The Bear's Tears (18 page)

Gainsborough and Reynolds portraits; satisfied, aristocratic
eighteenth-century faces. Their exuded security irritated him as his
glance lighted on them while Shelley recited what he had -gleaned from
Registry. Massinger nodded from time to time, absorbing each fragment
of information. Turner's Fighting Temeraire, then the misty,
swirling rush of his Rain, Steam and Speed. The
schoolchildren trooped out of the room; silence returned. Shelley's
voice dropped to accommodate itself to the renewed hush. An attendant's
heels clicked on the tiles. Finally, they confronted the obscure
shapelessness, the formless half-world of Turner's Sun Rising in a
Mist. Its reduction of the world to muted colour and pearly,
bleared light echoed Massinger's mood.

And Shelley's final words.

"… if, if you go on with this, then Cass is a good man
with pentathol. He can get to Vienna tomorrow afternoon. Remember,
unless you're skilled at this or familiar with the techniques —?"
Massinger shook his head abstractedly. "— then you can make mistakes.
You can close the oyster-shell as easily as you can open it. The whole
thing is very risky, Professor."

Turner's wan sun struggled in the mist.

"I know."

"Then, do you think you can do it? Why not just bring Hyde out?"

Massinger shook his head, vigorously. "No, Peter. This has to be
done. Desperate remedies. We must know what's behind it. Vienna Station
is working for someone other than you. Hyde is right about collusion.
We don't know friend from enemy. We don't even know if we have any
friends."

Shelley shrugged. "Very well. Then you must gain this man's
confidence. Pavel Koslov is his closest friend. You speak Russian,
Professor - you know Koslov. When you talk to the
Vienna
Rezident, under pentathol, you must be Koslov." Shelley
announced this in the manner of an examination, a test for his
companion.

Slowly, Massinger nodded; the abstracted, detached agreement of
an
academic conceding an argument. "I see that. Very well, if that is what
is required."

"But can you do it?" Shelley asked in exasperation.

"I have to, don't I?" Massinger smiled humourlessly. "Quit
worrying,
Peter. It's our only chance - isn't it?"

"Do you think it's one of their 'House of Cards' scenarios
actually
being put into operation?"

"It'd have the same effect, maybe, if it succeeded," Massinger
replied. "Throw your service into total confusion, sow discord at all
levels - I guess that's possible. But it could as easily be a vendetta
against Aubrey."

"But our people are helping them to carry it out."

"The last twist of the knife. That's why I have to succeed in
being
Pavel Koslov. Why I have to get the Rezident to talk to me."

"Couldn't we go to JIC, even the PM, with what we have? With
Hyde?"

"I've been warned off once."

"What about Sir William?"

"It was Sir William who warned me off. We wouldn't be believed.
Just
Aubrey's old friends and colleagues. Interested parties. No, it has to
be a fait accompli or nothing." He looked once more at the
Turner painting. "Let's walk, Peter. That picture is giving me a chill."

"You're still relying on a lunatic plan, Professor —"

"I know it. But, if we can get at even some of the truth and
tape it
- then we can go to Sir William, or even the PM, and show
them what good little boys we've been on their behalf." His smile was
both self-mocking and grim. "There's no other way, Peter. We must have
corroboration."

Massinger felt dwarfed by the large Renaissance canvases lining
the
walls on either side of them as they moved towards the main staircase.

"What can I do while you're in Vienna?" Shelley asked, as if
requiring some form of self-assertion between the huge paintings.

"Check Vienna Station - anything, any means. We must know how
rotten
the barrel is - and whether it's the only rotten barrel in town."

Shelley nodded. He appeared relieved to have been given some
task;
relieved, too, to be obeying orders. Massinger had become a surrogate
Aubrey. The weight of the realisation burdened Massinger, and his feet
felt uncertain on the marble steps down to the entrance hall. He felt
old, rather tired, very reluctant. Ahead of him lay danger, doubt, and
perhaps an unsatisfactory outcome. More than those professional risks,
however, his wife lay ahead of him in time. As he envisaged her, she
seemed unsubstantial, about to vanish like his own tormenting, betrayed
Eurydice. If she even so much as suspected, she would never forgive
him. She would not remain with him; she'd leave and never return. He
was so certain of that that there was a sharp physical pain in his
chest.

He would tell her he had been invited to a Cambridge college for
a
couple of days by the Master; a former academic rival, a present
friend. She would accept that. She had a great deal of committee work
during that week; she would be relieved that he, too, would be busy, in
company.

The lying had begun. He had taken the road he profoundly wished
he
could have avoided.

He and Shelley parted on the steps. Across Trafalgar Square, a
flock
of pigeons rose into the cold sunlight like a grey cloud.

"Be careful," Shelley offered. Then, as if unable to let the
matter
take its course, he added: "It doesn't seem sufficient!" His protest
was deeply felt, almost desperate. "It can't be enough to guarantee
success - surely?"

"I don't know, Peter," Massinger replied gravely. "We simply
can't
sail a better course or grab a bigger stick. We have to do it this way.
There isn't a choice. Take care yourself."

The words of each seemed comfortless and empty to the other.

It was almost dark when Massinger reached the house. He let
himself
into the ground floor hallway, and began climbing the stairs. He had
studied Hyde's new papers at the club, had sat at an eighteenth-century
writing desk jotting down everything he had been told, and everything
he knew and could remember concerning Pavel Koslov. And he had booked
his seat on the British Airways morning flight to Vienna, and a room at
the Inter-Continental Hotel. The ascent seemed to become steeper as he
mounted the stairs, as if a weight of guilt and reluctance pressed
against his head and body. Margaret was there, waiting for him. She
would have begun preparing dinner; supervising the housekeeper but
preparing the sauces and the dessert herself. There was a hard lump in
his chest which would not disperse.

He fumbled his key into the latch and pushed open the door. He
listened, but there were no noises, no wisps of conversation from the
kitchen. He opened the door of the drawing-room.

Margaret and Babbington were both sitting, apart yet somehow
subtly
united, facing the door. Babbington's face was serious to the point of
being forbidding. The man was charged with the electricity and danger
of disobeyed authority. He was still wearing his overcoat. Massinger
had passed his hat and gloves unnoticed on the hall stand.

Margaret's face was angry. Betrayed, flushed. Her eyes were
hard,
accusing.

She knew - somehow she knew…

Babbington had told her.

Told what?

He was acutely aware, like some schoolboy pilferer, of the
evidence
of Hyde's new papers in the breast pocket of his coat.

After the initial shock, it was the tense, unaccustomed silence
that
struck Massinger. There was so often music in this room; records
Margaret might be listening to, Margaret doodling at the piano, even
singing —

Music and the idea of it brought back the 'Hunt' quartet over
the
telephone and the guilty knowledge of Hyde and the palpable bulk of the
package.

Then she burst out; "Paul, where have you been?" It was matronly
yet
somehow desperate. Babbington had introduced her to subtle nightmares.
"What's going on, Paul?" she continued. "Andrew's been telling me all
sorts…" She looked down, then, her voice trailing into silence. She
sensed herself as part of a conspiracy against him. He saw Babbington
watching her with what might have been an eager hunger - a suspicion of
some former relationship between them stung him inappropriately at that
moment - then the man looked up at him. His eyes were satisfied.

"What's the matter, darling?" he asked as soothingly as he could.

Her face had hardened again when she looked up. "You know what's
happening!" she accused. "Andrew didn't want to tell me - I made him…"
She was ashamed at that. "You're still trying to help that man!"

"My dear," he said, moving towards her. Her knuckles were white
against the velvet of the arms of her chair. She was wearing only her
engagement ring and narrow gold wedding ring. Babbington's face
indicated that he had been sufficiently warned, that the consequences
were now of his making. "How can I have been helping him? At the club,
at my stockbroker's?" The lies came fluently. He turned to Babbington.
"Andrew - would you explain this, please? How have you upset Margaret?"

"I'm not upsetl I hate that man!"

"For God's sake, Margaret!" His eyes never moved from
Babbington's
face. The directorships, the Quangos, the circles that might have
admitted him, the respect - they all paled. This was
Babbington's real power - this … a woman in tears, almost
hysterical with fear and anger and hate. Babbington could, he was amply
demonstrating, poison Margaret's mind incurably.

Castleford —

He was made aware once again of how many pictures of her father
this
room, other rooms, contained. The portrait watched from the wall.
Castleford was here, in the room with them, assisting Babbington. He
felt nausea and guilt sourly together in his throat.

Then he remembered Aubrey. The pictures stared at him, the
portrait
watched. Aubrey, in the back of his awareness, pleaded for, demanded
help.

Aubrey —

"My dear," Babbington murmured, touching Margaret's hand, his
large
fingers tapping at the two rings, at the knuckles of her left hand.
Massinger clenched his fists at his sides. "My dear, go and calm down a
little. I think I may have - well, let me talk to Paul about this… mm?"

She looked at Babbington, nodded, sniffed, and got up. It was
mesmeric, a further demonstration of Babbington's power over her mind.
She left the room. Massinger pulled off his overcoat, careful of the
package as he folded it and placed it across the back of a chair. The
wall lights appeared gloomy, the room large and vacant.

"Well?" he accused Babbington. "What the hell are you up to,
Andrew?"

He stood over Babbington, who did not attempt to rise.

"What the hell are you doing, Paul? It's my right to
ask,
I think, not yours. What are you doing, man?" Even then, his
hand indicated the door by which Margaret had left. It was as if he had
struck her. "What were you doing in Earl's Court, at Hyde's address?
Who did you talk with - his landlady? Why, man? What were you doing at
the Imperial War Museum, with Shelley? Why did Shelley have to throw
off surveillance in order to meet you?" His eyes glinted, but Massinger
suspected that he had no answers to his questions, using them as he was
simply in the form of accusations. Please don't let him know, he
thought, and realised the weakness of his position. He and Shelley and
Hyde. The sum total… Inadequate.

"I —" Careful, careful, he told himself, trying to rid himself
of
images of his wife, trying to press down upon his anger, create a mood
of apologetic explanation. Not too weak, not too quick, but start to
give in. "I don't see what it has to do with you, Andrew. I really
don't think it needs you to come here and poison my wife against me —"
He had walked away from Babbington soon after he began speaking, and
now he turned to face him. Deliberately, the whisky decanter in his
hand as he did so. "Do you?" he finished.

"Poison?" Babbington smiled. "You never possessed much sense of
proportion, Paul, did you? I'm not poisoning Margaret against you. I'm
just trying to establish what you think you're engaged upon, that's
all." The remark invited explanation.

Not too quickly, Massinger instructed himself, pouring a large
whisky without offering one to Babbington. Margaret kept intruding,
tightening his chest with a physical pain. It was difficult to
concentrate on fending off Babbington. "Do I owe you any explanation,
Andrew?"

"I think you do, yes. You don't even know this man Hyde. Of what
interest is he to you?"

"I —" Massinger looked thoughtful, slightly guilty; almost
determined. "Aubrey asked me to check…"he admitted slowly.

 "What?"

"Aubrey asked me to check," he blustered. "It's as simple as
that.
He wanted to know whether Hyde had been heard from. Does that satisfy
you?"

Enough bluster, too much —? Had he hooked Babbington, used the
man's
poor enough opinion of him? Dodged and paltered enough to be dismissed?

Babbington smiled. His eyes almost seemed to form words
- errand-boy,
pet dog… Babbington's contempt for him was evident. Massinger wondered
whether the man might not destroy his happiness simply out of amusement?

"Aubrey asked you," he repeated with heavy sarcasm. "And what,
pray,
did you find out?"

"His landlady hadn't heard from him."

"And the matter of Shelley - your little assignation with the
head
of East Europe Desk?" Babbington made it seem a very temporary
appointment.

"Much the same," Massinger snapped, irked by Babbington's
interrogation. "Look, dammit, I was asked by an old friend, a
very old friend, if I would seek help for him. Can't you understand?
Aubrey was desperate, isolated, afraid. I had to do as he asked. I
couldn't turn him down!"

Yes, yes, yes, he thought, his eyes watching Babbington as he
held
the tumbler to his lips. Loyalty, old friendships - the futility of it
was expressed in Babbington's eyes. He had successfully placed
him now, understood and dismissed him as a sentimentalist. It confirmed
what he thought of Margaret and Massinger together, and the leverage
any threat to personal happiness would exercise on him. Massinger held
his body unmoving, though a wave of relief swept over him. He'd done it…