The Bear's Tears (34 page)

"Very well, Sir Andrew. And - Hyde?"

"He must be under cover somewhere - skulking on the Continent
like a
debtor. He'll come to light eventually. He's no problem. Incidentally,
any KGB activity?"

"None."

"They've cut their losses. Abandoned Aubrey to his fate, then?"

"It appears so, Sir Andrew."

"Wise of them, in the event. Very well, Eldon. The DPP would
like
the papers by midweek. Naturally after they've been seen by the PM and
the Attorney-General, in this extraordinary case. Can your department
manage that?"

"Yes, Sir Andrew. Sir Kenneth can be formally charged this week."

"Good."

"You know where he is now?"

"Yes, Comrade Rezident General. He is returning from Oxford at
this
moment. He is driving —"

"Never mind. Just make sure they don't lose him in London. You
presume he is planning to return to the man Hyde's flat?"

"We presume so, Comrade Rezident General."

"Very well. Dispose of him - this morning. As soon and as
quietly as
possible. Our friend seems to be over-confident as to Massinger's
harmlessness. I am not convinced. What he knows already is too
dangerous. He might - just might - talk to someone who will
believe him. Someone like Colonel Eldon, for example. No, it is too
dangerous. Massinger represents too great a threat. They lost Hyde in
Vienna - we have found Massinger. We will make certain. Give
the order - kill Massinger. I'll sign the authorisation."

"Thank you, Comrade Rezident General —"

"You didn't think I'd leave you holding the baby, did you?"

"I'm sorry, Comrade Rezident General."

"Very well - get on with it. Poor Paul."

"I beg your pardon, Comrade —?"

"Never mind. Just see that it's done."

Hyde had been jolted by Kabul, alienated. They had approached
the
capital a little after noon, filtering into the city in small groups,
making their rendezvous in one of the city's oldest and most warrenlike
bazaars, setting up headquarters in the rear of a rugmaker's shop. Its
owner was, apparently, a relative of Mohammed Jan. He bewailed the loss
of Jan's sons, dropped the ritual tears, put his resources at the
Pathan chieftain's disposal.

After they had eaten fragrant, indigestible nan bread and a rice
dish with mutton and raisins, Mohammed Jan and Miandad set out with
Hyde to reconnoitre the Soviet embassy buildings. The city was crowded,
its poorer suburbs and bazaars timeless, antique. The donkeys and
handcarts seemed intruded upon by the few ancient cars, the handful of
military vehicles. Veiled women, turbanned men, or men wearing beaded,
gold-threaded caps; then, suddenly, the Inter-Continental Hotel and
high-rise office blocks. Earth underfoot changed to tar. The contrast
stunned Hyde. A rug-vendor, samples of his wares over his shoulder and
at his feet on the pavement, stood in front of a department store. Hyde
grinned, and Miandad returned his expression.

"Nothing changes," the Pakistani murmured.

The smell of passing donkeys, overladen with petrol fumes. The
noise
of a passing Russian lorry. Someone getting out of a very long black
American sedan in front of the hotel; a man in a well-cut, fur-collared
overcoat, a woman in furs. The squeak of cartwheels, the noise of a
single-decker bus. Roll-neck women's sweaters in the nearest window of
the store.

A car or lorry backfired. Hyde immediately saw Azimov's face in
the
moment that he had turned and fired the single shot from the pistol.
The boy had known - even as he feared, even as he experienced a terror
of realisation and was crushed by its weight, he had known. His eyes
had retained a kind of calm. If there was forgiveness, even gratitude,
Hyde could not trust to it. He might have been inventing it.

One shot, through the forehead, knocking the boy's dead body
back
against the rocks. Keeping the vital, invaluable Soviet military
uniform intact, unblemished, without bloodstains. Even as Mohammed Jan
had argued, had demanded the boy, Hyde had been unwilling, unable —

Then a Pathan had moved to lay hands on Azimov, at Mohammed
Jan's
orders, and Hyde had simply turned and fired, almost without taking aim.

"He was my prisoner!" he had raged at the
Pathan
chieftain. Within the circles of kohl around his dark eyes, Mohammed
Jan had acknowledged Hyde's claim with a single flicker of his.
eyelids. Then Hyde, calming himself, had explained the necessity of the
quick, clean death - the condition of the uniform. Mohammed Jan had
accepted his cunning.

As he had accepted his scheme for reaching Petrunin, after
listening
to what Hyde had learned from the boy. Oh, the boy had been
informative. He'd known a lot, remembered a lot, and he told Hyde
everything because he was spending the coinage that ensured he would
live. He was bribing the Pathan tribesman who spoke Russian and had
light eyes and a lighter skin than the others. He had held his letter
and the snapshot of his wife against the unmarked breast of his uniform
jacket all the time he spoke. Hyde had put it and the letter back
inside the battered wallet, appropriating both the private man and the
public figure indicated by the ID documents.

"Hyde?" Miandad asked, nudging his arm.

"What —?"

Mohammed Jan was already striding away from them, towards the
principal square of Kabul, where the main facade of the
Inter-Continental Hotel outfaced high-rise offices and apartment blocks
and overlooked the compound of the Soviet embassy.

"We must not loiter," Miandad instructed. Two soldiers with
Kalashnikovs on their shoulders took up position on either side of the
main doors of the Inter-Continental. Two other guards, now relieved,
marched towards a troop transport, then climbed beneath the shelter of
its tarpaulin. The lorry roared away, black fumes belching from its
exhaust.

"OK."

They trailed after the tall Pathan, crossing the square. There
were
more cars, many of them Russian, with small, stiff flags on the bonnets
of the black saloons. Others, mostly cream or white, still possessed an
official appearance. The buses were crowded. The street-lamps were
beginning to glare in the afternoon air, and some illuminated neon
signs gained a bolder glow. Hoardings for consumer products vied with
stern governmental portraits and Afghan and Soviet flags.

Flags on the Soviet embassy. Behind high black railings, across
a
forty-yard width of snow-patched lawn, the low bungalows of the
compound were dotted around the white facade of the embassy building.
An ugly, modern concrete and glass extension lay alongside the main
building like a squat, utilitarian transport ship berthed alongside an
elegant, superseded sailing vessel. The extension appeared sufficiently
modern to have been completed after the Russian invasion. There was a
guard on either side of the main gates and a red and white barrier
pole. Ten yards further out into the square stood a large concrete
bunker, the guard post.

Hyde lounged against a lamp-post while Mohammed Jan and Miandad
began haggling with a rug-vendor who had set up his stall on a small,
grassless island amid the traffic, opposite the embassy gates. As they
bargained, Hyde knew they would be assessing distances, firing
positions, angles, cover. Their knowledge of Kabul and of killing
Russians was compendious and successful. For himself, he was for the
moment, simply the sightseer. His work lay beyond the black railings,
wearing Azimov's uniform. Cars and buses swirled between Hyde and the
railings of the embassy. The square was noisy behind him.

The Pathan chieftain had guaranteed to get them out of the city
once
Hyde had completed the capture of Petrunin. And Hyde had repeated his
promise while the adrenalin of Azimov's murder still prompted him. 'I
will
give you Petrunin, for your justice - damn you, I'll give you Petrunin!
You didn't need this poor sod - I'll give you the man himself!'
Miandad had not bothered to translate, and Mohammed Jan, without loss
of face or dignity, had turned his back on him and descended the slope
to the road. Hyde had watched him in a mood that was angry, jumpy and
uncertain.

Hyde surreptitiously glanced at the watch concealed by the baggy
sleeve of his blouse. Four. The air was darkening. Behind the embassy
buildings, where the plain ended and the mountains of the Hindu Kush
loomed forty foreshortened miles north of the city, the snow-covered
peaks glowed pink while the mountain flanks displayed a dull gleam
already dying into darkness. He came at this time usually, the boy had
said.

Dear Sasha …

Not Darling Sasha, only the more formal
acquaintanceship
claimed by Dear - Dear Sir…

Dear Sasha… Nadia wouldn't even get the letter and the
snapshot back - unless they returned them after removing them from his
body, not Sasha's stripped and rock-hidden corpse. She would never know
exactly what happened. She would, undoubtedly, fear the worst.

Unnoticed, Mohammed Jan was at his side. Hyde jumped as the
Pathan
spoke.

"Your promise?" he asked lightly in very accented English, a
parody
of Miandad, who appeared on the Pathan's other side.

"It still holds," Hyde replied.

"Can you do it?" Miandad asked a moment later, translating now
from
Mohammed Jan's Pushtu.

"Can he cause enough confusion, once I've got past the gates?"
Hyde
replied belligerently, staring into the chieftain's face. "You can
operate the rocket launcher - can you hit the embassy from here and
kill the guards in that concrete bunker? Can you pin down the Russians
for fifteen minutes afterwards? Because if you two can't do what's
needed, then all my promises won't be worth a light, will they? Just
bear that in mind — I'm the one who's taking the risk,
walking in there and relying on you two. Remind Gunga Din of that
little fact, will you?"

Hyde turned away as Miandad began to translate. He itched with
nerves, his skin crawling with his increasing tension, with little
prickly outbreaks of sweat, even as the temperature dropped towards
zero. He knew he would be all right; he'd be able to cope, get through
it. He had to, anyway. It would be some kind of compensation, an
apologetic risk to prove that he didn't always kill unarmed boys to
save them from torture and mutilation.

Now, Petrunin and the thought and memory of him no longer made
him
afraid. It was Petrunin, after all, who was really to blame for the
boy's death on the chilly, dawn-lit hillside. It was Petrunin who was
really to blame for what had happened to Aubrey. It was Petrunin who
was really, really to blame for Hyde's danger, for his
presence in this alien country, and to blame for the fact that even his
own side would kill him if they found him. Thus, he wanted Petrunin
very badly.

The curfew began at ten. Darkness fell before five.

The black car was escorted by motorcycle outriders with
Kalashnikovs
across their backs, and by two other black saloons before and behind
it. The windows of all three cars were tinted and dark. The cars were
heavy, ponderous, armour-plated, even on the underside of the chassis
by the look of it, to prevent injury from a rolled grenade or a
landmine: It was the arrival, or so it seemed to Hyde of some hated
local despot or potentate. It was Petrunin.
'The flagless car,'
the boy had said.
'No emblems,
nothing. And the outriders.'

The barrier swung up, the gates opened electronically. With
little
hesitation or slowing of its speed, the small motorcade swept through
into the embassy compound. Hyde watched the cars until they halted
outside the ugly extension, then his gaze transferred to the forest of
aerials on the roof of the new building, then finally to the windows of
the third floor. He counted.

Petrunin's suite of offices. The boy did not know how many
guards,
what alarms, what booby-traps. There, once inside the building, he
would be alone, on his own, isolated and without assistance.

"Have you seen enough?" Miandad asked softly. There were flecks
of
snow in the darkening air. "We have settled our matters."

Hyde nodded. "Yes, I've seen enough."
'He never sleeps, or
so
they say,'
the boy had told him.
'Bad conscience.'
He had
even smiled at that.
'He takes pep
pills all the time. He can't
sleep so he works all night
'
"Yes, I've seen enough," Hyde
repeated. "Let's go."

Massinger stopped the car and switched off the engine. The curve
of
Wilton Crescent had lost most of its snow. He had parked almost
directly opposite his own flat. As he looked up, he almost expected to
see Margaret at one of the windows - dining-room, drawing-room, any one
of the tall windows.

He kept his hands on the wheel of the rented Ford Granada,
afraid
that they would display a tremor he could not control the moment he
freed them. It was past midday. He had been driving around central
London, simply driving without purpose or destination, in the heavy
Monday traffic for perhaps an hour. His mind had been filled with black
and bitter recriminations. He blamed Aubrey and, more, he blamed
himself. He viewed the past days, since that morning he had first
visited Aubrey, as a kind of delirium; something heightened, feverish,
unreal. A lost week, a period out of time; days stolen from his life.

Aubrey had been the thief of his time. Aubrey the murderer.

Not that he was convinced… No, he was not convinced, he told
himself
once more, not nearly convinced. But, he could not rid himself of the
suspicion that it was true, might be true, could possibly be true…

Massinger shook his head like an old, tormented animal smelling
the
already spilled blood of the herd.

He knew, with a bleak certainty, that he had begun the process
of
moving towards a conviction of Aubrey's guilt. And for the moment,
relief that it was over, relief that he could take up his life at the
point where he had put it down like a parcel - all that was less
important than the creeping horror that Aubrey had murdered Margaret's
father. Had done, had done it —