The Bear's Tears (6 page)

Eight minutes. These people had come for him - by arrangement.

Hyde could not bring himself to admit the idea, even though the
accentless voice cried in his head,
Kill him, kill him
… He
was able, just, to hold the idea of
collusion
simply as an
unfamiliar word in his awareness. It did not burgeon into acts,
arrangements, betrayals, pain, faces. Eight minutes thirty —

Move, he told himself. Go now. Fourth man. He scanned the
Stephansplatz. A dark figure beneath a street-lamp, then another
passing across the lights from a coffee-house window. Point of
convergence, the Goldschmidgasse —

Then a knot of men appeared at the corner of the narrow street,
moving urgently. The figures he had identified spread outwards, like
seed cast from a hand. The net spread; men began running. In that
moment, it was already too late. A second earlier, they had been
evident by their immobility in the wind that hurried the innocent
across the square like leaves; now, they were moving more swiftly,
projectiles rather than detritus. Hyde was trapped in the doorway of
the cathedral, the door locked against him.

His thoughts raced but held no form. Adrenalin offered itself, but
with the crudeness of a one-swallow drink. Dark overcoat moving to the
cathedral's north side, dark overcoat to the south side, skirting the
square. Doorways checked. Two men coming across the square towards the
west door and its concealing shadow, two more descending into the light
of the metro station. Other, disregarded shapes drifted or hurried
across the Stephansplatz, as unimportant as the sleet blown through
the light of the lamps. Two men coming towards him, north side man
closer than the man on the south side. Eight men altogether; nothing
being left to chance. Substitution,
collusion -
now when he
didn't want them the images came to accompany the word. Wilkes's voice,
the accentless English in the palace grounds, Kapustin watching,
Babbington arresting Aubrey for treason - the arrangement of his own
capture and murder.

Now
—

South side man perhaps thirty yards from him, the two men crossing
the square, one taller than the other, broader, striding more quickly -
they were fifteen yards, fourteen, twelve…

He ran.

Hyde's boots skidded on the little accumulation of sleety snow on
the bottom step, then he turned to his left, thrust away from the
sooty, crumbling stonework, head down. A shout, other shouts like
answering hunting horns. The south-side man hurrying almost at once,
without noticeable shock-delay. Hyde rounded the west facade into
deeper shadow, hearing the footsteps behind him over the pounding of
his heart; over the drumming realisation that he was running into a
narrowing canyon behind the cathedral where the pedestrianised streets
on the north and south sides converged. At that instant, men were
running along the north side, beneath the unfinished, capped tower of
the Stephansdom, to head him off. It was a race. There would be no
doubling back, no luck of deception. Point of convergence - himself. He
would have to outrun them.

Lights from fashionable, expensive apartments above fashionable,
expensive shops. Shoes gleamed and primped in a soft-lit window. A
couple huddled in a chilly passion in the shop's doorway. The shadows
along the cathedral wall were deep, almost alive. Hyde skidded again,
and his hand rubbed against cold stone as he righted himself. He could
hear the beat of footsteps ahead and behind him.

Shop window, doorway, couple, dark side street…

He turned, saw the three men bearing down on him, and then fled down
the narrow street, away from the cathedral. Their pursuit resounded
from the blank, grey walls of the tall houses. Left into a narrow alley
with light at the other end, then right and across the street, hearing
a car moving away from him and the sudden, chilling screech of a cat,
then another alley, then a lightless street after the loom of a church.

He paused and listened. The car's noise had faded. There was the
noise of someone blundering into a dustbin, music from an upstairs
window, and the beat of footsteps - splitting up, the noises moving
away. He crossed the street and walked swiftly, hands in his pockets. A
man emerged from the alley into the dark street. He was alone, and no
more than a shadowy lump. Then he moved off in the opposite direction.

Sausages hung in the unlit window of a delicatessen; fat, ripe,
Daliesque. His dark, narrow features stared out at him in reflection.
He looked abandoned, inadequate. He had no cover, no luggage, no hotel,
no back-up. Wilkes had set the KGB on him.

A Mercedes roared past, startling him, making his hand reach
instinctively into the breast of his overcoat where the butt of the gun
felt damp with his exertions. Then he relaxed, and looked again at his
slight, hunched figure and the sallow reflection of his face. He began
walking slowly on, with no purpose other than to conceal himself.

"Is this to be the beginning or the end of this -
lunacy
?"

Sir Andrew Babbington, Director-General of MI5, lowered himself with
studied casualness into the armchair opposite Aubrey, and then looked
up into the older man's face as if assessing the visible symptoms of a
disease. Aubrey waved his glance aside with an angry gesture that
underlined his enraged question.

"Kenneth —"

"Babbington, I asked you a question. Pray do me the courtesy of
replying."

"This is Colonel Eldon," Babbington said, indicating his companion,
"of our Counter-espionage Branch." His smile indicated that he
considered he had answered Aubrey's enquiry. Eldon nodded.

"Sir Kenneth," he murmured. Eldon, behind his military moustache,
was sleek, handsome, clear-eyed; he was also tall. And Aubrey sensed a
tough doggedness just beneath the surface of this senior interrogator.
For a moment, Aubrey's heart beat with
a ragged swiftness. He gripped the arms of his chair to suppress the
quiver of his hands. The game had begun in earnest. There was no room
for mistakes, no margin for error.

"I have been held under what I can only consider to be house arrest
for two days. My telephone has been tapped, there have been guards at
my door. My housekeeper has only been allowed to go shopping after a
humiliating search. She is searched again when she returns. Oh, sit
down, Eldon —!" He waved his hand towards the unoccupied sofa. Eldon
sank into its deep cushions. The interruption had defused Aubrey's
angry protest.

Babbington said: "You wish the charges against you to be clarified?"
There was something sharp gleaming through the man's urbanity, and it
worried Aubrey.

"What charges?"

"Charges of treason," Babbington snapped.

"So you said at the Belvedere, and again at the embassy - and again
on the aircraft and in the car from Heathrow. You must be more
explicit," Aubrey added with a calm acidity he did not feel.

Babbington grinned. Apparently, a moment for which he had been
waiting had arrived. Eldon, too, seemed pleased that a point of crisis
had been reached. He was stroking his moustache in a parody of the
military man he had once been. His eyes appeared blank and unfocused,
and Aubrey realised that the man was dangerously intelligent,
dangerously good at his job.

"Very well, Kenneth," Babbington replied.

"You'll have to try very hard, Babbington - even were I guilty!"
Aubrey snapped, surprised at his own rage.

"Oh, we realise it will be a very long job, Sir Kenneth," Eldon
murmured.

"Why have I been denied all access to the Minister, to the Chairman
of the JIC - whom I might expect to be here in your stead, incidentally
- and even to the Cabinet Office?"

"Because for the present, and until this matter is resolved - the
power of all three lies in me."

"I see," Aubrey replied. He controlled the muscles of his face,
which wished to express apprehension, even shock. "Yet another
rearrangement of our peculiar hierarchy, I gather," he murmured
contemptuously.

Babbington merely smiled. Aubrey had been appointed as 'C' after the
retirement of Sir Richard Cunningham. The appointment had coincided
with the changes in the Joint Intelligence
Committee that the Franks Report on the Falklands campaign had
urged. The Chairmanship of the JIC had been lost by the Foreign Office,
and MI5, under Babbington, had seized its chance to bask in the sun.
MI5 had survived the Blunt, Hollis, Long scandals and emerged in the
ascendent under a younger, more virile leadership. SIS was regarded as
a country for old men, Aubrey being the oldest among them. Everyone was
waiting for his retirement. Sir William Guest, as Chairman of the JIC
and with the ear of the PM, had his own plans for a combined security
and intelligence service. And Aubrey knew that he intended Babbington
to head the new service, SAID. Everyone -
simply
everyone -
was waiting for his retirement. He could almost see the impatience in
Babbington's eyes, sense it in the room. And now, this - this
thing
that had lumbered out of one of his nightmares had fallen into their
hands, and they were all prepared to use it to get rid of him. It
almost did not matter to them whether he were guilty or innocent. He
would be removed and the new service would be inaugurated, and
Babbington would have his place in the sun.

Aubrey controlled his features once more. Babbington was enjoying
whatever expression of anger or bitterness played about his lips.

They had him now. Another Russian agent. Babbington was outraged,
even vengeful. That latter would be because he was an old family friend
of the Castlefords.

Evidently his face had again betrayed his thoughts, because
Babbington smiled and said with silky threat: "Whatever else may or may
not be true, Kenneth - if you betrayed Robert Castleford to the NKVD in
1946, I will have your head. I promise you that." The anger was cold,
well-savoured, decided upon. It was an emotion that had become a
motive, a mainspring of action. Aubrey avoided glancing towards Eldon's
glittering eyes.

Then Eldon said: "Sir Kenneth…" Aubrey looked venomously in his
direction. "Perhaps you would prefer that these conversations…" His
hands moved apart, suggesting the passage of a great deal of time; a
time without specified term. "… take place at one of our - residences
out of town?"

Aubrey shook his head. "I'm sure you realise that I would prefer to
cling to the familiar?" he replied with an acid smile. "In this case,
however, I would be using my surroundings as a constant reminder of
what is at stake for me - what I might lose."

"You would prefer to remain here, too, I suspect - comfort and
familiarity can be great betrayers." Eldon nodded his head in
acknowledgement. "No, we'll stay here, I think. Coffee?" he added
brightly.

"Please."

Aubrey lifted the small silver bell which Mrs Grey had instructed
him to buy and use as a proper means of summoning her, and it tinkled
softly in the comfortable room whose windows looked north over Regent's
Park. The central heating clunked dully. The morning's headlines lay
exposed and sharp on the table beside Aubrey's chair.

When he had ordered coffee, Aubrey said: "Why was no D-notice
issued, Babbington? Why the hue and cry? I can't see how that can be to
your advantage…"

"Not us. The Americans, we're pretty sure. They're impatient for
answers, for proof."

"Ah. They'd prefer to see the ascendency of your service completed."
His face folded into bitter creases, and his hand plucked for a moment
at the fringing on the armchair. "As would HMG, now that there is the
slightest doubt about myself. No country for old men, mm?" He looked up
at Babbington, whose face was as immobile as if he had suffered a
stroke. One eyelid flickered for a moment. Then Aubrey laughed, a
short, derisive bark. "My God, Babbington, you really
do
have
a lot to gain from my guilt!"

"And are you guilty, Sir Kenneth?" Eldon interjected.

Aubrey threw down his challenge. "I was using more sophisticated
techniques of interrogation when you were still fagging for your house
captain, Eldon."

"I'm well aware of your reputation, Sir Kenneth."

"Ah, coffee - excellent. Thank you, Mrs Grey."

Mrs Grey deposited the silver tray on the sideboard, bestowed
glances of proprietorial malice upon Aubrey's visitors, and then left
the room. Aubrey poured the coffee, fussing over it in a caricature of
aged bachelorhood. He flexed mental muscles as he did so. Then he
returned to his seat.

"Well, gentlemen?" he asked brightly. "I have the last forty-five
years to lose, and the emperor's new clothes…" He indicated the large
room and its furniture. "Perhaps you'd better begin."

Immediately, Eldon said: "Sir Kenneth, did you know that at your
last Helsinki meeting your controller was wired for sound, even though
you were not… by his request, if I remember your report correctly."

Aubrey was silent for some moments. The information had winded him.
Suspicions crowded in his mind, just out of the light. "Wired for
sound?
Controller
!" He squeezed contempt into his voice.

"Your KGB contact, if you prefer," Eldon corrected himself. "Yes,
wired for sound. We have the tape."

"Then —"

"It seems very conclusive."

"Where is it?"

"We'll let you hear it, Kenneth," Babbington soothed, savouring
Aubrey's failure of nerve.

"Conclusive, you say - then why the need for… ?"

"Conclusive of treason, perhaps I should have said, Sir Kenneth."

"Then it's faked! Where did you get it?"

"The Finns. They have people in the Soviet
apparat
in
Helsinki. One of them got it out, the Finns handed it straight on to us
- to Sir William and the Cabinet Office…"

"You bloody fools - you
dangerous
fools!" Aubrey snapped.