The Bear's Tears (3 page)

"I see." The Deputy Director looked into the shadowy corners of his
spacious office, then at the silvery snowgleam on the ceiling. His
shadow and that of his companion seemed hunched and diminished and
sinister, crouching over the photographs on his rosewood desk. He could
smell his cigar butts still in the ashtray - no, they were on the pile
carpet, upended there by a movement of the sheaf of blow-ups. "I see,"
he repeated, at a loss.

"The history fits, too. As far as we can check, all these 1946 dates
can be corroborated."

"What about the recent dates - the last two years?"

"It all checks out. At least, as far as we can go without asking
London direct."

"Then all this was garbage about a KGB Deputy Chairman wanting to
defect… ?"

"We think so."

"What else do you think?"

"Aubrey's been a sleeper for more than thirty-five years. Two years
ago, when he was within an ace of the top job, they woke him up."

"You say you haven't talked to London?"

"No, sir. We need to talk to Babbington - to MI5, sure - but that's
the Director's decision, not ours."

"OK." The Deputy Director's finger tapped at the blow-up of the
file's summary sheet, near the bottom. On the ceiling, his shoulders
seemed to move spasmodically in unison, as if he were vomiting. "You
believe this defector - and
this
?"

"We've tried him every way. Even under drugs and hypnosis. He comes
up smelling of roses every time. Same story. As a cipher clerk, he'd
heard the rumours everyone else had heard. Important files about to be
incinerated - topmost secrecy. He knew it could be his ticket on the
first-class gravy train, so he took his Japanese camera to work - and
found
Teardrop
."

"Aubrey's an old man now…"

"And he's just become Director-General of British Intelligence."

"Dammit, Bill, I know that…"

"Well, sir?"

The Deputy Director's large hands once more rearranged the sheaf of
photographs, but this time irresolutely. "Hell, I don't know - I just
don't know!"

"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on the fact that
Teardrop
is
a genuine highest security file from Moscow Centre. More than that,
these reference numbers on the cover show that it has been transferred
to their main security computer. Also, access is limited to the
Chairman and six Deputy Chairmen of the KGB. No one else, with the
exception of Nikitin himself, can get to see it. These pictures come up
genuine under every test we can make. The story they tell - however
appalling - holds up under investigation…" Once more, the pictures were
dealt like cards, fanned open across the whole desk. One or two slid to
the carpet, out of the pool of strong white light. "And it all means
that Kenneth Aubrey is a Soviet agent. It means he's
the
Soviet agent of all time!"

"And he's just been made head of British Intelligence." The Deputy
Director sighed once, but the sound became a stifled belch. "OK - we'll
take this to the Director first thing in the morning."

"Very well, Kapustin. Let it begin in earnest. The destruction of
Kenneth Aubrey - and with him, the destruction of British
Intelligence… I use Comrade President Nikitin's own words, Kapustin.
Does he exaggerate?"

"He does not, Comrade Chairman."

"You promise that such claims will not have been exaggerated, in the
outcome?"

"I do, Comrade Chairman. President Nikitin was right, as you were,
to place
Teardrop
in my hands. It will work. I give you both
my word on that."

"Then let's drink to it, mm?"

"A pleasure."

"We will wish Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, a Happy New Year - eh? A
very
Happy New Year!"

One by one, the rows of windows of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna
turned from bronze to orange in the setting afternoon sun, as if
invisible servants were going from room to room lighting great
chandeliers. Kenneth Aubrey and the Russian were almost in darkness as
they patrolled the terrace of the Upper Belvedere beneath the great
windows; two shadowy, unsubstantial and isolated figures. Patrick Hyde
sat perched on the stone plinth beneath the enigmatic, crouching statue
of a sphinx. Its companions ranged away from him along the terrace,
each of them staring out of Maria Theresa faces and from beneath
eighteenth-century hair down towards the city. Hyde looked up at his
sphinx as Kapustin continued his explanation to Aubrey. Yes, the smile
on that face was alluring as much as mysterious; lewd, even, as it
retreated into cold winter darkness. Appropriate to the conversation
that he could tinnily hear through the earpiece of the portable
recorder in the pocket of his dark overcoat. This time, Aubrey was
wired for sound and Kapustin seemed unworried at the prospect.

In a pause in the halting, almost embarrassed explanation, Aubrey
exploded with anger. Hyde had never heard him so enraged, so
undiplomatic, so unreserved before.

"You cannot tell me now that you refuse to come over?" his voice
asked in mocking, venomous disbelief. "After more than two years, you
simply cannot mean that!"

The silence hummed. The KGB Deputy Chairman,
Teardrop
, was
backing away. Hyde had known it for more than half an hour now, ever
since the first moments of the meeting. Almost from the moment Kapustin
had greeted Aubrey and Hyde had drifted to a more useful surveillance
distance, he had sensed a new and even more reluctant mood.

And it was a woman. An inducement to remain in the Soviet Union that
Aubrey would be incapable of understanding or accepting.

"I - I do mean that, my friend," Kapustin explained. "I - am sorry,
but I can say it in no other way. I - cannot come with you."

"Everything is arranged!" Aubrey stormed. "You agreed everything at
our last meeting. It was to be
next week
, dammit!"

Hyde watched the two almost indiscernible figures reach the far end
of the terrace, turn and begin towards him again. The orange colour of
the windows was now uniform, as if the early sunset had stalked after
them along the terrace. Hyde saw the pale blotch of Wilkes's trench
coat drifting like a patch of fog behind the two men. He and the rest
of Vienna Station were in control of security. Once more Hyde felt
himself, as Aubrey's traveling companion and minder, flatteringly
unused; wasted. He rubbed his ungloved hands. His breath smoked in the
last of the light. To the east, the pale sky darkened towards purple.
The gardens of the Belvedere glittered with yesterday's snow.

"But, this woman —" Aubrey persisted. "You say you have known her
only for a matter of a few months…"

"That is correct."

"Then, then - then I do not
understand!
"

"You have never been moved by such a passion, my friend?"

"Bring her with you!" Aubrey blurted out. Listening, Hyde shook his
head.

"I cannot. She - has a family. I do not need to tell you what former
colleagues of mine would do to them, with them, were the two of us to
emerge in the West. No, my friend, it cannot be…"

"Dammit, you're sixty-one —!"

Hyde smiled and tossed his head. Aubrey, the man devoid of sexual
passion, simply could not comprehend. Deputy Chairman Kapustin would
not come out to play, now or ever. To Hyde, it was a matter of
indifference. The cold impinged more keenly. Only for the loss of
Aubrey's coup was he regretful. And even that wasn't important - Aubrey
already had it all; knighthood, director-generalship, honour and glory,
world without end…

And perhaps after this he would return Hyde to the field, to proper
work.

"And should know better?" Kapustin asked mockingly. "Evidently I do
not."

"You could be blown —"

"I do not think so. And you, my friend, you would not betray me just
for disappointing you. I am truly sorry. There is much in the West that
I still covet, and much at home that sickens and disgusts me. But - I
am in love…"

Hyde heard Aubrey's snort of derision and saw Kapustin spread his
arms in a gesture of pleasurable hopelessness. Aubrey's stunted figure
beside him, now that they were close again, looked feeble and old and
bemused.

"Then this is our last meeting. We have nothing more to say to one
another." Aubrey's voice was still hurtfully contemptuous.

"It would appear so. You have been patient and you have been secure.
When I came to you, I asked a high price. You have, eventually, granted
it. You have satisfied me in the matter of a new identity, a new life.
And now that I have everything, it means nothing to me. I can no longer
go down these steps —" They were standing just above Hyde now, at the
head of a flight of stone steps. Hyde's sphinx seemed to smirk with
superiority and a sense of power in the gloom. Frost had begun to
glitter on her face. "— with you, or get into one of your cars parked
outside the palace gates. London is an impossible distance away.
Washington is another planet - for me, at least."

"Very well. I shall report the matter…"

 "Ah, yes. You will give a
most withering description of my sudden - weakness?" Kapustin laughed.
To Hyde, the KGB Deputy Chairman sounded like an actor, overplaying his
role.

"I - it's simply that I do not understand," Aubrey admitted.

Hyde jumped down from his stone perch. It was almost dark now, the
time of maximum danger when everything was shadowy and confusing and
suspicious. Sunset is a trap, someone had once told him. He picked out
Wilkes in his ghostly trench coat, and two of the others. And no enemy
activity.
Teardrop
could move about western cities much as he
liked. That kind of seniority was what had made him such a valuable
catch, the fish of the season.

And Aubrey had lost him, failed to land the catch…

"Goodbye, my friend."

"Goodbye."

The two men shook hands briefly and stiffly, and then Kapustin came
down the steps and passed Hyde without a glance in his direction.
Aubrey descended much more slowly, as if greatly tired. His face, in
the frosty almost-dark, was abject with affront and failure.

"Sorry, sir —" Hyde began.

"God in Heaven, what's got into the man?" Aubrey exclaimed.

"Sex, that's all it is," Hyde replied with assumed disgust.

"I found the whole business - so hard to believe," Aubrey
complained. "And kindly don't mock me, Patrick."

"Sorry, sir."

"But to have
lost
him —!" Aubrey burst out again as Wilkes
approached. The senior field officer of Vienna Station backed away at
the tone of Aubrey's voice. "Two years since he first approached us -
two years of meetings, negotiations, arrangements, assurances - of
courtship
,
dammit!"

"And then he dumps you for another woman," Hyde could not resist
observing, immediately regretting that he had done so. Aubrey turned to
face him, his eyes gleaming like chips of ice in the last of the light.
Then the old man shrugged.

"If he had arranged the whole charade for my personal
embarrassment," Aubrey remarked, "he could not have had more success.
My enemies - on both sides of the Atlantic - will say of me that I am
finally too old to cope. Washington contains few people I have worked
with in - sensitive matters. They will be
delighted
at
Langley with our success here!" Aubrey's pale features twisted in
irony. "Sir Kenneth Aubrey, KCVO, Director-General of SIS, falls flat
on his face. How
pleased
so many people will be to hear of
it! The Cabinet Office and MI5 will have a field day…" He sighed as he
choked off the sentence, then waved his hand towards Wilkes's hovering
form, dismissing him. "Back to the hotel, Patrick," he murmured tiredly.

"OK, sir."

Their footsteps crunched on the gravel of the path as they moved
down the slope towards the high hedges that bordered the more formal
and enclosed part of the gardens. The huge ornamental pool in front of
the Upper Belvedere was a sheet of glassy ice. A sliver of moon had
appeared above the horizon, and the first stars were like gleams of
frost. Hyde realised that Aubrey was still wired for sound. He could
hear his breathing and his heartbeat faintly in his earpiece. He took
the plug from his ear and thrust it and its cord into his pocket.
Kapustin, usually so wary of recordings of his conversations with
Aubrey, had seemed indifferent on this occasion. Doubtless, out of a
sense of fair play, Aubrey would order him to wipe this tape. Kapustin
was dead to Aubrey, the matter closed as finally as a mortuary drawer.

They reached a shorter flight of steps, then the tall hedges and
trimmed firs and statuary of the lower gardens. Hyde touched Aubrey's
elbow, offering him his support on the slippery steps. Aubrey did not
refuse the assistance. The weight of his arm was birdlike, fragile.
Wilkes was twenty yards away, on another gravel path, and his three men
were farther off, forming a screen. Aubrey's breathing was almost like
a crackle of static close to him…

The recorder clinked on the gravel as Hyde dropped it.

Crackle of static?

"Sorry, sir - dropped the bloody tape," Hyde said in an
unnecessarily loud voice. Aubrey clicked his tongue in disapproval.
Shut up, Hyde thought. Quiet…

Wilkes's shoes on gravel. Hyde scrabbled one hand over the path as
if searching for the recorder which he had already retrieved from near
his left knee. The gravel was sharp and cold through his corduroy
trousers. His woolen scarf felt damp against his mouth as he held his
breath.

"Come along, Patrick…" Aubrey sighed impatiently.

Shut up —

Crackle of static, and nearer than their own men…

Radio - two-way?

Aubrey took a step towards him - footsteps as Wilkes drew nearer.
Other footsteps, a small party of men. Wilkes hurried close to Aubrey.