The Bear's Tears (44 page)

"That the man was British, and highly-placed," Disch said
hurriedly,
mumbling slightly through the bread and sausage in his mouth, using the
sandwich as if it would help conceal the truth from Massinger.

Massinger opened his mouth to speak as the implications of
Disch's
statement struck him. Without the German's evasiveness and Massinger's
certainty that the man had his own suspicions, the statement would have
meant little or nothing to him.

"British?" he said at last.

Disch's eyes were little more than slits. He nodded. "He was
highly-placed. But, Sir Kenneth told us he learned nothing in the
Russian Sector, that it was only a trap for him —!"

"You don't believe that, Herr Disch —"

"I am certain that there is no connection —"

"But you do believe it! You think this highly-placed
Nazi
sympathiser was Castleford and that Aubrey murdered him on his return
from the Russian Sector."

"No —!" Disch protested weakly.

"Oh my God, man - you do believe it! Ever since you
spoke
to Zimmermann, you've been thinking about it." Disch blanched, then
nodded. "You do believe it, don't you? That Aubrey killed Castleford
because he was helping Nazis to escape? Don't you?"

The central heating plopped in the silence. The room seemed hot.
The
cathedral spires rose against the grey sky, a sky as bleak and
featureless as the landscape of Massinger's imagination.

"Yes," Disch admitted finally in a small, weak voice. "Yes, I
believe it."

The second helicopter flicked up and away, its belly luridly
reddened by the flames from the first. A fuel tank exploded, and a ball
of white flame soared into the air, almost touching the underside of
the surviving MiL. The whole of the courtyard was illuminated. Dead
Pathans, sporadic movement, Miandad's body, Mohammed Jan's green turban
on the snow only yards away. Hyde turned over the body of Petrunin and
tugged open the greatcoat and the jacket beneath. There was a spreading
stain on the front of his uniform shirt. A thin dribble of blood from
the corner of Petrunin's closed mouth. Hyde groaned as if he, too, had
been wounded. The flames from the crashed helicopter died down and he
almost missed the flickering of the Russian's eyelids. But he saw it,
and heard the groan of pain. It was thick, as if coming through a
liquid. More blood dribbled across Petrunin's cheek.

Hyde hauled Petrunin into a sitting position, then laid the
Russian's weight across his back and heaved himself upright. Petrunin
was draped heavily and unmoving - perhaps fainted, perhaps now dead? -
in a fireman's lift. Staggering, Hyde jogged at a leaden pace across
the courtyard. The spotlight of the second MIL was returning, moving
towards the now located source of the
rocket that had destroyed its companion. The shooting had almost
stopped. Then the four-barrel machine-gun in the nose of the gunship
opened up, raking the other side of the courtyard.

Hyde stopped, regained his bearings, shifted Petrunin's weight
to
greater comfort across his back, and then jogged through the shattered
gates of the fort. Immediately, his feet blundered into thicker snow
and his breathing became more laboured. His field of vision was
restricted, but he saw no soldiers. He was climbing before he fully
realised the fact, stamping one precarious and tired footstep ahead of
the next, his face bent almost to the snow under his burden. He heard a
groan, but sensed no movement through Petrunin's body. Fire lit the
snow around him, dimly and fadingly. He thought he could hear orders
shouted above the noise of his heart and breathing, but he could not be
certain it was not his own voice urging him to greater effort. The
light on the snow had vanished, and he realised he was in the trees
above the fort. He leaned their combined weights against the rough bole
of a fir, then let the Russian's body slide into a sitting position
while he rested, hands on his knees, dragging in lungfuls of freezing
air. When he turned his head, Petrunin seemed to be watching him
sightlessly and Hyde could only wish it had been Miandad still alive
and whom he had carried out of the fort. It might have been his hatred
that caused the trembling in his limbs, or simply weakness. Blood
stained Petrunin's chin. Hyde knelt by him, holding him upright, his
hand at his back. It felt sticky, and he realised that the bullet had
passed through the Russian's body. He realised, too, that the bullet
had punctured one of Petrunin's lungs and that the man was going to die.

He studied the terrain below him. Figures moved in the light of
the
hovering helicopters - there were two of them again now - checking
bodies. There were three Pathans in turbans in the centre of the
courtyard. He heard clearly on the cold air the shots that killed them.
The helicopter which had crashed had almost burned out. He counted more
than twenty Russian troops, disregarding however many the two MiLs
carried. He returned his attention to Petrunin, who had turned his head
slightly and was looking directly into Hyde's face. The Russian tried
to smile, but only coughed blood. Hyde wiped the man's chin slowly and
delicately with the sleeve of his loose blouse. The blood, he saw,
stained his sleeve almost up to the elbow. Petrunin was dying.

Petrunin nodded, as if he guessed at Hyde's thoughts.

"They had orders to kill you," Hyde said. "You're right in the
shit
now, just like me." Again, Petrunin nodded. "They wouldn't take the
slightest chance, would they? Not with your bloody
Teardrop.
As soon as someone laid hands on you, that's all that worried them -
stop you from talking at all costs." Hyde was breathing heavily again,
and leaning towards the Russian. Then he stood up. "Oh, fuck it," he
growled. He looked back down at Petrunin. "Do you want to go on living
- or stay here?"

Petrunin held up one limp hand. Hyde knelt by him. Then he said,
"Drop them in the shit, sport. Tell me about
Teardrop
."
Petrunin shook his head, in the slightest but most definite of
movements. Hyde glared at him, then shrugged. There was no time, now.
Later, perhaps —

He dragged Petrunin's arms across his back, hefted the body
- Petrunin groaned once and immediately became deadweight - across his
shoulders, and rose from his squat. He staggered under the weight and
the sudden assault of his own weariness, then he began climbing again,
one foot slowly and carefully and numbly placed in front of the other;
one, two, three, four, five, six seven…

Skirting trees, resting every twenty steps, then fifteen, then
twelve, as he climbed into the darkness and silence of the forest.
Often, he had to drop Petrunin's unconscious body into the snow and
rest, waiting until the shaking weakness left his limbs and he could
return his breathing to something like normal. Then, after checking the
fluttering, fading pulse and the amount of blood soaking the uniform,
he would heft him up again and continue his climb.

Two hundred and forty-three… four, five, six… seven… eight -
nine,
ten… eleven… He dropped the body again. When he had recovered
sufficiently to look around him, the fort was invisible, and the forest
was lightless and quiet. Distantly, he heard the rotors of a
helicopter, moving in what might have been another world or time. It
hardly impinged upon his awareness, and occasioned no sense of danger
in him. His body was capable only of feeling weakness, of resenting the
weight that burdened it. Hyde was incapable of emotion.

Seven hundred and sixty-two, three… one thousand-fifty, no,
seventy,
eighty-three… twelve hundred and eighty-three… four… four… five - six…
Three thousand forty-one… One, two, three - six, seven…

Hyde lurched and fell. The trees were smaller, more straggling,
upside-down. Something soft was falling on his face and hands. He
crawled, clawing with his hands, pushing with his feet. He touched
snow, pulled at it as at a lifeline, felt rock beneath, clung to it as
if on some vertical cliff-face.

He drifted… attended… drifted - woke. His breathing was calmer,
his
body numb. Petrunin lay, staring upwards a few yards from him on the
gentle slope. He had noticed nothing of the changing terrain. The
thinner trees were stunted by altitude. Hyde turned on his back. Rock
hung over him, a great shelf blacker than the sky. It frightened him
before it slowly assumed the properties of safety and hiding. He
listened. His fading heartbeat, his breathing, the soughing of the
wind, the call of an animal. Then, silence. What was missing? What
noise —?

There was no noise of rotors. His hands beat the snow at his
sides
in applause. Of course —! No helicopters. No noise. He could not
consider his luck, or his direction, or why his footsteps had not been
discovered. He looked at his snow-covered body, and licked his wet
face. He blinked. There were no stars. Cloud —?

It was snowing. He hadn't realised until a gust of wind had
blown
the snow under the overhang and onto his face. He raised his head.
Petrunin was slowly being whitened by the snow, as with a shroud.

Shroud —

Hyde got to his knees and crawled swiftly, scrabblingly across
to
Petrunin, shaking him by the lapels the moment he reached him. Cough,
blood, eyelids flickering…

"Come on, you bastard!" Hyde breathed fiercely. "Get out of the
bloody snow, you tit!" He giggled to himself as he dragged Petrunin
under the overhang. He propped him against the rock, and pulled his
greatcoat tightly about him, in part to hide the bloodstained shirt.
Petrunin's face was white, drawn. He was dying, was already close to
death.

Failure filled Hyde, as if his exhausted body was a bay that had
simply waited for the tide of that emotion to engulf it. The one man
who understood
Teardrop
, who
had created it, was dying at his
side; bleeding to death with absolute certainty. Hyde could do nothing.

He clenched his hands into fists he could not feel, not even his
nails digging into his palms. Cold or exhaustion, he could not tell. He
could distinguish nothing except the sharp edges of the rock at his
back and the curtain of snow falling, swaying in the gusts, moving
aside, falling again. He could do nothing…

Except listen —

Petrunin was talking. His voice sounded calm, without delirium,
but
it was weak and interrupted by coughing. Hyde tore part of the tail of
his blouse away and wiped at the man's chin after each bout of
coughing. It was as if the words were mouthfuls of pureed baby food and
the piece of cloth a means of removing any the baby did not swallow.
Petrunin stared at the curtain of snow that must have hidden their
tracks from the pursuit and was concealing them now, and spoke. It was
evident he knew he was dying.

"I hate this place," Petrunin was saying. Rather, his voice
spoke;
it was somehow separate from the man, almost the last surviving
particle of him. The tone was tired, detached, almost affected. Hyde
would have dismissed it, in other circumstances, as a lack of resource
in a mediocre actor. "I hate this place." It was evident that he had
repeated the phrase over and over again, until it caught his
companion's attention. "I hate this place…"

"Yes," Hyde said quietly.

It seemed sufficient, for Petrunin's strange, calm, objective
voice
continued: "I hate to end like this… I know I'm dying, Hyde. I know…"
He coughed a small, polite cough. Hyde wiped the little dribble of
blood from the Russian's chin. "I am so - so angry…" It was the weary
anger of a corpse. Yet Hyde knew the depth of Petrunin's feelings would
have wracked a healthy body. He did not look at the Russian, merely
nodded. He felt himself slipping into sleep, in and out of shallow,
cold water. He shook his head and sat upright, pressing his back
against the sharp creases in the rock. Petrunin's hand was waving
feebly towards the swinging curtain of the snowfall. "Out there - a
shithouse, Hyde. Like nothing you would know…" He had spoken in English
as he gestured, but his voice was as expressionless as that of a
translation machine. Alternately, he spoke English and Russian, at
times dividing the same sentence or phrase between the two languages.
"Like nothing I've known…"

Hyde knew time was slipping away as surely as Petrunin was
moving
towards his final evasion. Yet he could not interrogate the man, not
even point his monologue in a more fruitful direction. Petrunin might
simply give up, die the moment he was interrupted. Hyde had no idea how
long remained. He was angry, and yet he simply listened.

"So many bodies - no rules…oh, yes, they knew what they were
doing
—" Hyde wiped the man's chin. The face was grey, the teeth outlined by
a dark mascara of blood. Hyde looked away. Petrunin continued, thickly:
"Kapustin and Nikitin and the smug, smiling, certain others - they knew
what they were doing. The boy has got too smart, too big for his boots
- let's drop him right in the shit…" There was a grey self-pity in the
voice now, though its tone was still remote. "Let's send the smart-ass
to Afghanistan. It might even save us a bullet!" Hyde wiped at the
man's chin, but there was only a little blood. He began to worry now
that the blood would stop, that the final internal haemorrhaging would
begin, drowning Petrunin before his narrative was ended. He had changed
from shock into the costume of self-pity. Hyde could only wonder when
he would become more confidential, ready for another voice; needing
company, needing comfort.

"Two years - two years I survived it… God - do you know how much
I
learned about killing, about slaughter, about mutilation —! And the
rebels taught me everything. I threw up the first time I saw a patrol
of ours that had been attacked by rebels…" No coughing; nothing but a
loud, choking swallow. "Napalm, burn them like rats, like dark things
in corners, like lice… you can burn them all if you can find them…"