The Bear's Tears (27 page)

"All right!" Hyde snapped, turning his back on the camp, now
beginning to soften into shadow. Cooking fires were already
strengthening their glows, and cloaked women moved around them.
Children and goats grumbled and shouted. In places, bare, sharp rock
thrust through the snow. Armed men moved as if their only purpose was
to be carriers of weapons. "All right - my life doesn't matter to him.
But I can't help worrying about it, just a bit. If I can't do anything,
then it's a question of sitting out the war - for the duration. Here,
or somewhere like here."

Miandad turned to look once more at Mohammed Jan.

"They are as fierce and cruel and proud as people say they are,"
he
murmured. "Also immovable. They simply live in another world from you.
Your dislike of Russians is - well, rather like moonlight at midday.
Not to be noticed beside their feelings. They are very good at hating -
but on their terms, for their reasons."

"Let's get out of here."

"Very well. We should be safe, driving back to Peshawar. It is
always possible we may not be, of course." Miandad smiled a small, grim
smile. "Mm? Just one moment, I wonder what is happening over there… ?"

"What — ?"

"Listen. The old man talking to Mohammed Jan. I want to hear
what
he says."

Hyde moved away, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders slumped,
eyes
hardly seeing the grim reality of the camp. It did not interest or move
him. He felt only his own predicament, and frustrated rage that these
Pathans would not help him. He heard shouts, and saw men moving up the
slope towards Mohammed Jan's hut. They passed him without taking
notice. They carried long, ancient rifles and modern Kalashnikovs. All
of them wore bandoliers of cartridges. Miandad was right; it was a
different world. Its priorities, the depth of its hatreds and revenges,
all were alien to the encounters of Hyde's professional life. He began
to wonder what changes had been wrought upon the urbane, intelligent,
professional persona of Tamas Petrunin since his engagement in this
kind of war. For his part, there was a hint of relief in Mohammed Jan's
refusal; as if he had escaped some unforeseen, unnerving danger.

Yet Aubrey intruded on his thoughts even at that moment; old,
distressed, impotent. Hyde almost hated the loyalty that welled up in
him, knowing its power.

"One of Mohammed Jan's returning raiding parties is in trouble,
I
think," Miandad said softly at his elbow, startling him. Men continued
to brush past them, flitting like shadows towards their chieftain's
hut. Hyde turned to watch them gather around Mohammed Jan. The man's
voice was powerful as he began speaking.

"What did you say —?" Hyde asked absently.

"His eldest sons are leading a returning raiding party. The old
man
who arrived a few moments ago was a lookout, awaiting their return
through part of the Kurram Pass. But they are pinned down and waiting
for darkness - there are helicopters. And many of the party are dead,
from the numbers the old man was able to see."

Hyde shrugged. "You told me," he said, "it's a different world.
What
can I do?"

Men were already moving off, towards the perimeter of the camp
and
the long shadows from the mountains. The snow-clad peaks gleamed in the
setting sun. A sprinkling of lights showed the position of Parachinar.
Mohammed Jan had disappeared.

"Come," Miandad said. "Perhaps you will see what this war is all
about. Perhaps it will be a good lesson for you. We will follow
Mohammed Jan and his men. You may see what your old acquaintance has
learned of guerilla war." Miandad's teeth flashed whitely, but not in a
smile.

Below the aircraft, the scene was colourless; grey and white.
The
waters of the Gulf of Finland were wrinkled like a shabby grey cloth,
ending abruptly where the snow-covered shoreline of Helsinki became a
sheet of white. Narrow lines of snow-ploughed roads and railway lines
had been lightly traced, but the overwhelming the impression was of an
uninhabited, hostile environment. Massinger turned away from the window
at the recognition that the landscape and the sea lay below him like an
image of his own state of mind; empty and somehow hopeless. He could
not let go, he told himself once more, though, the precisely formed
words in his mind echoed hollowly in a small, piping voice. Patriotism
was ridiculous in him, an expatriate Bostonian, a cool-minded academic,
especially the simple, emotional kind he seemed to be experiencing.
Hyde did not have it, and he wondered whether even Aubrey possessed it.
Somehow, he had a capacity for patriotism, like a capacity for love,
and the object of that capacity could as well have been Afghanistan or
the US or, as it plainly was, Great Britain. He found that he cared,
almost despite himself, that his adopted country's intelligence service
was being manipulated by the Soviet Union. It was intolerable.

Or was it merely his damnable sense of right and wrong? Was that
at
the bottom of his heated urge to solve the mystery, clear Aubrey,
defeat his enemies? It might be, and he disapproved. It was a naïve
view of his character, and he desired not to be naïve.

He had spoken to Margaret again, from the airport, looking out
through tall windows onto a rainswept runway, a scene reduced to
monochrome like the one below him now as the aircraft dropped towards
Seutula airport. He had attempted to convince her that he was safe when
the very reason he could not return to her, do as she asked and give it
up, was because someone wanted him safely and incuriously dead. The
conversation had been painful, pointless. The chasm was still there,
merely emphasised by physical distance. She had settled into a routine
of hatred towards Aubrey, totally believing in his guilt; it was an
orthodoxy that nothing could soften or contradict. Therefore, while he
aided Aubrey he was a heretic, and damned.

Yet he knew that her belief was tearing her in two, just as he
was
himself being pulled apart. He could not tell her he would never be
safe, never, unless he could unravel the mystery - whatever the truth
concerning her father and Kenneth Aubrey.

Lastly, he had told her - trusting her with his life, as he had
wanted to do, felt he needed to do - that he would be coming back, that
he would telephone, that he had to see her…

The telephone receiver in their flat had gone down on those
protestations, on his pleading, on his need for her. The line had
crackled with static and he had listened to the emptiness for a long
time before putting down his receiver.

The rain had been cold on his face as he had crossed the tarmac
to
the Finnair flight to Helsinki.

The wing outside his window dipped, showing him the grey
buildings
and the runways of Seutula. The aircraft dropped its nose,
straightened, then began its final approach, Massinger settled himself
to thoughts of Phillipson and the immediate future.

In the growing darkness, Hyde caught glimpses of light-coloured
cloth from blouses or turbans, even of dark shadowy forms against the
snow, as the Pathan raiding party moved from rock to rock, from bush to
stunted tree to straggling vegetation. On the ground, it was a scene in
extreme slow-motion, the elapsed time so extended it was almost
stilled. Above the defile of the narrow, knife-cut valley that cut
through the border north of Parachinar, Russian helicopters moved like
agitated insects; flies maddened and over-exerted by poison from an
aerosol spray. Two kinds of time; patience and urgency, hunters and
hunted. To Hyde, using night-glasses, it seemed that many were wounded,
and by Miandad's guess the party was considerably reduced from that
which had entered Afghanistan three days before.

The MiL gunships drove the valley again like airborne beaters of
game, moving towards the high cleft in the rocks which concealed Hyde,
Miandad and, a little away from them, Mohammed Jan and three or four of
his trusted lieutenants; old, grey-bearded men with long, antique
rifles. The noise from the helicopters was deafening. Then they turned,
whirling as easily as dancers, the downdraught plucking at Hyde's hair
and shoulders as the four MiL-24s moved away. Hyde could distinguish
the 57mm rocket pods beneath their stubby wings and the four-barrel
machine-gun in the nose of each aircraft as they turned no more than
two hundred feet above him. He shivered.

"There," Miandad shouted above the din and its ricochet from the
valley walls. "There!"

Hyde lowered his night-glasses, following Miandad's extended
arm,
focusing the glasses beyond the retreating gunships. The faint redness
in the lenses swam and cleared. The scene had little colour; a clear,
bloodless monochrome. As the focus sharpened, it was as if something
had entered an arena; something making everything else of less
significance. A pike in a pool. A presence.

The helicopter must have been daubed some garish colour, Hyde
guessed. Certainly, it was not camouflaged like the gunships that now
seemed to bob and curtsey their way towards it.

"Red - blood-red," Miandad murmured.

Hyde lowered the glasses for a moment, and looked at the
Pakistani
colonel. Miandad nodded. Hyde felt chilled, but he could not have
explained his reaction. Petrunin —?

"Him?" he asked.

Miandad nodded. "Him. You will find his style - more
flamboyant?"
Miandad's teeth gleamed white in the darkness of the cleft of rocks.

Hyde raised his glasses once more, again adjusting the focus
slightly. The command helicopter which contained Petrunin was moving up
the valley, though very slowly, as if engaged in some courtship ritual
with the four MiL gunships. Its speed decreased further as it reached
its four heavily-armed courtiers.

Hyde moved the glasses down, twiddling the focus. He was
prompted by
an inexplicable fear and urgency. Below him, in the narrow river-bed,
the Pathans seemed to be moving with a similar sudden speed. Wounded
men were being handled more roughly, pulled and even dragged. Small,
bent figures scurried ahead of them. It was dark now, and they were no
more than half a mile from Hyde's vantage-point. They had already
crossed the border, even though that crossing was meaningless. Hyde
returned his gaze to the black air above the valley - some stars
beginning to appear, falsely bright in the night-glasses - and the five
helicopters. The four gunships hovered and paid homage in a slow
circling dance about the command aircraft.

Hyde heard Mohammed Jan issue orders. Men below them began to
move
swiftly towards the oncoming party and its wounded. Away down the
valley, the noise of the helicopters was magnified by the valley walls.

Then the group dissolved. The four gunships wheeled, came into
line,
began to beat up the valley again. The command helicopter lagged
behind; the armed sportsman waiting for the game to be terrified into
flight. It was sinister in the extreme, especially to Hyde, who knew
the occupant of the red MiL-24. The rescuers scuttled and weaved and
ran towards the returning party; flickering white and light-coloured
patches or swift shadows. The four MiLs closed above them, their noise
a fearful clatter from the rocks. Hyde watched.

He winced as small black shapes detached themselves from the
bellies
of each of the MiLs; strings of laid eggs. He followed them down,
watched some bounce, roll, jump, split. None of them exploded. His
shoulders and stomach relaxed. He turned to Miandad, glancing into his
grim face. The Pakistani shook his head slightly. Hyde returned his
attention to the moving Pathans. The two parties had met; wounded men
received extra, urgent support. The tempo of their progress increased.
The four MiLs banked and turned. More black eggs fell. There were no
explosions. Hyde found it difficult to breathe; impossible to
understand.

The retreating MiLs passed over the moving men, their noise
towed
behind them like a net. Almost silence, out of which the separate and
distinct noise of the command helicopter emerged, closing at a height
of no more than two hundred feet. Its racket banged back from the
cliffs above the valley floor. Hyde saw raised faces, bobbing,
quick-moving turbans. He could begin to distinguish bodies, forms,
figures. The party, augmented by the rescuers, was no more than a
quarter of a mile away from his vantage point. A faint, silver-sheened
mist was rising in the valley. It shone as if with dew or an inner
light.

Mist —?

It was thin, gauzy, hardly opaque. Yet it glowed falsely.

The red helicopter - now Hyde could distinguish patches of other
shades on its nose and flanks. Shark's mouth —? Grotesque faces —?
Animal heads —? He could not tell. Something occult, almost, about the
thing, as if it was not a piece of airborne technology but something
much older.

It hovered. Men ran, scattered, limped or fell. Hunched,
scuttling,
they moved through the sheen of silver which seemed to cling about
them, rising from the floor of the valley to a height of no more than
ten or twelve feet. Petrunin's helicopter hovered.

Miandad inhaled sharply. Hyde's shoulders hunched with tension,
and
his neck ached. The eyepieces of the night-glasses hurt him as he
pressed them to his face. Men ran, closer now, almost…

A glowing spark seemed to drift down from the command
helicopter,
which immediately lifted to a greater height and banked fiercely away.
The spark fell like a luminous insect, even a cigarette-end dropped
from the helicopter.

The mist burst into flame. A tunnel of fire existed in an
instant, a
coffin of flame which contained every one of the moving men. Hyde could
see them still moving, then standing, then twitching, then staggering,
then falling. He could hear the roar of the ignited napalm or whatever
it was. It was louder than the faint screams.

Then it began to die like the glow of a flashbulb; remaining on
the
retinae of the watchers still as a bright light, but dying into
paleness, then shadow then darkness. Hyde had dropped the
night-glasses. Heat beat against his face for a moment, then was gone
and he felt chilled to the bone. A few ragged shots from the antique
rifles in the rocks near him rang feebly out after the command
helicopter. Hyde raised the glasses once more. He felt nauseous.
Petrunin's helicopter was retreating backwards down the valley, its
pilot and observation windscreens facing back towards the carnage, its
air intakes above the windscreens like huge, flaring nostrils. It
looked like something gloating over its success.