The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  Hyde smiled. "Don't be silly."

  "What do you want?"

  "Something you won't want to see… in fact, I'll do you a favour…" His voice became strained as he twisted his body to request Assignment History once more. The demand for the passwords. He typed them in, his fingers touching across the keyboard as if seeking braille, his eyes flickering from keys to Stepanov to keys to… "A real favour," he continued. "You just avert your eyes. If you see what's about to come up…" The poem. A tear for Lara, whoever Lara had ever been, if anyone outside Petrunin's imagination. "… you won't be very popular at home or abroad. In fact, your future won't be worth a cork-fringed hat… understand? You're a dead man if you peek!"

  The gun waggled Stepanov's gaze aside. He selected the tape drive, his eyes flickering to the screen. First Directorate operations in progress in Europe… a goldmine from which Hyde desired only the one nugget. As the information appeared, it was recorded on the data cassette.

  "You seem very afraid," Stepanov said with a level, controlled voice.

  "I am."

  "What is it?" the Russian hissed.

  "Look and you'll get turned to stone — or fertiliser. Just as soon as they know you know."

  "You won't get away with this—"

  "I hope to."

  "You're not sure, then—"

  "I'm not sure. No, don't turn around—!"

  Hyde glanced towards the glass booth. Patchy steam on part of the glass. The coffee-maker was ready. Georgi had made his coffee. Hyde could see him bent over the table, arranging mugs, spooning sugar.

  Come on—

  The telephone rang. Stepanov's body twitched, and his lips parted in a smile. He half-turned.

  "Don't move. Just let it ring — let it ring!"

  He glanced at the screen. First Directorate operations — Libya and Chad. Names of illegals, guerilla unit commanders, Soviet advisers.

  Come on—

  The bloody short-cut — what the hell was the password? Dominus illuminatio mea, for Christ's sake—!

  The telephone insisted. Hyde stared at it helplessly.

  * * *

  "I left my heart — in San Franciscooo…"

  Wilkes sat down before the bank of twelve monitors — two rows of six. He continued humming the tune he had begun to sing, failing to recollect the succeeding lines of the lyric. His eyes flickered from screen to screen; a patient, absorbed, satisfied spectator of the scenes presented to him by the remote cameras located throughout the old house. For years, it had been variously used for training, interrogation, courses in interrogation counter-measures. The district around had been levelled and made late twentieth century and the house had become too noticeable, too easily observed to fulfil many of its former functions.

  "… little cable cars climb halfway to the stars—!" Wilkes burst out, remembering a detached, floating line of the song.

  Vienna had meant bigger business, way back when the house had been fully utilised — then it was always crowded with people. Front-line, like Berlin in the 'sixties. Wilkes whistled the tune of the song through his closed teeth. Watching the screens. The old house, stranded between the freight-yards and the gas works, began to fulfil some of its old functions.

  "I left my heart — in San Franciscooooo—!"

  Voronin and Babbington had agreed, decided, concluded. No margin for error or misunderstanding. The three of them — alarmed and on their feet now — were on their way to Moscow. The Massingers would never be seen leaving the aircraft — go out probably dressed in overalls and carrying plastic bags full of rubbish from the galley — but Aubrey would get the pop star treatment. And they'd all be dead within a week; the Massingers the same day they arrived, Aubrey as soon as the masquerade had worked. Heart attack. Easier than risking TV appearances, press conferences and the like. Heart attack.

  Wilkes grinned. "I left my heart — in the Lubyanka—!" he bawled at the top of his voice, then added: "Your last TV appearance, old boy, old chap." He leaned towards the screen which displayed the three prisoners. They'd roused Aubrey, he didn't look so thunderstruck now, so much in a daze. Wilkes could see the cogs grinding in the old bugger's brain. Too bloody clever by half—

  On another screen, Beach organising checks and barriers and cross-fire. On the first floor. The cameras strained to pierce the darkness that Beach had ordered, the screens glowing grey-blue with the effort to register faces, movement, patches of light skin.

  There — ground floor, rear passage. Someone wrapped in dark wool. Face dyed with polish. They meant business. The camera watched the crouching Russian move past and down the corridor towards the kitchen and the hallway beyond it.

  Wilkes leaned over and pulled an R/T towards him. Its thick short aerial quivered as he picked it up and tuned it to the frequency he had been told the Russians would be using. Whispers in Russian immediately leaked from it. One of the screens — he imagined he could lip-read and match voice to face — showed the KGB man in command issuing orders, crouched in the well of the main staircase to the first floor.

  Wilkes continued to hum. The prisoners huddled at the door, as if eager for their fate. Beach moved — he was registered on a screen showing the back stairs. He'd anticipated, then…

  Wilkes was drawn into the tension of the twelve screens. The secure room of the house, in the attic, was silent and aseptic around him, filled with the ozone smells of electricity and static and charged or burnt dust. A screen crackled as he ran his finger across it, cancelling Beach.

  For a moment, before the rattle of gunfire and the fall of a body away into the darkness of a staircase, his imagination seemed to throw onto the screen newsreel shots of Vietnam. Protest marches with the Capitol building behind the queue of idiots melted in and out of staring-eyed pictures of fatigued, beaten, hashed-out American faces. Then he blinked away the images as his attention was drawn to another screen.

  "I left my heart…" he murmured. And continued: "Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch…" Jimmy Young's voice in his head for a moment, to be replaced by the voices of his grammar school's 1st XV, aboard a coach, on tour in Wales. They were singing 'Unchained Melody' for him and his girl-friend. Now his dull, suburbanised wife, a dull lover and duller mother. The song had been for her and himself, much younger. She'd been pretty then. Enough to have been put in the club…

  "I left my heart…" he ground out through his clenched teeth.

  The body finished falling, came to rest and silence, in a patch of darkness that the cameras could not penetrate. Then a woolen-jerseyed Russian with a blacked-up face climbed the staircase warily, towards the camera.

  "S-waneee, S-waneee, how I lub yuh, how I lub yuh—!" Wilkes burst out, almost giggling. Who was that who'd been killed? He didn't know the name. One down, and the Russians had already moved to the first floor back. Another blacked-up minstrel followed the first up the stairs, teeth gleaming as he whispered urgently into the R/T clamped to his cheek. Wilkes heard his voice like static hissing behind a broadcast.

  Wilkes hummed. Beach moved quickly on one screen, two more Vienna Station staffers on another, crouching together, looking scared in the darkness. Russians moved in the main hallway, on the back landing, pressing down the first of the corridors—

  To be met. Wilkes jumped to attention in his swivel-chair, startled and surprised; the involved, vicariously-thrilled observer of the drama. Shots, ducking bodies, one cry over the R/T near his hand, that of a wounded Russian. Shots in singles, doubles. Two screens revealed the log-jam, the crouching bodies at either end of the corridor — a single flight of stairs and a corridor away from the prisoners' room.

  Come on, come on — don't get stuck now, Wilkes pleaded. He glanced at his watch. Three minutes, a little more. His call would be logged exactly at the embassy. He had to call Parrish now and tell him what was happening. It was his reason — his excuse — for being in the secure room.

  And to switch on the alarms—!

  He reached over an
d threw the switch, hearing the bells begin to ring in muffled and distant parts of the house. Then he picked up the telephone. They'd been ordered not to cut the wires, even though they knew the location of the terminal box for the landline. The convincing lie, the final mounting of Aubrey in his gilt frame, began with this telephone call.

  He dialled. Shots through the R/T, a body slumping too quickly back out of sight. Two down. A fusilade, then a rush at the stairs by the black-jerseyed group that had gathered in the stairwell, in shadow. Someone at the top of the stairs, outnumbered and running to save himself or to get help.

  It was Parrish's direct number. Wilkes blurted the emergency code, screamed for assistance, acknowledged futile orders from the Head of Station, looked at his watch, put down the telephone. He reassumed his passive role before the bank of screens. They held the whole first floor now. Beach and his group were retreating towards the prisoners and the secure room.

  Come on, come on—

  He had given the operation its time-limit — too soon? Had to. Look suspicious otherwise—

  Who was that — Davies? Moving away from the prisoners' door towards the turn in the corridor and the staircase up which Beach and another man were retreating. One, two, three left — and himself, Wilkes; the full complement.

  All the screens were empty now, except for those revealing the staircase, the corridor, and the prisoners' room. Davies appeared to be calling out. Above the noise of the alarm on the wall near his head. Then another screen and another revealed the hurried, crouched, run of two men in black. Down that corridor — which? — that corridor, yes, Davies beginning to turn, but they had him and then they had the door-handle to the prisoners' room, then Beach and the other man — who? Liske, was it? Liske. Surrounded. Angry, frightened, letting guns drop, hands and feet spread as they were searched, leaning towards the wall. Beach's face looked up at one camera and stared at Wilkes from the screen. His expression was puzzled, confused. He was wondering where Wilkes had got to, why he hadn't come down… Beach's head shook, then hung defeatedly against the wall as the prisoners were hurried past him. Pleasure, congratulation, delight came in a chorus from the R/T. The bluff was evident, overplayed, easy to interpret. He watched Aubrey and the Massingers moving across the various screens as he measured their progress towards the door, towards the gravel drive and the cars now pulling up to await them.

  Aubrey tired and ill and white. Massinger angry, wincing with rage and with the pain in his leg. The woman bruised and weak. For a moment, on every screen, he thought an after-image lingered. His imagination lit each of the screens with flickering memories. Tanks rolling into Prague's Old Town Square and across the Charles Bridge; napalm in Vietnam; Russian MiL-24s in Afghanistan. Black arms raising aloft Kalashnikovs in a sugarcane setting. Red Square parades. The weak, compromising faces of Presidents and PMs. The row of implacable faces and stances along the top of the Lenin Mausoleum, the tanks and missiles passing beneath their gaze.

  Then the hard-lit night, the faint whirl of snow in the wind. Aubrey and the other two huddled and bundled into the black cars. The black-garbed team hurrying now, the exhausts smoking in the spotlights. Burgeoning smoke, roaring engines over the still-open R/T—

  The movement, then the message.

  "OK, Wilkes," the R/T said, then clicked into an ether-whispering silence.

  Finished. Wilkes gazed at the bank of screens. At Beach and Davies and Liske beginning to move, to clatter down the staircase. Almost time to join them. He quite clearly saw images of El Salvador on one screen, on another a retinal image of Sadat's funeral. That inevitable motorcade and the blood on a fashionable pink suit — mini-skirted — on a third screen. The cradled, ruined head in Jackie's lap.

  "I left my heart—" he began, but the song faltered. Joke over. The cars had vanished out of the gates of the house. On the screen Wilkes could see the gasworks in the distance.

  The West was finished, he had decided. Decided long, long ago. Finished, washed up, a waste of everyone's time. Losers.

  He'd stuck by that insight, and the decisions which followed it; and been satisfied. No complaints. He flicked off the screens, one by one. No retinal images now. Only Beach and Davies and Liske running around like chickens with their heads cut off — Liske wounded.

  The only thing he'd ever disliked was the KGB's total knowledge of him. They'd understood him, utterly and completely understood him, from the moment he'd first approached them with — with the offer of his services. As if they'd always expected him to turn up—

  Working for winners. For those who were ruthless, not half-baked. The winners.

  He walked to the door of the secure room, shaking his head slightly. They'd understood him too easily, he was too much like them. He dismissed the idea.

  "I left my he-aaart in San Fran-ciscooo…" he whispered intensely, then composed his features to concern and worry as he locked the secure room's door behind him.

  * * *

  The ringing stopped. Stepanov's body, erect and stiff, seemed to shudder with the impact of the silence. Hyde's temperature jumped. He felt beads of sweat along his hairline and a cold sheen across the small of his back and beneath his arms. The pistol quivered in his left hand. The screen continued to unfold the contents of Petrunin's insurance policy; the streamer stuttered, recording each piece of data then pausing for the next buffer full of information. Already, Hyde had enough to guarantee his own safety. A coup—

  Get out—

  Without destroying Babbington, he had nothing. Wasted, used computer recording tape. His eyes flickered to the screen — still First Directorate current operations, still within the sphere of 9th Department — Africa. There was so bloody much of it—! And a short-cut password to each and every section and no way to short-circuit the parade of secret information. He looked down at the pistol, glanced at Georgi, who was looking up wondering why the phone hadn't been answered, glanced back at the screen, at Stepanov, who had now absorbed the shock of silence. He was beginning to smile at Hyde's failure. Glanced then at the vz.75 pistol in his hand. Fifteen rounds between himself and Hradcany Square.

  Silence. Short-cut, bloody short-cut—!

  The operator in Moscow would be reporting to his superior, perhaps at once to the colonel. If they became alarmed, they could ring anywhere — everywhere in the Chancellery or the whole of the Hradcany complex. Hyde was two floors beneath the Third Courtyard, like a rat in a sewer…

  They could block every exit without his being aware of what they had done until he ran into the gunfire.

  Stepanov made to turn to him, a remark forming itself silently on his full lips.

  "Don't—!" Hyde warned in a shaky voice, and Stepanov sat staring ahead of him. The weakness of Hyde's voice seemed a sufficient and satisfactory answer to the enquiry Stepanov had intended.

  Then he glanced at Georgi, who was emerging through the glass door, fifty feet from them, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. Hyde stared at the screen. Nothing yet. Forty feet away — as soon as Georgi reached them he would see the gun and, and, and…

  He could not even complete the thought, the certainty that he could not control two men and the screen as time ran out. Couldn't control himself—

  Georgi stopped, half-turned, half the distance to them. The telephone was ringing in the glass cubicle. Above the hum and mutter and conversation of the machines, Hyde could hear it dimly calling for attention. It seemed whispered, but urgent. Demanding. Georgi glanced very slowly at the mugs in his hands, at Hyde and Stepanov, then shrugged and turned on his heel. Stepanov's tense smile faded, then reappeared as he realised the nature of the call, the probable identity of the caller. Moscow Centre—

  First Directorate — damn, damn, damn—

  Georgi had reached the glass cubicle, opened the door, gone in, picked up the telephone.

  "Not long now," Stepanov murmured with exaggerated confidence.

  "Shut up—!"

  He watched Georgi, the pistol pressed against
Stepanov's side to prevent a sudden move. The guard was almost at attention, one hand fiddling with his unbuttoned collar. Moscow Centre. Then Georgi glanced towards them, speaking as he did so — describing the two men he could see, explaining, painting a picture. Nodding. Face suspicious, puzzled. Soon the orders—

  Short-cut, short-cut, short-cut — Dominus illuminatio—!

  And then—

  He did not even pause to consider the idea because, at the back of his mind, he could see Petrunin smiling, his lips painted with blood, but smiling…

  Break.

  MENU.

  He typed in ASSIGNMENT HISTORY, praying that the screen would not go grey and blank, listening intently to Georgi's door, waiting for the noise of its being opened, of the first question the guard would ask of Stepanov—

  Watching Stepanov, feeling his rigid, unmoving and confident frame against the hole at the end of the vz.75's short barrel.

  WHITENIGHTSWHITERUSSIANWHITEBEAR, he typed furiously.

  The screen cleared. He typed in Petrunin's name and rank and KGB number. Then, almost at once, with drops of sweat falling on the keys, making them treacherous, slippery—

  KABULMOSCOWLONDON.

  Georgi had a pistol in his hands! Stepanov was watching Georgi, willing him to move. Telephone clattered down. Door opened, banging back against the glass wall. Georgi hurrying—

  Poem to Lara. Tear for Lara.

  He typed LARA.

  A tear for Lara. A bear's tears.

  TEARDROP, he read in Cyrillic. Teardrop.

  He drew in a deep breath, sobbing almost, nearly choking on the aseptic, dust-free air. Georgi was hurrying, hurrying — phone left off the hook, please report at once, discover what is happening, bring your officer to the telephone—

  Hyde raised the pistol and shouted. Georgi halted, his hands feebly gripping the air level with his shoulders, fingers fumbling into surrender. His gun barrel was raised to the ceiling.

  "Throw the gun away, sit on the floor-do it!" Hyde yelled at the top of his voice.

  Georgi almost tumbled into a cross-legged position on the carpet, the gun yards away from him, sliding harmlessly to rest. The telephone began to ring next to the VDU. Hyde glanced at the screen.