The Bear's Tears (68 page)

"I would prefer that you did not."

"What? Not on your —"

"Please listen. The safe house has monitors and surveillance
cameras
both inside and out?"

"Yes, but —"

"And a security room?"

"Yes—"

"Then, Sir Andrew Babbington, I propose that Wilkes remains in
the
safe house - in the security room itself - and he can observe our
progress… you speak some Russian, Wilkes?"

"He does."

"Then over the R/T, he can inform us of the movements of his
unfortunate colleagues."

"Wait a minute, chum —"

"A good idea, Voronin. That's settled, Wilkes… drink your wine
and
don't sulk."

"Vienna Station was not curious as to how and where you captured
these desperate criminals?"

"Of course. Wilkes bluffed it out with them, in my name. Because
of
Aubrey's treachery, no one can be trusted. I have had to use local
unofficial and people I've drafted in - and a top-secret location.
Parrish swallowed it more or less whole, didn't he, Wilkes?"

"Like a greedy trout - silly old fart."

"And - for your part, my dear Voronin?"

"Everything is arranged. We will go in at eleven-thirty. A
strong
force of men. Aubrey and the others will be transferred to the embassy,
then to the airport. An Aeroflot diplomatic flight will take them to
Moscow - leaving at… but that is not your concern. They will be safely
in Moscow and no longer a threat to you before daylight tomorrow."

"Good. I'm glad that Kapustin has had the sense to accept my
scenario."

"Now, I would like to see a scale-drawing of the safe house,
please."

"You still haven't finished your Châteaubriand."

"I still prefer my meat to be more cooked - what do you say?
Well
done?"

"Yes. Quite correct. Well done it is."

"Well, there it is - Castle Dracula. You all right?"

"Stakes and garlic - check."

"Just walk straight in through the gates, past the guards. Just
like
that bus-load of schoolkids."

"Bit late, isn't it - getting dark?"

"Never too late for a bit of Party history."

"Christ - they're forming up in a crocodile, and I can't hear
any
noise! Something to be said for the Party after all."

"Make sure you buy the official guide book to the Hradcany. From
the
Cedok office in the First Courtyard. Then you can wander through the
Second and Third Courtyards to the cathedral. Across the courtyard from
the cathedral is the President's Chancellery. Down below the building
and the courtyard are, among other things, the computer rooms. Wander
over for a closer look at the architecture - you'll be looked for and
spotted."

"The supervising cleaner?"

"That's him. He'll use your name - no, he knows nothing else
about
you, only the name. Then he'll conceal you until tonight."

"You're certain he'll know —?"

"When the post office engineer arrives - yes. When an hour has
passed, he'll come and tip you off. Then you're on - the big finale,
all singing, all dancing."

"Why is he doing it?"

"Oh, he wants to be bit better off financially… well, he's
bitter as
well. He used to be an electrical engineer until he signed the Charter
one night when he was pissed out of his mind. Now, he supervises the
Mrs Mops in the Hradcany. Someone's idea of a joke. But, he wouldn't do
it without the money - it's also true you can trust him…"

"And I get out this way?"

"Your Soviet ID's OK - I double-checked. And the guards will
change
at about ten. When you come out, they won't expect to have checked you
in - they'll be new."

"OK - I'm off."

"Good luck, Hyde. I mean it."

"Don't go cold on your brilliant planning now, Godwin - that's
all I
need!"

"I'm not cold on it - it'll work, if you keep your head."

"I intend to."

"And remember - Moscow Centre will expect to hear from you
before
you start testing - and maybe during. If they ring you - at any
time - you've got to be able to bluff it out. You have to convince
them that you're doing nothing wrong, that you need to access the
information you've requested to check the system thoroughly. If you
don't, they could isolate your terminal at any time they choose, just
like that —! Your screen will go blank, the terminal will shut down,
and you'll never get hold of
Teardrop."

"Sure. Here's another bus-load of kids for the funfair. I'm off."

"I'll be here, waiting for you. You'll be finished before
midnight
and on your way to Bratislava, with any luck. You could be back across
the border before daylight."

"Let's hope it's soon enough."

"Good luck."

"Sure."

Babbington's bruise-dyed knuckles as he thrust his right hand
into
the black glove; Margaret Massinger's swollen lips and crooked,
reluctant smile; Massinger's limp and his own weariness; all confirmed
his growing realisation of the complete, successful power of an
implacable opponent. Margaret's hurt mouth and jaw were like badges of
ownership placed on them all by Babbington.

Then they were outside - Massinger shivered immediately in the
thin
raincoat he wore over his shirt. Margaret hunched into her fur jacket.
Aubrey felt the wind whip at his sparse hair, blow coldly around his
collar. The sky was bright with stars where racing clouds did not
obscure them. Gravel crunched beneath their feet - dragged in the case
of the limping Massinger. Margaret supported his weight as well as she
was able. Their guards walked beside them, unworried. Aubrey felt his
attention drawn towards the moving, changing, unreal clouds. His
thoughts drifted.

He ducked into the rear of the black BMW, and a guard followed
him.
In the headlights, he saw haloes of breath like signals of distress
around Massinger's head as the others were put into a Mercedes for the
drive to the safe house. Then the driver slipped into his seat, and
Babbington settled heavily into the front passenger seat, obscuring
Aubrey's view of the other car.

Babbington ordered the driver to move off. The BMW bucked down
the
narrow track towards the road through the village, headlights swaying
and jolting; illuminating the Massingers' heads in silhouette pressed
almost together in the leading car. Reconciled, accepting.

Aubrey was envious, and angry. Babbington's head obscured his
view
of the other car when he sat back in his seat. The guard was silent at
his side, hardly watchful, already assured of the old man's
harmlessness.

Yes, the Massingers - he'd known it the moment he had first seen
them together, seen it through the shock of her presence at the lodge -
had achieved acceptance; had settled for the consolation of their
reunion. It was to be envied, for he, after all, would die alone.

The lights glared as the BMW hit the final, slush-filled rut in
the
track and dirty, half-frozen water splashed the windscreen. Then, out
of the lights and the action of the wipers, knowledge emerged.

From what Babbington had said, his scheme had the attractions of
simplicity and effectiveness. Everyone would see the KGB recapture
their supposed agent. The Massingers would go with him to Moscow…

A fault there —

Aubrey swallowed drily. No fault, only ruthlessness. Whoever was
detailed to guard them at the Vienna Station safe house when they were
handed over was to die. The Massingers would not be accounted for. The
dead bodies would be irrefutable proof that the KGB took back their
own. As for the Massingers, there were no witnesses to the fact that
they had ever been in Aubrey's company.

And even if someone were to survive, no doubt Babbington's
explanation to Parrish as Head of Station - and to Guest and anyone and
everyone else - would be that the KGB took away the Massingers to
silence them. Innocents - victims of circumstance.

It did not even have to be tidy, loose ends could
remain.
No one would regard them as significant once the bodies were counted
and Aubrey had vanished in company with his friends from the
KGB —!

He clenched his hands into useless fists and swallowed the hard
lump
of bilious anger with difficulty, as he might have done a lodged
chicken-bone.

He closed his eyes. They were out of the village now, and the
oncoming evening headlights hurt his eyes. An image of Elsenreith
smiled in the flaring darkness, as if his face were outlined by the
explosions of an artillery barrage. Clara appeared more faintly behind
him, her face thin, undernourished waif-like, as he had first seen her.
And, because of Clara - love? Yes, perhaps. Certainly regard,
friendship unlike with any other woman…

Because Clara, Castleford.

He glimpsed the flicker of constant oncoming lights through his
pressed shut lids. They had turned onto the autobahn. He opened his
eyes, confirming his guess. Glimpsed then the two silhouetted heads in
the leading car, leaning together like dummies or the heads of two dead
bodies —

He shrugged, almost expecting their heads to loll away from one
another in death and disappear from the rear window of the Mercedes. He
closed his eyes once more.

Elsenreith, Clara, Castleford.

He had never felt as defeated, as alone and without hope while
in
East Berlin - the Russian Zone as it was then called, he pedantically
announced to himself. The Russian Zone. Not as helpless as now, not as
bereft of expectation. Hopeless —

His people had got him out - dragging him from the back of the
car
after they'd crashed a small truck into it as he was being transferred
from one prison to another - moving up the ladder of interrogation and
torture…

He had not expected them to rescue him, but even so he had
hoped.
Now, he did not, could not.

Castleford's face. His whining, pleading, ashamed face — then
his
slow-cunning, wary, treacherous, dangerous face. Then his dead face,
lying in a spreading pool of blood on the floor of his apartment.

His face in the bombed cellar - no, first his face lolling
slackly
and abruptly out of the back seat of the car - then his face in the
weak torchlight in the bombed-out, ruined cellar as Aubrey obscured it
with shovelfuls of rubble. Aubrey remembered the effort, the strain, of
levering the fragment of wall so that it fell into the hole of the
cellar, burying Castleford's stiff, white, staring face.

They were traveling north-east through the Landstrasse district
of
Vienna, towards the Danube. Clara had been in Vienna, they had met once
more, he'd helped establish her there in business and —

Memory disallowed success. Instead, he heard Castleford's broken
voice, confessing. Voicing the trap that had closed about him when one
of the bright, scintillating, glamorous young men, now with broken
fingernails and a starved look about him, had pleaded to be saved from
the authorities. Then another of the group Castleford had know at
Cliveden and other great houses during the thirties had come, and then
a third 

And then Elsenreith had come and announced the conditions of
Castleford's new employment. And he had done the work because there was
no alternative; helping war criminals escape, evade justice and revenge.

The trap had closed on Aubrey now just as certainly as it had
shut
upon Castleford.

The Massingers - he glimpsed their shadowy heads once more as
the
cars crossed the river by the Praterbrücke - had achieved their calm,
all passion spent, and for that, too, he envied them. It would be
better to lie down and wait quietly for the inevitable - would be
better…

In a matter of hours, a few hours at most, they would come for
him.
Killing those left, duped, to guard them at the safe house. Or leaving
one survivor, like Ishmael, to tell the tale. And he and the Massingers
would board the flight to Moscow before dawn.

The river gleamed with lights and then the BMW left the bridge
and
turned north. He began to watch the passing buildings, the oncoming
lights. Numbing his mind with fleeting sensations.

In the darkness, Hyde held the luminous dial of his watch close
to
his face; it clouded with his breath. He wiped the glass to read the
passage of time. Suk, the supervising cleaner, had been gone too long -
far too long. The sour smell of drying mops, of half-closed old polish
tins, of dust and cold, was the room's only reality.

The odour of detergent was strong and acrid. His stomach was
watery.
He had been waiting too long for a report from Suk, waiting too long to
be taken down to the lower levels of the building… the penetration
operation was on the point of being aborted…

However often he tried to dismiss that idea, it returned
insidiously, always with greater strength. He was nothing more than a
child hiding in an old dark house, playing sardines. But the game was
long over, no one had come to find him and the darkness was growing
more and more intense —

He shook his head, almost vehemently, clearing it. Around him
lay
the now unseen shipwreck of a hardware shop. Old vacuum cleaners, mops,
brooms, buckets, tea-chests, shelving. The pistol lay near his thigh as
he sat with his back against the wall.

He looked again at his watch. Time was running away. Suk had
been
gone three-quarters of an hour now on his scouting job… it should have
been fifteen minutes maximum before he came back to report. The
engineer would have been in the Hradcany computer room for more than
half an hour by now, perhaps more than an hour…
Where was Suk?

The corridor outside was silent, empty.

Suk had buggered it up, got himself suspected, caught… even
chickened out. Delaying until it was too late, anyway.

It isn't going to happen, he heard his mind announce with solemn
clarity. It isn't going to work.

It isn't going to work - and
you're trapped…