The Bear's Tears (5 page)

Massinger checked back, tracing his finger up the column. The
subject had changed. Aubrey was not merely suspected of Castleford's
murder. Russian agent, Russian agent, he read… information in our
possession, Russian defector in the US, CIA file delivered to MI5, MI5
to act… arrest of'C' expected at any moment, pending a full
investigation of the charges…

He read on until he reached the demonic folk-lore, and the old
devils of Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt came to occupy their
familiar places. Then he threw the newspaper from him and it fluttered
heavily to the pale blue velvet carpet. He turned to look at his wife.

"Well?" she said in a tight, strained voice. He sensed the
malevolence in her tone.

"Well?" he could only repeat hopelessly.

"It is
Aubrey
they're talking about, isn't it? Your
friend
Aubrey?" He could do no more than nod in admission. "To think that he's
been
here!
Here
! Sat here with us, with you… !"
Evidently, she believed every word of the report.

"Darling…" he began, hoisting himself out of his chair with the aid
of his stick. When he looked up, her face wore an appalled expression,
as if his movements were some further species of betrayal. "I can't
defend him," he said shakily, moving towards her. She seemed to back,
away slightly along the sideboard. Her large cuff slid against the
crystal of a decanter, and her gold bracelets rattled against the
glass.
"I can't tell you anything, anything at all…"

"You've known him… for years you've known him —!"

"Not then…"

"He's
your friend!"

"Yes."

"He murdered my father!" Her face was young, urchin-like, abandoned.

"They say he betrayed your father to the NKVD… I don't know what to
say to you - it's no more than a
rumour
."

They wanted it known
, he reminded himself, and the future
became clear to him in a moment of insight; it loomed over him like a
cloud - no, more solid than that, like a great stone that would crush
him if he could not learn to carry it. "Only a rumour," he repeated
huskily.
They wanted it known. The Joint Intelligence Committee,
the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Secretary, even the PM - they've all
allowed the witch-hunt. Everyone must want Aubrey's head
. Then, he
realised the truth…
They believe it. They believe Aubrey's guilty…
they even believe he's a Russian agent
.

He opened his arms. She moved into them with the sullen step of
reluctant surrender. Her body heaved with sobs. His neck was wet from
her tears. Thirty-five years late, she possessed the emotions of a
child or a teenage daughter. Her world, her certainties, had been
altered and thrown into shadow.

His eyes roamed the large room. He noticed, as if for the first
time, the number of framed photographs of her father that almost
littered the walls, the sideboard, the occasional tables. As if the
place were some weird kind of roadside shrine to a little-known saint.
A portrait of the young Castleford stared down at him from one of the
walls. Castleford was sacrosanct. Margaret's mother, of course, had
been mostly responsible for the veneration her daughter still felt; the
unalloyed, immutable admiration of a child remained with her even now.
Especially
now —

Margaret had been flung back down some time-tunnel to the moment
when Castleford had first disappeared, to the moment he had died.

"There, there…"he breathed, stroking her hair from crown to neck.
"There, my darling, my darling…"

"After all this time," she murmured, sniffing. He felt her swallow
hard, and then her voice was firmer. "I wasn't prepared for anything
like this - his face on the screen, suddenly to know that he had been
betrayed, not just murdered, but betrayed deliberately…"

He continued to stroke her hair gently. "I know, I know…" He glanced
up, into the mirror behind them. He saw a face that had been quickly,
and perhaps permanently aged. Deep lines, hunted eyes. His own
features. His hip ached with the premonition of effort. He was unready,
it was unfair, grossly unfair.

He knew it was false. All of it. Not Aubrey. Aubrey could not be a
Russian agent. Never.

But Margaret
… ?

He could not answer to the siren-call of that priority, even though
his whole heart and body required it of him. Her body was against his,
asserting its pre-eminence, but a chilly, clear part of his mind held
it at a distance. He had to help Aubrey. At whatever cost, he had to
help Aubrey now.

At least, he had to offer…

Hyde finished the last mouthful of Wiener Schnitzel and washed it
down with a glass of thin red Austrian wine. The cafe was noisier now,
more crowded with regulars interested only in wine and beer and coffee.
He was almost the last person to have ordered a meal. Now, his stomach
was full and his mind had slowed to a half-amused, cynical walking
pace. He could no longer seriously accept the idea of collusion between
Kapustin and MI5. It was patently ridiculous, even after only a small
carafe of wine. Someone had wanted him dead, yes…

But that had been because it was a set-up. Kapustin's game-plan
depended upon getting rid of Hyde. Leaving Aubrey alone to face the
music. It was neat, clear, hard-edged in his mind, like a piece of
coloured glass. No witnesses, no corroboration for Aubrey from the one
man who had been at most of the meetings with
Teardrop
.
Efficiency.

He wiped his lips with the soft paper napkin, studied the remaining
few sauteed potatoes, and decided against them. He was replete, calm;
certain. He looked at his watch. Just after ten. Almost time to call
in, arrange to be picked up by the embassy.

Aubrey was accused of treachery. Kapustin was cast, no doubt, as his
control. A clever KGB set-up, one which Aubrey had danced along with
for two years. Babbington and
MI5
had swallowed the story.
Clever; specious, but clever. Aubrey had enough enemies in MI5 and JIC
and the Cabinet Office for it to tip the scales against him; a cloud
was all they needed, not a prosecution.

He must recover the recording of Aubrey's conversation with
Kapustin. It would prove that it was the Russian who was refusing to
come over, that Aubrey had been engaged in a proposed defection by
Kapustin to the West. He must find it -Vienna Station
must
find it —

He studied the bill, counted notes onto the table, and then moved
towards the back of the cafe and the telephones. Now, he was possessed
by an urgent curiosity to discover how clever the KGB had been, to talk
to Aubrey and even to Babbington. Also, part of him wanted to see
Aubrey wriggle and scratch his way out of his dilemma.

He dialled the Vienna Station number and, when the switchboard
answered, he supplied the current code-identification. Almost
immediately, he heard Wilkes's voice, breathy and urgent, at the other
end of the line.

"Patrick -? Where have you been, man?" Wilkes exclaimed, his urgency
creating a ringing suspicion in Hyde's awareness that was immediately
subdued by the man's next words. "The old man's been crying out in his
sleep for you! Where the hell did you get to?"

"I - a little local difficulty," Hyde replied, reading the felt-pen
graffiti on the mirror in the phone booth. Punk rock, the inevitable
swastika, telephone numbers promising sodomites paradise. He closed the
door of the booth against a burst of laughter from the cafe. Outside,
in hard-and-shadowed lighting, tipsy jollity suggested normality. He
had been stupid. Even in danger of his life, he had been stupid.

"He's all right?" he asked.

"Furious - you know him," Wilkes replied confidentially. There was a
chuckle in his voice. So
normal
—

A gale of laughter from the cafe was like a concussion against the
glass. A waitress passed the booth in a check apron that matched the
row of tablecloths.

"What's going on?"

"Christ - Babbington and his merry men haven't confided in me.
They're in a huddle with Aubrey now. All sorts of charges are flying
around."

"The KGB tried to kill me —"

"What?" Wilkes was incredulous.

"It's their set-up, has to be.
Teardrop
was watching from
the wings…" Wilkes was silent for a moment. Hyde added: "It's all
Kapustin's game - the tape will prove that."

"What tape, Patrick?" Wilkes asked eagerly.

"Aubrey was wired —"

"Yes - we saw that. Where's the tape?"

"I dropped the bloody thing in the Belvedere."

"We'll take care of it!" It sounded like relief, even to the sigh
that followed the words. Hyde was puzzled. Then Wilkes removed the
impression as he said with urgent concern: "Come in, Patrick. This is
just what the old man needs. We'll find that tape
- you
talk
to Babbington."

"Have they arrested the old man?"

"Christ knows! The mutual embarrassment's like a fog in here. But
everyone looks serious - deadly serious."

"OK."

"Where are you?"

For a moment Hyde studied the number on the dial of the telephone,
and the location information. Another gust of laughter concussed the
glass. He turned his head. Normal. Aubrey needed his information.

"OK," he said. "Small cafe, in the Goldschmidgasse, near the
cathedral. I'll be inside."

"Hang on. We'll have a car there for you in ten minutes. Anyone
suspicious in the area?"

"No. I wasn't followed, once I shook them off."

"Good. Thank God you're all right. Everyone was worried…"

"OK, Wilkes. Hurry."

"Ten minutes at the outside."

Hyde put down the receiver. The scrawled-upon mirror was cloudy, and
the glass of the booth had become dulled with the raised temperature.
He folded back the door and stepped into the cafe. Strangely, the
laughter had a mocking rather than comforting ring. He shivered, and
returned to his table. The notes had been collected. He left the pile
of change and pulled his overcoat from the back of his chair. He
hesitated with one arm thrust into a sleeve, because the cafe was warm
and because he realised that all he had to do was to wait. A matter of
a few minutes. Outside, there had already been sleet riding on a fresh
wind when he entered the cafe. Then he continued to put on the coat
because he felt shaken into wakefulness by his instincts. He should
check the area around the cathedral square. Someone still wanted him
dead. Someone who spoke accentless English. That unwelcome realisation
bobbed out of the dark at the back of his mind, more real than the
lights and the laughter and talk and the reassurances of Wilkes's voice.

He closed the door behind him. Sleet blew down the narrow
Goldschmidgasse and through the halo of white light around a
street-lamp in the Stephansplatz. The wind had strengthened, and it
eased itself through his overcoat. He shivered, then turned towards the
lights of the square, shoulders hunched, collar turned up, the melting
sleet from his hair insinuating itself between his collar and skin. The
west door of the Stephansdom was a gap of dark shadow in the sooty
facade of the cathedral. Light burst from the metro entrance to his
right. Hyde eased himself into the doorway of a shop and surveyed the
square. Three minutes by his watch since he had put down the receiver.
He had only to wait.

A group of people emerged from the mouth of the metro station, most
of them young; noisy. He watched them bait each other, bait an old man,
reel. One youth blundered against the shop's grilled window, pressing
his nose flat as he tried to resolve the blurred souvenirs into
distinct objects. Then he rolled on, bumping against Hyde before moving
away. Hyde's body had flinched from the contact, and he was aware of
his heightened nerves. The youth expelled beery breath and a hard laugh
and almost returned to reproduce the fear he sensed, but then was towed
by the laughter of his friends towards the north side of the cathedral.
Couples drifted or were blown like black scraps across the square.
Bodies crouched beneath umbrellas. Hyde's breathing returned to normal.

"Come on, come on," he murmured. Six minutes, and his feet were cold
through the suede boots. His hands seemed numb in his pockets. "Come
on…"

An old woman tottered down the steps into the metro station. The
light coming from it appeared now like the open mouth of a furnace as
Hyde became colder. He could wait there… ?

He moved out of the doorway. Sleet slapped against his cheek. He
hurried across the square, head bowed, into the darkness beneath the
archway of the cathedral's west door. He pressed his
back
against the wood, then scanned the square once more.

And saw the first of them. Expected-unexpected. He had been looking
for surveillance, something that might prevent him reaching the car.
Someone stumbling upon him by chance. He found purpose. He found
informed opinion - knowledge. The car in the Goldschmidgasse, coming
from the far end of the narrow street, extinguished its lights perhaps
seven seconds before it turned into a parking space. And the man he had
seen on foot, moving from the Rotenturm towards the side street, had
signalled to it. He shuddered, pressing his arms against his sides to
still the quivering of his body. Overcoat, sports jacket, woolen
shirt, skin. He was intensely aware of his vulnerability.

Second man, third man…

One had come out of the mouth of the metro station in a dark hat and
overcoat. The other had come from the cathedral's south side, moving
purposefully across the still-lit windows of a men's outfitters. Dark
hat, dark overcoat. Dressed for the weather but umbrella-less in the
sleet. Erect, unaware of the weather, heads turning like pieces of
machinery; oiled, regular, thorough. Point of convergence, the
Goldschmidgasse. The first man he had seen paused in the shop doorway
where Hyde had first placed himself.