The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  "Whatever he has done, I cannot see Kenneth Aubrey enjoying a state pension and a Party flat in Moscow. Whatever… we do not want him back here. Understood?" Babbington nodded, tight-lipped. "Good. It is the future we must now look to — and that will be your business, at least in part. A cleansing of the stables. That and a full enquiry. That should satisfy the House, and the Press. The PM's first puritanical flush of enthusiasm — nay, her sheer exasperation after Blunt and the others that there was more bad weather coming from the direction of the intelligence service — has died down. She has listened to wiser heads, to counsels of calm—" Sir William seemed to glare at that moment. Babbington, of course, had been one of the headhunters… the PM had listened with enthusiasm, had agreed. Now Sir William had changed his mind and his advice was being heeded.

  "I see."

  "Excellent. You can bring Margaret back as soon as you wish — you have my blessing on it. That foolish man, her husband… but, when have we ever expected maturity from our Transatlantic cousins, mm?" Babbington was invited to smile, which he dutifully did. He was not still to be blamed, apparently. He would continue as Director-General of SAID, at the pinnacle. And Sir William, like everyone else, would continue to be unsuspecting in the matter of his real power. It could have been a great deal worse, he concluded.

  Except for Massinger and Aubrey and Hyde and Shelley — the small party of the faithful. Sir William had made them inviolate — but they had to be silenced.

  "When I return from Washington in a few days' time, I want to have a long talk with my god-daughter. Why she did not come to me at once I shall never understand!" Again, he threw up his hands melodramatically. "Dashing off like that. She was to hostess a small party for me next week." His full lips were twisted with indulgent humour. A confirmed bachelor, it was evident that Margaret Massinger had provided an easy, comforting surrogate child who had never cost Sir William money, time or tears and brought him some degree of easily gained pleasure. Parenthood without responsibility, Babbington thought sourly, an image of his own son, tie askew, dinner jacket stained, wildly drunk — a regular feature of the Tatler's picture pages. Ex-Eton, ex-Oxford, ex-, ex-, ex-

  Suddenly, he hated Margaret Massinger and her husband. And sensed their danger to himself. What did they know, or suspect? The old ghosts of '74 had been stirring. If they knew, then…

  Even if they suspected.

  "I understand your concern, Sir William." The studied introduction of cool deference stung the older man. He glowered.

  "Andrew," he said heavily, "I am not concerned. I want this foolish matter closed, like a factory without orders, like an old file. Closed. Finished with. Bring them back. Have them put on a plane home — today."

  "Very well — William." At last, Sir William began to feel comfortable with his role before this audience of one. "Yes," he continued with a sigh, "I hope you can persuade her to desist in this affair. And her husband. The silly man persists in the belief that Aubrey may be innocent."

  "That's ridiculous. You should have been able to convince him."

  "I tried — dear God, I tried. This American passion for investigation… it blinds them to the most evident truths."

  "I quite agree." Sir William's voice was lazier now, more drawling. They were two powerful members of the same exclusive club. There were no differences between them now. He smiled benevolently upon Babbington.

  Kim Philby, Babbington thought. Or Guy Burgess. How they must have relished — loved, moments like this. Laughing into their sleeves. The cosmic joke. He trusts me, I'm on his side now that he's demonstrated his petty power. All pals once more. Club members for life, for eternity.

  Yes, Babbington admitted to himself, there is a tang, a bouquet, to moments like this. The appetiser to the feast.

  "But, if we talk to him together — forbid him to continue, I think he can be brought to his senses."

  "That ought not to be beyond us. Margaret will certainly have to be reminded of her duty." He snorted. "The silly woman could have put herself in danger, for God's sake. Amateurs!" The word was pronounced with the force of some profound imprecation. An association of outer darkness, excommunication. Babbington thought: You impossibly pompous, blind old man.

  Sir William raised his hands, more limply this time. "Ah, well," he sighed, "it's done now. There are no more than a few pieces to be picked up — and your job of cleaning house. Then we can move ahead. I want it all working like clockwork before I finally vacate this chair." The voice purred, and hinted at the identity of the next occupant of that chair and that office. Babbington shrugged off the compliment, and in the same moment inwardly reviewed the prospect with satisfaction. This was beyond the laughter-in-the-sleeve, the nod-and-wink of secret knowledge. In Sir William's position, his treachery would be pre-eminent; invaluable to Moscow. Kapustin would be little more than an office-boy by comparison.

  "I'll have it in hand, William, before your return from Washington. Eldon can take charge of the cleaning-up."

  "Let's just have it over with!" Sir William remarked with sudden and unexpected testiness. "Unpleasant, time-consuming business… let's get on with it, and then on with more important matters." His voice reproved gently and with immense authority. Babbington, like a tiresome junior boy, was wasting the house-master's valuable time. As if to fulfil the image that occurred to Babbington, Sir William added: "Let's not spend too much time with the Colts, shall we, and neglect the First Eleven? What's past is past."

  "Quite." Babbington was satisfied with the self-control he had displayed during their meeting. He looked at his watch. "I have a lunch appointment, William," he explained deferentially.

  "Of course, my dear fellow — as a matter of fact, so have I." Sir William stood up, and offered his large, smooth-knuckled hand. Babbington took it, smiled.

  "Spring-cleaning will be early this year," he promised. "And comprehensive."

  "I don't doubt it, my dear fellow — but, find Margaret and her silly husband for me, would you? I'd like to have a long, godfatherly talk to that young lady."

  "Of course."

  Babbington envisaged the tightrope, the knife-edge. Timing would be important; daring crucial. Sir William would have to content himself with eventually learning that his god-daughter and her husband had walked into the very danger he had always feared they might meet. Unfortunate, the meddling of amateurs…

  As for Aubrey — if they once laid hands on him, he could be shipped to Moscow and his treachery displayed there for the world to see… before he was quietly killed. Aubrey might yet have made his greatest mistake. He had been safer in London than he was in any other part of the world.

  Yes. Who dares wins, he thought ironically. Who dares wins.

  * * *

  Paul Massinger was afraid. Not professionally, but in a deeper, more insidious personal sense which he could neither quell nor ignore. Zimmermann's warning to employ his old training and instincts had amounted to no more than a half-hearted attempt to avoid surveillance at Schwechat airport when they reached Vienna. His awareness was clogged and weary with the images of his sleepless night; the turning, tossing body of Margaret lying in the other bed, pretending sleep. He had been unable to discern any surveillance. He had made Margaret walk with an American couple to the doors of the lounge while he held back, watching the passenger lounge, the stairs, the doors. It was futile; a branch of mathematics which he had forgotten and which would not return. He was no longer an agent.

  He had given up the attempt and rejoined Margaret outside the glass doors in a bitter afternoon wind that seemed to mock them, and they had immediately taken a taxi.

  Margaret talked quietly and obsessively in the back of the taxi. Occasionally, Massinger glanced through the rear window but saw no tailing car. The turning of his head was a duty rather than a skill. His wife voice's endlessly refuted the accusation that her father might have been a Nazi. There was Cliveden, of course, even an acquaintance with Mosley. But it was nothing, nothing…

/>   He had not been allowed to take a commission because of his importance in the wartime civil service… no one had worked harder, no one was more outspoken of the need to defeat Hitler and the Nazis… people had trusted him… Churchill… Sir William would laugh at the suggestion… it had to be the woman… the answer was with the woman.

  Nonsense. Ridiculous. Foul…

  Foul, foul, foul…

  Massinger's head beat with the voice, with its almost mad intensity. Nothing had changed. His wife was still obsessed with her father's death and the manner of it. There was nothing else. Nothing else, nothing else, his mind began to chorus with her assertions and refutations. Nothing else. The remainder of their lives together was at stake, he admitted.

  Sobs like the separate, recurring pains of violent toothache. All night. Yet, whenever he addressed her or sat up in his bed, she had not replied but had instantly pretended sleep, holding her breath in the darkness of the bedroom as if listening for the noise of intruders. Until he, too, adopted a regular rhythm of breathing that imitated sleep. After a while, the sobbing would begin again, punctuated by sighs, and occasional stifled groans. The distance between the twin beds was a gulf. He had never felt so separated and apart from her and the sensation horrified him.

  He recoiled from what they might find in Vienna, even as she pursued it fervently.

  His call to Clara Elsenreith as he looked out at the Rhine masked by slanting, driven rain was one of the most reluctant he had ever made. The woman had agreed, almost suspiciously, to see them, but only because he was a friend of Aubrey whose name she recognised. She did not promise help or revelation.

  The Stephansdom, in the centre of Vienna.

  He could not recall, except with difficulty, that this was the city of less than a week ago, the city of the drugged KGB Rezident, of Hyde's danger.

  It was hard to remember Hyde. He was a distant, drowning figure in the waves of his wife's anguish, his white hand raised for help. He was, in all probability, dead.

  The taxi stopped and the driver turned and indicated the imposing seventeenth-century fasade of the first and second floors of the building that housed the elegant shoe-shop. Beyond the broad window of the shop was a cobbled courtyard which would contain the entrance to the apartments. Massinger paid the fare, tipping with unconsidered generosity.

  Margaret got out into the wind, which distressed the hair she had perfunctorily tidied in the taxi. She was heavily made-up, and the effect was to make her look older rather than to disguise the tired, drawn appearance of her features. The wind chilled and sculpted her features into an expression of hopelessness. He took her arm, and, as the taxi pulled away out of the Stephansplatz, led her beneath the archway into the courtyard. A small fountain was toyed with by the gusting wind. Green plants appeared drab and hardly alive.

  Massinger rang the bell. Immediately the security loudspeaker enquired his name. Then the lock was released, and they entered a wide hallway, elegantly carpeted, small tables dotting it as if items left over, superfluous. Wealth announced itself quietly and firmly in the hall and on the staircase. Massinger clutched Margaret's elbow more tightly, brushing down his ruffled hair with his other hand. Paintings, furniture, tables, sofas.

  The door opened as they reached the head of the stairs. The woman, white-haired and perhaps sixty, was four or five inches taller than Aubrey. Perhaps Castleford's height — almost as tall as himself, Massinger realised. Yes, she and Castleford would have made what would have been described as 'a handsome couple'. But Clara Elsenreith had preferred Aubrey, hadn't she…? She was dressed in a shirt and trousers perhaps too young in style but worn with definite confidence, even panache. Her eyes were intelligent, quick to observe. She smiled, introducing herself.

  "I am Clara Elsenreith. You are the Massingers. Please come in." Her cool voice might have been that of a receptionist. A young maid took their coats and disappeared with them. The walls of the reception hall were crowded with paintings, some of which Massinger recognised. There were many he felt he could give a current, and heady, valuation. Even almost forty years later, the sense of wealth clashed with the image he had had of Clara Elsenreith, bereft and penniless and an expert exploiter of men. She waved them through double doors into a long, high-ceilinged drawing-room. Gold leaf, gilding, and a wealth of paintings and ornaments. A high marble fireplace and tall windows through which the bulk and the towers of the cathedral could be seen. The room was warm.

  She indicated deep, comfortable chairs while she perched cross-legged, hugging her knee like a much younger woman, on a high-backed, delicate chair covered with some heavily embroidered material in blue and gold. Her shirt was chocolate-brown silk and her beige trousers were elegantly tailored. On her small, narrow feet were flat gold slippers. She seemed to watch them with amusement. There was no reluctance in her.

  "I've ordered coffee," she announced after a few moments.

  "Thank you," Margaret replied. Massinger sensed that the woman regarded them from a lofty superiority, as if they were two distant country cousins who had arrived in the city for a first visit.

  "It was good of you to see us at such short notice," he offered.

  Clara remained silent while the maid brought the coffee. Modern Rosenthal for the service, the coffee-pot silver and old and valuable. Then, when the maid had been dismissed, she said, "I was curious. Especially since I knew that dear Kenneth was also coming to Vienna — and at the same time. I don't believe in coincidences…" Her English was throatily-accented so that it sounded almost false, the trick of an actress. "Do you?" She seemed pleased with Margaret's discomfiture and shock, as if it represented the last piece in a complex puzzle she had just solved. She nodded to herself as if to confirm Massinger's impression.

  "He's coming here—?"

  "He is a — regular visitor, Frau Massinger. A very old friend."

  Margaret looked at Paul, her face suggesting she might flee from the room at the slightest suspicion of Aubrey's arrival outside the door. He tried to smile to calm her fears, but it was evident his expression did no good. She violently resented the information that Aubrey was on his way. She wanted only the truth, and he was synonymous with evasion and lies — and the woman was his potential ally. Massinger himself realised he should have considered this a bolt-hole to which Aubrey might run, if he ever had the chance. And, he added to the thought, there was a truth here, somewhere, even if it existed only in the woman's memory. Was it a truth dangerous to Aubrey?

  His eyes roamed the drawing-room. The apartment was larger than their home in Wilton Crescent, more richly appointed.

  "You're wondering," Clara Elsenreith announced, following his gaze. "I began with the shoe-shop on the ground floor. Then other shops, then small manufacturers. The shops sell my designs, clothes and shoes made by my companies… all over Europe."

  Massinger nodded, apologising for his curiosity. The woman seemed uninterested. She continued: "You are Kenneth's friend — I know of you. I understand what you must have been trying to do… but I understand what interests your wife, also."

  "Will you tell me the truth?" Margaret blurted, the shoulder-strap of her handbag twisted in her hands. Her face was sharp, urgent, demanding.

  Clara considered. "What truth?"

  "About my father—"

  "Ah, then what about him?" She seemed amused at Margaret's anguish. Massinger suspected a deep dislike of Castleford behind the cool eyes. At twenty or twenty-two, she would have been very beautiful, very desirable. A confident, challenging air of sexuality surrounded her even now. "There are things… no, leave that. You wish to know what happened to your father? He died."

  "And—?"

  "I know no more than that. If I did, it would not be my business to tell you."

  "Then you do know more—!"

  "I said I did not." Her tone quelled Margaret's outburst. Clara was used to obedience.

  "You knew my father?" Clara nodded. "You were his — lover?" Hope was more evident than c
ondemnation; the need for comfort paramount. Yet Massinger remained sitting in his chair, separated from her, little more than an observer or witness. There was no part for him to play in the present scene.

  "No, I was not," Clara said, smiling.

  "But—"

  "You believed I must be." She shrugged. "Perhaps I might have become his mistress, had I not already met Kenneth." She brushed her hands absently through her hair. "Kenneth was able to arrange matters for me to leave Berlin. Later, he arranged my papers here. He was able to help in many ways. Your father was more powerful, yes — but the choice was not left to me. Your father disappeared — died, we now know." Everything was announced in a cool, unmoved voice. Massinger could not decide whether or not the woman was acting the part they expected her to play — heartless gold-digger, living on her wits. He felt she had been attracted towards Castleford's usefulness, but…?

  "You didn't like Castleford?" he asked gently.

  "Liking did not come into it, not in those days, in that place."

  "Nevertheless, something repelled you. What was it?"

  "Possession," she announced, suddenly ruffled, looking hard at Margaret.

  "Aubrey and my father hated one another?" Margaret asked.

  "They did."

  "And you — you were the cause. Possession, you said."

  "No — I would flatter myself if I were the cause. In your father's case, perhaps… but," she added, turning to Massinger, "you know Kenneth. Passion would not disturb him so much, I think?"

  Massinger shrugged by way of reply.

  "It must be that!"

  "Why must it?" Clara asked Margaret. "Why? Kenneth's dislike of your father was — professional. He interfered in Kenneth's work."

  "And Aubrey killed him." Margaret had shifted her point of vantage. Now, it was rivalry, professional animosity.

  Clara seemed to look to the far end of the drawing-room, towards an alcove. Massinger followed her gaze. An illusion that Aubrey was standing there was powerfully clear to him. The illusion stepped into the room. It was Aubrey, old and tired and wearing a silk dressing-gown below which pajama trousers appeared. He was, however, shaved and groomed. He appeared fully at home in Clara Elsenreith's apartment.