The Bear's Tears (57 page)

Ski-ing. A ski-ing holiday. Visas were settled at the border,
not
required in advance. All Hyde needed to get into Czecho was a hired
car, a roof rack and a pair of skis as his cover. And an Austrian or
German passport supplied by Zimmermann. And he could get out by the
same route.

Hyde knew the what, Godwin the how. Hyde had legs - ingress and
egress were his business… Godwin could coach him to approach the
computer, Godwin would know the precise location and nature of the
computer link between Prague and Moscow Centre… Hyde and
Godwin, not Godwin alone.

Yes —

He would have to return to the office to get off a long, coded
signal - EYES ONLY Godwin - whatever the risk to his security… and
however much the desperation that had formed the scheme kept nudging
him. Babbington was on his way to Vienna by now. Shelley glanced at his
watch, then at the window. It was already getting dark outside. The
street-lights were on. The map was washed with an orange glow, as if
lit from within.

Desperate, but he had to take the risk of going to Century House,
just as Hyde and Godwin had to take the risks he intended
for
them. Then he would disappear back here, to hide out. Godwin would know
an untapped telephone and would be able to call him at Hyde's flat.

He sat down immediately. He wanted no truck with qualifications,
with the minutiae of planning, the sense of the many dangers that
pushed at his awareness like a madman at a door. Vast scope for error
and failure —

No. No!

He began at once, in an almost blithe, superficial mood that he
knew
would not last, to draft the signal to Godwin in Prague.

Margaret Massinger was huddled into the passenger seat of the
hired
Ford as they waited near the exit of the car-park beside the sliproad
from Schwechat airport to the autobahn. It was a few minutes after four
in the afternoon, and the orange lights made the sky behind them
prematurely darker. Clouds scudded in the wind, threatening snow if
they but slowed in their passage across the sky. The windows of the
Ford were misty with their breathing. The instrument panel glowed
because Hyde had the ignition switched on so that the heating warmed
the car. She felt uncomfortable with Hyde, her rescuer. He seemed an
essential component of the trap into which her husband had been led by
loyalty, by friendship - and by her. She blamed herself, over and over
without respite, fearing he might be dying or even dead by now, and the
blame spread like a patch of damp to include everyone connected with
Aubrey and his downfall. Hyde was, therefore, a prime target for her
outrage.

Hyde had found her sitting on a camp-bed used occasionally
during
stocktaking or by the manager of a small dress-shop owned by Clara
Elsenreith. The woman had taken Margaret there less than an hour after
she had discovered her fingering the small patch of blood on the
Chinese rug, and told her to remain there. Once Hyde had been directed
to Margaret's hiding-place, he instructed Clara to leave Vienna.

Where?
she had challenged.

Have you got a summer place?

St Wolfgang, but…

Go there. Now.

The woman had agreed to do so. Hyde himself had witnessed her
departure. He saw, also, the surveillance. Russian, he thought, rather
than Wilkes and the other corrupted souls. They were evidently waiting
for Margaret to return. Clara's Porsche would be followed, of course,
but so would the tail-car. Clara had important friends in the Viennese
police hierarchy. She had told her story to one of them -
she was
certain that
someone was
watching her apartment, following her car
.
She would be guarded all the way to St Wolfgang.

A pity her friends couldn't solve the problem of Margaret
Massinger,
her husband, and the old man. Vienna was Liberty Hall as far as
intelligence services were concerned. The police just did not see, hear
or speak. At best, they would expect to hand Margaret Massinger over to
Babbington as his problem.

Hyde glanced at her. Guilt had made its inroads on her eyes and
colouring. She was guilty now, disproportionately so; blaming herself
for the entire situation and its outcome. And afraid they'd already
killed her husband. She'd exorcised her father, for certain, but she
believed it had taken her husband's life to achieve it. Because of the
situation in which she had placed Aubrey, drawing Babbington's heavy
mob after her to Vienna and Clara Elsenreith's apartment, he could feel
no sympathy for her. She was an encumbrance, and a reminder that
attending to her safety was the only task he was competent to tackle.
For Aubrey, he could do nothing.

"He was on the plane," he said. He had returned to the car from
the
airport observation lounge only a few minutes before. "And he's being
met." He had glimpsed Babbington hurrying across fifty yards of
windswept tarmac towards the airport buildings. It would have been an
easy shot for a rifle.

Hyde had no gun. He patted his waistband. Almost no gun. A small
.22
Astra which belonged to Clara Elsenreith, and one spare 6-shot
ammunition clip. A lady's gun with only close-range stopping power. He
had never used one before. Those few field men and armourers he knew
who had used the Astra advised that it required half the magazine to
ensure immobilising any enemy. The gun did not provide a great deal of
comfort. It was marginally better than nothing. He settled down behind
the wheel in silence. The gun might be next to useless, but he had
unwrapped some of the bandaging from his right hand so that he could
hold it more easily. It had been painful, closing his hand
experimentally around the butt. Driving the car, too, hurt his hands,
but the pain was now retreating.

When the first escorting car passed them, followed by the
limousine
which must contain Babbington behind its tinted windows, the sight
startled Margaret Massinger. She sat bolt upright in her seat, turning
to Hyde, who at that moment switched on the Ford's engine.

"What will he do to them?"

"Who? Your old family friend and escort to the opera?" Hyde
sneered.
A third car was bunched up behind the limousine. It looked like a KGB
procession. It was, he reminded himself.

Margaret's face was pinched with anger. "Yes. Him."

"I hear the KGB Rezident in London got pissed at your place a
few
times, too. That right, is it?" His hands touched the wheel gingerly,
then gripped. A stabbing pain, then almost at once a steady ache he
could ignore. He rolled the car gently down the sliproad, accelerating
once he reached the autobahn. The traffic was already heavier with the
first of the rush-hour. A caterpillar of lights rushed towards them.
They were invisible in the thinner stream of traffic heading into the
city. Away to their left, the landing lights of an aircraft flickered
and winked.

"Yes," Margaret admitted miserably. Hyde desisted from further
comment. Accusations, reminders only fed her guilt. Guilty, she was
useless, even dangerous. "What will he do to them?" she repeated after
a mile or more of silence.

"If it hasn't occurred to him yet, then it soon will."

"What?"

"The old man on display in Russia."

"How could he —?"

"Easy. Drug the poor old sod up to the eyeballs, take a few
snaps,
then get rid of him. Babbington would be safe then, because the old
man's treachery would have been confirmed."

"And Paul?"

"An accident."

"No…" Margaret's voice shuddered, and she covered her face with
her
hands.

The three cars ahead had left the autobahn into Vienna and were
climbing and twisting through the maze of a major junction. Hyde closed
the gap between them, aware of the plethora of signs and distances and
directions. The cars braked, turned and Hyde followed them onto
Autobahn 23, heading south-west. He wondered for a moment whether he
had been spotted, since the three cars appeared to be retracing their
journey, and then decided it was merely a precautionary move. He let
the Ford drop back into the stream, half-a-dozen cars behind the
trailing.

He was alert at every sliproad and junction. They passed through
Favoriten and Liesing before the autobahn turned south and became the
E.7. The three cars left the autobahn at Vosendorf, turning west onto
Autobahn 21. By this time, Margaret had a road map on her knees, and
periodically switched on the courtesy light.

"It looks like the Vienna Woods," she said, switching off the
light
immediately.

"He's not likely to go further afield. I wonder who owns the
property - us or the Red Terrors?"

The cars left the autobahn outside the village of Perchtoldsdorf
and
Hyde slowed, widening the gap between them and himself before he, too,
took the winding minor road. Now that they had left the tunnel of
lights, they could see the low hills rising against still-blue gaps in
the clouds. Vineyard lines and trellises flanked the road. The village
was quiet, glowing, tiny. Hyde saw the doors of an inn swing open,
could almost imagine he heard accordion music and singing. Yet there
were modern houses, too. New wealth moving to picturesque suburbs,
enlarging villages. He saw a Porsche parked outside a converted barn, a
BMW outside a modernised mill, a Ferrari standing next to it. They
crossed a tiny stone bridge and, as they did, the three cars ahead
turned off the narrow road into trees. He saw their lights dancing
ahead of them on a rutted track. He drove beyond their turning point,
noticing the narrow drive and the lights of a large, low house perhaps
a hundred yards beyond. They were just outside the village. Hyde
stopped the car.

"Welcome to King Babbington's regal hunting lodge," he remarked.
"Who says crime doesn't pay. It must belong to the opposition. We
couldn't afford it." He gently touched his hands together. Just aching…
not too bad.

"Are they inside?" Margaret asked, the first tiny note of
hysteria
in her voice. It disturbed Hyde.

"Oh, yes - they're inside."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I really don't know."

A log fire blazed in the huge fireplace. The lighting was
subdued,
warm. The shadows of the men who got quickly to their feet as he
entered loomed and swayed on the walls and ceiling. Deep old chairs, a
sofa, gleaming block flooring covered by thick, bright rugs. Babbington
realised the appearance and furnishings probably corresponded to
someone's image of a senior Party official's
dacha
in the
woods outside Moscow. However, he liked the house; always had done. It
was a safe house in more senses than intelligence jargon implied. He
nodded to the three men in the room. More shadows loomed as his escort
trooped in behind him. One of them took his dark overcoat. He shook
hands warmly with Wilkes who had crossed the room to greet him. Wilkes
was Vienna Station; Wilkes was entirely necessary, even irreplaceable.
The others were locals, one of them even an emigre Bulgarian, one of
the mercenaries of the secret world. The dog-soldiers.

"You've kept them apart?" Babbington asked, letting go of
Wilkes's
hand.

Wilkes nodded. "All the time."

"Good."

Babbington crossed to the fireplace. The heat from the logs
leapt to
his cold face. He rubbed his hands together then offered his palms to
the fire, bending slightly forward. He appeared intent upon pictures in
the flames, but for Babbington there were none. He had his objective
clearly in mind and there was no margin for error or imagination.

When his hands were warm again, he turned his back to the fire
and
studied the men in the room with him. They appeared, amusingly, like
stark-shadowed passport or prison pictures of themselves against the
white-painted stone walls of the room.
His
people - Vienna Station.
Wilkes, of course, had been the
beginning
of it, approaching the KGB when he was first posted to the city. A
greedy man, a man who sought money and also loved the challenge of
betrayal. Eventually, Babbington was made known to him, and Babbington
began using him. By that time, Wilkes had enlisted most of the people
in the room. He was running Vienna Station by then, even though the
Head
of Station, Parrish, was nominally his superior. Parrish allowed
Wilkes, as senior field officer based outside the embassy, to
control the operation of the Station; to pay, to contact, to mount
operations, and to recruit - most importantly, to recruit. Wilkes had
recruited the locals and the emigres, even two of the men posted to
Vienna from London. He'd done a very good job during the past three or
four years. He had provided Babbington's communications base, and his
eventual means of trapping Aubrey.

Briefly, and with an inward smile, Babbington recollected
approaching the small, self-important figure of Aubrey in the Belvedere
gardens. Only two weeks ago. Another forty-eight hours
would see it finished with.

Them finished with
, he
corrected himself.

"How badly is Massinger hurt?" he snapped at Wilkes. "I
couldn't
obtain a clear picture from - your colleagues." There was evident
irony. Wilkes's expression did not change.

"Not bad. He's been patched up. A doc the - our friends use from
time to time. Silly bugger wanted to be a hero. He'll live. Just lost a
lot of blood, that's all." Wilkes affected boredom.

"And Aubrey?" Babbington could hardly mask the gleam of
satisfaction
in his voice.

"Grumbling - threatening - full of bull, about covers it."

Babbington's face registered disappointment. Evidently, Aubrey
was
not yet a broken man. He wondered whether he should see him, or let him
stew a little longer.

"No news of the woman?"

"Which one?"

"Massinger's wife - oh, dismiss your colleagues, Wilkes…"