The Bear's Tears (56 page)

"It's every Soviet embassy in Europe and most of them elsewhere,
and
everything I can remember about them - and about our people in the same
places." He grinned. "It's all highly secret, of course."

"Sure," Ros replied.

Shelley had told her some, but by no means all. She had needed
to be
assured concerning the importance of what Hyde was doing, required some
vague suggestions that all would eventually be well, and had then
seemed satisfied. Shelley did not understand her relationship with
Hyde, or her feelings for him. And he did not have the time to spare to
consider the situation.

His face must have appeared impatient, for she stood up and
smoothed
the creases from her denims. "I'll leave you in peace," she said.

"There's just no way in," Shelley murmured, his fingertips
pushing
the separate sheets of his notebook like pieces on a board, with
deliberation and intensity.

"What?"

Shelley looked up. "Oh, sorry. Talking to myself."

"It - it is dangerous, isn't it?" Ros blurted out suddenly. Her
large, plump hands held each other for comfort beneath her huge bosom.

Shelley nodded. "It is. Not for you —"

"I didn't mean that!" she snapped. "I meant him - and you, and
that
Massinger bloke… and your boss. It's a stupid bloody game to begin
with, and bloody worse when you find out it's for real!"

"I'm sorry."

Ros snorted in derision and anxiety, then left the room. The cat
squeezed through the door just behind her feet. Left alone, Shelley
stood up and walked around the sofa to confront the unyielding map once
more, the can of Foster's still in his fist. His other hand was thrust
into his trouser pocket. He began toying with his car keys. The car was
even parked two streets away, just in case. Alison had gone to stay
with her mother in Hove - he'd taken that precaution immediately after
Hyde's call from Peshawar. Arguing all the way to the coast - but he
had managed to return to London without them.

He had used the excuse of having caught a cold in order to leave
his
office less than an hour after reporting that morning. He had returned
to Hyde's flat to await his call from Rome and to tell him the
damaging, possibly fatal news of Aubrey and Massinger. He had spent the
greater part of the previous night on the telephone in his flat, and
the last few hours before dawn trying to sleep in Hyde's bed, which he
found too hard. He was camped out, homeless.

Hiding, he reminded himself. I'm on the run like Hyde. I am
hiding.
No one knows it yet, but I'm already on the run.

He studied the map once more, his eyes roaming at first over
whole
continents, then reading his notes attached to those embassies and
consulates he considered most vulnerable to a penetration operation.

He'd run all kinds of penetration ops from Queen Anne's Gate and
from Century House, plenty of times. But he'd never held Aubrey's
safety in his hands before, and the concentration required to play this
kind of esoteric chess - this war-game - would not come because the old
man's face was always there at the back of his mind. He sighed and
swallowed more beer. It was gassy. He belched politely. The room was
warmer now, with the central heating turned up.

Come on, come on - make a beginning, he told himself. Alison was
safe in Hove, perhaps walking their daughter, the dog, even her
mother's spaniel along the beach. He, too, was safe for the moment.

Safe until he talked to someone. He could not approach Sir
William
without Hyde, without Margaret Massinger. Whatever he said would be
transmitted directly to Babbington, and he would have endangered
himself for nothing. Sir William was leaving for Washington that
evening. If he spoke to him now, he would pass the matter to the
Cabinet Office or JIC, and they would immediately inform Babbington. No
- that way, Aubrey's final disappearance was certain, and time would
run out for the Massingers…

He was Aubrey's only hope. He and the annotated,
scrawled-upon map on the wall. He flinched at the responsibility,
convinced as he now was that Aubrey would be shipped to Moscow as soon
as it could be arranged. It made sense. A drugged, bewildered Aubrey
would pose for pictures in Moscow, the world would believe his
treachery, and Babbington would be safe.

Shame about poor Massinger, dying in that car crash… his
wife
was terribly upset - she committed suicide, you know… poor woman.
It wouldn't take long, or much of an effort, to clean the stable and
ensure the continuation of Babbington the Russian agent as controller
of all British intelligence and security.

Pictures of Aubrey - Babbington must already have thought of it
and
needed only to arrange the delivery of the package to Moscow Centre…
Aubrey wearing his new medals, Aubrey in his new Moscow flat — Before
Aubrey died and was forgotten. Come on, come on —!

He moved closer to the map. London was out - too well-guarded,
impenetrable. And he didn't have the people… Likewise Paris, Rome,
Stockholm, Helsinki…

The Middle East - SIS were thin on the ground there, anyway.
He'd
dismissed Baghdad, Cairo, Amman almost at once… Far East - they
wouldn't have the computer links to Moscow Centre in some places, in
others they'd be too well guarded, too secure.

His long fingers touched, even caressed the map, smoothing it,
stroking whole continents, countries. Nothing. All his notes, almost
every one of them, registered hopelessness. The men he could trust were
pitifully few, those he could still trust in senior posts even fewer.
None of them promised the kind of expertise required in handling a
computer terminal, gaining access using Petrunin's instructions, and
coping satisfactorily with ingress and egress. And already, almost all
of them would have accepted Babbington as DG, and the re-organisation
of SIS into SAID. Aubrey was no more than an unfortunate part of their
collective past.

An irrelevant sense of fastidiousness made him lift the bottom
corner of the map and look to see whether he had marked the wall with
his pins and jottings. Yes… stabs of felt pen, little stains, the
pricks of pins - damn!

He cursed himself for evading his task. Looking behind the map —!

Map - curtain - map - Curtain… Curtain…

He had lifted the map like an old lady peering from behind her
net
curtains, glimpsing adultery or a marital quarrel or new furniture
being moved into the house across the street. But the image of a
political curtain, the idea of the capital letter - had come to him
instead.

Behind the Curtain…

He'd noted one or two of their embassies in Eastern Europe
already…
a preliminary listing of Aubrey's people, the still loyal, the ones who
would act word-of-mouth from him without official orders, without
explanations… where?

He knelt at the coffee-table, a vague progression of thoughts
unrolling in his mind, but shapeless and changing as soon as he
examined them. So he moved with them, instinctively, quickly… where?

He shuffled the papers, casting them aside because they seemed
no
longer relevant; a foolish speculation. Yes, here it was. A handful of
people - lower echelon as before, SIS personnel who owed everything to
the old man, as he did.

Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Bucharest…

He had to look at them on the map. He got up, the sheet in his
hand - locals, unofficial, businessmen, SIS officers, clerks and
cleaners and secretaries - inside and outside the Soviet embassies.

Berlin… His pen tapped at the city, at head-height on the wall.
Berlin… everything was kosher between the Russians and East Germans -
the old pals act. East German Intelligence was used by the KGB, they
shared lots of work, security would be sloppier…

Berlin. Babbington would have Berlin Head of Station on his side
already - Macauley would see the main chance, a London posting to East
Europe Desk - Shelley's own job… who else was there? Clerks, ciphers -
might do, might not? Shelley didn't know the men and therefore couldn't
risk trusting them. Plenty of cleaners and secretaries on SIS's books
in and around the Soviet embassy but no field officer capable of being
trusted with the job.

He sighed with disappointment. The shapeless, changing ideas
scudded
through his mind. It was only their movement, their suggestion of
energy that he obeyed. He anticipated nothing.

Warsaw. Nothing, not since martial law. SIS people had been
picked
up in the nets that caught the Solidarity leaders and so had many of
the locals SIS employed. Warsaw, he noted with grim acceptance, was a
blank piece of paper which he ought to affix to the map.

Bucharest - no. Too far, too many unknowns - possibly no
high-grade
traffic with the Moscow Centre main computers. Budapest - now,
Budapest… ?

A network had been rolled up there six months before. It had
never
been re-established. An indiscreet junior minster had been on the hook,
right inside the Interior Ministry. He gave the names of all the
others, of his contact officer, of the occasional visiting field
controller, and they'd all gone into the bag.

They'd got two back, three were still in prison - two
businessmen
and an exchange student - and the native Hungarians had all been shot.
Budapest - blank sheet, then…

Belgrade. Tight, because of Yugoslavia's non-aligned status.
Just
like a foreign country to the KGB. Plenty of Yugoslavs, but little to
show for their efforts.

Prague… another old pals act. The KGB used the STB, Czech
Intelligence, as its messenger-boys, its hit-men on occasion. The heavy
mob. That obscenity of a Czech embassy built of grey concrete and
smoked glass in Kensington Palace Gardens carried more high-powered
aerials and receiving dishes than the Soviet embassy itself. The KGB
and the STB played footsie all the time with one another.

Shelley remembered a report from a low-grade source that much of
the
communications network used by the KGB in Prague now existed inside the
Hradcany Castle rather than in the Soviet embassy. As he recalled the
information, he remembered himself as a tourist, years before, on
holiday in Prague, and immediately his mind was filled with images of
the huge, looming cathedral of St Vitus, part of the Hradcany. He'd
queued for hours to get into its garish, almost oriental interior
- Cologne cathedral tarted up for a pop concert, Alison had said of it.

He'd seen - they'd both seen - the big black Russian saloons
parked
like a defensive barricade around the government buildings in the
castle. That had been before 1968. Now, they were back with a
vengeance. Hand-in-glove, almost incestuous, the relationship between
KGB and STB.

It was so pally, it was downright sloppy —

Shelley looked at the map. He tapped the city on the Vltava with
his
forefinger. He studied his list, then looked back at the city almost
with longing. Who could he trust, out of all the SIS personnel in
Prague, other than Godwin? Godwin was Aubrey's man. But - useless…
Shelley heard the words echo in his mind; ashamed of them, bitter at
their truthfulness. Godwin had been wounded in Germany protecting the
life of a fake Chinese defector. He'd taken two bullets in the back and
now he walked on crutches, moving two dragging, useless legs with their
aid. Aubrey had not pensioned him off, as he should have done. Instead,
the old man had posted him to Prague as a cipher clerk. Poor bloody
Godwin.

Two crippled, dragging legs. No go. No penetration op in
prospect
there. Worse, Godwin had the qualifications. He was trained in
computers, had used them at Century House before his Hong Kong posting,
where he had agreed reluctantly to go and only because of the sunshine,
since there was little or no computer work for him. He would understand
- be able to analyse and explain - everything Petrunin had told Hyde.
He would understand —!

"Damn! Oh, damn, damn, damn it!" he shouted. Godwin,
fit and healthy, could have done it!

The ideas in his mind seemed to drain away towards a distant
horizon, like clouds seen in a speeded-up film covering the passage of
a day or even a week in mere seconds. Dead end. He touched the map once
more, his fingers spread as if he were about to use some secret
combination that would open a wall-safe.

Godwin had useless legs, Godwin couldn't even hobble without
both
heavy metal crutches.

His mind began softly chanting the formula over and over.
Failure.
Dead end. His fingers stroked the map, as if trying to coax some
solution from its colours and contours and boundaries. Slowly, heavily,
they stroked southwards —

Vienna?

Hopeless. It was called the city of spies. Everyone was secure
and
no one was to be trusted in Vienna. Impossible to mount something
against the embassy there, even though Hyde - with good strong legs he
could not help but think, disliking himself at once - was there, too.
In Vienna, agents changed allegiance with every remittance - Queen's
face, Presidential features, German philosopher, hero of the people…
they obeyed only the faces on the banknotes. And Vienna Station itself
was now being run on Babbington's behalf. No go. Definitely no go.

And then he thought —

Hyde… hydrofoil. Hyde - hydrofoil, Hyde-hydro…

There was a hydrofoil trip up the Danube for tourists from
Vienna to
Bratislava which took less than an hour, no papers required… Bratislava
in Czechoslovakia… Hyde-hydro - He could get Hyde into Czecho easily —

The clouds rolled back through his mind as if the film had been
reversed, moving more swiftly than ever, radiant with energy. He could
- yes, it was possible, it could be done —

Danube. January. Ice —

The hydrofoil only ran in the summer months, for the tourists.

Immediately, he was defeated, his schemes shrunken and dry like
long-fallen fruit. But almost at once, because the racing clouds of his
ideas did not stop, he thought - Zimmermann. Even as he realised that
Hyde could not cross into Czechoslovakia without papers and knew that
he could not supply them, he understood that Zimmermann would have
contacts in Vienna, that he could supply —