The Bear's Tears (69 page)

Light switched on —

Hyde, startled into movement, slid upright against the wall, the
gun
coming up immediately, the barrel quivering slightly from reaction
until he stilled it, aiming it at —

— at Suk's stomach.
Suk's
stomach
—!

His legs felt weak. Suk's face mirrored his own shock and relief.

"For
Christ's
sake —!"
Hyde hissed venomously. "Where
the
fucking hell have you been?"

"Come, come quickly," Suk urged, pressing his thin, stooping
form
against the door he had closed furtively behind him. "Please —"

"It's over an hour since you - Christ, man, where were
you?"

"You must come at once, please, you must come now —!" the
supervising cleaner pleaded.

Hyde moved on stiff legs.

"Why? What's gone wrong?"

Suk shook his head vehemently. "No, nothing is wrong… I—"

"What?"

"It - it was difficult for me to approach, to know… eventually,
I -
I did not tell you this, but when I came last, the engineer…"

"Yes?"

"He had already arrived - I did not know how long before - I had
to
find out, I could not come sooner —"

"And?"

Suk seemed to stoop to Hyde's height, as if to diminish himself
as a
target for blame or blows. He was sweating. Hyde smelt him, too,
intruding upon the smells that had filled his nostrils for the past
hours.

"Only ten minutes before - I swear it, only ten —!" Suk cowered.

Hyde nodded, then looked at his watch.

"One hour and twenty - OK, take me down." He stared at Suk, but
a
threat seemed superfluous, even wrong. And his own tension threatened
to interfere with his articulation, and he merely added: "Come on, Suk
- take me down."

Hyde climbed into the white lab coat Suk had provided, clipping
the
ID card with his name, photograph and details enclosed in clear
plastic, to the breast pocket. He pocketed the pistol, and tested the
weight of his briefcase filled with files and forms in his left hand.
Then his right hand fiddled for the other documents in his pocket. The
cover seemed as thin and unprotective as the white coat. Joke scientist
- did they really expect him in that guise? Godwin nodded, smiling
sardonically in his mind. Suk opened the door with exaggerated caution,
almost comically. Then slipped through the crack into the corridor.
Hyde followed.

Suk's whisper enticed him like the tune of a snake-charmer along
the
corridors, down the flights of stairs to the cellars of the Chancellery
building where the KGB had installed their high-security computer room,
protected by the rock of the high Hradcany ridge.

Now, the man wanted to talk, to babble away tension, letting it
leak
out in words.

"The engineer was delayed by a job outside Prague - a military
installation, I think… complained much, but I did not think he was
coming, sorry, but I missed him… I have glimpsed the room only once
since his arrival… it seems he is still occupied…"

Hyde wanted to order him to keep quiet, but was afraid of a
crack in
his voice. Suk's words were like a strong light, making the weave of
the operation transparent and fragile. Shut up, man, shut up —

Then, the last flight of steps. The shoulder of a uniformed
guard at
the bottom, jutting beyond a turn in the corridor. Hyde dodged back out
of sight, feeling Suk's shallow, quick breathing on his neck and cheek.
He shivered, turning to face the supervising cleaner.

Then looked at his watch.

"He was delayed?" Suk nodded. Already, the beads of perspiration
on
his pale forehead were drying. He had completed his role. In a moment,
he would be able to retreat from this location, this tension. Count the
money —

"Then the fault on the computer should have disappeared by now,"
Hyde said. He remembered turning the hands and setting the clock in the
darkness of the metro tunnel.

He saw the shoulder of the guard, the first obstacle of his
course.
Even if he passed him, there would be others; beyond them, he might
only find that the engineer had already left, the fault had vanished,
his presence unnecessary and immediately suspicious. The guard's
shoulder twitched like an organ of sense detecting something amiss.
Hyde gripped the material of Suk's suit above the breastbone.

"I'm walking into a trap because you couldn't do your fucking
job
properly!" he hissed, leaning his lips to the man's ear. He heard Suk's
ragged breathing, loud as an alarm signal, and immediately released the
thin, coarse material of the jacket. Suk was vigorously shaking his
head, and sweating once more.

"No…"he protested.

"Get lost."

He shrugged Suk aside. The man backed away like some cowed,
theatrical servant, then muttered in a whisper: "I - will wait…"

Way out, exit, his mind warned, and he placated Suk
with a
nod. Then dismissed him from his thoughts. He heard the hesitant
footsteps vaguely; something that did not concern him.

Down the green wall to the next basement level, parallel with
the
handrail of the stairs, was painted a red stripe. It signified an area
of maximum security. They had passed stripes along every wall, down
every set of steps. They had gone from green to yellow to blue and now
to red. Indications of growing security, of greater and greater
restrictions to access. Increased warnings to Hyde of his danger, of
the distance back from the computer room to the castle above.

Red stripe. Absolutely no unauthorised personnel. Strictly no
admittance without the correct papers and identification. He looked
again at the guard's shoulder. The red stripe down the wall was at the
level of the marksman's badge on his upper sleeve. The tip of his rifle
barrel jutted beyond his shoulder, as if searching for him; waiting.

Twelve steps - then he had only the ID clipped to his breast
pocket
and the other papers with which to confront this first guard. And, if
he passed him, he would be between the rifle-tip he could see and the
Kalashnikov of the next guard further along the corridor. In a
crossfire if they so much as suspected…

Twelve steps.

He took the first step, body steady, temperature endurable, legs
OK,
breathing controlled.

His left foot fumbled at the third step. Already, the guard's
shoulder-flashes and arm-badges were more significant, larger in his
vision. It was as if he were on the point of tripping, of stumbling the
short distance to a collision with the uniform. He hesitated, felt the
perspiration beneath his shirt, then almost at once he was two-thirds
of the way down the striped wall towards the guard's shoulder. He felt
light-headed, as if with fresh, chill air. Better. Under control.
Better.

His foot touched the bottom step and the guard, startled, turned
to
him. Hyde stared into the young, freckled, open features, knowing that
if anything went wrong, if he were suspected or even exposed, he would
have to kill this guard in order to get out. The narrow corridor and
the flight of stairs were the only exit he knew from the cellars of the
Chancellery.

Marksman's flashes, KGB stripe. "Good evening, Comrade," Hyde
said
casually, presenting his breast-pocket ID for inspection, airily waving
his other documents in his right hand, as if beginning the theatrical
hypnosis of the young guard.

He waited on the edge of the precipitous moment. The guard took
his
papers, read them carefully, compared face with picture with face with
picture clipped on his pocket…

And nodded. Hyde's hand - fingers, at least - had touched the
small
of his back where the pistol was now concealed in his waistband. The
guard looked down, incongruously, at the faded denims and the
three-striped training shoes he was wearing. And seemed more than ever
convinced. Hyde's right hand regained his side, then touched the square
briefcase, flicking the catch. The guard peered. His ear was close to
Hyde's face, as if expecting a whispered confession. His fingers -
bitten nails, but clean - riffled the folded sheets of continuous
paper, the pamphlets and reference books, the ring-bound notebooks, the
manuals.

"Thank you, Comrade," the guard announced at last with a slight,
familiar deference. Members of the same side, the same club. Russians
in Czechoslovakia - KGB Russians. Godwin had said the papers would
stand up to inspection. They had.

Hyde said, "I hope this doesn't take all night."

"I'm off at twelve," the guard replied with complacency and a
grin.

"Lucky sod. I won't be out before then —" He almost wanted to
cross
his fingers as he said that.

He ambled with studied indifference down the red-striped
corridor
towards the guard at the end of it, a man relaxed by his observation of
the first guard's inspection of his papers. Already, there was the
smell of ozone and air-conditioning. There were staircases running down
further into the cellar complex. The corridor ended, opening out into a
glass-panelled area with chairs and a vending machine. An incongruous
rubber plant and magazines on a glass-topped table. The reception area
of a new company out to impress visitors. Beyond more glass panelling,
which reached to the high ceiling, lay the computer rooms. Men in white
coats and foot-coverings, No Smoking signs, security warnings - the
guard.

A flick of the papers, a glance at the breast-pocket ID, and the
guard stood aside from the door. Hyde felt breath and heartbeat
hesitate, even though he hardly paused in his stride as he pushed the
first door open and passed through. Ten fifty-three, he saw, glancing
at his watch as he pushed open the second door then let it close behind
him. Constant temperature, high level of noise - chatter rather than
hum
of the machinery. Perhaps three people mincing and sliding between the
metal cabinets - one carrying a clear plastic disc pack, loading it
onto one of the computers. The shift manager and an operator were
watching the job stream unfold on a console. The night shift.

High ceiling, a long room retreating beneath bright white
lighting.
Rows of VDUs and terminals. Controlled air came up near his legs
through one of the hundred grilles set in the suspended floor. Thick
bouquets of cable and wiring emerged from the floor directly into the
boxes which stood like ranks of filing cabinets, most of them orange
and bearing the legend ICL. Just as Godwin had said. British computers.

"Where's the post office engineer, Comrade?" he called out. A
bearded young man looked up from a sheaf of print-outs, pencil held
daggerlike in his teeth. He merely nodded in acknowledgement of what he
guessed to be Hyde's role and business and waved an arm vaguely. Hyde
followed the direction, moving more quickly now. If the fault had
disappeared because the short-life battery had run down, if the
engineer had called the Soviet embassy and requested a system test and
the genuine
tester
was on his way, if, if, if —

Someone glanced at him without interest, assuming his business
there. The noise of the room was almost unnerving. The temperature was
dry, dead like the air. Carpet, wiring, air-ducts and grilles, glass
walls, racks of tapes and discs, printers, VDUs. Hyde moved through an
alien, mechanical landscape towards the highest security area. He saw
guards, relaxed though in uniform, armed only with holstered pistols,
an officer, and one man in overalls, incongruous as a plumber might
have been in those aseptic surroundings.

A guard moved, glanced at his ID, and nodded. "Still giving
trouble?" Hyde asked the post office engineer's back as he bent over an
oscilloscope-like sophometric measuring set, toolbox open beside his
swivel-chair. The man waved him to silence. Hyde shrugged, someone
grinned and indicated the importance of the telephone call in which the
engineer was engaged.

The highest security areas was glassed off from the rest of the
computer room. Unnecessarily, but with habitual, obsessive KGB
thoroughness. Status, too, played its part. KGB officers who could
operate a remote terminal but who did not understand, and therefore
despised, computers and their programmers and operators, would enjoy
this sense of separation, of distance from the people in white coats.
Civilians.

The engineer was talking over the telephone landline to Moscow
Centre's Records Directorate. In his hand, flapping like a fan, was a
transistor-board he must have just changed. In a similar room another
trusted, security-cleared engineer would be checking the line at his
end. From terminal to scrambler to modem to telephone line - the two
men hurrying the miles towards each other. Feeding signals of known
frequency down the line and through the system and checking the
read-out at each end.

The fault was less than a mile of telephone line from the
Hradcany,
Hyde thought. He should have found it…
Intermittent
- calm
down, it's not staying around to be found.
Should already have
disappeared
, he reminded himself. Ten fifty-six.

The engineer put down the telephone and turned to Hyde. His
round
face was red and he was perspiring. His lips formed an obscenity in
silence before he realised that he, rather than Hyde, remained the
outsider of the group around the remote terminal.

Yet he persisted in his anger, saying, "Not as much fucking
trouble
as that lot!" He pointed to the telephone. On the screen, green symbols
- a simple piece of information, perhaps —? Yes, football scores from
Moscow. Hopelessly scrambled. A jumble of Cyrillic letters, gaps,
half-lines.

Then, as if by magic, resolved. At the engineer's nod, the KGB
Officer cancelled then re-summoned the scores, and they unrolled
obediently. Dynamo Tblisi 2, Dynamo Kiev 1.

"See?" the engineer said demandingly. "See? What a bloody
cock-up,
Comrade system tester! It's too intermittent to trace. They keep
telling me the fault's here, not in Moscow - not even in the Russian
section of the line - but here in Prague! I ask you, how can they know
that? Just bullshit!"