The Bear's Tears (73 page)

"I left my heart…" he murmured. And continued: "Oh, my love, my
darling, I've hungered for your touch…" Jimmy Young's voice in his head
for a moment, to be replaced by the voices of his grammar school's 1st
XV, aboard a coach, on tour in Wales. They were singing 'Unchained
Melody' for him and his girl-friend. Now his dull, suburbanised wife, a
dull lover and duller mother. The song had been for her and himself,
much younger. She'd been pretty then. Enough to have been put in the
club…

"I left my heart…" he ground out through his clenched teeth.

The body finished falling, came to rest and silence, in a patch
of
darkness that the cameras could not penetrate. Then a woolen-jerseyed
Russian with a blacked-up face climbed the staircase warily, towards
the camera.

"S-waneee, S-waneee, how I lub yuh, how I lub yuh —!" Wilkes
burst
out, almost giggling. Who was that who'd been killed? He didn't know
the name. One down, and the Russians had already moved to the first
floor back. Another blacked-up minstrel followed the first up the
stairs, teeth gleaming as he whispered urgently into the R/T clamped to
his cheek. Wilkes heard his voice like static hissing behind a
broadcast.

Wilkes hummed. Beach moved quickly on one screen, two more
Vienna
Station staffers on another, crouching together, looking scared in the
darkness. Russians moved in the main hallway, on the back landing,
pressing down the first of the corridors —

To be met. Wilkes jumped to attention in his swivel-chair,
startled
and surprised; the involved, vicariously-thrilled observer of the
drama. Shots, ducking bodies, one cry over the R/T near his hand, that
of a wounded Russian. Shots in singles, doubles. Two screens revealed
the log-jam, the crouching bodies at either end of the corridor - a
single flight of stairs and a corridor away from the prisoners' room.

Come on, come on - don't get stuck now, Wilkes pleaded. He
glanced
at his watch. Three minutes, a little more. His call would be logged
exactly at the embassy. He had to call Parrish now and tell him what
was happening. It was his reason - his excuse - for being in the secure
room.

And to switch on the alarms—!

He reached over and threw the switch, hearing the bells begin to
ring in muffled and distant parts of the house. Then he picked up the
telephone. They'd been ordered not to cut the wires, even though they
knew the location of the terminal box for the landline. The convincing
lie, the final mounting of Aubrey in his gilt frame, began with this
telephone call.

He dialled. Shots through the R/T, a body slumping too quickly
back
out of sight. Two down. A fusilade, then a rush at the stairs by the
black-jerseyed group that had gathered in the stairwell, in shadow.
Someone at the top of the stairs, outnumbered and running to save
himself or to get help.

It was Parrish's direct number. Wilkes blurted the emergency
code,
screamed for assistance, acknowledged futile orders from the Head of
Station, looked at his watch, put down the telephone. He reassumed his
passive role before the bank of screens. They held the whole first
floor now. Beach and his group were retreating towards the prisoners
and the secure room.

Come on, come on —

He had given the operation its time-limit - too soon? Had to.
Look
suspicious otherwise —

Who was that - Davies? Moving away from the prisoners' door
towards
the turn in the corridor and the staircase up which Beach and another
man were retreating. One, two, three left - and himself, Wilkes; the
full complement.

All the screens were empty now, except for those revealing the
staircase, the corridor, and the prisoners' room. Davies appeared to be
calling out. Above the noise of the alarm on the wall near his head.
Then another screen and another revealed the hurried, crouched, run of
two men in black. Down that corridor - which? - that
corridor, yes, Davies beginning to turn, but they had him and then they
had the door-handle to the prisoners' room, then Beach and the other
man - who? Liske, was it? Liske. Surrounded. Angry, frightened, letting
guns drop, hands and feet spread as they were searched, leaning towards
the wall. Beach's face looked up at one camera and stared at Wilkes
from the screen. His expression was puzzled, confused. He was wondering
where Wilkes had got to, why he hadn't come down… Beach's head shook,
then hung defeatedly against the wall as the prisoners were hurried
past him. Pleasure, congratulation, delight came in a chorus from the
R/T. The bluff was evident, overplayed, easy to interpret. He watched
Aubrey and the Massingers moving across the various screens as he
measured their progress towards the door, towards the gravel drive and
the cars now pulling up to await them.

Aubrey tired and ill and white. Massinger angry, wincing with
rage
and with the pain in his leg. The woman bruised and weak. For a moment,
on every screen, he thought an after-image lingered. His imagination
lit each of the screens with flickering memories. Tanks rolling into
Prague's Old Town Square and across the Charles Bridge; napalm in
Vietnam; Russian MiL-24s in Afghanistan. Black arms raising aloft
Kalashnikovs in a sugarcane setting. Red Square parades. The weak,
compromising faces of Presidents and PMs. The row of implacable faces
and stances along the top of the Lenin Mausoleum, the tanks and
missiles passing beneath their gaze.

Then the hard-lit night, the faint whirl of snow in the wind.
Aubrey
and the other two huddled and bundled into the black cars. The
black-garbed team hurrying now, the exhausts smoking in the spotlights.
Burgeoning smoke, roaring engines over the still-open R/T —

The movement, then the message.

"OK, Wilkes," the R/T said, then clicked into an
ether-whispering
silence.

Finished. Wilkes gazed at the bank of screens. At Beach and
Davies
and Liske beginning to move, to clatter down the staircase. Almost time
to join them. He quite clearly saw images of El Salvador on one screen,
on another a retinal image of Sadat's funeral. That inevitable
motorcade and the blood on a fashionable pink suit - mini-skirted - on
a third screen. The cradled, ruined head in Jackie's lap.

"I left my heart —" he began, but the song faltered. Joke over.
The
cars had vanished out of the gates of the house. On the screen Wilkes
could see the gasworks in the distance.

The West was finished, he had decided. Decided long,
long
ago. Finished, washed up, a waste of everyone's time. Losers.

He'd stuck by that insight, and the decisions which followed it;
and
been satisfied. No complaints. He flicked off the screens, one by one.
No retinal images now. Only Beach and Davies and Liske running around
like chickens with their heads cut off - Liske wounded.

The only thing he'd ever disliked was the KGB's total
knowledge
of him. They'd understood him, utterly and completely understood him,
from the moment he'd first approached them with - with the offer of his
services. As if they'd always expected him to turn up —

Working for winners. For those who were ruthless, not
half-baked.
The winners.

He walked to the door of the secure room, shaking his head
slightly.
They'd understood him too easily, he was too much like them. He
dismissed the idea.

"I left my he-aaart in San Fran-ciscooo…" he whispered
intensely,
then composed his features to concern and worry as he locked the secure
room's door behind him.

The ringing stopped. Stepanov's body, erect and stiff, seemed to
shudder with the impact of the silence. Hyde's temperature jumped. He
felt beads of sweat along his hairline and a cold sheen across the
small of his back and beneath his arms. The pistol quivered in his left
hand. The screen continued to unfold the contents of Petrunin's
insurance policy; the streamer stuttered, recording each piece of data
then pausing for the next buffer full of information. Already, Hyde had
enough to guarantee his own safety. A coup —

Get out —

Without destroying Babbington, he had nothing. Wasted, used
computer
recording tape. His eyes flickered to the screen - still First
Directorate current operations, still within the sphere of 9th
Department - Africa. There was so bloody much of it —! And a
short-cut password to each and every section and no way to
short-circuit the parade of secret information. He looked down at the
pistol, glanced at Georgi, who was looking up wondering why the phone
hadn't been answered, glanced back at the screen, at Stepanov, who had
now absorbed the shock of silence. He was beginning to smile at Hyde's
failure. Glanced then at the vz.75 pistol in his hand. Fifteen rounds
between himself and Hradcany Square.

Silence. Short-cut, bloody short-cut —!

The operator in Moscow would be reporting to his superior,
perhaps
at once to the colonel. If they became alarmed, they could ring
anywhere - everywhere in the Chancellery or the whole of the
Hradcany complex. Hyde was two floors beneath the Third Courtyard, like
a rat in a sewer…

They could block every exit without his being aware of what they
had
done until he ran into the gunfire.

Stepanov made to turn to him, a remark forming itself silently
on
his full lips.

"Don't —!" Hyde warned in a shaky voice, and Stepanov sat
staring
ahead of him. The weakness of Hyde's voice seemed a sufficient and
satisfactory answer to the enquiry Stepanov had intended.

Then he glanced at Georgi, who was emerging through the glass
door,
fifty feet from them, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. Hyde stared
at the screen. Nothing yet. Forty feet away - as soon as Georgi reached
them he would see the gun and, and, and…

He could not even complete the thought, the certainty that he
could
not control two men and the screen as time ran out. Couldn't control
himself—

Georgi stopped, half-turned, half the distance to them. The
telephone was ringing in the glass cubicle. Above the hum and mutter
and conversation of the machines, Hyde could hear it dimly calling for
attention. It seemed whispered, but urgent. Demanding. Georgi glanced
very slowly at the mugs in his hands, at Hyde and Stepanov, then
shrugged and turned on his heel. Stepanov's tense smile faded, then
reappeared as he realised the nature of the call, the probable identity
of the caller. Moscow Centre —

First Directorate - damn, damn, damn —

Georgi had reached the glass cubicle, opened the door, gone in,
picked up the telephone.

"Not long now," Stepanov murmured with exaggerated confidence.

"Shut up —!"

He watched Georgi, the pistol pressed against Stepanov's side to
prevent a sudden move. The guard was almost at attention, one hand
fiddling with his unbuttoned collar. Moscow Centre. Then Georgi glanced
towards them, speaking as he did so - describing the two men he could
see, explaining, painting a picture. Nodding. Face suspicious, puzzled.
Soon the orders —

Short-cut, short-cut,
short-cut -
Dominus illuminatio
—!

And then —

He did not even pause to consider the idea because, at the back
of
his mind, he could see Petrunin smiling, his lips painted with blood,
but smiling…

Break.

MENU.

He typed in ASSIGNMENT HISTORY, praying that the screen would
not go
grey and blank, listening intently to Georgi's door, waiting for the
noise of its being opened, of the first question the guard would ask of
Stepanov —

Watching Stepanov, feeling his rigid, unmoving and confident
frame
against the hole at the end of the vz.75's short barrel.

WHITENIGHTSWHITERUSSIANWHITEBEAR, he typed furiously.

The screen cleared. He typed in Petrunin's name and rank and KGB
number. Then, almost at once, with drops of sweat falling on the keys,
making them treacherous, slippery —

KABULMOSCOWLONDON.

Georgi had a pistol in his hands! Stepanov was watching Georgi,
willing him to move. Telephone clattered down. Door opened, banging
back against the glass wall. Georgi hurrying —

Poem to Lara. Tear for Lara.

He typed LARA.

A tear for Lara. A bear's tears.

TEARDROP, he read in Cyrillic.
Teardrop.

He drew in a deep breath, sobbing almost, nearly choking on the
aseptic, dust-free air. Georgi was hurrying, hurrying - phone left off
the hook,
please report at once,
discover what is happening, bring
your officer to the telephone —

Hyde raised the pistol and shouted. Georgi halted, his hands
feebly
gripping the air level with his shoulders, fingers fumbling into
surrender. His gun barrel was raised to the ceiling.

"Throw the gun away, sit on the
floor-do it!"
Hyde
yelled
at the top of his voice.

Georgi almost tumbled into a cross-legged position on the
carpet,
the gun yards away from him, sliding harmlessly to rest. The telephone
began to ring next to the VDU. Hyde glanced at the screen.

… implemented when conditions favourable
to place him in
unassailable position within hierarchy…

The name, Christ the name —!

… operational order given. Proposed
merger of two services,
security and intelligence, suggests optimum chance of success for
operation within ensuing twelve months…

The name —!

… Cabinet opinion favours new combined
service…Chairman
of JIC
will provide favourable conditions for promotion of our agent… Deputy
Chairman Kapustin to begin overtures… documents in preparation for
eventual defection of agent Smokescreen…

Stepanov, Georgi, the telephone. Noise, urgency, fear. He felt
himself out of control, weak and trapped.

Babbington.

Blank screen.

Illusion? He touched the grey surface of the screen, smoothing
out
its charge of static. Illusion?