began.

  "What is?" Margaret snapped.

  "Your father — it's a crazy, wild guess — Aubrey was wrong, I'm certain of it…"

  "What?" Her tone was icy.

  Zimmermann turned once more to the window. The barge with its hoisted washing was slipping beneath the Kennedybrücke now, bereft of colour. No more than another black slug on grey.

  It had begun to snow once more. He remembered that Massinger's grey hair had sparkled with wetness when he came through the door. Zimmermann wished to excuse himself, he was inwardly hunched against Massinger's reply. He refused to listen to it, nonsense that it was… a fate deserved. If true, Aubrey had known, would have been sure.

  "No—!" Margaret almost screamed. "No, no, no, no!" The stain was too great, the smear. What Zimmermann had divined from his own conversation with Disch had become clear to Massinger, too. Perhaps Disch himself, on reflection, had also come to believe it. Now, Margaret Massinger was trying to reject the suspicion they all shared. Not that — above all, not that… Her father could not be at one with the mass-murderers of the six million, the maniacs, the slaughterers, the deformed, the misfits, the thugs and torturers — not them! Zimmermann, as a German, could not but resent the horror in her voice, even as he sympathised with her.

  She was sobbing now, he was murmuring useless comforts, having caused her distress. Zimmermann had hoped Disch might have concealed what he suspected, but had not believed he would.

  "No, no, no, no…" she was murmuring.

  Stop, he thought. Stop it. It was useless to suspect, more pointless to believe, most futile to know. It was almost forty years ago. She had to shake it off — both of them had to exorcise her father's ghost. It might be a matter of life and death — theirs…

  Snow, snail-tracks once more on the window, long slow barges, the steely river — the barge with the washing, and her words at that point, just before the barge slipped out of sight beneath and beyond the bridge…?

  Babbington. Sir Andrew Babbington. The Director-General of MI5.

  Read the will, he thought. When the body is discovered in the library and the rich old lady is pronounced murdered, read the will— Who has most to gain? Who benefits? Who becomes rich?

  He smiled. Margaret's sobs and the soft, coaxing words of her husband no longer impinged upon him. He felt only an impatience to study the files.

  Babbington… read the will, Inspector, read the will…

  * * *

  Sir Kenneth Aubrey could think of nothing other than the destruction of the journal in Clara Elsenreith's possession. The idea of its continued existence was frightening and painful to him, but all other thought frightened and pained him more. Beyond the destruction of his confession to Castleford's murder lay nothing. An
empty landscape. Perhaps he could hide with Clara for days, even weeks. After that, however, there was nothing. Only his disappearance, an act of willed disguise, anonymity, denial of his former self. He would have to find somewhere to skulk as Herr Jones, or Monsieur Smith or Signer Smith or Senor Jones for the rest of his life. He could never be Kenneth Aubrey again.

  One of the Frenchmen who shared his compartment had removed his shoes and stretched his legs. His socks smelt in the over-warm, dry atmosphere. The sleeping child in the farthest corner of the compartment murmured, shifted. Her mother adjusted her arms about her. The express was less than an hour from Strasbourg. He would be in Vienna the following day.

  The French newspapers carried nothing concerning his disappearance from England. Evidently, it had not been made public. There were stories, of course; peculiar and witty Gallic cruelties regarding himself, British Intelligence, Britain itself. But nothing of his current whereabouts. The secrecy did not comfort him. Instead, he saw it as a signpost on the road towards his inevitable disappearance into another identity. Already, the press had lost sight of him, and that was only the beginning. Unlike the traitors, for him there wasn't even a Moscow where he could arrive in safety and remain himself.

  All he was able to do was to destroy the written evidence of his guilt. There was nothing better or more or greater to hope for. The early edition of France-Soir, which he had bought in Paris, lay still opened on his lap. Mitterand was in London to see the PM concerning the EEC budget and the CAP — again. He could read the headline and the caption to the photograph suddenly in the brief, fleeting lights of a country station. The tired familiarity of the wrangle hurt with a physical sensation of pain in his chest. He — he, Kenneth Aubrey, might have been calling to brief the PM not an hour after the talks with Mitterand had ended — or the next day, or the day after that…

  Now, he would never do that again.

  He did not love power — no, he resisted that insinuating accusation that popped out of the darkness at the back of his mind. No… but it had been forty-five years since he had begun to serve his country, since he had begun to be the person he thought himself to be. Now, he had to relinquish that country, that person.

  Brainwashing experiments, he thought suddenly in an irrational, unnerving way. Suspension of the body from buoyant slings in tepid water. In no more than days, one was left with a clean sheet. The utter absence of physical sensation completely erased the personality. No memory, no opinions, no person. It had begun to happen to him.

  The express rattled over points, swayed, then clicked on into the winter night. The lights of another country station. A railway employee — some guard or porter or station-master or signalman — had watched the train pass. Aubrey recognised that he might become that anonymous man past whom the world would rush and disappear into the distance.

  Tears pricked his tired eyes. Sleep would not come. The odour of the Frenchman's socks mingled with that of half-melted sweets from the opposite corner of the compartment.

  * * *

  Petrunin's eyes opened. They seemed, impossibly, to fall open rather than be revealed by the raising of the eyelids. The man's face was drawn and grey, but the only visible blood on his face was old and dry. Hyde's breath escaped in a ragged, elongated moan of relief. The noise of the helicopter had returned and then had faded once more as he had sat hunched against the man he thought was dead, his head listening for some betraying heartbeat against the wetness of Petrunin's blouse. It had almost stopped snowing. Hyde could see the black sticks of the nearest stunted trees against the whiteness of the ground. But Petrunin was alive — just.

  "Why?" Hyde said at once, seeing that the Russian's eyes remained unfocused, inward-staring. "What was the reason for it?"

  Petrunin was silent for a long time. The wind whispered, puffing snow under the lee of the overhang. Hyde was numb with cold. Then the Russian muttered in the remote voice that had become familiar to Hyde: "I don't — want to be remembered as the butcher of Kabul." It was uninflected, passionless yet full of self-pity. Hyde had not reached the place where what remained of Petrunin had retreated. "I don't want to be remembered as the butcher of Kabul," Petrunin repeated exactly. Hyde did not think it was even a nickname he had been given. He was describing the state of his self-knowledge.

  "Why?" Hyde shouted. "Why did you need Teardrop?"

  "I was being used, even then," Petrunin said, disconcerting Hyde. "In 1941, during the nine hundred days…" His voice tailed off. Hyde had no idea what he meant. "Even then, scouting, carrying messages… I was no more than a boy — thirteen when the war began… they've had me in their pockets since I was thirteen… since Leningrad…"

  Hyde was chilled by this glimpse into Petrunin's past. As little more than a boy, he had experienced the privations and terrors of the German siege of Leningrad which had last nine hundred days.

  "Yes," he said.

  "In their pockets… their man, their thing …"

  "But — why?"

  Something reminded Hyde to attend to the reality beyond the tiny huddle of himself and Petrunin. Silence, except for the quiet soughing of the wind. The snow was still falling, but more lightly. He could not hear the helicopter's rotors.

  Petrunin did not answer his question. Instead, his cold, remote voice said, "Leningrad…" It was a sigh. Its meaning had become a talisman for Petrunin which perhaps protected him against memories of the more recent past. Hyde felt himself totally identified with the Russian, a fellow-conspirator in a world of enemies. The identification was so close that Hyde could not envisage the border or foresee his escape.

  "Why?" he asked again softly and without hope of any reply.

  "Why?" Petrunin repeated. "Why?" He spoke in English once more, a sharper, more amused tone in his voice. "To place him — to place our man at the apex, the pinnacle… whenever we wished. When the time…" A slight cough interrupted Petrunin. His eyes closed as if to eradicate pain. Hyde looked at him. Only minutes now. Then Petrunin seemed to gather a new, urgent strength. "The time was right," he announced. "Sir William was the — the Chairman of JIC, he had your Prime Minister's ear… your new service, combining intelligence and security, could be set up now—! The time was right… and sweet…" He coughed, then added: "For our man…"

  Hyde heard only that last phrase, as Petrunin's voice faded like a poor radio signal.

  Their man. Hyde felt himself shivering uncontrollably. The answer was a moment, one more sentence away, and the realisation of its proximity made him understand his surroundings and his situation more deeply. Once he had the knowledge, he had to stay alive, get out—

  "Who?" he asked, but before he received an answer he had pressed his palm against Petrunin's mouth. The Russian's eyes widened. Hyde could not be certain the Russian could see the soldier moving slowly across the snow, forty yards from them, clothed in winter combat camouflage, Kalashnikov carried across his chest, snowshoes lifting and clumping and flattening the snow.

  Hyde felt Petrunin's lips moving against the cold flesh of his palm. It might have been the name of the traitor, it might have been a protest at being gagged. It might have been some last, futile epithet. Hyde clamped his hand more firmly over Petrunin's mouth as the soldier continued to pass across their field of vision.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  Arriving

  Two more soldiers came out of the stunted trees, bobbing into view as they climbed the last of the shallow slope. Both of them, rifles angled across their white-clad chests, appeared to be walking straight towards Hyde and Petrunin, able to make out their huddled shapes beneath the overhang. Petrunin's body slumped against Hyde once more, almost into an embrace, and Hyde knew the man was still alive because his lips kept murmuring soundlessly against his palm. His hand was warmed by the faint breathing of the Russian, but it was a fitful breeze, threatening to disappear each time it tickled his palm.

  The first soldier passed out of sight and his two companions moved after him. Their exaggerated steps
sifted and fluffed the light snow. There was no sound of any helicopter. Petrunin was shivering against him. Ten seconds, fifteen, twenty, a minute… time elongated. Hyde wanted to cry out, to scream as the nerves tautened all over his body; as if the cold had left him cramped and maddened with pins-and-needles. A minute and a half…

  They stopped, casting about. Hyde was convinced that he could see, with vivid clarity, the slight depressions left by his laboured footsteps in the snow. He thought he could make out the shallow trough where he had slithered, dragging the Russian, towards the overhang. It must be clear to the soldiers—

  They moved off, as if half-afraid of being left too far behind their companion. Hyde's breathing rushed in his ears. He could hear his heart, just feel Petrunin's shallow, irregular breathing. Out of sight, out of sight — go on, go on…

  Another few yards, yes, three, two, another step…

  They were gone. He heard one of them call after the first soldier. He heard the quickening slither of their snowshoes.

  Now, the snow beyond the overhang looked smooth and undimpled except where they had walked. Gently, as if in apology, Hyde removed his hand from Petrunin's mouth. The lips were still working soundlessly, not so much searching for words as for an expression — perhaps a smile.

  "Your man?" Hyde asked. "Who is he?"

  "Babbington," Petrunin replied after the smallest hesitation. His lips found something like acceptance, then the name, finally a smile. "Babbington!"

  "Christ — then it's worked!"

  "Of course." The voice was remote again, but in a superior, Olympian manner. "Of course."

  "Jesus-bloody-Christ," Hyde breathed. "Him?"

  "Him."

  "When — how long, for Christ's sake—?"

  Petrunin waved his hand dismissively, weakly, as if he considered Hyde was wasting the little time left with the wrong questions. "A long story," he murmured. "It always is. Now — what will you do?"

  Hyde rubbed his face. "God knows."