The Bear's Tears (51 page)

He requested Massinger's room number.

"Come on, come on…"he murmured, then: "Ah, Paul, my friend. I
apologise for waking you at this hour."

"Wolfgang? What is it?"

"I appear to have been burgled. The files have been taken. I'm
sure
they were the object of the burglary. I am calling you to advise
extreme caution tomorrow and for all the days that follow."

"Burglarised - God…"

"Please be careful - I will not caution you not to go, because
you
would not listen. But, watch your back, my friend. You may need old
instincts, old training. And hurry back. I - we need each other's help,
of that I am certain."

"Yes, yes I will. A couple of days, no more —"

"Good night, then."

He flung the telephone onto the sofa, as if to allow it to
remain an
integral part of the ransacked room. He rubbed his forehead, his other
hand on his hip as he paced the stained and littered carpet. He
appeared professorial, and on the point of beginning some abstruse line
of argument. His thoughts, however, were clear and simple.

KGB. Moving to protect, moving to remove proof. Carrying away on
large farm forks the dungheap concealing the diamond. Protecting…

It had to be. Babbington. At once, they had moved to a position
of
aggressive defence on his behalf.

It meant caution. Extreme, almost somnolent caution, if he were
to
proceed. Especially, it meant doing nothing to arouse their suspicions
until he had Massinger back with him from Vienna.

It also meant, he thought suddenly, scrabbling for the
telephone, it
also meant that Frau Margarethe Schröder might, just might, be in some
immediate danger. Picking up the telephone, he began dialling the
prison in Cologne, his eyes roaming over the littered, broken remains
of his furniture and ornaments with a weary gleam of wisdom and cunning.

He was running into the low, newly risen sun, wintrily-red, his
shape black against it for those pursuing, his shadow thrown long
behind him. His shadow was palpable to him, even though he could not
see it. To his heightened, exhausted, almost hallucinatory senses, it
dragged behind him like a lure for hounds. He was an easy black target
against a red disc. He could hear the noise of the MiL gunship as it
prepared to swoop once more, and he scanned the rocks for cover.

Finesse, you bastards, finesse, finesse… ! he had silently
screamed
at the helicopter, over and over, as he had reached the narrow,
twisting floor of the steep valley and began running as the dead
winch-man was retrieved by the crew of the MiL. He wanted them to toy
with him, play cat-and-mouse. That way, he might survive.

The snow had drifted in places in the narrow knife-cut of the
valley. It restrained and trapped, caused him to stumble in his fear
and haste and weariness, then it was a thin, powdery skin and he ran
more easily from rock to rock, dodging, sprinting, bending low then
running upright, head back like an athlete. It was perhaps no more than
four miles long, and he would reach the border in less than a mile —

That was what he had announced to himself, between the few
quick,
deep, preparatory breaths he had taken at the foot of the tumbled,
boulder-strewn slope, the Russian helicopter still above and behind him.

Less than a mile —

It was meaningless, of course. The border wasn't even drawn at
that
point, it did not exist. Pakistan lay at the other end of the valley,
and Parachinar, which he had to avoid. And somewhere was the army and
the people who would be waiting for Miandad, under instructions that
the dead Pakistani officer had never divulged to him.

Less than a mile —

And he had begun running. Random, fast, hesitant, bent over,
upright, apparently directionless. There were one or two shots which
faded on the dry, cold morning air, their bullets well wide. It was not
Kalashnikovs he had to avoid, but cannon fire, machine-gun volleys,
grenades, anti-personnel mines… all the weaponry of a MiL-24 gunship
determined to make a kill.

Half a mile, surely half a mile by now, he pleaded with his
judgment
as he heard the MiL move from the hover to the approach as if it were a
bird of prey stooping. The noise clattered in the thin dry air,
bouncing off the rocks. The modern Stuka, he heard some irrelevant part
of his awareness remark in the tone of the bar-room bore, passing out
his platitudes like helpings of crisps or peanuts.

The image grew, and he amputated it. He turned, and watched the
MiL.
It was flying cautiously - no, not cautiously, tauntingly was the right
description. One change of acceleration, one dip, and it could cover
him like a cloud or a coffin-lid in perhaps no more than six or seven
seconds. But it wanted to play cat-and-mouse because its crew were so
enraged and so confident. Make him sweat —

Terror, advancing up the narrow valley, dragging its wake of
deafening, reverberated sound behind it. Terror. It minced slightly,
from side to side, swaying as if grotesquely miming a woman's walk. It
moved towards Hyde's shadow, which had seemed to prostrate itself at
the helicopter's approach. Hyde felt his body quivering uncontrollably.

Terror.

He turned his back on it, and began running again, weaving as
quickly and agilely as he could through the littered rocks and
boulders. His legs were leaden; the noise seemed to drain them of
strength. Then he heard the launch of one, two missiles from the pods
beneath the MiL's stubby wings. He dived for the nearest rock, almost
somersaulting over it, crouching behind it immediately. The flare from
the rockets dazzled his eyes, he could feel the heat of the exhausts.
The two rockets exploded twenty yards ahead of him, throwing up earth
and rock and snow in front of the red sun, obscuring it. The valley
appeared dark. Hyde stood up and ran into the churning cloud of debris,
and through it into the glare of the sun. They'd been playing with him.
He wasn't meant to die at once, not just yet.

The MiL slipped over the haze of settling earth and dust,
following
him, moving barely faster than he was himself. He jumped a low rock,
almost twisted his ankle as he landed on a loose boulder, hopped until
his balance was righted, and went on, dodging and weaving in his
sprint, changing direction every few paces. Meaninglessly, he realised
he must already have crossed the border. The MiL's long, fat shadow
slid over him like night, and the machine was a little ahead of him. A
grinning face swung the mounted machine-gun in his direction, a flutter
of iron butterflies emerged, fell from the belly of the MiL, bouncing
and skittering ahead of him like tacks spread to ambush an approaching
cyclist. Anti-personnel bombs, the toylike things that had deprived
children of arms and eyes and faces in a dozen corners of the world.
Play with the nice iron toy, painted dark-green, and numbered. Bang —

Hyde jumped onto a rock as one of the stub-winged bombs rolled
towards his feet. He tiptoed like an unpractised tightrope artiste
along the rock, arms akimbo for balance, then jumped to another rock,
jumped again, ran and skipped three paces, jumped to a larger rock —

One lay in the fold of the rock, his toe reached at it, he
overbalanced, tumbling onto the snow-covered ground where the tips and
wingtips of the iron butterflies thrust out of the thin snow carpet,
growing like strange plants. He rolled, groaning, and stopped his
momentum by digging in his heels. His head swung round and he was
staring at the white numbers on the squat little body of one of the
bombs.

Fused, or contact?

He could not tell whether they would detonate on contact or
after
the lapse of a precise number of seconds.

Then one exploded behind him, shattering a loaf-sized lump from
its
parent rock. He got to his knees, he stood and hopped. A deadly game of
hopscotch, one foot, side, forward, side, side, up onto a rock - the
MiL was still ahead of him, the machine-gunner grinning, waiting for
him to catch up with the game - along the rock, one foot, space there,
bomb there, quick, quick, bomb! -clear ground,
hole-in-the-snow, avoid! - clear, clear, bomb, clear…

He was out of the little cabbage-patch they had sown for him,
and
the ground was clear. Small detonations, throwing up snow and brown
earth, began almost at once. He ran, keeping close to the scatter of
rocks and boulders, his breath and limbs labouring now that the going
was instinctive. He must be no more than half a mile from the end of
the valley. He was across the border; closer to death.

"Finesse, finesse, finesse," he kept repeating through the thick
saliva in his mouth, through clenched teeth. "Finesse, finesse…"

The rocks were charred, even the snow looked black beneath its
light, latest covering. Something had burned… ?

Fifty Pathans - metal balls, the strange eggs that had burst
open on
impact - the silver, gleaming mist…

It was here. The MiL was above him. He could almost see the eggs
dropping, bursting open, smell the napalm mist —

Egg, egg, three, four, six, ten - fifteen…

He could see them
—.

Half-eggs, rolling, their contents spilled already. A string of
eggs
laid by the MiL.
They were going to
burn him
—

He felt the mist cold on his face. It refracted and distorted
the
sunlight, enlarged the huge red disc ahead of him. It was cold,
chilling, terrifying. It clung. It was higher than he was, he was
in
it
—

A tunnel of silver mist, just like before, gleaming even in the
daylight. It outlined his arm as the limb bobbed in front of his eyes
like St Elmo's fire. It clung to his hands, to the skin of his hands,
to his Pathan clothing, to every part of him. To his face and beard and
eyelids —

He wanted to scream, to stop and do no more than scream, as the
MiL
banked sharply and returned towards him. What was it, was it —?

The match, the firefly glow he had seen drop from Petrunin's
blood-red helicopter…

A tunnel, a box of mist that would become a box of fire,
consuming
him —

He rubbed his clothing, the mist moved about him, closed in
again -
the helicopter slowly settled above him, the machine-gunner grinning,
signaling farewell in an exaggerated, final salute - he rubbed at the
mist again where he felt it on his skin, waved his arms, shook and
danced his body but the mist only stirred sluggishly then closed in, as
heavy and unmoving as long curtains in a slight breeze. It surrounded
him. He was trapped, already dead. The mist had formed a cell, with a
roof, walls, floor. And it would consume everything within it —

Within it?

Spark?

He could see the spark,
in
the dark belly of the MiL -
the
means of ignition was about to be released.

Within it —

He ran. The mist moved, closed behind him, gleamed and
shimmered,
dulled the light. He ran. He ran. The mist gave but did not end. Its
spread was controlled by its chemical composition. How wide, how deep,
how long —? He did not look up. He ran.

Light, air, less coldness on his face and the backs of his
hands. He
ran.

Mist folding behind, rock ahead. He ran.

He was still covered with it
—.

He dived for the shelter of the rock, hearing the roar of the
mist
as it became flame. He rolled in the snow, hiding his face and hands,
folding them into the bulk of his body. He rolled. Smoke near him,
searing pain in his hands, on his face. He plunged them into snow,
burning on his legs, he rolled and rolled in the snow, driving his body
into a drift against the rocks which half-buried him, filling his
nostrils and mouth and eyes and driving out all sensory impressions of
the burning mist. Gobbets of fire must have flown in the MiL's
downdraught, some of them reaching him. He did not want to know about
his burns.

He did not want to know anything. He was finished. The snow
cooled
him, froze him. He couldn't move - there was nothing left. The snow
numbed his face and hands. He turned his mouth, spat out snow,
breathed. It was enough. The air, even if it tasted of napalm, revived
him.

But nothing more —

He would wait.

He kept his eyes closed. They were heavy with snow. He heard the
helicopter, his body tensed. He waited.

The noise - he could feel the downdraught of the rotors
- clattered
off the side of the valley, enlarging and expanding into two, three
sets of rotors. Perhaps others had come… ? He did not care. He could no
longer even be terrified. Soon, soon now…

He was numb and clean. The smell of the napalm was dying down,
the
heat dissipating. He opened his eyes slowly. Half-melted snow watered
in them. The helicopter hovered above him blackly, haloed with
sunlight. There was another helicopter thirty yards away. And he heard
the retreating noise of rotors. Retreating…

Roundels, green and white. Hyde was disorientated, waiting to
die.
The crescent moon and one star of Islam at the tail of the helicopter.

Green and white, no red star on the belly.

Roundels… ?

He could not explain what had happened, not even as the Pakistan
Army Sikorsky S-61R gunship helicopter dropped gently and benignly
towards the charred floor of the narrow valley, blowing snow over his
body from its downdraught as it descended.

"This whole matter has gone far enough to have become something
of a
shambles," Sir William Guest, GCMG, Cabinet Office Chairman of the
Joint Intelligence Committee and a former Head of the Diplomatic
Service, appeared pleased with the opportunity to display his
seniority. His leather swivel chair creaked under his considerable
weight - Babbington noticed again that he had a fat man's enclosed eyes
and expressionless facial flesh which suggested slowness of mind, even
stupidity. At least, nothing more than a certain money-grubbing low
cunning, Babbington added to his observation. It was, of course, a
mask. Sir William was his master, and his mentor, and his
intellectual capacities were considerable. SAID was his brain-child;
its birth was the fruit of his persuasion of the PM and the Cabinet
Committees concerned. "A shambles," Sir William repeated with heavy
emphasis. Then: "You will remember, Andrew, that I opposed the idea of
lifting the 'D' Notices, and especially the idea of a prosecution for
treason in Aubrey's case." It was not a hand-washing exercise, rather a
reprimand.