The Bear's Tears

Apart from my habitual thanks to my wife for her editing of this, my
longest novel to date, I wish to especially thank Peter Matthews for
his invaluable assistance with the theft of information from the KGB's
central computer which appears in Part Three of the book. Any errors,
distortion or license of method or terminology are my responsibility,
not his.

Time hath, my lord, a
wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms
for oblivion,

A great-sized monster
of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good
deeds past: which are devoured

As fast as they are
made, forgot as soon

As done.

— Shakespeare:
Troilus
& Cressida
, III, iii

I
have done the state some service, and they know't -

No more of that.

—
Shakespeare:
Othello
,
V, ii

Quick —

Remember what they told you, the front cover of the file first. A
proper sense of occasion, and the laying out of your wares…

Camera joggle. Remember that. You must be in a hurry, and nervous…
It must all be slightly out of focus, especially at the beginning.

The electronic flash flared onto the paper he could see through the
lens, a small sunburst but much whiter than sunlight.
Teardrop
,
the file proclaimed in the Cyrillic alphabet. The other words and
reference numbers signified its importance, and the fact that it was
consigned for immediate incineration, its contents having been
transferred to tape and stored in Moscow Centre's principal security
computer.

Teardrop
. A man's history. A special history.

He turned the cover of the file, exposing the first of the pages it
contained. A digest. Photograph that, they had said. No matter the
urgency or the effects of your fear, you would have obtained at least
that much in the way of bona fides. The earliest date was 1946, the
last as recent as a month before. And the file was still not closed.

Camera joggle, he reminded himself. It had already become too
mechanical, too skilled and unhurried. Pages one to five without a
break, without a tremor. Perhaps practice did not make perfect. How
many times had he done this… ?

Make certain the grey metal shelving appears in the top corner of
some of the shots. Authenticity. Skip pages…

He flicked over the seemingly ancient sheets, the torn-out pages of
notebooks, the letters, the carbons of signals received, splaying them
like cards against the background of the buff folder and the dusty
floor of the cold records basement. No need for induced joggle, induced
fear; he was shivering with cold now.

Live through it - they will ask you about these moments, again
and again… they will ask, seeking to verify, to prove…

Fear - footsteps? He tried to imagine the hostile ring of bootsteps
in the concrete, striplit corridor outside the door. Flick on the
pages. Flash, flash, flash - white light glaring on the passing,
momentary sheets of paper. His knee would be at the edge of one shot -
he congratulated himself for that simple, homely, authentic touch. Part
of the series of interrogations from 1946. Then he flicked on quickly,
the pages now becoming very distressed, spread untidily on the concrete
between the racks of grey metal shelves…

Then it was no longer 1946, it was the last two years…

Joggle the camera - but not too much…

Remember what you feel at each moment, associate feelings and
experiences with some of the pages…

What was that? A meeting in Helsinki last year. Footsteps on the
concrete outside, halting… ? He managed to frighten himself in the
darkness, his eyes still dazzled from the last exposure.

On again, flash, flash…

The last page. No,
not the last one nor the penultimate, not
even the one before that
…

Then he had finished. He shivered with the cold and the returning
darkness. His legs, up to the bent knees, were invested with an aching
cramp. He could hear his own breathing. It might, after all, have all
been real - all his, emotions.

He sighed aloud.

"Well done," came a voice from the darkness. So he had been
convincing, he told himself, his body jumping at the sudden words.
"You'd like a drink now, I expect?"

The last white sheets in the
Teardrop
file had acquired a
faint, snow-reflected gleam as he recovered his night vision. Yes, you
are committed now, he told himself. Your fate is in these pages, with
his.

Him. The subject of the
Teardrop
file.

"Yes," he replied, clearing his throat in the echoing dark. "I would
like a drink."

Patrick Hyde watched Kenneth Aubrey as he and the Russian left the
ferry in the wake of holidaymakers intent on reaching the gates of the
zoo. Hyde disliked the fact that Aubrey was not wired for sound, in
deference to the Russian's unaccustomed nervousness. He felt cut off
from his superior, hampered in his task of protecting Aubrey.

He waited until the ferry was empty of passengers. There did not
appear to be any contradiction between Deputy Chairman Kapustin's given
word that he was alone and Hyde's own surveillance. If there were KGB
bodyguards, they were unusually unobtrusive. Hyde strolled down the
gangplank and along the quay towards the pine trees that masked the
Korkeasaari Island Zoo. Behind him, across the breeze-ruffled, gleaming
water, Helsinki was white and pink and innocent in the summer afternoon.

Hyde was still irritated by the fact that Aubrey had forbidden him
to search Kapustin for a weapon or a microphone. Aubrey's face, as he
unwound the lead from his waist and undipped the microphone from his
shirt, had been smug with trust. Hyde's blunter sensibilities did not
enable him to trust Kapustin, even though these meetings were almost
two years old.

Nothing new. A long, unfruitful courtship. Kapustin, by his words
but not his actions, wished to defect to the West. A full Deputy
Chairman of the KGB, Inspector-General of First Chief Directorate,
Operations and Personnel. The glittering prize which dazzled Aubrey.

Ahead of him, fifty yards away against the backcloth of summer
shirts and bright dresses, Aubrey and Kapustin strolled towards the
turnstiles at the entrance to the zoo. A lion roared in the distance.
Children gasped or squeaked with anticipation. Nothing dangerous moved
beneath the heavy, aromatic pines, yet Hyde could not relax. There was
no danger, nothing more than his persistent, recurring sense of
wrongness. Everything was wrong about this - what, perhaps the tenth or
even fifteenth meeting between Aubrey and Kapustin? Kapustin the
reluctant virgin. Kapustin vacillating, refusing to commit himself,
worried about the money, the new identity, the place of residence.
Leading Aubrey by the nose.

A red and yellow ball rolled across the path at Hyde's feet. A small
boy in shorts, freckled and palely blond, chased it, then trotted away
towards his parents, picnicking beneath the trees on wooden benches
where sunlight poured down on them. Midges hung in the air like visible
motes of their laughter.

He queued behind Kapustin and Aubrey, then kept twenty yards back as
they walked the narrow paths between goat pens. A llama watched Hyde
with the superior stare of a civil servant and bison grazed against a
high mesh fence.

Wrong, he reminded himself. Disgruntled, too. Fed up with acting as
Aubrey's bodyguard on this periodic tour of European capitals. The
meetings were arranged to coincide with Kapustin's visits of inspection
to the Soviet embassies of Western Europe -Berlin, Vienna, Bonn,
Stockholm, Madrid, London, Helsinki. Each time, Kapustin supplied
high-level gossip, Politburo insights, evidence of shifts of power and
opinion - and excuses for not coming over. Demanding twice the money or
twice the security, perhaps even twice the flattery.

Kapustin and Aubrey had halted in front of a monkey cage. Small,
furry, whiskered faces watched them, small hands clutched towards them
through the bars. Harsh voices demanded and insulted. Aubrey appeared
earnest; Kapustin, taller and heavier, seemed to lean over him, a
schoolmaster over a pupil trying to rush at a solution. Aubrey's
expression was a mirror of the cross, pinched face of the Capuchin
monkey that watched the two men through the bars. Hyde watched the
crowd around them, watched the cameras and the eyes. Nothing.

The exasperation was clear on Aubrey's face beneath the straw
trilby. Kapustin gestured broadly, a non-committal shrug. Hyde moved
closer to the barrier in front of the cage. A small grey monkey
skittered away from him along a branch that led nowhere, as if he
represented a palpable threat.

"Double agent? We are not asking you to be that, Dmitri," Aubrey was
saying in a quiet, urgent voice. "Why do you persist with the idea? It
was your request -
you
contacted
me
, Dmitri.
Directly. Personally."

"As if I were waking a sleeper?" Kapustin murmured.

"Quite." Aubrey refused to smile at the remark. "Ever since then,
you have toyed with us, with me."

"I apologize." Kapustin watched Hyde for a moment as the Australian
drifted closer, his eyes looking away from the monkey cage. In the
distance, the lion roared again. Then Kapustin returned his attention
to Aubrey. "You have been very helpful, you have done everything…" he
murmured.

"My duty, no more than that," Aubrey observed stiffly. "What you
offered could not be ignored. But why hesitate now - again and for so
long?"

"I cannot decide between you and the Americans."

"Money? Is that it?"

"Would it be money with you?"

"No. The situation would not arise."

"Obviously not, now that Cunningham is to retire."

"You know, of course."

"You are confidently expected to take his place as the
Director-General. You will, of course?"

Aubrey brushed at the air with his hand. "That's irrelevant."

"Your real work can begin then."

"Perhaps. Listen to me, Dmitri. The period of courtship is over.
Your decision is awaited. You must decide. You must act."

Hyde drifted away from the two men. Their voices became lost in the
screeching of the monkeys and the noise of children. The same
conversation, the endless tape-loop of persuasion and hesitancy.
Kapustin playing with Aubrey, wasting everyone's time. Elaborate verbal
games, continual amusements…

Hyde let the thought go in the babble of a school party of pigtailed
girls and crop-headed boys, bustled past him by an efficient
schoolmistress. A blob of vanilla ice-cream appeared on his brown
corduroy trousers. He grinned and wiped it away. The idea of ice-cream
appealed to him as he vented his irritation on the two old men behind
him.

Teardrop
. Kapustin's codename, suggested by the Russian
himself at that first meeting in Paris. He looked back. The two men
were surrounded by the shuffling party of schoolchildren. The strident
voice of their teacher lectured them. The image of Aubrey and Kapustin
was harmless, even risible. Nothing would come of
Teardrop
.
Hyde did not expect the KGB Deputy Chairman to defect - not this year,
not next year nor the year after that. Aubrey was still not even
certain of the man's motives for wishing to defect. A vague disillusion
seemed insufficient to explain him.
Teardrop
. It didn't mask
some personal tragedy, as far as SIS could establish. It meant nothing,
just a codename.

Mechanically, Hyde watched the cameras and the eyes, then the paths
and the trees. Nothing. He yawned, felt bored, and wished for action.

Kapustin and Aubrey passed him then, returning to the gates, deep in
urgent conversation. Unimportant. Nothing.
Teardrop
was a
waste of everyone's time.

Slowly, unalert, he began to follow the two old men.

"This is now the actor, from yesterday?" Kapustin asked in the
darkness at the back of the room. The film whirred in the 
projector. Cigarette smoke drifted in
the beam of white light that reached towards the wall screen.

"Yes, Comrade Deputy Chairman."

"The cloud shadows don't look right to me. You've got the time of
day OK, and the glare of the sun. But there was more of a breeze today.
There aren't enough shadows."

Kapustin watched his own back moving away from the camera,
accompanied by a figure apparently that of Kenneth Aubrey. The actor
bore little facial resemblance to the Englishman, but from this
viewpoint he was identical. The walk was good, very good, the attitude
of the shoulders and the head slightly on one side, like a listening
bird. The straw trilby was habitual summer wear with Aubrey, and it was
fortunate he had worn it that afternoon.