The Bear's Tears (25 page)

He had to know. There was a KGB double in SIS, and it had to be
someone fairly senior - it was the only explanation that made sense.

"OK, in you get." Massinger struggled into the back of the taxi
and
ordered the driver to the Inter-Continental. He sighed with relief as
he lay back in the seat.

"You accept the hypothesis?" he said as they crossed the Danube
Canal. Hyde was silent for a moment, then he nodded. "You have to be
right. It has to be one of the high-ups. But who!"

"Yes, who indeed? The KGB have someone important in their
pocket,
helping to carry out
Teardrop
,
If we knew why, we
might know who."

"You haven't any theories about that?" Hyde asked with evident
irony. Beneath that tone, there was the indifference that springs from
sudden and unexpected well-being. Hyde, out of danger, was shutting
himself down like a complex series of circuits and relays.

Massinger, knowing that he was doing little more than thinking
aloud, said, "To make sure that Aubrey is finished off? To throw the
service into confusion? To assist some huge operation we know nothing
about? It could be any or all of those - and maybe other reasons. We've
got who and why, and no answers to either question —"

But, I have an answer, he thought. Even more crazy than this
Viennese business. And it needs you, he added to himself,
glancing sideways at Hyde's lolling form. And you won't like it, not
one little bit.

Margaret returned to him, then. He shut her out. Later, later,
my
darling, he told her image. This matter first…

Why? That's the real question. Who could be
anybody -perhaps one of fifty, even a hundred… and they had no access,
no leverage. There was no one who could, or would, tell them. Shelley
might be able to draw up a list of possibilities, but it would be a
long one.

And there was one man, just one man, who knew everything - who
knew why
—! Who knew the traitor's name… Petrunin knew everything.
Teardrop
was his creation.

He glanced at Hyde from slitted eyelids. "Do you know where
Petrunin
is now - in disgrace, you said?"

"More than one report's confirmed he's in Afghanistan. At the
Kabul
Embassy. The roughest posting they could find for him, I suppose." Hyde
replied without considering the implications of either the question or
his answer.

The taxi turned into the Johannesgasse. Hyde was relaxed. In a
couple of hours, with luck, they'd be half-way out of Austria.

He patted his overcoat pocket. His new papers lay there, against
his
breast like a talisman. He did not consider the future beyond the next
few hours, which were decidedly hopeful.

He was getting out of Vienna, where he might easily have died.

… reassembling our
afflicted Powers,

Consult how we may
henceforth most offend

Our Enemy, our own
loss how repair,

How overcome this
dire Calamity,

What reinforcement we
may gain from Hope,

If not what
resolution from despair.

-
Milton:
Paradise Lost
, Bk.

Hyde was still dazzled by the snow-gleam from the mountains as
the
Douglas C-47 taxied noisily along the runway at Peshawar. There was
thin snow on the plain, but the yellow earth revealed itself in
patches, and the foothills beyond the town were stubbornly grey. But,
as the old aircraft had circled and dropped towards the airport, he had
seen, disbelieving, the mountains stretching northwards towards the
Hindu Kush and even the Himalayas as if they would never end, never
descend again to desert or plain.

It was cold in the aircraft despite the cabin heating. Most of
the
soldiers who were his companions, returning from leave in Karachi and
Hyderabad and the southern towns, rubbed their arms beneath their
greatcoats and shuffled their feet. They had taken little notice of him
almost from the moment they had left Karachi's military airfield. He
was foreign - English - and they probably guessed his purposes in
journeying north towards the border with Afghanistan. They were
refugee-camp nursemaids and policemen; he was probably a
border-crosser, illegal, frowned-upon, tolerated but unofficial.

As the plane taxied to a halt, Hyde could see two trucks waiting
for
the returning troops. Drawn up perhaps ten yards from them was a Land
Rover. A Pakistani officer who managed to appear neat, small, groomed
even in green combat jacket and black and white scarf stood beside it.
To Hyde, he might have been part of some ancient and romantic war film.
He presumed it was Colonel Miandad of the Pakistani Bureau for the
Border, a branch of army intelligence. He collected his hand luggage
and followed the last of the disembarking soldiers through the huge
door in the fuselage. Immediately he appeared on the passenger steps,
Miandad's attention switched to him. Incongruously, the Pakistani
officer raised a swagger stick in greeting and moved quickly to the
bottom of the ladder, hand extended. The first of the trucks was
already pulling away towards the low, shack-like airport buildings.

"Mr Hyde, I imagine?" Miandad said in clipped, almost accentless
English. His features were narrow, dark, intense. His eyes glittered on
either side of a hawkish, aristocratic nose. Hyde thought he appeared
most like a civilised, assured pirate.

Hyde shook the extended hand, then they both replaced their
gloves.
"Colonel Miandad?"

"That is correct. Please come with me. Some coffee, I think?"

"Please."

Hyde climbed into the Land Rover. As Miandad got behind the
wheel,
he said: "You look very lost, very out of place, Mr Hyde - if you do
not mind my saying so?" There was, after all, a hint of the comic Asian
inflection expressing itself in archaic colloquialisms. Hyde was almost
relieved to discover it.

"I am," Hyde admitted.

"Here." Miandad passed him a vacuum flask. Hyde poured himself a
strong, sweet coffee.

"It is most unusual - your visit," Miandad continued. "However,
perhaps not the strangest request we have received in the Bureau since
the Russians entered Afghanistan. Usually, it is the CIA who require
the most outrageous assistance." He smiled with very white teeth. He
looked young around the mouth, experienced around the eyes, where fine
lines had begun to appear. Hyde assumed he was probably in his
mid-thirties.

"Coffee's good."

"Excellent. I - do not have great good news for you, Mr Hyde.
Not so
far, at least."

"Oh."

"Professor Massinger's idea was a very clever one," Miandad
admitted. "In theory. And, as my old university teacher, he was
sensible to think of myself, and to remember that I had been trained,
at least in part, at one of your establishments in the Home Counties…"
Miandad's eyes seemed to stare into the distance, towards the
mountains, or towards memories that were years old. "… by your Sir
Kenneth Aubrey. Who is now in such deep trouble —" The comic, sing-song
inflections were stronger for a moment, as if Miandad parodied his
English education and experience. "Yes, all that was very astute.
However, it relied upon the assistance of the mujahiddin, and
Pathan mujahiddin into the bargain."

"I see…"

The pilot and crew of the Douglas were already in the second
truck,
which then pulled away after its companion towards the airport
buildings.

"I don't think you do see, Mr Hyde. And I'm afraid we should
move
now. There are sometimes eyes who watch, even in Peshawar."

"Russians?"

"The occasional one. No - Afghan army spies who cross over as
refugees, some of them even posing as rebels. I will take you now to
meet the man who is the problem. A mujahiddin leader called
Mohammed Jan. A brave, independent, pig-headed man. Without his help, I
do not think you could even cross into Afghanistan. You certainly will
not be able to reach your objective." As he put the Land Rover into
gear and revved the engine, Miandad watched Hyde. He seemed to be
weighing the Australian, who felt his glance was clear and keen,
missing little.

"What are our chances?"

Miandad shook his head. "I should say, Mr Hyde, that they are
very
poor. Mohammed Jan does not send his people into Kabul any longer.
Certainly, he would not send them to attack the main headquarters and
barracks of the Soviet army!"

The Land Rover bumped in the rutted wake of the two trucks. Hyde
did
not know whether his uppermost sensation was disappointment or relief.
Three days ago, he had been asleep in the hired car as they approached
Munich in a grey, wet dawn. A weary yet fiercely wakeful Massinger had
been driving. In the moment that a halt at traffic lights had woken
Hyde, he had seen a determination that amounted to passion in the
American's face. The smile that Massinger had directed at him had been
ominous in its self-satisfaction and its attempt to disarm. Hyde's
relief at escaping from Vienna remained, but it was severely lessened
by the promise in Massinger's smile.

In the forty-eight hours that followed, Massinger never left his
hotel room; rarely was he not engaged in a telephone call. Hyde
supplied his drinks and his meals, and otherwise wandered the city in
the chill rain to escape the hothouse atmosphere. The man burned with
organisational energy, and with an almost demented sense of purpose.
His face and voice and the countries and persons who received his calls
continually hoisted signals of danger to Hyde, unsettling him, making
the adrenalin flow, eroding his reluctance.

Shelley, of course. Call after call to the telephone box outside
the
village pub. Shelley's wife had answered the telephone at first, and
forestalled Massinger identifying himself. Shelley had gone to the
telephone box and rung Munich; the first of perhaps twenty
conversations between them. Then other people in London, then old
colleagues in Langley and Washington or even retired to New England,
Florida or California. It appeared as if Massinger were calling his
whole, lifelong acquaintance. Then Pakistan…

Eventually this neat, purposeful man beside him. Colonel Zahir
Miandad of Pakistani Military Intelligence; an expert on Afghanistan
and the guerillas and the Soviet occupation. On that first occasion a
crackling, scrambled military line down which Massinger had to shout to
be heard. Perhaps the first of fifteen or sixteen calls, the last of
them almost the beginning of Hyde's journey. Massinger had not asked
him to go, simply told him what had been arranged, having continued in
the assumed role of his field controller.

He had one simple task - the capture of a senior Russian officer
from his headquarters in Kabul, or from any place he was to be found.
Petrunin. The creator of
Teardrop
.
Hyde, with guerilla help,
was to attempt to capture Tamas Petrunin of the KGB.

"I have talked to Mohammed Jan on many occasions," Miandad was
saying as the Land Rover nudged and shunted its way through the maze of
rutted, frozen mud streets of one of Peshawar's ugly, low suburbs. It
was a shanty-town, a disfigurement. Miandad's eyes were carefully
intent upon the traffic -bicycles, oxen, ancient cars. Hyde saw a
Morris which had been daubed orange and was probably pre-war, and an
old, partially roofless Leyland single-decker bus. "I have talked to
him of this matter twice - no, three times - in the last twenty-four
hours. He refuses to entertain the idea." Miandad turned to him. "I
cannot make a bargain on your behalf. You have no weapons to supply
him. He is not interested in men and what is in their heads. Only in
guns - rocket launchers, especially. He would capture the Russian First
Secretary for you in exchange for a half-dozen 'Red Eye' launchers and
suitable missiles!" Miandad's smile gleamed. "But - it is not the case.
And, although I am able to assist you because I am much my own master
here, I cannot offer our weapons on your behalf."

"I understand…"

Was he relieved, or disappointed? He could not decide. The Land
Rover broke free of the restraining traffic, and almost immediately
they were beyond the last petrol-tin and corrugated-sheet shanties and
the bullocks and the wrapped women and turbanned men. The mountains
that contained the border and the Khyber and the other passes into
Afghanistan lay ahead of them, grey barriers climbing to dazzling white
peaks and ridges. The contrast was too great, almost unbearable,
burning like rage or nausea in Hyde's chest. The mountains loomed
pitilessly over the river plain that was scabbed and diseased with the
shanty-towns and refugee camps that surrounded and clung to Peshawar.
Hyde had seen the like of it in South Africa, and on a few occasions
when his flight from Australia had refuelled at somewhere like Bombay.
The big-eyed, big-bellied children outside a tent made from a
corrugated iron sheet and a length of cardboard, propped against one
another…

He dismissed the images, both remembered and recent. It was his
task
to glide across the surface, not to look through the ice at what lay
beneath. A white bullock ambled across the track. Miandad slowed the
Land Rover, then jarringly they accelerated again. Disappointed, Hyde
told himself. Even though Petrunin had almost killed him twice,
directly or indirectly, and even though Hyde feared meeting him again -
he was disappointed.

"Where is this Jan?" he asked.

"In one of the camps. One of the many, many camps," Miandad
added
wearily.

Before them, at the edge of the plain, the mountains gleamed
with
innocent snow and ice.

"But you think seeing him again will do no good?"

Miandad shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he murmured.

Alison Shelley pushed one trolley, Massinger the other, down the
busy aisles of the hypermarket. The Shelleys' young daughter sat, legs
akimbo, facing her mother from the trolley. She seemed contented with
chocolate, the corners of her small mouth already stained like her
fingertips. Shelley walked beside Massinger, occasionally depositing
bottles or tins in the two trolleys. Were anyone observing them, their
activities would have appeared an obvious fiction.