The Bear's Tears (50 page)

"In - my flat," she admitted in a small voice. "Usually in my
flat."
The repetition was more defiant. She had lifted her head.

"Why - for security?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Of course," she answered scornfully. "The woman was the wife of
a
civil servant, someone he worked with here in Bonn." Zimmermann was
nodding, staring at the table-top and its faint geology of coffee
stains and pencil scribbles, doodles and cigarette burns. "They had to
be careful. I was asked -I helped." The implication was that she had
been paid, too. Babbington had evidently won her over by charm and
bribery. She flicked a lock of frizzy white hair from her forehead.
"They met there two, maybe three times a week."

"Can you remember exactly when this was?"

"1974, of course." And then her anger burst out. "When
Guillaume,
the traitor, was arrested. Now he is back in the East, after
what he did to betray Germany, and I am here —!" Zimmermann reached
towards her, but she snatched her manlike hands from the table. "Why do
they still care about all that?" she wailed. There was iron in the
self-pity, however. "It was forty years ago - everyone has forgotten -
people don't know and don't want to know! Why am I here?" she
screamed.

Zimmermann stood up, leaning his knuckles on the table. "It is
to
help you get out of here that you must answer my questions, Frau
Schröder. A little more help, if you please. I am a very busy man, and
I have no time to waste with these - demonstrations of self-pity."

She turned from her lawyer to him, sniffed and wiped her eyes.
The
tone had stung and impressed her. Bribed her, too. She nodded her head,
vigorously.

"What can I tell you? Two or three times a week, there was never
mess, the sheets were always changed on the bed, there were champagne
glasses washed up, any food… all was washed up, put away when they had
finished. I was never inconvenienced. The flat was always empty when I
returned."

"Did you know this woman?"

"Yes. By name - I had seen her once or twice."

"But never at the flat?"

"No. They were - discreet."

Zimmermann pondered. At last he had been able to dehumanise the
situation, purge it of its associations. Margarethe Schröder was now no
more than a possible witness to events in 1974 - a retired secretary
with a high security clearance. The recipient of a civil service
pension.

"Can you be specific, as to dates? When did this affair begin
- when
did they begin using your flat for their meetings?"

"I went to work for Mr Babbington - oh, in March, or perhaps the
beginning of April. I am not certain. At first, I did not wish to be
seconded, but he was very charming, very considerate…"

"Of course. And the flat?"

"Perhaps two weeks later - at first, it was to be only for one
time,
then he pressed me, with such apologies… and so…" She raised her hands,
almost smiling. "Then two or three times a week." She chuckled
throatily.

"I see. They could not use hotels?"

"The woman was, as you know, well known in Bonn. She might have
been
recognised by women in her circle?" To Schröder, it was self-evident
that such precautions had been needed.

Zimmermann paused for a moment, then he said: "You had a
telephone
installed in your apartment, of course?"

"Naturally."

"The week of the traitor Guillaume's arrest - Mr Babbington used
your flat?"

"Often. He persuaded me that I had been working too hard, that I
should take a few days' leave. I went to Bavaria - it was beautiful in
the spring. He - he bought the train tickets and booked the hotel… a
good hotel."

Zimmermann contained his rising sense of excitement. The
apartment
with its untapped, unsuspicious telephone, had been in Babbington's
possession for the crucial few days. Babbington's periods of
disappearance had been accounted for because of the affair - they even
knew where he was, so the surveillance reports and recollections
claimed. Babbington had disarmed them by indulging in an affair and
finding a hiding place for himself and the woman. It had excused any
and all of his actions, giving them the gloss of adultery, not
criminality. The telephone calls to Guillaume had begun on April 22nd.

"You returned to Bonn - when?"

"On the 25th of April."

"And Mr Babbington continued to use your apartment for his
meetings
with - this woman now dead?"

Margarethe Schroder shook her head. She even appeared saddened
by
the recollection. "No. Mr Babbington was very upset. He told me that
her husband was becoming suspicious - they had to part, even though he
begged her —"

"You believed him?"

"You think I don't recognise unhappiness when I see it?" she
challenged.

"So, the affair was over - and, of course, Mr Babbington's new
work
took up all his time. He was able to lose himself in his
responsibilities."

"Luckily for him. Slowly, he seemed to mend, to recover his
spirits."

"Did he settle your very high telephone bill before he returned
to
England, Frau Schröder?" Zimmermann asked quickly, startling and
confusing the woman.

"How did you… ?" Then she dismissed the suspicion that this was
the
thrust of Zimmermann's enquiries, and said, "Yes, he did. Every mark
and pfennig."

"It was a high bill. Did most of the calls - local ones - come
while
you were on holiday?"

"Yes… I think so, anyway —"

"But before that there were many calls - long-distance, even
international?" She nodded. "But the mainly local ones were while you
took your holiday?"

"There was never any attempt to deceive me - Mr Babbington
explained
that he took work to the apartment, that he had to talk to London a
great deal - before the bill arrived he told me all this."

"Ah. Of course. It was nothing." He looked at his watch. One in
the
morning. He felt a tired, jumpy excitement tightening his chest. This
was, at the very least, a satisfactory beginning. He had method and
opportunity now - perhaps he might discover motive, too, given time? He
stood up. He shook hands with Margarethe Schröder perfunctorily. "Thank
you," he said. "Thank you. I - shall be in touch with your lawyer, Herr
Ganzer, within a matter of days. I am sure we can do something to make
your next Christmas something to remember!" He tried to smile once
more, and almost achieved the expression of sincerity. It was a
reflection of his own self-satisfaction that she witnessed.

"Thank you," she said bemusedly. Zimmermann shook hands briefly
with
Ganzer, nodding an assurance as he did so, and left. His footsteps
clattered along the brightly lit, tiled corridor.

As he passed through the corridors and levels of the prison
towards
the main gates and his car, beneath the long striplights, he began to
escape the pervasive, constricting sense of imprisonment that the
interview room had contained. It had radiated from the woman, Schröder.
She was the past that imprisoned him and his country.

He accepted what he recognised as his own internment within his
talents. He was a spy and an interrogator, and always had been. That he
accepted as a willed life sentence. But her -Schröder - she represented
those who had made Germany and most of Europe a prison and a
charnel-house. He wanted to distance himself from them and what they
had done. In part, his whole life had been such a distancing process.
But now, his debt to Aubrey had returned him like a planet in a long,
elliptical orbit to the moment of Germany's greatest shame. He had come
face to face, in that warm, dry, interview room, with the horror of the
past.

He hurried into the cold air of the courtyard, turning up the
collar
of his overcoat. He climbed thankfully into the Mercedes, started the
engine and drove to the gates. He showed his pass and the gates opened.
He was free.

He had almost reached the slip-road to the Cologne-Bonn autobahn
before he realised he was being followed.

Babbington took the telephone call from Bonn and for once
envisaged
the town at the other end of the connection. He remembered, quite
clearly, Margarethe Schröder's small, cramped, neat apartment and the
telephone - and the dozens, even hundreds of calls he had made.
Sometimes the woman had been there - poor Use, who had died of cancer
so painfully - but mostly he had been alone. Use had been a good cover,
a good lover, but a luxury he had had to abandon as time ran out for
Guillaume. He had covered his tracks, but
Teardrop
had been
bound to raise the ghosts of '74, and now he was forced to exorcise
them a decade later.

"It is done - everything as you ordered. Do you want to look at
the
stuff?" The accent was American. The KGB officer had, like so many of
them, learned his English in the United States, probably as a student.

"What is it?"

"He had all the right files pulled. He was getting close. The
woman
in Cologne - he's seen her."

"You're certain?"

"Yes."

"Then let's hope tonight will be a lesson to him. Many thanks."

Babbington put down the receiver and rubbed his nose between
thumb
and forefinger, as if easing his sinuses. Oleg, his contact, sat
opposite him in a dowdily covered chair, a tumbler of malt whisky
balanced on its wide arm. He appeared at ease. Babbington considered.
It would be well - would yet be well…

Zimmermann had, however, moved quickly, with insight and talent.

"OK," Babbington announced casually. "It's been done. Zimmermann
is
due for a shock. It should keep him quiet - at least temporarily."

"What do you gain by that?"

"Time. Just as we gain time when Massinger and his wife fall
into my
hands tomorrow. They will be removed from the board."

"And Aubrey?"

"My reply to that, Oleg, is - and Hyde?"

"Don't worry. He's alone - he can't get out."

"Petrunin is dead?"

Oleg nodded. Fair hair flopped across his forehead. He flicked
it
aside. "Yes. They're certain."

"Two years too late."

"Perhaps."

"I have the right to complain - I'm coming behind with the
broom,
Oleg."

"The Centre has ordered me to inform you as to the dangers of
too
great a degree of ruthlessness in this matter."

"Too great - how?"

"What do you intend doing with the Massinger couple, for
example?
And Aubrey, when you locate him?"

"Have them brought back. What else?"

Babbington felt himself studied through a microscope of
distrust.
They were wary of the very ruthlessness that had attracted them to him,
that had guaranteed his seniority with the passage of time. With an
effort, he kept his face bland and reassuring while his thoughts raged.
A slight tic began at the corner of his mouth, and he masked it with
his tumbler, sipping at the whisky.

"It would be too easy, too simple, to use your enormous powers,"
Oleg said. "Like swatting flies. The problem is, the squashed flies
remain on the window-pane or the white wall, marking it."

"I don't need a lecture in caution. This is your test for me - I
shall pass it." He saluted his companion with the tumbler, and drank
again as the tic recommenced.

He would swat them - if they knew, any or all of them,
rather than just guessed or suspected or were blundering around,
blindfold at the party and trying desperately to touch someone they
could not see. If they knew, then he would swat them. If they
knew, or acted upon knowledge, at any time, then he would have them
eliminated - Massinger, Margaret, Aubrey, Zimmermann, Shelley, Hyde.
The whole little gang. Every one of them. He would have to be careful,
of course. If they behaved, they had to be allowed to live because
their deaths would be a messy and unnecessary complication…

But if they
knew
, and they
acted
—?

Dead.

"Another dead one," he said, picking up the bottle of whisky and
finding it empty.

Zimmermann inserted his key in the lock, and the door swung open
at
once, before he had turned the key. Immediately, he knew he had been
burgled. There was no one in the corridor, he had passed no one on the
stairs, no one had been using the lift…

He listened. Nothing. Silence. The smell of liquor, of broken
bottles. He stepped into the hall and felt for the switch. When the
light came on, he could see the door of the lounge ajar. Furniture was
overturned - a small piece of Meissen broken near the door, a headless
shepherdess - and the smell of the broken whisky and gin bottles
increased. Still he heard nothing.

He hurried now. The lounge was a shambles, and the wide-open
door of
the bedroom as he passed it revealed the tumbled bed and the drawers
hanging open like shocked mouths. His clothes were strewn about the
room.

He saw immediately that the silver pieces were gone, and the
porcelain. The paintings had been cut from their frames, the
photographs - there was one from his own past, in the uniform in which
Aubrey had captured him in 1940, grinning from beneath his peaked cap -
had been smashed or ground underfoot. The drinks cabinet had been
emptied - yes, a bottle of whisky and one of gin neckless, the liquor
soaking into the carpet.

He saw that the small wall-safe hung open, the picture frame
askew
that had concealed it. The files were gone, each and every one of them,
together with his savings books, his chequebook, his other credit
cards, his will and the rest of his papers. And the two thousand marks
in notes he always kept there.

But it was the files, of course. The damned files…

He was galvanised rather than numbed by shock. He looked out of
the
window but the Audi that had followed him was not to be seen in the
street. He crossed to the telephone, rescuing it from its entanglement
with a rug, finding the receiver itself hanging over the back of the
sofa. He dialled the Konigshof Hotel. He had no wish for a restorative
drink - the spilled whisky was oppressive and heady. He was angry at
the damage - the professional entry clumsily disguised by modern
vandalism. Very angry.