The Bear's Tears (55 page)

For the moment, she realised, she was drained of all feeling.
She
accepted her emptiness with gratitude. It was over, if only for that
moment or that day. She would not anticipate its return. She stood up
after chafing her cold legs. Then she turned towards the west door and
left the cathedral.

The Stephensplatz was still busy. Crowds of people seemed to
disappear into the maw of the metro entrance across the square.
Homegoers hurried past her as she walked slowly back towards the
shoe-shop and the archway and courtyard and apartment that she now felt
she could confront.

She turned up her collar. The wind had not lessened. It flicked
and
whirled around her, lifting the skirt of her coat, as she passed under
the archway. The fountain had become a weak, broken peacock's tail, and
the green plants rattled in the wind. She pressed the bell.

And saw that the door was unlocked, not fully latched…

No one had answered the bell - she had not heard the catch
released.
The door had been open. She went in and up the stairs, rehearsing her
manner towards Aubrey, especially towards Paul.

The double doors were open into the drawing-room, after the door
at
the head of the stairs had also been found ajar. Every door was open.
The drawing-room was empty.

"Paul," she called. Then, more loudly: "Paul!" Finally, hoarse
with
suspicions-becoming-fears: "Paul!"

The chair on which Clara Elsenreith had seated herself was
overturned. The armchairs and the sofa still bore the imprints of their
three bodies. There were glasses, and a smell of whisky spilt on the
huge Chinese carpet. She bent down to pick up one of the tumblers, and
her fingers were red when she clutched it. For an instant she imagined
she had cut herself, and then she saw the patch of blood on the pattern
of the rug, almost circular and dyeing its tight pile. There was a
smear of it on the chair, too, and on the arm of the chair, as if
someone wounded had slumped…

It was the chair where Paul had been sitting!

She heard a faint, distant knocking, muffled and unimportant.
Paul
—! Where was he? Where was Aubrey —? Blood —?

She heard footsteps coming quickly, lightly up the staircase.

The sunlight gleamed on the fins and flanks of the parked and
taxiing aircraft at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport. It was a bright,
springlike day after the cold and mountains of Afghanistan. Yet for
Hyde it was, also, a scene viewed through too much glass, too visible.
It prompted suggestions of the imminence of surveillance and discovery,
even though before entering the telephone booth he had swept the main
passenger lounge a dozen times and found it clean of everyone except
airport security.

He was still wrapped tightly in his dark overcoat. They had
handed
it to him in Peshawar as if it formed a part of a new and enemy
uniform. They had watched him with clever, sad, disapproving brown eyes
and serious dark faces. Miandad's people, all of them disappointed,
hurt that it was he who had come back, yet punctilious in carrying out
their dead superior's orders. Medical attention, food, bath, shave,
telephone provision with secure line, transport. Because he could not
write with his bandaged, aching hands, they had given him the use of a
portable tape-recorder and an empty room. Once ensconced and securely
alone, he had dictated into the receiver every clearly recollected word
Petrunin had spoken concerning the retrieval of
Teardrop
from
the security computer in Moscow. That and everything else had been done
swiftly as if by well-trained servants, survivors of the Raj. Only
their lips and eyes betrayed, at odd and quickly caught moments, their
disappointments, the laying of blame at his door.

He had been bundled aboard a military jet to Karachi and put on
the
first commercial flight to Rome. He knew he was no more than luggage.
Handled carefully and with respect because it was the property of a
wealthy and powerful man, but it was nevertheless done in a remote and
detached manner. His debriefing had been skeletal, concerned mainly
with the way in which Miandad had met his death. Even the demise of
Petrunin seemed of little interest to them. It seemed that nothing
which had occurred was deemed worthy of the sacrifice of Colonel
Miandad. Petrunin was the bane of the Pathans and the other mujahiddin.
His death might console the families for the loss of Mohammed Jan and
the others.

Thus, they had dispensed with his company as soon as they were
able.
Officially, he had never been in the country, had never crossed the
border with Miandad. They had repeated many times during his period
with them, Miandad's last words as reverently as if they had come from
the Koran. Mr Hyde must be given every assistance, whatever the
circumstances, whatever the outcome.

It was why their helicopter had spotted him, picked him up.

He had spent more than an hour on the telephone to Shelley, whom
Ros
had summoned to the flat in Earl's Court. He had been fully debriefed,
even to reciting once more Petrunin's useless retrieval instructions.
Shelley had been shocked by his revelations; bemused by the computer
jargon; numbed by their incapacity to do anything against Babbington.

On the flight from Karachi, Hyde had slept because there was
nothing
else to do; nothing left to do. He knew, and his knowledge was useless
to him, useless to Shelley. He had measured progress only by the
decreasing pain in his hands and face.

Clumsily, with his bandaged right hand, he dialled the number of
his
flat, and waited for it to ring four times. Then he put down the
receiver, picked it up and dialled again. On the third ring, Shelley
picked up the receiver in Earl's Court.

"It's me," Hyde announced. "What's the news?"

"Catastrophic, Patrick - nothing sort of disastrous." Over the
telephone, Shelley sounded lugubrious in an almost comic way. Yet Hyde
sensed shock and fear beneath the gloom.

"What?"

"Babbington's got the old man, and Massinger."

"Christ, how? When? You didn't even know where they were
yesterday."

"Vienna —"

"Massinger went back there? The glass around him was
acquiring the faint opaqueness of his tension. I don't believe
it —!"

"I thought they were in Bonn, with Zimmermann, just as I told you
yesterday. But, they got a lead on what happened to her
father in 1946, in Berlin —"

"What the hell are they doing bothering with that, for
Christ's sake?"

"His wife's obsessed by it - poor woman. But, the old man was
there,
too - in the apartment of a woman he knew in Berlin, and one Gastleford
knew, too." Shelley's voice was very quiet and distant, a long way
away. "I've spoken to her - got her number from Zimmermann… he's been
suspended from his post, by the way. The word from on high —"

"So, Babbington got the lot of them? They all walked right into
the
cage. Christ, while I'm out in Apache country, the old man's revisiting
one of his old flames and the bloody Massingers are worrying about dear
dead Daddy's spotless reputation! What a fucking mess, Shelley! What a
God-awful fucking cock-up!"

"Feel better now?" Shelley asked after a few moments of silence.

"What else is there?"

"They didn't get Massinger's wife, nor this Clara Elsenreith
woman.
Both of them were out of the apartment when the two men were taken.
There was blood on the carpet, and the maid locked in a wardrobe. This
Elsenreith woman's a hard one but she's scared, too. She knows what's
at stake - Aubrey must have confided everything to her."

"Where's the Massinger woman now?"

"Stored safely."

"And the old man?"

"I don't know. I do know Babbington's booked to Vienna this
afternoon."

"Then he's going to see the old man. What are you fucking well
doing
about it?"

"There's - nothing I can do. Who would listen?"

"Sir William - he's got a pipeline straight to the PM."

"He's been Babbington's patron for years. He wanted the new
set-up,
SAID, and he wanted Babbington to run it. He might look at proof, but
he would never listen to assertion. And once a breath of what we know
gets out, we're both dead."

"I'm dead anyway when they catch up with me - remember?
Babbington
will know by now, and he's bound to believe Petrunin told me everything
before he died."

"Well, we can't try Sir William. What chance do you think there
would be of finding Massinger and the old man alive if we tell anybody?
Babbington would know in five minutes."

"Ballocks to Massinger! He's a silly bugger anyway. What does
1946
matter when you could be pushed under a bus any minute?" Hyde paused,
and then asked: "How could Babbington get rid of them without questions
being asked?"

"His KGB pals could take care of it for him. They might take the
old
man to Moscow for all I know, so they can send back pictures of his
emergence there before they kill him. As for Massinger, he could be
driving a hired car when it leaves the road and goes over a cliff- how
the devil do I know? But, he'll do it."

"The bloody crunch, then," Hyde murmured. "The bloody crunch."

"What can we do about the old man, Patrick?"

"God knows. Where is he?"

"Somewhere in Vienna - there's no one in Vienna Station I dare
trust, no one I can even send out."

"There's only us —?"

"Yes."

"Christ…" Hyde breathed. "Then, for God's sake, think of
something -
someone. Anyone. You must be able to trust someone who knows computers!"

"There's no one. God. I've racked my brains, but I can't come up
with a single name - not one I can be certain of."

"Then tell someone - without the proof- just tell someone!"

"I can't —! It's too dangerous. Look, your job is to go to
Vienna
and talk to Mrs Massinger —"

"Now I'm supposed to commit suicide — Christ!"

"She's desperate, she's afraid. She may know something - she may
be
able… look, Patrick, Sir William is her godfather —"

"And Babbington's a family friend. I know the set-up."

"She could be your only chance," Shelley said softly and
calculatedly.

"You bastard," Hyde breathed. "All right, all right. But you
-you
think of something else. Back-up. This won't be enough, and you know
it."

"All right - I promise. But, if you can get her out, do it. Put
her
somewhere safe. We could need her."

"Shelley - what about the old man?"

"Forget about the old man, Patrick - we can't get near him for
the
moment."

"For Christ's sake, Shelley - thinking is your
bloody job! So thinkl The old man could be in Russia by
tomorrow or the day after - find some way to stop it happening. You owe
the old man everything." His anger had provoked a return of
the pain in his hands, especially his left hand as it awkwardly
clutched the receiver. His cheek, too, burned once more.

"All right, all right - you don't have to remind me. I'll think."

"Find an answer. Now, give me the number of this Elsenreith
woman in
Vienna."

"How - dammit,
how?
"

Shelley stood before the huge map of Europe, the Middle East,
and
Asia which he had tacked to one wall of the sitting-room of Hyde's
flat. Ros watched him with undisguised disapproval. Hyde was untidy,
yes - but during his frequent absences she was always able to restore
the flat to an approximation of the perfect reality it had possessed in
the Golden Age before she had let it to Patrick Hyde.

And she fussed and tutted about it now because Shelley had told
her
where Hyde was and the danger he was in and she did not wish to think
about either subject.

"I've brought you some lunch," she said, offering a plate of
sandwiches and a large can of Foster's to Shelley's back. Peter Shelley
turned, attempting a smile. His brow was furrowed and his face pale. He
looked almost debauched by tension and failure. She witnessed fear,
too, in his eyes, above the dark smudges. He was afraid for himself and
attempting to ignore the feelings.

"Thanks, Ros." He took the plate and flopped onto the sofa. He
drank
greedily at the beer, staring at the torn sheets from his notebook
scattered on the coffee-table and the carpet beneath. The cat had toyed
with his felt pen, wiping it in a thin trail across the green carpet,
leaving a broken, blue, wobbly line. As if apologising, the
tortoiseshell rubbed itself against Ros's denims. She gently pushed it
away with her foot. Unoffended, the cat jumped onto the sofa next to
Shelley, attracted by the scent of the tuna sandwiches.

"These are good," Shelley remarked. There were cat hairs on the
lap
and calves of his dark suit. Ros forgave him for his patronising tone.

"Will he be all right?"

Shelley looked up, startled. "I hope so."

"He could always go back to Aussie - nobody'd find him there.
Not
that he'd want to…"

"Do you want a sandwich?"

"I've had my lunch, ta." Nevertheless, she sat opposite him in
an
armchair that fitted her large frame snugly, even tightly. She watched
him, then looked at the map spread on the wall behind him. He had
scribbled on it in several places - rings, crosses, names, dates -
pieces of torn notebook, frayed-edged, were also pinned to the map,
obscuring much of the Mediterranean, some of the North Sea, parts of
the Soviet Union and the Middle and Far East. It looked like the
creation of a peculiar, fastidious, regimented man planning his holiday
or even writing a travel guide. "What is it?" she asked, nodding
towards the map.

He glanced at it almost guiltily, as if embarrassed that it
should
represent hours of work. His stomach rumbled and he apologised. He
looked at his watch. It was after three - no surprise that he was
hungry.